(no subject)

[mamadeb]

Now, it may be just because I don't read het fic, but I do see a lot of headers and drabbles and such, so you'd think that in a fandom that pairs *everyone* and *everything*, I'd see a nearly canon pairing, but I don't. Then again, I could just be me

Why do I not see any Ginny/Dean stories? Or even stories with Ginny and Dean in the background?

I have my suspicians, of course. The good ones are that people have other pairing preferences for her, such as Harry or Draco, or Hermione or Luna. And she's not with Dean yet - she only wants to start dating him at the end of OotP and nothing's happened, so we don't have an image of her with him. After all, we don't see any stories with her and Michael Corner, either, and they dated for most of OotP. So, I'm pretty sure that most of the reasons are that people prefer her with someone else.

I just wish I could toss out another, less good reason.

No one wants to admit to being racist, and I suspect most of us have more of that than we'd care to recognize in ourselves, and I do not think it's on purpose. On the other hand, I've only realized it at all this week while writing a scene in the current WIP.

Do you think that, unconciously, people just don't want to pair our pretty, redhaired Pureblood girl with a Half-blood/Muggleborn boy from West Ham?

Or do they just prefer him with Seamus? :)

Comments

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

I wrote Ginny with Dean in my big_bang_hd fic. It was a very very background pairing but it was there as it is canon (well, depending on what HBP will bring, too, but right now it's still canon).

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Yeah.

I miss a lot of stories, so it could well just be me.

I wrote one myself, though.

[tpau]

maybe they jsut want to set him up with angelina or something

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I'd think he'd be terrified of Angelina. Also, wasn't she dating Fred?

[tpau]

was she?

[kaalee.livejournal.com]

I wrote a story that had Ginny/Dean as a relationship; it was from Seamus's perspective, him pining after Dean. It was a ginny/dean, seamus/dean story, really.

But, yeah. I just prefer him with Seamus. ♥

*waves shipper flag*

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

You know...in my head, Ron is very, very straight.

Poor guy. There's Seamus and Dean in one bed and Harry and Neville in the other. :) :) :)

[kaalee.livejournal.com]

hahahaha, when I was talking to shocolate, we were talking dean/seamus and harry/ron, saying that Neville was going to have to single handedly (so to speak) repopulate the Gryffindor world.

;)

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

I'm a huge Ginny/Dean shipper. Alas, I didn't put my money where my mouth was, and now I am waiting for new canon before I try to write anything.

Why so few Ginny/Dean stories? I have my theories. I'll post the innocuous ones and then the one I suspect might contribute, which is rather offensive.

1) Dean is a rather minor character, and by the time G/D was hinted at in canon, most Ginny fans were committed to Ginny/Harry, Ginny/Draco, Ginny/Hermione, Ginny/Neville to name the main Ginny ships.

2) The most frequent Dean ship is with Seamus, and again, I think most S/D shippers were pretty firmly entrenched.

Aaaand the not-so-innocuous:

I don't think that Dean's half-blood status has so much to do with it as, er, how can I put this nicely? Skin color and ethnic background. I hate to say this, even in this day and age, there are people who don't want to write a white girl with a black guy. :(

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

See, that last is what I'm afraid of, although I do believe that the prior shipping is probably a bigger reason.

(I can see Dean being shy about dating Ginny because she's Ron's sister and a pureblood, but it's clear Ginny isn't worried - and Ron just wants her to date Harry.)

The wizarding world, so far as I can see, doesn't worry about skin color.

And I'd forgotten about Ginny/Neville.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

I don't think the wizarding world has a problem with "interracial" relationships; after all, Fred dated Angelina, Harry dated Cho, and there's much bigger fish to fry what with Animagi, Metamorphmagi, veela, giants and so on. Ethnicity is pretty small potatoes in comparison. The biggest division appears to be between "purebloods" and "everyone else" - Muggle-borns, half-bloods, part-veela, part-giant, and so forth and so on. And this division matters only for certain purists.

