24 KiB
[deleted by user]
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 30
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Created: 2017-01-21T19:11:58
Post:
[removed]
Comments:
u/Schuano [+18] (15 hours later)
He shouldn't have called Harry Potter "kid." One of the things that's central to the HPMOR Quirrelmort is both his politeness and his distinct voice when talking to Harry.
"Kid" is an Americanism that's not in with the character. We know he calls Harry "boy" and has done so repeatedly in canon.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
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u/TK17Studios [+13] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Two things: with "jarring," be very careful about the line between "makes people appropriately uneasy" and "makes people write you off, because you haven't yet earned their faith in an enduring manner (such that they trust that the wrongness has a reason)." This is how Eliezer lost a vast swath of readers in the first 10 chapters of HPMOR (e.g. "kids don't act like that").
Second, even with Quirrelmort being a mask, he spent the vast majority of his life in Britain, and the implications of that should probably be adhered to, unless you want to take out screen time to justify him deliberately losing his native lexicon or whatever.
Edit: as long as I'm making a comment, tiny tiny ^tiny note ... use the em-dash (—) for jarring breaks, and ellipses (...) for trailing off. The very first sentence that's in all caps feels to me like it ought end with DEAD— rather than DEAD... because the latter seems to indicate lots of time and space, while the former seems to indicate cut-off.
u/Schuano [+6] (a day later)
It's that it's a break of character to something completely random. Like watching him speak with a Southern drawl or a Jamaican accent. "Seriously?" works better.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/Zephyr1011 [+3] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (a day later)
I'm British, and I can't recall ever hearing it in normal usage
u/None [+2] (a day later)
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u/Zephyr1011 [+2] Potentially Unfriendly Aspiring Divinity (a day later)
I'm not sure if there's a direct equivalent, but boy or child probably captures tone best. I think really Mr Potter also works perfectly fine though.
Also, to clarify, the word kid is used, but rarely as a direct address to a child
u/LogicDragon [+1] (6 days later)
The word "kid" is sometimes used - "he's just a kid", "where are the kids?" - but I've never heard it used as a term of address.
To serve the same purpose, you might use "young man/lady", "boy", "child", etc.
u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (a day later)
I can change it to "Seriouly?" and just leave off the "kid."
That sounds like it may work. Breaking his distinct voice is apparently what you are going for, but you still want his voice to sound British. I assume you are trying to make Voldemort sound a bit ruder and more causal as his ultra polite persona breaks? I wonder what British slang would work best here... possible British slang words to consider: prat, git, twit, twat. I don't actually know British slang, so I can't tell you what would best fit Quirrelmort-mask-cracking-but-still-British Voldemort but hopefully one of those will sound right.
u/Roxolan [+8] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (53 minutes later)
"Oh? Um, what third option did I miss?"
"I can solve the problem myself. I am after all at least as smart as you, and I have eternity to catch up on your lead in scientific education. I don't need you for any particular purpose."
Anyway, I'm not sure how you can write much of interest based on this premise. There's a reason Yudkowsky called it a a shorter and sadder ending.
u/None [+6] (3 hours later)
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u/Anderkent [+5] (5 hours later)
I didn't doubt that Quirrellmort has a deep agenda in that snippet. It just didn't seem like there's anyway that Harry has a place in that agenda other than a pawn. Based on what's presented: Quirell behaves in an antagonistic way (rather than like a mentor as throughout most of HPMOR); Harry is about to be mind-wiped and as such unlikely to be a threat to QM. If QM and Harry's goals were aligned, that wouldn't be necessary either.
Now, that's not to say that the story can't easily evolve into one with Harry as the protagonist and we witness his struggles against QM. Or anything else, like us slowly finding out what QMs 'third option' is. None of that would be particularly jarring. But as of the first chapter, it definitely does look like QM has won.
u/None [+7] (5 hours later)
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u/Anderkent [+3] (5 hours later)
Cool. Yeah, that changes the impression somewhat; I don't think it was necessary to put it here though - we can wait for the next chapter ;)
I think it's a sign of a every well designed serial that people will build theories and make assumptions about what is going to happen that are most often going to be wrong. You shouldn't feel obligated to correct every misinterpretation :P
u/None [+5] (2 hours later)
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u/Roxolan [+1] Head of antimemetiWalmart senior assistant manager (2 days later)
Interesting is up for debate, but "sad" as in "most characters we've grown to love end up dead or suffering". Quirrelmort is not a utility monster, so his victory is not a happy ending on net.
u/Gurkenglas [+5] (3 hours later)
Harry could have justified his disregard for Moody's warning, as I did when reading chapter 86, by assuming that everyone, as often, mistook common sense for Legilimency. Spreading that misinformation is totally in character for a Riddle - remember the finger snapping?
