Title: Darkly Dreaming Harry
Author: LineApe
Rating: M
Genre: Horror/Humor
DLP Category: Humor
Pairing: None
Status: Work in Progress
Summary: Five minutes pass before the neighbors decide to call triple nine; another ten before the fire-engine arrives. The Dursleys were dead long before that. Psychopath!Intelligent!Harry. Slight Dexter and American Psycho crossovers. HarryxMulti
Link: FFN

I give it 4/5. A good light read.

 

It's an interesting concept and moderately entertaining, but the author does a lot of "telling" instead of "showing". The writing, while coherent, lacks detail and a certain something.

3/5. Decent waste of time for the concept alone, but doesn't deserve a spot in the library.

 

Psychopath.
HarryxMulti.

Good gods.

Your simple human mathematics cannot possibly measure my skepticism... but I'll give it a go, nonetheless.

Edit: Running commentary. Spoilers ahoy!

Oh god, second person.
Oh god, kleptomania as a stepping stone to serial killing.
Oh god, the author's trying to be edgy.
"can't feel emotions" - really? Because there's a fuckton of smug irritation going on here.
Got spite down pat, too.

I want to stop reading, but I can't. It's a train wreck in fic form.

It's like a bad comic book villain, except without the theme, purpose, or personality.

Oh god, he's a TV star too. IT JUST DOESN'T STOP.

 

Very light reading, it's just that sparse in detail. That's the main difference between this fic and a story by Nuhuh for example. It's breezy and when every scene is so minimal there's no option for the reader to relate or be intrigued by Harry and his misdemeanors.

In fairness the second-person wasn't too bad. The attempt at being edgy was no worse than a lot of stories in the Dark Arts section.

The second-person narration is ok. There are a few hiccups when you've got this intrusive instructing of the reader of what Harry's supposed to feel.

Hagrid is hilariously dumb:

The irreverent places like those are actually pretty funny. And it's randomly over-the-top too:

Is that hyperbolic, over-exaggerated in some way? Is that serious?

It's not very polished:

is followed by

A lot of the humor is bad, like calling Molly a cow.

Correction: it's not actually humor, just bashing. Another point: good writers never stoop to that. Do people still get pleasure from predictions that Ginny will end up fat? Or that her mother is unbelievably fat? :/ Do they ever think that, just retaining the figure of a portly, dumpy housewife after seven children is already pretty astonishing?

It's a crack fic in the guise of a really dark story. The humor up till chapter 6 is so petty that I liked parts of it.

3/5

 

I read this last week, and enjoyed every minute of it. 4/5 from me

 

Preddy sure it wasn't meant to be taken seriously (although, tbh was a bit annoyed at that passage).

Read up to chapter 10, and I'm really enjoying it, though I expected the plot to develop slightly faster. Surprisingly, I sort of like this Harry, in spite of all the sociopath thingy going on - I just think he's hilarious.

4/5 for now, better than a lot of the stuff that gets into the library, imo.

 

It's a good story, IMO. Not the best, not nearly, no, but a decent read and rather funny at times.

The second person actually makes this fic far better than it would be otherwise, so bonus point for that. Not many writers can make good and fun 2:nd person. Off the top of my head, I only know JBern, and now LineApe/Pers. (IIRC weren't they the same person?)

4/5 from me.

 

Unless Pers is getting his troll on for his personal amusement, I'm relatively certain this isn't the case. LineApe 'is' a member here, in the form of PinstripedPajamas.

Regarding this fic, it's...an interesting concept that I'd like to read a serious take on, but this...isn't that. There's still some humor here, as well as a healthy dose of the-author-is-trying-way-too-hard. But beyond that, it's something I'll continue looking for updates for, as even train wreck humor is better than nothing, sometimes.

3/5

 

It piqued my interest, but that's about it. It's utterly bland, and I've decided to stop reading until the chapters pile up. At least its updated fairly often.

 

Crap. I was certain LineApe was Pers... :facepalm

Then again, after reading his stuff in the Plot Bunny thread, I really should've known better.

 

This is really fucking bad. :|

The premise of Dexter!Harry is occasionally interesting but it needs someone a little more skilled to pull it off. The cool thing about Dexter is that you root for him, even when you really shouldn't.

This Harry's just an asshole. 1/5.

