Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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Doctor Spaceman: Jul 6, 2010; "Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."

Roadie posted:

So I challenge you (or anyone) to exhibit any paragraph in HPMOR, and delete a sentence from it, in a way that makes it better. I’m sure I made some editing errors on the unnecessary-sentence level. But did you notice any?

This bit was revealing for several reasons

Yud posted:

I'm not lumping you in with the kismesis stalkers, I know it was an honest comment you left earlier.

\> It read like a passage from an exemplary piece of fanfiction, not an exemplary piece of fiction.

Among the original intentions of HPMOR was as "an Ultimate fanfiction of Harry Potter set against the background of other Harry Potter fanfictions" (since I originally thought other HP fanfiction readers would be the primary audience) (where Ultimate is a term of art akin to the Ultimate Meta Mega Crossover). That line *is* deliberately fanfiction, very much so, or even meta *about* fanfiction; it's saying, "And now this is how *this* fic puts the characters into different Houses!" Might not be everyone's cuppa tea - but I would point out that it certainly isn't a stray unnecessary sentence; it serves a deliberate purpose.

Contrary to the Lone Power's servants elsewhere in this thread and their deliberate half-self-delusions/half-lies, I don't imagine that HPMOR can't be improved. I could improve a lot of it *just by going through and taking out some of the italics*. But unnecessary entire sentences are larger mistakes than that, and one I'd have been watching for more carefully on editing passes. It isn't an illusion that every sentence seems to serve a purpose.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 08:59

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 00:52

Old Kentucky Shark: May 25, 2012; If you think you're gonna get sympathy from the shark, well then, you won't.

That poo poo is fascinating to me on multiple levels because every single legitimate author I've ever met and spoken to is a neurotic ball of self-loathing when presented with their own naked prose; it's a cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason, that whenever you read your own words, all you can see are the mistakes. Same for actors and their own performances. But this doofus can look at that sprawling mess and say "Yeah, basically perfect in every respect."

Dunning-Kruger is a hell of a drug.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 09:38

cultureulterior: Jan 27, 2004

Hope you guys had fun! I still think it's a fantastic work of literature- (I voted for it as best novel Hugo), but people do get different things out of books!

# ? Aug 19, 2019 09:51

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

cultureulterior posted:

Hope you guys had fun! I still think it's a fantastic work of literature- (I voted for it as best novel Hugo), but people do get different things out of books!

I just checked your post history in this thread and the one thing you seem to have actually said you like about it is that the protagonist is pro-immortality. Is that really enough to get you past literally everything else about it or do you also think it's good in other ways?

# ? Aug 19, 2019 09:56

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

is "kismesis" the act of creating kismet, or what

edit: wait, best novel Hugo? not some category like "best fanfiction"?!

DACK FAYDEN fucked around with this message at 11:59 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 11:57

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

lol, that's from Homestuck. It's the troll word for someone you love to hate. I can't believe he actually said that.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 11:59

cultureulterior: Jan 27, 2004

Ed: Yes, best novel Hugo

Tiggum posted:

I just checked your post history in this thread and the one thing you seem to have actually said you like about it is that the protagonist is pro-immortality. Is that really enough to get you past literally everything else about it or do you also think it's good in other ways?

Other ways as well:

- The only book where both the time travel and people's (Harry's) reaction to time travel makes sense. (World building is all about drawing what you've put into the world to it's inevitable conclusion. If you have time travel devices, they have to be limited, and those limitations have to make sense. They did here.)

