happyg, Untitled Tome has problems, but considering it's the author's first, it's pretty amazing. Glad you're enjoying my stuff.

Piece of technical advice: Mentions don't work if you put a space in. Also, you have to type in the exact username that you see, capital letters and all.

 

It's possible UT is the author's first publicly released. work, or mayhaps he previously wrote on a different account.

But yeah, its rather readable. I find it of Library quality.

 

It is indeed the first I've ever released, and it's very much been a learning curve. No excuses for its deficiencies though lol.
ScottPress, I found your spectrum rather amusing. Vanilla Ice might be more at home in-between [the average person] and Grey!Harry, only because he strikes me as the young man who tries his utmost to be edgy and "chill", but fails spectacularly... in the 90s. So for canon timelines he fits in pretty well, haha.

I think a problem that canon divergences often run into - as Scott has already alluded to - is not just the transition itself, but its catalyst(s). Authors understand (whether subconsciously or no) that the Dursleys weren't that bad, for example, so you get this Bizzaro illustration of the foster-parents from Hell to give Harry that push. Or Evil!Dumbledore.

But there's something to be said for canon foundation. Writing without it can be fun, in the way a Pokemon Nuzlocke is fun, but it's on the author to make it worthwhile for the audience, and that's the hard part. PotDK did this well, as did the first third/half of Emperor, but a full AU Dark!Harry would be a behemoth task for anyone - too much stuff to keep track of.

 

Well, I'm going to write a story (probably take me a year) that begins during the Epilogue.

It's a long prologue, and I'm not going to waste time explaining it, but it basically ends up that the last 19 years of Harry' life [1998-2017] were nothing more than a dream. Now, since I have personal experience with lucid dreams, and even dreams that lasted for a very long time, I have the perspective needed to make it work.

He wakes up and, eventually, finds out that it's 1998, just one day after the Battle of Hogwarts.

 

The thing with that, is that he's really waking up too late to change anything in any way other than abrupt and artificial change. The epilogue flows pretty smoothly out of the way everything ties up in book 7, you can see how everything ended up the way it did. And most of the pieces are in place by the day before the Battle of Hogwarts. Then there are other things...does expectation of survival change the outcome of Harry's sacrifice of himself to Voldemort? Or does he change his strategy that day entirely? Does he try to save everyone, and demonstrate a bunch of skills he remembers from the 'dream'?

You have a kind of interesting premise, its like timetravel!Harry, but done differently. But you have to choose the moment of return quite carefully, and I'm not convinced that the day before the Battle of Hogwarts is it.

 

AmerigoCorleone

Information probably better kept secret. Perhaps shared with your beta. Because, you know, you just literally spoiled your whole story. Half of the reason people read stories is to find out what's going to happen next.

ihateseatbelts, I used Vanilla Ice as an amusing (well, it amused me) substitute for a White Knight on that spectrum, only because Ice may be the whitest white guy in the history of pasty caucasians (I blame his movie), not for the way he acts in the film. I believe the film character was the first confirmed sighting of an edgelord.

To return to the relevant topic, instances of transplanting Dursleys for the Manson family or Dumbledore for a badly concealed Grindelwald to facilitate Harry's change is still a character transplant that happened out of the blue. The trick here is that most FFN regulars are easily enough fooled by this and proceed to perceive Harry's development as realistic, when it's still based on bullshit - only this time with a smokescreen.

That's why I think the biggest challenge is finding a divergence that makes enough sense that implementing it (you have to implant something somewhere to start, if you don't then you're just writing canon rehash) will make sense and not be horribly jarring. Some divergences are easy - change timing by whatever, change a werewolf's path a little and Harry is bitten. Others are tougher. If you want to begin a change that will fundamentally alter the character (which I believe is required if you want to go full Dark Harry, practically a 180 from canon), changing the circumstances, what's outside the character is a start, but then you need to implement a change inside the character.

Personally, this is what I struggled with the most. Semi-success was achieved through blood, sweat and tears, minus actual blood, sweat and tears, but with a big dose of humility and trying to actually understand the base material from which I was diverging. I still have the first version of my fic somewhere. I look at it from time to time to remind myself what an utterly shitty writer I used to be just two short years ago. At the moment I'd say I'm orbiting average ranges, and hopefully still steadily improving.

Just two years - I was 20 versus 22 now. It's not that big of a change. I didn't really change as a person, not very much, in any case. It really is amazing what some constructive criticism can help you achieve, if you're willing to learn.

