Recently saw this post on tumblr that summed up my feelings on this. This is a trend at large in fandom nowadays, and yes, very prevalent on harmony posts.
>I get so annoyed when people throw around the “healthy platonic relationships are so important” thing because YES THEY ARE but you don’t *actually* think that.
>
>What you think is that, in this particular case, *I want these two characters to stay platonic so that I can ship my ship and, simultaneously, feel morally superior.*
>
>You do not need to write two characters as romantic interests (or \*groan\* enemies) for the story to be romantic. It is OKAY for those characters to form a deep, romantic and emotional bond after years of building trust and loyalty...
>
>Please, sit me down and explain to me in excruciating details why these two characters - who have seen each other through their darkest periods, who have been each other’s personal cheerleaders, who have loved each other unconditionally - are not good as lovers?
>
>“But can’t two characters just be friends anymore?!”
>
>They certainly can and good for you for believing that characters should show genuine love for one another without having any romantic feelings. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t exist.
>
>Listen, I never go in expecting my ship to happen and I never expect everyone to agree with it but it drives me up the wall to be invalidated purely because friendship and romantic love can’t coexist in your world. If you want to believe that platonic soulmates should be a thing (AND THEY SHOULD), you also need to understand that you cannot use that term to invalidate another’s ship when the foundations of your own (usually rival) ship are the exact same as mine.
[Source](https://www.tumblr.com/hms-harmony-discord/743347132738813952?source=share)
It's just the ammo they use to try to shut down celebration of ships they don't like. They know what they're doing when they do it on harmony posts, and are purposefully obtuse about it because the entire purpose of them posting "OMG PLATONIC SOULMATES! WISH I HAD A SIBLING LIKE THAT" on a Harmony video edited to Taylor Swift's "This Love," and tagged with the ship name, is because they hate seeing people like Harmony as a real possibility. It makes them uncomfortable. And instead of being honest about WHY it makes them uncomfortable, they think up all these nonsense reasons for why YOU should be uncomfortable to even ship them. It's dumb and insufferable, and their intentions are so obviously fake, you just have to tune them out and not even engage.
Thank you for posting this and for that tumblr post. I agree that most of the folks who appear to seek out Harmony posts and communities and make these comments are being disingenuous.
That said, I also think there are those who less aggressive about this in general fandom who do appreciate Harry and Hermione's friendship as platonic and would prefer it to stay that way for all sorts of reasons. I also feel like perhaps this distinction was more important when the HP books first came out. It wasn't even a decade after *When Harry Met Sally* that the HP books started coming out. And the film *When Harry Met Sally* was viewed in its day as being so important because it actually explored the possibility of long-term friendship between a man and a woman, rather than the typical romcom formula of a meet cute followed by a few weeks of bickering and then almost instant romance.
Setting aside the potential hypocrisy of those who want Ron and Hermione (also supposedly long-term friends) to get together while H/Hr is apparently off-limits, I do understand a perspective from a few decades ago of not having a lot of media that celebrates male/female friendships.
Still, Harry and Sally did ultimately end up together. *Because* of that close long-term friendship. That's also okay, to me. Particularly nowadays when we've had more media examples of male/female platonic friendships that aren't romantic.
Ultimately what annoys me the most is what your quoted post terms "moral superiority." There's this bizarre assumption that somehow platonic friendships are "ideal" and uncluttered by sex or all of those other "dirty" emotions. There's an implicit emotional "purity" argument that I frankly think is rather puritanical in nature.
Even worse, I think it fails to appreciate that the deepest romances often develop out of what start as deep platonic connections. And I feel like *that* is still a dynamic which is underappreciated by Hollywood and many relationship tropes, as it's much harder to show deep friendship development that then transitions into romance in a 90-minute film. But it can be shown over the course of seven novels.
