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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   3368 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 24, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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People really like Sherlock Holmes stories, to the point that they're probably the best candidate for the progenitor of the entire Mystery genre. To those here who enjoy these stories, would you mind putting on your over-analysis caps and explaining what it is about the stories that you enjoy?

I think for me they're "intelligence and competence porn". Roughly, it's the idea that an intelligent and competent person, put into a dark and evil situation, can use the light of reason to restore order and uncover hidden secrets. Thriller novels, of the techno- and military- varieties, also do that for me. As with porn, I worry that over-consumption by susceptible demographics can induce unrealistic expectations of human behavior. ;-)

It took a couple of read-throughs of HPMOR for me to get that a) Harry was not being held up by EY as a role model, and b) the main moral of the story is that (spoilers all) he left a trail of pointless wreckage as he broke anything that got in the way of him doing what he thought was right, and if not for the vow Quirrelmort had him take, he would have broken everything.

if you don't mind adding some more spoiler tags, how did how did he almost break everything?

I read the remarks about quarks and antimatter and black holes and plagues in Chapter 119 as "if not for Quirrelmort's forcing an Unbreakable Vow onto Harry, he'd do something world-breaking, or worse. And then with that as the eventual lesson, re-reads of the work reveal a different meaning to the EY-cool that @fishtwanger talks about.

I assume this refers to the moment where the Vow stopped him from revealing the wizarding world and the Transfiguration Stone to the muggles, the implication being that if he did it, the chances of someone casting Summon Earth-Destroying Amounts of Antimatter Just To Try It would skyrocket.

That's the one.

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