Chapters 55-56: disappointment. Harry recovered way too easily, if the story were consistent he’d be screaming on the floor until the Aurors arrived. The obstacle of Bahry’s future testimony shouldn’t have been so easy to remove, now I’m suspicious that Eliezer will deal with the obstacles posed by McGonagall, Dumbledore and others in the same fashion. In general, the end of Ch. 54 seems to promise all hell breaking loose, 55 undoes that, tries to build more suspense instead, and fails to be believable because it erased previous suspense too easily. It’s like a prelude that promised a fugue and didn’t deliver. But the part where Harry momentarily thinks of Bellatrix as a good unquestioning minion was one of those moments of brilliance that I love the fic for.
The best description of hell breaking loose I’ve ever read was the first part of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”. I first read it assuming it would be a difficult work of “serious” literature, and it totally upset my expectations by being more exciting than any “fun” literature I’d seen. Here’s how it goes: all the heroes and the main conflict are introduced in the first couple pages, then the situation quickly becomes tense, then passions begin to flare up, then the whole thing explodes while we’re not even halfway into the chapter, and when you expect it to subside it explodes some more instead, then more and more, and unbelievably the chaos just keeps growing until the last page of Part 1 when it ends with a couple paragraphs and you have to close the book rather than read on to Part 2, because you’re shaking and you need to work out who was thinking what.
disappointment. Harry recovered way too easily, if the story were consistent he’d be screaming on the floor until the Aurors arrived.
I’ve thought about this a bit. Emotionally, I agree with you. But all the counter-arguments make sense. I’ve finally narrowed it down to a single sentence, at the end of Chapter 54:
(And then it was already too late.)
This sentence is epic. It sent shivers down my spine when I first read it. It resounds with finality. The jig is up. The battle has been lost. Despair, all ye mighty. I couldn’t wait for the next installment to find Harry waking up in an holding cell with his plans crumbling about him, desperately thinking his way out of this jam without giving up his friend.
Now, I do actually enjoy the next two chapters. But the promise of finality was broken. Ch55 starts out with “And then it was already too late… PSYCH! It’s not too late at all!” It feels like the X-men comic books I’d read as a kid, which on the cover showed our heroes dead or mortally wounded, the villain of the month triumphant above them, but when you grab the comic and read it you find that nothing like that happens in the story.
If that line was removed (or at least changed to not be so Final) the transition between 54 and 55 wouldn’t be jarring.
Harry waking up in an holding cell with his plans crumbling about him, desperately thinking his way out of this jam without giving up his friend
Prisoner’s Dilemma, huh? :-) I had the same hopes for 55. Right now it looks like Harry will escape the mess without losing anything. Whyyy? Corwin of Amber had a spectacular failure that got him imprisoned and blinded, and the story was better for it.
Harry recovered way too easily, if the story were consistent he’d be screaming on the floor until the Aurors arrived.
Well, to the accusation of inconsistency I will respond that (a) Harry is not standing five paces away from a Dementor this time and (b) he has been strengthened somewhat by previous realizations, thus he does not instantly fall over and gets a chance to recover.
Chapters 55-56: disappointment. Harry recovered way too easily, if the story were consistent he’d be screaming on the floor until the Aurors arrived.
I agree entirely.
In chapter 52, I was able to empathize with Harry. I felt what he was feeling. And the feelings were was surprisingly intense.
But in the next chapters the story just started getting too unrealistic, and Harry became an impossibly superpowered character, and I lost my emotional connection with him.
This was a constant problem throughout the rest of the story too, but the problem is especially egregious in this story arc. And the impossibly-superpoweredness kept escalating.
Chapter 52 was vaguely plausible.
Chapter 53 might have been plausible, if Harry had a lot of time to prepare.
Chapter 54 was only slightly less realistic than chapter 53.
And I thought that after Chapter 54, this story arc was over. Harry failed at his mission, and just had to keep from losing his mind entirely before the aurors found him and he had to face the consequences of his actions.
