Whelp, CNN is reporting on it now, and The Sunday Times actually did release the article, if this turns out to be 'troll' it'll be one of the most massive trolls in recent literary history. It's looking more and more real.

Also, Mugglenet isn't happy, I am loling.

 

1. This is pointless. I don't see anyone being particularly happy about it. Ron/Hr fans will rage, H/Hr fans will be reminded of what could have been and rage. Everyone else will either ignore it or rage that their pairing is the right one.
2. The pairings are ALL stupid wish fulfillment. Ron/Hr for JKR, guys with adequacy issues and girls with no ambition or simply a thing for readheads. H/Hr for sad basement dwellers (guys) or girls with low self esteem. H/L for guys who fancy themselves as cool and broad minded or girls who feel lonely. D/Hr for idiots. H/G for jocks or groupies. It's pretty simple stuff. :fire
3. Why is there even a number three, I assume I've hurt feelings by now and most people aren't reading this.
4. I'd assume that the imprinting theory for H/G runs into some problems when you consider that Harry didn't know what his mum looked like until he was 11. Sure, he had 16(?) months to imprint on her, but even if the theory were still credible in mainstream psychology I imagine it would be significantly weakened.
5. Sad wish-fulfillment aside, all the potential ships are boring. The most potentially interesting ships are probably the Harry/Slytherin girl ships. Not in the 'Ice Princess' way, but more in a, 'Harry ends the story with Ginny, then the epilogue shows him with [Slytherin Girl] while Ron is with someone-or-other and Hermione isn't there because her only child is 3 years old, she waited to get married to further her career' Why? Because people grow up and that's not a bad thing.

PS: I usually ship H/Hr, for anyone keeping score. Why? Probably because I had a bit of a crush on (book) Hermione when I was younger. Yep. Being played in the movies by Emma Watson just as the hormones really started to kick in didn't help. :facepalm

 

1. So, shouldn't Harry be looking at girls resembling Petunia?

 

Haha this is fucking great. I don't care if it's true or not, 'cause it's grade A entertainment either way.

 

I regret their relationship too. It was terrible.

 

Well, the whole series is premised on wish fulfillment from the start. Fan pairing shipping in a story about a poor, abused, adopted boy who becomes rich (at least from his pov), gets some revenge on his abusers, and becomes the chosen one in his new life.... seems like minor wish fulfillment in comparison to canon to me. And trying to inject reality seems counter to the whole point of escapist fantasy, might as well demand a magician to put on an honest (and therefore boring) show. There is enough reality in, well, reality.

Which is what bothers me about HP ultimately. Harry didn't have to work for or toward anything the first few books, to transform himself to something better, meaner to survive, etc.

 

In the end, he's just not that kind of character. The hat wanted to put him in Slytherin, because he'd "do well" in it or whatever, but what does that even mean? Harry is not exactly cunning and is, by far, the least ambitious character in the series. He spends 7 books trying to be unnoticed, for various reasons.
On the other hand, I suppose we should be glad he's at least not the kind to abuse the level of power and leeway he's given.

 

I always found that rather funny. The hat also says he has 'a thirst to prove himself'.

The only thirst I see from him is the thirst to prove that he's not what everyone seems to believe (and even then he just bitches about it rather than actually trying to be proactive). You can say he wants to step out of his own shadow, as it were, and be admired for his own merits rather than the imagined ones. But he doesn't seem to make any attempt to actually carve his own path at all.

Is aspiring to mediocrity counted as 'ambition' now? :facepalm

 

This was enough to get us all posting in the General Discussion thread again, which is amusing, because I'm sure Rowling got exactly what she wished: honest interest.

I'm also personally enjoying just a bit of agreement from Rowling that Hermione/Ron was an awful match. Whether that means anything about who Hermione or Ron should have been with is something I'll have to see later.

Considering this thread has spawned a lot of talk about Harry/Hermione, I'd like to say that it wasn't that much better of a match in canon come book 6. Harry/Luna was sensible and cute.

Unfortunately, Harry/Luna is almost always garbage in fanon because authors can't get her particular flair down properly. Thus, Harry/Hermione ends up being the best of the ships that only include the DoM girls in fanon.

(Ginny doesn't exist. I can't think of a single character flaw, and I can't think of a single tag or trait. When she walks off screen, was she not just the only Weasley child with a vagina?)

EDIT: He had a thirst to prove himself... in book 1. Before he made the choice to go into Gryffindor, he could have been someone powerful in Slytherin. He would have been forced to put away childish things, or he would have been put down like a dog. When he chose Gryffindor, though, he gave up on that.

 

This is just JKRs way of saying that Harry and Hermione have been having an affair for 19 years. I eagerly await the fanfiction about infidelity.

 

Agreed with this.

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Uhm, hell no to that last part. I'd get rid of her as fast as I can if she's anything like my mother. Fuck that.

 

Yeah, well. Basically this is all about Rowling acknowledging the fact that the epilogue simply sucks. Or has someone managed to find any genuinely good things in it?

 

Eh, couldn't really give a shit less what she says/thinks anymore.

 

She really should have just killed Harry off in the end. It'd save us from this tripe.

 

Well that's cool, because then Ron and Ginny can have a revenge affair too, and if the contraceptives don't work, it's fine as she'll just output a typical Weasley brat.:fire

Watching the shipping wars on the other Potter boards has been hilarious the past day.

 

The worst of it for me is that the more I think about it, the more I realize I actually wouldn't like Hermione/Harry, so I can't even sort-of-but-not-really enjoy this "reveal". Bit too quasi-incestuous, in my opinion.

Sad but true. Oddly, the authors that get Luna right aren't interested in pairing fics.

 

That's because competent authors write the pairing that fits the story, and not a story that is driven by a pairing.

I don't really understand what chemistry people saw between Harry and Luna in the books. I didn't see any more than with any other female character. It is a cute sort of pairing in my books though, and one that I rather like.

 

I don't think it's possible to read all of the terrible bashing-filled infidelity fics that already exist... AND YOU WANT MORE?!! :fire

 

Only if he's more deeply troubled than we ever imagined. I suppose there's some argument to be made for some small part of him, deep down, wanting her love and approval, despite the neglect and emotional abuse (and, at the very least, the threat of physical abuse), and so he seeks it out via a surrogate...

But, no. :|

Now, if you want to talk imprinting, let's talk about the little red-haired girl who grew up on stories of Harry Potter. Hehe. She was well and truly primed for Harry before ever meeting him.

In theory, I have few problems with Harry/Ginny... The OBHWF ending was ridiculous, what with every notable 'good guy' still alive at the end of the battle marrying into the Weasley family. Who wants to bet whether part of the reason Remus and Tonks died was because karma dictated it, after the latter had the nerve to choose the former, over Charlie Weasley?

It's almost like the books exist to show the Weasleys getting everything they want. Sure, they lost one of the twins (I could see some people rather cruelly seeing him as 'a spare'), and a stray ear, but they got pretty much everything else they (read: Molly) ever wanted: The Boy Who Lived, Hermione (one of the primary heroes of the war), the supernaturally beautiful Fleur (magically-verified as the best witch the French had to offer), a financially successful store, and thousands of speckled offspring...

Molly wants Harry/Ginny, Ginny wants Harry, and Harry is the hero so he has to have some sort of 'prize' in the end. Ginny is sporty, fiery, reportedly one of the most attractive girls in the school (even by a racist Slytherin's grudging opinion), magically powerful, the only Weasley daughter for generations, supposedly has deep insight into Harry's feelings and motivations (though many fans reacted negatively to her "wouldn't be happy unless you were fighting Voldemort" line at the funeral)... aaaand is nearly entirely absent from the books.

Harry suddenly falls hard for her in the middle of the next to last book, which was unbelievably poor timing on JKR's part, given that she had just introduced Amortentia and showed it being used: Doubly bad because many fans have noted her penchant for strewing Chekhov's Guns all about the place.

Given that, is there any wonder there are so many Weasley love potion plots in the fandom?

Ginny could have been replaced with Romilda or Demelza and it would have been nearly as meaningful... except that they weren't Weasleys.

There's no reason H/G couldn't have been a great and well-received pairing, if only Ginny had been a character in the books... and Harry interacted with her more than twice... and had a single thought about her before his sudden interest in her, during his last year in the castle.

lol
I was reading some of the comments from the first article, and every once in a while someone pops up to say something along the lines of, "Who cares? Everyone knows D/HR is the OTP."

Yes, I suppose if you're the type who thinks a smart, driven, ambitious girl would go for the guy who is racist against her kind, cruel to animals, is nasty and pompous in general, and joined a hate group... yeah, you probably do believe they'd be perfect for one another. Among his good points... Uh, while he was a vehement racist who was gleeful at the idea of muggleborns dying, he didn't have the guts to actually kill people, himself: A glowing recommendation if I ever heard one.

I think D/Hr shippers are just people who feel like they really missed out on the chance to ship Anne/Hitler-Youth-Member, when the Diary of Anne Frank was first published, since such a pairing would make just as much sense and for the same reasons.

Of course, citing Hermione's good sense may backfire, seeing as she did end up with Ron, who, while not a militant racist (just mildly bigoted, considering his casual dismissal of muggles and his love of Martin Miggs -no doubt, the minstrel show of wizarding comics), is pretty much the anti-Hermione. Zero interests in common, where she works hard for lofty goals he wants to outshine his brothers without working at it, ravenous hunger for learning versus a near total absence of intellectual curiosity... I could go on. Everyone could.

Hermione has no interest in what Ron likes, while Ron actively belittles Hermione's interests and implies she's 'mad' for having them.

I won't say Harry and Hermione are perfect together and absolutely belong together. I won't say Ginny, Hermione, or even Ron are bad people. But, I will say that Ginny would have been better received if she hadn't come from nowhere (and transparently for JKR's seeming motive to fulfill every Weasley wish), and I flat out think Hermione and Ron would be bad for each other, and that what we see of them in the books bears this out.

Good with other people? Probably. For each other? No.

I had to quit reading the comments on the aforementioned article, though, because if I saw one more person justify R/Hr with, "Opposites attract!" as though that's some kind of scientific constant, rather than an empty saying with less weight than even your average superstition, it would have had an undesirable effect on my blood pressure.

People, please quit saying shit just because you've heard other people say it, and with just as little reason, because you don't have reasons or evidence of your own.
Unless you are, in fact, a parrot, quit parroting shit.

Supposed "opposites" probably attract just as often as they repel, but the real test is whether opposites can Maintain. I've seen relationships where the people involved had no habits, hobbies, interests, or even personality in common, and they either ended, or lingered in a sort of grudging, bitter, lifelessness because the couple was either staying together 'for the children' or felt like changing the status quo at their age was just too daunting.

It is NOT a pretty picture.

It also brings up another tired and empty platitude people haul out when justifying R/Hr: "They're like an old married couple." Yes, the couple I just described above. Considering the divorce rate, odds are better than average that an 'old married couple' is actually a 'former married couple.'


People also need to quit bringing up Harry's "Like a sister" comment from the last book. A: He was trying to placate Ron, who'd proven already that he was more than willing to vanish if his nose was put far enough out of joint, and B: Toward the end of the series, JKR seemed increasingly eager to put paid to any notions of pairings that didn't mesh with her own, and the mission she was on.

A throwaway line like that was one way of saying, "This is the way it is!" without really going to much effort or taking up a lot of page space (and, we all know how JKR hates taking up any unnecessary pages establishing, justifying, or exploring relationships).

Despite the length of this post, my attitude toward the whole thing would be "meh," if it weren't for the big grin I'm wearing at the irritated cries of all those Heron shippers (especially those who call certain 'mainstream' Potter forums home).

If JKR published Harry Potter: The Alternative Pairings Edition -whether as hardbacks, paperbacks, or just E-books- the world would heap venom and flames upon it that would put basilisk venom and Fiendfyre to shame... and it would still sell like fucking hotcakes.

And, with that same grin (whether it's H/Hr or something entirely different), I would purchase my own copy of HP: Schadenfreude Edition, for the lulz. Still a better love story than Twilight.

Edit:

Hehe. Yeah, there are plenty of those, and they started appearing right after the first person read the epilogue.