JosephWongKS posted:

I don’t believe that Eliezer will actually let his author avatar get hurt for even the briefest moment, but I’m willing to give him props if he does.

quote:

"Wait!" said one of the other Slytherins, his voice suddenly panicky. "Stop, you shouldn't actually do that!"

The largest Slytherin ignored him, taking Harry's right hand firmly in his left hand, and taking Harry's index finger in his right hand.

Harry stared the Slytherin straight in the eyes. Part of Harry was screaming, this wasn't supposed to happen, this wasn't allowed to happen, grownups would never let something like this actually happen –

quote:

Slowly, the Slytherin started to bend his index finger backwards.

He hasn't actually broken my finger and it is beneath me to so much as flinch until he does. Until then, this is just another attempt to cause fear.

"Stop!" said the Slytherin who had objected before. "Stop, this is a very bad idea!"

"I rather agree," said an icy voice. An older woman's voice.

The largest Slytherin let go of Harry's hand and jumped backwards as if burned.

"Professor Sprout!" cried one of the Hufflepuffs, sounding as glad as anyone Harry had ever heard in his life.

Into Harry's field of vision, as he turned, stalked a dumpy little woman with messily curled grey hair and clothes covered with dirt. She pointed an accusing finger at the Slytherins. "Explain yourselves," she said. "What are you doing with my Hufflepuffs and..." she looked at him. "My fine student, Harry Potter."

Uh oh. That's right, it was HER class I missed this morning.

"He threatened to kill us!" blurted one of the other Slytherins, the same one who'd called for a halt.

"What?" Harry said blankly. "I did not! If I was going to kill you I wouldn't make public threats first!"

quote:

A third Slytherin laughed helplessly and then stopped abruptly as the other boys shot him deadly glares.

Professor Sprout had adopted a rather sceptical expression. "What death threat would this be, exactly?"

"The Killing Curse! He pretended to use the Killing Curse on us!"

Professor Sprout turned to look at Harry. "Yes, quite a terrible threat from an eleven-year-old boy. Though still not something you should ever dream of pretending, Harry Potter."

"I don't even know the words to the Killing Curse," Harry said promptly. "And I didn't have my wand out at any time."

Now Professor Sprout was giving Harry a sceptical look. "I suppose this boy hit himself with two pies, then."

"He didn't use his wand!" blurted one of the young Hufflepuffs. "I don't know how he did it either, he just snapped his fingers and there was pie!"

"Really," said Professor Sprout after a pause. She drew her own wand. "I won't require it, since you do seem to be the victim here, but would you mind if I checked your wand to verify that?"

Harry took out his wand. "What do I -"

"Prior Incantato," said Sprout. She frowned. "That's odd, your wand doesn't seem to have been used at all."

Harry shrugged. "It hasn't, actually, I only got my wand and schoolbooks a few days ago."

Sprout nodded. "Then we have a clear case of accidental magic from a boy who felt threatened. And the rules plainly state that you are not to be held responsible. As for you..." she turned to the Slytherins. Her eyes dropped deliberately to Neville's books lying on the floor.

There was a long silence during which she looked at the five Slytherins.

"Three points from Slytherin, each," she said finally. "And six from him," pointing to the boy covered in pie. "Don't you ever meddle with my Hufflepuffs again, or my student Harry Potter either. Now go."

Monocled Falcon posted:

This chapter doesn't seem to have anything to do any "Methods of Rationality". The first chapters read a bit like an episode of the magic school bus about social science, but this weird game and the bullying thing have nothing to do with or even any of the Less Wrongisms I'm aware of.

Xander77 posted:

Don't be willfully dense - dealing with bullies is a standard part of the bildungsroman / Ender's game formula. A story which consisted of nothing but "Less Wrongisms" and lectures about them, omitting an actual plot, would be even more insufferable than what we got.

...

Mind, the bullying thing goes off into some goddamned stupid directions later on. But still.

Monocled Falcon posted:

I think you misunderstand me. Why does the story suddenly turn into Ender's Game? Wasn't following the plot of the first book, but stopping every chance to smugly lecture the audience the point?

quote:

She didn't have to repeat herself; the Slytherins turned and walked away very quickly.

Neville went and started picking up his books. He seemed to be crying, but only a little. It might have been from delayed shock, or it might have been because the other boys were helping him.

"Thank you very much, Harry Potter," Professor Sprout said to him. "Seven points to Ravenclaw, one for each Hufflepuff you helped protect. And I won't say anything more."

