What are your personal "red flags" before reading any fanfic?

The author is a transhumanist. One of his interests is the prospect of medical immortality. This is reflected in his fiction.

edited 27th Nov '14 5:58:45 PM by Pannic

Oh. Great.

Accurate enough, if by 'one of his interests' you mean 'the giant honking obsession that defines most of who he is as a person'. Seriously, I get why someone might be uneasy about the idea of their life ending, but Yudkowsky takes it to legit phobic levels, which is why Methods of Rationality spends so much time shilling for Pascal's Wager scams like cryonics.

edited 27th Nov '14 6:09:56 PM by Iaculus

Oh, "Methods of Rationality". I thought you meant the "Partially Kissed Hero" guy, which is why I asked, since that would make him a hypocrite.

In the case of PKH it's the opposite - the author seems to be some kind of weird fundamentalist of what I'm guessing is a non-mainstream variant of Mormonism. Though that story, too, involves the prospect of Harry becoming immortal.

You know, one of the core things of the Joseph Campbell monomyth (though the story structure is not as universal as Campbell claims it to be) is that the hero must face death. Skysaber/Lionheart is a hack, however, so he don't understand how stories work.

edited 27th Nov '14 6:18:40 PM by Pannic

When you think about it, it seems weird that people aren't more scared of death.

Excluding settings where the afterlife is known to exist or death is a revolving door of course.

edited 28th Nov '14 12:47:59 AM by storyyeller

Death is pretty common, and inherently necessary to life. Not just in a vague spiritual way, but in a 'if people never died then there could be dictators forever, social reform would be much slower/less likely, and if people keep reproducing at a certain rate then at some point there will be too many people for the limited resources we have' way. I always wonder why people don't bring that up when talking about why resurrecting the dead is forbidden, or immortality is.

I did! Immortality was noted to be something that societally they just weren't ready for in In The Service.

Without death or pain, courage or the lack thereof is impossible. That puts a serious cramp in your storytelling. Though, honestly, Mo R is really weird about it. It's kind of the "Rapture Ready" of the transhumanist line of thought; terrified of death enough to seek to desperately deny its power. I think most transhuman lines of thought have less to do with escaping dying and more with trying to be better than our biology currently allows us.

I don't read MOR, so I don't know how his phobia manifests in the story, but I find it ironic that the one original series' core morals is pretty much the exact opposite of that fear.

There was actually a review of MOR on this site that praised the fic and criticized the original books, saying:

Wait, so it's a Harry Potter fic where obsession with earthly immortality is a good thing? Man, so glad I listened to my Hype Aversion on this one.

but I find it ironic that the one original series' core morals is pretty much the exact opposite of that fear.

This is actually discussed in story. Dumbledore brings up all of Rowling's pro-death arguments, but Harry is not convinced.

Okay, also I avoided the fic because its Harry sounds like every insufferable nitpicker in the fandom rolled into one. Validated there, too.

Oh, and he manages to conjure a dementor-destroying Patronus at age eleven, with the happy thought of how great it's gonna be when nobody has to die.

I'll admit that it's actually handled kinda okay and has build-up and makes sense... sort of.

HPMOR does, however, claim that Dementors are personifications of death, which is one of the most obvious examples in the story of the author's obsessions trumping basic canon symbolism and themes. I mean, c'mon, what does the Kiss very explicitly not do?

Still not as bad as the infamous Chapter Seven in terms of 'the fuck was the author thinking', though.

edited 28th Nov '14 4:34:44 PM by Iaculus

I've only read the "Humanism" arc, on a friend's prompting. I'll start reading the story proper come the winter break, probably. I think I'll liveblog it.

"Depression? Screw that, I'm gonna make them the signifiers of death so my character can easily beat them, because there's no way immortality can bring about depression!"

Did this guy never watch Highlander?

Death needs to happen because, in a world where nobody dies, the world would become overpopulated as fuck.

Is this ever addressed in PKH?

That's not really an issue when you have magic though.

Anyway, I will admit that Harry is way too arrogant, and not just when he's in Voldemort mode. I mean, it does come back to bite him once or twice, so he's not completely invincible, but it's still treated as a good thing more often than not.

Also, all of the characters are adults in the body of kids. That's not uncommon in fiction though, it's just something you have to roll with.

HPMOR has its flaws, but it's still the best fanfic I've ever read.

edited 28th Nov '14 5:05:46 PM by storyyeller

The thing I don't like about HPMOR is Quirrel. Fuckin' Quirrel. The story never established why he wasn't using his "poor p-professor q-quirrel" facade. And he is so smug.

In general, it's pretty annoying when a fic is entirely about the viewpoint character calling the narrative-supporting authority figures out. (Doubt MOR qualifies per se, but as long as the topic is raised.) That was the only Fernwithy fic I couldn't stand, the one written just after book seven where Teddy comes just shy of kicking down the wall to backstage and beating J.K. Rowling to a pulp. They're all palpably like that - fans tearing into the creator, not characters tearing into other characters.

Well we won't know for sure until the end of the story, given how inscrutable he is. But there are several motives for MOR!Quirrelmort to act the way he does.

It seems that his plan is to groom Harry as his successor and unite magical britian under his leadership. And part of that is the whole army thing to get wizards used to working as an army. He's demonstrated by example how much more effective they are. Meanwhile, he has to act to Harry the way Harry would like him to appear in order to gain his trust.

Eh, I remember reading a few chapters of 'Methods of Rationality' and I just saw his Harry as a complete self insert and lost interest. The only other 'rational fic' I read, Luminosity, was way better because it came off as more of a 'this one thing changed, and still accounting for the stupidity of canon, make things happen because the main character is more logical'.

...of course, it might have helped that Luminosity was way better than Twilight.

Despite being inspired by MOR, Luminosity is a completely different kind of story. They're both good but in different ways. I see Luminosity as the way Twilight should have been, though the ending does demonstrate why Unspoken Plan Garuentee is a thing.

MOR isn't trying to be Harry Potter but better because Harry Potter is already good. It has the same elements of Harry Potter but interprets them differently. It's a lot like those edgy Twice Told Tales that are all the rage. Except with psychology lessons thrown in.

The author has not yet responded to my ridiculous pleas to write an original work of mine into a more rational one.

But I guess he's busy doing...stuff.

I like HP Mor, but I never liked the timeline he set out. Only now he's up to the Unicorn's death, and it's...unsettling in my mind to read it. Like, partially because of time travel, things happen at a faster rate?

Honestly, though, I'll stick to HP and Nightmares of Future Past.Even if it's got its flaws, too. But I was tempted not to read that one due to it alluding to the X-men comic. That's another red flag, allusion in the title. I can basically tell what's going to happen, already.