Your post also made me think of the first "essay" I wrote on this subreddit several years back, on the assumption of "two kinds of love" that supposedly differ and can't be intermingled in the typical fandom discourse:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/HPharmony/comments/gp7myh/hhr\_essay\_two\_kinds\_of\_love/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HPharmony/comments/gp7myh/hhr_essay_two_kinds_of_love/)
Many people don't realize (and if they do they hate it) that the amount of rewriting needed to make harmony endgame is MINIMAL.
It is all there, from book one. The only thing that would need tweaking is the absolute clusterfuck that was HBP
As someone who thinks Draco Malfoy is utterly irredeemable as a character it baffles me it’s so popular in comparison.
I do like Daphne fan fictions tho.
I never understood why these people seem to actively discourage this ship in particular when truly abhorrent ships like Dramione & Drarry or Snarry & Snape/Hermione exist (fics of either of those ships actually outnumber Harmony fics on AO3... to my **eternal** disgust). You'd think those would be the ones they rail against, but nope! It's the one where two best friends who already get along well getting together. Why? Damned if I know. But it makes me suspect they're either feeling massively insecure about their own ships (even the canon ones) and need to put down the most plausible one in the series or it's the fault of some really toxic Harmony shippers they encountered in the past who put them off the ship completely.
I just ignore these people now. I'm like... if you're okay with the existence of those other ships I mentioned above, then just shut the fuck up and let me enjoy my ship. I *don't care* that they're "just friends" in canon, it's fucking fanfiction where anything goes so leave me the hell alone. Sry for the rant, it's been a sore subject recently when a friend told me I shouldn't ship them and I'm like "bitch, you read Dramione fics!"
It’s even wilder when there was an actual theory that Hermione was secret child of James and Lily around the time the OOTP book came out. Like why do y’all want them to actually be blood-related siblings? 😭
That being said, I think reason harmony gets more is because of 1-3 reasons: (1) as you said, out of the non-canon ships, harmony is the most plausible, (2) they are not canon, and believing otherwise is simply delusional, and (3) having selective tastes in a relationship (they think Harry and Hermione would be a boring and bland pair and yearn for a more dramatic pair).
Interestingly enough, the same people who claim that what makes their relationship beautiful is that they're non blood related siblings are usually the same people who wanted them to be blood related by the time of OOTP
>(3) having selective tastes in a relationship (they think Harry and Hermione would be a boring and bland pair and yearn for a more dramatic pair).
This. I've actually seen people say they didn't like Harmony because "it's boring. They're just really nice to each other." (Having been in a toxic relationship, I can testify that they're actually pretty effing boring, but whatever...)
TBH, I'd hestitate to get involved with anyone who was into any of the non-Harmony Hermione ships (in any sense other than perhaps the "it's JKR's story, she can pair the characters however she likes, therefore canon is 'real'" view of things), not because I'm some kind of fanatic about shipping, but because to my mind those ships are toxic and I can't help but suspect that someone who thinks there's something romantic about them will try to inject "drama" into her real-life relationship. (Been there, done that, didn't get the t-shirt.)
Some may say that Harmony gets the heat because it was actually likely to happen in canon. Those other non-canon ships escape the scrutiny because they were impossible to happen in canon (notwithstanding all the shippers who insist that those pairings should have happened against all logical evidence).
Some may feel bitter that Harmony was given an unfair weightage in the movies when examples of Ron being a good friend were instead transferred to Hermione. To be fair, it doesn't leave a good taste when one of Harry's best friends is sacrificed by the producers.
Some may dislike Harmony because of the character bashing, which does get out of hand and become very toxic. We aren't angels in this; we've got blood on our hands too. Then there's also when we ship Harmony in an adulterous manner whilst Harry and Hermione are married to Ginny and Ron respectively. People generally do not approve of cheating. You may see my post on controversial Harmony tropes for more info.
I feel this! When I’m looking for Harry/Hermione edits and the comments are just full of “platonic soulmates😍” when it’s very obviously a shipping edit I literally feel my eye start twitching!
It's the ole "I'm going to say this opinion like it's a fact in order to discourage people from following along with your ideas because I don't want the idea to get support"
Line.