But then in chapter 55, he made a miraculous recovery. Noone could recover like that. Not even Eliezer Himself could recover like that.
From then on, this wasn’t a story about a real person, it was a story about an impossibly superpowered character, and the story lost almost all of its emotional impact.
I still think Harry should have just given up, and turned himself in to the aurors. I don’t see how this could possibly end well, and Harry’s actions in chapters 55 and 56 are just making things a whole lot worse.
But this is a story, and so of course it’s going to end well, no matter how stupid or reckless the protagonist seems to be acting.
It’s still an awesome story though, it’s just that the suspension of disbelief is gone.
But that’s just my opinion. Your Mileage May Vary.
EDIT: ok, I accept Eliezer’s explanation and David Allen’s explanation of why Harry was able to recover. I take back my complaint about Harry’s recovery being unrealistic. But, not knowing what Harry’s plan is in chapters 55 and 56, it still seems to me like Harry would have been better off giving up.
One of Harry’s established traits is his highly trained reflex to question his own perceptions, especially under difficult circumstances.
This situation is probably the most extreme that we have seen Harry in. In this context that ability comes across as a super-power, but it is not out-of-character.
sorry, what I should have said is that the story as a whole will end well. It’s still possible that Harry’s actions in this particular story arc will have disastrous consequences, that Harry will have to try to fix later. It’s also very likely that Harry won’t be able to fix all of the disastrous consequences.
but I would still offer 1-1 odds that this particular story arc will end without disastrous consequences… though there is some ambiguity about what counts as “disastrous”.
um… oops… did I just challenge Eliezer to not give this story a happy ending? I want a happy ending. or at least a bittersweet ending. It’s just that I would prefer if the protagonist didn’t recklessly get into impossible situations that he then goes on to use impossible superpowers to get out of.
And what happened to Harry having learned how to lose? This seems like a situation where losing immediately is the best option. The more Harry resists, the worse things will be when he loses. Unless something really improbable happens.
Anyway, I expect that all of these things that I’m complaining about are probably a case of “the plot demands it”. It would have been nice if Eliezer could have avoided these problems, but sometimes you just can’t please everyone.
Also, we won’t know for sure if Harry is holding the idiot ball until we find out what his plan is, hopefully in the next chapter.
oh, and is it just me, or are the words “trust the author” really unconvincing? I mean, if you already know how generally awesome Eliezer is, it’s a whole lot easier to trust him as an author, but those words would be entirely unconvincing to anyone who hasn’t heard of Eliezer before… though he has already earned lots of trust with the previous chapters...
I remember the extensive discussion about “The Cold Equations”, in which it was concluded that the only way that sort of tragedy could be generated would be if there was massive organizational incompetence.
Stowaways were a known problem. Why wasn’t the spaceship locked? Why was there a door on the closet?
I think a reasonably happy ending is forced for MOR. Harry survives. So do other major good characters. However, perhaps a MFAI (Magical FAI) is created, and power and responsibility are handed off to it. What would Harry do with the rest of eternity then?
He might still enjoy exploring how magic works—I expect it’s as rich a field as physics. (Last I heard, the idea that physics may offer unlimited depths is still respectable.)
Ending for a rationalist fairy tale: And then they learned how to live happily ever after.
I would think Rowling’s creation and management of the Harry Potter universe is quite clearly an example of massive organizational incompetence. Eliezer’s characters might try their very hardest to save themselves, but like the stowaway they were dead the moment they were born into Rowling’s universe.
What an awful story. I just read it, and am now in a state of outrage.
The message is ostensibly that the laws of nature don’t care about human welfare, which, as we all know, is true enough. But the problem described in the story is entirely human-caused: a straightforward engineering failure. It’s the result of stupidity, poor planning, and failing to learn from past mistakes.
And the sexism (“OMG It’s a girl!”) makes it all the more distasteful, although that’s probably unfair of me, since it was after all written in the 1950s.
I can’t see Eliezer writing a story like this. Ever.