- Excellent descriptions of high-powered magic. (I generally stay away from books without either spaceships or magic)

- Supremely well suited to analysis- not literary,(about which I do not care) but world building / plotwise. Lots of things were predicted on the forums before they actually showed up in the story just because of near-invisible hints

- Seeing the recurrence of the "sensible preparation for emergencies"-trope that I recognise from my own childhood

- Many hilarious parts, e.g. clothes shop

- Quirrell was an excellent villain up until chapter 108ish

- Exploiting magic system of transfiguration/patronus worked well for me. (Most people get imdoctrinated with the anti-immortality sour grapes so it makes sense that few people could do it)

- Time pressure being applied by the joint effort of high powered seers is a great reason for an implausible plot to work out. (Few realize this, Worm, Wheel of Time, Jean Johnson, Rothfuss are the only ones I know of)

- Reporter squashed like bug

Bad parts:

- Omnipotent student council is silly
- Ending Quirrell is not smart (my headcanon is that fate gave him a mini-stroke at exactly the right time)
- Alchemy wasn't as cool as transfiguration

cultureulterior fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:01

Tiggum: Oct 24, 2007; Your life and your quest end here.

cultureulterior posted:

The only book where both the time travel and people's (Harry's) reaction to time travel makes sense.

Not even close to true. Read more books.

cultureulterior posted:

Excellent descriptions of high-powered magic.
Many hilarious parts, e.g. clothes shop
Quirrell was an excellent villain up until chapter 108ish

I guess these are pretty subjective, and since you aren't interested in literary analysis I guess it's pretty unlikely that you'll be able to explain what you liked about them.

cultureulterior posted:

Exploiting magic system of transfiguration/patronus worked well for me. (Most people get imdoctrinated with the anti-immortality sour grapes so it makes sense that few people could do it)

I would say that the idea that Harry could do partial transfiguration (given that apparently no one else could) was a moderately clever idea, except that it raised more questions than it answered. Why could no other muggle-born could do it? Why had no wizard realised that it was their own internal concept of an object that determined what could be transfigured on its own? You don't have to know what an atom or molecule is to realise that a car is a single object and so is the wheel of that car, etc. And from there it's only a short step to conceptualising half an orange as distinct from the object that is an entire orange. An apple core is a single, whole object and so is the apple it came out of. So why couldn't a wizard transfigure the core while it was still in the apple?

Same with the patronus thing. Harry's super power is that he is literally the first person to ever think that it defeating death could be possible - but the deathly hallows are based on that very idea. His uniqueness is contradicted within the story.

cultureulterior posted:

Time pressure being applied by the joint effort of high powered seers is a great reason for an implausible plot to work out. (Few realize this, Worm, Wheel of Time, Jean Johnson, Rothfuss are the only ones I know of)

Read more books. Or even watch more movies.

cultureulterior posted:

(I generally stay away from books without either spaceships or magic)

...

analysis- not literary,(about which I do not care)

There's no way to say this without sounding like a condescending arsehole, but this explains everything, really.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:25

YaketySass: Jan 15, 2019; Blind Idiot Dog

I'm willing to agree sour grapes clich�s about immortality in settings where it's definitely possible can get a bit aggravating, but transhumanists can't help themselves but counter them in the most insufferable way possible.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:35

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Tiggum posted:

Read more books. Or even watch more movies.

Just read the first three books of the Dune series how to see what it looks like when a competent author gets a hold of the idea and does it right... and creates a fully fleshed-out and fascinating universe with a bevy of relatable characters on top of that practically as an afterthought.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:36

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

cultureulterior posted:

Ed: Yes, best novel Hugo
Other ways as well:

Tiggum posted:

Not even close to true. Read more books.

there's a common thing amongst HPMOR stans that (a) it nerdsnipes them so totally that they literally think it's the best book ever written in important ways (b) they haven't read many other books

and if they have, then it was probably Worm

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:48

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

I did not like Worm but everyone who isn't me seems to, should I give it another shot when the author is done with the remastered-or-whatever edition

like it had some okay ideas but in general the execution felt lacking and the buildup to the climax made no sense

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:55

Cassius Belli: May 22, 2010; horny is prohibited

divabot posted:

there's a common thing amongst HPMOR stans that (a) it nerdsnipes them so totally that they literally think it's the best book ever written in important ways (b) they haven't read many other books

and if they have, then it was probably Worm

I'm sure a lot of them read Ready Player One, which does a very similar kind of nerd-ego-stroke (check out the Let's Read).

