Let me use this opportunity to re-raise a question I’ve been puzzled about for awhile now: how does Harry win?
According to an author’s note, we have “two major story arcs” left before the fic is finished. Eliezer also mentioned possibly doing a “solve this puzzle or the fic ends sad” thing, but implies he’s at least going to give Harry a chance to win.
It’s not certain what “two major story arcs” means in terms of story time, but it seems very likely that it at least means “before the start of the next Hogwarts school year.” So there has to be some way for Harry to win, not just in his seventh year like in the books, but in the next several months.
I confess, I’m tempted by the part of this theory (not the whole thing mind you, not this one part), that suggests that the Pioneer Plaque gets less and less useful as a Horcrux as it drifts farther and farther from Earth. That would give Harry a path to defeating Voldemort more or less permanently
But that seems problematic, because of Rational!Voldemort being smart, and because of the hint in the humanism arc that Voldemort has horcruxes hidden in other places, corresponding to the other traditional elements.
So I’m stumped. I suspect we’ll get some major other puzzle pieces when Voldemort reveals his plan, or a significant chunk of it, to Harry. Which won’t necessarily be an instance of Bond Villain Stupidity. Basically everything that’s happened from the end of the Stanford Prison Experiment arc to now has been Voldemort trying to make Harry more compliant (Qiaochu_Yuan pulls out the key quote here), suggesting there’s something Voldemort needs Harry to do, and that may require explaining what that thing is.
That said, I’m still wondering if Voldemort is going to end up making a rather catastrophic blunder of some sort, perhaps out of his cynicism getting in the way of accurately predicting people’s behavior. My estimate of the chances of that happening is increased somewhat by Qurriellmort as Robin Hanson which hadn’t occurred to me before this thread but which I now think was probably Eliezer’s intent.
Let me use this opportunity to re-raise a question I’ve been puzzled about for awhile now: how does Harry win?
According to an author’s note, we have “two major story arcs” left before the fic is finished. Eliezer also mentioned possibly doing a “solve this puzzle or the fic ends sad” thing, but implies he’s at least going to give Harry a chance to win.
It’s not certain what “two major story arcs” means in terms of story time, but it seems very likely that it at least means “before the start of the next Hogwarts school year.” So there has to be some way for Harry to win, not just in his seventh year like in the books, but in the next several months.
I confess, I’m tempted by the part of this theory (not the whole thing mind you, not this one part), that suggests that the Pioneer Plaque gets less and less useful as a Horcrux as it drifts farther and farther from Earth. That would give Harry a path to defeating Voldemort more or less permanently
But that seems problematic, because of Rational!Voldemort being smart, and because of the hint in the humanism arc that Voldemort has horcruxes hidden in other places, corresponding to the other traditional elements.
So I’m stumped. I suspect we’ll get some major other puzzle pieces when Voldemort reveals his plan, or a significant chunk of it, to Harry. Which won’t necessarily be an instance of Bond Villain Stupidity. Basically everything that’s happened from the end of the Stanford Prison Experiment arc to now has been Voldemort trying to make Harry more compliant (Qiaochu_Yuan pulls out the key quote here), suggesting there’s something Voldemort needs Harry to do, and that may require explaining what that thing is.
That said, I’m still wondering if Voldemort is going to end up making a rather catastrophic blunder of some sort, perhaps out of his cynicism getting in the way of accurately predicting people’s behavior. My estimate of the chances of that happening is increased somewhat by Qurriellmort as Robin Hanson which hadn’t occurred to me before this thread but which I now think was probably Eliezer’s intent.