All of ourimaler's Comments + Replies

ourimaler120

"Drop dead, Potter."

OK, that one got me to chuckle out loud.

Hm. So far, while I've been enjoying these epilogue chapters, it feels like there's not ENOUGH of them. I'm not sure the story can be given a satisfying conclusion with just one more chapter.

...Of course, in theory the chapter can be 100,000 words long, but...

Yeah, only one more chapter, and Harry hasn't even spoken to Hermione yet. Or his parents. Or gone back to the mirror to see if they could get Dumbledore out. No Bellatrix either. Or Dementors.

No Merlin or Atlantis either, though I suppose neither of those is gonna happen.

4gjm
I think Eliezer has given information about his word counts that suggests that the last chapter will be on the order of 10k words or so.

There was that whole "You just used a Muggle dark ritual to permanently sacrifice your ability to believe in blood purism" bit.

2Shmi
That was an ELI5, not a lie...

True, but he was also a lot less useful - Voldemort intended to take the gloves off and have the entire Ministry either dead or imperiused within the next 24 hours, meaning Lucius's political connections suddenly mattered a whole lot less.

ourimaler280

Hm. Remember how memory charms, while removing the memories, don't necessarily remove the emotions of the erased moments?

Draco at the start of the chapter:

The feeling of emptiness that filled him up was so profound that it left no room even for pretended courtesy.

Everyone was dead.

Draco after obliviation:

The feeling of emptiness that filled him up was so profound that it left no room even for lies.

Everyone was dead.

Everyone was dead, and it had all been futile from the beginning.

ourimaler160

Harry has, throughout the story, demonstrated a tendency to lecture people when simpler words were far more likely to get results. He is... not a good communicator.

0William_Quixote
Yeah, that's Harrys MO. By this point it's almost a running gag (or it would be if it were less sad). In the first bunch of chapters Harrys lectures are really funny for just how out of place they are if you actualy imagine them coming from an 11 year old. In fact they are out of place if you imagine them coming from any real person at all, rather than from a character in a book. In the early chapters this is played for laughs and then even called out when Hermione notices that people in books speak like books. Here though the exact same behavior goes from funny to sad. Stakes are too high.

He's about Harry's age and Narcissa was disappeared before Voldy got kaboomed, so, yeah.

ourimaler130

Kind of glad Draco wouldn't give an answer to Harry - it's sad, but also entirely realistic. Would have strained my suspicion of disbelief if he'd just accepted to forgive and forget.

As for Narcissa... Sweet vindication. ...And then a gutpunch as she speaks her husband's name.

7WalterL
I dunno, the best way to carry on his Malfoy tradition would be to thank the Boy-Who-Lived profusely, smile falsely and carry on. For emphasis he should claim he was only Imperiused into pretending to love his father, callback to Lucius -> Voldemort. Harry isn't dumb enough to trust him no matter what he says, might as well spit in his eye one last time.

I hoped for Draco saying "I need more time. Lock me up somewhere safe if you have to, but I need time to process this."

4Subbak
Well I guess eventually the right memories will come back to her. Although I guess Draco can't have been more than a few months old when she "died".

Hm. To be honest, I'd hoped that this chapter would include a scene of Harry explaining events (or at least a version closer to the truth) to McGonagall, Snape and Moody, since it seemed unlikely they would fall for his melodramatic psychic display. (And because keeping secrets has NOT worked well so far, as Harry recently realized.)

4Epictetus
He should definitely tell the truth to Moody. Harry's inexperience has caused him to overlook many things in the past and this is serious enough to get someone with actual experience to look over the facts. Voldemort probably had other plans in motion and other agents carrying out his will.
3kilobug
Well, since they did accept that "Voldemort tried to cast AK on a child, boom big explosion", and they do suspect that Harry's scar is indeed connected to Voldemort, I don't see any reason for them to distrust Harry's account of the events, especially since they mostly match what they found there. As for keeping secrets, not speaking about "the sense of doom" and the Azkaban issue to the Order did harm, but keeping secret about partial transfiguration and his ability to transfigure carbon nanotubes allowed him to save the day, so I wouldn't say "keeping secrets has NOT worked well" in general. If I were Harry, I would probably wait a bit until the emotional chaos (both inside Harry and inside McGonagall) lowers a bit before telling them "hrm, you know, I'm the one who killed the Death Eaters". If I were to even speak about it at all.

It does cast a different light on that time he asks Harry why Voldemort does the things he does.

ourimaler340

So, apparently, the final exam question was "What would Taylor Hebert do?".

4[anonymous]
Alternatively, "What would Neji do?"
2hairyfigment
A: Taylor would violate her mentor's mind and then make him look like a hero.
0Luke_A_Somers
Answer A: Carbon nanotube spiders. Ouch. Answer B: I think all of them were in range. Admin powers time?
6Alsadius
Anyone who gives a speech in a school talking about how drugs are fun is a good person to emulate, IMO.

True. Which is why my final proposal involved providing something to distract the Death Eaters for a crucial moment.