# ? Aug 19, 2019 12:56

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Worm is kind of amazing in that it takes basically every stereotypical and clich�d superhero comic power ever and demonstrates how completely horrible the world would be if you handed those powers to real people who actually act like people would, instead of unrealistically heroic figments of our imagination. I'll always kind of respect that story for how completely it sucks you into that "...this unpleasantly believable" mindset.

As a story it has... issues, though. The whole thing could've stood to be half as long.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 13:01

cultureulterior: Jan 27, 2004

Tiggum posted:

Not even close to true. Read more books.

I estimate I'm at 3 thousand or so, which is decent. Recommendations are welcome- I can send you my Goodreads- but I imagine what we actually disagree on the constraints of realistic time travel.

Tiggum posted:

There's no way to say this without sounding like a condescending arsehole

Don't worry, I find the concept of being, and the ability to be, critical of others' taste in art hilarious. (Whereas criticising the art itself is fine)

Also, yes, Dune is another excellent example.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 13:36

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

DACK FAYDEN posted:

I did not like Worm but everyone who isn't me seems to, should I give it another shot when the author is done with the remastered-or-whatever edition

like it had some okay ideas but in general the execution felt lacking and the buildup to the climax made no sense

things that will never happen. instead he's retconning a pile of it in Ward (Worm 2) and issuing Word of God so dumbass it could compete with Rowling's.

like, I love Worm so very much, but oh my goodness it has its issues. If it hasn't hooked you in three to six chapters, it's not gonna and you should read something you enjoy.

I'll give Yudkowsky one credit: he's said if it's in the text it's fair game.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 13:52

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

I've always kind of disliked time travel as a central story conceit, because it tends to be employed in one of two ways: as a "fish out of water" story where the time travel really exists only as a plot device to set up the circumstances of the story the author actually wants to tell, or in the form of a closed time loop where time travel and the effects of time travel are central, but in a manner that effectively removes all agency from the protagonists of the story - their success or failure are pre-ordained even more than is usual for fiction and in a way where you can often tell the specifics of it right from the beginning. The best analogue to closed loop time travel stories, in my opinion, would be locked room murder mysteries: it's entirely obvious what the eventual result will be and the point is less the crime itself and more figuring out whodunnit from the context clues.

It is surprisingly rare for a novel to not only feature time travel, but to allow its characters to actually make meaningful changes. Even if don't think all that much of your opinion on the quality of HPMOR itself, if you've got any good suggestions for books that feature well-executed time travel, then I'm certainly all ears.

Cardiovorax fucked around with this message at 14:03 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 13:59

Wrist Watch: Apr 19, 2011; What?

I kinda liked hpmor but also I've never read any of the books or watched any of the movies so my only point of reference for anything beyond secondhand knowledge is the other fanfic that has the dnd wizard in Harry Potter land. Also I was stuck somewhere without wifi for a while and needed something to pass the time athat wouldn't burn through all my data. So under those extremely specific circumstances where you aren't familiar with the source material and know nothing about the author and have literally nothing better to do I can give it an emphatic "it's better than nothing I guess" out of ten

# ? Aug 19, 2019 15:21

YaketySass: Jan 15, 2019; Blind Idiot Dog

If Yudkowsky had posted this on AO3 he'd be a Hugo Awards winner by now.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 15:31

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

literally everything about MoR that is appealing in any way is done better by some other piece of fanfiction. not even considering original fiction. time travel? the slipshank trick where an object suddenly appears because you intend to place it there later as a time-traveler is probably the single most interesting thing that happens in MoR, but it's a reasonably common idea nowadays. high-powered magic? there are HP stories whose action scenes and ritual magic scenes put both yud and rowling to shame in comparison

i mean, it even fails as a "rationalist" story because it really isn't about rationalism. it's about yud's very specific neuroses concerning death, faith, etc. that he has conflated with rationalism. there are stories written by MoR fans that do a way better job of the 'x but with the scientific method' shtick than MoR ever wanted to.

there's no reason to like this story anymore, if there ever was at all

Jazerus fucked around with this message at 16:55 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 16:44

