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reenkashippiness seems so ridiculous when it's gets very applied. obviously, i'm biased, 'cause if -i- like a couple, i will always squee at a cute pic of them even if it's completely shallow or whatever, but. mostly, i thought the msn article was encouraging as far as it being a good movie, and it's cute thinking of dan listening to the sex pistols and emma having a babe sign on her door. that's pretty much what i remember. also, wheeeeeee, they'll be in the 4th movie..!..!!.!!
as far as the hermione-clings-to-harry (around the end with the timeturner, i guess), that's cute, but. it's like... i don't like shippiness if it's based on cuteness alone. i mean, for some people it means "well, they look good together" and like-- a lot of people look good together and could have a go at a relationship. a -lot- of people. you could maybe have a hard time with hagrid just 'cause there's not a lot to work with, cuteness-wise, but still. if you're just saying, "can we make this look cute", throw me a couple and i'll write a cute nibble of fic for them where they're pretty and 15 and clinging to each other with wet hair.
i mean, i actually don't find rupert grint -or- emma cute (though emma's getting cuter)-- like, at all. seeing them on all the r/hr pictures does nothing for me. my shippiness is obviously superior 'cause it's not based on cuteness. muwahahahaha. okay, 5-year-old!reena out of the way now...
but yah. i'm just a ridiculous romantic and we all know that, so. and sometimes i'm obsessed with things being platonic, like my inexplicable feeling about kirk/spock. like, it's all about rightness-- not what -can- happen, but what -should- happen. maybe love doesn't work like that-- maybe it "just happens", and people click or they don't, and some random combination of circumstances determines whether anything will come of it. i've never actually come to any conclusions about this and i've thought about it way too much, too.
on the shipping war panel at nimbus, they referred to it as the "war of the cliches". i thought that was cutely meta, but in a way it should've destroyed all argument right there-- because as far as which cliche you prefer-- there's no debating that. you can sort of deduce which cliche jkr prefers if you try to be objective-- and for the longest time, i have been a non-shipper, so maybe i could be. the text sort of -wants- you to see certain things, even if it doesn't succeed at convincing you. you can still tell what it's -trying to do-, most of the time.
like, in `queer as folk' (am using it 'cause i'm listening to qaf vids on repeat again, awww yeah baby)-- sure, you can ship brian/michael if you want, but you can tell where the show is going from the first (just as in the uk version, you can tell it was -not- going there). and it seems easier for me to allow the story to unfold as it wants to in my head. so i see what the story wants me to see most of the time, at least on the surface level. if i were so inclined, i could argue anything i want based on the same text, of course-- and that's where my own enjoyment of what seems to be on the surface (ron/hermione, angry!harry, pathetic!draco) comes in. i -like- how it seems, so i don't bother double-guessing it. i've never figured out -why- i always seem to like these common interpretations, but there you go.
i wouldn't say there is ron/hermione tension or any overt romantic air between them in ootp-- any more so than harry/hermione, anyway. but i guess... because i'm looking for it, i just see how the story seems set up in terms of "cliche bias". it's sort of a feeling of "rightness" because the story has its own bias and you can sort of -feel- it in most stories. sometimes you don't even realize what it is, and then at the end (in a good story), you always think, of course, of course that's how is, there were so many -signs-, and most of them probably aren't lodged in the character interaction but in the general ideals of the story-- the cliche preference you see played out in many other ways. this is a sort of extremely meta way to read it that i can't even -chart- very easily, but it seems most natural to me.
in particular, lily/james and molly/arthur clearly seem to be examples of the main cliche preference. i guess you could say that draco will never get a break in canon because the text itself seems to dislike him, have a bias against him. harry's pov being the problem isn't the issue, because it will -remain- the problem-- no matter what, emotions seem to remain stable in some way even if their valence changes. you could tell that ron & hermione and lily & james just need a push-- they're waiting for the opportunity, their relationship isn't a process of -growth- but rather -mutation-, transformation. these pairs are volatile-- if it's quiet now, it doesn't mean it'll be quiet later. if i hate you now, doesn't mean i'll hate you later. that's the preferred cliche. harry and hermione are in a stable relationship of predictable growth, where there is little volatility-- the metaphor (cliche) is one of growth, of continuous and evolving support. as harry's needs change and he needs girl advice, hermione's capabilities grow and she -gives- him girl advice.
