Distinguishing between parseltongue statements and those not is important, but I think it's more along the lines of him having a very skewed perspective on the whole issue. I suspect if he'd tried to get anywhere in muggle bureaucracies, he'd experience similar frustrations. His remarks are the author's polemic on the human condition, not on the wizard condition.

 

Are we actually calling a plot cliche that's about as old and overused as the live in trunk and Manipulative Dumbledore genius?

 

At the end of the day it's still just a fancy variation of the old "It's Harry's duty to defeat Voldemort because he did it before"-cliché you see in alot of Dark/Indy!Harry stories, coupled with the standard complaints of "betraying the light" for getting sorted in the wrong house etc.

Haven't read the later chapters and I think I'm gonna hold off until the entire thing is finished and then reread it but I doubt my biggest complaint with the story is gonna change, that it went from an amusing and lighthearted story with some grey-dark moments sprinkled throughout to straight on grimdark with very little lighthearted comedy.

 

The biggest problem with the latest chapters is how idiotic Dumbledore's plan was. It was doomed to fail on multiple points, and was completely pointless. DId Dumbledore actually forget about the cloak of invisibility?
In the worst case where Voldemort didn't have the cloak of invisibility and didn't have the ability to abandon the body at will, Voldemort still could have blown himself up to escape and revive elsewhere, so the plan was entirely predictably doomed to fail.

 

If reread the scene with Dumbledore you notice Dumbledore doesn't really behave in character, rather he is behaving how Voldemort would expect him to.
Theory: The mirror showed Voldemort what he wanted/expected to see. The real Dumbledore is still alive and well.

 

In that case it should have stopped showing Dumbledore when Voldemort put on the cloak.

 

I'll just assume everyone reading here now is up-to-date or doesn't care about spoilers.

I always assumed that Harry's Dark Side was the Voldemort horcrux, so I wasn't completely surprised. Still, that he is Tom Riddle was unexpected.
Yudkowsky said that he first thought he was too obvious with his characterization of Harry and that he feared everyone would figure out immediately that it's the horcrux. He didn't predict that people would just think it's a badly written character or a self-insert. I would call that (tongue-in-cheek) a failure of rationality.
The problem was compounded by him buffing up Hermione and Draco as well, so Harry didn't seem so out-of-place anymore. If the protagonist had been a normal 11-year-old and then met that Harry, we would have known something was up with him.

On the recent updates:
There was a lot of info-dumping done. On the one hand it's nice to have that information and history, on the other hand it's not very good story-telling to just dump 15k words of explanation.

Next problem I had was with the way Dumbledore was taken out of the picture. It might have been realistic or rational to not have some epic battle or something like it, but it was narratively unsatisfying. The mirror and its properties are just newly introduced, as is the spell Dumbledore uses, which is then immediately turned against him in a pretty simple way. No foreshadowing, nothing. I just thought this was pretty lame.

The latest update gives us a deadline to come up with a solution for Harry. I think that's interesting, but I can understand why other people might be mad about "taking the Happy Ending hostage".
Last time he did something similar, he eventually released both endings, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. (Although back then people disagreed on which one was the good ending.)

 

Disclaimer: Spoilers for the end of the story.

Complaints about story quality:

The author has completely failed to predict his readers: 1. Failing to understand that they don't trust the author in advance, so they think that Harry is a poorly written child instead of a not-really-a-child. 2. Failing to understand that the readers have a preconceived idea of Dumbledore as extremely powerful.

These 2 failures make the story significantly worse, and the author should have anticipated them and written differently.

Comment about author's challenge to readers:

We don't actually know which ending the author considers 'good'. Personally, I think that the author thinks the 'good' ending is Harry dying, so I have even less reason to participate in the author's challenge.

Comments about what's happening in the story:

Dumbledore's plan for stopping Voldemort is completely stupid, but that's consistent with the mediocre Dumbledore present throughout the story. As far as I can tell, the only reason Dumbledore has had any success is because previously Voldemort was taking it easy on him and because he has access to prophecies.