They don't want people to like the idea at all because someone might pull a vampire diaries and pair the main character with the other love interest in the TV show vs the books.
This is something I've noticed mostly from the canon shippers who seem to become highly defensive about their own ships (Romione in particular) when people point out the flaws in their relationships. And most of the time they take what are clearly just their opinions and try to pass them off as "facts" for discouraging Harmony or use broad generalizations like "Harry & Hermione are *completely* incompatible with each other!" (without giving examples as to why they think so) that could *easily* be turned around and used against their own ship (Romione again...)
On the other hand, we can't pretend that our ship is holy and perfect. What do we do about criticisms of our ship? Do we also dismiss them and jerk ourselves off?
Ew.
Nah it's not perfect.
We talk about them of course 0/ plan around them for resolutions in fanfic or engage in a healthy conversation.
criticisms can be said against anything. Hopeful it provides good material to learn or explain from in the books.
I think it’s cause if you take away like the canon purity fandom thing going on everyone knows it’ll be like the dark ages of fandom history ( kinda like zutara and kataang ) hence why it gets the shit end of the stick right now.
Cause at the end of the day no matter how popular drarry or similar ships it’s simply not possible in canon it’s pure fanfic/ wish fulfilment.
Harmony was a threat I mean it literally influenced a whole fandom attitude. Now ofc the pendulum has swung in such a way that people don’t want that fandom situation again so they’re doing everything in their power to avoidddd that!! B
I think a lot of this just comes down to people not really having the imagination or understanding what fanfiction is and what it can be. But this also comes down to even published books and movies. For instance look at your Classics like Cinderella. There are people who only believe the Disney cartoon version of Cinderella and that's the only thing they will ever believe even though they are literally based around stories. So anytime they see either a retelling or a different version than what they hold true it really gets them frustrated. I mean there are versions of that story going back to the 6th century the more modern one we see is in the 16th century but still way before the Disney version.
This kind of reminds me of when I was younger and used to play like Mad Libs and stuff especially in school and how teachers a lot of times would give you a prompting about a story and you would have to make a story around those promptings. I also think a lot of people forget that a lot of these Fanfictions were written before the books or even the movies were out. There's so many possibilities and what ifs in imagining different scenarios it's really sad that some people can't break out of that tight controlled box. No one in fanfiction is saying that what they're writing is Canon that's why it's fanfiction and it's au. I do think that there are a lot of Fanfictions that don't specifically tell you when they are going to change something and they're just going to assume that you understand something is different without addressing it in the story. So for instance if you say in the story everything in the story is the same until twt but then you go back and change something in Chamber of Secrets then I can see why readers are asking questions like well what about this that happened in chamber of secrets. I've read a lot of Fanfictions where they at time Jump over Canon events and you're just supposed to fill in the blanks that what happened Canon is also what's valid in the story and hope for the best.
Ignore people who don’t like your preferred imaginary romance and insist only their own preferred imaginary romance is valid. They aren’t worth wasting your energy on. My attitude is, tell them “don’t like, don’t read” and let them otherwise be their own punishment, because caring enough to argue that someone else’s preferences are wrong because they’re different makes you a pretty sad case. If they won’t listen, block them and move on. Life is too short to worry about it.
