Subject: So, Rowling dropped a bombshell.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-02-02 03:28:00 UTC
So, if you've been watching the news, JK Rowling recently stated that she thought that Ron/Hermione was not meant to be. Good news for H/Hr shippers like me. A full interview is coming uit in Wonderland magazine soon, but mugglenet.com has some insights.
What's your views on this?
~Kitty
Exhibit A:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10076581/1/Epilogue-Part-2
Character bashing for everyone (intentionally or not) in this fic!
The sad thing is, it's not even a spelling and/or grammatical mess. The OOC is despite the author having a modicum of intelligence. Ugh. I feel unclean.
Araeph
I like H/Hr, and that fic was just insanely unfair.
...is that the author makes Harry sound like a Grade A jerk and a nepotism advocate in the process. (Seriously, pulling strings to keep Ron on as an Auror?!) If your version of Harry talks, thinks, and acts like that, why would you want to pair him with your beloved Hermione? "Congratulations, Hermione, you've won the right to be with Sulky McNitwit for all eternity! Now let's have a kiss!"
Baffling.
~Araeph
... is that most people are familiar with the characters as teenagers, and the lesser authors of the world keep that characterisation (quite often because they themselves are teenagers) rather than actually, y'know, think about what they'd be like as adults. Harry would, out of necessity, have had the moanier aspects of his personality kicked out by a relationship with either Ginny or Hermione, since both are noted for their inability to put up with people like that. Ron would've got a lot smarter by association with Hermione, and Hermione would've become a lot less hidebound when it comes to rules by association with Ron. We see bits of this happening already over the course of DH, but most authors are content to render their precious Golden Trio emotionally stunted twerps.
That said, I'd quite like to see a really good post-epilogue fic that does this sort of thing well. Any and all suggestions gratefully appreciated.
*curls up in a ball and cries in the corner* Why do so many people hate Ron? Why??
The short fragment paragraphs in that fic made my eyes hurt. I get the author was going for a dramatic effect, but... ugh...
CAUTION: Falling fragments!
But from what I read, my take is that she regrets pairing them up not because there's any specifically better ship, but that she feels that how she paired characters up towards the end of the series doesn't reflect how she feels about them now and how they could have grown.
... Which is perfectly valid, I think everyone who has written original fiction and gotten characters together has at least one pair where they look back and are like "You know what, that doesn't work as well as I thought it would."
I also think that it might be part of the backlash that she's occasionally gotten for having so many characters paired up by their late teens and presumably married only a few years after that. Although it happens in real life (and seems to have been common in the UK in the late eighties and early nineties, if the amount which stories from that time mention couples that young is any indication,) it's very different from the reality known by the fanbase, which is people who were being born in the late eighties and early nineties.
Personally, I saw the Ron/Hermione ship coming as early as second year (I was also a fan of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, so I was no stranger to shipping the people who bicker the most,) but wasn't 100% sold on it after the bird incident in sixth year. Hermione's temper and developing ruthlessness, especially with her magic, didn't sit well with Ron's blunders. She's got a tendency to lash out at Ron far more than she does anyone else, and I didn't think that was going to make a great marriage.
Harry and Hermione always seemed like family to me, so I don't think it was actually necessary to have a marriage within the Golden Trio. Actually, I was on the fence about most of the student pairings in the last two books because 1) I felt that everyone involved was too young for the pairings to be permanent, 2) Many characters who were paired weren't given equal screentime and so pairings came off as very uneven, since we didn't know enough about one of the parties, and 3) I think Rowling is much better at writing mystery plots and children than she is at writing teens, and she fell into the trap of thinking that romances are absolutely necessary to writing teens or marketing to them. (Or just into the writing trap of wanting all her literary creations to pair off and settle down.)
I'm not a shipper - particularly when it comes to Harry Potter if only because that sort of thing can go right off the end of the lunacy scale - so have no real comment on H/G vs H/H, but I do agree that we're in for a rough time on the badfic front.
I can almost hear the cries of 'I knew their love was the OTP all along' from here...
Honestly, I never even liked the idea of any of the trio being together. They just seem too much compatible as friends for a romantic relationship to work.
On the other hand, Ginny-Harry always seemed like Ginny's one-sided school crush. From my perspective, she always seemed more compatible with Neville.
To be honest, for the main trio, I don't remember ever shipping them with any of the characters presented in the book, and all of their romantic interactions with pretty much anyone seemed a bit forced.
First: Where did you hear that?
Second: Call me one of those weirdos, but I'm a Ron/Hermione shipper. I'm not 100% sure why JKR would say that (I mean, she was dropping hints since GoF, maybe even PoA if you really look), but it might have something to do with them falling in love over the course of a war... I love Ron and Hermione together.
