Presumed Dead

From Fanlore
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)My Partner's Dead, Just Kidding (MPDJK) [1], Not Quite Dead, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated, thought dead, mistaken death, miraculous return, believed dead, resurrection
Related tropes/genresdeathfic, denialfic, fix-it
See alsohurt/comfort, comic book death, afterlife, reunion, The Great Hiatus
by Suzan Lovett, from the zine Perestroika -- Napoleon Solo mourns the "death" of Illya Kuryakin (1991)
Related articles on Fanlore.

Presumed Dead is a fanfiction trope in which a character who is assumed to be dead is actually alive.

Presumed death stories allow the reader, along with other characters in the story, to explore scenarios and feelings about the death of someone they care about. "Presumed dead" stories often dwell on the emotional hurt/comfort. In that sense, they are deathfics without the commitment!

A character's fake death can be presented many ways. Sometimes, an accident makes it appear a character is dead; the body is either not found, or it is not reconizable.

Another use of fake death is a planned way to allow a character to "go underground" to solve a mystery or solve a crime.

"Presumed dead" stories have a tangent, that of fix-it fics that resurrect a character who dies in canon.

While most presumed dead stories star the main characters, some include long-lost relatives such as a sibling or parent, and others bring back villains that had supposedly already met their end.

In fantasy and sci fi fandoms, sometimes the dead characters actually have expired, and are resurrected with magic or technology.

In Canon

As well as in fanfic, series canon often include "presumed dead" plots or subplots, especially during cliffhanger season finales.

The most famous of these is probably Sherlock Holmes's death and return, and Spock's at the end of the Star Trek movie The Wrath of Khan, though Kirk's 'death' at Spock's hands in the TOS episode Amok Time also qualifies.

Time travel stories often include character deaths that can only be fixed by restoring the "right" timeline, such as seen in the first Back to the Future movie, and the season 4 finale of Stargate: Atlantis.

A very famous presumed death is the 1984-1985 Dallas Dream Season.

Other canon examples are in Once a Thief in which Li Ann believes Mac to be dead in an explosion, the Le Abdollen scene in The Two Towers, where Aragorn (who was believed dead) returns to Helm's Deep, and the character Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, a playable character in the Square Enix video game Final Fantasy XII.

Comic Book Death

Comic book canons so frequently kill off and resurrect characters that comic fandom refers to the phenomenon as "comic book death."[2][3] In one X-Factor comic, Siryn refuses to mourn the death of her father, Banshee, because "half the X-teams are always mourning the other half thinking they're dead. If you think I'm falling for that, you can just forget it. My da's fine. He'll turn up." [4] For a long time, the joke in comic-dom was, "No one stays dead except Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Uncle Ben." In a phenomenal demonstration of the point, Jason Todd and Bucky Barnes have since been resurrected.

Comic Book death has even spread to movies through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with Agent Phil Coulson (an original character for the films who never previously appeared in comics) returning from the dead after The Avengers.

Dead Lite

Some fans consider these "pseudo-deathfics" to be cheating, "copping out" and undermining the emotional intensity of grief.

Other fans who find deathfics too depressing enjoy the happy resolution of the angst.

From a fan in 2004:

For some reason, I find a lot of that "My partner's dead, just kidding!" stuff and stories where one partner is tortured/tormented/injured severely and you're supposed to hang on through the whole story wondering what will happen to be more manipulative than death, but it may also be that those tend to be written by people who are copping out on the death thing -- like, they won't go far enough, so it ends up being accidentally manipulative, if you know what I mean. I can't think of anything off the top of my head to illustrate, though.

I like uncertainty of course, but I think too often the tenterhooks thing is almost more of a cheat than actual death would be. But the worst thing I ever saw was this story in Pros that was really, truly beautiful and affecting in its sadness, and you're thinking it's a death story, and then it's all a Dallas dream... arg! I hate that! [5]

Needs a Warning?

Whether such a fic should require a warning is a matter of debate; some fans find temporary deathfics as traumatizing as the real deal, while others don't like such spoilers on a story.

From a fan in 2008:

Sholio: One thing I've been struggling with lately is whether to put a deathfic warning on presumed-dead fic. I've had people tell me that a fake/temporary character death is just as traumatic for them at the character's death scene as a permanent death, but I absolutely *refuse* to spoil a story by putting something like "fake death" or "not a deathfic" on it. (I honestly loathe it when authors do that. If you're going to spoil your own story, at least put it under a cut!) So I was thinking about using deathfic as a general warning for those sorts of stories, so people can not read them if character deaths bother them...

xparrot: Huh...I wouldn't label them death-fic myself, though that's personal to me - I think of Presumed Death and Death as entirely separate categories, the former being one of my favorite fictional tropes, the latter being something I have to brace myself for and often will just avoid in fanfic. So you wouldn't spoil people, but you would lose a percentage of readers who won't try the story at all, as well as confusing others (I know some folks who feel cheated if a death-fic turns out to be a fake-out; false advertising, and such.) (For me personally, putting a "not a death-fic" label is a good way to get me to read a story, so while I can understand why it bothers you to be spoiled, it's not a problem for me. But I don't usually read fanfic for plot twists; as I've mentioned before, fanfic is more a comfort thing for me, while I like more extreme stuff in the original fic I read.)
On my own presumed dead fic, I usually just warn for lots of angst, which can cover death or presumed death (I actually do warn for character death when I do it for real, because I so detest coming across it unexpectedly myself; however, unless you've read enough of my fic to know it is something I warn for, the angst warning doesn't give anything specific away...) [6]

A Feature of Hurt/Comfort

While most fandoms will have at least a few examples, this trope is quite common in some, especially fandoms that tend toward hurt/comfort.

