Hell I'd fucking give Jon a forever home to see more of any of his work.

Joe is in the same bracket.

Shezza and his Denarian Apocalypse as well. Wanker.

 

The reason behind MoR's huge following is that it's in a way more than just Harry Potter fanfiction. It was actually the first piece of fanfiction I ever read (I hadn't even realized there was such a thing as fanfiction), and it was because it was posted on some forum or another that I was following as an interesting take on rationalism, kind of in the way TEDtalks are linked around. I also learned about the existence of DLP via LW's rants on MoR.

You have to realize that a large portion of the following of MoR isn't in any ways interested in the rest of the Harry Potter fandom, it simply intersects with much larger part of the other internet communities than any other "better" fanfiction. There's for example a thousand post thread about it on the xkcd forums.

I agree that MoR isn't the best thing to start with if you are genuinely interested in HP fanfiction, but nonetheless it's a huge magnet collecting people to the fandom, because you can discuss it beyond it's literary values, or even without any interest in the HP universe (I certainly hadn't read all the books before enjoying MoR).

 

And therein lies its critical failing as an Intro to Fanfiction.

Yes it does all those things, but at the heart of fanfiction is the fan part. As in, it's not meant to be used as a platform for anything other than a good story. I can say with all honesty that I respect LW for his continuation of a story, especially in the midst of all the media and news around it.

However, MoR is not a good Intro to Fanfiction, simply because it is not (in my opinion) good fanfiction. I feel like a lot of people will read it and assume this is how all fics are, or how a good portion are, when in fact it's not.

Again, I don't have an issue with others liking it, much as I wish I could just torch it from the internet forever, but that in no way means that I can accept (quietly at least) that this is what any class would use, as it wasn't really ever meant to be just fanfiction, it's a mouthpiece for the Author to convey his thoughts and ideas on the world and how it should run, given form in a shitty piece of literature that everyone eats up.

Honestly it has the same rating as 50 shades of grey to me. It's fanfiction, but it misses the core point of Fanfiction.

 

Intro fanfiction usually isn't good. In my case I started with natural 20 which was and is amazing but from what I hear most people start with cliche terrible crap.
And HPMOR is better than most fanfiction because most fanfiction is terrible and HPMOR is mediocre.

 

Coupla years ago, I started with stuff I'd never read today (such as Prefesser N).

 

MoR is what got me into fanfiction, first fic I ever read. I still have a great amount of fondness for it. To this day, I don't think a fic has made me laugh as much as MoR. That said, for all the cool concepts and things it does well, from a purely literary standpoint its fairly terrible.

Nightmares of Future Past and then Team 8 were my follow up fics. I actually miss those days. Back then I could read horrible cliche filled stories and thoroughly enjoy them, Dumbledore/Weasley bashing, harems and all. Nowadays everything seems to make me walk away in disgust.

 

This is the same feeling I get, when I watch stuff I ADORED as a child... FUCK, that means, I'm getting older. Goddamn.

 

[citation needed]

Sorry to be a bit snarky, but who says what the core point of fanfiction is? That it has to have a good story and work as a novel?
That seems like your personal judgment.

Fanfiction is just fiction that borrows characters, settings and/or plot from an original work. If you're trying to study fanfiction, you should look at the works that are actually popular and not the ones you personally enjoy.

Obviously MoR sacrifices quite a bit in order to teach certain concepts and lessons that the author thought were important. It's still fanfiction though.
Just as stories that jettison setting and plot completely and just have the characters hanging out in a coffee shop are still fanfiction. (Even though I personally have no interest in them.)


EDIT: Nevermind that (below), was mostly turned around in a later chapter.
I'll leave it here though, no deleting stuff.

I'm trying to articulate why the recent chapters felt sort of off.
I guess it's because they don't work well on the stories own themes.
Most of the story seemed to be all about optimism and humanism and truth and so on. Now it ends with mass-murder and covering up the truth.
Seems like a very cynical ending in light of how the story started.
I understand the basic arguments - this was the solution that Harry came up with in 60 seconds and it was self-defense after all; telling the truth might have some bad consequences - but it's still unsatisfying.
I just did not expect this story to take that arc of a Harry with lots of deeply held principles becoming jaded and ending up another Dumbledore I guess.

 

HPN20 has some weak points, but it's a quality piece of fanfiction. It would be absolutely terrible if it tried to take itself seriously, but it doesn't, so it works really well.

 

False, MOR is, by many accounts, a "story". Which is to say, many people have indeed claimed it is a story.
In other words I reject to your usage of "by any account" which should only be used when your premise is an axiom of the debate, or agreed upon by most people with experience in the subject matter (In this case MOR and stories)

 

Maybe he just finds author tracts to be a subset of stories? Since HPMOR is basically Rationalist Shrugged.

I think it's a big enough story that a course on fanfic should cover it, and it brought a huge number of people into the hobby, but I'm somewhat doubtful that it will have any long term effects. HPMOR will be an aberration, not a foundation of fanfic to come

 

Story: A sequence of events, real or fictional.
That a good definition? If you want to give your definition I can rejudge MOR with your definition in mind.

 

A big part of the reason people like MoR is because the author stand-in that attempts to pass for Harry is a smug little shit that uses his "rationality" as an excuse to look down on other people who haven't seen the light, and by reading it they feel like they become "rationalists" and get to look down on other people too.

 

And by writing that, you have managed to look down on those people. Great job.

I mean, I can very well understand why MoR has such a huge fanbase (explained above), but I can't understand the hate it seems to elicit here. Yes, it's pretty bad as a story (haven't followed it since something like chapter 85), but so is 95% of all other fanfiction. At least MoR has/had plenty of genuinely hilarious moments in the beginning, and has a lot of out-of-the box thinking you don't see too often in fanfiction.

 

While I can understand why there's criticism that MoR isn't a story, because at times it does give the impression that it's just a platform for the author to use as his mouthpiece, I still think it's unfair to say it isn't one.

It has characters and a plot, and just because it doesn't fit your personal idea of what a story should be doesn't mean it can't be classified as a story by the most commonly accepted definition of the term.

You're free to dislike it, yes, but making remarks like that serves no purpose.


Having said that: not a fan of the last few chapters. It feels like the author takes the story too seriously at times or not seriously enough and it shows. I'm looking forward to the reunion between Hermione and Harry, but I think the story was better off with her dead tbh, so we'll see how that goes.

 

Are you saying that essays and poems can't be stories?