(no subject)
I have nothing new to offer here, but I feel the need to put some of this in writing for my own benefit.
OotP is old news now, but I suspect I am not alone among HP fans in that it continues to nag at the corners of my mind. I've followed LJ entries and mailing list discussions with interest, but I have not participated, instead attempting to gather and formulate my own thoughts about the book - and I've been helped immensely in this task by Morgan's incredibly articulate, well-thought-out, and effectively expressed views, both on the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo mailing list and here, on ptyx's LJ.
I'm not sure how successful I've been, because even after much rumination, I think about OotP and I feel . . . nothing. Rhysenn (iscaris) said it well: After I read the last line of the book, I sat quietly for a couple of minutes. Trying to sort out my immediate reactions to the story, before over-analysing it and sorting out what I liked and didn't.
But there was only a blank.
And I realised that was how the book made me feel -- blank. Not just feeling nothing, but feeling a void. I had the feeling that I'd just run around a great big circle and come back to the point where I started, just feeling empty, mildly heartbroken, and so, so exhausted.
Yes, that's it exactly. I just don't feel anything about this book. Like Cassie Claire (epicyclical) said, I've finished every other HP book eager to go back to Hogwarts, impatient for the next installment. But after OotP, my excitement with the HP canon universe has plunged - I have little desire to go back there with JKR.
The whole point of this installment, what it was trying to achieve and how it fits into the series as a whole, is somewhat of a mystery to me. As liviapenn said, it's not really "about" anything, the way CoS was about the heir of Slytherin opening the Chamber of Secrets, or PoA was about a psycho killer escaped from wizard prison to kill Harry, or GoF was about the Triwizard tournament. What is OotP about? Protecting a prophecy? We don't even know that's what's going on until the very end of the book, and we certainly never learn why it has to be protected, since Dumbledore knows what's in it - and in any event it doesn't really seem like it could be all that useful to Voldemort. Is it about Harry being used by Voldemort to get to Dumbledore and the Light? Well, that would have been more interesting than being used to get to a pretty boring prophecy - but there's no real hint that this is what Dumbledore is concerned about. Does JKR really expect us to believe that Dumbledore would believe that staying physically away from Harry would somehow convince Voldemort that Harry isn't all that close to Dumbledore?
And what happened to the characters and themes introduced in GoF - Karkaroff, or Peter/Wormtail? At the end of GoF I was left believing that Peter, and Harry's saving of him, would continue to be key in the coming books. Maybe it will be, but there's no hint of it here. I'd looked forward eagerly to learning more about Snape's Death Eater history and redemption, and what he - and only he - could do for the Order - but none of this was even mentioned. Wouldn't it have been more interesting to delve deeper into the characters we already know, rather than introducing a new cast?
OotP is full of plot holes and inconsistencies and incredibly wordy. Then again, this doesn't distinguish it all that meaningfully from the earlier books, and I had no problem overlooking those issues in, say, GoF. I think the key issue for me is that the extent of these flaws in OotP, and the absence of the - for lack of a better word - "magic" that made me love the earlier books, has caused me to lose my trust in the author. Yes, in the previous books there were plot holes and inconsistencies galore, too many characters and too many threads, too many balls in the air - but I trusted implicitly in JKR's talent; I believed that she has a "master plan," that she would tie these things together, that it would all make sense and that I would ultimately be satisfied.