on the other and, hermione doesn't seem to care (on the surface, anyway), what -ron's- needs are. she doesn't feel the need to support ron in the same way-- she realizes she can't really affect him very deeply by talking-- he'll just tune her out like he tunes out his mother, whereas harry -wants- an intelligent caring semi-parental voice since he's never had it. i can see lily here is what i'm saying. whereas hermione's concern for harry is almost parental in ways-- or at least protective-- hermione's relationship with ron is much more adversarial and flippant and selfish, more like between the married couples in the books. yes, selfish. she has her agenda, with ron. she wants ron to be like -she- wants him to be-- she doesn't want to be understanding and empathic, like she clearly -can- be, with harry. i don't think she can't understand ron as well as harry, in terms of his awkward gestures and gifts and gruff compliments-- she doesn't seem to want to.
but this doesn't even matter to me, because i don't prefer r/hr because jkr prefers it since i read fanon first. basically, i prefer the r/hr cliche-- the basic victorian bodice-ripper romance standby of sometimes prim, sensibly uncaring female who spurns the advances of the reluctant, goofy, enthusiastically yet often ineffectually courting male. he's clueless, she's not-- she's cold, he's hot-- he's vulnerable and angry and sometimes acts like a jerk-- she's rather righteous and moral and keeps her emotions beyond some wall. this applies to... let's see.... a number of my favorite ships: buffy/spike, lily/james, brian/justin (woo! justin's the girl, ehehehe), tsukushi/tsukasa from `hana yori dango', even fanon!h/d, and darcy/elizabeth at that.
so yeah. harry/hermione is from another romantic tradition entirely, and i would say it's not -romantic- (as in, not an ideal of the traditional Romantics), per se. it's more like mulder/scully (which is a ship that i adore) or qui-gon/obi-wan-- partners as lovers, basically. or maybe even (my idea of) duncan/methos, though i'm not sure about that. duncan/methos is a strange ship, cliche-wise. since i could just as easily say methos/duncan. it's one of the most equally balanced ships i can possibly think of, in terms of initiative and temperament. while they're complementary (as harry and hermione are also complementary), it's a partnership that is good for working together, that gives itself to mutual achievement. they're more together than they were apart, because there's this system of checks and balances-- one can catch the mistakes of the other.
i think i've seen a psychological typing system somewhere which tries to tell you what kind of partnership you're suited for with some other person that had taken the test. there are different sort of balances, obviously, different sorts of complementary systems-- it's like... different people fit together in different ways, even though they're still a perfect fit in some sense. often enough, the person you're wonderful in bed with would be a disaster to work with, and vice versa. very very rarely, it works both ways-- as in katherine hepburn and spencer tracey, for instance (although note, neither of them wanted to get married and solidify the traditional romantic aspect of things), or scully & mulder. but what you have there is a sort of reined in volatility-- there's all the tension of a romantic pairing, but it's working for the benefit of the working relationship because the work can somehow use the tension-- most clearly true in acting. with scully and mulder, they were always suppressing their romantic tension while they worked together because a romantic attachment would've been a weakness while friendship strengthened them, and it was merely an energy between them that gave them a wider range of communicative skills and a more unique closeness which probably protected them.
i think it's possible to make it so that harry & draco have a good -working- relationship since they'd bring such different approaches to the table, but you'd have to can the sexual and/or emotional aspect for that to happen (and this is the only hope i -have- for canon), 'cause the sex would give each of them too much power over the other, increase the frequency and intensity of the misunderstandings between them. just as it's -possible- to see a romantic goal to harry & hermione's relationship, but you risk their stable friendship, the same "hermione as harry's rock" aspect that some people are so enamoured of-- simply because people want someone who understands them at some time in their lives, someone who'd be easy, who wouldn't require much effort to upkeep a relationship with. so often people say-- well, ron/hermione (or harry/draco, or spike/buffy, or brian/justin) may happen, but it would never last, because they're too volatile, they don't have enough in common, they aren't sensitive to each other's needs like "true friends" turned lovers would be.
