A while ago I posted about Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. It's a fanfiction. It's also one of the best things I've ever read. The premise is "What would the Potterverse look like if Harry (and Voldemort) were really smart." This means A) that people tend NOT to do things like creating a ludicrously complex plot to get someone to touch a portkey when they could just toss them an enchanted coin, B) When Harry learns about Magic, he looks upon the bizarre, mindbogglingly weird rules that it follows and says "Whelp, time to do some science to figure out how this really works, and C) Rather than just trying to kill Voldemort and call it a day, Harry attempts to actually understand and fix the underlying social problems that allowed the Death Eaters to rise to power in the first place.
The story is really funny, really clever, with well crafted complex characters and an interesting plot and all the stuff that makes a story generally good. On top of that, it is one of the most poignant stories I've read when it comes to showing science and rationality as they should be. Honestly, this may sound ridiculous but I've never read anything that made me so excited and proud to be a human being. I can't guarantee it'll be as life affirming for y'all as it was for me, but I can guarantee, at the least, that it'll be a really good story.
The last chapter of Book 1 went up last night. It ends on a cliffhanger, but it's a very satisfying cliffhanger. Even if the story never continues (the author stated he's taking a one month hiatus, and prior to now he's been updating a chapter a week), I consider it well worth the time I put into it.
My one warning is that it may look at first like Harry is a bit of a Mary Sue insert who is always right and surrounded by idiots. This is somewhat true, but by the end of the story it becomes clear that Harry has enormous issues that he needs to fix, and whenever you see him do something that looks wrong to you, it may very well BE wrong and he's probably going to get chewed up for it a few chapters later. One of my favorite things about it is that it's NOT entirely clear what the moral of the story is. There's a lot of complex issues that are not as simple as Harry (or other characters) think they are.
You can download a PDF here, which has the whole thing done as an actual book with the original Harry Potter fonts and everything.
The story is really funny, really clever, with well crafted complex characters and an interesting plot and all the stuff that makes a story generally good. On top of that, it is one of the most poignant stories I've read when it comes to showing science and rationality as they should be. Honestly, this may sound ridiculous but I've never read anything that made me so excited and proud to be a human being. I can't guarantee it'll be as life affirming for y'all as it was for me, but I can guarantee, at the least, that it'll be a really good story.
The last chapter of Book 1 went up last night. It ends on a cliffhanger, but it's a very satisfying cliffhanger. Even if the story never continues (the author stated he's taking a one month hiatus, and prior to now he's been updating a chapter a week), I consider it well worth the time I put into it.
My one warning is that it may look at first like Harry is a bit of a Mary Sue insert who is always right and surrounded by idiots. This is somewhat true, but by the end of the story it becomes clear that Harry has enormous issues that he needs to fix, and whenever you see him do something that looks wrong to you, it may very well BE wrong and he's probably going to get chewed up for it a few chapters later. One of my favorite things about it is that it's NOT entirely clear what the moral of the story is. There's a lot of complex issues that are not as simple as Harry (or other characters) think they are.
You can download a PDF here, which has the whole thing done as an actual book with the original Harry Potter fonts and everything.