My SHIP is sinking...

[pippin_999]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., Katze <jdumas at k...> wrote:

> After reading various fanfics, I've found a very strange pattern 
occuris fics that end up H/Hr.  It seems that the impulse reaction 
is to pair Ron and Hermione, and Harry with either Ginny or x (I 
won't read ficswhere he's dead). What disturbs me is that Ron is 
either made to be the bad guy/bad husband, or he is killed off in 
order to make the Harry/Hermione happen. Why is this?
> 
> Knut for your thoughts?

Well, this is not really hard to understand. Draw yourself a nice 
hot bath, sprinkle in the salts and the bubbles, light a scented 
candle, slip into the soothing waters, smile as your head 
touches the bath pillow, close your eyes and think of... Ron? 

See, Ron doesn't cut it as a romantic fantasy. Draco's got exotic 
hair, an interesting pallor, great and likely ill-gotten wealth, and 
loads of attitude. Harry's got a mysterious destiny, exotic eyes, 
great wealth, and he's an orphan (sniff!)  Draco lives in 
mysterious unseen Malfoy Manor. Harry is captive to the ogrelike 
Dursleys.  Ron, the wizarding world's boy next door, lives in a 
ramshackle house where the pipes bang, there's mouths to feed 
and chores to do, people have jobs that aren't going anywhere 
and nobody  appreciates him. Not much fuel for fantasy there 
either.  And why do people write fanfic? Because they don't want 
the fantasy to end.  But Ron is the end of the story. After he wins 
Hermione there's nothing more to say except, "and they lived 
happily ever after", unless you want to write about banging pipes 
and such.

Of course I think Hermione and Ron are going to be a great 
couple, but to write about them you have to think about what it's 
really like to love somebody and not about that wonderful 
nebulous "being in love" which is the stuff of romance novels 
and bathtub fantasy.

Pippin