Professionals fanfic is known to include MPDJK, and The Real Ghostbusters fanfic had multiple long gen fics with one or more of the team seeming to die but later returning.

Stargate: SG-1 had a variety of stories with Daniel Jackson appearing to die but surviving it, probably because it happened so much in canon.

Marvel Cinematic Universe fandom has many fix-it fics for the death of Agent Phil Coulson, many of which were written before his canon resurrection. They are particularly common in the Clint-Coulson ship, deriving angst from Clint Barton's reaction to Phil's apparent death before his survival is revealed. Following the release of Age of Ultron, fix-it fics also appeared for the death of Pietro Maximoff - although unlike Phil Coulson, Pietro's resurrection is not (yet) canon.

Hornblower TV fandom has the Live Kennedy Universe which is an AU in which a major character death is averted; this is usually written with an initial presumption of death, which is remedied in the course of the story.

Fan Comments

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. [7]

My particular set of favorite h/c tropes are mainly centered around worry and angst -- I am absolutely gone for "don't die on me!" type scenarios (bleeding out! heart attacks! desperate clinging! rescue breathing!) and characters sacrificing themselves for each other or thinking each other are dead (presumed dead is one of my biggies, especially if it goes on for YEARS), or being terribly angry at each other but still loving each other deep down and then having something ~terrible~ happen. I am SUCH an angstbunny.[8]

Example Fanworks

Example Art

  • Paulie Gilmore for "Last Will and Testament" by Joy Maricevic Kenneth Hutchinson is presumed so dead, he almost gets an autopsy! -- from Zebra Three #3 (1978)
    Paulie Gilmore for "Last Will and Testament" by Joy Maricevic Kenneth Hutchinson is presumed so dead, he almost gets an autopsy! -- from Zebra Three #3 (1978)
  • Sandy Chandler Shelton in Bondstories #7 portrays Vincent Wells, a character often in mourning and often sad, about the canon death of Catherine Chandler, something fans frequently turn into a presumed death in the trope, She's Not Dead (1994)
    Sandy Chandler Shelton in Bondstories #7 portrays Vincent Wells, a character often in mourning and often sad, about the canon death of Catherine Chandler, something fans frequently turn into a presumed death in the trope, She's Not Dead (1994)
  • "Reichenbach Falls..." by eurasia-art (Sherlock) (2012)
    "Reichenbach Falls..." by eurasia-art (Sherlock) (2012)
  • "Discovery" by ALS123, Dawson discovers Basil's notes -- artist's comment: "It's just how I think Basil might react to discovering Holmes' "death" at the Reichenbach Falls. He's reading Watson's beginning draft to "The Final Problem" and Holmes' note describing his fight to the death with Moriarity. May write a fic for this someday. I like to think that Basil learned much of his detective skills from Holmes (while watching him in secret of course), and that he would be absolutely crushed to learn such horrible news about his mentor. He might mourn for days, falling into a deep depression himself. :(" (The Great Mouse Detective) (2012)
    "Discovery" by ALS123, Basil discovers Watson's notes -- artist's comment: "It's just how I think Basil might react to discovering Holmes' "death" at the Reichenbach Falls. He's reading Watson's beginning draft to "The Final Problem" and Holmes' note describing his fight to the death with Moriarity. May write a fic for this someday. I like to think that Basil learned much of his detective skills from Holmes (while watching him in secret of course), and that he would be absolutely crushed to learn such horrible news about his mentor. He might mourn for days, falling into a deep depression himself. :(" [9] (The Great Mouse Detective) (2012)

Example Fanfiction

Example Zines

Rec Lists

Archives & Links

References

  1. ^ In fandoms with partners (professional or ships), this trope is sometimes called "My Partner's Dead, Just Kidding" (MPDJK), an acronym which may have originated with Megan Kent back in the early 1990s.
  2. ^ Comic Book Death - Chris Buchner, May 1 2007 (accessed 1/2009)
  3. ^ Comic Book Death on Wikipedia (Accessed 1/2009)
  4. ^ X-Factor #7, Peter David. May 2006.
  5. ^ comment by gwyn r at I love to listen to the sad, sad songs
  6. ^ from comments on tipper_green posted Dec. 17th, 2008 (accessed 1/2009)
  7. ^ comment by Maygra at the 2004 essay, I love to listen to the sad, sad songs
  8. ^ "December unscheduled posting meme: Tropes!, Livejournal post by sholio, Dec 2, 2014". Archived from the original on 2026-06-29.
  9. ^ from Discovery
Retrieved from "https://fanlore.org/w/index.php?title=Presumed_Dead&oldid=3065133"