Where did that ship come from?

[sistermagpie]

Recently I’ve read a couple of conversations that made me think about shipping. Specifically I've been thinking about the criticism: Why does s/he like her/him? As in: We don't understand why s/he likes her/him. The sudden attraction comes out of nowhere. If we don't understand that it's not realistic/it's badly written or whatever

Comments

[violaswamp]

Fiction, unlike reality, has to make sense. ;) The reader knows it's fiction, so it has to be extra-convincing for that purpose alone. Even if you're writing about purple flying unicorns, you have to set up the story so the the unicorns make sense in that universe. Same with romance, I guess.

[sistermagpie]

Absolutely. But of course, people have different ideas about what makes sense for romance. For instance, what doesn't make sense about a boy being attracted to a hot girl? How much explaining does that need? None if the reader finds the girl attractive him/herself, but maybe more if they don't!

[go_back_chief]

For instance, what doesn't make sense about a boy being attracted to a hot girl?

But it makes less sense that a boy would suddenly be attracted to a hot girl he never even thought about, previously. Unless she suddenly became hot (which is plausible, especially when it comes to teenage girls) or she said or did something, or something else happened that made him think of her in a completely new way and thus discovering she was hot. Both possibilities are plausible, but only the second one is interesting.

[sistermagpie]

But it makes less sense that a boy would suddenly be attracted to a hot girl he never even thought about, previously. Actually, I think it would make sense if they were both adolescents. I do think it's supposed to be a sort of "My, how you've grown" situation. Unfortunately we're not actually told that Ginny now has big tits, but Harry starts to find Ginny attractive around when she becomes a knockout (judging by how suddenly everybody agrees how pretty she is). There's a bit of a lag, but I assume that's supposed to be explained by Harry seeing her as Ron's little sister and so needing to catch up with his body reacting to her like she's a girl

[aasaylva]

Really, any ship needs that spark of “and then sexual attraction ARBITRARILY happened.”Very good point - and I'd like to say that's something I found annoying in quite a lot of Ginny-bashing posts (as much as I dislike the girl myself): the reasoning that it's not o.k. for a boy to fall in love with a girl because of her looks, but he should do so because of her niceness or intelligence or whatever. Intelligence is just as arbitrary a quality as beauty and in neither case does it "make" love, so to speak. It may facilitate the relationship in the long run, but so does beauty sometimes

[sistermagpie]

I think we have very similar reactions to that pairing. I didn't like it ever, although I used to like Ginny as a character just fine. When it happened I didn't like her as a character or them as a couple, but I couldn't think of any good reason he couldn't be attracted to her, suddenly or otherwise. It's not true love, but it didn't have to be

[lokifan]

Yes! This. I loved this post, actually, even though I forgot to reply the first time I saw it.

It is awkwardly written, perhaps because unlike with Cho Chang, the attraction isn't made as obvious - maybe the difference between a sixteen year old and a fourteen year old boy's desire made JK unwilling to write it clearly?

What bothers me the most about the H/G relationship is that JK can write romance - Ron/Hermione is never explained either, aside from Hermione's habit of going out with Quidditch players, and it still works. (Although I like it when fanfic has them ending up with other people.) Remus/Tonks I don't like, but it's still convincing interaction. Dumbledore/Grindelwald, even, works without being explicitly stated! Narcissa/Lucius, Molly/Arthur - different marriages but convincing ones. And the one we see from our POV character is just... a damb squib. I think perhaps it's supposed to be that when Harry begins to be attracted to her, he sort of turns to her and says 'of course', and we're meant to as well. As you said, he

[static_pixie]

I think I get what you're saying here, and it does make sense, especially when, like you said, the story isn't supposed to be about romance but the author wanted to include romance anyway. I think it's probably why I never got Harry/Hermione despite the fact that, technically, that would have made more sense. Or Harry/Luna, to be honest, though that, again, technically would have made more sense. Like, it's pretty much the cornerstone of Darcy and Elizabeth in P&P, the attraction not necessarily being explained but just being there, since Darcy and Elizabeth almost never speak to each other

[sistermagpie]

We do know a lot more about other people in RL...actually, you know? It's probably a little of the opposite too. We *don't* know as much about real people as we do about fictional ones, and we know we don't know it and that's why we just have to deal with it when they throw us a curve ball.

