I don't post very often here but I have a question. Why is Ron so popular in the fandom? As far as I have noticed in the books, he does nothing spectacular in the series . Is it his average-like quality what endears him to a lot of fans? Is it his insecurities that people feel pity for the character?

 

He's popular because he's the affable, goofy, comic-relief best friend and he's part of the only canon ship with two main characters in it. (Probably in the opposite order.)

But honestly I don't think he's that popular, as far as the main characters go. Outside DLP he's probably third out of the trio, and while R/Hr people probably don't hate Harry a significant minority of H/Hr people absolutely hate Ron.

 

I am sure you'd have noticed that while almost every R/Hr shipper is nothing short of a Ron worshiper while H/Hr fans are more of Hermione worshipers. I am also an H/Hr fan but I don't feel the need to hate Ron. I believe the hate comes from the way Ron's character shaped up in HBP & DH especially the way he treats Hermione despite *liking* her. Add to the fact that Rowling makes some nonsensical comments in her interviews with Harry/Ginny being soul mates and R/Hr being being combative but having mutual attraction for each other.:facepalm
I feel JKR screwed up Ron's character badly.

 

A lot more people should die--or rather, the ending should be such that it is not a total victory and one is left to wonder if there was a real victory in the first place. Harry Potter is a crushing, absolute victory with insignificant losses. Bittersweet endings are the best. Why Japan has been winning forever.

 

The big problem in HP is its all about everyone else but Harry . I don't recollect a single scene where Harry ever properly introspects about his life,dreams and possible death. We view everything else about everyone else including the "greatness" of the Weasels . Anyone observed how Ron suddenly became super Ron in DH? Parseltongue???
Rowling I feel must have read those "Ron is brilliant in chess hence he must be a brilliant strategist" fics.

 

More like an unfortunate and fickle/capricious friend who was unwittingly killed in front of one or more of his friends.

But, I grant you, the idea is there.

You know... that's not hard to do, and actually a pretty decent jumping-off point for a fic.

Harry could be stuck in Umbridge's office, writing lines, and have a POV vision of Nagini killing Ron. When he regains consciousness, Umbridge is bitching at him about sleeping/feigning a fit of some sort instead of taking his punishment. He tries to leave, but she stops him. He explains his friend is dying, she calls him a liar...

In the end (whether she actually stops him from leaving, or he eventually stuns her and smashes down the door), she prevents Harry from getting to Ron/Dumbledore in time to save his friend.

Suddenly, Harry's annoyance with the ministry and its pack of corrupt obstructionist stooges is a seething hatred that only blood will quench... to say nothing of his new zero-tolerance policy regarding Death Eaters, aspiring Death Eaters, sympathizers, so-called-spies, and Voldemort.

Wham!

This gets mad bonus points for being so incidental, so reflexive.

Ron isn't a target. If he hadn't shown up, he wouldn't have gotten killed. Period/full stop. Crouch just doesn't need the added hassle, so he turns around and tags Ron with an insta-kill, takes a second to transfigure the corpse into a wad of chewed gum, then trots off to interrogate Harry.

It shows just how bad the bad guys are, by having one dust a main character, simply because his presence is inconvenient. It could have been Ron, the Prime Minister, or Morag MacDougal... doesn't matter to Crouch.

*cough* It also has the added bonus of trivializing the circumstances of Ron's death, while still being realistic. It feels bashy enough for haters, but it's still totally feasible for non-haters. *cough*

Although, you'd have to find a good reason for Dumbledore to be sitting around with his thumb up his arse. Harry went to the castle with fake!Moody because Dumbledore was dealing with the uproar around a dead Cedric appearing with Harry. If you're killing Ron instead of Cedric, you need a reason for Dumbledore to hang around the maze instead of escorting Harry back to the castle, himself, to start the interro- debriefing.

Obviously, if Ron is being killed in addition to Cedric, then there's no problem.

Having Ron actually participate in the Tournament doesn't appeal to me for a number of reasons, mainly that it precludes Harry's participation, and there's no truly compelling reason for the villains to enter him.

 

Problem with killing Ron in addition to Cedric is your basically doing the same thing twice in a row. The effect of seeing Ron killed because he was an inconvenience would be lessened if Cedric had just been killed for the exact same reason, in my opinion.

So you'd probably just want to inconvenience Dumbledore somehow and leave Cedric alive. I'd agree with not having him enter the Tournament too. I mean, this is Ron we're talking about, and I'm no hater but I doubt he'd even survive the first task. You'd also have to cover the tournament and show what happened, and that isn't really the point of the story.

