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labellementeuseSo after seeing it recced a few places I started reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality this morning, an extremely long fic I am still only twenty or so chapters into; briefly, the premise of the story is that Petunia Evans marries an intellectual rather than, you know, Vernon, and Harry is raised a much-less-well-adjusted-than-canon-Harry rationalist. (Sidenote: I am sure they are going to have some kind of angsty backstory but they didn't get to it yet and I must say this strikes me as a peculiar premise, viz., abuse a child horribly and he grows up to be, well, Harry Potter; treat him perfectly well if a bit unusually and he grows up to be, frankly, a little shit. I appreciate that this might have some kind of narrative pleasingness but it's a really terrible - not to mention irrational - model.)
Anyway I'm still reading it so something about it is obviously interesting (apart from the way Harry talks like no eleven year old to ever exist and, crucially to me, all the other characters have undergone some kind of metamorphosis; so Dumbledore is significantly crueller, Minerva stupider, Ron a bully - it was frustrating to me when there were scenes and events that there were no reason to have changed but were changed anyway, clearly as part of the author's project to re-write the Potter books in a way they find appealing; but if you want to fix things in an AU, you need to fix them, not just unbreak them. If you know what I mean. Also a world in which Harry doesn't like Quidditch is a dumbass world.)
But it's funny because if you asked me to pick my favourite HP character Harry wouldn't even be in the top five (possibly not even the top ten); but - because he's really not in this fic at all - Harry is the character I really miss. Funny old thing.
Anyway I'm still reading it so something about it is obviously interesting (apart from the way Harry talks like no eleven year old to ever exist and, crucially to me, all the other characters have undergone some kind of metamorphosis; so Dumbledore is significantly crueller, Minerva stupider, Ron a bully - it was frustrating to me when there were scenes and events that there were no reason to have changed but were changed anyway, clearly as part of the author's project to re-write the Potter books in a way they find appealing; but if you want to fix things in an AU, you need to fix them, not just unbreak them. If you know what I mean. Also a world in which Harry doesn't like Quidditch is a dumbass world.)
But it's funny because if you asked me to pick my favourite HP character Harry wouldn't even be in the top five (possibly not even the top ten); but - because he's really not in this fic at all - Harry is the character I really miss. Funny old thing.