OK, here's what I ended up posting:

"Have sseveral ssecretss you would consider worth a hosstage, but before that, ssusspect your plan to get rid of me flawed. Am Tom Riddle. Might have accesss to horcruxes. Unlesss grant ssecurity of parentss firsst, will raise wand at minionss; they will casst avada kedavra, sskipping sseveral of your intended ssteps; am gambling on returning from horcrux before you hurt hosstages."

Nonplussed, Lord Voldemort gestured to his Death-Eaters. "A small change in orders, gentlemen. If the boy speaks in human tongu... (read more)

I kind of wish I had a better visual imagination or spatial awareness. I tend to have trouble keeping track of the environment in novels. As such, even after going back to the story, I'm not entirely sure where exactly Harry is.

The reason I bring this up is that we are told, explicitly, that the Death Eaters will kill Harry if he stops pointing his wand toward the floor.

But 1 G gravity is FAST, and they might be too surprised to react in time if Harry suddenly falls THROUGH the floor. Which may or may not be an option available to him, depending on his location, by using partial transfiguration to turn a thin section of the floor around him into sand.

3lerjj
1 G is a high acceleration, but it's not that fast initially. That gives him about half a second before his head falls below ground level (0.64s to fall 2m).
0ourimaler
OK, here's what I ended up posting: "Have sseveral ssecretss you would consider worth a hosstage, but before that, ssusspect your plan to get rid of me flawed. Am Tom Riddle. Might have accesss to horcruxes. Unlesss grant ssecurity of parentss firsst, will raise wand at minionss; they will casst avada kedavra, sskipping sseveral of your intended ssteps; am gambling on returning from horcrux before you hurt hosstages." Nonplussed, Lord Voldemort gestured to his Death-Eaters. "A small change in orders, gentlemen. If the boy speaks in human tongue, makes a sudden move, or raises his wand away from the floor, don't case avada kedavra on him - cast stupefy inst-" Before Voldemort could finish his sentence, before the Death-Eaters could switch mental tracks, Harry's wand - which had never stopped pointing at the floor - finished casting the partial transfiguration. A very thin section of the floor, in a circle surrounding Harry, was now sand. The younger Tom Riddle, along with the piece of floor he had been standing on, quickly fell to the ground below, away from the Death-Eaters' line of sight.

I played it a few months ago. It was quite fun... and, yes, there's one big shout-out to HPMoR (more specifically, to the Bayesian Conspiracy) in interactions with Ellen.

What kind of impressed me about "The Truth, part 1" was the reveal.

Consider: In most mystery novels, the reveal scene(s) is where the detective explains what the reader has been struggling to figure out since the start of the story. It provides a powerful "ah-ha!" moment if done right.

Here, everything Harry figures out is stuff the reader most likely already knew, thanks to meta-knowledge. We're watching him figure out what we'd been hoping he'd figure out for dozens of chapters. By all rights, it shouldn't provide that ah-ha feeling.

And yet... it does. I think the stream of consciousness really sells it. It helped me feel like I was inside Harry's head, living through that realization.

Well, it's your call. But for what it's worth, I enjoyed HtTtHnT when it was running (particularly how the protagonists handled the loss of their secret identities).

Luminosity sounds like an interesting idea, though I'll confess I've never read any of the Twilight books...

1Manfred
Well, you could always try reading the first few chapters and stop if you don't like it >:D
1Alicorn
Luminosity requires no knowledge of nor affection for canon Twilight.

Thank you! And thanks again for the link - I got around 250% as many unique views in the 48 following hours as I had in the entire preceding month.

Hello! Unless I'm mistaken, you're the author of Hi to Tsuki to Hoshi no Tama? I used to read that.

4Alicorn
I am, yes, but I now consider all the webcomics I used to do embarrassing and would rather steer you towards my more recent prose, like Luminosity.

I spent the first six years of my life in Israel, and the rest in France. Now, my immediate family wasn't really religious, but cultural osmosis did lead me to believe in the better-known Old Testament stories - a vague belief in God, as others might believe in Santa Claus (I also believed in the Tooth Fairy. And that she looked like Gonzo in a skirt. Muppet Babies may have been to blame).

Around age 8-10, I became enamored with science, which became central to my worldview. Now, one of the books I owned around then was a children's animal encyclopedia, and... (read more)

ourimaler270

Hello. I'm Ouri Maler, or "sun tzu" on some other forums; turning 29 in August.

I don't exactly remember when I started thinking of myself as a rationalist, but I know the core of my pro-science, pro-logic worldview was formed between the age of 8 and 10. For many years, I planned to be a physicist. In college, I studied to become a roboticist. And since that hasn't entirely panned out, I'm currently struggling to get employed as a programmer. I also write as a hobby, and I do try to reconstruct rationalism in my current urban fantasy story, "... (read more)

4Eliezer Yudkowsky
Oh hey, welcome! Any magical girl who takes the time to view the Earth from space has my vote, but you already know that.
7Alicorn
Oh hey, I have encountered this thing in the past and I think you have interacted with one of my beta readers and you promoted my friend Emily's Kickstarter. Hi!