I suspect it's because there is a much higher proportion of procrastinators among people who like this kind of story than is the norm. For me I found this by being rather bored and wondering what people thought about this fanfic I like. One googling later...

I think it likely that what you call rationality and what the author does are somewhat different things. He seems to define rationality as Bayes' Theorem+MML formalism of Occam's Razor. The former is a math theorem and the latter only assumes that the universe (or magic in this case) has some order.
Though I do agree that Harry's plot armor is a tad annoying...

 

Updated.

Revolves around Harry and Snape interaction.

 

Most absurd lines in the fan fiction to date occur in this chapter:

And then, for this one, all I could think was "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect":

---------- Post automerged at 06:08 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:02 AM ----------

Oh, also, if this fiction winds up having the magic explained by some stupid "the world of harry potter is a post-singularity computer simulation" or something, I think we are all going to be upset.

 

To be honest, I wouldn't give a shit. This stopped being a Harry Potter fanfiction a long time ago; probably why I got so bored of it so quickly, whereas others seemed to stick with it. I read fanfiction to waste time when not reading actual literature, I don't expect/want fanfiction to be used in this way by authors. It's a stupid premise, to load this much information into such a flimsy genre-verse, and to then keep pouring forth such a vast amount of theories and half-thought-out plot devices at such an immoderate rate into this world held together by one thing, Magic, is just bad writing.

I feel this fic goes against everything intrinsic to Potter-Law, and it's just [some of] the challenging thoughts posed by the author, and the admittedly decent writing, which has enamored many and blinded them to this.

Dark-Stallion.

 

Or it could be that some of us don't give a shit about Potter Law and judge the fic on its own merits.

I'm still in love with this fic, and think it's probably the best fic of 2010. Carry on, Less Wrong!

 

It's not that we're bound to follow Potter Law (it was, after all, just for fun), it's rather that it embodies pretty much the majority of DLP's preferences, so obeying it is simply an extension of what we want anyway.

 

Also, why are dumbledore and quirrell!mort both being written quasi-pedo in this fic?

 

K, so I've never really had much of a personal problem with you before. But the fact that you think THIS is the best fic of 2010 shows you to have pretty much no taste or idea of what makes a work good. All this fic does is attempt to inundate the reader with the authors fallacious notions of truth in a setting that renders that truth inherently impossible. Less Wrong is not really an author, because he isn't actually writing a story. He's writing something to prove how intelligent he is and how stupid you (the reader) are by comparison. That's not good writing. And the fact that you think its the BEST fic written this entire year... that's just crazy.

 

Actually, I think his eventual aim is to get more people for his apocalyptic+messianic cult and hence more donations for the organization he's PR guy of (singinst.org).

People's ideas about truth always interest me. Could you tell me what you mean by this?

 

This author = slightly less pretentious than Fettucinni/Joe/Pointy-shoed Fuckstick. Find the 'Knowledge is Power' failthread, and read about his opinions on social interaction (particularly women), and how one's perceived heightened overshadows or justifies what would be a huge fucking red flag in terms of stunted personality - which is strangely analogous to Less Wrong's thought process, if a bit more juvenile.

But because the story is humor, there's nothing wrong with the fairly transparent agenda the author has in terms of how they perceive others/the world around them. Like this last chapter for example: the reader is supposed to parse through Harry's monologue based on the hypothetical situation Snape presented to him, and come out of it thinking "Of course! Lily Evans WAS shallow! Of course - Good looking people are forgiven more easily, I've even seen it happen! DOH HO HO RATIONALITY!"

This Harry is as much a self-insert for Less Wrong as KIP's Harry was for Fetucinni, and that's why Zennith (rightly) identifies Harry's actions as the author's "fallacious notions of truth."

 

Blaise pretty much hit the nail on the head.

 

I'm not saying the protagonist isn't an author stand-in or that the author isn't pretentious, but beautiful people really do get a lot more slack in real life. I can quote references to studies published in peer reviewed journals that confirm this. Yes, the last sentence was attempt at humor, but the point stands.

 

Of course we do. I fail to see the problem.

