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this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2026
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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I was going to throw a point of order about not all fanfic being erotic, but given how they fetishize "intelligence" and "rationality" I can't be sure that they don't get off on that slog.
To give Gary Marcus credit here, HPMOR may not be erotic, but many of Eliezer's other works are erotic (or at least attempt to be), the most notable being Planecrash/Project Lawful which has entire sections devoted to deliberately bad (as in deliberately not safe, sane, consensual) bdsm.
Eliezer tried to promote/hype up Project Lawful on twitter, maybe hoping it would be the next HPMOR, but it didn't quite take. Maybe he failed to realize how much of HPMOR's success was being in the popular genre of Harry Potter fanfic (which at the time had crap like Partially Kissed Hero or Harry Crow as among its most popular works), and not from his own genius writing.
I know I've said somewhere on here before that "Harry Potter for pop science nerds" is fanfiction on easy mode, but I'll stand by it.
Also I think there's enough manipulation fantasy in HPMOR, and enough lack of agency from Hermione, that it qualifies—in it's own way—implicitly as being erotic.
You can't build a fandom full of that many fucked-up people without some of them getting horny in a fucked-up way.
Edit to add: example of a non-erotic fanfic https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436