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jackWhat I love about it
That it (sometimes) deals with magic system asking the questions I would ask, if I saw the universe acting in such a suspiciously anthropomorphic way.
That it''s totally hilarious in places about those questions.
That I genuinely care about its version of some of the characters.
What I don't like (so much)
Obviously writing something like this is hit-and-miss, and you couldn't have the great bits without having the rough edges, so I don't mean to criticise the fic by pointing out what worked less well for me.
It sometimes seemed to be pushing Harry's hyper-rationality at the expense of common sense or normal human feeling. Which is understandable, as that's sort of the point. That's what I had a problem with when I first tried to read it, that Harry's father and to some extent Harry dismissed his mother's experiences of magic, and only reluctantly implementing a rational test, which well-characterised or not annoyed me; but I got to like it a lot more when I saw that the fic did expose Harry's own biases (such as always looking for clever solutions that made him shine, rather than sane ones), for instance when the sorting hat points them out.
But there's still a definite tendency to fetishise rationality: for instance, several times there are mentions of extreme torture or other evil stuff, and I feel like (1) yes, it's good that someone can examine this stuff objectively but (2) he needs to be more aware of most people's reluctance to face it, not as "something I'll understand once it's explained to me" but "something I will respect even before I understand why people do it".
I feel someone going around asking questions like "hm, so is torture evil?" is like someone designing an atomic bomb: most probably it will NOT lead them into unrestricted amorality if someone can't justify it quickly enough, or set fire to the entire atmosphere of the Earth, but you want to be careful examining that sort of thing.
And it's good to examine all the questionable premises of a magical story, and a commonly effective way of doing that is to take them to the logical conclusion. But it's not always the best way: sometimes it smacks of someone reading Animal Farm and saying "This doesn't make any sense, animals can't talk, and if they COULD talk, they STILL wouldn't act like that", and then driving that point into the ground. In magic systems, the details vary enormously, but a common set-up is that performing a spell correctly is something like invoking a complicated one-line perl program: incomprehensibly powerful if you don't know the rules, but amenable to a mixture of hard work and aptitude. Now, this is a good metaphor, but not a perfect metaphor, and it's perfectly possible to critique it. But I think everyone understands instinctively, even if they can't articulate it, that examining the exact correspondence between magic words and results won't hold up, and driving that into the ground is funny and may make a good point about how science works but is a dead end when criticising the world-building.
Also, some of the pop culture references, while nice, are a bit forced.
That it (sometimes) deals with magic system asking the questions I would ask, if I saw the universe acting in such a suspiciously anthropomorphic way.
That it''s totally hilarious in places about those questions.
That I genuinely care about its version of some of the characters.
What I don't like (so much)
Obviously writing something like this is hit-and-miss, and you couldn't have the great bits without having the rough edges, so I don't mean to criticise the fic by pointing out what worked less well for me.
It sometimes seemed to be pushing Harry's hyper-rationality at the expense of common sense or normal human feeling. Which is understandable, as that's sort of the point. That's what I had a problem with when I first tried to read it, that Harry's father and to some extent Harry dismissed his mother's experiences of magic, and only reluctantly implementing a rational test, which well-characterised or not annoyed me; but I got to like it a lot more when I saw that the fic did expose Harry's own biases (such as always looking for clever solutions that made him shine, rather than sane ones), for instance when the sorting hat points them out.
But there's still a definite tendency to fetishise rationality: for instance, several times there are mentions of extreme torture or other evil stuff, and I feel like (1) yes, it's good that someone can examine this stuff objectively but (2) he needs to be more aware of most people's reluctance to face it, not as "something I'll understand once it's explained to me" but "something I will respect even before I understand why people do it".
I feel someone going around asking questions like "hm, so is torture evil?" is like someone designing an atomic bomb: most probably it will NOT lead them into unrestricted amorality if someone can't justify it quickly enough, or set fire to the entire atmosphere of the Earth, but you want to be careful examining that sort of thing.
And it's good to examine all the questionable premises of a magical story, and a commonly effective way of doing that is to take them to the logical conclusion. But it's not always the best way: sometimes it smacks of someone reading Animal Farm and saying "This doesn't make any sense, animals can't talk, and if they COULD talk, they STILL wouldn't act like that", and then driving that point into the ground. In magic systems, the details vary enormously, but a common set-up is that performing a spell correctly is something like invoking a complicated one-line perl program: incomprehensibly powerful if you don't know the rules, but amenable to a mixture of hard work and aptitude. Now, this is a good metaphor, but not a perfect metaphor, and it's perfectly possible to critique it. But I think everyone understands instinctively, even if they can't articulate it, that examining the exact correspondence between magic words and results won't hold up, and driving that into the ground is funny and may make a good point about how science works but is a dead end when criticising the world-building.
Also, some of the pop culture references, while nice, are a bit forced.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 10:12 am (UTC)You can ask "is torture always bad?" without supposing that the answer is "no", only that it MIGHT BE "no" and we should look into that. There's a lot of mis-information flying around - for instance some VERY IMPORTANT people seem to be acting under the misapprehension that torture can be used to usefully extract information from people when it has been shown that this is not generally true. You could take an objective look at what torture is and what it accomplishes, what the costs and benefits are... and come to a rational conclusion. And then your argument for not torturing people is something that can be explained to disagreers, which "EEEEEW GROSS" can't be.
I think this Harry is a bit clueless about why other people might think differently to him, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing in a character (it's a flaw, yes, but people have those).
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 11:59 am (UTC)And yes, I agree Harry represents someone who tends to the hyper-rational, and it's completely plausible that he share those flaws, but it's still deliberately possible to see the real-life opinions infused into him. The fic does often point out his flaws, both in text and in the introduction, but I get the feeling that although the author is aware of those, he hasn't actually worked through them as much as he'd like.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 02:18 pm (UTC)Say aliens have arrived on Earth, and you're one of the few who know that they are secretly Nazi metaphors who want to eat people (everybody else thinks the jackboots are a cool retro fashion statement). Then one of your little band gets captured by the aliens. Now, they can't read minds, but they do have no compunction about torture, especially torturing humans.
Now how sure are you that they won't be able to extract any useful information by torture?
S.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 02:55 pm (UTC)It certainly could be effective, if used for specific purposes. It's just that it essentially never is.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 03:07 pm (UTC)