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avichapman comments on [FINAL CHAPTER] Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, March 2015, chapter 122 - Less Wrong
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Wow. I see now what EY meant when he said it wasn't fair to criticize HPMOR as sexist before it was done. I finished reading the last chapter with the feeling that this was actually an origin story for Hermione.
Even without the enhancements, in real world terms Hermione was the most admirable character. Harry was a young boy with an old genius's brain patterns and an Oxford professor of science to raise him. Not really a fair benchmark to compare a 12 year old with.
She got better grades than Dumbledore did at her age, was beating the young Tom Riddle with a time turner in class, and beat Harry and Draco in the first battle, with neither a mysterious dark side nor military training. It was Hermione who knew more than than Draco and Harry how to properly make use of her army. It was Hermione who formed and led a band of Mighty Heroes.
It was Hermione who was fundamentally decent and had a moral rudder. A leader, brilliant, brave, and good. As long as she lived, it was clear that the future would belong to Hermione. No sparkling required.
In fairness, it was Quirrell who gave her the idea. She was flailing until he spoke to her and then assigned a deliberately chosen group of people to be her army.
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It was Hermione who inadvertently gave a bunch of 12-year old girls the idea that they should rush headlong into danger against superior opponents, and then was forced to stick with them as damage control.
I'm not sure why having won one kind of lottery is more admirable than another. (Getting a good brain from genes vs inheriting useful brain patterns from Tom Riddle).
That's why I said "in real world terms". Not a lot of genius horcruxes to bestow in the real world. Or partial transfiguration powers to exercise. Or bigger, harder, longer, and more throbbing midichlorians pulsing through your blood.
Hermione has real world admirable characteristics. Real world Hermiones prosper, and help those around them prosper.
Does it really nullify the criticisms of sexism? The Self Actualization arc remains mostly the same, Hermione is one of the characters that gets the least "upgrades" compared to canon for most of the story, so is McGonagall she's still fridged for the sake of Harry's quest (although I don't think that fridging is a good criticism), she ends up awesome through no actions of her own and her future is steered by Harry. People who criticized HPMOR for being sexist won't change their mind because of this ending.
As Harry's pet?
EDIT To head off the inevitable need to clarify myself, I clarify now: This refers entirely to Hermione's current status as the not-in-the-know smiling gofer being handed her role by the ever so wise 11-year-old savior and master of the fate of the universe who is of course the only person who could ever guide the whole fricking world in such a way that it won't be destroyed and tell her what she should be because reasons. And of course she just takes it. I interpreted this not as sexism but as the exaltation of Harry over all others who are of course less than sane/rational/special/human/important/worthy/cosmically-significant for basically no reason other than Time Says So. And everyone just goes along with it. That whole aspect of this whole chapter (and the last several) made me cringe. For multiple reasons.
But at the same time, Harry tries several times to give Hermione her own agency and not reduce her to this role. Or at least he says that he's trying to do that. He's not very good at it yet.
I believe that what happens on stage is what's important in a story.
More generally, I think Harry should be doing more towards putting together a team. I hope that Eliezer more fully learns the lesson from how well HPMOR fans did with the final exam.
To be fair, HPMOR was a major achievement. Doing justice to fiction about a team of very smart people might be more than can be expected.
It's Hermione who thinks of others as PCs who one could build a team out of, and has demonstrated that she can do it.
I hope we all do. And the rest of the world as well. Intellectual endeavors really should be able to iterate much faster than the paper publishing loop. Make intellectual work scalable in time and space and people.
Which is a lesson he should have learned when Hermione beat him and Draco in the first battle.