any romantic relationship, friends-to-lovers or adversaries-to-lovers or anything else, has obvious pitfalls and dangers, of course. it is once again, up to personal preference and temperament, what sort of thing you like to see and you want for yourself. in the hp books, it seems clear where the bias is, but that's just me, and like i said, it doesn't matter-- my bias is clearly smack in the i-hate-you-i-love-you camp most of the time-- i grew up on it, and it has the fairy-tale thing that i can never get over. i will always swoon for the feisty heroine rebuffing the gormless hero, showing him a thing or two, landing him on his ass. with boy-boy relationships, it gets even more interesting, 'cause this fighting would often go two ways-- so they're both the heroine and the hero, which appeals to my gender-role bending instincts. i also have a high amount of love for pure friendship and the depths of sibling love (which i never actually experienced, being an only child, and most often a friendless and antisocial one, at that).
okay, i'll shut up now~:) i keep wanting to actually type up my magic-in-the-hp-books entry and getting distracted by stupid things like fluff-fics and fandom stuff. but, no more! magic coming up soonish sometime~~~
as far as the hermione-clings-to-harry (around the end with the timeturner, i guess), that's cute, but. it's like... i don't like shippiness if it's based on cuteness alone. i mean, for some people it means "well, they look good together" and like-- a lot of people look good together and could have a go at a relationship. a -lot- of people. you could maybe have a hard time with hagrid just 'cause there's not a lot to work with, cuteness-wise, but still. if you're just saying, "can we make this look cute", throw me a couple and i'll write a cute nibble of fic for them where they're pretty and 15 and clinging to each other with wet hair.
i mean, i actually don't find rupert grint -or- emma cute (though emma's getting cuter)-- like, at all. seeing them on all the r/hr pictures does nothing for me. my shippiness is obviously superior 'cause it's not based on cuteness. muwahahahaha. okay, 5-year-old!reena out of the way now...
but yah. i'm just a ridiculous romantic and we all know that, so. and sometimes i'm obsessed with things being platonic, like my inexplicable feeling about kirk/spock. like, it's all about rightness-- not what -can- happen, but what -should- happen. maybe love doesn't work like that-- maybe it "just happens", and people click or they don't, and some random combination of circumstances determines whether anything will come of it. i've never actually come to any conclusions about this and i've thought about it way too much, too.
on the shipping war panel at nimbus, they referred to it as the "war of the cliches". i thought that was cutely meta, but in a way it should've destroyed all argument right there-- because as far as which cliche you prefer-- there's no debating that. you can sort of deduce which cliche jkr prefers if you try to be objective-- and for the longest time, i have been a non-shipper, so maybe i could be. the text sort of -wants- you to see certain things, even if it doesn't succeed at convincing you. you can still tell what it's -trying to do-, most of the time.
like, in `queer as folk' (am using it 'cause i'm listening to qaf vids on repeat again, awww yeah baby)-- sure, you can ship brian/michael if you want, but you can tell where the show is going from the first (just as in the uk version, you can tell it was -not- going there). and it seems easier for me to allow the story to unfold as it wants to in my head. so i see what the story wants me to see most of the time, at least on the surface level. if i were so inclined, i could argue anything i want based on the same text, of course-- and that's where my own enjoyment of what seems to be on the surface (ron/hermione, angry!harry, pathetic!draco) comes in. i -like- how it seems, so i don't bother double-guessing it. i've never figured out -why- i always seem to like these common interpretations, but there you go.
i wouldn't say there is ron/hermione tension or any overt romantic air between them in ootp-- any more so than harry/hermione, anyway. but i guess... because i'm looking for it, i just see how the story seems set up in terms of "cliche bias". it's sort of a feeling of "rightness" because the story has its own bias and you can sort of -feel- it in most stories. sometimes you don't even realize what it is, and then at the end (in a good story), you always think, of course, of course that's how is, there were so many -signs-, and most of them probably aren't lodged in the character interaction but in the general ideals of the story-- the cliche preference you see played out in many other ways. this is a sort of extremely meta way to read it that i can't even -chart- very easily, but it seems most natural to me.
