That's exactly what you do when you're planning a story. You imagine your end, then you imagine how you get there. It's not out of complete retardation that pairings became a concept.

 

Doesn't need to be, a story could just be more of an expression of certain ideas that have to be there, and the rest sort of flows around and you work it to make sense.

I mean, he writes fanfic, he's not writing a booker prize winning novel.

That said, I think ScottPress's rating is very harsh and the story is probably around 2.5-3 at worst.

 

As I understood TE7's argument, he complains that the fandom is too shipping focused with the most of authors creating fics with a pairing as a starting point and not a plot idea. Likewise readers largely search for a fics with a certain ship or even limit themselves to reading those with one exact pairing.

 

But no.

Because by and large most stories don't set out to be romance stories. Unless it's a story dedicated to romance, like... I dunno, Grow Young With Me or something, setting out to write it with a pairing in mind is stupid, and I agree with that argument.

If you're planning on writing a romance between two characters then fine. If you're planning to write a sports story, or a crime/noir story, or literally anything but romance, having a fixed pairing in mind when starting the story takes away from it.

 

I'm not so sure.

 

He has an unfortunate habit of confusing Astoria and Daphne. I mean, in Letters it was supposed to be Astoria too.

But in all seriousness he does have a plan. Princess was always going to be the same story, it was just a matter of naming characters and minor plot changes.

Like, I've seen the epilogue to LdS. It was written around the time Chapter five was published. Obviously there's now going to be some changes, but the story has, still, fundamentally worked up to that point in the epilogue.

 

But yes.

Writing anything without a clear understanding of what's going to happen is asking for trouble. If you're not having any romance, then you're not having any romance. If you are going to have, then you must know how is going to happen. It's that simple. You can't just write your crime/noir story and have the detective fall in love with the killer half-way through it simply because it starts felling right. I mean, you can, but doing that has a very high chance of derailing your train.

Now this is reasonable. Although in the fandom's defense I'll probably never gonna click a Harry/Malfoy story no matter how well written it is, or how right it starts to feel in the context of the plot. Just not my cup of tea.

 

I'm not saying you shouldn't plan out how characters interact with each other. I'm saying that you shouldn't go into writing a story saying that Harry and X must be together, if the focus of your story is not romance.

 

And I'm saying that you should, if they must be together at all. Otherwise you're throwing gears into a working machine. Might not break it, but it's much more likely that it will.

 

Well, we'll agree to disagree then.

Edit: The further discussion on this topic can be found here. -Sesc

 

Best in the fandom? Someone said that? This is like watching trashy softcore porn in book form with better writing. It's got some interesting ideas that don't really turn into much of a divergence for sure.

I don't read this because it's groundbreaking fiction that I've never seen before. I read this because it's trashy, and seems to have a fun grip on Harry thinking with his dick under influence of fem Voldemort.

I'm into it mostly cause of my poor taste in trashy romance novels.

*SPOILERS* (kind of I guess)

Spoiler

Also this Voldemort is about to win her war by converting a horny teenage boy with her looks, a boy whose parents she killed. Who then proceeded to happily show him their deaths.

I don't think I've ever seen this done in fanfiction before. So I'm a little interested in that. Also I just want to see Harry boink Voldemort in a nonslash way.

FOR SCIENCE.

*cough*

 

I think that meat is off the menu, cowboy.

 

Hush you knave! I'll probably follow this to completion just for him to get down with Hermione, but whatever. It's a quick fun read with little substance to keep track of, sometimes you just want something bad for you.

 

Seriously, I don't see a point to this story besides the Harry/femVoldemort pairing. I could see it as something else if there was something else there. If Emily had remained like the canon Voldemort, with same motivations and character, I could believe Limpieza de Sangre was about Harry coming to align with the Death Eaters side because he had a chance to consider them simply because getting closer to a female Voldemort gave him pause. That would be an use of the genderbender that follows this principle of TE7. But no. Emily is not in any way, shape, or form the character Voldemort was. Their motivations are not nearly the same. As it stands now, Harry sympathizes with a misunderstood group of people that were pushed too far. We're taught nothing because it's OOC and because anyone could come with "btw the Death Eaters are not really evil okay," by altering their very core characteristics.

 

To toss my two cents into the planned/unplanned pairing jar. Writing fiction is all contrivance--that's what your plot is. The problem isn't what you contrive, it's how you do it. Do it well, and you'll write a good story. Do it badly, and you'll write a bad story.

Edit: The further discussion on this topic can be found here. -Sesc

TE7 seemed to have an idea of what he wanted to contrive, but he simply executed his ideas poorly--thus, bad fanfic.

 

LdS was essentially spawned from someone telling TE7 he couldn't write fem!Voldemort and him being contrarian.

The story is supposed to be focused on Emily anyways. And how different Voldemort's life would've been as a female in the 1940's. It's not supposed to be a canon rehash. It's Emily's story, and Emily is not Tom.

 

Yeah, I've never understood why people complain that Emily isn't Tom. I thought that was kinda the point. I don't really even care for this story, but it's pretty obvious Emily is supposed to be a different person. Yeah, we can then argue that Voldemort shouldn't be tagged as a character, but meh, there's still enough of canon Voldemort in Emily to allow it.

 

My biggest two complaints are how badly the Ministry have been handled the last few chapters and how Emily - despite not being Tom (which while a valid reason means starting a fic in GOF with the same back story is kind of eh as massive ripples) dosent seem like a credible threat.

 

Calling it now, Harry will go to America and be guided into ressurecting Emily from his scar horcrux. And BAM!, she will be 16, so it won't be weird.

 

Spoiler

The epilogue takes place ten years later.