Real characters

[Ebony <selah_1977@yahoo.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50199

Oh, Amy.  :)

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Amy Z <lupinesque at y...>" 
<lupinesque at y...> wrote:
> Ebony's post, and more especially Eileen's follow-up trashing Ron 
> *and* Harry, made me think about how we tend to chew up characters 
if they are less than perfect.  We're like the Donner Party at this 
> point.  After two and a half years without fresh meat, we're 
reduced to cannibalism--not eating each other but munching on the 
characters we've got stashed in the hold.
> 

See, that's why I hesitated to post my essay here... it's a month 
old, and I'd wanted to begin discussion on it, but I just *knew* that 
someone would say this.  (Examines notches from ship debates past.)  
If anyone thinks this, please know that you can search the archives 
and find me critiquing Ron as early as December 2000.  So this is 
nothing new for me.  :-)  Save for all the new revelations which I've 
flagged, I've *always* read those scenes that way.  The essay was 
less me trying to justify why I ship the way I do to others as it was 
me explaining what I'm reading in detail.

Note "critiquing".  I am by no means in favor of "bashing" Ron.  I 
think I bowed and scraped enough with the disclaimers in my essay... 
I can pull out all the places where I did.

Anyway, who wants to talk about perfect characters?  It is precisely 
*and* primarily because there were things in GoF that bothered me 
that I wanted to talk about them with others and I searched online 
until I found adult fans of the series.  

> Ron isn't just a kid with a bit of a temper, a 
> sarcastic tongue, and lazy study habits; he's stupid, mean, and 
> incompetent. 

Hmm.  This isn't my view of Ron by a long shot.  

I'd say he's growing resentful, which is leading to this meanness.  I 
think he is falling behind the other two.  I do think that he's got 
some weaknesses, but then again, so do the other two.

> I do think, however, that JKR has created very nuanced characters.  

I agree.


> And yet sometimes we write about complex 
> characters the way young readers talk about Hermione:  "She's so 
> bossy," they say, and hate her, not noticing that there is a lot 
more 
> to Hermione than that and that the author unquestionably intends 
her 
> to be interesting, likeable, and admirable (if not perfect). 

Again, come on.  My essay wasn't entitled "A Complete Analysis of Ron 
Weasley in GoF", or "The Importance of Being Ron Weasley in the Harry 
Potter Series".  The essay was about why *I* have trouble reading R/H 
in GoF.  I do not see what many others see, even after trying very 
hard to see it (which I did, at least for the first 6 months after 
GoF came out).  

Why would I point out all of Ron's very good characteristics in an 
essay in which I am speaking about why I do not like the idea of him 
with Hermione, when such evidence is tangential to the topic?  Unless 
I'm supposed to worry unduly much about the finer feelings of Ron 
fans?  

Sorry.


> I know I'm echoing what many have said when I say that I love most 
of  these characters *because* they're imperfect.  

And you know what?  I write and obsess about Ron *because* in the 
first two books I loved him so much.  Perhaps it was just reader 
shock to realize that I was losing sympathy for a character that 
initially I liked better than anyone else in the series after Harry.

So my writing an essay like mine means that I don't love the 
characters?  I just don't get it.  Why would I spend that much time 
and effort on something I do not love?

Sigh.

I am sure that in OotP, we will see that, as you say, "Ron is a real 
kid, flawed and complex, which makes it possible to swallow his 
incredible courage and loyalty and believe that he could be that 
funny on such a consistent basis."  I hope he gets a subplot of his 
own that is semi-independent from Harry's, and that has nothing to do 
with the cliche of romance.

> So I laugh at subjects like "Ron and Harry are Inconsiderate 
Idiots," 
> and even write posts with such titles myself, but really, I get sad 
> when we start to devour the characters who give us such wonderful 
> images of ourselves and other real people we know.  Fortunately, a 
> truckload of food arrives in five months.


Why sad?  Just take a breather, like I do.

Then come back and enjoy the feast!

--Eb, sad that her essay was taken the wrong way