I'm not sure why H/Hr or H/L would make any more sense than H/G in the long run. I mean, Hermione maybe from the pov that she's the girl he chooses to spend most of his time with, but there's no reason he ought to be attracted to Luna. Ginny's the "best" girl in the school, so her being a prize for Harry kind of does make sense. Storywise, anyway. Character-wise too, I guess, if you figure that Harry always has to have what is set up as the prize only the best guy wins? Like I said above, it comes across to me ultimately like what attracts them to each other is a shared sense of satisfaction and superiority which isn't very complimentary but probably does attract people!

[atair]

Hi! this was really interesting. It made me think about why I prefer Zuko/Mai to Harry/Ginny. (I'm not anti H/G, I'm just very indifferent to it and found it somewhat awkwardly written.)

Firstly, I think it helps that we're introduced to Mai independently of Zuko, so I have a clear idea of who she is uninfluenced by the way Zuko sees her - so I like her more, feel more of a connection to her. Secondly, we're much more inside Harry's head than we are inside Zuko's; we're doing a fair amount of guesswork interpreting everything Zuko does, so it's not too disconcerting to deal with his feelings for Mai the same way. With Harry, we have more access to his thoughts and feelings, which makes not being told much about how he feels about Ginny beyond the physical attraction seem weird.

[sistermagpie]

I agree with all this. Mai's got her own story far more than Ginny--which could have backfired, I guess, if that story didn't work. For some people it doesn't. But ultimately Mai's interest in Zuko is set in a certain context that she and Zuko have in common. And also given who Zuko is anybody liking him is going to have a different affect on him than it does on Harry--where you have this set up where Harry is uncomfortable with fangirls yet somehow the girl he wants is the biggest fangirl of all. Okay, he notices her when she pretends not to be, but it's not like he's bothered by that or is elsewhere turned on by girls who are indifferent to him.

But yeah, like you say, we're inside Harry's head a lot and since his attraction seems so separate from himself (even to him!) it's hard to integrate it into the character.

[atair]

The thing that troubles me most about H/G is that I feel it could have been made to work if this kind of thing had been done - if Ginny had actually lost interest and Harry had to work for her somehow, for example. And, as someone above/below said, if there were some event that had sparked the feeling; I'd also have liked to see their relationship affect the main plotline beyond providing a convenient happy ending. In execution, H/G was made much more boring than it needed to be.

And yeah, because (after CoS) Ginny has pretty much no story, she comes across as being constructed purely for the romance, which reduces the convincingness still further. Wheras, as you said, Zuko and Mai are not perfectly matched and the relationship is pretty clumsy, and the relationship's far more realistic as a result, imo.

[sistermagpie]

Interesting--what makes you see J/L in a different light than the other romances? To me they all seem very much the same. They are, I suspect, supposed to all be "meant to be," only since this isn't a grandly romantic universe "meant to be" means you get married and have kids that go to school. As someone has said, in this series being in love makes you an asshole--so all the relationships involve people either fighting each other or fighting as a united front against other people. James and Lily included.

I think there are probably plenty of relationships people naturally see as more interesting--with Harry/Luna, for instance, I think the Luna character pushes more buttons with Harry. Ginny always makes him feel safe and okay with himself, even when she's disagreeing with him. Luna's got that icky outcast thing that scares him (though probably nobody who knows him would ever suspect how obsessed he is with that). I think it often comes down to preferring the characters behavior with one person over another person.

[sistermagpie]

Well, yeah. Harry pities here--I did mean that. But I mean, Harry's got real fears about being the loser who's picked on. So he reacts to people like Luna and Neville by being the protector, and he'll defend them to anyone who asks, but he doesn't want to be friends with them. He needs a sort of distance--though I suspect that's more JKR's way of seeing things. Harry's cool; of course he's not friends with seriously socially challenged kids. His true place is as the protector of those kids. Exactly like Ginny. She's awesome, because the perfect girl is not a weirdo. But she is the girl the weirdos love because she defends them and doesn't look down on them (unless you think seeing them as victims who need your protection from bullies is looking down on them