Canonalicious

[arabellasq]

So I was in the cab thinking about the powa of da canon to wipe out old prejudices. Namely, I was mulling over of all the times I'd seen Ron/Lavender in fanfic, and how I always turned up my nose at the very idea of it. It seemed preposterous. It had no place in the arc of the story. What did we know about Lavender, anyway? Why would Ron ever

Comments

[hildigunnur]

I agree that if three weeks ago someone would have said to me that we would see Ron/Lavender, I would have thought that preposterous at best.

But after reading HBP, I'm in awe. I feel that with Ron/Lavender JKR portrayed a teenage relationship I remember seeing over and over with my friends. The girl who thinks getting and keeping a boyfriend is the ultimate goal in life and the boy thinks that mere experience will make him a man.

It also gave me a new side to Hermione which made me love her even more as a character. Maybe because I do remember how it felt to be in her shoes.

[redwood7]

If you'd told me three weeks ago that Ron and Lavender would get together and I'd like it, I would have thought you were nuts. But you know what, it was perfect. It was exactly right. It was absolutely part of the story's arc - it was part of Ron's maturing process. Even though I'd snorted at the idea 87 million times, once JKR penned it, it simply was. Because it was canon.

Big Fat WORD. Ron was a prat, but it made the UST even more unbearable.

A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action"

We certainly got that in HBP, didn't we?

[peachespig]

And I'd even say that "What did we know about Lavender, anyway?" was precisely the reason that she was suited to play this role in the story arc.

I didn't realize it ahead of time, but after reading HBP it made sense, that Ron needed a relationship like the one with Lavender before getting together with Hermione. He's been casting a lustful glance at pretty girls he doesn't really know for years, like Fleur and Rosmerta; he needed to try that kind of shallow relationship before he could realize it wasn't what he wanted; which he did, to his credit. Lav's defining characteristics for this relationship are her availability and her irrelevantness to Ron's real life.

Now Ron won't have to wonder years down the line whether he'd rather break up with Hermione to date someone with more manageable hair and more simpering giggles; he already tried it, and moved on. JKR was right to have him go through Lav first.

[lilac_bearry]

I didn't realize it ahead of time, but after reading HBP it made sense, that Ron needed a relationship like the one with Lavender before getting together with Hermione. He's been casting a lustful glance at pretty girls he doesn't really know for years, like Fleur and Rosmerta; he needed to try that kind of shallow relationship before he could realize it wasn't what he wanted; which he did, to his credit. Lav's defining characteristics for this relationship are her availability and her irrelevantness to Ron's real life.

WORD to A and WORD to You!

[arabellasq]

He's been casting a lustful glance at pretty girls he doesn't really know for years, like Fleur and Rosmerta

Nice! Excellent point. He really did have to see what that was about, in order to let it go.

[peachespig]

Yeah, and maybe more obviously, also to feel less insecure about Hermione's apparent experience with Viktor while he had none at all.

Speaking of which, am I the only one who thought Ginny might have been referring just to Hermione getting a courteous kiss goodnight from Krum, or maybe a couple of chaste smooches walking around the lake? I can't quite picture them groping out behind the Quidditch shed, especially considering her maturity level at the time, and can't figure out when in the timeline their putative snog sessions were supposed to have happened.

[ashtur]

It is interesting that JKR has sent all 4 characters through some form of "preliminary" romance before they land with the "real" ones. I'm not sure what it says, but I suspect that it's very much intentional.

Anyway, welcome back :) and glad I was able to add you to my fl

And that, boys, is why you should never go for looks alone!

[dr_c]

Ashtur-- I had already been developing a chart to that effect, to go with an essay which I hope to finish in the foreseeable future (please work, HTML table codes!):

HarryRonHermioneGinny
The First CrushCho (PoA/GoF)Fleur?
Rosmerta?LockhartHarry
The Available OneCho (OotP)LavenderViktorMichael,
Dean
The Right OneGinnyHermioneRonHarry

Not, of course, that JKR consciously drew this up as a pattern to follow; only that it's a common path followed by kids as they grow up, and that JKR drew up the characters' lives so as to be both (1) realistic given the tendencies of teenagers in general, and (2) appropriate to the given character's personality.

