Sirius/Peter recs (biichan and <lj site="livejournal.com" user="e

[pauraque_bk]

No, it was Peter--steady, soothing Peter, Yorkshire farm boy, short and solid with strong hands equally suited to birthing a lamb, sketching a picture, or making him whimper--that Sirius liked the most. Cared for the most.

And it was this passage, from Golden Afternoon [NC-17], that made me really sit up and take notice of biichan. Read on:

Peter who never made him feel like a nuisance or a child, who never had anyone better to do, who listened--really *listened*--to him. Who liked him just as much whether he was curled up at the foot of his bed or with him under the covers. Who smiled at him like he was the world.

This characterization of Peter is nothing like my own, and it's vivid, deftly drawn, comes at canon from a completely fresh angle -- "farmboy" suggests naive, "sketching a picture" goes to right-brained, inarticulate, "like he was the world" suggests obsessed. We simultaneously see through Sirius's eyes, and our own. If you've never read this pairing, this is the perfect place to start.

Then there was the sequel, The Story of How Hard We Tried [NC-17], which takes on the huge challenge of making us believe these two in a relationship as adults. Again, biichan paints with bold, inventive strokes, *owns* this premise:

Peter was painting the walls of their flat. At first Sirius thought it was Eden, green and lush, and perhaps it was but there were figures, two of them, androgynous, and they were approaching a gated hedge, almost stepping through it and it didn’t seem to be the desert that they were being exiled to. Peter threw all of himself into the painting. If he wasn’t painting, he was downstairs drinking in the pub, where Sirius never went anymore, or his ragged breath beat a feeble tattoo as they made love on the old brass bed on the far side of the room. He never seemed to have much breath any more.

I see Peter hunched over his beer, thinking in secrets and feverish paint. I *feel* this. Much more of the right-brained Peter, his trouble with reading, his mumbled words -- "Our last day, I reckon". The shapes of Sirius's tattoos (we know this Peter thinks in shapes -- biichan doesn't have to tell us so), the gibberish words... we think they're what he sees when he looks at English text.

biichan shows, in this fic in particular, that she's a powerhouse of mood and characterization, drawing such immediately memorable personalities in so few words. It reminds me of Libertine (luciusmalfoy)'s fic -- if you've read it, I hope you'll know what I mean -- she has that boldness and spark of orginality that's in Libertine's characters. You'd never thought of Lucius the way Libertine wrote him, but once you meet that Lucius, you can't forget him. biichan's Peter is that way. I'm on the edge of my seat hoping for more from this universe.


I'd been planning to rec those two fics for a long time (way too long, really), and another excellent Sirius/Peter fic came down the pike today:

eponis's drabble Clever [PG-13] was written for the Candy Is Dandy challenge, and attacks the Sirius-Peter relationship in a way I really liked. There's this... muffled animosity between them in the OotP flashback sequence that eponis completely gets, and phrases in terms of Peter's mad, inarticulate fantasies... yes.


Now go forth, ye fen, and send feedback!

---

Also:

ari_o wrote Bella Lestrange/Dolores Umbridge. Which, of course, makes...

...wait for it...

...Umbrella.


And:

fanfic_hate got you down? Try fanfic_hats!

Comments

[biichan.livejournal.com]

*blushes* God, you flatter me too much and I'm not even sure I deserve it. I wouldn't even have my Peter if it weren't for littlewings04: we've been writing Sirius and Peter for a private RP and my Peter's a direct descendant of hers. Or maybe I'm writing her Peter the way she sometimes writes my Sirius. Well. Um.

Man. 'Powerhouse of mood and characterization?' And here I thought I was just trying to say exactly what I meant without any wasted words. God, I'm flattered. I really, really am. God.

Emma (littlewings) wrote a short ficlet from earlier in this timeline called Paint (http://www.livejournal.com/users/littlewings04/242423.html?nc=3). I'm sure you'd like that one too. She's one of my best friends in the world (and not only because she introduced me to knishes) and she really does deserve so much of the credit for making Peter the way he is, even if I was the one who conveyed it into writing.

Thanks. A lot.

About 'Paint' and other things

[biichan.livejournal.com]

She wrote it in response to 'The Story of How We Tried.' But I wrote 'Golden Afternoon' in response to some things we'd RP'd together with me playing Sirius and her playing Peter.

I've got some ideas for post-Azkaban Sirius in this timeline, with Remus, and him working through having the person he'd wanted first and not having the one he'd actually had for a time, though I'm not sure how to resolve it into writing. And Sirius during Azkaban fascinates me too. And of course, it would be nice to write more of them as boys--I might try to write something earlier, in fifth or sixth year, before they got together. We'll see.

If nothing else, there's the private little RP me and my friends write, that I draw my MWPP characterization from. We have it at yearofthesnake, though there's not much up there at the moment. There will be eventually, though.

Re: About 'Paint' and other things

[cleverthylacine]

It's good to see you get some recognition. :D

biichan has most been noted in the past for her characterisations of Alastor Moody, who is proudly paired with my own Dylan Mulciber; she writes one of the few Sirii I can remotely stand.

Re: About 'Paint' and other things

[pauraque]

Mm, Moody fic. Must go check that out. Thanks for the tip.

[pauraque]

You're welcome, and thanks for pointing me in the direction of your RP partner. I don't do RP in this fandom, but I have in others... it _is_ a great way to come up with new ideas.

[gaeta.livejournal.com]

Now go forth, ye fen, and send feedback!

Done. Now, where's that post on the Sirius-Peter dynamic?

[pauraque]

Now, where's that post on the Sirius-Peter dynamic?

It's on the to-do list! Figuratively and literally.

[gaeta.livejournal.com]

Hmm, never knew about the "To-Do" feature. Of course, I'm notoriously not a list-maker, but yours looks to have some interesting items on it.

Have friended you already. Will now await the goods.