 

This story has been bouncing around the Almost Recommendable thread for a while, and I think that's exactly where it belongs. It's a good time waster, and there are parts that made me smile, but there's not much else.

3.5/5 - it's upper-echelon recycle bin material.

 

I find this story amusing.
4/5 from me.

 

I think bashing works for certain groups of people because it stimulates brain areas which give some people pleasure if they can see other people being tormented, put down and to demean them. robst's "In this world or the next" is one of the worst I've had the unpleasure to try lately.
Authoritarian personality disorder.

I don't think these people enjoy these stories because of the "plot?" as they are badly written in general. But they can generate strong feelings similar to the obvious smut or some weird emo fics where you're wondering why they have so many fans.

 

There were certain good things and certain bad things about this story that were already mentioned here. Normally I would give this 3/5 but since I really like Evil!Harry stories, I'm going to bounce it to a

4/5

 

Ah, crap. I was going to re-write this when I had gotten to the end of the first year to get rid of the nagging annoyances I've had with it.

I guess the slim chance it had of making the library has gotten even slimmer.

Some of the things listed here are the nagging annoyances I intend to remove in the re-write.

2nd person stays, but I like to think that I'm a better writer now than I was eight or nine months ago. I could make it better.

The stealing has no need, because I don't really have anything plotted out for that.

The TV star thing is unneeded as well. That'll be going.

This started out as a 'fly by the seat of my pants' kind of thing. There was no plan of any sort, and the useless stuff needs to go.

Now-a-days I am much like the Cylons, I have a plan.

I made it sparse because I didn't want to describe everything in detail. It Hogwarts. Its Harry Potter. Anyone who would ever end up reading this would already have this information.

I wanted to get to the inner working of Harry's utterly fucked up mind.

As for the bashing, well, I don't like to think of it as bashing. This Harry is not perfect, and his biggest flaw in my opinion is his arrogance. It's gotten him into trouble a number of times already, and it will do so again and again.

He's an unreliable narrator because he sees himself as so much better than everyone else.

So no, not bashing, but rater it's just the skewed viewpoint of a person who sees things the way they want to. Truth be damned.

And this may be taboo here, but I like Snape and Dumbledore, and I have some interesting things planned for them.

I do however dislike Ron, and not lowering his intelligence even lower than it already has been is an ongoing challenge.

The rest of the Weasleys are fun to play with.

In fact, I don't think anyone will see what I have planned for this family coming.

No, nothing he says or thinks is ever meant to be taken seriously.

Glad you liked it. The plot is slow, but I intend to move it along at a faster clip and get this damn boring first year done with.

Only four or five chapters until we're onto the next school year.

That bad eh? Oh well. Can't please everyone.

He is an asshole. That's the point.

This character is not not Dexter. I guess as time has passed I've moved further and further away from the Dexter character. He's more Patrick Bateman than Dexter now.

Asshole, but I think likable asshole. At least, my reviewers think he's likable, but then again, most of them are complete and utter idiots who want instant gratification.

I have dozens of reviewers who are practically screaming for Dumbledore's head.

I'm not sure why, but they're pretty adamant about it.

*sigh* I just got compared to robst. That makes me sad.

I hate that guy.

Robst that is, not you. I haven't formed an opinion on you.

-PinstripedPajamas (aka Lineape)

 

I see nothing wrong with Harry Potter having been a TV star. I even think it adds to the plot, explains how he is able to act normal and keep a poker face without requiring a suspension of disbelief from the reader. Keep this aspect.

 

The TV star thing is totally over the top, but taken as humor it was mildly funny - in the sense that Harry thinks wizards watch TV and already expects fame, it was different.

Also, I don't think you need to address every post individually. Authors that do that are often the ones that can't take criticism and feel the need to justify everything (not that you come accross too bad, yet).

You might want to remove HarryxMulty from the summary. People may expect a harem fic or something.

 

TV Star thing is the reason I stopped reading this after enjoying most other things. Someone in IRC linked me this some time back.

If I was allowed only one thing to change about this story, that would be it.

Great concept, mostly humorous, but some distractions like Tehan pointed out. Will definitely give the re-write a go if you put it out. Until then I don't think it's quite library worthy.

 

I'm of two minds about the TV Star aspect. It does lead to some mild humor when people recognize him as Harry Potter, as he doesn't realize that it's...not due to television.

On the other hand, it's pretty fucking stupid. So there's that.