How do you know that? I haven't seen anything pointing towards Ron sustaining his poor work ethic.

 

That is retarded. I really can't recall him being much, if at all, lazier than any normal teenager would be.

 

I'm sure I've sad it before and I'm sure I'll say it again.
That is the whole entire point of Ron.

Ron is the 'normal' one, his interests are food, chess, quidditch and the only reading he seems to do voluntarily for the sake of reading is an offhand mention of comic books.

Ron kind of breaks a lot of the cliche super! indy! dark-but-not-evil! Harry escapist masturbatory fantasy because despite being a wizard he's still just a normal teenage boy and having magic doesn't change that.

He pisses people off by reminding them that even if magic was real and they were a wizard they wouldn't be Harry Potter.

 

Yes, Ron is pretty normal. Compared to characters who are special in any way, he is boring. That is the problem with him: I don't want to read about people who are exactly like the people I went to school with, ten years ago. Escapist fantasy should have characters who are cool.

 

No he pisses people off because they think he corrupted Harry. So in essence we're mad because he made Harry Potter think he wasn't Harry Potter. He's a terrible obstacle towards any sort of motivated Harry and a complete idiot at that. One would think that after a few years he'd notice that Harry was a magnet for crazy shit and either adapt or back off but nope, business as usual.

He (and Harry for that matter) is delusional. And he drags Harry down with him, which is his real sin.

 

Harry didn't need corrupting. He was specifically written to be that way. He has an induced Jesus-complex, but it's all psychological. In all other aspects, the protagonist was supposed to be an average guy. For the reader to identify themselves in him. Supposedly, Twilight took this to another level.

When "fixing" the protagonist in fan fiction to make him competent, Ron has to either be fixed as well or removed from position of close friend, because a smart, knowledgeable, hard working, capable protagonist would not carry this dead weight.

 

Which, unfortunately, means that Ron's for the chopping block in most ffn fics.

 

This is for stories where the divergence is after Harry enters Hogwarts. Characters have their behavior suddenly changed, maybe even totally reversed, with no explainable reason.

For example, Snape and Malfoy not only turning good, but also nice to Harry after 5th year, or suddenly ALL EVIL!

Consistency needs to be maintained.

 

Harry didn't need corrupting because he was written that way? That makes no sense at all. Writers generally give reasons why their characters are the way they are, just because JKR wanted Harry to be an everyman doesn't mean there wasn't an in-universe cause.

I'm well aware that JKR wanted him to be normal and mediocre and to show that good/love -even lazy good- would always triumph and that kids are kids no matter what. Doesn't change the fact that Ron is the nearest and most convenient explanation for Harry's unfathomable laziness.

 

What unfathomable laziness is this? At no point on canon is Harry lazy, he might not have done obscene amounts of schoolwork or study but that doesn't mean that he was lazy.

He worked as hard as anyone, for the first few years he did schoolwork alongside extracurricular activities like quidditch and defying the forces of evil. Then he did loads of preparation for the triwizard tournament, he spends weeks learning new spells that might be useful. In fifth year he ran the DA, alongside studying for exams, occlumency lessons and quidditch. Don't forget that he wanted to help the order as well but was not allowed. Sixth year he had his private lessons with Dumbledore, an ever increasing workload for school and he was quidditch captain. The in the final book he single-handedly destroyed the Dark Lord that no one else was capable of killing.

At what point of this was he lazy?

Just because he didn't kill three dark lords and five politicians every day before breakfast does most definitely not make him lazy.

 

While I appreciate you taking up for Harry/Ron/JKR/kids-in-general, to say that Harry "single-handedly destroyed the Dark Lord" is the single most retarded thing I've heard in many a year - and I've been watching GOP debates, for fuck's sake.

The entire POINT of Harry Potter is that you don't succeed alone, that insular and antisocial psychopaths cannot triumph over those who put themselves out there and ask for help and support.

Also, to say that Harry's "private lessons with Dumbledore" took up, well, ANY of his spare time is just laughable. Harry went weeks without hearing from Dumbledore, and in fact was chided by Dumbledore that he's wasted tons and tons of precious Slughorn-shmoozing time angsting over Malfoy's exploits. It's clear that Harry had some free time between pining over Ginny and obsessing over Malfoy, even *with* the added pressure of Quidditch Captain.