With OotP the balls in the air have multiplied exponentially, while my faith in JKR has proportionately decreased. What was this book about? What was this book's purpose? It had no coherent plot. It begins less than a month after the end of GoF, yet the Harry we see, and the Sirius we see, bear little resemblance to the Harry and Sirius we left at the end of fourth year. Many people have scoffed at the idea that JKR's own characters can ever be "out of character" - after all, she defines the character. But how can it be good writing for an author to make her readers feel like her characters are OOC? The Harry we see in OotP is not a "bad" Harry - I have no problem believing in his anger, his frustration, his sullen resentment. But how did he get to be that way between the end of GoF and the beginning of OotP? Morgan said it so well (SBRL #15373) that I have to quote her: Let's say I create this character called John. For four chapters of my story I describe him as being a mature, loyal man, sensitive and caring, and particularly fond of cats. Then in the fifth chapter I show him being childish, selfish, cheating on his wife, mistreating his friends, dropping bigoted comments and kicking a cat. And I don't give you any explanation to that sudden change. Then you politely tell me, "Hey, Morgan, what happened to John? He wasn't like that." And I tell you, "Well, it's my character, I can do whatever I want with him." You wouldn't think much of my writing abilities, would you?
No, I wouldn't. And I wouldn't trust you as an author ultimately to give me a satisfying story about John, either - which is how I feel about JKR. How can I trust her to resolve things satisfactorily when sometimes I can't even recognize her characters?
What coalesced these feelings for me was Sirius's death. I had been spoiled (by choice) and had read the last bit of the book before starting at the beginning, so it wasn't a surprise. But up until the Department of Mysteries scene and what came after, I was able to overlook many of the flaws and inconsistencies in the book, and I was enjoying the read. If I didn't already know the ending, I would have been hoping and looking forward to a satisfying conclusion, like PoA and GoF.
And then Sirius died. Or whatever.
I mean, what was that? Was it a death? If JKR hadn't said repeatedly in interviews that the dead stay dead we would all be on tenterhooks waiting for Book Six - these statements are the only real reason we have to believe that he is in fact dead. So my first question is, why has she issued these statements? Which is another way of saying that (quoting Morgan again) when an author has to give an interview to explain points of their book, for me that's a sign that the book is flawed. Why bother to create all that ambiguity around the death if she's just going to undercut it in her RL interviews? Why has she told us this herself - shouldn't her book do the telling?
(Which begs the question why death "has to be" final for JKR at all - after all, mortal injury isn't. As Morgan said, yet again: I don't quite understand why she makes a point of being realistic about death when she's very not realistic about other parts of the overall plot. But that's neither here nor there for now)
And to take the point further, how can it be good writing if I finish the book feeling like Sirius's death made no sense, advanced the plot not at all, and is only in there for shock value - and I have to rely on the author's outside comments to have any belief that that is not so? The death, assuming it was that, was . . . irritating. If one of my favorite characters (and Sirius is that) is going to die, I want it to mean something to me, to make sense, to touch me - and this didn't. It felt like author amateur hour. As many others have said, if it was intended to get across the points that war is nasty and death can be sudden and arbitrary and unfair and painful, it failed miserably, because Cedric's death had already done that, and in a much more effective and convincing manner. We've got the point now, JKR - we don't need to be beaten over the head with it. Cassie said it best:But Sirius' death seemed so meaningless, so pointless, so undeserved - and yes, good people do die in this world, that's a fact, and good deeds and love are not always rewarded and blah blah English Lit 101. But tell me you wouldn't feel disappointed if we opened book 6 with Harry accidentally being killed by a falling pot of begonias, forcing Neville to bravely carry on subsequently. Tell me you wouldn't feel it was poor writing. Yes, it gets across the message that life is filled with unforeseen consequences, and that death comes to the deserving and the undeserving alike. Any of us could be run over by a bus at any moment. I am just not sure that this is a message that is particularly novel, interesting, or worth reading about.
Especially after we've already read about it in GoF. Or in Morgan's words:I think Cedric's death accomplished everything JKR has said to have tried to imply with Sirius', and in a much more dramatic and convincing way. Cedric's death was arbitrary, pointless, tragic, cruel, absurdly fast, and a consequence of Cedric's decisions too. When JKR tried to repeat all
that with Sirius, well, it was old news already. Sirius' death didn't add anything to what we had already.
