Reviews FanFic / Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

How is it sexist?

Well, most obviously the fact that none of the females are rationalists, the two most important females are professor mcgonagal and hermione, both of whom rely on emotion instead of logic. Mcgonagal sitting in the room, trying not to think about time travel while snape and dumbledore discuss it, for example. Harry mum isnt as smart as his dad. Hermione isnt as "cold" as harry and draco. Putting a woman on a pedastal by saying she is pure and kind is still sexism, btw, of the classic "damsel in distress" type

the reinterpretation of Snape and lily's realationship can also be seen as sexist, that lily is shallow for choosing the more attractive guy, as if snape somehow deserved her just because he liked her (dont get me wrong, i ship it) when SPHEW, a society for heroines, was in danger at the end, they were all saved by males Hermione won her first battle as the sunshine general by relying on her male luitinents to come up with plans instead? really? that kinda bgged me but idk

but overall, its a pervasive thing, women shown as more emotional, less rational (a cutting insulnt in a rationalist fic, no?) the more pwerful characters are men, the kind and well intentioned but misguided characters are female.

I actually think he lets most characters, except the three main ones, keep the characterisation that Rowling gave them. That is to say, if Methods is sexist, so was the original material.

I wish to retract part of that: Harry is like he probably would have been, had he been raised by decent parents, and Hermione is basically the way she was during her first year, so really it's only Quirrell who is different from Cannon… and Quirrell is not even Quirrell, but Monroe, so it's justified.

I would argue that the change to Petunia is sexist. It ties together a woman's appearance and her self-esteem and rather than challenge that, it reinforces that by Petunia being only able to improve her self-image through magic plastic surgery. There's not even the standard backhanded attempt to mitigate the message with the idea that "Her new confidence in her image helped her realize her other good traits."

Harry is nothing like he would have been ever, are you serious? harry is a total OC, hes just a really fantastic one decent parents dont give you a genius level IQ and an inclanation towards supervilliany.

Harry Potter canon is a bit sexist, yes, partly due to the male POV, but the sexism in HP is more subtle. Possibly because Methods is so centered around logic and rationalism: when JKR wrote females characters as more empathetic and emotional, it wasnt an insult to the females.

Also Hermione probably saves everyone's collective asses more than anyone bar Harry, and he's the main character.

I see where the reviewer is coming from. Making Harry a super-genius kind of stole Hermoine's thunder in a big way. It wouldn't have been that hard to make Heromine's parents more accommodating to her intelligence in a rationalist way considering that they're both Muggles and she's already intelligent to begin with, but instead the fic was centered around a completely OC-version of Harry Potter.

Regards Petunia: it seems very improbable that her simultaneous beauty/personality upgrade was the author saying "beautiful people are better". The way I read it, he was acknowledging the fact that ugly people receive worse treatment, and if you get treated like that every day of your life, why, then you might learn to become the sort of person Cannon!Petunia was. It is made clear in the Omake file for Twilight, chapter 64, that the author knows about this problem and considers it unfair.

Regarding Cannon!Harry: he showed so few signs of child abuse that I consider it more realistic that he was in fact quite brilliant to begin with.

As for sexism in the original, making it subtle does not mean it is not a problem. Most of Rowling's main characters of various shades of awesome were male. That means any fanfiction that does not introduce a bunch of O Cs to replace the protagonists, will have most of its awesome characters be male. There were Hermione, Luna and Ginny in the original; of those, two are too young to go to Hogwarts in Harry's first year, and one is already far, far more awesome than Rowling ever bothered to make her.

It is not an insult to Hermione that she is not yet a rationalist. Oxford Professor Michael Verres is no perfect rationalist either, and he is at least three times Hermione's age. The main reason she is not figuring everything out for herself, the way Harry is, is made out to be about her respect for authority, and his lack of it. That was already a character trait with her, not something Yudkowsky tacked on.

The author may not have intended that message, but that's the one I got out of it.

I should add, I think that while the author never intended to make that bit sexist, he mishandled it rather badly. A classic case of Unfortunate Implications.

Harry is still the protagonist, and still male.

I'd like to ask whether you would think it less sexist if it were women who were mainly portrayed as overly intelligent,budding psychopaths. Hermione is, in my opinion, already portrayed as superior to Harry.

Didn't Hermione die in the latest chapter?

So? She was more ethical, kinder, had more moral integrity; academically, she read faster, learned faster, did thorougher work… her flaw was being too naïve, and that is justified by her upbringing. The way her parents treated her. She was as magically strong as him, but she hadn't practiced certain unconventional magics, and she really should have.

Unfortunately for her, the story and narrative treat Harry as superior anyway.

But I cant honestly name a single rationalist feamle in this story. You can have justifications for every one, but that doesn;t make the overall point less valid.