in particular, lily/james and molly/arthur clearly seem to be examples of the main cliche preference. i guess you could say that draco will never get a break in canon because the text itself seems to dislike him, have a bias against him. harry's pov being the problem isn't the issue, because it will -remain- the problem-- no matter what, emotions seem to remain stable in some way even if their valence changes. you could tell that ron & hermione and lily & james just need a push-- they're waiting for the opportunity, their relationship isn't a process of -growth- but rather -mutation-, transformation. these pairs are volatile-- if it's quiet now, it doesn't mean it'll be quiet later. if i hate you now, doesn't mean i'll hate you later. that's the preferred cliche. harry and hermione are in a stable relationship of predictable growth, where there is little volatility-- the metaphor (cliche) is one of growth, of continuous and evolving support. as harry's needs change and he needs girl advice, hermione's capabilities grow and she -gives- him girl advice.
on the other and, hermione doesn't seem to care (on the surface, anyway), what -ron's- needs are. she doesn't feel the need to support ron in the same way-- she realizes she can't really affect him very deeply by talking-- he'll just tune her out like he tunes out his mother, whereas harry -wants- an intelligent caring semi-parental voice since he's never had it. i can see lily here is what i'm saying. whereas hermione's concern for harry is almost parental in ways-- or at least protective-- hermione's relationship with ron is much more adversarial and flippant and selfish, more like between the married couples in the books. yes, selfish. she has her agenda, with ron. she wants ron to be like -she- wants him to be-- she doesn't want to be understanding and empathic, like she clearly -can- be, with harry. i don't think she can't understand ron as well as harry, in terms of his awkward gestures and gifts and gruff compliments-- she doesn't seem to want to.
but this doesn't even matter to me, because i don't prefer r/hr because jkr prefers it since i read fanon first. basically, i prefer the r/hr cliche-- the basic victorian bodice-ripper romance standby of sometimes prim, sensibly uncaring female who spurns the advances of the reluctant, goofy, enthusiastically yet often ineffectually courting male. he's clueless, she's not-- she's cold, he's hot-- he's vulnerable and angry and sometimes acts like a jerk-- she's rather righteous and moral and keeps her emotions beyond some wall. this applies to... let's see.... a number of my favorite ships: buffy/spike, lily/james, brian/justin (woo! justin's the girl, ehehehe), tsukushi/tsukasa from `hana yori dango', even fanon!h/d, and darcy/elizabeth at that.
so yeah. harry/hermione is from another romantic tradition entirely, and i would say it's not -romantic- (as in, not an ideal of the traditional Romantics), per se. it's more like mulder/scully (which is a ship that i adore) or qui-gon/obi-wan-- partners as lovers, basically. or maybe even (my idea of) duncan/methos, though i'm not sure about that. duncan/methos is a strange ship, cliche-wise. since i could just as easily say methos/duncan. it's one of the most equally balanced ships i can possibly think of, in terms of initiative and temperament. while they're complementary (as harry and hermione are also complementary), it's a partnership that is good for working together, that gives itself to mutual achievement. they're more together than they were apart, because there's this system of checks and balances-- one can catch the mistakes of the other.
i think i've seen a psychological typing system somewhere which tries to tell you what kind of partnership you're suited for with some other person that had taken the test. there are different sort of balances, obviously, different sorts of complementary systems-- it's like... different people fit together in different ways, even though they're still a perfect fit in some sense. often enough, the person you're wonderful in bed with would be a disaster to work with, and vice versa. very very rarely, it works both ways-- as in katherine hepburn and spencer tracey, for instance (although note, neither of them wanted to get married and solidify the traditional romantic aspect of things), or scully & mulder. but what you have there is a sort of reined in volatility-- there's all the tension of a romantic pairing, but it's working for the benefit of the working relationship because the work can somehow use the tension-- most clearly true in acting. with scully and mulder, they were always suppressing their romantic tension while they worked together because a romantic attachment would've been a weakness while friendship strengthened them, and it was merely an energy between them that gave them a wider range of communicative skills and a more unique closeness which probably protected them.