Voldemort hasn't disarmed Harry yet. Two possibilities: 1. This is a plot hole. 2. Voldemort isn't trying to kill Harry, he's going easy on him for the sake of having a game with him now and in the future.

Question about the thread:

Why is the thread tagged harry/hermione? They're just friends, and Harry hasn't gone through puberty.

 

He's STILL eleven?

 

The entire story takes place in first year, but he has the brain of an adult Voldemort.

 

Sort of? I think it would be more accurate to say he was never eleven.

 

Say what you will about the story, it has a very dedicated following. To wit, the word count of the review page for ch. 113 is over 280,000 words - longer than the Order of the Phoenix.

I'll admit I like the story, though I'm not quite as enamoured of it as I was at first. For instance, I thought that the Hermione-fights-bullies arc was borderline ridiculous. However, it's also one of the most meticulously plotted fanfics I've ever read, and it rewards reading with an attentiveness to detail. So my final judgment in positive, though that may change if the ending proves unsatisfactory.

 

I wish Xiph hadn't reopened the thread, so I didn't read a page and a half of people unironically praising a fanfic where Harry used a special magical Patronus to kill Dementors, as an eleven year old.

 

And for all that LW bashes unrationalists, Harry (a plug-in for his worldview) shares a fundamental value with Voldemort in not being fond of death very much to the point where, as I got to know him in MoR, he would probably risk an apocalypse if it meant success. As lines continue to blur between Harry and Voldemort, I find myself increasingly rooting for Voldemort, which, keeping in mind Yudkowski's story about aliens, might actually be the true, "good" ending (Voldemort wins and goes on killing idiots). Which wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

Keeping in mind Yudkowsky's track record the bad ending will involve everybody becoming Tom Riddle agent smith style, and the good ending will involve the entire earth being destroyed.

 

Unless Harry took over the place as "the source for the illusion".

Which is a wonky explanation.



As for Dumbledore's plan.

There are two interpretations, I gather.

The first one is that he simply didn't expect Tom to have exactly that Cloak, which would serve only as a workaround to escape the trap, and not turn it onto Dumbledore. It was only the fact that Tom took a hostage Dumbledore did not wish to destroy that achieved more than a simple escape.


Other possibility exists - Tom might have lied. He still might have been trapped - even if he put the cloak on and doomed Harry to the same fate, he only needed Dumbledore to believe it.


What is wonky with canon, it's that the cloak was summoned (close enough to it) and that doesn't work with the Cloak.

 

I've always had mixed feelings about this fic.

The beginning chapters were interesting, with occasional disappointments such as Harry's long name (I can't take Potter-Evans-Verres seriously).

Later on, some actually good plot points were introduced like Lord Voldemort who has read the Evil Overlord List (basically becoming a competent villain in the process).

Then there were further disappointments such as the super!Patronus. Eventually, the fic committed two things I consider as unforgivable in fanfiction.

1. It has people "running out of magic" AKA magical reserves. I can never, ever accept this in a story and it will always make me lower the rating, regardless of all other things.

2. This story has no magic. Let me explain: I consider magic to be the thing the reader feels when reading a story. Harry Potter is a story about wizards, castles, dragons, flying broomsticks and childlike wonder and awe. Methods of Rationality does not have this type of magic at all. It has cold, emotionless physics and mathematics instead.

So, my final rating is as such:

-1 for magical reserves.
-1 for no Story Magic.
-1 for idiotic plotpoints such as super!Patronuses.
+1 for Voldemort being competent.
+1 for making me curious enough to want to finish it.

Final score: 2/5

 

Here's an interesting take by a critic:

http://su3su2u1.tumblr.com/post/112496343438

I can paste it also if need be.

 

Isn't that the point? I assumed it was supposed to be amusingly ridiculous.