So okay, let's give JKR the benefit of the doubt and assume for the moment that this was not her purpose in killing Sirius. Why, then, was this death so terribly necessary that she felt (again quoting Morgan) it would be worth it to be inconsistent with everything she had written before to get there? Is it the old hero archetype thing - Harry has to lose all his parent figures in order to complete the Hero's journey, to give him the necessary internal strength (see my earlier LJ posting, quoting my friend Nancy's views on this point)? Well, okay - but then why make his death so ambiguous, odd, and unsatisfying? Are we back then to the trite truism that death can be ambiguous, odd, and unsatisfying, especially during war? If so, see discusison of Cedric above - been there, done that. And if JKR's goal was for Harry to lose his parent figures, why not allow his relationship with Sirius to grow further before he loses him - Harry lost a hope, an idea, more than an actual parent. Seems a little cheap.
So if we are trying to give JKR the benefit of the doubt, we must try to believe that though the meaning and necessity and purpose of Sirius's death is impossible to discern at this point, she is telling the truth, and so all will eventually become clear to us - in three years, when the next book comes out. This is the best possible view of the situation - better by far than believing that Sirius died to show Harry the arbitrariness of death - but it's pretty unsatisfying, and pretty incompetent from a literary perspective. An author shouldn't need to give interviews to reassure her readers that yes, what she is doing does in fact make sense - that's not why I read fiction. The writing should speak for itself. So if she does in fact have in mind a meaningful, plot-furthering purpose for Sirius's death (which I am not sure I believe), maybe she should at least have hinted at it in OotP - in other words, maybe this book shouldn't have ended where it did. Because I was left feeling like the death was kind of - - - dumb. Pointless. Silly. I just don't get it.
And it's almost mind boggling how amazingly rushed and unsatisfying the post-death scenes are, and how few loose ends the final chapters tie up - or even give me reason to believe in the future tying up of. I mean, if we are to believe JKR, Sirius's death is a Big Deal - but that is significantly undercut by the fact that the book ends so abruptly after this supposedly key event, and the fact that the final chapters explain nothing at all. Doesn't Harry have any questions for Dumbledore - like, maybe, what is that archway, and what's behind it, and how do we know Sirius is dead? Sure this is only book 5, so all our questions won't be answered - but some of them? Any of them? How about answering some old questions before presenting new ones? Maybe leaving everything, and I mean absolutely everything, unresolved is just a cheap trick on JKR's part - an attempt to keep readers on the edge of their seats, wanting more. But I've got to say, it failed miserably with me. I feel cheated, disillusioned, and without any real trust that JKR has the vision or talent to finish this series the way it should/could be. I await the next books without any of the joy and hope and anticipation with which I awaited earlier installments.
Morgan has said on a few occasions (e.g., SBRL message 15338) that she has always feared for the future development of the series, that she never believed JKR would be able to tie it all together. I wouldn't have shared this fear in any significant way before OotP - but now I fear that the immense promise of the earlier books will never be fulfilled, that she will never make it all fit together, and that my feelings after reading the final book (which I will do) will be dissatisfaction and disillusionment. My belief in her imagination has not faltered, but my belief in her literary talent has taken a huge nosedive. A plot full of holes and inconsistencies may be "realistic" in the sense that real life is full of holes and inconsistencies and often makes no sense. But as Cassie and many others have said before me, real life may not have to make sense and have a coherent plot, but good fiction does. By that definition, this just is not good fiction.
****
Maybe this is why I'm having so little difficulty with post-OOtP fanfic that ignores Sirius's death. I've emailed with a few authors who write pairings with Sirius - Minx and Ballyharnon, who write fantastic Sirius/Remus (Lost Feelings and the of Linen universe - I love both of these), and the absolutely awesome Fabula Rasa, who of course writes Sirius/Snape - expressing my views on this issue, but I'll repeat them here.