Harry blinked. He'd been expecting something more along the lines of a lecture about keeping himself out of trouble, and a rather severe scolding for missing his very first class.

Maybe he should have gone to Hufflepuff. Sprout was cool.

"Scourgify," Sprout said to the mess of pie on the floor, which promptly vanished.

And she left, walking along the hall that led to the green study room.

"How did you do that?" hissed one of the Hufflepuff boys as soon as she was gone.

Harry smiled smugly. "I can make anything I want happen just by snapping my fingers."

The boy's eyes widened. "Really? "

"No," said Harry. "But when you're telling everyone this story be sure to share it with Hermione Granger in first-year Ravenclaw, she has an anecdote you might find amusing." He had absolutely no clue what was happening, but he wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to add to his growing legend. "Oh, and what was all that about the Killing Curse?"

The boy gave him a strange look. "You really don't know?"

"If I did, I wouldn't be asking."

"The words to the Killing Curse are," the boy swallowed, and his voice dropped to a whisper, and he held his hands away from his sides as if to make it very clear that he wasn't holding a wand, "Avada Kedavra."

quote:

Well of course they are.

Harry put this on his growing list of things to never ever tell his Dad, Professor Michael Verres-Evans. It was bad enough talking about how you were the only person to survive the fearsome Killing Curse, without having to admit that the Killing Curse was "Abracadabra."

"I see," Harry said after a pause. "Well, that's the last time I ever say that before snapping my fingers." Though it had produced an effect that might be tactically useful.

"Why did you -"

"Raised by Muggles, Muggles think it's a joke and that it's funny. Seriously, that's what happened. Sorry, but can you remind me of your name?"

"I'm Ernie Macmillan," said the Hufflepuff. He held out his hand, and Harry shook it. "Honoured to meet you."

Harry executed a slight bow. "Pleased to meet you, skip the honoured thing."

Then the other boys crowded round him and there was a sudden flood of introductions.

When they were done, Harry swallowed. This was going to be very difficult. "Um... if everyone would excuse me... I have something to say to Neville -"

All eyes turned to Neville, who took a step back, his face looking apprehensive.

"I suppose," Neville said in a tiny voice, "you're going to say I should've been braver -"

"Oh, no, nothing like that!" Harry said hastily. "Nothing to do with that. It's just, um, something the Sorting Hat told me -"

Suddenly the other boys looked very interested, except for Neville, who was looking even more apprehensive.

There seemed to be something blocking Harry's throat. He knew he should just blurt it out, and it was like he'd swallowed a large brick that was just stuck in the way.

It was like Harry had to manually take control of his lips and produce each syllable individually, but he managed to make it happen. "I'm, sor, ry." He exhaled and took a deep breath. "For what I did, um, the other day. You... don't have to be gracious about it or anything, I'll understand if you just hate me. This isn't about me trying to look cool by apologising or your having to accept it. What I did was wrong."

JosephWongKS posted:

Character development! Could this be the start of Eliezarry’s road to being a decent and likable person?

Piell posted:

Yud doesn't know the plot, he's never read the books.

Monocled Falcon posted:

This chapter doesn't seem to have anything to do any "Methods of Rationality". The first chapters read a bit like an episode of the magic school bus about social science, but this weird game and the bullying thing have nothing to do with or even any of the Less Wrongisms I'm aware of.

Siegkrow posted:

I'll say this once, just so this circlejerk can hate me for it:

I liked this fanfic.

Siegkrow posted:

I can enjoy Hitler's paintings

The Time Dissolver posted:

Hitler's paintings weren't any good though so you still shouldn't profess to enjoy them.

Murphy Brownback posted:

Is this actually true? Several paragraphs in the next couple chapters were copy-pasted pretty much verbatim out of the first book. Did he just read the wiki to get the general plot/character names, and then flip to random pages to copy material or what?

Big Yud posted:

[I r]ead the first 3 books, watched the next 5 movies, checked the wiki often, and most importantly, read at least a hundred other Harry Potter fanfictions. I know off the top of my head who Fleur Delacour's little sister is, in fact I've read a whole book about her bonding to Harry Potter's ghost after he dies in the Second Task of the Triwizard tournament.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

quote:

Big Yud posted:

[I r]ead the first 3 books, watched the next 5 movies, checked the wiki often, and most importantly, read at least a hundred other Harry Potter fanfictions. I know off the top of my head who Fleur Delacour's little sister is, in fact I've read a whole book about her bonding to Harry Potter's ghost after he dies in the Second Task of the Triwizard tournament.

i81icu812 posted:

Fanfiction of fanfiction.

quote:

There was a pause.