i think it's possible to make it so that harry & draco have a good -working- relationship since they'd bring such different approaches to the table, but you'd have to can the sexual and/or emotional aspect for that to happen (and this is the only hope i -have- for canon), 'cause the sex would give each of them too much power over the other, increase the frequency and intensity of the misunderstandings between them. just as it's -possible- to see a romantic goal to harry & hermione's relationship, but you risk their stable friendship, the same "hermione as harry's rock" aspect that some people are so enamoured of-- simply because people want someone who understands them at some time in their lives, someone who'd be easy, who wouldn't require much effort to upkeep a relationship with. so often people say-- well, ron/hermione (or harry/draco, or spike/buffy, or brian/justin) may happen, but it would never last, because they're too volatile, they don't have enough in common, they aren't sensitive to each other's needs like "true friends" turned lovers would be.
any romantic relationship, friends-to-lovers or adversaries-to-lovers or anything else, has obvious pitfalls and dangers, of course. it is once again, up to personal preference and temperament, what sort of thing you like to see and you want for yourself. in the hp books, it seems clear where the bias is, but that's just me, and like i said, it doesn't matter-- my bias is clearly smack in the i-hate-you-i-love-you camp most of the time-- i grew up on it, and it has the fairy-tale thing that i can never get over. i will always swoon for the feisty heroine rebuffing the gormless hero, showing him a thing or two, landing him on his ass. with boy-boy relationships, it gets even more interesting, 'cause this fighting would often go two ways-- so they're both the heroine and the hero, which appeals to my gender-role bending instincts. i also have a high amount of love for pure friendship and the depths of sibling love (which i never actually experienced, being an only child, and most often a friendless and antisocial one, at that).
okay, i'll shut up now~:) i keep wanting to actually type up my magic-in-the-hp-books entry and getting distracted by stupid things like fluff-fics and fandom stuff. but, no more! magic coming up soonish sometime~~~
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 03:56 pm (UTC)Wow. I never thought about it before, not being all that invested in het ships.
But yes, you're completely right. This is a really convincing explanation.
*adds to memories*
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 04:39 pm (UTC)And I came to a very similar conclusion, that it mostly has to do with what we are looking for. Though I don't think it's always about what we look for romantically in our lives. When I think of people who have been my OTPs--well, like the two we share: Mulder/Scully and H/D, you're talking about two totally different things there. But maybe both of those ships deal with two contrasting things I feel in myself. Or maybe I ship those two pairings for different reasons.
I had been thinking of this before seeing the Daniel and Emma picture but I pretty much thought the same thing. I'm not as struck by Emma's looks as many people seem to be (not that I think she's homely by any means), but even so I could see that objectively it makes for a stereotypically romantic picture. That just wasn't enough to change my feeling about H/Hr at all, which is that it's not a relationship that interests me all that much. It's also not one that I see as having a sexual aspect to it at all, but I've never spent any time trying to argue that about it. That is, I don't have a good argument ready for why H & Hr. would never be interested in each other because objectively sure, they could date. I just sort of feel like yeah, they could date...but why?
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 05:10 pm (UTC)i often don't reply to your posts 'cause i just have nothing to add and probably wouldn't have written this if i saw your post first >:D
i'm so with you on the snape/harry-- maybe i'm just, i dunno, stubborn and set in my ways (which i am)-- but just 'cause something's new and shiny and -possible- doesn't mean it suddenly becomes more attractive, to me. in a way, thinking like that just seems hopelessly shallow the way people who date promiscuously seem shallow (though they may just have different fundamental natures) to people (like me) who find one or a few stable things they like and stick with them.
like-- yah, there's that sense of being satisfied with what's there. with kirk/spock, for instance, i have a deep sense of fulfillment and satisfaction with what's there and a sort of fear of changing it and shaking it up on some basal level.
with harry/draco, obviously, there's nowhere else to go but up. and also ron/hermione doesn't seem to be very satisfying where it's at, either.
i feel like the people who like snape/harry more because of a semi-slashy scene between them in ootp are -also- being led around by the text (their interest being shaped by what they perceive as canon, just like you and me), but in a different way. instead of running it through their own preferences and thinking as to whether something -essential- about these people fascinates them, they're just reacting to the -spark-, the (possible) -result- of their interaction rather than the mechanics and motivations behind it, which a romantic would be doing.
i liked your comparisons to the archetypes of earth, fire, air and water. i definitely avoid earth types in almost all pairings unless it's fire, heh. i think i tolerate hermione romantically 'cause she's an earth/air type paired with a fire/water type. it works because of the air and fire reacting and the water and earth providing some basic comfortability and friendship (man, and now i'm waaaayyy too deep in the astrology mumbo-jumbo). whereas it doesn't work with a water/earth type like harry. there isn't much reactiveness or combustability there to interest me.
hmmm. yeah, man. i wanna see more snape-and-draco but like, no one writes it without the heavy chan-or-sex element as far as i know. not that i know much. much draco does -need- snape, and snape could maybe open doors that would lead to some more harry interest. but that's the rabid shipper in me talking ^^
i couldn't stand doggett with scully or just doggett in general, most of the time. but yeah, generally i'm attracted to what the -chemistry- is, what people bring out in each other, the emotions, and it's best when there's movement and some sort of edge to it, something powerful. but the "why" and the emotional background interests some people more than others, i guess. i mean, there are people out there who like a guy with a girl 'cause he'd "make a good father" or "make her feel safe" or "would respect her like she deserves", too. geh. so as to say, people are working out their issues in one way or another, there -.-
even so, i like to think that text -predisposes- some characters to pair up more than others, and hp definitely seems to lean heavily on h/hr and r/hr in different ways. yes. i will chew my fakely objective cud triumphantly at the end of book 7, i just know it >:D
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 05:17 pm (UTC)That was a very beautiful and thought-provoking post with many good points. Now I realize why I never ship the "proper" pairing in Victorian novels, am not a fan of the goofy suitor/prim female tradition, and was rarely happy with the endings of the JA novels--other than Mansfield Park, which most people don't like because they prefer Fanny/Henry Crawford. I see it as different from love/hate (which I do like on occasion), IMO because it's not nearly so intense and kind of silly. I just don't like that style of story. It's a very Western tradition, whereas I grew up with an Asian background and learning about love stories that were really built more on a subtle friendship--the characters of Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon come to mind. Ah well. To each her own. :)
*Adds your post to memories and goes to organize thoughts in own LJ*
no subject
Date: 2003-07-27 06:05 pm (UTC)mostly i like intensity of whatever kind-- so a lack of intensity would really kill a ship for me. but on the other hand, i don't like plenty of ships that -could- maybe be intense, just because the particular dynamics don't work for me (or it's not slash, ehehehe). like, i suppose draco/ron is intense, maybe, but. too simple. plus my lack of attraction to ron, i guess, though that neither here nor there.
but thanks~:)
and i loved `crouching tiger, hidden dragon' muchly. i seem to respond to whatever dominant chemistry (the one i'm most attracted to, if there's several) that exists within any given text. i've liked friendship-based love many times-- and all sorts of other types, since i've read across a range of cultures (though mostly still western, i guess).
sometimes i just don't -like- the aesthetic-- like in jane eyre, for instance-- just because the whole deferential "i'll take care of you, my love, in your darkest hour, and redeem you with my feminine softness" thing rubs me the wrong way -.-
but the concept of the whole thing a western notion of romance is quite interesting~:)
i think in enough books (the chinese-american and japanese novels and anthologies i remember reading, anyway), the relationships are too complex to label as a "sort" of pairing. i think it's only a sort of writer that makes the two characters so easily predictable and identifiable. my favorite stories would probably we ones where there's emotional intensity but not -predictability-, necessarily.
that's part of what attracts me about slash, this stepping away from typical gender-roles and romantic ideas, though most often authors don't actually fully carry through with the ideal. but i like the potential. that's probably why even though i ship r/hr and severely prefer it to h/hr, you won't find me actually -reading- any r/hr fic ^^
no subject
Date: 2003-07-28 05:01 am (UTC)me too. because that whole partners-friendship-is-important-lover thing is boring to me. well, not always. i used to ship willow/xander (before willow/tara came along and claimed me for itself) and i love stuart/vince in qaf u.k. but, for the most part, i want the passion and the intensity and the falling in love against all odds.
i will always swoon for the feisty heroine rebuffing the gormless hero, showing him a thing or two, landing him on his ass.
see, just your description of that right there makes me swoony and long for it.
with boy-boy relationships, it gets even more interesting
that's why i like slash so much, or gay films. i find it much more interesting to watch something different: girl/boy can be lovely but nevertheless it is typical. i grew up watching that. i love the possibilities in stories of boy/boy or girl/girl. there's something terribly romantic about the struggle in it.