author_by_night: (Default)
author_by_night ([personal profile] author_by_night) wrote2005-04-26 07:41 am

In Defense of Remus/Tonks

[Bad username or unknown identity: Okay, early morning post, so I doubt anyone'll see it, but just in case... I've made a few points defending Remu/Tonks.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: I'm not telling people to ship it, just showing that Remus/Tonks shippers are not all twelve year old fangirls. ]

[Bad username or unknown identity: So...][Bad username or unknown identity:  misconceptions (that I've seen) vs. the real deal (from what I've seen).]

[Bad username or unknown identity: 1. We Hate Sirius.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: think that). No, none of us do.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: A lot of the ships, actually, focus on Tonks and Remus's mutual closeness with Sirius as a backdrop. And in the ones that have Tonks not even]

[Bad username or unknown identity: having known him well... I disagreewith the notion she wouldn't have, but that's still not a bad theory. We do know Tonks's mother, Andromeda,]

[Bad username or unknown identity: to be a favorite cousin of Sirius's, after all. For all we know, there was a rift before Sirius went to Azkaban.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: 2. We think young girls should marry old men.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: Um, no. Not in the least. First, I want to point out that its not necessarily canon that Tonks is 21 - she acts young, but so does Bill Weasley, at least by the way he dresses. Tonks is described as being young, but so was Remus]

[Bad username or unknown identity: in PoA, when he would've been 33 or 34. I think its clear Tonks is in her twenties, since she'd just become an Auror, and she does still seem semi-young, but even if she is fourteen years younger... they grow up faster in the books, and besides, they all live]

[Bad username or unknown identity: so long that I'm sure after a while, age doesn't matter. They are both younger anyway - its not like Remus is 60. (And considering Tonks is an Auror and likely had a rough]

[Bad username or unknown identity: childhood, what with her family being DE oriented, I'm sure she's very mature in some ways).]

[Bad username or unknown identity: 3. We feel Remus and/or Tonks have to be with someone.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: There's probably shippers who do feel this way - but there's people like that with all ships. I think if we wanted Tonks and/or Remus to be shipped with]

[Bad username or unknown identity: a random person just because, I'd pair them with people like Hestia Jones or Charlie Weasley. But no, this is not about randomly shipping someone. Fics that are obviously afflicted with the]

[Bad username or unknown identity: "pair everyone off now" disease are ones that have ten ships (usually five of them are the same people - HP/HG, HP/DM, HP/CC, HP/GW, etc), not ones that have two.]

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[Bad username or unknown identity: 4. We're a bunch of Remus fangirls.]

[Bad username or unknown identity: You know what? Some of us are. Well, sort of - some of us are jokingly fangirls. But it doesn't mean we honestly think Remus has no flaws,]

[Bad username or unknown identity: or really want to snog him. (I have to admit that he seems like someone I'd end up dating, but I don't want to date]

[Bad username or unknown identity: ). ]

[Bad username or unknown identity: Okay, I need to go... I'm going to go write my one shot where everyone at Hogwarts together, and where Sirius used to threaten to throw Tonks off his motorcycle, and she runs to Remus for comfort.... in it, Tonks saves his life while wearing a Lara Croft outfit!]

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[identity profile] darsina.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
early morning post, so I doubt anyone'll see it

You know not everybody lives in the US. ;) You raised some very good points.

[identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 04:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I know not everyone does, but a lot of people on my friend's list live in the US and have similar, if not the same, time zones. And even some people from other countries share my TZ or have one that is close to it. (Ontario Canada is also EST, and Brazil is two hours ahead, at least where my friend lives).

[identity profile] darsina.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 05:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Sorry, dear, that was only meant as a little friendly teasing.

[identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com 2005-04-27 11:33 am (UTC)(link)
Hehe, I know, I was just saying. (Gosh, we both spend way too much at the HZ, don't we? Having to defend jokes! ;))

[identity profile] fernwithy.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 02:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah--assumption #3 bugs me, because the truth is, before we met Tonks, I was happily assuming that Remus was mostly going to be a solitary guy, maybe ending up headmaster, still living alone and more or less happy that way. He didn't seem right in a romance. Then Tonks came along as a character and just seemed to click.

As to #1... why would we hate Sirius? That's just stupid. Both Tonks and Remus love Sirius. Why would someone who likes both Tonks and Remus hate him?

[identity profile] fernwithy.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 02:45 pm (UTC)(link)
As to #2, the age obstacle is there, but it's definitley an obstacle. I've lost most of my age hang-ups about who should be allowed to marry whom age-wise, as long as they're well-matched and have a stable relationship that they're both committed to. The age question is raised by how much or little they have in common. Should "young girls" in general marry "older men"? Depends on the young girl and the older man. And last I knew, someone who is, at the very youngest, 22 (has to be at least seven years older than Harry), is a woman.

[identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 04:53 pm (UTC)(link)
I think the age thing needs to be brought up somewhat, but I don't think Remus dating Tonks would make him a dirty old man or anything. And maturity counts - I have friends who I think would be old enough to date someone of a great age difference, and I have others who I feel are not ready for dating yet, period. Heck, even I think my potential significant other would hae to be somewhat on my level. But if Tonks can be an Auror despite her (very scary) situation, she has to have some maturity. Plus, Remus looks older, but 35 is still fairly young.

And by Tonks's scary situation, I mean being related to a lot of people who would love to make Andromeda "pay". :(

[identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I don't get it either... I read that excuse somewhere, and am still confused. I think some people just think its wrong to Sirius for them to be paired or something.

