None of the characters in HPATMOR are meant to be offshoots of their canonical counterparts. This is very much a "Harry Potter as if written by someone else" type story, in this case Eliezer Yudkowsky. Harry is without a doubt an Author Avatar, but that didn't bother me. It did you, but to each their own. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.
I do like the potential of your Tom Riddle story though!!
But… Riddle pretty much IS the protagonist.
And making sense of Potterverse is something I've been trying to do since I was twelve.
If you didn't "buy it" as you say with Ender or Matilda, you won't buy it now.
@Linna
Riddle's a major character in the fix as-is, yes, but I felt he would have fit well into Harry's role because he is (in canon) said to be a brilliant student and skilled manipulator. But I also felt setting the story in his era would have had the added benefit of allowing the author to use canon characters from Riddle's time without twisting the personalities of those from Harry's time (such as Draco Malfoy) since so little had been written about them.
In regards to your second comment, I'm not sure what you mean. Are you referring to "Ender's Game" and "Matilda" by Roald Dahl?
Yes. Ender was six and Matilda was five, and they act their age as much as Methods!Harry does.
I also like the potential of your Tom Riddle story – I'm just not certain Yudkowsky could have written it. His goal is to teach the methods of rationality, and I don't see how he would have done that with an orphanage child Tom Riddle.
Yeah, I meant those two.
I can buy Ender and Matilda because those two characters are written with the original intent by their authors to act that way. But Methods of Rationality is a fan fiction, so Harry has an established canon personality and characteristics and I simply can't imagine Harry's life circumstances being able to alter him so radically.
Why I suggested Tom Riddle is, because, I think the his potential to fit the "mold" Yudkowsky created is much greater. For example, why not have Tom adopted by a scientist and his wife as a baby? Then a radical alteration of Tom's personality seems plausible — Tom would have grown up knowing love and thus wouldn't hate Muggles but he could also have some sociopathic tendencies that are left over. But I also prefer Tom to Harry because in canon, it's established that Tom was one of the most brilliant students to pass through Hogwarts and thus I could more easily see him being extraordinarily gifted in both science, rationality, and magic.
Who would be the antagonist in that story?
Grindelwald certainly could be one. He seems very anti-Muggle and thus could conceivably be anti-science as well. Or his followers. Or the pure-blooded aristocracy that might not take well to Tom Riddle acting as an upstart.
I had been assuming that harry was tom riddle, it seemed rather obvious to me that he was voldemort reincarnated, or in soul, or something. But I have been reading the story with the assumption that harry has been mentally repalaced by tom riddle
however, if i am in fact correct and he is, this could be seen as a case where the twist isnt worth the damage to the premise. If the premise is "harry raised by scientists" and the twist is that it isnt harry at all, sure, its a logical explanation for a lot of stuff, but the problem is that a lot of people will have already given up the story when it wasn't explained.
Its a peril of all twists, and you have to weigh wether a twist is worth the confusion it initialy causes: in this case, I would have to say it isnt worth it, but im not the author, so ill just read and enjoy with the assumption that it is tom riddle all along
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Not For Everyone
I had initially heard of Methods of Rationality touted as THE Harry Potter fanfic, but had never checked it out myself until recently. I immediately fell in love with the concept — combining science and magic while approaching problems from a rational and logical standpoint. Unfortunately, the execution left, well, something to be desired. It's not that HP Mo R is bad by any means (I found it well written and paced), but I just can't buy the radical character re-imaginings. Centrally, the problem lies with Harry. Harry, even supposing he's extraordinarily gifted (which he isn't in canon), simply never comes across as a realistic interpretation of the character — instead, he very much feels like an Author Avatar. Granted, Harry was raised in a different environment, but that alone can't account for the extreme changes in personality and intellect. Other characters — such as Dumbledore and Draco Malfoy — also seem rather off, with no variance in upbringing to really account for this.
Truthfully, I suppose that my biggest problem with this fic is that I feel it would work much better with Tom Riddle as the central protagonist. It would be pathetically easy to make up an explanation for Tom's altered life circumstances. And given that Tom is noted to be one of the most brilliant students to pass through Hogwarts (with sociopathic tendencies to boot that could be curbed or more powerfully expressed at the author's discretion), I feel that he would have been the natural choice to head up such a fanfiction. Harry frequently posits on "world optimization" and this would fit neatly into Riddle's characterization. Moreover, existing characters would not necessarily need their personalities to be so warped to fit into this framework since Rowling provided a few names from Tom's era but little in the way of characterization. Simply replace Draco with his grandfather Abraxas, for example.
Full disclosure: I haven't read this fic in its entirety. I read a few chapters and skipped ahead a bit so to get an accurate feel for the rest of the story once I became disenchanted. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but at this point, I've clearly realized it's not for me. Check it out, but also be wary of the hype.
As for me, I'll hold out and see if Less Wrong is ever willing to consider a spin-off: Tom Riddle and the Methods of Rationality.