51–60 of 92 posts
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But because it's fan fiction, I wouldn't object if, after the story finishes, someone produced their own edit of it.
Ahem. You don't happen have that .tex template hanging around that was used to produce the .pdf? Because it's absolutely beautiful and I would like to co-opt the template for my NaNoWriMo novel :D.
The thing that I find the most interesting is that a few people on the fanfiction groups I frequent absolutely loathe the story, and there's a sizable group that are ambivalent to it. What I haven't seen, however, is anyone here or on reddit criticize it in any way. Probably because this is not really Harry Potter fanfiction - the main character of this story is not Harry Potter, so many aspects of the story are radi…
I’m very confused by the often very vitriolic criticisms from some avid fanfiction fans. Is MoR violating some kind of fanfiction etiquette I as an outsider don’t get? Some seem to be very annoyed whenever they think MoR veers too far from canon which I don’t understand at all. What do I care about canon as long as it makes sense internally? Picking and choosing certain ideas from the existing material while dropping…
fill-in-the-blanks: This is a story that tells parts of the original work's backstory. The custom is to try scrupulously to maintain canon compatibility -- ie ensure that your work, and the original works, could be presented as a unified whole without contradiction. Fernwithy (http://www.sugarquill.net/index.php?action=profile&id=50...) writes beautifully in this mode, is very careful about maintaining consistency, and has only started writing stories set in the future of the series since the 7th book closed the canon up.
The future fic: This is the sort of thing authors do because they're impatient for the next installment of canon. They try to write the next installment themselves. Again, consistency is considered important. Usually there's some wish-fulfillment, not so much in terms of self-insertion, but in terms of the author taking the story where they wished it would go, especially by pairing two characters the author likes together.
After the End(http://www.sugarquill.net/read.php?chapno=1&storyid=619) and The Letters of Summer(http://www.phoenixsong.net/fanfiction/story/53/) are both good examples.
Once the next installment of canon comes out, the future fic is usually retroactively labelled AU, or alternate universe.
The single-point-of-departure AU: "For want of a nail, the horse was lost..." -- the author picks a very specific time and place in canon in which something goes differently, and then tells the story from there. Even here, consistency is prized, unless you can justify how the change arose from the point of departure. I haven't read much in this mode, so I don't have any immediate suggestions.
A strangely specific variant of the single-point-of-departure is the Peggy Sue, in which a main character travels back in time, inhabits the body of his/her young self, and redoes everything using their knowledge of future events. Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2636963/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_N...) and Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4068153/1/Harry_Potter_and_the_W...) are both examples. Peggy Susie (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5731071/1/Peggy_Susie) is a one-shot parody of this genre by MoR's author.
The crack-fic: The author takes the story miles into left field, usually played for laughs. How Hogwarts Became a Nudist Colony (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2179136/1/How_Hogwarts_Became_a_...) or Potter Puppet Pals (http://www.potterpuppetpals.com/newppp/channels/TroubleAtHog...) are prime examples. No rules here but the rule of Funny.
MoR doesn't fit neatly into any of these categories, but starts out sounding a lot like it's going to be a single-point-of-departure AU (the notes at the top of the first chapter have now been edited to specifically disclaim this). MoR is an example of, well, taking another author's universe, using the bits you like, and changing whatever you need to change to tell the story you want to tell, in the manner you want to tell it. It shares this "genre" with most comic reboots, Homer, Milton, the Bible, the brothers Grimm, Disney -- basically a huge chunk of western culture. But it still doesn't quite fit into the set of genres commonly seen in HP fanfic.
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Just to clarify, you're judging this story after only 3 chapters? Because if you want to get an accurate impression of the story, you should push past chapter 5 at least. The tone of the story evolves considerably, and you might find you like it after all. (Though to quote the author, "If you still don't like it after Chapter 10, give up.")
