Hey there. I'm the Mad Maudlin mentioned in the article,
Cool!
You compare Hermione to Ron, but you know, even Ron has ongoing character drama that carries over from book to book--his frustration with his family and his feelings of inadequacy.
Absolutely. I was having a hard time really articulating the difference but I think it's there. Like...Hermione's conficts that run from book to book I suppose come down to Ron himself if you assume she's liked him for a while. But that's basically a case of her wanting something--the same thing--and just working on getting it. While Ron, meanwhile, has this character vulnerability that makes him do unexpected things or get emotionally wonky and need to prove things to himself or lash out at other people. Hermione lashes out with Ron when she's jealous about Lavender, for instance, but it's just specific to that incident. She's angry because she wants to be with Ron and she's letting him know it.
Even Ron's development with Lavender is more character driven for Ron. If he did feel inexperienced or that he needed to prove something, it's still believable that he got himself entangled with this other girl for those personal needs. Where as Viktor/Hermione, from what we see, is more Hermione just juggling another thing well. She's asked to the ball, she dresses up nicely, Viktor likes her, and she handles that while still obviously mostly concerned with Harry. When Ginny announced that Hermione had snogged Viktor, it didn't make their relationships seem any more emotional to me. And where Ron (and Harry) both fumble through the situations they get themselves into with Cho and Lavender, Viktor just stops being mentioned in HBP in terms of Hermione. She didn't seem to be dating him in OotP, it just seemed like he liked her and she continued to correspond with him.
Heh--I didn't know I had that much to say on that.
One thing I did mention to Ms. Traister, but which she apparently felt no need to include in the article, was that I relate much better to some female characters outside of HP--the women of Firefly, for instance, and Teyla on Stargate: Atlantis. They spark for me, probably because they are much less self-contained and more integrated into the plot.
Hmmm. "Interesting" that wasn't included because by not including it she sort of implied something about your relating to women characters that wasn't true...
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Date: 2007-06-03 02:16 pm (UTC)Cool!
You compare Hermione to Ron, but you know, even Ron has ongoing character drama that carries over from book to book--his frustration with his family and his feelings of inadequacy.
Absolutely. I was having a hard time really articulating the difference but I think it's there. Like...Hermione's conficts that run from book to book I suppose come down to Ron himself if you assume she's liked him for a while. But that's basically a case of her wanting something--the same thing--and just working on getting it. While Ron, meanwhile, has this character vulnerability that makes him do unexpected things or get emotionally wonky and need to prove things to himself or lash out at other people. Hermione lashes out with Ron when she's jealous about Lavender, for instance, but it's just specific to that incident. She's angry because she wants to be with Ron and she's letting him know it.
Even Ron's development with Lavender is more character driven for Ron. If he did feel inexperienced or that he needed to prove something, it's still believable that he got himself entangled with this other girl for those personal needs. Where as Viktor/Hermione, from what we see, is more Hermione just juggling another thing well. She's asked to the ball, she dresses up nicely, Viktor likes her, and she handles that while still obviously mostly concerned with Harry. When Ginny announced that Hermione had snogged Viktor, it didn't make their relationships seem any more emotional to me. And where Ron (and Harry) both fumble through the situations they get themselves into with Cho and Lavender, Viktor just stops being mentioned in HBP in terms of Hermione. She didn't seem to be dating him in OotP, it just seemed like he liked her and she continued to correspond with him.
Heh--I didn't know I had that much to say on that.
One thing I did mention to Ms. Traister, but which she apparently felt no need to include in the article, was that I relate much better to some female characters outside of HP--the women of Firefly, for instance, and Teyla on Stargate: Atlantis. They spark for me, probably because they are much less self-contained and more integrated into the plot.
Hmmm. "Interesting" that wasn't included because by not including it she sort of implied something about your relating to women characters that wasn't true...