SHIP Subjects

[pippin_999 <foxmoth@qnet.com>]

No: HPFGUIDX 50830

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Penny Linsenmayer 
<pennylin at s...> wrote:
> 
> With respect to my assertion that JKR may not have heard the 
term "cute meet" before or intended her PS/SS interactions to 
work that way, Pippin said:
> 
> <<<<<We'd have to suppose she's never read The Taming of 
the  Shrew, either. Hollywood did not invent the romantic comedy. 
> Elizabethan dramatists did, in 1590 or so.>>>>>>>>
> 
> That still doesn't address the issue of her *intent.*  I still say 
she may not have intended the effect that you see.  <<<

Maybe not. But romantic comedies are as formally constructed 
as murder mysteries. Whether a particular reader happens to be 
familiar with the art of story construction or not, it's reasonable
for a critic to expect the writer to understand the form they are 
using.

 Book One opens with a murder, and we, as readers, expect that 
any saga that opens with a murder will concern  the quest to see 
justice done.  In the same way, if a girl happens across a boy's 
path while searching for a toad (instead of a handsome prince 
<g>), it's reasonable to expect some comic/romantic involvement 
later.

What strikes a chord with the readers and makes them want the 
characters to connect is the sense that they are emotionally 
incomplete when apart. This sense is created for both Ginny and 
Hermione in their opening scenes with Harry and Ron. It isn't 
created for any of the other female characters. In fact that's one of 
the biggest complaints people have about the books.  

 Having created this incompleteness, the story should resolve it, 
or it will always seem unfinished.  Shakespeare tried for the 
realistic "let's all wait to be sure of our feelings" ending in
"Love's Labour's Lost", one of his earliest plays, but the general 
feeling is, it didn't work. The ending is not satisfying.  And if
*he* couldn't pull it off... 

Real lives are full of  threads that don't go anywhere, abandoned 
themes, and fizzled romances--which is why most of us can't 
turn our lives into successful stories without a lot of work. Story 
construction aside, the shipping argument seems to be one of 
"two sides of the same coin" versus "opposites attract." Since 
the theme of the books is that "differences of habit and language 
are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are 
united" I would think R/H  more in keeping with that theme than 
H/H. But we'll see.

We already know that Harry, Hermione and Ron are capable of 
more than ordinary loyalty and devotion. They were capable of 
being heroes at eleven, why shouldn't they be capable of 
marriage at twenty?


Pippin
who is romantic enough to think that if the people are right for 
each other, they can agree to wait faithfully till the time and the 
place are right too.