Neville clutched his books tighter to his chest. "Why did you do it?" he said in a thin, wavering voice. He blinked, as if trying to hold back tears. "Why does everyone do that to me, even the Boy-Who-Lived?"

Harry suddenly felt smaller than he ever had in his life. "I'm sorry," Harry said again, his voice now hoarsened. "It's just... you looked so scared, it was like a sign over your head saying 'victim', and I wanted to show you that things don't always turn out badly, that sometimes the monsters give you chocolate... I thought if I showed you that, you might realise there wasn't so much to be afraid of -"

"But there is," whispered Neville. "You saw it today, there is! "

"They wouldn't have done anything really bad in front of witnesses.

quote:

Their main weapon is fear. That's why they target you, because they can see you're afraid. I wanted to make you less afraid... show you that the fear was worse than the thing itself... or that was what I told myself, but the Sorting Hat told me that I was lying to myself and that I really did it because it was fun. So that's why I'm apologising -"

"You hurt me," said Neville. "Just now. When you grabbed me and pulled me away from them." Neville held out his arm and pointed to where Harry had grabbed him. "I might have a bruise here later from how hard you pulled. You hurt me worse than anything the Slytherins did by bumping into me, actually."

"Neville! " hissed Ernie. "He was trying to save you!"

"I'm sorry," whispered Harry. "When I saw that I just got... really angry..."

Neville looked at him steadily. "So you yanked me out really hard and put yourself in where I was and went, 'Hello, I'm the Boy-Who-Lived'."

Harry nodded.

"I think you're going to be really cool someday," Neville said. "But right now, you're not."

quote:

Harry swallowed the sudden knot in his throat and walked away. He continued down the corridor to the intersection, then turned left into a hallway and kept on walking, blindly.

What was he supposed to do here? Never get angry? He wasn't sure he could have done anything without being angry and who knows what would have happened to Neville and his books then. Besides, Harry had read enough fantasy books to know how this one went. He would try to suppress the anger and he would fail and it would keep coming out again. And after this whole long journey of self-discovery he would learn at the end that his anger was a part of himself and that only by accepting it could he learn to use it wisely. Star Wars was the only universe in which the answer actually was that you were supposed to cut yourself off completely from negative emotions, and something about Yoda had always made Harry hate the little green moron.

quote:

So the obvious time-saving plan was to skip the journey of self-discovery and go straight to the part where he realised that only by accepting his anger as a part of himself could he stay in control of it.

The problem was that he didn't feel out of control when he was angry. The cold rage made him feel like he was in control. It was only when he looked back that events as a whole seemed to have... blown up out of control, somehow.

JosephWongKS posted:

My guess is that Eliezarry has a piece of Voldemort’s soul in him (consistent with canon) and Voldemort’s soul is responsible for his sudden bursts of wrath (departure from canon), and that Eliezarry will progressively become more and more of a Death Eater as time goes on and Voldemort’s soul gains more and more control of Eliezarry. This will be the “big plot twist” of the story.

"Harry Potter Becomes A Communist" posted:

"There are two kinds of people in this world, Mr. Potter," said Quirrell in a racist voice of colonialist imperialism. "There are the smart people who matter and the stupid people who shouldn't exist. The world rightfully belongs to the smart people who matter. It just so happens that most of these people who matter are white males, but that is in no way an indication of me being a white supremacist."

The Shortest Path posted:

Hahahah what the gently caress

Is this some kind of parody of awful stereotypes or what?

PT6A posted:

It's called Harry Potter Becomes a Communist, and upon following the link, apparently Commie Potter is a fan of Robert Mugabe.
I honestly don't know whether it's making fun of communists, or trying to promote communism, or if it's just the insane fever dream of a babbling retard, and I really don't want to read enough to find out.

PT6A posted:

It's called Harry Potter Becomes a Communist, and upon following the link, apparently Commie Potter is a fan of Robert Mugabe.

I honestly don't know whether it's making fun of communists, or trying to promote communism, or if it's just the insane fever dream of a babbling retard, and I really don't want to read enough to find out.

anilEhilated posted:

These two are literally the same thing.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Big Yud posted:

That's already a sufficient answer, to some degree; but the main problem was that after Book 3 I read enough Harry Potter fanfiction that my brain started to think of the Potterverse as a grownup place and when I went back to Book 4, it felt too young.

Reflections85 posted:

the fanfiction he read was more "grownup" than the fourth book and, having read this wonderfully grownup fanfiction, he could no longer read the actual series.