OK, R/T shippers, enlighten me please ...
Dec. 9th, 2005 02:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snorkackcatcherA week or so ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maple_clef posted an essay on feminism in HP fandom post-HBP. As tends to happen, many of the responses started discussing shipping matters, and in particular Remus/Tonks, and several known reasonable people (including fernwithy and the author herself) surprised me by confidently claiming that there was discernable setup for the ship in OotP.
The suggestion was that there were enough hints there in OotP for it to be a reasonable guess that it would happen, and that this interpretation was validated by the fact that the ship actually happened in HBP. Despite the fact that Remus/Tonks is a pairing I liked even before HBP, I'm not entirely convinced by this ...
Now as far as I can see, there was no direct setup whatsoever. Zero. None at all. In fact, I'd go further and say that surely there couldn't have been anything intended as direct setup in OotP -- because JKR was planning to use the romance as a red herring in the next book, and thus couldn't afford to give hints two years in advance. And that interview in which she said how amazed she was that somebody had thought of it certainly didn't sound like she expected anyone to guess based on OotP, and so perhaps was thinking that she hadn't actually given any substantial clues.
By "direct setup," incidentally, I means something like the butterflies in Harry's stomach when he first sees Cho, or Fleur gazing at Bill with interest coupled with the twins' sniggering remark about private lessons, or of course the many Ron/Hermione anvils that came crashing down. In other words, something clear cut that hints at actual romantic interest rather than simple friendship. There were even a few places where a dog (or wolf!) could have barked in the night but didn't -- e.g. the complete lack of Remus-Tonks interaction during the Department of Mysteries fight. Easily explicable if JKR was deliberately avoiding portraying them as showing more concern for each other than just friendship, a sticking point otherwise.
I'm happily prepared to concede that there was indirect setup written in -- by which I mean the fairly minimal basics of showing them interacting in a friendly manner that wasn't incompatible with a possible romance, because that had to be there if the end result was to seem at all plausible. But that sort of thing could apply to many potential pairings -- hell, Wolfstar fans can point to many more moments of that type. And if it's affectionate banter you want, Moody/Tonks has far more examples, if emotional support, step forward Remus/Molly!
Once we get into HBP, then yes there are direct setup moments -- the mention that Remus was trying to talk her round, her changed Patronus, Remus taking his time to answer Harry's question about it, etc. But because the romance is a red herring plot point they're still quite small hints, not giveaways like the Harry/Cho or Bill/Fleur moments mentioned above. My feeling is that if the intended setup in HBP is so minor, anything in OotP will have been even more so; and so even when you know the pairing happens later on, it surely doesn't mean that the OotP interactions were intended to show anything more than compatibility -- they're setup in the sense that they lay some of the groundwork, but they're not actually hints.
I'll admit that I never saw this one coming -- before HBP, I felt it was a ship that worked nicely in fanon based on the good personality fit, but for which there was no real evidence in OotP other than that, and one which had probably never crossed JKR's mind. I was wrong about the latter -- I'm still not quite sure I was wrong about the former.
So, am I just being over-picky, or am I missing something obvious here?
maple_clef posted an essay on feminism in HP fandom post-HBP. As tends to happen, many of the responses started discussing shipping matters, and in particular Remus/Tonks, and several known reasonable people (including fernwithy and the author herself) surprised me by confidently claiming that there was discernable setup for the ship in OotP.The suggestion was that there were enough hints there in OotP for it to be a reasonable guess that it would happen, and that this interpretation was validated by the fact that the ship actually happened in HBP. Despite the fact that Remus/Tonks is a pairing I liked even before HBP, I'm not entirely convinced by this ...
Now as far as I can see, there was no direct setup whatsoever. Zero. None at all. In fact, I'd go further and say that surely there couldn't have been anything intended as direct setup in OotP -- because JKR was planning to use the romance as a red herring in the next book, and thus couldn't afford to give hints two years in advance. And that interview in which she said how amazed she was that somebody had thought of it certainly didn't sound like she expected anyone to guess based on OotP, and so perhaps was thinking that she hadn't actually given any substantial clues.
By "direct setup," incidentally, I means something like the butterflies in Harry's stomach when he first sees Cho, or Fleur gazing at Bill with interest coupled with the twins' sniggering remark about private lessons, or of course the many Ron/Hermione anvils that came crashing down. In other words, something clear cut that hints at actual romantic interest rather than simple friendship. There were even a few places where a dog (or wolf!) could have barked in the night but didn't -- e.g. the complete lack of Remus-Tonks interaction during the Department of Mysteries fight. Easily explicable if JKR was deliberately avoiding portraying them as showing more concern for each other than just friendship, a sticking point otherwise.
I'm happily prepared to concede that there was indirect setup written in -- by which I mean the fairly minimal basics of showing them interacting in a friendly manner that wasn't incompatible with a possible romance, because that had to be there if the end result was to seem at all plausible. But that sort of thing could apply to many potential pairings -- hell, Wolfstar fans can point to many more moments of that type. And if it's affectionate banter you want, Moody/Tonks has far more examples, if emotional support, step forward Remus/Molly!
Once we get into HBP, then yes there are direct setup moments -- the mention that Remus was trying to talk her round, her changed Patronus, Remus taking his time to answer Harry's question about it, etc. But because the romance is a red herring plot point they're still quite small hints, not giveaways like the Harry/Cho or Bill/Fleur moments mentioned above. My feeling is that if the intended setup in HBP is so minor, anything in OotP will have been even more so; and so even when you know the pairing happens later on, it surely doesn't mean that the OotP interactions were intended to show anything more than compatibility -- they're setup in the sense that they lay some of the groundwork, but they're not actually hints.
I'll admit that I never saw this one coming -- before HBP, I felt it was a ship that worked nicely in fanon based on the good personality fit, but for which there was no real evidence in OotP other than that, and one which had probably never crossed JKR's mind. I was wrong about the latter -- I'm still not quite sure I was wrong about the former.
So, am I just being over-picky, or am I missing something obvious here?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-12-24 03:55 pm (UTC)I guess the thing is, it doesn't matter whether or not it was originally intended. I think it was--there's just a smidge too much of it for it to strike me as accidental--but whether it was or not, it's now true, and becomes retroactively true because the author has interpreted those actions through later canon to mean what it now means. To use the Sirius example, she might have just made up a name out of the blue and not thought twice about it when she wrote the flying motorcycle scene, but the character he turns out to be is still the character he was that night.