I guess each author has to decide how she wants to proceed in the wake of OotP, and how her own personal "muse" has been affected by the events of canon, but my own feeling, especially in light of how incredibly unsatisfying OotP was for me, is that JKR's pre-OotP canon was in a way just a tool, a launching pad, for authors' ideas. The beauty of fanfic for me, the joy of it, is that it is limitless, that we (I use that loosely, since I am not an author!) can take the tools we're given - i.e., canon - and use them to build anything we damn well want. After reading OotP I started to think about how, when it comes to HP slash, my mind can apparently handle all sorts of contradictions without any difficulty at all. Even before OotP, I could read, and love, a great fic in which Sirius and Remus are lovers forever, and then I could put it down and pick up a new fic in which Remus is a jealous jerk and Sirius and Snape have mad passionate sex on the potions worktable and join themselves with a dark bond (that would be Fabula Rasa's Cordelictus), and I could love that fic and believe in that world equally while I'm reading it - they could all coexist in my head. And, perhaps surprisingly but perhaps not, OotP does not seem to have changed that - even now, I can pick up the Lost Feelings stories or Cordelictus and love them, regardless of where JKR, or Ellen Fremedon, or Cybele or Amanuensis, or Canis M. or Ballyharnon or anyone else has chosen to take those characters.
The great wonder of fanfic for me is that all the things I've ever imagined can continue to happen in my imagination - I can believe concurrently in every Sirius I've ever read (well, maybe not every, but you get the point) - sweet!Sirius, evil!Sirius, bottom!Sirius, dom!Sirius, hurt-and-lonely!Sirius, depressed!Sirius - and damn the inconsistencies. So far, at least, OotP has not changed that. My appetite for good Sirius/Remus and Sirius/Snape remains as great as ever, even if it's now AU. Fabula's and Minx's and Ballyharnon's Siriuses are all alive in my head - in many ways more alive than JKR's, because they are actually so much more well developed than the canon character.
Of course, I would understand if an author no longer felt the inspiration to continue to explore and develop a character who no longer exists in canon. But I'll welcome it and read it without hesitation if they do!
OotP is old news now, but I suspect I am not alone among HP fans in that it continues to nag at the corners of my mind. I've followed LJ entries and mailing list discussions with interest, but I have not participated, instead attempting to gather and formulate my own thoughts about the book - and I've been helped immensely in this task by Morgan's incredibly articulate, well-thought-out, and effectively expressed views, both on the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo mailing list and here, on ptyx's LJ.
I'm not sure how successful I've been, because even after much rumination, I think about OotP and I feel . . . nothing. Rhysenn (iscaris) said it well: After I read the last line of the book, I sat quietly for a couple of minutes. Trying to sort out my immediate reactions to the story, before over-analysing it and sorting out what I liked and didn't.
But there was only a blank.
And I realised that was how the book made me feel -- blank. Not just feeling nothing, but feeling a void. I had the feeling that I'd just run around a great big circle and come back to the point where I started, just feeling empty, mildly heartbroken, and so, so exhausted.
Yes, that's it exactly. I just don't feel anything about this book. Like Cassie Claire (epicyclical) said, I've finished every other HP book eager to go back to Hogwarts, impatient for the next installment. But after OotP, my excitement with the HP canon universe has plunged - I have little desire to go back there with JKR.
The whole point of this installment, what it was trying to achieve and how it fits into the series as a whole, is somewhat of a mystery to me. As liviapenn said, it's not really "about" anything, the way CoS was about the heir of Slytherin opening the Chamber of Secrets, or PoA was about a psycho killer escaped from wizard prison to kill Harry, or GoF was about the Triwizard tournament. What is OotP about? Protecting a prophecy? We don't even know that's what's going on until the very end of the book, and we certainly never learn why it has to be protected, since Dumbledore knows what's in it - and in any event it doesn't really seem like it could be all that useful to Voldemort. Is it about Harry being used by Voldemort to get to Dumbledore and the Light? Well, that would have been more interesting than being used to get to a pretty boring prophecy - but there's no real hint that this is what Dumbledore is concerned about. Does JKR really expect us to believe that Dumbledore would believe that staying physically away from Harry would somehow convince Voldemort that Harry isn't all that close to Dumbledore?
