Fan Rant '10 #3: Ship - Ron/Hermione
[requested by marie_j_granger]
There are very few pairings, canon or non-canon, that I feel strongly about either way. Ron/Hermione falls into that large "eh" grouping I feel towards most ships. Both those looking for a huge R/Hr lovefest or bashfest will probably find themselves unsatisfied by the following.
Most of what negativity I do have towards R/Hr stems from the nasty ship wars, not the ship itself. I didn't appreciate the sentiment from certain R/Hr fans that as a H/Hr fan, my reading skills must be deficient in some way. No - I saw R/Hr just fine. I simply didn't care about it, and liked the idea of another ship better. I've been fortunate to have representatives of the sane side of R/Hr fandom on my f-list - you do your ship proud. :)
I always had a sneaking feeling R/Hr would happen in the books, and foreseeing that outcome, I was able to acclimate myself to it, even if I would never muster any enthusiasm for it. I could accept it, but I had no interest in seeing anyone but JKR write it; I'd figured that if anyone could make me like it, it was her. (I also thought this about H/G, which proved wrong, but that's a separate rant.) The results were mixed.
I've never really been drawn to the bickering genre when it comes to romances. I think the only bicker/banter ship I ever actively liked to any degree was Buffy's Xander/Cordelia, and even then you never saw me make icons or write fic for them. Even Han/Leia leaves me lukewarm (pun not intended, LOL). It's just personal taste. I seem to gravitate more towards epic, angsty, doomed ships, not ships largely meant for comic relief.
I think what keeps me from getting more invested in Ron/Hermione, aside from that general "meh" towards bickering ships, is that more often than not to me their banter reads as people who genuinely don't understand each other, less than people sublimating an attraction to each other. There's a genuine intent-to-deeply-wound in many of their interactions that I don't pick up near as much from, say, Han/Leia. I never get the impression they apologize to one another for these fights, that they just ignore them and move on - only to fall into the same fights over and over again.
Also more often than not, it seems to me the only thing they have in common is their friendship with Harry. I don't get the impression that Ron really appreciates Hermione's brains any further than they benefit him, and I don't get the impression that Hermione is charmed by Ron's consistent lack of ambition. I tend to think Hermione would get bored with Ron fairly quickly - that comes probably from my own identification with Hermione, and I just can't picture myself in a lasting relationship with someone like Ron. Nor do I think Ron would be able to long tolerate Hermione's intense concern for Harry taking up so much of her attention away from him. That is, obviously, a completely subjective matter. I was also disappointed by that "how to win chicks" book Ron used in TDH - while I suppose there is irony in that Ron was using a book to try to win Hermione, I would have appreciated it more if his attempts to woo her stemmed from a genuine maturing rather than gimmicks from a book.
But at least there is a friendship there, however baffling it is to me. And at least in DH Ron showed genuine pain and concern when Hermione was being tortured, which seems to be more than Harry felt at the idea of Ginny going through such a thing. And for whatever reason, it's hard to deny that Ron does seem to be able to get under Hermione's skin like no one else.
You'll never see me write fic centering on them, but I can at the very least tolerate them in a fic as a secondary ship to, say, Harry/Luna. In fact, I dare say that I can stand the combination of H/Lu + R/Hr more than I can stand the combination of H/Hr + R/Lu. Maybe I just don't care about ships that involve Ron? Who knows.
There are very few pairings, canon or non-canon, that I feel strongly about either way. Ron/Hermione falls into that large "eh" grouping I feel towards most ships. Both those looking for a huge R/Hr lovefest or bashfest will probably find themselves unsatisfied by the following.
Most of what negativity I do have towards R/Hr stems from the nasty ship wars, not the ship itself. I didn't appreciate the sentiment from certain R/Hr fans that as a H/Hr fan, my reading skills must be deficient in some way. No - I saw R/Hr just fine. I simply didn't care about it, and liked the idea of another ship better. I've been fortunate to have representatives of the sane side of R/Hr fandom on my f-list - you do your ship proud. :)
I always had a sneaking feeling R/Hr would happen in the books, and foreseeing that outcome, I was able to acclimate myself to it, even if I would never muster any enthusiasm for it. I could accept it, but I had no interest in seeing anyone but JKR write it; I'd figured that if anyone could make me like it, it was her. (I also thought this about H/G, which proved wrong, but that's a separate rant.) The results were mixed.
I've never really been drawn to the bickering genre when it comes to romances. I think the only bicker/banter ship I ever actively liked to any degree was Buffy's Xander/Cordelia, and even then you never saw me make icons or write fic for them. Even Han/Leia leaves me lukewarm (pun not intended, LOL). It's just personal taste. I seem to gravitate more towards epic, angsty, doomed ships, not ships largely meant for comic relief.
I think what keeps me from getting more invested in Ron/Hermione, aside from that general "meh" towards bickering ships, is that more often than not to me their banter reads as people who genuinely don't understand each other, less than people sublimating an attraction to each other. There's a genuine intent-to-deeply-wound in many of their interactions that I don't pick up near as much from, say, Han/Leia. I never get the impression they apologize to one another for these fights, that they just ignore them and move on - only to fall into the same fights over and over again.
Also more often than not, it seems to me the only thing they have in common is their friendship with Harry. I don't get the impression that Ron really appreciates Hermione's brains any further than they benefit him, and I don't get the impression that Hermione is charmed by Ron's consistent lack of ambition. I tend to think Hermione would get bored with Ron fairly quickly - that comes probably from my own identification with Hermione, and I just can't picture myself in a lasting relationship with someone like Ron. Nor do I think Ron would be able to long tolerate Hermione's intense concern for Harry taking up so much of her attention away from him. That is, obviously, a completely subjective matter. I was also disappointed by that "how to win chicks" book Ron used in TDH - while I suppose there is irony in that Ron was using a book to try to win Hermione, I would have appreciated it more if his attempts to woo her stemmed from a genuine maturing rather than gimmicks from a book.
But at least there is a friendship there, however baffling it is to me. And at least in DH Ron showed genuine pain and concern when Hermione was being tortured, which seems to be more than Harry felt at the idea of Ginny going through such a thing. And for whatever reason, it's hard to deny that Ron does seem to be able to get under Hermione's skin like no one else.
You'll never see me write fic centering on them, but I can at the very least tolerate them in a fic as a secondary ship to, say, Harry/Luna. In fact, I dare say that I can stand the combination of H/Lu + R/Hr more than I can stand the combination of H/Hr + R/Lu. Maybe I just don't care about ships that involve Ron? Who knows.