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

DACK FAYDEN posted:

I did not like Worm but everyone who isn't me seems to, should I give it another shot when the author is done with the remastered-or-whatever edition

like it had some okay ideas but in general the execution felt lacking and the buildup to the climax made no sense

no it's bad

yet another author that can't escape the escalation problem and just keeps ramping poo poo up to cosmic scale threats because they don't know how to write falling action once in a while

there are worm fanfics that take the good universe it's set in and actually do interesting things with it but the original story is, on the whole, not good

# ? Aug 19, 2019 16:50

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Worm was pretty definitely written with an eventual escalation to a literally world-shattering crisis in mind from the start. I'm the last person who would say the story doesn't have a lot of problems (god knows I could never make it all the way through) but "threat escalation" isn't a justified criticism as these kinds of thing go.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 16:53

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

Cardiovorax posted:

Worm was pretty definitely written with an eventual escalation to a literally world-shattering crisis in mind from the start. I'm the last person who would say the story doesn't have a lot of problems (god knows I could never make it all the way through) but "threat escalation" isn't a justified criticism as these kinds of thing go.

it's not executed well. it doesn't have the dbz escalation problem where toriyama just kept making every enemy bigger and badder because there was no plan, but the cosmic aspects of worm just aren't compelling paired with the street crimefighting aspect. there's a reason batman fights street crime in one comic line and cosmic horrors in a different one, basically. the main line doesn't really talk about those times batman went to another planet to fight darkseid, while justice league doesn't dwell on the penguin or the riddler - that poo poo is tonally incompatible!

if worm was an experiment to see if you could do both, well, it was worth a shot but the results are clear

Jazerus fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 16:53

Epicurius: Apr 10, 2010; College Slice

Jazerus posted:

the slipshank trick where an object suddenly appears because you intend to place it there later as a time-traveler is probably the single most interesting thing that happens in MoR, but it's a reasonably common idea nowadays.

I mean, Bill and Ted did it better.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 17:26

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

Cardiovorax posted:

Worm was pretty definitely written with an eventual escalation to a literally world-shattering crisis in mind from the start. I'm the last person who would say the story doesn't have a lot of problems (god knows I could never make it all the way through) but "threat escalation" isn't a justified criticism as these kinds of thing go.

Yeah the entire point of worm is the ridiculous escalation. It's definitely a flawed work and would be better at about half as long, but it's a pretty fun ride. It's Apocalyptic fiction and honestly I dig that.

Also as an original work it takes a ton more creativity than this poo poo. Then again, I suppose for all of Yud's flaws that make him a burning trashfire hack of a man, he's at least creative. AI's torturing simulations to influence the past? You can't make that poo poo up

# ? Aug 19, 2019 17:33

Cardiovorax: Jun 5, 2011; I mean, if you're a successful actress and you go out of the house in a skirt and without underwear, knowing that paparazzi are just waiting for opportunities like this and that it has happened many times before, then there's really nobody you can blame for it but yourself.

Jazerus posted:

it's not executed well.

I'm not arguing about whether it's executed well, I'm saying that you can't claim that it has "the escalation problem" because the escalation problem stems from bad writers not planning out their story far enough and needing to continually one-up themselves to keep up the tension. For all its flaws, this certainly isn't the case here.

Whether you think it succeeds in making the smooth transition from small-time local crime to multiversal world-saving is up to you to decide. I can appreciate its ambition in trying to simulate the entire "life cycle" of a comic superhero in a single story, but even then I personally like it more as a setting and collection of character arcs than as a story, so it's not like I really disagree with you there. Still, fair's fair.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 17:50

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Worm transitions pretty quickly out of "has a strong but weird power used creatively" into "has straight up handwave bug magic, and only fights idiots", and if the fights aren't clever, what's the point.

Tunicate fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 19:28

Dabir: Nov 10, 2012

The Iron Rose posted:

Yeah the entire point of worm is the ridiculous escalation. It's definitely a flawed work and would be better at about half as long, but it's a pretty fun ride. It's Apocalyptic fiction and honestly I dig that.

Also as an original work it takes a ton more creativity than this poo poo. Then again, I suppose for all of Yud's flaws that make him a burning trashfire hack of a man, he's at least creative. AI's torturing simulations to influence the past? You can't make that poo poo up

Yud didn't come up with that, sex pest Roko did. Yud just uncritically bought into it and banned all discussion of it from his cult to stop it "infecting" people.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 20:20

The Iron Rose: May 12, 2012; Cat Army

Dabir posted:

Yud didn't come up with that, sex pest Roko did. Yud just uncritically bought into it and banned all discussion of it from his cult to stop it "infecting" people.

yud plagiarizes from better writers once again :argh:

# ? Aug 19, 2019 20:43

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Dabir posted:

Yud didn't come up with that, sex pest Roko did. Yud just uncritically bought into it and banned all discussion of it from his cult to stop it "infecting" people.

excuse me if you know anything about timeless decision theory you'll know that Yud knowing it in the future is the only way Roko invented it in the past

please god tell me this joke was close enough to true to work so I don't have to do any more research

# ? Aug 19, 2019 20:51

YaketySass: Jan 15, 2019; Blind Idiot Dog

This is probably going to lead to people explaining the Basilisk all over again, but the thing is that the concept is a logical elaboration of crank ideas Yudkowsky had fiercely defended before.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 20:54

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

What's interesting to me about the final confrontation is how meaningless it is. In works by a competent author a fight is ultimately the culmination of a disagreement between characters, ideologies, or forces (man vs. God).

It's been a while since I read this literary abomination but I could not tell you what the conflict between Harry and Quirrell is because they both have the same callous disrespect for most other people and the same desire to overcome death by sheer willpower or whatever.

It's triply hilarious because that is one of the central conflicts of the books - Voldemort's desire to extend his life is a reflection of his own selfishness and inability to consider anything other than himself. The entire moral of the Deathly Hallows is that you will die and what matters is less your death but how you lived. It's a very Christian worldview, yes, but it ties in with the central themes of the work. Harry comes to terms with death because he has people who love him and needs to support them. Voldemort cannot come to terms with it because no one has ever loved him and he's not capable of it, to the point of mutilating his own soul.

Ignoring this to go "ha ha wizard economics are dummmmm" is not the mark of a rationalist but of a barely literate moron. When you have Harry parroting Voldemort you have taken nothing away from Harry Potter.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 21:33

YaketySass: Jan 15, 2019; Blind Idiot Dog

Difference is Harry is on the side of "Light" in some vague way, which totally isn't fanfiction jargon encroaching onto the story with no explanation.

# ? Aug 19, 2019 21:56

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

TheGreatEvilKing posted:

What's interesting to me about the final confrontation is how meaningless it is. In works by a competent author a fight is ultimately the culmination of a disagreement between characters, ideologies, or forces (man vs. God).

It's been a while since I read this literary abomination but I could not tell you what the conflict between Harry and Quirrell is because they both have the same callous disrespect for most other people and the same desire to overcome death by sheer willpower or whatever.

It's triply hilarious because that is one of the central conflicts of the books - Voldemort's desire to extend his life is a reflection of his own selfishness and inability to consider anything other than himself. The entire moral of the Deathly Hallows is that you will die and what matters is less your death but how you lived. It's a very Christian worldview, yes, but it ties in with the central themes of the work. Harry comes to terms with death because he has people who love him and needs to support them. Voldemort cannot come to terms with it because no one has ever loved him and he's not capable of it, to the point of mutilating his own soul.