And what happened to the characters and themes introduced in GoF - Karkaroff, or Peter/Wormtail? At the end of GoF I was left believing that Peter, and Harry's saving of him, would continue to be key in the coming books. Maybe it will be, but there's no hint of it here. I'd looked forward eagerly to learning more about Snape's Death Eater history and redemption, and what he - and only he - could do for the Order - but none of this was even mentioned. Wouldn't it have been more interesting to delve deeper into the characters we already know, rather than introducing a new cast?
OotP is full of plot holes and inconsistencies and incredibly wordy. Then again, this doesn't distinguish it all that meaningfully from the earlier books, and I had no problem overlooking those issues in, say, GoF. I think the key issue for me is that the extent of these flaws in OotP, and the absence of the - for lack of a better word - "magic" that made me love the earlier books, has caused me to lose my trust in the author. Yes, in the previous books there were plot holes and inconsistencies galore, too many characters and too many threads, too many balls in the air - but I trusted implicitly in JKR's talent; I believed that she has a "master plan," that she would tie these things together, that it would all make sense and that I would ultimately be satisfied.
With OotP the balls in the air have multiplied exponentially, while my faith in JKR has proportionately decreased. What was this book about? What was this book's purpose? It had no coherent plot. It begins less than a month after the end of GoF, yet the Harry we see, and the Sirius we see, bear little resemblance to the Harry and Sirius we left at the end of fourth year. Many people have scoffed at the idea that JKR's own characters can ever be "out of character" - after all, she defines the character. But how can it be good writing for an author to make her readers feel like her characters are OOC? The Harry we see in OotP is not a "bad" Harry - I have no problem believing in his anger, his frustration, his sullen resentment. But how did he get to be that way between the end of GoF and the beginning of OotP? Morgan said it so well (SBRL #15373) that I have to quote her: Let's say I create this character called John. For four chapters of my story I describe him as being a mature, loyal man, sensitive and caring, and particularly fond of cats. Then in the fifth chapter I show him being childish, selfish, cheating on his wife, mistreating his friends, dropping bigoted comments and kicking a cat. And I don't give you any explanation to that sudden change. Then you politely tell me, "Hey, Morgan, what happened to John? He wasn't like that." And I tell you, "Well, it's my character, I can do whatever I want with him." You wouldn't think much of my writing abilities, would you?
No, I wouldn't. And I wouldn't trust you as an author ultimately to give me a satisfying story about John, either - which is how I feel about JKR. How can I trust her to resolve things satisfactorily when sometimes I can't even recognize her characters?
What coalesced these feelings for me was Sirius's death. I had been spoiled (by choice) and had read the last bit of the book before starting at the beginning, so it wasn't a surprise. But up until the Department of Mysteries scene and what came after, I was able to overlook many of the flaws and inconsistencies in the book, and I was enjoying the read. If I didn't already know the ending, I would have been hoping and looking forward to a satisfying conclusion, like PoA and GoF.
And then Sirius died. Or whatever.
I mean, what was that? Was it a death? If JKR hadn't said repeatedly in interviews that the dead stay dead we would all be on tenterhooks waiting for Book Six - these statements are the only real reason we have to believe that he is in fact dead. So my first question is, why has she issued these statements? Which is another way of saying that (quoting Morgan again) when an author has to give an interview to explain points of their book, for me that's a sign that the book is flawed. Why bother to create all that ambiguity around the death if she's just going to undercut it in her RL interviews? Why has she told us this herself - shouldn't her book do the telling?