To be honest, though, I'm mostly worried about this news being true because if it is, it's going to spawn even more Ron the Death Eater fics, which I despise. Ron is awesome. Yeah, he has flaws and isn't the best person all the time... but who is?
I should probably stop writing; I can't form a coherent thought when I get something like this dropped on me.
I mean, the two of them have had way too many disputes in the books prior to Deathly Hallows, where all of a sudden they're all mushy-gushy because Ron read a book on how to charm witches. Once they're together... well, I really can't see it lasting, and it's remarkable that they've gotten at least enough years of marriage under their belt to raise two children.
Ooh, the plotbunnies are rolling around for a post-Epilogue, domestic-bliss-isn't-suiting-them sorta thing. I mean, I'm a Harry/Hermione shipper (back in my day we called it the Pumpkin Pie) too, and I'm not entirely sure how Harry and Ginny are soulmates (Agent Eledhwen's saying something along the lines of "I work in BBC Sherlock and Star Trek; I know what soulmates look like" right about... now). I can definitely see Hermione and Ron having shouting matches, Hermione telling Rose not to settle for a man like Ron, Hermione throwing herself into her work so thoroughly that she's never home --
(yes, this is speaking from personal experience, shh.)
To me, all this bickering actually made Ron/Hermione believable. Most of it was about small things and annoyed Harry because it seemed so unimportant. But that’s the point. By using any opportunity to dispute, Hermione and Ron made sure that they could agree on most of what was important to them, and that the small things they couldn’t agree upon didn’t really matter. This doesn’t seem to be the worst way to build a relationship.
The one big issue left in the end was the supposed House-elf Enslavement Curse. This was solved when Hermione watched Harry charming Kreacher without the use of magic, and when Ron realized that "we can’t expect them to fight for us". I don’t think that "How to Charm a Witch" had much to do with this. But I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed there. Shoving the house-elfs out like little children? Now when Ron had said "Somebody should tell them what’s up, so they can decide whether they want to run, hide or fight" – naah, I wouldn’t have kissed him anyway :-)
Also, I seriously hope that Harry and Ginny, after this first kiss in HBP, talked about some important things rather than just snoging before there was time to tell Harry about the Quidditch final.
I don’t understand why Harry and Ginny, or Harry and Hermione, or Ron and Hermione, or anybody else, should be “soulmates” (and Still-not-an-agent Androia Avatar asks whether being soulmates would make them canon Sues and Stus). Considering that "right over easy" is one of the big themes of the books, I wouldn’t expect this to be so easy. I’d expect that they all have to work on their relationships to make them work.
And now I’m wondering whether Jo really said something entirely new. But I have to see the full interview to understand what happened there.
HG
You said it much better than I could have. *worships*
Ron/Hermione is an OTP of mine (wait- isn't that a bit of a contradiction? Meh.), so I get a bit incomprehensible when I try to discuss it.
Like I said, my perception of a good relationship is affected by personal experience, and Ron and Hermione act too much like my own (quite separated) parents for me to be invested in them as a couple.
The story of my first love is too complex to tell it here, but some of the reasons it failed where definitely
- not talking enough anyway (like Ron and Lavender)
- rather lying than risking a good quarrel (Harry occasionally does this to Hermione)
HG
Isn't it the position of an author to decide which characters to pair off, when, and to whom? If J.K. Rowling didn't think Ron and Hermione would fit one another, why did she have them get married and make several children? I mean, from a certain perspective, going with the Ron-Hermione relationship when she doesn't think it could be altogether viable would be good from a Pair the Spares standpoint, since if Harry and Hermione paired up, there wouldn't be all that many main characters or central supporting characters for Ron to have flash-forward babies with that hadn't already been paired off, aside from Luna. (Now that would be an interesting story.) But she'd have been able to make it work if she really thought a big name should've been paired with someone less recognizable. It didn't entirely seem as though J.K. Rowling was aiming for name recognition in the final choices anyway, as evidenced by the fact that she already settled, and I use the term loosely, for having fan-favorite Draco Malfoy paired off with(gasp) a minor character!
And of course, leaving any main characters unmarried would be absolutely out of the question, since their referential offspring would be required to interact with one another on the eve of their first day of wizard school, making some form of final pairing an absolute necessity. How else would we know that Voldemort hadn't destroyed any chance to create a new generation of magic users?
Wow, I am a lot more invested in this than I thought I was. I don't even really like Harry Potter!
Obviously we don't yet have the full story, but it's possible she was more saying that thinking back on it she's not sure that's the way she would've done it now.
Of course, it's not like this would be the first time she's just thrown random stuff out there to stir up the fandom hornet's nest and stay relevant.
