The Phantom Librarian

Hmmm. Seems like a good excuse to actually read some fic this week, given how much I throw out there for the perusal of others. Since I view art more widely than I read fic--and because I'm constantly blown away by the number of talented artists in fandom--I'll also rec an artist a day. How's that? I'll try to keep it from being a Fern's-friends thing, but the truth is, I've friended a lot of people whose art I like, so there's definitely not going to be a way to go seven days without listing an artist who's not on my f-list!

Author of the Day (Sunday, even though I'm posting in the wee hours of Monday morning): Arabella (Profile at SQ)

I'd been trolling at the Pit for HP fanfic and was wringing my hands in absolute despair at what I was finding when someone said, "Hey, try the Quill--it's exactly the kind of fic you like." Feeling a bit trepiditious anyway, I clicked over, and picked Arabella's fics, since she was one of the site owners and I figured it would be a good place to find out if I'd been led right... and boy, was it. Largely Ginny/Harry and Ron/Hermione centric, but not all entirely shippy... and I liked the shippy ones, which is a rarity for me (Not As A Last Resort was probably the first frankly shippy story I'd ever actually decided that I liked), but my favorite wasn't at all shippy--The Very Secret Diary tells the year of CoS through the back and forth diary entries from Tom and Ginny, and gets progressively darker as he takes over her mind. Disenchanted picks up after the confrontation in the Chamber, and deals with the aftermath, with Dumbledore coming in to speak to Ginny in the hospital wing.

Lovely writing, strong characterization. Go, Arabella.

Artist of the Day: Nundu (SQ Link--art under the stories)
Warm, life-like artwork, often of family and relationship scenes. She's done some great work with James and Lily, like this one with baby Harry, and this quiet couple moment. She captures personalities beautifully as well (Sirius Black at eleven.) And I think anyone who's ever written Sirius will understand Just Write It, where our favorite pushy character comes to dictate to the artist!

Anyway, those are today's recs, not counting three recs I put up in an earlier post.

I'm going back to "Little Bits of Junk" tonight--honest. I just have to get the segue from the plot device to get him there to the actual, you know, plot.

Okay, an actual subject, which is something of a rant:

Canonically, Sirius Black's best friend is James Potter. The person who most influenced Sirius's life is James. The person to whom he is so grateful that he is willing to die to keep his son alive is James.

Remember James?

I don't want to get into exactly what set me off, because I don't want to get into any specific story, but at the moment, my teeth are gritted pretty hard.

Look, I love Remus. Love him to itty-bitty little pieces. If I can find a way to make Remus more important to the plot, then I am absolutely shameless about using it. And I like Sirius. And I like playing them off one another. Granted, I like to do it in the friendship mode, but when it comes to this, there's no real difference between friendship-fic and slashfic--the question is about the relationship between them.

And you know what?

When you're doing Sirius, Remus is not the most influential person from his childhood. That's James. James, James, James, James.

James is not someone he turns to because he doesn't want to bring danger to Remus. James is not someone who he likes because he understands the deep relationship with Remus. James is not the person who facilitates chances for him to meet with Remus.

James is Sirius's best friend. Canon is not ambiguous about this. What Sirius does is driven by his love for James.

Not by his love for Remus, however you happen to interpret the word "love." Yes, they all did become animagi for Remus's sake--note all--but that seems to be a kind of group decision. Any time we hear about dyads within the group, it's James and Sirius.

So let Sirius love Remus as much as you feel like and in whatever way you feel like, but please, don't devalue the primary positive relationship in Sirius's life in the course of doing it. James is his best friend, and James is the one he's going to go to first and think of first.

And in closing, James.

Okay, back to the nineteen-twenties.

In part one, Neville came home on his birthday to find Bill Weasley and Kingsley Shacklebolt talking to his grandmother. An Egyptian artifact, the Feather of Maát, which has magical powers, was stolen from the British Museum and prominently replaced with a brooch that had Mrs. Longbottom's maiden name on the back (it had been given to a teacher whose name she no longer remembers when she was a child). The item had been sold to the museum in the 1930s; it had been missing for ten years after being stolen from a home Gran doesn't recognize when Kingsley opens a magical window to show it to her. The window is still open when Bella, wearing the Feather, leads two other DEs in an attack, during which Neville falls through and lands in the grass outside the house. Kingsley closes the window.

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