 

Well the obvious problem is that ugly people keep procreating in batches.



The problem with the fic's presentation is the idea that Snape somehow 'logically' justifies his bitterness; as if the argument is solid like a geometry proof just because the language resembles mathematical/analytical spew.

 

Ugly people have no reason to be ugly when countries like Brazil exist. Go there, get a job in the imported electronics sector, and enjoy the insurance-covered plastic surgery.

 

I can't say I thought that was what we were supposed to do. Are you sure this is the author's intent (seems somewhat out of character based upon what I've seen of him on lesswrong.com)? How do you judge such a thing?
This also applies to some other attempts to judge author intent in this thread^

EDIT: Scratch the above. He explicitly says it in the latest author notes. Guess you've got a good point there.

 

It seems I don't understand the criticism. First of all, we don't really know the details about Lily's relationship with Snape or James Potter, neither in canon nor in this fic. Without knowing more about how sixteen year old James Potter and Severus Snape were like, we can't know whether sixteen year old Lily Evans was shallow or shrewd.

In the fic, according to what Snape told Harry, Lily chose a handsome rich bully ring leader over an ugly friendless boy who thought he was more deserving. Whether he was right or not, being bitter about her choice is like being bitter about gravity. So Snape is a dumbass for not letting it go after such a long time. That is my conclusion from the fic. Isn't this what the author intended to say?

In canon, Snape knew Lily from before Hogwarts. My impression was that he was friend-zoned and fantasized about his lab partner rationally considering who among her male peers was the most smart and talented and marrying him. Instead she chose the most popular boy in her year, once he stopped being so juvenile. Again, very plausible and probably not a bad strategy for choosing a husband (depending on how sure she was he wouldn't be a jerk to her). Harry himself went after beautiful popular athletic girls instead of girls with the most promising career perspectives or whatever. If Hermione was secretly in love with him, would she label him shallow? Would that be fair? Perhaps, but that's not a reason to waste your life and be bitter fifteen years later.

EDIT: @Blaise, RE: ugly people. You know the joke, "what do programmers use for contraceptives? Their personalities" ? Being ugly has nothing to do with it.

 

But it realllly doesn't help.

 

I actually liked the last chapter far more than some of the previous ones. To me, it highlights Harry's ridiculous arrogance and at the same time upholds him as a sympathetic character. It also points out that magic can trump uber-rationality, in regards to legilimency, at least at Harry's level.

The part where Snape mentioned Harry's near-death was chilling and well done. Was the author trying to infer that Lily was shallow? Who give's a fuck? Let the reader make their own judgement. I think she probably was. I have not met many teens who weren't, myself included at that age. We can also clearly see that Snape has traits that would exlude him from consideration as a worthy human being, if he so easily can contemplate the murder of children.

So, Harry learned a valuable lesson from an enemy, lost one of his staunchest protectors, saved a death-eater spawn from bullies and advanced his seeming all-powerfulness. Not a bad day's work.

EDIT: Yeah, so I just read an A/N on the last chapter and I gotta say...don't. It's fine if reading Harry makes me sometimes want to shove an M-80 up his ass, but the the author's insight make me want to give him equal treatment. Evermore, I will treat the author's views as I would my parent's sex lives. They might exist, but I will not contemplate them.

Why do artists presume we want to hear their views anyway? The last thing I would do is read a story just because I respected the mind that created it. The story is the end, not the means. Obviously there are seminal works that escape this dictum; Uncle Tom's Cabin, Huckleberry Finn, Inferno and the like. But, unless the work is a farce, allegory or very subtle, the author's views do not intrude on the story. Otherwise it is preachy and transparent and will promptly lose my interest.

Reading the A/N's in this story is like putting a topless stripper on the roadside, holding a neon sign pointing to all the things I don't like about this story. It destroys the suspension of disbelief and makes me want to visit the nearest fireworks stand....and a strip club.

 

Heh, that was the only silver lining to this story - the fact that he kept his author's notes out of the chapters. I'm glad I don't read his profile, otherwise I'd just rage harder.

@ Wolfe550e: I lol'd XD