Re: Who’s to blame, the students or the professor, the readers or the writer.

[Milz]

No: HPFGUIDX 134375

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "brwneil" <BrwNeil at a...> wrote:

>You must also sell this relationship to your readers.
>
Admittedly, she did a better job of "selling" and developing this
relationship than Tolkien did of the Arwen/Aragorn relationship in the
books (not the movie)
 
> There is no way I can produce actual numbers to support what I'm 
> about to say, but I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that at 
> the end of OotP probably at least 30% of HP readers still supported a 
> H/Hr pairing.  Yes, we've all read by now that these people were 
> delusional. Despite all the clues, all the anvils, all the comments 
> by JKR these people still felt that the final pairing would be Harry 
> and Hermione.  I guess they just couldn't see the forest for the 
> tress.
> 

I wouldn't call them "delusional", per se. I think that the H-Hr
shippers deeply identified with either Harry and/or Hermione. In doing
so they took that position of "Okay, who in the book would be 'my'
perfect mate?" That's why Ron and Ginny suffer so much in the Shipping
Reports. Because these people can't imagine themselves with Ron or
Ginny, so Harry or Hermione can't see anything in them either.

> That left 70% of the readers saying that the series would end in a 
> Ron/ Hermione relation.   Now these were the smart people, the ones 
> that could read the clues and noticed the anvils hitting them on the 
> head.  Of course, not all these people actually supported R/Hr as a 
> ship, but they had seen the clues and were not in denial.  Let's be 
> generous and say that ¾ of these people actually wanted an R/Hr 
> relationship to take place.  That would mean 52% of readers saw and 
> supported an R/Hr relationship.  18% saw it, but weren't happy with 
> it.  And, of course there were the delusional 30% that saw H/Hr.
> 

Smart, no. I think that these are the people who read the books with
an open mind. In other words, they weren't so prejudiced by their own
ideas, they were able to see those "anvil-sized hints". This is really
a common human characteristic, by the way. I've seen people "hate" a
particular food, not because they tasted it once and didn't like it,
but due to their preconceived ideas that they wouldn't like it anyway
or they wouldn't like it because it's a too green or has too many
vegetables or something like that or worse, they can't imagine
themselves eating anything like that. 

What's even funnier is that Rowling actually pokes fun at the Shippers
within the pages of HBP: Molly's and Ginny's attitude towards Fleur.
Neither can see what Bill sees in Fleur. Neither thinks Fleur has the
character/personality/qualities to be good enough for Bill. Neither
wants to accept Fleur and Bill's relationship as a true
love-relationship. Do Molly and Ginny sound familiar?  

I'm not a shipper, nor do I have an interest in the Shipping
Forecasts. imo, Rowling had to include teen romance in order to make
her characters more like real teens. The real plot is Good v. Evil
(Harry v. Voldemort)

So should the H-HR Shippers feel bad or stupid? Of course not! 
 
Frankly, I would love Harry to kill Voldemort and then die himself in
book 7. But if she chooses him to live to a ripe old age taking care
of his and Ginny's 7 children, so be it. It's her books. It's her
story---I'm along for the ride.

Milz (who doesn't like Ships of any sort)