Think about it: Ron and Hermione essentially hooked up not only fresh out of high school, but right after going through some really emotionally intense, high-stakes saving-the-world stuff. That's a pretty terrible foundation for a long-term relationship. It's not a huge stretch to imagine that the feelings they have for each other wouldn't last forever in the normal, boring, everyday world.
That goes for the rest of 'em, too. They're lucky if they stay compatible once they settle down.
They'd all still want to be there to see their kids off to school, though. Perhaps we just didn't get to see the chinks in the armor in the epilogue.
~Neshomeh
If so, that'd probably be why. I mean, she could have gone back to change it, but w/e.
Parts of the interview are on various news websites. If you Google it, it should come up.
~Kitty
However, I would temper it a little.
I could be reading too much into it, but I don't think Rowling originally wanted to pair Harry and Hermione because it seemed a little obvious. Hermione's the primary female protagonist, Harry's the primary male protagonist, having them get together would be a bit hackneyed. This comes from someone who ships H/Hr, or Harmony, or Insert-Shipping-Portmanteau-Of-Choice-Here.
The three characters, as far as I can make out, are to show two worlds and two different approaches to magic. Ron's a normal kid from a magical household, Hermione's a normal kid from a Muggle household, and Harry's got his feet in both. Having Ron and Hermione get together is how Rowling shows that the two worlds can become one, the traditions of the old ways and the vibrancy of the new working together for a brighter future.
Or I could be talking through my hat, I don't know. =]
--parp
Honestly, I'm not a shipper.
My reaction to R/Hr? "Meh, OK."
My reaction to H/Hr? "Meh, whatever."
My reaction to H/G? "Eh, if that's what you want."
I ship friendship. :)
But what I CAN think about, and little else, is the tidal wave of fics that are going to be coming in! Hideous Ron-bashing fics, OOC Hermiones and Harrys running around, and the Ron/Hermione shippers hitting back with Harry-bashing...ugh. Better batten down the hatches, PPCers. It's gonna get ugly.
*dusts off the Red Pen files*
It may be time to return to duty.
—Araeph
I'm sure there's a way to reasonably extrapolate from this new info to write decent fic, but I don't have the time to scribble it out myself.
That being said, I remember my days on FictionAlley's forums way too well. I can only imagine the thread titles for the shipping and anti-shipping forums...
Why did the Red Pen files get dusty in the first place? Were you swamped with hings to do IRL?
Also, LotR and PotC, my main two fandoms, have quieted down quite a bit. Though, with the resurgence of LotR on the Hobbit movie's release, there's still plenty of new material. And they're working on Pirates 5, so you never know.
Araeph
You've got to be kidding me. Wasn't the fourth one horrible enough? (I mean, I couldn't get through it! The half that I did get through read like a cliched fanfic that had been acted out for no apparent reason! I've been told the mermaids were good, but as I couldn't make it far enough into the movie to meet them, I can't add to that opinion--but the first half of the film? Was dreadful.) Why make a fifth? Who's even going to be in it?
...seriously, why would anyone ever make a fifth PotC movie? I can't get my head around it.
(Also, hi! How've you been? It's been a while since I've seen you around the Board...)
~DF
PS: Pirates 5 for the love of--why--what--why would you even--/boggles/
The reason being, that even though critics hated Pirates 4...it still grossed a billion dollars worldwide.
Yeah.
I mean, uh, obviously it's because part of the story still hasn't been told yet! :P
(I've been well--busy, but well, with the exception of a cold that's been bothering me since Tuesday. And you?)
Araeph
How awful. I hope it won't be as bad as the fourth...or worse...
On the other hand, you never know--it might surprise us all and turn out to be excellent! /puts on optimistic face/ You never know...or at least, we can hope...
...as long as the next part of the story isn't Capt. Jack Sparrow's long lost daughter with sparkly hair and eyes who hails from 21st century America and is a better piratate than everyone else, I think I can bear it. I think.
(Ah, colds. Bane of everyone's existence, more or less. Drink lots of tea, and stay warm!)
(I've also been well, but very much in a busy state as well--I spent the weekend in a different, if nearby, city, and then came back and went swimming the next day with my little cousin who's visiting from Israel. And then there's homework. And my new volunteer job, at a school, with fourth graders. So I've been busy, and am now exhausted, but all is well :))
~DF
With whom all the female characters want to bump uglies. Also, he's a ninja and possibly from space. Or is Jesus.
Oh, who am I kidding, it'll be more Johnny Depp Depping his way around a slightly damp set as Deppishly as he possibly can because who needs a story when you've got quirky?
"I ship friendship."
Truer words have never been spoken before. Allow me to high-five you through the internet!
*Slaps monitor*
Friendships are far more literarily important than Romances anyway.
(Literarily is not a word, you say? Wrong! I have made it so.)
Hello, I am a newbie here to say hi, wish you well, and eagerly await the return of the Red Pen Files.