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Watched Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix tonight. Still my favorite of the movies. It made me want to reread The Halfblood Prince before the 6th movie comes out this year.
As I watched this time I idly kept an eye open for shipwatch. I saw the one look Ginny gave in the Room of Requirement (oh, the dramione smut fics I've read set in that room!), but that's all really. I think it's too bad they didn't have a bit more of her in this movie, even scenes of her looking at him fondly or them being friendly in the background. I fear that the sixth movie will make the same mistake as the book, and drop the romance on us like a pink brick from sparkly heavens above instead of building to it. I hope it's not like that; it'd be nice if they improved on one of the books most annoying subplots.
While watching OotP, however, I had the same experience as I had reading the book: I shipped Harry and Luna. I can't help it! It's like she popped into their universe just at the right time to be a love interest! Someone who rapidly becomes drawn into the group but is odd enough that she stands out from Harry's normal circle. That's what a love interest character often is: someone who fits in with your best friends well enough but isn't the same as your best friends. And whether the book intended it or not, Cho and Luna were the only two non-Trio females that Harry spent any significant time with in this book/film. One can't help but make parallels. Lots of parallels. Presumably Harry hung out with Ginny plenty as well since he's so close to their family, but we never see it. No screentime! These inconsistencies just make me gnash my teeth.
It's the same problem I have with Avatar and K/Z pairing, only for HP it's worse. Because with K/Z I could always understand that as clear as it is why they're shippable, there were also enough plot reasons to reasonably interfere with anything in-series, and Zuko did have an on-off girlfriend, so I understood why they weren't for other viewers. For Luna and Harry, in the course of the fifth and sixth books, none of that is evident. There's no betrayals or warring nations or anything to say they can't hook up, and they clearly got along (if anything, even moreso in the movie...I loved her barefoot in the forest). The same could be said of Ginny, except that Harry and Ginny have very little screentime together in the until halfway through book 6, whereas Harry and Luna actually seem to interact. And then when I see how his romance with Ginny was eventually written...it feels so arbitrary.
I still want to grab JKR by the shoulders, shake her hard, and say "Look, you can't play with your audience this way! Relationships are not like murder mysteries. The point isn't to be surprised at the twist ending, the point is for everything to fit together and the relationship to feelgenuine to those characters involved."
Anyway, it's an old complaint. It seems I still can't watch OotP without having the uncomfortable feeling that maybe something's wrong if the ship that seems so evident to me in the character-plot positioning, the themes, the camera's eye POV, and the acting isn't the relationship that's supposed to be the hero's true romantic love. Half my brain watches in amazement and says "Seriously? SERIOUSLY?" even still. Ah, well! Perhaps the HBP movie will fix it for me and sell the H/G relationship as something sweet.
As I watched this time I idly kept an eye open for shipwatch. I saw the one look Ginny gave in the Room of Requirement (oh, the dramione smut fics I've read set in that room!), but that's all really. I think it's too bad they didn't have a bit more of her in this movie, even scenes of her looking at him fondly or them being friendly in the background. I fear that the sixth movie will make the same mistake as the book, and drop the romance on us like a pink brick from sparkly heavens above instead of building to it. I hope it's not like that; it'd be nice if they improved on one of the books most annoying subplots.
While watching OotP, however, I had the same experience as I had reading the book: I shipped Harry and Luna. I can't help it! It's like she popped into their universe just at the right time to be a love interest! Someone who rapidly becomes drawn into the group but is odd enough that she stands out from Harry's normal circle. That's what a love interest character often is: someone who fits in with your best friends well enough but isn't the same as your best friends. And whether the book intended it or not, Cho and Luna were the only two non-Trio females that Harry spent any significant time with in this book/film. One can't help but make parallels. Lots of parallels. Presumably Harry hung out with Ginny plenty as well since he's so close to their family, but we never see it. No screentime! These inconsistencies just make me gnash my teeth.
It's the same problem I have with Avatar and K/Z pairing, only for HP it's worse. Because with K/Z I could always understand that as clear as it is why they're shippable, there were also enough plot reasons to reasonably interfere with anything in-series, and Zuko did have an on-off girlfriend, so I understood why they weren't for other viewers. For Luna and Harry, in the course of the fifth and sixth books, none of that is evident. There's no betrayals or warring nations or anything to say they can't hook up, and they clearly got along (if anything, even moreso in the movie...I loved her barefoot in the forest). The same could be said of Ginny, except that Harry and Ginny have very little screentime together in the until halfway through book 6, whereas Harry and Luna actually seem to interact. And then when I see how his romance with Ginny was eventually written...it feels so arbitrary.
I still want to grab JKR by the shoulders, shake her hard, and say "Look, you can't play with your audience this way! Relationships are not like murder mysteries. The point isn't to be surprised at the twist ending, the point is for everything to fit together and the relationship to feelgenuine to those characters involved."
Anyway, it's an old complaint. It seems I still can't watch OotP without having the uncomfortable feeling that maybe something's wrong if the ship that seems so evident to me in the character-plot positioning, the themes, the camera's eye POV, and the acting isn't the relationship that's supposed to be the hero's true romantic love. Half my brain watches in amazement and says "Seriously? SERIOUSLY?" even still. Ah, well! Perhaps the HBP movie will fix it for me and sell the H/G relationship as something sweet.