Why I'm saying all this? Because, in terms of the HP fandom and the Dark Harry trope, the biggest problem with most of those stories is that most writers aren't as good as they think and they pussy out when you come out with fair criticism. In their minds, good critique=praise. They forget that no matter if critique is good or bad, it's still going to be critique in either case. Praise is something else entirely and they get enough of that from their worshipers. They see any criticism as an attack instead of what it actually is - help. And so the carousel spins, spitting out more shitty fics the faster it goes.

Holy shit big post, eh?

 

The information I shared is within the Prologue, and even Summary. So, there is no "spoiling the story".

The Dream itself is just a catalyst for the events that would transpire, of which I have not even shared a hint of.

---------- Post automerged at 04:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:43 AM ----------

Oh, no! It's the day after the Battle of Hogwarts. My story is dealing with the aftermath of the war and how the characters in the story move on.

There are, of course, plenty of other things the story will address, but those things are part of a greater whole.

 

Ah, sorry misread that. Then I definitely think its the wrong time. Its timetravel!Harry with him reappearing after he can actually change anything.

 

Oh, this isn't a story of action.

The story I'm writing is strictly a psychological story that deals with each character and how they deal with the aftermath of the war.

The Dream that Harry Potter had is part of a greater whole, but explaining it's meaning within the story would spoil everything.

 

And this is where the issue lies, I think. HP, though an absolutely massive fandom, doesn't exist in a vacuum. We've all been introduced to it in different ways, whether it's through wanting more from the original canon or from browsing around on FFN because your favourite Sailor Moon fic hasn't updated yet.

You then end up (as we always do) with two types of people. Two types of readers and two types of authors:

- the ones who expect the same level of quality as they would from any other serious body of work, commercial or otherwise.

- the ones who don't, because for them, the "fan-" prefix acts as a sort of disqualifier, shielding said body of work from scrutiny while filtering through the praise and "OMG harrys a Demented pheonix animagus!?! so does that mean hes gonna nned like 3wives becus he has an unstabel core wich means hes realy sexually agresive??? GR8 CHAPTER"

Of course, it's no one's job to navigate through the minefield of "is this person serious or aren't they", so we review as we please. The typical DLP reviewer is going to clash with the typical FFN author and vice versa for this reason.

Aside from a handful of reviewers that I was and still am truly grateful for (a couple of whom do post here, and some who don't), I craved real critique for UT, and I'm glad that I'm finally getting it on here. But I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I've received critique for other things from a young age, and I've seen the benefits.

A lot of the authors on FFN won't see it that way. They believe that stars are born, not made. They believe that the stuff of a typical DLP review is a death sentence to their dream.

Most importantly, they do not comprehend the concepts of skill, passion, disposition, routine, etc. They know only of "talent". (Hence magical cores lol)

Not everyone wants to be an internationally-acclaimed storyteller; there are hobbyists even among us. But we still want to get better at it. Some don't, apparently, and I think that the question of "is that okay?" is where the divide will always remain.

 

I disagree. Sure, they weren't child-beating anal-rapists, but the way they treated Harry is enough to develop sociopathic tendencies in any child (see: Tom Riddle, Snape). This is actually one of my biggest peeves with these kind of stories - they feel the need to turn the abuse up to 11, not understanding that Harry is the exception, not the norm.

Same goes to Evil!Dumbledore. You might not agree that Dumbledore's actions were extremely incompetent, but if you look through Harry's perspective, he has enough reasons to hate Dumbledore: he is the one who had placed him with his abusers despite knowing they would abuse him, and placed a squib watcher who didn't seem to be bothered that Harry was ignorant about the magical world, even when he's a very high-profile celebrity in it and in constant danger, so he needs every piece of information to stay safe. He didn't even bother to check things with his godfather, who served in his Order, after he went to prison for very unlikely reasons. Again, you might not see this as incompetence or neglect, but an abused child surely would. Dumbledore doesn't have to steal Harry's money and drug him and pay his relatives to abuse him for Harry to hate him.

So, as I see it, you don't even need a divergence for Harry to turn dark - he has plenty enough reasons already.

Personally, I don't think of "Dark Harry" as simply Harry using Dark magic - it isn't even a necessity - I think of it as one that is not heroic, noble, and full of love to people he doesn't even know, but rather hateful, arrogant and anti-social. One that tries to avoid Voldemort's schemes rather than rush into them, and uses people and immoral means (Legilimency? torture/interrogation?) to achieve his ends. I don't think I've ever seen this kind of character interpretation executed well.