Even with Bahry obliviated there should be lots of clues it was Harry. Especially now that Quirrell is down and whatever spells he was casting to confound the wizarding equivalent of forensics are probably down. Harry sized foot prints in the dust, cloth fibers where Harry lay down? The angle/position that the stunning spell hit Bahry implying it was cast from a low elevation?
Or to put it another way who are the Wizarding community going to think did this?
Ex-death eaters? Not killing Bahry is a sign that it is not them. The unusual patronus that seemed to be able to hide Bellatrix, and will possibly kill Dementors next chapter, has the hallmarks of Harry.
If they didn’t know about the existence of time turners then they might be fooled, but he has used them so much, it is really a poor alibi.
So yeah put me in the camp of all hell should still be breaking loose even if Harry doesn’t get caught red handed in Azkaban.
Even with Bahry obliviated there should be lots of clues it was Harry. Especially now that Quirrell is down and whatever spells he was casting to confound the wizarding equivalent of forensics are probably down. Harry sized foot prints in the dust, cloth fibers where Harry lay down? The angle/position that the stunning spell hit Bahry implying it was cast from a low elevation?
The wizarding world doesn’t stoop to non-magical forensics. Footprints? Fibers? How barbaric.
I don’t think that it is obvious to most of the other characters that it is a patronus that is hiding Bellatrix. It would also be discounted because she remains invisible under the cloak after Harry’s patronus is extinguished in Ch. 56.
Canon Dumbledore would have observed the masking power of Harry’s patronus, and would be clever enough to to guess that the Harry’s cloak could have this property. Presumably the HPMOR Dumbledore is at least this clever.
Dumbledore however observed Harry’s extreme response to an unshielded dementor, so he might be confused at a Harry that walks around unprotected and apparently unaffected.
Working against Harry is that Dumbledore’s patronus could be used to identify Harry’s patronus as the one it observed in Azkaban, and that any dementor that observes Harry, and survives, could also identify him. It seems that if Dumbledore wants to later verify or exclude Harry as the intruder, he can.
1 ) But Harry thinks the scapegoat was possibly him! Which doesn’t help.
2) Or if Quirrell wasn’t trying to set up Harry it could have been random ex-death eaters, hence the need to kill Bahry with a killing curse for a consistent story. Which Harry scuppered by saving him.
3) Assuming a scape goat likely to obliviate rather than killing curse, Harry doesn’t know who it is and what power they should have and how smart they should be. His actions, such as stopping cast the patronus, while keeping Bellatrix hidden, are giving more information to the wizarding world. Might they be able to guess that whoever is keeping Bellatrix hidden has a deathly hallow cloak thing?
Actually apparently Dumbeldore believes that Dementors should be able detect people in an Invisibility cloak, because they sense them through emotion. According to the wiki page anyway. So maybe Dumbledore would be fooled.
Actually apparently Dumbeldore believes that Dementors should be able detect people in an Invisibility cloak, because they sense them through emotion.
Everyone expects invisibility cloaks to not be very good—they usually aren’t. The Deathly Hallow one is described as being fantastically valuable for being a ‘true’ invisibility cloak*, and not merely equivalent to a ‘very strong Disillusionment charm’ and weakening quickly with age (to quote from memory Luna Lovegood’s dad; and speaking of them, we haven’t heard very much from them since the first few chapters).
If Dumbledore expects a ‘true’ Invisibility cloak, then this is basically == expecting Harry.
* Yes, this does raise the question how Dumbledore could apparently see through it to Harry and the Mirror of Erised in book 1. The charitable explanation is that he was bluffing or heard Harry; the uncharitable one is that like Lucas, Rowling only came up with the Deathly Hallows and the ultimate ending late in the game.
he uncharitable [explanation] is that like Lucas, Rowling only came up with the Death Hallows and the ultimate ending late in the game
That is undeniable. Invisibility cloaks are mentioned in the early books, and no hint whatsoever is given that Harry’s is special. It would have been better if she could have done a real Lucas (or an Eliezer) and edited the earlier references in the earlier books.
