I know in the past there was some discussions about Major Character Death, however, I didn’t see too much regarding OC’s (save for one ask). I told a select few of my readers who died in my fic and they ALL said I had to tag it MCD. These deaths are OC’s (not self-inserts either) and so are not canon characters. I would always tag correctly for triggers and such, but I assumed MCD was for canon characters? I lost a bunch of subs and bookmarks after updating the tags. 1/2

ao3commentoftheday:

I think all my readers assumed I’m killing off the main paring 😦 Was hoping you’d open this up to your readers to hear their thoughts on it. (PS. I guess its a massive compliment to me that people care so much about the OC’s I wrote that they were devastated to learn they die). 2/2

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I’ll give you my experience, since I have some in this area. I wrote a long fic with two significant OCs and one of them died but I did not tag it with MCD because, like you, I believe that MCD is for canon characters. 

I think that when you kill off a canon character, you’re killing off more than just someone’s investment in this one story you’ve written. It’s this character that is beloved by your readers in a way that OCs (no matter how much they may love them) will never really be loved. It’s shocking when a canon character gets killed off and I know that I don’t actually want to read a fic where my faves get killed off. But an OC? I could deal. The investment just isn’t as great like it is for these canon characters that I’ve watched every week for literal years.

That’s my take on it but I’ll open it up for the followers. Opinions?

–Mod M

I, personally, think that the MCD tag is for any main character in that particular story because the issue isn’t WHOSE character is dying, it’s WHICH character is dying. When we see that OCs are involved, we’re already expecting to treat all the characters the same in our minds. Their deaths weigh as much as the canon characters’ deaths to those of us who read fics with OCs in them. Same thing with whatever other horrible things the author wants to inflict on them. And honestly, it doesn’t make sense to not tag something based on the character’s creator. It makes even less sense when it comes to potentially triggering topics like this one because it happens and not tagging it is fucking rude. To put it lightly.

It doesn’t matter who created the character, if they’re the main character in your story and they die, slap that tag on there because

Proper tagging is proper fucking etiquette.