In Defense of Remus/Tonks

[author_by_night]

[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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Comments

[darsina.livejournal.com]

early morning post, so I doubt anyone'll see it

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

[fernwithy.livejournal.com]

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?

[ex-olivehorn645.livejournal.com]

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. ;)

[livii.livejournal.com]

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).

[lvblheron.livejournal.com]

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.

[lizer-nibbler.livejournal.com]

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.

[a-t-rain.livejournal.com]

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.")

[jan-aq.livejournal.com]

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