Seriously, HBP was the biggest bunch of filler in all the books. I'm not saying all that info wasn't crucial, but Christ, Dumbledore couldn't gone over all those memories in a long weekend and still had enough time left over for, oh, say, telling Harry WHY the Sword of Gryffindor just MIGHT be useful in the coming months.

/rant, 'cause I hate when I start ranting.

And just so we're clear, I happen to *like* Ron and feel that he's essential to keeping Harry grounded and as close to normal as possible.

 

I was using hyperbole to get my point across.

As do I, which is why I made some exaggerations in my over zealous defence. I'm just very annoyed with people blaming the Weasley family for everything that goes wrong in Harry's life. I suppose you could say it's a pet peeve of mine.

 

This is my point. Fucking quidditch cannot be considered hard work in his circumstances. For the first three years he seemed to coast by doing nothing out of the ordinary to defend himself after a threat every year, apart from the Patronus Charm.

Then comes GOF where he actually did some research into his shit. The problem is OOTP. Voldemort was fucking back, why the fuck was he worrying and bitching about quidditch when he should have been doing everything he could to defend himself. And I'm talking beyond mind defense here. And iirc there was nothing new in those DA meetings-which says something about Hogwarts education- just shit he was already good at, so absolutely no growth came from any of it.

As for HBP, Portus already covered it.And if quidditch was such a fucking timesink then he should have dumped it. And where are you getting this ever increasing workload shit from btw, I've seen no indication that Hogwarts education works that way.

Laziness, delusion or just fucking failure to prioritise, you know there's a huge problem when there's a Dark Lord out for your fucking blood in the real world and families of the people who work for him inside the castle with you and it barely seems to faze you.

 

The first three years he was faced by what should have been once in a lifetime problem. He's never going to have to fight another basilisk and frankly there's not much he could have done to prepare. After third year was the first time he realised the potential for Voldemort to come back time and again.

How was he meant to prepare with Umbridge looking for any excuse to kick him out, as someone said in OOTP, staying put is the safest thing he could have done. As for nothing coming out of the DA, he might not have learned some super powerful spells that shitpwn everyone he meets, but he did gain a small cadre of decently capable followers willing to fight for him. It might not have been a conscious plan but it sure was effective. It also gave him a chance to get in regular practice and hone his leadership skills.

He should have given up just about the only thing in his life that he enjoyed, that's just putting him on the fast track to burnout. It said several times how he needed to stay up late to finish homework, in both OOTP and HBP, it also said explicilty that as exams were approaching the teachers kept giving more work.

Meh. He was probably used to it by the end. He can only stay tense about the prospects of imminent death for so long. He was staying in what was, despite all evidence, meant to be the safest place in Britain. Considering all of Voldemort's plans seemed to come to fruition in the month of June it's not surprising that in the year between confrontations he relaxes.

 

Because he totally stayed put and didn't, y'know start a massive conspiracy to train students regardless of school and Ministry policy.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that Harry liked shit in life other than quidditch. And staying up late to finish homework is not necessarily a sign of a crushing workload but of poor prioritization skills. If you spend the period right after your last lesson playing quidditch or doing other stuff then you can bet you'll finish your homework later.

 

Harry may have been rather lazy when it comes to preparing himself to fight against the Dark Lord out to kill him, but his OWL results show that he wasn't bad in school.

 

I've always subscribed to the theory that he was pretty good at practical magic but subpar when it came to completing assignments.

 

To me this list of results shows he's scraping into the above average category, with a single subject he's particularly good at. It also tells me that if he isn't interested in a subject he puts little to no effort in. Someone who can get an O in a subject, any subject, can surely scrape an A at least in a purely theoretical subject, or a primarily theoretical subject like Divination.

 

Personally, I'm not fond of Harry's development in this area. In the first book he was described as being very interested in his text books, and he had a desire to prove himself. Somewhere along the way he decided to become mediocre and passive. It's also puzzling that as he grew older he seemed to become less mature.

 

It's interesting that Ron gets all the blame for Harry not being a proactive academic master and world-slaughtering badass, yet Hermione gets a pass.

It's not a simple push-pull sort of thing. It's not just about Ron being a negative influence on Harry's study habits, and Hermione being a positive influence. Hermione is at best a double-edged sword in that respect.

"I guess I should read this chapter, but meh. I can just nag the answers out of Hermione later."

If you take Hermione out of the equation, maybe Harry drops even further, ending up with truly mediocre to poor academic performance. Or maybe he gets tired of barely scraping by, and actually makes more of an effort on his own. We'll never know for sure.