I've seen the gender issue come up in the fanfic? Like, sometimes explicitly with the authors meta-ing about it, and sometimes just worked in as something one has to deal with in Harry's character. I suspect that alone wouldn't be enough to turn me off - after all, I've read Mike Hammer and not burnt the book afterward! - and none of the stuff in the fic is the stuff that really sets me off (like constant rape apologism, for example.) I am more worried about boringness+seriously sketchy worldbuilding, although the fic has reassured me about the worldbuilding, at least, quite a lot.

Also, I can take a hell of a lot more rampant misogyny when it's a male POV I can dismiss as oblivious than when it's a female POV internalizing it, as unfair as that is.

I've never had much luck with UF as a genre though maybe that's just because I've only ever read bad UF (I'm pretty sure the stuff I tried was bad by any measure, and more on the PR end) which is probably why I hadn't picked up Dresden yet. How bad will it be if I read the books in "order the library gets them" rather than chronological order? (Bearing in mind of course that I've read all the fic already.)

RE: Langoustini. Um. See my next post? :D