Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 22, chapter 93

daenerys

This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 93. The previous thread has passed 300 comments.

There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)

The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17,18,19,20.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically:

You do not need to rot13 anything about HP:MoR or the original Harry Potter series unless you are posting insider information from Eliezer Yudkowsky which is not supposed to be publicly available (which includes public statements by Eliezer that have been retracted).

If there is evidence for X in MOR and/or canon then it’s fine to post about X without rot13, even if you also have heard privately from Eliezer that X is true. But you should not post that “Eliezer said X is true” unless you use rot13.

Yet Hermione and McGonnagal are essentially as flawed as they were in the original text.

Amelia Bones, Susan Bones, Daphne Greengrass, Padme Patil (and even more minor characters like Hannah Abbot and Tracey Davis) are all significantly stronger and more relevant characters in this one than they ever were in the Harry Potter series.

If you compare ratio of the genders of relevant characters, HPMOR is better than the original Harry Potter ever was. You say Hermione is as flawed as in the original but you forget that it was Ron who was completely downgraded to peripheral status.

And as Velorien said, fridging is defined by its narrative purpose, and we don't know its narrative purpose yet.

Yeah I meant to mention Amelia Bones, who is by far the most competent female character we've encountered thus far. She is not, of course, a particularly major character thus far.

I guess when a character has an exciting fight off stage and we as readers perceive them as mortally wounded and helpless, and our male character swears vengeance at their death.. thats pretty much fridging to me. Regardless of the conclusion, the next few chapters at least will be devoted to Harry's actions which are entirely predicated on hermione's death.

If she had, as some sug... (read more)

11Alejandro113y

On the other hand, major female characters Luna and Ginny are entirely absent from HPMOR. I guess it was inevitable given the decision to make the story take place only within Harry's first year (since they are not in school yet) but I would have loved to see an HPMOR version of either of them.