Also there was the part about Voldemort presumably not being able to use magic directly on Harry.
In fact this evidence is strong enough that I'm expecting you to reveal that he can't enchant Harry or legilimize without eye contact, this instead being a trick. For example, they might both be in the mindscape of a thrall of Voldemort's, or^in^the^mirror
Also if his death caused the end of the world it would hardly be "HE IS HERE. HE IS THE END OF THE WORLD.". If the heat death stuff was the true interpretation of the prophecy, Voldemort would recognize that, for he heard Trelawney's words and remembers Trelawney's voice - unless the heat death first needs to happen for him to recognize it?
u/None [+5] (4 hours later)
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u/zookatron [+7] (6 hours later)
A bit of feedback:
I would have included a bit more disorientation and confusion on Harry's part after he comes out of the simulation. I don't think that even a strong rationalist like Harry would be able to so quickly come to grips with such a world-shattering realization that the past few eventful days of his life were entirely fabricated, or even that such a thing is possible. It seems like he should at least momentarily consider some alternate hypotheses (maybe that he was somehow teleported somewhere and that someone was impersonating Quirrelmort for some reason) instead of having him pretty much immediately jump to the correct conclusion of a epic-scope memory charm simulation. I also think it would be far more impactful if Harry realizes that Hermione is still dead a tiny bit later on rather than being literally the first implication he realizes. I think you may be suffering a bit from the curse of knowledge of knowing the story you're telling ahead of time, as the scene you're trying to set up makes sense in retrospect, but the dots didn't connect very well for me on my first time reading it through.
I really think it's a pretty big oversight to not at least mention Harry's Occlumency. You could at least have Harry try to hastily throw up some Occlumency barriers and have The Enemy easily overcome them, thus demonstrating their irrelevance, but the fact that Harry doesn't even try to resist the eye-contactless Legilimency seems pretty sloppy to me.
You're missing a closing apostrophe after 'Friend' in the sentence <"Nothing," said the man Harry had once known as 'Professor,' 'Mentor,' and 'Friend.>
I realize you stated you're explicitly moving away from canon on this a bit, but I think there should be a few more serious ramifications for Voldie using magic on Harry, at least make using the memory charm visibly painful and laborious for him. Just having him use magic seemingly effortlessly on Harry seems like a really jarring break from how it's treated in the original series.
Overall really, really good for your first public work. Looking forward to more.
u/None [+4] (8 hours later)
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u/zookatron [+4] (11 hours later)
I see, I didn't realize that Harry doesn't in fact immediately realize that his experiences were faked, though looking back I can see what you were trying to convey. I sort of jumped to that conclusion because he immediately thinks Hermione is dead, which I imagined would only make sense if he thought the events of her resurrection were not true. I guess I have to say if I were placed in Harry's position, thinking that Hermione was dead would not be my first conclusion, I would think that some type of illusion or teleportation magic was at play (even despite the "melting" detail), and probably would continue thinking so until it was shoved in my face that it had all been an elaborate simulation, though maybe I'm not as clever as Harry.
While the desire for temporality is reasonable (I can agree that HPMOR is a bit long winded with Harry's thought processes in places, though I think it's understandable considering Eliezer's goals) I think you sacrifice a little bit too much and make it too hard to understand what Harry is thinking. There is something to be said for the fact that sometimes the speed of thought can be significantly faster than the speed of speech/text, such that it can be very reasonable to have a solid paragraph of thought description that only takes a second or two in "story time". I admit that it may be the case that I err on the side of enjoying an unrealistic level of description though.
