They are introduced as insane, not snotty. Nearly the first thing Draco says is that he plans to rape Hermione and our Hero uses his Agency to do exactly nothing about it. (It is hard to exaggerate how bizarre this story is to people who haven't read it.)

Hundreds of pages later, Harry uses the first iota of power he is given to prohibit students from playing Quidditch according to rules he believes are irrational. There is an immediate outcry which he dismisses because it's just the mewling of inferior intellects. It's hard for me to see any signs of growth here.

(Harry's contempt for sports is amusing, given that about a third of the story is dedicated to his love of cheating at a particularly moronic sport invented by the Lord Voldemort ripping off Ender's Game.)

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HDThoreaun a day ago | parent [-]

He convinces Draco that his whole ideology is wrong. He convinces him not to rape anyone before he rapes anyone. Not exactly sure what the better outcome is here, just turning him in would only strengthen his violent ideology. There are many complaints to be made about the story, as you said its boring and too long and often too preachy. A lot of the visible changes in the characters happens in the last quarter. Even though the whole story has been building to that it can seem like its a bit out of nowhere.

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aiedrionio a day ago | parent [-]

Does Yudkowsky spill more ink on condemning Draco's hatred and violence or on making fun of Hermione Granger's feminism? Voldemort is treated as an ultimately worthy adversary, while Ron is a joke and Hermione is a pet handed power by our Awakened Hero. Yudkowsky treats sexual violence, genocide, and mass murder as forgivable missteps on the road to greatness, but treats liking sports as a fatal character flaw and being concerned with human rights as risible. Arrogance is consistently rewarded while goodness is consistently ridiculed.

I don't claim Yudkowsky believes these things consciously, but they are omnipresent in his story and they reflect his bizarre attitudes to morality. The fact that he acknowledges at the very end that the characters he created are fools doesn't change the fact that he spent six hundred thousand words holding them up as paragons of virtue and rewards them with apotheosis.

	▲	HDThoreaun a day ago \| parent [-]
		Hermione is the actual hero of the story. Every time rationalist harry makes a mistake he is acting against her direct advice. Her character literally exists to show off his deficiencies and his coming of age basically boils down to realizing he should be more like her. For many reasons voldemort is an ultimately worthy adversary. Much of that has to do with Harry's biases that come from being too invested in rationalism. Since he considers himself above everyone he's ever met he longs to find someone he considers his better and voldemort fills this role. He wants a mentor so badly that he's willing to throw out his entire ideology to keep him. I think yudkowsky's portrayal of voldemort as the ultimate adversary to rationalism is better than pretty much any plot arc in the original story. Harry does ultimately completely reject voldemort so Im not sure how sexual violence, genocide, and mass murder as treated as forgivable. From the very beginning Harry is deeply concerned with human rights, his distractions and the path he takes toward achieving human rights in this messed up world is again an integral part of the story. > The fact that he acknowledges at the very end that the characters he created are fools I think this is my biggest issue with your characterization. Yudkowsky shows harry to be a fool from the very beginning, as you pointed out with the draco/ron stuff. With his dismissal of much of hermiones advice. He very consciously did not create harry as some ubermencsch character who can do no wrong. He shows that harry believes himself to be a parity of virtue, but that he very much is not until hermione's death.