Ignoring this to go "ha ha wizard economics are dummmmm" is not the mark of a rationalist but of a barely literate moron. When you have Harry parroting Voldemort you have taken nothing away from Harry Potter.

yud isn't unaware of the central conflict you mention. mor, apart from being advertisement for yud's scam camps, is an explicit rejection of rowling's thesis and themes.

harry in this story is not harry from the books. he's (unknowingly) a shard of voldemort's soul that has consumed or subsumed good old heroic harry potter and then been raised in better circumstances than he was the first time around, but he retains some of voldemort's neuroses, including preoccupation with death. voldemort calls him out on this very briefly at one point before/during the final confrontation but it flies over harry's head since he is unaware of who he is.

this is actually kind of clever and i will give yud a bit of credit for trying to throw himself a lifeline on the whole issue of harry being a profoundly different person. the point, i suppose, is that voldemort is correct in his goal of immortality but wrong in his approach, and dumbledore is wrong in his passive acceptance of death but correct in his conduct, while harry, as the reincarnation of voldemort, is able to bring scientific rationalism to the table in order to synthesize these antithetical positions into something both correct and moral. sounds like an interesting story, too bad he mostly just hosed around doing dumb bullshit and talking about rape with malfoy

Jazerus fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Aug 19, 2019

# ? Aug 19, 2019 22:13

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

I'll concede that.

I just think if you're going to write that story, you don't copy over the characters from the stories you refute.

Unfortunately the Yud cult is only capable of seeing the world through pop nerd references.

# ? Aug 20, 2019 00:00

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

now, what it means that yud thought the best possible avatar of his philosophy was literal baby wizard hitler is left as an exercise to the reader

# ? Aug 20, 2019 02:01

OctaviusBeaver: Apr 30, 2009; Say what now?

Harriezer was a twit but I don't remember him being outright evil, or even rude most of the time. Granted it's insanely convoluted and took 4 years to read so maybe I just forgot.

# ? Aug 20, 2019 04:07

TheGreatEvilKing: Mar 28, 2016

OctaviusBeaver posted:

Harriezer was a twit but I don't remember him being outright evil, or even rude most of the time. Granted it's insanely convoluted and took 4 years to read so maybe I just forgot.

Aside from his not understanding why people like Ron had to exist, lust for power, and desire to kill?

# ? Aug 20, 2019 04:34

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

divabot posted:

there's a common thing amongst HPMOR stans that (a) it nerdsnipes them so totally that they literally think it's the best book ever written in important ways (b) they haven't read many other books

and if they have, then it was probably Worm

do not get me started on worm

DACK FAYDEN posted:

I did not like Worm but everyone who isn't me seems to, should I give it another shot when the author is done with the remastered-or-whatever edition

like it had some okay ideas but in general the execution felt lacking and the buildup to the climax made no sense

it's not being remastered. situation bleak. last word (from the man himself) was that wildbow has hired a ghostwriter to write a new version of worm.

Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Aug 20, 2019

# ? Aug 20, 2019 04:53

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# ? Jun 7, 2024 00:52

Milkfred E. Moore: Aug 27, 2006; 'It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.'

like, you can't seriously argue worm was well-planned from the very start when it's a story that has a two-year timeskip in between paragraphs in a story that, until that point, has consisted of about eight weeks of time. during the writing of worm, wildbow said he planned only one chapter ahead, and it's pretty clear when you go back and read it. you get whole arcs, like arc 7, that exist for no real reason and could be safely cut in their entirety for any 'revised' format (you could make a slick YA trilogy out of arcs 1-8, basically.) but the benefit wildbow had was an actual decade of worldbuilding notes and previous ideas. i liked it well enough to read it twice and then do a retrospective on the first eight arcs but, man, the dissonance between the story-as-is and the fandom version of it is really something. i personally think it's really interesting that the story Worm is not what the fans like, but the world of worm. it's why there's so many fanfictions which tell the story but differently. really, wildbow could probably make a killing if he just leaned into what he was good at and put out a collection of Worm RPG Sourcebooks and maybe a collected novella of the best interludes.

on the other hand, at least it's not ward. speaking as a web serial writer man, the trajectory of worm -> pact -> twig -> ward, and the interplay between author, work and fandom, has been really interesting to see from the perspective of a reader and someone who can peek 'behind the curtain.' like, the whole thing that happened with browbeat is fascinating.

Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Aug 20, 2019

# ? Aug 20, 2019 05:05

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > Let's Read: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality"

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