Personally, my interpretation of the HPMOR canon was that Harry is a reasonably strong Occulmens, aided by The Enemy's adult thought processes being projected onto his immature mind. He seems to at least have satisfied a certified Occlumens instructor (though now that I think of it, I can't remember if it's ever stated explicitly whether or not Harry formally graduated from his instruction with Mr. Bester, though I know it's implied in several places). And I didn't mean to imply that Harry would have been trying to use Occlumency immediately upon being the room, just that he would have tried it after The Enemy explicitly explained eye-contactless Legilimency. While I concede I am considering this from the comfort of my cushy armchair, Legilimency and Occlumency go together naturally enough in my brain that I thought of it immediately, which means I can't help but find it something of an oversight that Harry doesn't think of it at all. I appreciate what you were trying to go for with making him too panicked to think clearly enough to consider it, but I can't imagine that I'm the only one who's going to think that you missed something really important if you just don't mention it at all. Especially considering that you're branching this off of HPMOR, in which Eliezer writes Harry as being frankly inhumanly good at thinking of such things ;)
I didn't want to bring it up in my initial feedback as I thought it a bit more of a quibble of subjective asthetics, but since you expound on it a bit more I have to say I'm not that much of a fan of adding impulsive behavior to The Enemy's base psyche. My interpretation of The Enemy in HPMOR is that while he is a narcissistic psychopath, he is at his core deeply rational, always choosing his actions based on maximum estimated utilions per expenditure of effort, and that he sees actions such as petty tantrums to be needlessly emotional and beneath him. In my opinion this unyielding rationality is a brilliant way of humanizing an otherwise very dislikable character, because even if you disagree with his values you can still admire his unflinching rationality (especially so considering the target audience of the story). Having some element of genuinely admirable character is an important part of making antagonists more than just clichéd Evil People who do bad things Because Evil, and having Voldemort be a genuinely rational character that harms people not out of sadism or carelessness but because it's simply the most effective way to achieve his goals is a beautifully effective way of achieving this, imo. That said, I do think your exploration of Voldemort genuinely realizing that Harry may be correct in evaluating that persisting in his psychopathy is in fact contrary to his own fundamental utility function is a fascinating one, and I'm interested to see more of that idea explored in the actual text.
Anyway, even if I don't agree on an aesthetic level with all of your choices, I think your decisions are reasonable and I'm looking forward to seeing how your story evolves :) Don't take my opinions as anything more than a single subjective data point, I just hope that I managed to give you some of the different perspectives you were looking for in asking for feedback.
u/None [+3] (12 hours later)
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u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (21 hours later)
We are not magical entities of pure disembodied thought.
Well, your Voldermort apparently has the capability to run thoughts of other people at subjective speeds around 100x normal, so it would make sense if he could partially use this on himself when he needs extra thinking time. And Harry is a mind copy of him, so if you really wanted to
handwavejustify Harry's thinking speed, you could claim he subconsciously utilized an ability Voldemort had modified himself to have.
u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (8 hours later)
Just having him use magic seemingly effortlessly on Harry seems like a really jarring break from how it's treated in the original series.
Unless "the enemy" was intentionally overplaying how much trouble the resonance actually caused in order to deceive harry for a moment such as this one.
u/None [+2] (8 hours later)
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u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (8 hours later)
Right, I was agreeing with your conclusion. I had quoted that statement, and was disagreeing with comment above by noting that Quirrel could have been intentionally exaggerating how much the resonance affected him in order to put Harry off guard.
u/zookatron [+1] (11 hours later)
While I admit this is all definitely open to interpretation, personally I think your evidence that Quirrell uses Legillimancy on Harry in the original series is sketchy at best, and all the other examples you list are not directly interacting with Harry. It's clear that Voldemort is immensely powerful, but that he's not capable of bringing his power to bear against Harry because it will resonate back against him with equal force. I stand by my interpretation of the original series that the resonance is crippling and potentially lethal to Voldemort if he uses any magic on Harry.
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
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u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (18 hours later)
Don't forgot that the Stuporfy happened in what is now an illusion within your canon. So Quirrelmort might have chosen to make it realistic, but he also might have underplayed the resonance just to mess with Harry or to see how the scenario might unfold.
u/zookatron [+2] (11 hours later)
though now that I think of it, I can't remember if it's ever stated explicitly whether or not Harry formally graduated from his instruction with Mr. Bester, though I know it's implied in several places
I have to say I find it difficult to imagine that The Enemy would be willing to risk capture while breaking into Azkaban, just so that he could pretend to be violently knocked unconscious by magical resonance in order to convince Harry that he couldn't use magic on him.
u/scruiser [+2] CYOA (18 hours later)
There is also the fact that a spell representing the pure embodiment of life was hit by a spell directly opposed to life, so that may be the absolute worse case that the resonance can generate, with more minor spell causing more manageable resonance.
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (11 hours later)
This is my own parallel universe, which just so happens to resemble Yudkowsky's universe in every perceptible way up until a point of divergence. If there are an infinite number of universes, then there's a "you" out there in the multiverse who has, down to the atom, been exposed to all the same experiences and thoughts as you (and who's reading these exact words right now) whose path diverged significantly from your own at the word "significantly" when Princess Celestia opened an interdimensional portal into the alternate "you"'s bedroom.
I am familiar with Heinlein's "World-as-Myth" concept, so now I am wondering just how much I am supposed to read into this... o.o
and he's not currently aware of our existence.