 

On reflection, you might be right about the Dursleys, there. After all, Dumbledore did say he was presently surprised by Harry's state upon his arrival at Hogwarts. So maybe there's something to the idea that one's personality and emotions are almost - if not just as - important to their magical qualities as their intelligence and knowledge in other areas. Maybe it's a two-way street, and the reason Canon!Harry came to be is because he's just... well... magically loving.

Sounds stupid (and it overrides Dumbledore's insistence on our choices being more important than our abilities) but to quote Jim Kay, "It's fantasy, stupid."

 

Playing on the angle Atram raised re: canonical Dark Harry divergences,

DH kind of played up the manipulative Dumbledore angle. Arguably, Dumbledore's been grooming Harry as a proverbial sacrificial lamb since at least OotP, where we get the earliest indication that Dumbledore recognizes Harry to be a Horcrux of sorts. (Maybe he knew earlier, but the 'in essence divided' scene seems to be the earliest confirmation of it, reading HBP and DH back into OotP)

Dumbledore realized -- and I think to some extent, Harry subconsciously knew as well -- that Voldemort was never realistically going to be beaten by Harry in a straight contest of magical skill and might. It was sacrifice that turned Voldemort into a wraith the first time, so I suppose it's only fitting that it would be sacrifice that would turn him mortal once again.

Canonically, Harry decided to cave into Dumbledore's plan, but I suspect that decision was significantly influenced by the fact that he and his friends had literally run out of time, with Voldemort's forces on the doorstep. In a way, it was a pretty slick plan on Dumbledore's part to set up the Resurrection Stone to be available only once Harry was ready to sacrifice himself, to be make death look appealing.

However, if Harry was able to work out the fact that he was a Horcrux in advance during 6th year and figure out Dumbledore's plan to sacrifice him -- he would come to understand why Dumbledore never tried to arrange for him to be taught advanced defensive magic or whatever else Hermione speculated he would be 'trained' in. Combine this with the stress of having delved at least lightly into the Dark with his failed Cruciatus against Bellatrix, his loss of Sirius, and the revelation of the prophecy -- canonical Harry could very well just go Dark at that point.

 

I think the biggest problems have already been raised. Personally I've never really been that into the whole Dark Harry thing (mostly due to a lack of decent fics in the genre) - Circular Reasoning being a standout exception. They tend to hit every cliche there is as a matter of course (evil Dumbledore, Slytherin!Harry, Dark Magic just being misunderstood, etc.) and go off the rails right out of the station.

The fact that they're often just edgier Indy!Harry fics (and now I want Indiana Jones!Harry, god dammit...) means they often have the same issues.

Seeing a slow slide into darkness after 4th year is always interesting, as the set up is right there - serious trauma, in over his head, desperately looking for an edge. But it's not often executed well. For that matter, as Rayndeon pointed out, his use of an unforgivable at the end of 5th year is a good point to start a slow slide.

Come to think of it, the aftermath of 4th year hasn't been used as a divergence point much beyond Renegade Cause (that I can think of off the top of my head).

I wrote a snippet years ago that had Harry gank Bellatrix with a Killing Curse instead of the Cruciatus at the end of the Ministry fight in OotP but never went anywhere with it. I always liked that as a divergence point but never figured out where to take it.

Is there a point to this rambling post? I have no idea!

TL;DR: Characters are complex because people are, and the vast majority of Dark!Harry fics have the habit of making caricatures out of their characters. And Indiana Jones, because I still want that.

 

I feel like a lot of Black Magic Harry fics would be better if they stopped taking themselves so siriusly.

 

That would require of their authors the ability to accept critique, which, as we've discussed, is a trait sadly lacking among the great majority of them. The fandom is weighed down by the crippling epidemic of butthurtitis.

 

ScottPress Missed the pun there.

 

Are you fucking sirius?

On another note, because your love life is none of my business, no I didn't. My point is still valid, perhaps even more so than if you just wrote "seriously", because the execution of grimdark in some of those fics is so retarded that one can't help but wonder how these authors can possibly take their writing seriously instead of just openly admitting they'd been writing crack all along.

 

A la The Room.

But it raises an interesting question - for me, at least. How many of these authors really want to explore Dark!Harry (or just Harry using Dark Magic and the consequences thereafter) in any serious context? Do they actually find the subject intriguing, or is it just a convenient tool for them to be... well, cool and alternative? Of course, it's hardly alternative any more.

 

As they say, you just answered your own question. As far as serious authors go, most of them are probably here on DLP.