Chapters 55-56: disappointment. Harry recovered way too easily, if the story were consistent he’d be screaming on the floor until the Aurors arrived. The obstacle of Bahry’s future testimony shouldn’t have been so easy to remove, now I’m suspicious that Eliezer will deal with the obstacles posed by McGonagall, Dumbledore and others in the same fashion. In general, the end of Ch. 54 seems to promise all hell breaking loose, 55 undoes that, tries to build more suspense instead, and fails to be believable because it erased previous suspense too easily. It’s like a prelude that promised a fugue and didn’t deliver. But the part where Harry momentarily thinks of Bellatrix as a good unquestioning minion was one of those moments of brilliance that I love the fic for.
The best description of hell breaking loose I’ve ever read was the first part of Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot”. I first read it assuming it would be a difficult work of “serious” literature, and it totally upset my expectations by being more exciting than any “fun” literature I’d seen. Here’s how it goes: all the heroes and the main conflict are introduced in the first couple pages, then the situation quickly becomes tense, then passions begin to flare up, then the whole thing explodes while we’re not even halfway into the chapter, and when you expect it to subside it explodes some more instead, then more and more, and unbelievably the chaos just keeps growing until the last page of Part 1 when it ends with a couple paragraphs and you have to close the book rather than read on to Part 2, because you’re shaking and you need to work out who was thinking what.
I’ve thought about this a bit. Emotionally, I agree with you. But all the counter-arguments make sense. I’ve finally narrowed it down to a single sentence, at the end of Chapter 54:
This sentence is epic. It sent shivers down my spine when I first read it. It resounds with finality. The jig is up. The battle has been lost. Despair, all ye mighty. I couldn’t wait for the next installment to find Harry waking up in an holding cell with his plans crumbling about him, desperately thinking his way out of this jam without giving up his friend.
Now, I do actually enjoy the next two chapters. But the promise of finality was broken. Ch55 starts out with “And then it was already too late… PSYCH! It’s not too late at all!” It feels like the X-men comic books I’d read as a kid, which on the cover showed our heroes dead or mortally wounded, the villain of the month triumphant above them, but when you grab the comic and read it you find that nothing like that happens in the story.
If that line was removed (or at least changed to not be so Final) the transition between 54 and 55 wouldn’t be jarring.
Prisoner’s Dilemma, huh? :-) I had the same hopes for 55. Right now it looks like Harry will escape the mess without losing anything. Whyyy? Corwin of Amber had a spectacular failure that got him imprisoned and blinded, and the story was better for it.
I think you’re right. The power of that line even confused me into jumping to conclusion that Quirrell died, despite a much better explanation. The book will be better if this device is changed.
Well, to the accusation of inconsistency I will respond that (a) Harry is not standing five paces away from a Dementor this time and (b) he has been strengthened somewhat by previous realizations, thus he does not instantly fall over and gets a chance to recover.
I agree entirely.
In chapter 52, I was able to empathize with Harry. I felt what he was feeling. And the feelings were was surprisingly intense.
But in the next chapters the story just started getting too unrealistic, and Harry became an impossibly superpowered character, and I lost my emotional connection with him.
This was a constant problem throughout the rest of the story too, but the problem is especially egregious in this story arc. And the impossibly-superpoweredness kept escalating.
Chapter 52 was vaguely plausible.
Chapter 53 might have been plausible, if Harry had a lot of time to prepare.
Chapter 54 was only slightly less realistic than chapter 53.
And I thought that after Chapter 54, this story arc was over. Harry failed at his mission, and just had to keep from losing his mind entirely before the aurors found him and he had to face the consequences of his actions.
But then in chapter 55, he made a miraculous recovery. Noone could recover like that. Not even Eliezer Himself could recover like that.
From then on, this wasn’t a story about a real person, it was a story about an impossibly superpowered character, and the story lost almost all of its emotional impact.
