• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    When Harry meets Hermoine he tells her to name all the quarks or else she’s an NPC.

    Which is intense whiplash from the previous chapter, where politely asking Draco to describe the Death Eaters’ whole deal has him ticking off rhetorical beats for plain old fascism.

    Basically, the Less Wrong guy wrote a full Harry Potter novel, and it is exactly what you’d expect. Some aspects are fantastic! Others… yikes.

    A detail I love that’s not a spoiler: Crabbe and Goyle are well-characterized to act exactly the way they are in canon. They’ve been molded as bodyguards since they were little, and now they’re in wizard middle school getting to play tough-guy bruisers on Draco’s behalf, so of course they’re tryhard doofuses that he finds mildly embarrassing. But when Quirrel invites one of them to spar, demonstrating the ancient mystical defense known as… judo… Goyle quietly asks what belt he has. Quirrel says “seventh dan.” The tough-guy act comes right back up, and Goyle throws himself into it, because he knows he’s about to get his ass kicked, safely.

    The whole thing is ultimately about modeling people on these layers of facade. A lot of it gets overly analytical and kinda up-its-own-ass. Certain characters call that out and condemn actions at face value, so some of it’s deliberate writing for the protagonist and antagonist. But only some.

    Even with abundant benefit of the doubt, figuring ‘this guy wrote Harry like a know-it-all child,’ any recommendation would be complicated.