I agree, of course, with peachespig's point above, that Ron needed to see that "the best looking girl who'll have you, even if she's completely horrible" (Hermione, GoF) wasn't really what he wanted. JKR said as much to Melissa and Emerson: Ron up to this point has been quite immature compared to the other two and he kind of needed to make himself worthy of Hermione. Now, that didn't mean necessarily

Re: And that, boys, is why you should never go for looks alone!

[peachespig]

the thought "Ginny Weasley is pretty" never registers in Harry's conscious mind.

Though we do get to overhear, along with Harry, as Pansy and Zabini talk in the train compartment about how "a lot of boys like her... even you think she's good-looking, don't you, Blaise, and we all know how hard you are to please!"

So clearly Ginny is in fact hawt, and Harry is surely aware of it - but I agree that his lack of emphasis on that fact is a telling change from Cho.

Re: And that, boys, is why you should never go for looks alone!

[arabellasq]

I agree that his lack of emphasis on that fact is a telling change from Cho.

So do I. Ginny's attractiveness is clear to us, which means that it must be clear to Harry, since we only know what she looks like through Harry. But he didn't dwell on it as one of her strong points. In the end, what mattered to him was that she understood him and vice versa. Though I'm sure her good looks didn't hurt. :)

Nice chart, Dr. C. I love to see that Ginny is the one whose initial venture into love is the only one that came full circle. Considering that Love is Harry's greatest advantage over Voldemort, I have to wonder if it wasn't Ginny's greatest advantage too, when fighting the Horcrux. Her "first crush" was on the "right one" and I've always considered that first crush to be true love (I don't care if she's eleven).

Even the Prophet is bound to report the truth occasionally

[dr_c]

Re. your original point, Arabella: I suspect that part of what's going on there is the annoyance of seeing a stupid theory turn out to have some truth to it. In the pre-HBP fanfic tradition, R/L had been mostly (as far as I know) a desperate attempt to dispose of an inconvient (tall red-haired) character, so as to make way for The Perfect Spiritual Love Of Harry And Hermione. There wasn't really any particular reason for thinking that it would happen (not more than for a hundred other theories that came to nothing, anyway); and so it was natural for those who had seen it argued for too many times to build up an internal resistance to it

Re: Even the Prophet is bound to report the truth occasionally

[arabellasq]

Dr. C, your subject lines are the best.

part of what's going on there is the annoyance of seeing a stupid theory turn out to have some truth to it.

But that's the thing... it didn't annoy me. I would have expected it to! But instead it just enhanced my enjoyment of both his character journey and Hermione's, and, as redwood7 put it, it "made the UST even more unbearable." In canon, R/L affected me in exactly the opposite of the way it had always done to me in fanfic. It made me grin, man.

In the pre-HBP fanfic tradition, R/L had been mostly (as far as I know) a desperate attempt to dispose of an inconvient (tall red-haired) character, so as to make way for The Perfect Spiritual Love Of Harry And Hermione.

Yeah. That's what had always bothered me about it - the fact that R/L was arbitrary; a device to Be Rid of Ron. But it was woven into the actual story in such a way that it was not at all arbitrary, and rather than getting rid of Ron, it brought him running back to Hermione, a sadder but wiser man.

Re: Even the Prophet is bound to report the truth occasionally

[jisushika81]

I agree. Especially with the last two books, I would wonder if JKR worded this sentence or that phrase the way she did in reference to something from fandom. I feel she keeps things fairly close to her original plot plans, yes, but I also feel like a lot of times she's winking at us. Like Bill/Fleur...the little one-liner in OotP made everyone that read AtE absolutely fall out! Of course, then it became canon in HBP...