(Which begs the question why death "has to be" final for JKR at all - after all, mortal injury isn't. As Morgan said, yet again: I don't quite understand why she makes a point of being realistic about death when she's very not realistic about other parts of the overall plot. But that's neither here nor there for now)
And to take the point further, how can it be good writing if I finish the book feeling like Sirius's death made no sense, advanced the plot not at all, and is only in there for shock value - and I have to rely on the author's outside comments to have any belief that that is not so? The death, assuming it was that, was . . . irritating. If one of my favorite characters (and Sirius is that) is going to die, I want it to mean something to me, to make sense, to touch me - and this didn't. It felt like author amateur hour. As many others have said, if it was intended to get across the points that war is nasty and death can be sudden and arbitrary and unfair and painful, it failed miserably, because Cedric's death had already done that, and in a much more effective and convincing manner. We've got the point now, JKR - we don't need to be beaten over the head with it. Cassie said it best:But Sirius' death seemed so meaningless, so pointless, so undeserved - and yes, good people do die in this world, that's a fact, and good deeds and love are not always rewarded and blah blah English Lit 101. But tell me you wouldn't feel disappointed if we opened book 6 with Harry accidentally being killed by a falling pot of begonias, forcing Neville to bravely carry on subsequently. Tell me you wouldn't feel it was poor writing. Yes, it gets across the message that life is filled with unforeseen consequences, and that death comes to the deserving and the undeserving alike. Any of us could be run over by a bus at any moment. I am just not sure that this is a message that is particularly novel, interesting, or worth reading about.
Especially after we've already read about it in GoF. Or in Morgan's words:I think Cedric's death accomplished everything JKR has said to have tried to imply with Sirius', and in a much more dramatic and convincing way. Cedric's death was arbitrary, pointless, tragic, cruel, absurdly fast, and a consequence of Cedric's decisions too. When JKR tried to repeat all
that with Sirius, well, it was old news already. Sirius' death didn't add anything to what we had already.
So okay, let's give JKR the benefit of the doubt and assume for the moment that this was not her purpose in killing Sirius. Why, then, was this death so terribly necessary that she felt (again quoting Morgan) it would be worth it to be inconsistent with everything she had written before to get there? Is it the old hero archetype thing - Harry has to lose all his parent figures in order to complete the Hero's journey, to give him the necessary internal strength (see my earlier LJ posting, quoting my friend Nancy's views on this point)? Well, okay - but then why make his death so ambiguous, odd, and unsatisfying? Are we back then to the trite truism that death can be ambiguous, odd, and unsatisfying, especially during war? If so, see discusison of Cedric above - been there, done that. And if JKR's goal was for Harry to lose his parent figures, why not allow his relationship with Sirius to grow further before he loses him - Harry lost a hope, an idea, more than an actual parent. Seems a little cheap.
So if we are trying to give JKR the benefit of the doubt, we must try to believe that though the meaning and necessity and purpose of Sirius's death is impossible to discern at this point, she is telling the truth, and so all will eventually become clear to us - in three years, when the next book comes out. This is the best possible view of the situation - better by far than believing that Sirius died to show Harry the arbitrariness of death - but it's pretty unsatisfying, and pretty incompetent from a literary perspective. An author shouldn't need to give interviews to reassure her readers that yes, what she is doing does in fact make sense - that's not why I read fiction. The writing should speak for itself. So if she does in fact have in mind a meaningful, plot-furthering purpose for Sirius's death (which I am not sure I believe), maybe she should at least have hinted at it in OotP - in other words, maybe this book shouldn't have ended where it did. Because I was left feeling like the death was kind of - - - dumb. Pointless. Silly. I just don't get it.