Yes: I set it aside very early on. I'm quite certain the story will change & evolve. However, I'm rather sceptical that the writing quality will. Part of why I gave it up so early is purely on me: I am a sucker for a page-turner -- once a plot picks up a certain amount of steam, I have a near-compulsion to finish. This is the case even if, upon reflection, I don't like the writing, characters, events, etc... Nothing…
Oh this has happened to me far far too many times...
If it helps, MoR's plot is fairly episodic and doesn't start to pick up steam until about chapter 16
I'd add an "I loved it" but honestly, I liked a lot of the things you disliked, so YMWPV.
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Oh wow, there you are. I just wanted to say that I absolutely love this series of Harry Potter stories. Awesome. Brilliant. Genius. This is as someone who does read a lot as well. It's really, really, really excellent. It's the only mostly static website on the web which I go and manually check every couple of days, excited at the thought that maybe there's a new chapter up. It's like having a child's Christmas every…
"Thanks," he said in the small, awkward voice of someone who'd never quite figured out how to take a compliment like that gracefully.
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"Thanks," he said in the small, awkward voice of someone who'd never quite figured out how to take a compliment like that gracefully.
It strikes me as slightly ironic that this book is so popular here. After all, it's in praise of rationality, whereas HN is a community of entrepreneurs; A profession where the odds against you are so great that you almost couldn't get out of bed in the morning without delusions of grandeur, or at least a healthy dose of narcissism.
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I've read the comments, and the point still stands. There's a reason that I had never heard of a "weirdtopian" novel before. If something is outside of the scope of what humans are capable of, it's very jarring to one's suspension of disbelief. Just because it fits with his desire to make it weirdtopian doesn't mean I like it any better.
But isn't the basic idea that, through genetic engineering et al, we can become a species other than our own? I can't fault a science fiction story for showing the possible sociological consequences of scientific progress, no matter how much I don't "like" the direction science or society is taking—that's the whole point of science fiction, after all. People like to have protagonists with "human" values to root for i…
It wasn't even an especially important or relevant part of the plot. It's not an unusual, or especially heinous sin for SF to be tone deaf about how actual human beings function, but supposing that any kind of peaceful society would allow rape is pretty absurd.
The thing that I find the most interesting is that a few people on the fanfiction groups I frequent absolutely loathe the story, and there's a sizable group that are ambivalent to it. What I haven't seen, however, is anyone here or on reddit criticize it in any way. Probably because this is not really Harry Potter fanfiction - the main character of this story is not Harry Potter, so many aspects of the story are radi…
Beyond that (and of course Harry being, well, a nerd) it's not awful for canon. Sure, there's a bit more over the top characterization (Dumbledore gets hit really hard by this, and the kids only act 11 when convenient) but that's not really canon-related.
I guess there's probably a bit much "Ender's Game at Hogwarts", though.
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Use a time machine to prove/disprove P == NP Hold up. P==NP is only proved if you have a time machine.[1] It's still unknown in story if you can do it with a conventional, causal, turing machine. Also note that Harry is either ahead of the times (he doesn't mention the Moravec paper in-story) or very, very au courant, being perhaps the only eleven year old in the world to be reading preprints of theoretical computer…
Actually, it happens to be true that all eleven-year-olds attending wizarding school read preprints of theoretical computer science papers.
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Oh wow, there you are. I just wanted to say that I absolutely love this series of Harry Potter stories. Awesome. Brilliant. Genius. This is as someone who does read a lot as well. It's really, really, really excellent. It's the only mostly static website on the web which I go and manually check every couple of days, excited at the thought that maybe there's a new chapter up. It's like having a child's Christmas every…
I hope I'm not raining on your Christmas, but if you register at FanFiction.net, you can subscribe to get an email whenever a new chapter is posted. That way you find out about new chapters quickly, and you don't have to check manually. That's what I do, anyway. There's also an unofficial RSS feed: http://demented.no-ip.org/~feep/rss_proxy.cgi?5782108