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Yeah, I would appreciate fewer spoilers. I haven't read this whole trainwreck, but am enjoying seeing it mocked as it develops in the thread. And McGonagall missed a classic opportunity to school Yud in being "rational." (She still has a chance after letting him buy the stupid medical kit) Sure, letting him buy the drat thing will set her up as the (Yud would presumably go on a stupid diatribe about exceptions for reasonable requests and how his HP is a special snowflake, etc, etc, but he just doesn't realize that many of the "irrational" bureaucratic things in life are perfectly sensible if you just look at it from the decisionmaker's point of view)
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Mar 4, 2015 18:53
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God, this Harry... He's just got absolutely no empathy or patience. It really is like watching a spoiled child who thinks he's entitled to everything throw a tantrum. "But I'm rational and special and goddamnit give me the things I want!"
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Mar 9, 2015 18:09
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Why are we making fun of this, rather than being forgiving? It's about magnitude of stupid and the quality of the writing. Other stories have terrible main characters (e.g., the characters in series like A Song of Ice and Fire are often horrible). But that's not everything to the character. There's usually something else redeeming about them - their humanity, their struggle with failures, their focus on a relatable goal, their sheer magnificent badassery (e.g. Tyrion Lannister), stuff like that. For instance, we like Frank Underwood in House of Cards even though he's a sociopath because he has moments of compassion, humanity, and an overall goal that we can get behind. His relationship with his wife is fascinating, he seems truly invested in his America Works program, and not just for the electoral benefits, he has limited loyalty, etc. Compare that to Yud's Harry, who has very limited moments of humanity (his discussion with his parents, which can be charming) and a whole lot of obnoxious better-than-thou snark. Unlike Frank, he's not self-aware that he sounds like a douche and he doesn't do it for effect. This is partly why I hate that fantasy series about the rapist leper, and didn't finish it. Sure, most of the series is about him being depressed and thinking he's a bad person. But if he's an unlikable person, why am I reading or caring about him? Anti-heroes work when there's a humanity to them and something identifiable about them. Think about the Watchmen heroes, Deadpool, Iron Man sometimes, Batman, etc. Furthermore, the quality of the writing makes a huge difference. Good writers can make very unlikable characters fun. That's another part of why we like the Lannisters (or at least reading about them) or Frank Underwood. Yud doesn't have that. He's got super jarring transitions, very little sense of character consistency, and to the extent that the spoilers imply he's just trying to 'foreshadow' some underlying secret in Harry's life, he's written it in a way that makes Harry read like a sociopath rather than hinting at the reveal. You can see the importance of writing when we figure out which of Harry's fourth-wall-breaking mental notes work, and which ones fall flat. For instance, his "Overthrow government of magical Britain at earliest convenience" comment. Standing alone, that's funny. But in context? Harry's horrified that Draco's actually planned how to get away with rape and perjury so that he can punish someone for writing newspaper headlines. A snarky checklist simultaneously diminishes the horror of rape and the crimes Draco's contemplating (yes, yes, teenagers say stupid poo poo like this all the time) and undermines Yud's claim that Harry is a truly good person who wouldn't actually condone Draco's conduct. Similarly, Yud's not in on the joke. Think about Frank Underwood and House of Cards, where it's clear that the writers and Kevin Spacey think that Frank's a terrible person. They occasionally give us signs that they realize he's bad, and that can help make the story tolerable. Or the Lannisters, who are bad people and George RR Martin knows they're bad people. In contrast, there are no signs of self-awareness here. Yud's writing makes it feel like he actually thinks that robot Bayesian rationality is the right answer (even when he doesn't properly apply it), and people have backed that up with references to his other writing. EDIT: I just had a thought about the "Teenagers joke about rape" thing. You could portray a teenager who told a rape joke, or even had a quasi-serious discussion about how to get away with rape, and still have that teenager be serious. Frankly, anyone who knows teenage boys who play games has heard rape jokes. But you know they're jokes, or that the discussion is purely theoretical, because you have other reasons to believe that the people in the discussion are still good people. That's why Draco comes across so poorly here - all Harry (and we) know about him is that he's rich, manipulative, and has a plausible rape scheme. BUT. But