Comment by Kim_Bruning

People said that comic books and pulp novels were morally harmful and caused juvenile delinquency, which is indeed nonsense. However that has nothing to do with the quality and depth of the writing so your post is irrelevant.

> They're about engaging the imagination and making you take hypothetical situations seriously.

- that nudges readers in interesting (to society) or new (to the reader) directions. Or at least in not in actively harmful ways. Otherwise, OF, livestreaming, or whatever latest social media BS, etc. are king: purposefully designed to create parasocial relationships that trick you thinking you have chance to be noticed.

My main beef with most fan fiction is that in my experience, it unconsciously locks readers into an extremely rigid way of thinking. Of course, this varies from fandom to fandom but woe upon the budding writer who ships the wrong pair or violates the canon.

It mirrors religious dogma, but somehow even worse when compared to all the disputes in Christianity throughout the centuries. (Plus, there's at least a connection between Christianity to modern democracy.)

I am not responding to the examples, and I am not challenging the claim that famous vs not famous author does not matter, or that dead tree vs screen does not matter; I am raising the question whether it's just a quantity issue ("Just so long as they read", "entire novels worth of text").

Is it? I am not sure either way. Do you lose something by only reading chapters of a novel but never the whole story from the beginning to the end, even if you're still reading the same amount?

> How can I forget Harry Potter And The Methods Of Rationality

If you find out, let me know. I wish I could.

I've never read such self absorbed drivel in my life. To be fair, I've not read any Ayn Rand, so I might be judging harshly.

Maybe not the best thing for kids to be reading!

https://www.thecut.com/article/milo-youngblut-max-snyder-ziv...

Even without the, you know, murder stuff, I think we can do better for kids than another generation of "rationalists", considering the track record here.

Jane Austen was considered pulp. So was Charles Dickens. And Conan Doyle.

Nobody considered those high literature back in the day!

>Who cares?

I do? Why would I want my kids to be consuming crap when they could be engaging with great works and high art?

>Also, I thought that Yudkowsky's HPMOR fanfic had more interesting ideas than the whole Rowling series, which I like a lot.

Then you do not understand writing. If Yudkowski really had more interesting ideas, then he would have been able to do HPMOR as original fiction.

Rowling is actually really good, inventing very charming things, very fun sentences, and there's nothing even close in HPMOR (I have read it myself, and enjoyed it to some degree), but you really underestimate how good Rowling is.

Yes, pedantically, and as mentioned in the Notes in the Text in most editions, the Lord of the Rings is a single book sometimes published in three volumes.

I believe the publisher of LOTR broke it up into multiple books.