Ron and the Trouble with Veela, and the SHIPping wars

[Anne <urbana@charter.net>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50391

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Erica <cymru1ca at y...>" 
<cymru1ca at y...> wrote:
> I thought that the Veela episode at the World Cup (Harry vs Ron's 
> ability to resist) was a foreshadowing of their respective 
reactions 
> to the Imperious Curse in Fake!Moody's DADA class.
> 
This makes sense to me too. Ron does seem to be, how shall I say 
this, highly *suggestible*, whereas Harry's mind seems to be able to 
resist a lot of external influences. I'd bet Ron could be easily 
hypnotized (hypnotism being a benign version of the Imperius Curse) 
while Harry could pretty easily resist hypnotism - unless it was a 
Dementor doing the hypnotizing... It will be interesting to see 
whether and how much Ron's suggestibility and Harry's ability to 
resist play into future plot lines (after seeing Harry resist Imperio 
in the graveyard scene, it would be hard to imagine what could force 
him to submit...) 

As for the current SHIPping wars on this list, I simultaneously enjoy 
reading them and marvel at the lengths  to which people will go to 
try to convince others of the rightness of their SHIPs. I had no 
opinion about anything SHIPpy until after POA, when I started to 
think in terms of H/Hr. [I still think in terms of H/Hr despite the 
Ron--->Hermione "clues" in GOF, but I don't plan to go through the 
books for "proof" because (as in many things) I'm just operating on 
my own gut feeling.] But as Penny mentioned, I think Harry will be 
extremely busy with world-saving for at least the next 2.5 books, so 
I don't see him hooking up with anyone seriously until near the end 
of Book 7, if then [and I don't wish to contaminate this list with 
fan fic ideas but I think many H/Hr shippers prefer that they don't 
hook up until post-Hogwarts... which does show up a lot in the fan 
fics I prefer to read]. IMO SHIPping is all a matter of 
interpretation, and I like to let the "different strokes for 
different folks" philosophy apply :-)

Anyway, the fact that we are willing to engage in these huge debates 
about who belongs with whom indicates to me that there are a lot of 
people who love the HP characters enough that we *wish* they were 
real people (hey, I'm one of them, guilty as charged). We love these 
characters as if they were real people, almost as if they were 
members of our families, and we hope they'll do what *we* think is 
best for them. It will be interesting to see if any of the characters 
end up doing things the way we've envisioned them. And now I realize 
that I really must reserve a copy of OoP...

Just my 2 sickles. YMMV of course.

Anne U
(back to lurking and proto-filking)