Thirty(?) Days of Fire Emblem, Day "Fifteen" / Potterfic Recs

 So, back to the meme.

#5: Favorite Villain: If we're going with the penultimate Big Bad, the human sort, I have to say Rudolf.  If we're going with the final, not-human, Big Bad, it's harder to say... Medeus (humans have it coming), Idoun (not what was expected) and Ashera (whoa) have their interesting points.  Fomortiis and the Fire Dragon, not so much.  At all.  And if we're just going with a villain, any villain... I do have that soft spot for Caellach.

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So, Harry Potter.  Since people on the f-list are getting interested, I will present the following recs.  These are not necessarily the "best" stories out there, as I have only read a fraction of what is available and my tastes are idiosyncratic, but these stuck with me.

"The Shipping Forecast"-- nothing to do with 'shipping!  A glimpse of Snape as a lad looking to better himself.  I really like this author's take on Snape, which was firmly in the "he's lower-class and possibly Yorkshire" camp well, well before HP7.  This writer also wrote some interesting HG/SS and the only HP/SS I've ever liked, but she yanked her stuff off the 'net when she decided to go pro.  Sad times.

"The Scarlet Pimpernel"-- A Percy Weasley redemption story that made me silly-delerious happy upon reading it.  I mean, really, this sort of "behind the scenes fix-it" tale is precisely what fanfiction is about.

"Dark Gods In The Blood"-- My favorite of the SS/HG post-Voldemort epics.  Sucks to be Harry, but oh well.

"Somewhere I Have Never Travelled"-- Another post-Voldy SS/HG epic, with time travel and stuff.  There are parts I loved and parts, like the whole psychoanalysis bit with the healer from Newfoundland, that just tick me off.  (Also contains some bonus HP/HG, which is Fine.  By.  Me.)

"The Prefect's Portrait" by Arsinoe de Blassenville.  Marvelously entertaining, ingenious, Slytherin apologist BS.  There's an illustrated version out there that's quite lovely.  Ms. de Blassenville has a few other equally marvelous and ingenious works of BS out there that are worth a read if you can stand the deconstructionist stance, I mean canon warping. 

A word on the SS/HG-- it was really kind of a subgenre unto itself, a very literary subgenre whose writers seemed, at the time I was following it, to be mostly adult women.  It's a crack/AU pairing in its very inception, but the good writers recognized this and tried to run with it anyway.  Hermione is, IMO, usually an author stand-in, or some kind of... I dunno, Jane Eyre stand-in subbing for the author.  And Snape is a smoldering wounded romantic hero in need of a right fixing up.  It gets old after a while, but after plowing through highly-touted and bloody ridiculous Harry/Draco stories, not to mention the complete works of Cassie Claire, the SS/HG was a nice change of pace.

There was also a SS/HG one with Hermione as a ghost (death by potions class accident) that was really sweet and moving even if it went kind of fluffy at the end, but the title eludes me and I never did bookmark it.  Oh well.  I was following some interesting Lupin/Tonks stories, too, but after the way they ended up in canon I lost the taste for it.

I also don't actively seek out HP/HG stories, but I do welcome recs on their behalf.  

Thirty(?) Days of Fire Emblem, Day "Twenty-Five"

Day 25: My Favorite Archetype

Ugh.

I mean, I know it wouldn't be Fire Emblem without them, but the OVERemphasis on them on both the gamer and the 'ficcer sides of fandom has made me a little sick of the whole concept.  Especially the people who try to turn every single character from FE1-4[*] into an archetype progenitor (where's the rest of the "Yumina" types, huh?), regardless of how well the later characters fit the archetypical slot.

Anyway.  I guess I like the Cain&Abel archetype the best.  Its consistent and deliberate application over the years gives it a little more resonance than That Peg Knight You Start With (And When Do I Get to Sleep With Her?) or Lousy Pre-Promote Axe Dude.  Though I am compelled to put in a word for the BFF Wind Mage, uncommon as it actually is in the games.

* Especially funny in that characters who fit one archetype in FE1/FE3 Book I/FE11 fit into a different category in FE3Book II/FE12, and same goes for some of the Jugdral gang.  When is a Lena not a Lena?  When you only get to recruit her during the final boss battle!  When is an Abel not the Abel?  When he shows up as a damn enemy mid-way through the game!  That's why I prefer a conceptual name (Red Knight & Green Knight, Gentle Staff Chick, Flaky Staff Chick, etc) to use of a character name for the archetypes.  Except for the "Jeigan," which is written in stone even if TV Tropes renamed it "Crutch Character."

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I want to write Fire Emblem/Harry Potter crossovers now.  It's Manna's fault.