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kgalias comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What fanfics should I read (perhaps as a HPMOR substitute)?
Harry Potter and the Natural 20.
If you haven't yet taken EY's suggestion in the author's notes to read Worm yet, do so. It's original fiction, but you probably don't mind.
Edit: also this might belong in the media thread?
Object level response To the Stars. Meta level, check the monthly media thread archives and/or HPMOR's author notes. They have lots of good suggestions, and in depth reviews.
I quite enjoyed https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2857962/1/Browncoat-Green-Eyes
(Yes, it's a Harry Potter/Firefly crossover. It's much, much better than the premise makes it sound)
I took this recommendation, and hated it. Got as far as the thing with Jayne's mother before I accepted that it wasn't going to get any better.
If you're some random person, wondering whether you should listen to me or Alsadius, I recommend the following test: read the first chapter. If you like chapter one you'll probably like the rest of it, and if you don't, you won't.
I agree with this test. True of many stories, really. I'm a fan of the plot, which only really comes together 2/3 of the way through, but if you're not a fan of the banter, it's not worth it.
I started reading it. Harry isn't Harry. He's constantly spouting "Charming" and "Snarky" lines at every character, and is inexplicably expert at piloting and knows everything about the firefly-verse after a time-skip of 2 years. If you hadn't told me he was Harry Potter I would've guessed he was Pham Nuwen. There's also tons of call-backs to past firefly events and lines of dialogue, which shows pretty weak imagination on the part of the author. A reference is one thing but you don't make it by characters constantly going "Hey remember that one time when we did X?" "Hey remember your wife?".
The request was for a HPMOR substitute. I figured that a Harry-like Harry wasn't exactly a necessity. As I said in an above comment, this author uses canon as a loose suggestion.
I keep running into that. Does it make sense to read if you haven't watched Firefly?
(I have watched Firefly - an episode or two. Didn't like it.)
Not really. You can get by without Potter knowledge(as usual, this author mangles it a fair bit anyways), but the plot is heavily tied into that of Firefly/Serenity, and the Firefly characters are more prominent. That said, feel free to read his Potter-only stuff instead - I haven't gone through his whole oeuvre, but everything I've read has been hilarious and well-written.
There's a new subreddit dedicated to rationalist fiction. You can check out stories linked there. I'm currently reading Rationalising Death, a Death Note fanfic and it's pretty good even though I haven't seen the anime on which it's based.
I'm also one-thirds into Amends, or Truth and Reconciliation, which is a decent look at how Harry Potter characters would logically react to the end of the Second Wizarding War. So far no idiot balls and pretty good characterization.
Rationalising Death may be better if you haven't read Death Note; it's pretty good about explaining everything. As someone familiar with Death Note my feeling so far has been that Rationalising Death hasn't diverged enough; it sometimes feels like just rehashing the original. Not always, certainly, and I'm overall enjoying it, but that's seemed like the biggest flaw to me so far (admittedly, the author says divergence will increase as it goes along, and there are signs of that pattern).
Chapter 7 is where it really starts moving on its own track, in my opinion. Things are really shaking up, and unknown forces are now in play.