accio-shitpost:

accio-shitpost:

remus john lupin deserved a happy ending and i will Fight you on this

tbh i think one of the most significant writing missteps with the last book for me was how many people died

and i’m not saying this as a ‘omg she killed my faves’  kind of fan, i’m saying this as a writer. what, narratively, does remus’ death add? tonks’? fred’s? dobby’s? hedwig’s? moody’s? colin’s? some of them, sure, you can argue that they added more than others. some of them (moody) raised the stakes, some (dobby) were heroic sacrifices, some of them (fred, colin) to show the senselessness of death in war. but i don’t think this many characters needed to die.

and i get it. as a writer, there’s a huge temptation to do the thing that will make your readers the saddest. kill off some beloved characters, sure, that’ll do it. and i’m not saying that there was no thought put into who and where and why – this isn’t like a big huge thing that breaks the series or anything. there are reasons why this decision was made. note that i haven’t counted snape – not because of personal feeling to the character but that his death and his arc are tied together. there’s a sense of inevitability and finality about snape’s death that i don’t feel with all of the others.

but remus in particular? one of the characters for whom we see the impact of both wars? the man who lost all his friends in one way or another, who’s starting a family – doesn’t he deserve life, and happiness? isn’t it a better ending to show the older generations healing and becoming better too? it just seems like cruelty to deny him a something of a happy ending.

and like, yeah, the alternative of not killing any of the main characters and having them all get lucky escapes by virtue of being main characters would feel cheap as well. but i keep coming back to this thing with remus – he is a tragic hero. he has been through so much and suffered so much and sacrificed so much, why deny him this chance at happiness just when his life is starting to look up? imagine that ending – remus, tonks, and teddy, able to be the family that the potters could never be because that was ripped from them. a symbol of how the war is over and won and people can move on, and heal. and i get it, senselessness of war etc, but this is one battle with fifty casualties, most unnamed. the likelihood of surviving a few hours of battle is higher than you’d think, especially as a skilled magic user. and neither tonks nor remus is the lily of this story. they don’t need to sacrifice their lives so that their child can live – that’s harry’s job.

same with fred, really – he’s a symbol of the next generation of kids who make something for themselves, a beacon of hope in the dark times of the war (u-no-poo), but there’s apparently no place for him in the world after voldemort. 

and i don’t know how i would have written this. there’s no easy answers. but i just don’t see the need to leave such a high body count in a story about how love and friendship and noble sacrifice saves the day.

but what about the scene with the ressurection stone then? wasnt it symbolic to have the four sort of parental figures (not that he didnt have other but you know what i mean) all reunited in front of harry?