*Insert spoilery subject here*

[author_by_night]

I was commenting on  scarlett71177's post about JKR's dateline interview in which she elaborates on the R/T deaths (basically saying it was to show the cruelty of war and that children are left orphans - nevermind that we never even saw the latter issue come up), and as I said on her comments, I think I know what upsets her, and what's upsetting other shippers the most, about their deaths, and it's actually got very, very little to do with how JKR wrote said deaths (though I still think they could've been shown better.) 

No, the real issue for me, and possibly most R/T shippers?  (And non-R/Ters as well?)

They were ours.

As far as I go, I spent years working on Remus and Tonks, to the point on which I have established:

- Tonks's childhood nickname ("Wood Nymph").

- Their family and extended family (Ted would've been the big brother of two wonderful sisters, and had an awesome aunt who loved his parents more than the world).

- The relationship Remus had with each Marauder.

- The exact space on the street where they reunited after not seeing one another in years.

- Tonks's confidantes.

And it goes on.

I'm not the only one, so I feel I can speak for several fans: it sucks.

I have a confession: My friends who liked Sirius were devastated after the fifth book, to the point where one friend wrote an AU where Sirius comes back. (Person to whom I am referring: I'm sorry, but I never really understood why you wanted to do that.)

Not, at least, until TDH.

Because it's hard, having to part with characters you worked so hard on, even though you knew your ficverse wasn't canon, even though you knew they might die. We came into fandom knowing the risks, but we got writing...

And next thing we knew? We had characters who weren't ours, but that we still felt like were ours.

It's easy to say "just write original stuff then", but easier said than done. I do have my original things, but Tonks is already so developed in my mind that I have to be careful not to let my original people echo her. (Although I do have two orginial fiction characters who are twin sisters, and yet one is a combo of Remus and Hermione, and the other is a perfect combination of Luna and Tonks.) But they still aren't the Remus and Tonks I grew to love.

Obviously, one must say goodbye. And I know for me, I will have to anyway, because if I want to write as a living, it can't be done with characters already created by someone else. And I do feel like my original characters are whispering, "okay, ABN, come play with us for once."

But it's still hard, believe it or not, to say goodbye.

Comments

[ashavah]

You know, I think one of the saddest things about OotP for me was not Sirius's death in itself, though I cried and cried and hated that he had to die, but the background JKR gave us. He'd had such a horrible life as a young man, and I'd made him happy (at least until his mother died), the son of an Auror and a bureaucrat, and very much beloved. To see that the genuine article had had such a horrible life was one of the reasons I couldn't bring myself to reread OotP all the way through until a few weeks ago.

[arianablack.livejournal.com]

Hehe, like I told you before, welcome to the Denial of Death club ;) We're having T-shirts made.

I agree, once you get attached to a charecter and make them your own, its devastating when the "real" author kills them off. I think its even harder than killing one of your own OC's, because you had control over their deaths. With the fic charecters, you had no choice or preparation.

[chthonya]

I'm curious - why do you feel you have to say goodbye? It seems to me that nothing in your ficverse is contradicted by the deaths. Is your interest in the characters so dependent on their ultimate survival?

I don't ask to be snarky, I'm genuinely interested. See, I'm in the opposite position - I've spent years thinking about Lucius, and am absolutely amazed he isn't among the dead. But because I always expected him to die, I've always expected to have to deal with that, and I'd reassured myself that I'd still have backstory to write. Not to mention AU.

That said, if this pushes you towards original characters, go you! I seem to have a few years of fanfic to get out of my system before any OCs deign to come calling on me...

[ashtur.livejournal.com]

To be entirely honest, I don't have that feeling at all. Maybe it's different to have your "special" character rendered entirely and completely irrelevent and unmentioned, but despite any investment I may have had, I just sort of shrugged and went on.

[alkari.livejournal.com]

I was upset at Sirius, and especially as he had had so much unhappiness in his life, but I understood ;why' he was killed in terms of JKR's over-riding story arc. The parental figures andmentors have to die, and the Hero has to go on alone. Fine - I can live with that.

But I am afraid that her 'explanation' of the deaths of Remus and Tonks didn't stand up for me at all. I fear it was another case of Jo using a truckload of anvils to make a point, where a subtle pebble or two (a.k.a. relying on your readers' intelligence and perceptions) would have been so much better. We didn't NEED to be hammered with a join-the-numbered-dots picture about the tragedy of kids left without parents, and vice versa, in wartime - even young children can understand the wartime losses and tragedies from the body count of DH and previous books.