And it's almost mind boggling how amazingly rushed and unsatisfying the post-death scenes are, and how few loose ends the final chapters tie up - or even give me reason to believe in the future tying up of. I mean, if we are to believe JKR, Sirius's death is a Big Deal - but that is significantly undercut by the fact that the book ends so abruptly after this supposedly key event, and the fact that the final chapters explain nothing at all. Doesn't Harry have any questions for Dumbledore - like, maybe, what is that archway, and what's behind it, and how do we know Sirius is dead? Sure this is only book 5, so all our questions won't be answered - but some of them? Any of them? How about answering some old questions before presenting new ones? Maybe leaving everything, and I mean absolutely everything, unresolved is just a cheap trick on JKR's part - an attempt to keep readers on the edge of their seats, wanting more. But I've got to say, it failed miserably with me. I feel cheated, disillusioned, and without any real trust that JKR has the vision or talent to finish this series the way it should/could be. I await the next books without any of the joy and hope and anticipation with which I awaited earlier installments.
Morgan has said on a few occasions (e.g., SBRL message 15338) that she has always feared for the future development of the series, that she never believed JKR would be able to tie it all together. I wouldn't have shared this fear in any significant way before OotP - but now I fear that the immense promise of the earlier books will never be fulfilled, that she will never make it all fit together, and that my feelings after reading the final book (which I will do) will be dissatisfaction and disillusionment. My belief in her imagination has not faltered, but my belief in her literary talent has taken a huge nosedive. A plot full of holes and inconsistencies may be "realistic" in the sense that real life is full of holes and inconsistencies and often makes no sense. But as Cassie and many others have said before me, real life may not have to make sense and have a coherent plot, but good fiction does. By that definition, this just is not good fiction.
****
Maybe this is why I'm having so little difficulty with post-OOtP fanfic that ignores Sirius's death. I've emailed with a few authors who write pairings with Sirius - Minx and Ballyharnon, who write fantastic Sirius/Remus (Lost Feelings and the of Linen universe - I love both of these), and the absolutely awesome Fabula Rasa, who of course writes Sirius/Snape - expressing my views on this issue, but I'll repeat them here.
I guess each author has to decide how she wants to proceed in the wake of OotP, and how her own personal "muse" has been affected by the events of canon, but my own feeling, especially in light of how incredibly unsatisfying OotP was for me, is that JKR's pre-OotP canon was in a way just a tool, a launching pad, for authors' ideas. The beauty of fanfic for me, the joy of it, is that it is limitless, that we (I use that loosely, since I am not an author!) can take the tools we're given - i.e., canon - and use them to build anything we damn well want. After reading OotP I started to think about how, when it comes to HP slash, my mind can apparently handle all sorts of contradictions without any difficulty at all. Even before OotP, I could read, and love, a great fic in which Sirius and Remus are lovers forever, and then I could put it down and pick up a new fic in which Remus is a jealous jerk and Sirius and Snape have mad passionate sex on the potions worktable and join themselves with a dark bond (that would be Fabula Rasa's Cordelictus), and I could love that fic and believe in that world equally while I'm reading it - they could all coexist in my head. And, perhaps surprisingly but perhaps not, OotP does not seem to have changed that - even now, I can pick up the Lost Feelings stories or Cordelictus and love them, regardless of where JKR, or Ellen Fremedon, or Cybele or Amanuensis, or Canis M. or Ballyharnon or anyone else has chosen to take those characters.
The great wonder of fanfic for me is that all the things I've ever imagined can continue to happen in my imagination - I can believe concurrently in every Sirius I've ever read (well, maybe not every, but you get the point) - sweet!Sirius, evil!Sirius, bottom!Sirius, dom!Sirius, hurt-and-lonely!Sirius, depressed!Sirius - and damn the inconsistencies. So far, at least, OotP has not changed that. My appetite for good Sirius/Remus and Sirius/Snape remains as great as ever, even if it's now AU. Fabula's and Minx's and Ballyharnon's Siriuses are all alive in my head - in many ways more alive than JKR's, because they are actually so much more well developed than the canon character.
Of course, I would understand if an author no longer felt the inspiration to continue to explore and develop a character who no longer exists in canon. But I'll welcome it and read it without hesitation if they do!