To be honest, I kind of prefer Warlocke's idea with Umbridge. Really gives the story a lot of conflict between Harry and the Ministry, and it would actually make the reader really hate Umbridge, something book 5 did really well. You'd need a plot device to get Nagini a chance to off Ron though - doubt she'd be able to kill him in Hogwarts. Trip to Hogsmeade, maybe?

 

Ron, it seems, wasn't J.K.'s only target:
http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/11/02/jk-rowling-almost-killed-hagrid-too/

 

I would have actually cried if he had died.

 

And as Rowling over time continues to reveal that she basically considered to kill everyone at some point during her writing, the individual cases start to lose their importance. It will in fact be the few people that Rowling never wanted to kill, that will spur creativity amongst fanfiction writers as they try to find the most gruesome ways for them to die. Peeves will turn out the be the greatest source of originality.

Just a little prediction.

 

Is it just me, or does it sound like JK wanted to kill Ron Weasley off because she was going through a mid-life crisis?

 

If Cedric is already killed, the readers might think the worst has already passed...then WHAM! Ron dies too.
And GoF will end with Harry seeing mysterious winged horses, and an enigmatic girl telling him that it's okay, that these were Thestrals and they're real, that he was just as sane as she was.
...heck, if I didn't already have the ending and sequel planned out I would use this in my story.

On the other hand, Cedric can simply be so badly cursed he's hovering between life and death, and it takes both Pomfrey and Dumbledore to save his life, thus Dumbledore isn't immediately available.

Or some other crisis, e.g. the maze has been rigged by Fake!Moody to blow up.

 

Did anyone else first confuse the Boggart scene in OotP for a real death? Because I totally did my first read around. I was all... :tear: Then I realized Harry and Hermione would be together and that made it better. Then I picked up the book a few minutes later to realize it was just a boggart. :|

 

I didn't feel like that when I read it but it would have been foreshadowing if Rowling actually pursued it. It would have made the WW short of a few Weasleys . The only thing I have to comment about H/Hr being a fan of the potential pairing myself is one simple H/Hr scene (the one at Godric's Hollow where Hermione comforts Harry where his parents are buried) completely blows away the utter tripe that is H/G and R/Hr that we see in the books.

 

The best friend dies and makes the hero to improve his skill? People, you are thinking about DBZ not HP.
Sirius died and Harry didn't do anything. Hell, Dumbledore's death was like nothing happened.
JK was drinking too much at the time, and thought "Well, maybe I can kill Ron... Draco still exists."

 

That one scene emphasised a closeness between Harry and Hermione that was never topped at any point in the story by and two characters. When reading DH, I was rather pleased, thinking that this was the turning point, that Hermione would stop pining for Ron, Harry for Ginny, and they'd start to see each other instead.

Of course, it didn't happen. But this scene is so popular among "Harmonians" for a reason... Ron and Hermione were never shown to be this close.

Moving on...

I don't see where else besides GoF that Ron could've died. The series was at that point before GoF. From past interviews, JK has stated that Arthur was originally meant to die from Nagini, but her instead planned to kill Lupin and Tonks so that someone's parents died in the war. HBP was too late, and reserved for Dumbledore anyway.

 

Harry got friend-zoned.

One more thing; the single reason I can't see HHr as viable any more is because of that one scene in the PoA movie where they trio are standing at the circle of stones, when Buckbeak was supposedly being beheaded. Hermione latched on to Ron and then Harry basically hugs into her back like Lungs on a subway and creepifies the whole pairing from then on.

God damn movies spoiling my favourite pairings.

 

One of my main problems with DH was the fact that it ended too happily. One of the Trio should have died because, as my grandfather (a WW2 and Korean war veteran) said, war is hell.

Hermione and Ron are respectively my first and second favorite characters in the series, and if JK had killed one of them off in DH, it would have been a punch to my gut that would've actually engrossed me in the story. Instead, DH was a story that at the end left me saying, "Really? That's your grand finale?" So, as much as I love those two, killing one of them would have made DH vastly better... assuming, of course, she handled it well.

 

Who gives a damn about the movies. They sucked. Frankly Harry Potter would probably have been a lot better if JKR had said "fuck romance" and left it out entirely.

Also Ron dying would be a good impetus for Harry to move his ass. Of course Sirius and Dumbledore dying failed to make him get up and try, so maybe expecting Ron's death to do it is just as stupid...

 

Harry sat on his bed, staring at a Linkin Park CD. 'Why Ron? Why'd you have to die?

At that precise moment, a goblin flashed into his room.

"What are you doing here, Griphook?"

"I just came to tell you that Ron has left you everything."

"Oh my," Harry said, suddenly filled with even more sadness.

"Which was nothing," Griphook deadpanned. He then goblin-troll grinned and disapparated out.