On the other hand, fandom might have a problem with the Ginny/Dean racial combo. No-one I know has come right out and said it. However, I can't help but wonder.

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

Okay, this is reasonable considering how little thought I spend on het. It didn't occur to me until MamaDeb said this what a gorgeous couple Ginny and Dean must make. Of course, the Dean in my head is some fabulous male model that I'm pretty sure was on one of geoviki's icons. Has anybody ever seen any art for Ginny/Dean?

[indigocat.livejournal.com]

I seen a few stories with Ginny/Dean in the background of the story and one where I believe they are married, but I can't remember which ones.

Though I like prefer Dean with Seamus. :)

And while I prefer Neville with Draco, I have a fondness for Ginny/Neville.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

Neville/Harry!

:) Or not.

(Nice thing about slashers - we don't have ship wars.)_

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I've read a story that had Ginny/Dean as a side pairing, but don't recall it offhand. geoviki's Harry/Draco series beginning with A Thousand Beautiful Things has Hermione/Dean, though.

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't believe it's racism in this case, because while Ginny/Dean is mighty thin on the ground, so is Ginny/Seamus and (as you say) Ginny/Michael (Ginny/Neville's sligtly bigger, but then Neville is a more important character than Dean).

And I don't know about your f'list, but on mine, there's been a hell of a lot of Kingsley Shacklebolt/Everybody and their Brother

[rosehiptea.livejournal.com]

I almost never see Hermione/Victor Krum (though someone did claim it in 30_kisses. And I read quite a bit of het, though actually the only general Harry Potter list I'm on currently is femmeslash.

I don't think it's racism, but I can't prove it. All I know is that I tend to forget which characters are a different race, despite having seen the movies. (Which says more about my bad memory than anything else, but still... I really don't think it's racism. I think people just prefer other people for Ginny.)

I did once see a Harry/Ron fic which was told from Dean's viewpoint, and Dean was Ginny's boyfriend. And another Harry/Ron where Ginny married Dean and Neville (At the same time.)

[animamea.livejournal.com]

Hrm... You know, I had completely forgotten that Ginny was interested in anyone until you mentioned it. I guess I should pay more attention next time... ^_~

[latxcvi.livejournal.com]

I'm honestly not sure what explains it, because I really don't see a lot of Ginny/anybody who's not Harry, Draco or Hermione, and like you noted, despite her having dated Michael for a bulk of OotP, I don't think I've come across a Ginny/Michael story, either. Also, as you've noted, it's not like Dean doesn't get any action at all; he gets paired with Seamus a lot both as a primary pairing in stories and as a background pairing. It's possible that it's something as simple as not knowing, canonically, how *Dean* feels about Ginny. I mean, we know he likes Seamus because we're told they're best friends so it's easy to two-step to slash between them. But we don't know, do we, if Dean has any interest in Ginny?

So, I don't know. I mean, if Dean never got written about at all, despite the fact that characters like Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini, who are all of *one or two line mentions* out of five volumes, get regularly paired with people/written about, then I'd be more likely to think the race issue was at work. But Dean *does* get written. Maybe not as much as Nott or Zabini, but certainly a fair amount given that (a) we don't know a *lot* about him, and (b) he doesn't have a huge role in the books themselves. It's not like Smallville fandom, where I bet that using my fingers and toes, I could count the number of stories that prominently featured Pete in either a gen, het or slash scenario and *still* have digits left over. And Pete was a credits character for three seasons who also happened to be the lead character's *lifelong best friend*.

With Dean generally, I think it's that he's a minor character for whom a lot of people already have a preferred partner, and a preferred partner they've had in mind for him for a while now. As to Dean/Ginny specifically, I think it's probably that there's not a lot of Ginny/anybody fic when the other half is someone who's not Harry, Hermione or Draco (or Tom Riddle, for those who like to live dangerously *g*).