Character Death: when to warn?

[runespoor]

Okay, so I was thinking about the Andromeda Table and I wondered... What does "Character Death" means, exactly? So yes, someone dies. But when do you warn for character death?... All of this is, of course, purely hypothetical.

Say it's a Blaise/Pansy fic in which Sirius falls through the veil. He's not important to the main pairing, but he matters to the reader of the books, so do you mark character death? Say the fic is Remus/Sirius - do you warn for character death or do you assumes the reader knew what he was in from?

Do you warn for death if it's canon death? If it's AU but the character died in canon anyway? For any character - disregarding his or her importance in the fic and/or the original material? Do you take the "character death" warning to means only the mains characters of the fic?

Do you warn for death if the character comes back, for instance as a ghost? Is it any different if he or she is somehow brought back to life, or if they appear as an Inferi, or as a vampire, or as a portrait, or as something like Riddle's diary?

Personally, I take "character death" to mean that I'd better not get too attached to the main characters of the piece, because one of them is going to eat it. Then again, I like a warning if the SO of the main character of the fic is already dead. And I think "character death" is not too much to ask when half the wizarding world as we know it bites it in a final battle of any sort. It's all very relative, I suppose.

Please comment, I'd love to read your input.

Comments

[magicicada.livejournal.com]

I like getting attached to characters in fic, and if knowing they're going to die could lessen that attachment, I'd rather not know from the beginning-- yeah it hurts, but it can make the fic much more effective. The opposite is true for me as well. I’ve read fics with warnings like, ‘Scary, but don’t worry no one dies’ and I’m less relieved at the end than I would have been if I thought a death might really happen. I think warnings for darkfic or dark themes serve well enough or summaries that make it known that bad things could potentially happen.

[runespoor7.livejournal.com]

I agree with that. Looks like warning for dark or dark themes is the consensus then, which is weird when you realise how many fics are out there with a warning for death.