And I agree that subtle sexisn isnt nessisarily better than overt sexism, but honestly, i dont care that much about sexism. I dont consider myself a feminist. Subtle sexism doesnt interefere with my ability to enjoy a story, so I don't care. That isn't the case in HPMoR, so I consider it a problem.

And as far as Hermione having moral integrity... thats the part i DONT like. As a female who likes morally ambigious characters and villian protagonists, I didnt find her moral integrity endearing at all, I found it mary-sueish. Shes just smart AND good AND kind AND blah blah blah.

Honestly I'm not a big fan of Rationality, but if you consider that fic's Hermione a Mary Sue then I think you need to re-read the story again.

No, your right, shes not a mary sue. Sorry, i was mis-using that as a generic term for "annoying character", my bad

Are you guys serious? First of all. Why are you comparing Harry to his canon Counterpart? The author flat-out states that this is an alternate universe. Second. The sexism is based on canon. Give me a part where the cat-teacher took initiative. None. Not as many as I can re-call anyway. And Hermoine maybe smart canon wise, but HPMOR? She can't even begin to compete with Harry James vans Potter etc. Deal with it. SRSLY. A Nd Petunia was terrible to begin with. Now you pity her? Lo 0 L.

A major criticism is that Harry is so different, because of one event, that he shares nearly nothing with his canon counterpart, other than the name. You can't refute the sexism, much of which did not exist in canon, by bringing up one example where a different form of it showed up in canon. Finally, saying, "One of the smartest characters in canon cannot hope to measure up to Not-Harry because of author fiat" will not convince people that this Harry Potter is not a Sue.

I think there's some tainting by the POV shown in the work here. Harry is definitely NOT a perfect rationalist anymore than his father is. Hermione actually beats Harry on a few points, such as being able to judge people on their own merits. Overall I think Hermione comes across as the second-most awesome character of the 1st year students. Based purely on brains she put together an army that is equal to Malfoy's, makes better use of her people, and is arguably a more powerful witch. She's certainly more sensible and ethical too. Heck, she's more ethical than Harry is and makes him realize his own failings on more than one occasion. That doesn't mean she doesn't have flaws (she certainly does).

I think thoughts that Harry is a Sue (which I disagree with), partly stem from the fact a lot of this is from Harry's point of view. Harry has an interesting combination of an inflated ego and awesome ego and often fails to notice his own flaws and mistakes, and occasionally rationalizes them away. Harry in this is very smart, but he's not the best at magic. He has some unique abilities, but they are very limited in their utility. He often gets in over his head and sometimes doesn't even realize it or makes the same mistake again. And the work does not pretend that everything he does is good (and certainly the author states this many times in notes).

I'm not seeing the sexism here unless you consider a male protagonist sexist. It isn't the author's fault that Rowling made the most powerful canon wizards male and did so by a large margin. Overall I think Mc Gonagal is actually given a decent boost in this work, as her reasoning and justification for her behavior is gone over and she's shown to be a very Reasonable Authority Figure (even if not perfect). More so than any other adult. As for Petunia, I think HPMOR does more to humanize her than the original material. She always had major flaws, and this work just puts them into context that can make sense (imho). Hmm, I'd say that Madam Bones overall comes across as highly competent. I guess one could argue the author should have strayed even further from canon with the female characters, but overall I think the changes are improvements.

As for Harry's genius intellect. I find this to be a reasonable interpretation of canon. Malnutrition at a young age does permanent damage to physical growth and mental faculties. Canon is essentially explicit about how Harry doesn't get enough food at home, and yet he's smarter than average. I can believe he'd be a genius if he did have proper nutrition. Now certainly Hermione suffers relatively, since she was the only character that consistently utilized her brains in Canon - Harry was oddly uninterested in learning about magic in many ways. But she gains more relative ground as a moral center, imho, since Harry makes more major errors in judgement here. She's also shown to learn things much more quickly than Harry does — she's better at magic generally and goes through even the science texts at a very impressive rate. Overall, I'd say that the text clearly shows Hermione has more native intelligence than Harry. He just has a leg up at the present because of how he was raised (and he has much more audacity). There's every indication that in time Hermione would prove herself to be smarter than Harry. Heck, in the story even Harry says this, which is quite a statement given the size of his ego.

Imho, so far the story shows maybe 4+ people playing Xanatos Speed Chess. Harry at best is managing to tread water. I do not think he is a Sue. That said, I think this can be hard to tell in many cases until a story is finished. At this point there's so much going on behind the scenes that it's a bit hard to tell how things will end up. I do grant he's unnaturally and unreasonable good in many ways for someone his age, but that's actually a plot point.

This really isn't that important, but it's been bugging me, since it keeps showing up in the comments of these reviews:

Cannon

Ahem.

Or more shortened: \"Gravel-Embedded Snickers Bar\"