we don't know that Yud's Harry is also a good person. He's told us he's a good person, but we haven't seen him do anything to be a good person. (This is why show-not-tell is so important) Instead, we have seen Harry act in a way that's entirely consistent with the Malfoy rape plan. Think about what he's done: get a letter, force Hogwarts to prove magic exists, lie to people trying to help him, steal from a bank, scold people when he admits he's stolen money, be slightly charming around his parent, make a lot of promises inside his head, be rude to a bunch of people who are trying to be nice to him, manipulate them while he's doing it, be rude to Ron when Ron tries to be nice, and hang out with Draco even though Draco's being an rear end in a top hat. None of that suggests that Harry wouldn't hop on the rape train. Arcturas fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 18:29
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sarehu posted:Yeah because if you don't turn into a blubbering little baby you're a horrible person.  It's true!(But really, my point was less about "rationality" and more about how it's poor writing and a rather inconsistent characterization of Harry)
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Mar 18, 2015 23:16
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Nessus posted:It isn't that he 'doesn't respect his place,' it's that he's being presented as this rationalist supermind but he's actually acting like Artemis Fowl or some kind of Randian ubermensch. It makes him seem like an intelligent but barely hinged maniac rather than some kind of uber-rationalist super-optimizer. You could use this as a lesson on how mere scientific rational thinking does not in any way guarantee you won't be a shithead. Ayup. He's not acting rationally. He's acting like a smug douchecanoe. He artificially limits his "rational" inquiries to random bullshit that gets him what he's already decided he wants, and decided he deserves because he's "smart" and "rational." Legacyspy posted:Are you saying that Harry is supposed to be a "uber-rationalist super-optimizer", but fails to do so? I never got that conclusion that at all. I thought he was supposed to be another character in the vein of Artemis Fowl, Ender, Bean, or Miles Vorkosigan. But all four of those characters are 1) written likeably, and 2) act like humans. Yud's Harry is just a douche, constantly, without any conceivable purpose.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:03
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There are a bajillion problems with what you wrote, Legacysoy, but the one that stands out to me is the torture v flyspeck argument. At the core, the problem with that is that torture is categorically different than flyspecks and the two are not comparable. There is a difference in kind, not simply a difference in magnitude. That's why you can't just say "I can change the scenario and you are still wrong!" Because the way you set up the scenario matters. CO2 emissions causing a chance of asthma and therefore death is categorically different than torture. Thy are different kinds of moral harm. EDIT: For instance, things like agency matter. It's very different if someone volunteers to be tortured to save everyone from inconvenience than if we decide to torture them. The certainty of harm matters. Those are both key distinctions between "eating a food with a possible radioactive thing that could maybe cause me to get cancer which will kill me" and torture. The number of other people the harm is laundered through matters. This affects things like how culpable I am for the use of child labor because of my purchase of an iPhone or whatever tech gadget-I am culpable, and probably shouldn't buy those items, but it's far less morally indefensible than torture. That's why it's more morally okay to buy those items and then still work to end the abuses of the companies abroad by applying political or moral pressure, or through other means. In short, Yud's basically ineffectually flailing at the philosophical debate over utilitarianism without engaging with the centuries of moral thought that's gone into the issue. That's fine and all, but claiming it's some sort of moral breakthrough because of "big numbers" is super dumb. As people in the thread pointed out and you ignored. Also, moral inconsistency is part of our lives. We are not required, as humans, to be morally perfect and consistent. EDIT the second: You should read "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" by Ursula Le Guin. Arcturas fucked around with this message at 15:33 on Mar 26, 2015 |
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Mar 26, 2015 15:05
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Things Eliezarry has done: Emotionally manipulate adults by threatening bad behavior Bully vulnerable children Play practical jokes on other kids to feel superior to them "Teach" other kids by berating them Think he's smarter than he is Read lots of books that tell him he's smart Brag constantly I'm sure all of that makes him super unique...
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Apr 24, 2015 17:27
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