The Phantom Librarian

Wow. So people think the anagrammatic point of "Romilda Vane" is "I'm A Dan Lover." Okay. I guess the letters work. But I kind of suspect, if there's any anagram point to it at all, it's "A Random Evil," which fits what she does. I mean, yes, she fangirls Harry (who is not Dan), but her function in the plot is to accidentally make Ron crazy, leading to his poisoning. A totally random bit of evil. I'm just sayin'.

I have to say, I'm wondering about accusations that a bit of canon (in any fandom) "reads like fanfic." I know that the insult means, "It reads like fanfic that I don't like," but I have to wonder at the concept of the thing, really. Fanfic writing and canon writing are, well, writing. They come from the same place. We write about what interests us, JKR writes about waht interests her. Sometimes they coincide. Sometimes they don't. There's not some mystically different approach that one takes when writing canon (known among we mere mortals as "original fiction"), except for the fact that the canon writer is creating the original scenarios as well as speculating on them. (And yes, you speculate in original fiction as well as in fanfic. You have to. I came up with a scenario I liked in The Gods in Time, but speculating on it didn't interest me much, so the story fizzled out. I just didn't have anything to say after the initial set-up, even though I liked my guys.) So yes--of course some canon is going to read like fanfic, because at some point, some fan writer is going to have speculated on something that the canon author was also interested in speculating on.

The use of "It's like fanfic" as a criticism strikes me as particularly puzzling when it comes from fanfic writers, who know the process of writing (and even know that there are times you just push through a plot point because it has to be done). Canon writers are just the writers who happen to write canon. They're people. They go through the same writing process as everyone else.

On the last Shades entry, Maureen asked about other stories with Sanjiv, Maddie, and Daffy in them. As it happens, the first story I ever did with them was one I never finished. I think I've posted it before, but it's long-lost. So here's the scene from the story when the three friends first appear (along with one Freddie Wizendale, who has never come back, and Berit Ollivander, who showed up at the birthing party but has otherwise never appeared again). Maybe sometime, I'll finish the story of Tonks knowing Cedric, but for now, here's the little snippet with Tonks's Hufflepuff friends. I'm leaving Sanjiv's original last name alone, because it's fair to do so, but I was informed that it wasn't a real last name, so I changed it to McPherson in later fics.

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