somniloquence

We touched on this a little (or I did) in email. Truth is, if you wrote a death story in TF&TF, I'd probably read it, because it's you and I trust you as a writer. I'm not saying it would make me happy, and it would probably make me cry...

I was trying to equate this to people's aversions to AU's...in that the problem with AU's is that they don't represent the characters in the original setting...where they play more to archetypes than the actual characters we fall in love with. Now pretty obviously, AU's aren't a problem for me [G]...but I think the corollary stands, in that generally in source, the characters are alive at the end of whatever...

Granted people can be in great heaps of denial when a character does die in the series (Stargate and Horatio Hornblower are pretty blatant examples of characters surviving their deaths in fan fic.)

The loss aspect doesn't bother me so much. I tend to play that a lot -- My Partner's dead, Just Kidding! is a theme I'm very fond of.

I also like dark, but I don't know. To take it to death both bothers me because fandom is an escape and I really don't necessarily want my real life tragedies to follow me into the realm I go for comfort...and also, because I'm not sure I'm entirely with the idea that death is the only (or the best) way to hit that depth of emotion you're talking about.

I do think you should write what you want regardless of audience, because I know that for me, the writing I do is primarily for me. It's the betaing and posting that's for the audience.

I guess also, I don't often find fan fic fare that bland because of repetitive themes. There's nothing as thrilling for me as when a writer takes a fairly common theme and puts a new spin on it.

I think on some level I find most death fic to be manipulative on a fairly blatant and obvious manner and it makes me a little nuts. I know a piece J did in M7 had me clawing the ceiling because it was both horribly painful and incredibly well written. My reaction to it really was pretty alarming...even as emotional as I can be.

Then again, I was never a huge fan of Romeo & Juliet and I pretty much thought Hamlet got what he deserved. Or maybe it's my personal experience with death that pretty much makes me disbelieve and get angry at the portrayals of death as uber romantic, like Love Story or Brian's Song.

So, it's very much a case that it's not that I really think death stories are bad and wrong as much as my reaction to them is so very out of step with what they often are, that avoidance is the more prudent choice for me, in most cases.