[identity profile] fernwithy.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 06:02 pm (UTC)(link)
What on Earth does it have to do with Sirius, though? It's not like R/Ters ship R/S, and therefore need to dispose of a pre-existing relationship somehow, so the good relationship they have in the books doesn't need to be compromised in any way. Why should anyone either of them dates have an impact on their relationship with one another?

(Never mind, of course--dating overrides all other relationships, so no matter who it is, that will become more important than the friendship and the friendship will have to be ditched in order to accomodate a romance, and therefore the friend must be hated by those wishing for a romance. I hate that attitude.)

[identity profile] ex-olivehorn645.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 03:48 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm pretty neutral about Remus/Tonks. My biggest problem with it is that the two characters have very little 'on screen' interaction in OotP, and personally I never got any vibe from either of them regarding the other. When I first heard of people pairing them off, I was surprised. I think it's plausible, but I don't think there's any canon pointing to it.

Of course, I seem to be slowly becoming the polar opposite of a shipper. I don't care for most fan ships these days.

As for your number one, well, if you don't ship Sirius with Remus in a fluffy cloud of pink bunnies and rainbows, then you hate him. Obviously. ;)

[identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 05:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Its weird, before R/T I wasn't so into the big fan ships either. And its still the only pairing I really write or read. I don't really worry about trio ships, though I do think R/Hr is likely to happen. Actually, I'm not that interested in the trio - I guess I sort of feel I write fanfic to cover territory JKR might not. I'll read the occasional trio fic, though, and I have written a few one shots.

[identity profile] fernwithy.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 06:04 pm (UTC)(link)
That's about where I am. No ship particular interested me, and when I turned over R/T in my head the first time, I was surprised to find it working and to find myself thinking, "Yeah... I like that." And then I was utterly shocked to find out that other people thought so, too. I thought I was being quite odd and quirky.

[identity profile] livii.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
I like your points. I don't like R/T (like olivehornby above, it startled me that people shipped them) but anyway, I don't think any of the points you brought up are reasons to bash the ship or shippers.

The age one is particularly interesting, as what it is to me is an interesting obstacle - it would force the author to write an intelligent, mature story wherein Tonks and Remus both would have to examine their motives somewhat and realize that their relationship isn't going to be terribly normal compared to other people. Things like that, which could in fact be interesting. If I could see them together, which I can't, so I don't read it. ;)

I have been guilty of being annoyed at the speed with which R/T was picked up after OotP, when it felt like "an available girl! Quick! SHIP HER!" given that to me it feels as far-fetched as pairing, I dunno, Ginny and Dean (which I know is actually canon, but if you think about it, we've never even really seen them interact with each other), but I have to give the R/T shippers credit for sticking with it and making it into a proper ship (even if it still gives me the WTF vibes).

[identity profile] lvblheron.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 06:41 pm (UTC)(link)
Thank you! Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Especially for pointing out that not all Remus/Tonks shippers are twelve-year-old fangirls. Some of us are thirty-five year-old fangirls! But siriusly, thank goodness for people like FernWithy and others who make a good case for R/T in their stories. Without them, we'd have to defend ourselves to the Skeptics even more than we already do.

[identity profile] lizer-nibbler.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 09:15 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm not even sure how I stumbled upon R/T...I just remember thinking I was being weird.

But it seems to be a fairly plausible relationship..I mean, after all, they must both have been close to Sirius, and I'm sure his death brought them closer together. And they're two of the few 'younger' people in the Order, so it makes sense that they would have a little more in common with each other than with some other people.

[identity profile] a-t-rain.livejournal.com 2005-04-26 10:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I'll be a twenty-nine-year-old fangirl in a couple of weeks, is that old enough?

Thanks for posting this. It puts into words a number of things that I've often wanted to say, especially about the "well, they just want to pair Remus up with SOMEbody female" thing. (Actually, my experience has been exactly the opposite: this is one of the few fanships that seem to be more popular with casual readers who don't read or write fanfiction, don't have long lists of ships they'd like to see, and don't go around scouring the books for "subtext.")

[identity profile] author-by-night.livejournal.com 2005-04-27 11:42 am (UTC)(link)
You're right! I think its about the only ship I'll actually try and find a fic for. I loosely ship Hermione/Ron, but never write it, and hardly ever read it (except when it is featured in the fic, but not a big part of the plot). Actually, I don't read trio ships much period - the trio just doesn't interest me as much except in canon. I guess I feel like I read/write fanfic to see what JKR probably won't cover much, and the trio is something she definitely *will* cover. (Does that make sense?)

[identity profile] jan-aq.livejournal.com 2005-04-27 12:46 am (UTC)(link)
you know, I haven't read or seen many Remus/Tonks fics but if I picture it, it doesn't seem that strange to me, especially comparing it to some of the other pairing. XD Tonks could be older than 21 (although she seems like she acts like a teenager sometimes) and i'm sure that with her metamo-whatever abilities (ah! Is Jan actually skiving up on looking up this magical term? The sky must be falling!) she can look as old or as young as she wants. Imagine her appearing as old as Remus' mother! XD

[identity profile] fernwithy.livejournal.com 2005-04-27 01:35 am (UTC)(link)
Hey, she appears older than he does twice in canon. Both times when the two of them escort the kids to the Hogwarts Express, she's dressed and morphed as an older lady with gray hair.