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[personal profile] freckles_and_doubt
My Standard 5 class hangs around on Facebook, currently commenting on a class photo in which we're all ickle and stuff. Today someone mentioned that one of my friends from back then has subsequently grown up to produce ten children. She was brighter than I am: her O-level results kicked mine to the curb, and mine were pretty OK. She didn't do A-levels. She went off to secretarial college, got a job, got married before she was twenty, and presumably started procreating immediately thereafter, if she's racked up that kind of sprog count. She was deeply religious, as was her husband, and horribly enmeshed in Rhema Bible Church. It makes me want to cry. It's quite possible that she's blissfully fulfilled and contented, but I am heartsore to think of all that intellectual potential that never went anywhere.

Fortunately, talking about tears and intellect, an antidote is at hand. I have just spent an entirely hysterical hour reading Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is a Harry Potter fanfic which leaps gleefully, boots and all, onto the totally ginormous logical flaws all over the series, and proceeds to surgically dissect them on strict rationalist principles, with frequent reference to science and logic. It made me laugh until I cried. Seriously. There were actual rivers of actual tears. I cannot recommend it in high enough terms. Rowling's absolute absence of actual thought about the structures and logic of her world have always infuriated me: this is an extremely joyous-making response.

Also, the disclaimers at the head of each chapter are genius.

Edited to add: Damn. Fic jumps the shark with excessive syrupy emotion in Chapter 18, although not before delivering a trademark snarky slapdown of Snape's incompetence as a teacher.

Date: Thursday, 6 May 2010 06:56 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] schedule5.livejournal.com
I have no idea how anyone with, ooh, more than about 3 children ever finds the energy to even begin making number four. Let alone 10. If she is blissfully happy and fulfilled, it's probably because she's so buggered from all the pregnancies and sleep-deprivation that her brain can no longer process higher thought.

Date: Thursday, 6 May 2010 08:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] extemporanea.livejournal.com
As someone commented in the Facebook discussion, "has anyone asked her to stop?!" I can understand people who want children. Two children, even. Three or four at a pinch. The deliberate, wanton absence of logic and thought in ten just floors me. How do you clothe or educate them all? give them enough attention to stop them from becoming psychopaths? it does not compute.

Date: Friday, 7 May 2010 05:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wolverine-nun.livejournal.com
I think my mum managed by taking a 6 year break. Then the older 2 were roped in to help with the younger 2. But then, we're also all totally screwed up (at least the first 3) so perhaps my parents should have, um, had us backwards and stopped at 2. Yes, that would've worked. Don't tell Steph I said that.

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