"How's Annie?"

 

Epilogue: Private detective Harry Potter needs a break from the not-so-blissful life of snark remarks. On the beautiful streets of Chicago he stumbles on the most charming of dimples.

 

What you are describing:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3766574/1/Prince-of-the-Dark-Kingdom

 

Hmm... I'm 7 chapters in (about 40%, according to my Kindle) and honestly, I'm agreed with the majority of the first page of this thread. In 40k words I've seen no plot development (unless you count rehash as plot), mediocre writing, wooden dialogue, most characters (including Harry) have the depth of a puddle and the only draw of the fic so far, Voldemort, isn't a draw because of how good she is, but because she's just jarring in her entirety.

The obvious thing is the sex change, which is brought up in how it contrasts, say, the diary Tom Riddle, but nothing's been hinted so far why she appeared male to Harry before or why she uses masculine titles. And then there's the whole angle of twisting Voldemort to fit the mold of an ultimately righteous revolutionary rather than a power hungry supremacist, which rarely goes over well. At this point I would expect at least a couple hints of a future explanation, but all I got so far was more setup and "character building" for Voldemort, involving such things as baking cookies. That's not subverting the canon character, that's just turning him inside out, guts out and all. And what actual fuck is Harry doing? "Hey, let's go to talk to this incredibly dangerous and homicidal witch... cause". I guess the power of boners really is that strong.

Also, it's cute how the author explicitly mentioned that Voldemort wouldn't be on the cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or anything, but then proceeds to play on the attractiveness angle. I just think it's silly. If you want your Dark Lady to be hot, then have it be so. No need to be bashful.

At this point I wouldn't give it more than 2/5 and even then I'm struggling to round up to 2. Is this a case of PrinceofSlytherinisis, the first 100k words are utter shit and then it suddenly flips into 5/5 material, or is there a more immediate uptick in quality and whatever sense this is supposed to make?

 

Desu, my only hope for this right now is that it creates a new trend of fem!Voldemort fanfics. Merlin knows we've been stuck in the Daphne phase for too long.

 

Harry/Voldemort fics won't suddenly start making sense just because it's Tommie now.

 

I'm a believer that anything can be written well.

 

No, but I'm more willing to read fem!Voldemort/Harry than Voldemort/Harry.

 

The whole story is pointless trolling. The author filled half the content with Harry/Emily UST and then stated multiple times on Reddit that there would be no Harry/Emily (in fact said it was disgusting pedophilia or something to that effect).

 

What really? Well fuck, what am I supposed to do with this hard on now? This is like that time when the Wind Chakras guy genderbent some ninja and got me all confused.

 

I've read 12 chapters and I have to say, I have no earthly idea why so many people are praising LdS to high heaven. Oh, I get that plenty of people like trash fanfic, but what I don't understand is how this is being held up as among the best recent stories in the fandom. TE7 swapped out canon Voldemort for a bizarro!fem version that is being portrayed as both propely Volemortish and evil, but at the same time veers hard toward the misunderstood!Voldemort trope. Emily isn't charismatic, as some claim, and she just seems like a muggle with magic rather than a witch. I cannot fathom why she would still have the same followers as in canon.

I cannot stand the copious flashbacks, because they're pointless. They seem to be dropping a lot of points of divergence, but no ripple effects can be observed in the present timeline.

The writing is absolutely flavorless. Everything reads the same. I scrolled right past the big battle sequence at Nurmengard and I can tell I missed nothing.

Everything so far reads like fluff or filler. Twelve chapters in, nothing has really happened. That's the worst thing about this fic imo. It's rehash, and not even competent rehash--we get snapshots to inform us where in the OotP timeline we are, and the rest is either flashbacks, slice-of-life shit or bizarro!Voldemort doing something that doesn't move the plot forward in any way. In fact, nothing anyone does seems to move the plot forward.

So. Changes introduced change nothing, the writing is bland, and the plot is nonexistent. It's actually kind of an achievement how the author took so many divergence points and still managed to come up with precisely nothing interesting or exciting. There's not a single redeeming feature here.

1/5, and it's a stretch

 

Are you kidding me? Is this true? If so, can someone tell me what is the point of this story? What are we supposed to take from it? @Miner, since you seem close to TE7, do you have anything to say?

"He was curled onto his side, one hand over his face. She could see the scars etched onto the face of his hand. The words 'I must not tell lies' clearly visible against his pale skin. Her teeth clenched together and she forced the anger down. She forced herself to think of anything else but harming what had injured something that was so very much hers."

What about this? Redherring? Troll? Baiting shippers to keep reading?

 

Eh, I've just read through author's comments on Reddit and I can't see anything condemning Harry/Emily on the contrary:

 

I mean I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to divulge what's going to happen with the story in the future. The thing that people need to realize is that TE7 hates the concept of shipping/pairings, so if you're gonna go and ask him if Harry/Emily is a thing he's going to tell you no, because Harry/Emily is a pairing and pairings are stupid.

WRT the whole "Harry is hers" thing, think about like... the entirety of DH's plot.

 

TE7 hates pairings, but only writes romance? Is he trying to be 2deep4u or something?

 

He hates the idea of mashing two people together and forcing a relationship. He doesn't like things to be predestined as with most of fanfic.

 

THAT explains a lot. A LOT.

TE7 makes things up as he goes.

 

There was definitely one comment about him finding Harry/Emily weird or fucked up or something.

 

Well, you inspired me to dig. Those are like 3 months old.

Random Shitposter: I don't think you can say Emily doesn't want a relationship with Harry when she's sharing with him the memories of intimate moments throughout her life. Even she admits to herself that her interest in Harry isn't cut and dried.

TE7: Fine. She is not interested in a romantic relationship with Harry.

and,

RS1: I just need to know if she's going to be a mother/sister figure for Harry or a love interest
RS2: Why not both? Harry certainly desperately needs both of those things and I can see Emily deciding she will be the one to provide them. Dark witches are supposed to be a bit insane, no?
TE7: Sure but that doesn't mean she's a pedophile! It amuses me that no one ever takes into account the fact that an obviously Adult Emily would not be attracted to a fifteen year old boy.

Granted, when I wrote my previous post I hadn't known about TE7's stance towards pairings. So yeah, the "pointless trolling" part may be an exaggeration and the disgusting part is non-existent. After reading a bunch of TE7's posts for half an hour, my gut tells me that if Harry/Emily happens, it will be in a sequel where Harry is over 17.

 

That's not it. I'm pretty sure he plans out every story that he's ever written before writing it. The thing is, when you're planning, you don't necessarily have to say "Oh and because we know that Harry and Emily will be together at the end of this story, then X,Y,Z should happen, and then they're a pairing."

Socialist has the right of it though. At least fmpov. I can't see into TE7's head or anything.