Jan. 14th, 2011

edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
I have a very rarely updated story (Strange Likenesses) wherein Voldemort attempts to possess Harry Potter in the mid-1980s, things go badly wrong, and they end up aware of each other around the end of PS/SS. It's very rarely updated because to this day, I am not quite sure where it's going -- I started writing with a scenario rather than a plot, and have been suffering the consequences of that ever since.

But. While I am trying to make Voldemort comprehensible (one symptom of this is that whenever we're in his POV, he thinks of himself as Tom), he's still every bit as evil as he was in the books. He's not a nice person. He's not a woobie. One of the themes of the story, I think, is how Harry (who does have morals) copes with having a person like that in his head, and having their memories effectively intertwined.

I recently got a series of reviews for that story which seem to posit Voldemort as the protagonist and Harry as a meanie for not agreeing with him and trying harder to get along with his would-be possessor.

*headdesk*

I suppose this is what I get for writing stories that don't automatically paint my villains as maniacal, blood-drenched, cackling OMG THE WORST MONSTER EVER!!!, but seriously, I have a moral center, and it does tend to influence my stories, whether implicitly or explicitly. I'm not making any effort to hide that I think Voldemort is in the wrong on pretty much everything. Trying to make him be a person, to remember that he was quite intelligent before he went bugfuck crazy the way he seems to have done by the end of the series, and to point out that Dumbledore and Harry aren't perfect either, doesn't mean I think Voldemort is good or right. I think, actually, that villains who can be seen as people are scarier than villains who are effectively cardboard cutouts.

Oh well, once a story is out in the world, there's not really anything I can do to control how people read it. Even if some of the readings make me scratch my head and wonder where on earth I went wrong. *sigh*

Now I just need to figure out how to respond to the reviews...

Profile

edenfalling: stylized black-and-white line art of a sunset over water (Default)
Elizabeth Culmer

July 2025

S M T W T F S
  1 2345
6789 101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Tags

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags