Explain to me how Harry/Hermione vs Harry/Ginny is in any way a new discussion?

This isn't even new material. World of God isn't new material. The Harry Potter series ended on the last page of book 7, and the only way we'll get more material is if she writes it. Rowling "regretting" pairing off two of her characters in an interview that nobody can even fucking cite isn't 'new material.'

 

I really need to internet more. Just found My Immortal wiki via the TvTropes link provided by mknote.

:fire WTF

How did I not know it? Mind. Blown.

Off-topic, but I had to.

EDIT: I had a sudden desire to take this 'thing', fix the grammar and make it into the crackiest fic ever. (must not. stahp typing, hands!.)

 

Let's see if I can make your day.

 

It's official, Snap and Loopin have become my favorite literary duo. And now I need to find a passable fic with a DeathEater!Lupin.

 

It's so bad, that it turned into pure gold and :awesome Why? Because there are Vampire Caveman on Mars. And you can read a book with pages made out of lasers, and words written in headless women, making godless love to dragons made out of motorcycles

Check this out

 

Soooooo

The article was finally published in full.

It's exactly what I thought it would be: JKR does a shitty job of saying there's a part of her that favors the Harry/Hermione dynamic and a part of her that favors Hermione/Ron, but her comments are isolated and used to blow up the fucking internet.

I highlighted the relevant cut if you don't want to read the whole thing.

 

So, basically she admits that the romance wasn't written realistically, but that they could make it work if they wanted to.

 

I didn't know ThirtyH nor My Immortal. Oh sweet innocence

 

Emma's attempt to do damage control after JKR gets rolling just really amuses me. Well played, Eyebrows.

 

Mmm, yeah, what I took from that is Harry/Hermione probably started fucking like wild rabbits in the tent after Ron left :awesome

And dammit, I want some interviewer ask JKR if she's ever thought of having a TV show set in the HPverse made. I would love a show about the Aurors fighting the first war against Voldemort. It could even be called The Aurors.

 

Huh. Well, I guess that's as solid as it'll get. We all knew it anyway.
So in several AUs, Harry and hermione ended up together, but in this one, she and Ron did, and were happy. That's nice, I suppose.

Everything can work, there's no "the One" she has to be with to be happy, all that's needed is effort. I'm ok with that, and that's what I choose to take away from this.

 

My take:

A writer looks back over her work and says, "Hmm, maybe it should've gone a different way."

And . . . ?

I'm not sure what the big deal is about (and yes, I have read the thread), except that she's undermined her own story a little bit. Then again, that's better than having to take to the blogs to explain the conclusion of a story to irate fans.

 

Ron and Hermione would have a terrible relationship, but that sure as heck doesn't mean Harry and his martyr complex would do better than Ron and his inferiority complex. H/R have rather distinctly different outlooks on life, which is more than can be said for H/Hr, as Harry's outlook on life seems to be "wait for Dumbledore to do something or tell me something" circa Book 6. Ron and Hermione would break up acrimoniously within months. Harry and Hermione might exist in a sort of apathetic state.

JK Rowling is not a very good romance writer.

 

Well as far as wanting to do what Dumbledore advised . . . there are very few people in this world who are actually self-motivated enough to feel comfortable dispensing with the counsel of people they deem to be smarter than themselves. And the people who are that independent may not be so at 17.

There's also the fact that Dumbledore only left him certain pieces of the puzzle, which Harry first had to put together himself, before being good enough to succeed the way he was supposed to to even be able to get to the part where he sees the greater scheme. And he still had to be brave enough to accept death. I know people don't like that part, but he actually had to die for Riddle to die, so it could be argued as necessary.

And whether or not that was a bad choice, even if he looks for guidance elsewhere, beyond himself, he still has a strong sense of ethics and remains a pretty principled, strong-willed person.

In that sense, Harry is like a ram. He might let his friends choose the path, but it's not like you can force him down one he doesn't like, or feels to be the wrong way. He's his own person, but he's more flexible, more adaptive, than Ron is.

Sure, these traits might be undesirable in a hero to some, but I doubt Harry would be as bad a husband as Ron. What people don't like about him as a hero, that he's something of a leaf in the wind, that he has no desire for greater personal power or stature, that he has a somewhat delayed temper, might make for a better marriage than insecurity, jealously, and a highly inflated sense of entitlement.

Slightly apathetic still seems better than openly combative.

 

Or Ron might have grown up like people usually do around that age and lost his insecurity and jealousy. Don't know where you get the highly inflated sense of entitlement.

 

If we're doing the Psychological breakdown thing: Harry and Hermione have shipwreck written all over it. Harry is emotionally and psychologically abused. His protection mechanism is escape. Unless a person goes through series counseling, the chances that he'd become "okay" after that are slim to none.

Hermione is a single child, shunned by others and thus, her character in canon seeks self-identity and approval by proving herself right/intelligent. Moreover, because of that she will push on any issue that she believes she is in the right to push on, but she breaks down and pushes away when she does not receive the emotional response she's looking for, whether it's about a broom, Ron asking her to the Yule Ball, dating, Harry's response to her breaking his wand, or her response to Ron showing back up.

That combination in a marriage equals divorce, probably before the five year mark. According to canon character, the first time they fight, he'll pull away to avoid conflict and sulk/ignore the problem. She'll push, which will only push him away. That equals rejection in her schema and she'll dive head first through all her cognitive distortions.

Someone'll say, "but that's assuming they don't mature, or grow up." No. It has nothing to do with maturity or growing up. Our cognitive distortions only become more intricate and tightly weaved, unless there is purposed work in those areas. Is there a chance they'd both grow out of those issues? Sure, but there's also a chance that you'll survive Ebola.

Ron, on the other hand, in canon, also has issues, but his issues are ones that CAN BE grown out of, or minimized by age. Growing out of a brother's/family's shadow comes about by traipsing all over the country in a war and becoming famous (according to DH he was famous, as I supposed all three were). The quick anger/saying stupid stuff often is curbed by the wisdom of age. In short, though the most immature in the books, Ron is also the most psychologically stable in the long term.

Of course, that's all based on realistic cognitive distortion schemas/cognitive therapy. Since this is fiction, if the author says it works, it works. Period. Fiction is nice that way. It's why I read it.

 

Your assumptions are ridiculous. You assume growth in Ron that simply "can't" occur in Harry and Hermione. How is it that Ron's crushing lack of self-worth that is expressed in angry bursts of suspicion and jealousy is any easier to overcome than Hermione's crushing lack of self-worth expressed in a form of intellectual narcissism and a right to champion the weak and oppressed?

More than that, I am baffled that you think Harry expresses his early issues through escape. Luna does that (in make-believe). Hermione does that (in the world of theory and conceptualization). Harry doesn't do that at all. When he's pressed by anyone, he gives in! That's his weakness. He follows, unless that person is someone he dislikes instead of loves; then you see Harry's backbone.

If Harry and Hermione got into a fight, Hermione would win because Harry wouldn't want to fight, and Hermione would think herself right. Eventually, there would be an explosion, though. Most likely Hermione, with her need to champion the weak, would feel bad for Harry, find herself to be a total bitch, and slowly change herself within a few iterations of this.

 

Before I start, I just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to bash Ron. I'm just trying to analyze his faults and explain my point of view. I also know he was wearing the Horcrux sometimes, but since I still hold Harry and Hermione accountable for their actions while they wore it, I have to do the same with Ron.

Having said that, I don't think that type of person grows out of being jealous or insecure. To grow out of those things, you have to solve the problems that cause them, namely relative incompetence and a sense of entitlement.

We know from PS that Ron wants to be Head Boy and Quidditch Captain, but that he has no intention of doing the work required for either one. He won't study hard, makes fun of those who do, and he's all too willing to give up on Quidditch when he's not immediately bawss at it. We see in GoF that he somehow believes that if he had actually entered along with Harry, that he'd have had a chance to win (besides the fact that his jealousy won't let him believe his best friend). We see that he just sort of, expects, Hermione to have ended up going to the ball with him, and he accuses her of all sorts of nice things when she tell's him she's not just there for him to fall back on when he fails (hint, hint). We see in HBP that he's willing to brutally injure the girl he supposedly likes emotionally for something she was perfectly within her rights to do . . . two years ago, totally out of insecurity (not having snogged yet) and jealousy (Viktor Krum). We see how he starts to talk about Krum when he's not around, even though he'd been a huge fan before, all because he feels as though the girl he likes has been "stolen."

He gets angry when Harry and Hermione are invited to the Slug Club, but never even tries to do anything worthy of an invitation. In DH, he offers essentially nothing, but expects Harry to have received a great plan from Dumbledore that would have allowed him to tag along and gain glory without actually having to suffer or struggle. He gets mad at Harry for not having this plan, and then leaves because he's jealous that when Harry does plan, Hermione helps.

He actually seems to be caught in a sort of vicious cycle. He's insecure because he sees the talents of those around him, and jealous of the praise and admiration they receive for that, which only makes him more insecure about his lack of notoriety, making him more envious of others' successes.

I mention an inflated sense of entitlement because, despite the aforementioned realities, he still seems to expect the same rewards, respect, and admiration from others without actually earning it, and I think that's what causes his outbursts. He's not only insecure and jealous, but angry because he feels as though he's not only lacking the things he wants, but that he should have them as well, that he's being unfairly denied the things he wants by those who succeed around him while he continues to wait for recognition that isn't coming, like it's going to fall out of the sky.

Hence, in PS, he asks if Erised shows the future, because that's what he expects. When he gets angry because Harry is chosen as champion it's because "he gets everything," which seems to imply he thinks he should get something for . . . doing nothing? When he finds out Hermione has kissed someone else, or even just danced with them, he's angry because she . . . should have been saving herself for him, or something, after all his insults? When Harry and Hermione get invited to the Slug Club, he's mad because . . . he should have been invited too? In DH, Harry's a bad guy because . . . Ron "expected [him] to have a plan"? When he leaves their camp, he wants Hermione to come with him because . . . he's more important than defeating Voldemort? He's upset when she chooses to stay with Harry instead of going with him because . . . they had a previous agreement that he was more important to her than Harry? or because she had agreed to like only him? or because they had agreed to ditch him together if it came to that?

If Ron were only jealous and insecure, he might even be okay for the most part. Jealous and insecure people aren't necessarily assholes. I say sense of entitlement because it is that in addition to the other things that makes him what he is. He expects to get what he desires simply by virtue of being himself, and when he doesn't, he gets angry and lets it exacerbate his jealousy and insecurity to that point that he accuses and rejects even the people he loves because he feels they've betrayed him by somehow diverging from the plans he had for them and himself.

Someone on the forum jokingly asked a little while ago whether anyone else tried to plan out the lives of their friends. In relation to himself, Ron certainly seems to, to some extent.

@ E.C.: I defer to your greater wall of text.

EDIT: A lot of this got ninja'd, lol.