GAH! STILL wondering how much I'm supposed to read into this!!! >:P
u/None [+1] (11 hours later)
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u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (12 hours later)
Also, you might or might not find this interesting...
...GDI, you're never going to be able to update quickly enough now. I am on the edge of my seat in anticipation. >:]
u/None [+2] (12 hours later)
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u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (20 hours later)
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/696e6372656469626c65 [+2] I think, therefore I am pretentious. (a day later)
u/scruiser [+3] CYOA (8 hours later)
Harry could have justified his disregard for Moody's warning
On the other hand, Moody is a very skilled dark-wizard hunter, so it would seem that he would at least get some evidence before taking this on hearsay. Legilimency should be usable in combat with enough skill right? If Moody fought Voldemort and analyzed others' memories of combat with Voldermort he should be able to tell this for sure. Harry was just carelessly trusting Quirrelmort's lie.
u/scruiser [+5] CYOA (8 hours later)
This is the HPMOR!darkfic spin-off I didn't know that I needed. Very brilliant, very dark. The text does a good job with making us throw out all of our previous assumptions about Quirrelmort (his seemingly accidental rage filled toss of the Cauldron). This creates ambiguity and fear (will Harry die, will he torture's Harry's family in retaliation, etc.) In terms of getting an ending as Happy as canon, it makes it seem impossible, yet at the same time I want to see Harry try (although I would be interested in seeing this interpretation of Quirrelmort in action). Also, with the entire epilogue being an obliviated memory now, well did Quirrelmort know that was Dumbledore's real plan or guess at it? The explanation for Dumbledore's plan makes sense in hindsight, but did Quirrelmort fabricate this just to appease Harry's ego? If so, you will need an explanation for all of Dumbledore's weirdness, hopefully something more satisfying than senility and dementia. Remember that your are free to rewrite facts established as being merely part of the memory charm simulation, but at the same time, some readers may forget this so it will help to remind them.
u/None [+4] (10 hours later)
I'm feeling super excited by this. It looks like you've spent lots of time planning this out, and I hope it goes really well for you.
If you're looking for more feedback, btw I'm sure the good folks at r/HPMOR would love this too (I noticed it hasn't been shared there yet).
Do keep writing this! I want to read more!
u/None [+5] (10 hours later)
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u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
Oh, that's super awesome. I hope your edits go well!
u/MoralRelativity [+2] (2 days later)
That's great news, I'm looking forward to it. I really enjoyed this first chapter so any improvements will take it into awesome territory.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
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u/MoralRelativity [+1] (2 days later)
Thanks. I prefer to go spoiler free if I can. I enjoy just letting stories unfold.
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (11 hours later)
WA-FRIGGIN'-HOO.
Outstanding spin, true rationalist style (milk "reality" for all it's worth, get the most out of a single crucial observation). Bravo.
u/None [+4] (11 hours later)
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u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (22 hours later)
"Milking Reality" sounds like a good name for a podcast.
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (an hour later)
Well then.
I'm watching this space.
EDIT: Also, what else have you written? There's nothing else on your account, but this is a far cry from being awful Author's First Work stuff.
u/None [+3] (an hour later)
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u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
Huh. Well, I'll get into the nitty gritty later tonight if you'd like, and if you need/want a beta reader then let me know.
u/LiteralHeadCannon [+3] (9 hours later)
Oh, fuck yes. Hyped to see where this is going.
u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
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u/LiteralHeadCannon [+2] (10 hours later)
Your avatar gives me a lot of hope that this story is going to venture into areas I find very interesting. :)
u/None [+2] (10 hours later)
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u/None [+3] (21 hours later)
Looks a bit like Count Olaf from the Series of Unfortunate Events
u/t3tsubo [+3] (a day later)
I thought voldie couldn't use legilimens on HP because of the "sense of doom" resonance thing?
u/ToaKraka [+2] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (7 minutes later)
You probably should remove the other four "stories" on your account and move them to your profile, lest the moderators crack down on you for such blatant disregard for the rules (reproduced in part below for your convenience).
Entries not allowed:
1. Non-stories: lists, bloopers, polls, previews, challenges, author notes, and etc.
2. One or two liners.
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
u/None [+1] (a day later)
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u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
I think you're missing the fact that Quirrell is a high-level operator who makes fast updates on the fly. It's obvious that he was arranging for her to be at Mary's Place, but that doesn't necessarily indicate anything other than that he was going to wreak some form of vengeance. I lean toward the interpretation that he had strong intentions but vague plans, and seized upon his particular method of punishment only in that moment.
But whatev.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
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u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (2 days later)
Oh, wow. Are you going with that interpretation for your AU? (Word of God says it was Flume)