I still think Harry should have just given up, and turned himself in to the aurors. I don’t see how this could possibly end well, and Harry’s actions in chapters 55 and 56 are just making things a whole lot worse.
But this is a story, and so of course it’s going to end well, no matter how stupid or reckless the protagonist seems to be acting.
It’s still an awesome story though, it’s just that the suspension of disbelief is gone.
But that’s just my opinion. Your Mileage May Vary.
EDIT: ok, I accept Eliezer’s explanation and David Allen’s explanation of why Harry was able to recover. I take back my complaint about Harry’s recovery being unrealistic. But, not knowing what Harry’s plan is in chapters 55 and 56, it still seems to me like Harry would have been better off giving up.
One of Harry’s established traits is his highly trained reflex to question his own perceptions, especially under difficult circumstances.
This situation is probably the most extreme that we have seen Harry in. In this context that ability comes across as a super-power, but it is not out-of-character.
I agree with most of your comments, but -
So you’d offer 4-1 odds on that bet?
sorry, what I should have said is that the story as a whole will end well. It’s still possible that Harry’s actions in this particular story arc will have disastrous consequences, that Harry will have to try to fix later. It’s also very likely that Harry won’t be able to fix all of the disastrous consequences.
but I would still offer 1-1 odds that this particular story arc will end without disastrous consequences… though there is some ambiguity about what counts as “disastrous”.
um… oops… did I just challenge Eliezer to not give this story a happy ending? I want a happy ending. or at least a bittersweet ending. It’s just that I would prefer if the protagonist didn’t recklessly get into impossible situations that he then goes on to use impossible superpowers to get out of.
And what happened to Harry having learned how to lose? This seems like a situation where losing immediately is the best option. The more Harry resists, the worse things will be when he loses. Unless something really improbable happens.
Anyway, I expect that all of these things that I’m complaining about are probably a case of “the plot demands it”. It would have been nice if Eliezer could have avoided these problems, but sometimes you just can’t please everyone.
Also, we won’t know for sure if Harry is holding the idiot ball until we find out what his plan is, hopefully in the next chapter.
oh, and is it just me, or are the words “trust the author” really unconvincing? I mean, if you already know how generally awesome Eliezer is, it’s a whole lot easier to trust him as an author, but those words would be entirely unconvincing to anyone who hasn’t heard of Eliezer before… though he has already earned lots of trust with the previous chapters...
(Harry having to learn how to lose was great.)
Remember “The Cold Equations”? I wouldn’t be shocked if Eliezer wound the entire fanfic up with some similar message.
I remember the extensive discussion about “The Cold Equations”, in which it was concluded that the only way that sort of tragedy could be generated would be if there was massive organizational incompetence.
Stowaways were a known problem. Why wasn’t the spaceship locked? Why was there a door on the closet?
I think a reasonably happy ending is forced for MOR. Harry survives. So do other major good characters. However, perhaps a MFAI (Magical FAI) is created, and power and responsibility are handed off to it. What would Harry do with the rest of eternity then?
I think there’s textual evidence suggesting that he would have descendants and then attend a lot of birthday parties on celestial objects.
He might still enjoy exploring how magic works—I expect it’s as rich a field as physics. (Last I heard, the idea that physics may offer unlimited depths is still respectable.)
Ending for a rationalist fairy tale: And then they learned how to live happily ever after.
But he gets the ‘ever after’ before he learns how to make ‘happiness’
Harry will invent Fun Theory, of course. And then he’ll spend the rest of eternity testing and improving this Fun Theory.
I would think Rowling’s creation and management of the Harry Potter universe is quite clearly an example of massive organizational incompetence. Eliezer’s characters might try their very hardest to save themselves, but like the stowaway they were dead the moment they were born into Rowling’s universe.
No no no no no. Not a stupid space Aesop as in the cold equation. No!
What an awful story. I just read it, and am now in a state of outrage.
The message is ostensibly that the laws of nature don’t care about human welfare, which, as we all know, is true enough. But the problem described in the story is entirely human-caused: a straightforward engineering failure. It’s the result of stupidity, poor planning, and failing to learn from past mistakes.
