Originally written in response to a counterpoint on the above critique:
In general, I think we disagree on the percentage level—for instance, you point to the arrival of a hundred phoenixes and don’t think of that as cheating for a cool moment, whereas I think it is cheating for a cool moment. There’s nothing about that moment in the battle, or even that battle in general, to imply that it’s more phoenix-worthy than any other moments throughout history (or even in the story itself) to have a suspension-of-disbelief-breaking HUNDRED phoenixes show up. So I imagine it’s just an issue of where each of us draws the line.
Same thing for idiot ball. Merlin firmly held it throughout the entire story, in my opinion. Same thing for explicit rationality, of which I think Harry and Hermione did basically zero, except “generally plan ahead.” Same thing for the repeated “oh, the problem will be solved by an ancient magical artifact” sort-of deus-exes.
Re: worldbuilding, there’s good and bad side stuff. Speaking as someone who loves the Wheel of Time and has read every book in it at least four times, I love me some ancillary action. But ancillary action has to pay off in itself, if it’s just there to enrich the world, or otherwise it’s wasted time. Again, I think it’s just that we have different tolerance levels? I notice that you more-or-less agreed to the majority of my points, and basically just felt that each was either enjoyable anyway, or less egregious than I was making it out to be.
Probably the only point I have an … antagonistic? As opposed to friendly debate-y? … reaction to is your last one, about the strengths and weaknesses of publish-as-you-go. I think you make a fair appraisal of the situation, but I personally don’t think that explanation suffices for an excuse. I recently got into a long back-and-forth about how terrible the book Elantris is, and someone was like, hey, give the guy a break, it was his first novel. To which my response was, no one made him publish before he learned how to write passably well.
I think there’s a similar deal with serial fiction. I’m writing serial fiction myself—I’ll be up until two or three in the morning tonight, working on r!Animorphs. But if one of my chapters sucks because it’s branching, verbose, or haphazard, I think I should still be criticized for that. Saying “but but but it’s because I’m publishing as I go!” seems, to me, like saying “but but but this is only my tenth painting ever!” Sure, and it deserves credit for trying, and maybe the hundredth one will be better. But that doesn’t make it good, and if it’s bad, valid criticisms should be “allowed” to be spoken. The immaturity of a given artist or a given draft is no defense—if a creator doesn’t want to be criticized for those flaws, they can always just … wait until their work doesn’t have those flaws.
Originally written in response to authorial+fan gushing enthusiasm after Eliezer made a comment about SigDig:
“A worthy successor on grounds of worldbuilding and humanism” isn’t quite the same as “a worthy successor, no qualifications needed.” I’ve enjoyed following Significant Digits a lot, and I’m looking forward to the finale, but I also think that the overflowing praise and admiration in this thread isn’t fully grounded, and is counter to the author’s own (repeatedly) stated desire to improve. I think there’s a bit of a halo effect thing going on, where the good qualities of the writing and the general Hufflepuff impressiveness of having spilled this many words are causing people to gloss over real flaws.
Or maybe it’s just that the people who identify those traits as flaws aren’t speaking up? There could be a self-selection effect along the lines of not-wanting-to-ruin-people’s-party or being afraid that offering critique will cause others to get upset, or something. But I’m feeling willing to risk the ire of die-hard fans if it means bringing the conversation back to a place where it’s not all about gush. Based on mrphaethon’s response to my last criticism, I predict he’d prefer that, too.
Speaking as someone who’s read HPMOR about eight times all the way through and rates it at about a B+, I think Significant Digits comes in somewhere between C and C+ [I later revised this down to a C- after the conclusion]. I don’t think it would obviously clinch EY’s declaration were there five works of similar length, and I doubt mrphaethon wants his trophy to be based on “nobody else put as much time into it.”
There are things SD does exceptionally well. The early parts of the Lethe touch arc, for example, were both well-imagined and incredibly chilling—the chapter internal to Harry’s consciousness was some of the finest writing I’ve seen, and it’s far from the only bit that’s really, really good.
But there are many more things that come to mind as uncanny-valley versions of HPMOR, rather than actually feeling true to the spirit. Harry and Hermione simply don’t feel like HPMOR!Harry and HPMOR!Hermione + some years, in the same way that many of the scenes in Ender in Exile felt false-note untrue to canon Ender Wiggin (Draco does seem spot-on, FWIW, but I don’t buy his role within the larger context of the world ). The inclusion of a wider/wilder magical feel, more in line with standard high fantasy, doesn’t click—I like the magic on its own, but I can’t reconcile this universe with the HPMOR universe, because HPMOR rules with this history = world already destroyed a dozen times over. Half of the broadening of the world re: politics, other races, flashbacks/historical examples works, and half of it bores or feels overwrought or irrelevant.
Et cetera, et cetera—I would enumerate more of the things that are good about SD’s writing, except that the whole point of this post is to provide a reasonable counterpoint. And there are a couple of elements that I think are outright bad, though I’m going to refrain from posting those here as well because I’m not trying to flame or troll. Again, I’ve enjoyed this ride, and I’m looking forward to the ending.
But as a sequel, this falls in the reference class of [Matrix Reloaded, Dune Messiah, and Ender’s Shadow], rather than [Empire Strikes Back, Dark Knight, or even Speaker for the Dead]. In fact, Ender’s Shadow may be the perfect analogue—some amazing parts, a significant number of mediocre parts, a couple of terrible elements, weird pacing, doesn’t-quite-feel-like-exactly-the-same-universe, and steals some of its power in a zero-sum way from the original.
I think that, if SD ultimately ends up being considered the “true” or “official” continuation of HPMOR, the overall result will be a lowering of the average quality-per-word of the combined work by a meaningful amount, and the final impression will be one of a “meh” conclusion that [prediction based on reference class forecasting and outside view synthesis of previous chapters] didn’t quite stick the landing.
In a certain sense, that feels like the saddest possibility of them all, because if SD were terrible, no one would think to give it the successor endorsement in the first place. But now, because it’s good enough, it feels like it’s being handed the seal of approval in a sort of “Well, sure, I guess” spirit, and the result will be nobody bothering to spend time writing something better.
Originally written in response to a counterpoint on the above critique:
Originally written in response to authorial+fan gushing enthusiasm after Eliezer made a comment about SigDig: