vivithefolle:

hillnerd:

headcanonsandmore:

lytefoot:

vivithefolle:

headcanonsandmore:

alastyearonearth:

I’d pay good money for someone to explain how Harry and Ron manage to be the sole example in mainstream media of two white male leads who didn’t get shipped together by main fandom

Two possible explanations; 

• The HP fandom hate Ron for displaying human flaws and insecurities, whilst other characters (such as Harry and especially Hermione) have their flaws and bad decisions collectively ignored by the fandom
• People would prefer to ship Harry with literally anyone-else except ‘the person Harry would miss most’ Ronald Bilius Weasley

Some people also prefer to consider Harry and Ron as brothers, rather than lovers, and that interpretation is fine too!

… doesn’t mean I won’t keep on building myself a little stash of Harron fanfiction for a rainy day…

I mean, the reason I don’t ship them is because I ship Ron so hard with Hermione and it’s clear in the text Harry does too, but the biggest question is, why is it so rare in the fandom as a whole?

Compare to, say, Kirk/Spock and Luke/Han. (I am Fandom Old. These are my standard examples.)

I think there are four things that do it, honestly.

1. As @headcanonsandmore mentions, there’s a lot of irrational Ron-hate in the fandom. We can attribute some of that to the films, and also to the second point.

2. Neither of them performs traditional masculinity enough that the pairing has the right air of absurdity for slash shipping. (Compare Kirk/Spock.) Like, their relationship feels like if they had been interested in each other, we would have seen more of it. Ron especially is willing to apologize for his faults and make himself emotionally vulnerable. Given the way Ron comports himself, I really do feel like if Ron liked boys he would have kissed Harry in the forest of Dean. More generally, Harry and Ron don’t have those moments when they withdraw from emotional intimacy to prove to the audience that they’re not gay.

3. Harry ships Ronmione. Harry doesn’t want the girl, he’s happy that his two best friends are getting together. Contrast that to Luke’s reaction to Han and Leia; he only backs off because she literally is his sister.

4. Draco. Harry and Draco have a dynamic that is much easier to twist into the kind of unresolved sexual tension that Kirk and Spock have. Ordinarily shipping the two male leads is the low-hanging fruit, but the dynamic between Harry and Draco lends itself much more to easy smut than the one between Harry and Ron. Combine that with the fact that apparently more straight girls are attracted to Tom Felton than to Rupert Grint, and there we go.

Keep in mind: I’m not trying to convince anyone not to ship it. I’m trying to explain the phenomenon that so few people do.

I love all of these points, @lytefoot; you make some great conclusions here. 

I still don’t understand why more people are attracted to Tom than Rupert, though. Don’t get me wrong, Tom’s a crackin’-looking lad, but Rupert is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. But maybe that’s just personal opinion, since Rupert’s the reason I don’t consider myself 100% heterosexual anymore. 

I find that people tend to ship men together when the relationship has a hate/love aspect, or a soft/hard contrast. 

Ron and Harry are nothing but love- and both are pretty bro-tastic together- thus they aren’t very shipped.

Add in the weird Ron-hate, and weird Draco-love (or Snape-love), and ginger men not  being as sexualized-  then there ya go.

People do seem to have a hard time shipping men together if they can’t make one appear more feminine than the other.

Despite his numerous feminine qualities Ron is still a very classic teenage boy, brash, loud, blunt. He swears, he eats a lot, he’s athletic, he presents himself as a knight and protector; he’s not shown crying until the last two tomes (it’s suggested he’s crying when Ginny goes missing in CoS but no mention of the word “tears” is made).

Add to it the harmful misconception of homosexual relationships commonly known as “yaoi” where it’s basically “sweet feminine boy with strong masculine boy” and it kind of explains it, really.

Harry and Ron are both athletes but they’re playing for the same team, they’re not rivals or anything. They’re comrades-in-arms. And for some reason, people don’t think it can make for an interesting relationship.
Well, maybe you can make “interesting” plots (read: creepy, gross, paedophilic, borderline-necrophiliac) by shipping Harry and Snape, but I thought that a lasting relationship was supposed to be fulfilling and healthy?

Checking the tags on AO3, it seems that people tend to make Draco and Harry into the “soft boy” or “strong man” in equal measures, but Ron seems to often be made into the “alpha male” when he’s shipped with anyone. I’ve seen a few “submissive” Ron, but more often than not he’s made into the “dominant”.

It just shows that most HP fanfiction writers are teenage girls who fetishize gay relationships without trying to understand them beyond “boy on boy is hot”.