And the sexism (“OMG It’s a girl!”) makes it all the more distasteful, although that’s probably unfair of me, since it was after all written in the 1950s.
I can’t see Eliezer writing a story like this. Ever.
Even with Bahry obliviated there should be lots of clues it was Harry. Especially now that Quirrell is down and whatever spells he was casting to confound the wizarding equivalent of forensics are probably down. Harry sized foot prints in the dust, cloth fibers where Harry lay down? The angle/position that the stunning spell hit Bahry implying it was cast from a low elevation?
Or to put it another way who are the Wizarding community going to think did this?
Ex-death eaters? Not killing Bahry is a sign that it is not them. The unusual patronus that seemed to be able to hide Bellatrix, and will possibly kill Dementors next chapter, has the hallmarks of Harry.
If they didn’t know about the existence of time turners then they might be fooled, but he has used them so much, it is really a poor alibi.
So yeah put me in the camp of all hell should still be breaking loose even if Harry doesn’t get caught red handed in Azkaban.
The wizarding world doesn’t stoop to non-magical forensics. Footprints? Fibers? How barbaric.
I don’t think that it is obvious to most of the other characters that it is a patronus that is hiding Bellatrix. It would also be discounted because she remains invisible under the cloak after Harry’s patronus is extinguished in Ch. 56.
Canon Dumbledore would have observed the masking power of Harry’s patronus, and would be clever enough to to guess that the Harry’s cloak could have this property. Presumably the HPMOR Dumbledore is at least this clever.
Dumbledore however observed Harry’s extreme response to an unshielded dementor, so he might be confused at a Harry that walks around unprotected and apparently unaffected.
Working against Harry is that Dumbledore’s patronus could be used to identify Harry’s patronus as the one it observed in Azkaban, and that any dementor that observes Harry, and survives, could also identify him. It seems that if Dumbledore wants to later verify or exclude Harry as the intruder, he can.
Quirrell would plan well to already have a scapegoat prepared.
1 ) But Harry thinks the scapegoat was possibly him! Which doesn’t help.
2) Or if Quirrell wasn’t trying to set up Harry it could have been random ex-death eaters, hence the need to kill Bahry with a killing curse for a consistent story. Which Harry scuppered by saving him.
3) Assuming a scape goat likely to obliviate rather than killing curse, Harry doesn’t know who it is and what power they should have and how smart they should be. His actions, such as stopping cast the patronus, while keeping Bellatrix hidden, are giving more information to the wizarding world. Might they be able to guess that whoever is keeping Bellatrix hidden has a deathly hallow cloak thing?
Actually apparently Dumbeldore believes that Dementors should be able detect people in an Invisibility cloak, because they sense them through emotion. According to the wiki page anyway. So maybe Dumbledore would be fooled.
Grandparent (my comment) was probably
Everyone expects invisibility cloaks to not be very good—they usually aren’t. The Deathly Hallow one is described as being fantastically valuable for being a ‘true’ invisibility cloak*, and not merely equivalent to a ‘very strong Disillusionment charm’ and weakening quickly with age (to quote from memory Luna Lovegood’s dad; and speaking of them, we haven’t heard very much from them since the first few chapters).
If Dumbledore expects a ‘true’ Invisibility cloak, then this is basically == expecting Harry.
* Yes, this does raise the question how Dumbledore could apparently see through it to Harry and the Mirror of Erised in book 1. The charitable explanation is that he was bluffing or heard Harry; the uncharitable one is that like Lucas, Rowling only came up with the Deathly Hallows and the ultimate ending late in the game.
That is undeniable. Invisibility cloaks are mentioned in the early books, and no hint whatsoever is given that Harry’s is special. It would have been better if she could have done a real Lucas (or an Eliezer) and edited the earlier references in the earlier books.
I’m not sure which is worse—a single magic gene or midichlorians. But to be honest I might be willing to trade off Ron for Jar Jar.