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Comment by zyxley | Hacker News Reader

MoR? Bleh. It's basically a half-inch away from a self-insert story, with every Doylist weakness in the narrative brutally exploited in a Watsonian manner and every other character made into a drooling moron so that Harry can be a genius by comparison.

I much prefer stories like Applied Cultural Anthropology, which takes the informed attributes of characters and runs with them to better flesh out the background and to give every character, including the villains, more Doylist competence.

Edit: link is https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9238861/1/Applied-Cultural-Anth... (thanks, Groxx)

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I don't think that's a fair analysis of the characters as the story progresses (except maybe for Ron, but who likes Ron anyway?) How far into HPMOR did you get?

I haven't read much of this, but I recall a scene where Dumbledore was portrayed in a very unflattering light at least.

(Something about trying to avoid dying I think)

Yeah, I did not like that one either. Though claiming that Dumbledore is portrayed as a "drooling moron" there (or anywhere else for the matter) is not precisely correct.

Read on. Dumbledore is clearly one of the smartest characters in the book, not a drooling moron at all. He puts on a pretence of being completely bonkers to confuse his enemies, but he's very smart and thinks fifteen steps ahead (just one short of Harry...) and is one of the few characters in the book who's an Agent rather than an NPC.

As for the other characters, their level of agency varies, but at the very least Quirrel, Hermione and Draco are also agents (i.e. smart enough to be capable of driving the story in a meaningful way), and the other characters are portrayed fairly accurately given their stupidity in the original books.

In the original book, ALL the characters are stupid. In HP:MoR, 5 characters are not stupid. I think that's an improvement.

You are right of course. I just did not want to give out too many details.

You could argue that the original JKR work also portrays Dumbledore in a somewhat unflattering light. (He sent children after known dark wizards on multiple occasions, lied to Harry on several occasions, arguably stood by while Sirius was sentenced, etc.) As readers, we like Dumbledore, but he is hardly a paragon of virtue. I rather enjoy how MOR spins that.

I have my issues with the rest of the series, but I really liked the part where Ron says "if you are a friend of Malfoy, you can't be my friend" and Harry tells him to go pound sand. It's just a horrible thing for the supposed heroes of the original book to roll along with.

> every other character made into a drooling moron

Professor Quirrel?

Well... he seems to be the only one who actually drools so far (not counting the troll or any non human being).

I'll have to check that one out, thanks!

Link for others (and for verification, but I think it's right): https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9238861/1/Applied-Cultural-Anth...

Do you have a link you could share?

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