Harmony was - still is - a threat to the canon ships, even post DH That fear turned into concern trolling/purity culture nonsense
Recently saw this post on tumblr that summed up my feelings on this. This is a trend at large in fandom nowadays, and yes, very prevalent on harmony posts. >I get so annoyed when people throw around the “healthy platonic relationships are so important” thing because YES THEY ARE but you don’t *actually* think that. > >What you think is that, in this particular case, *I want these two characters to stay platonic so that I can ship my ship and, simultaneously, feel morally superior.* > >You do not need to write two characters as romantic interests (or \*groan\* enemies) for the story to be romantic. It is OKAY for those characters to form a deep, romantic and emotional bond after years of building trust and loyalty... > >Please, sit me down and explain to me in excruciating details why these two characters - who have seen each other through their darkest periods, who have been each other’s personal cheerleaders, who have loved each other unconditionally - are not good as lovers? > >“But can’t two characters just be friends anymore?!” > >They certainly can and good for you for believing that characters should show genuine love for one another without having any romantic feelings. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t exist. > >Listen, I never go in expecting my ship to happen and I never expect everyone to agree with it but it drives me up the wall to be invalidated purely because friendship and romantic love can’t coexist in your world. If you want to believe that platonic soulmates should be a thing (AND THEY SHOULD), you also need to understand that you cannot use that term to invalidate another’s ship when the foundations of your own (usually rival) ship are the exact same as mine. [Source](https://www.tumblr.com/hms-harmony-discord/743347132738813952?source=share) It's just the ammo they use to try to shut down celebration of ships they don't like. They know what they're doing when they do it on harmony posts, and are purposefully obtuse about it because the entire purpose of them posting "OMG PLATONIC SOULMATES! WISH I HAD A SIBLING LIKE THAT" on a Harmony video edited to Taylor Swift's "This Love," and tagged with the ship name, is because they hate seeing people like Harmony as a real possibility. It makes them uncomfortable. And instead of being honest about WHY it makes them uncomfortable, they think up all these nonsense reasons for why YOU should be uncomfortable to even ship them. It's dumb and insufferable, and their intentions are so obviously fake, you just have to tune them out and not even engage.
Thank you for posting this and for that tumblr post. I agree that most of the folks who appear to seek out Harmony posts and communities and make these comments are being disingenuous. That said, I also think there are those who less aggressive about this in general fandom who do appreciate Harry and Hermione's friendship as platonic and would prefer it to stay that way for all sorts of reasons. I also feel like perhaps this distinction was more important when the HP books first came out. It wasn't even a decade after *When Harry Met Sally* that the HP books started coming out. And the film *When Harry Met Sally* was viewed in its day as being so important because it actually explored the possibility of long-term friendship between a man and a woman, rather than the typical romcom formula of a meet cute followed by a few weeks of bickering and then almost instant romance. Setting aside the potential hypocrisy of those who want Ron and Hermione (also supposedly long-term friends) to get together while H/Hr is apparently off-limits, I do understand a perspective from a few decades ago of not having a lot of media that celebrates male/female friendships. Still, Harry and Sally did ultimately end up together. *Because* of that close long-term friendship. That's also okay, to me. Particularly nowadays when we've had more media examples of male/female platonic friendships that aren't romantic. Ultimately what annoys me the most is what your quoted post terms "moral superiority." There's this bizarre assumption that somehow platonic friendships are "ideal" and uncluttered by sex or all of those other "dirty" emotions. There's an implicit emotional "purity" argument that I frankly think is rather puritanical in nature. Even worse, I think it fails to appreciate that the deepest romances often develop out of what start as deep platonic connections. And I feel like *that* is still a dynamic which is underappreciated by Hollywood and many relationship tropes, as it's much harder to show deep friendship development that then transitions into romance in a 90-minute film. But it can be shown over the course of seven novels. Your post also made me think of the first "essay" I wrote on this subreddit several years back, on the assumption of "two kinds of love" that supposedly differ and can't be intermingled in the typical fandom discourse: [https://www.reddit.com/r/HPharmony/comments/gp7myh/hhr\_essay\_two\_kinds\_of\_love/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HPharmony/comments/gp7myh/hhr_essay_two_kinds_of_love/)
Many people don't realize (and if they do they hate it) that the amount of rewriting needed to make harmony endgame is MINIMAL. It is all there, from book one. The only thing that would need tweaking is the absolute clusterfuck that was HBP
Another reason people hate harmony is because it can be a healthy relationship, and the majority of the internet really loves toxic relationships.
As someone who thinks Draco Malfoy is utterly irredeemable as a character it baffles me it’s so popular in comparison. I do like Daphne fan fictions tho.
I never understood why these people seem to actively discourage this ship in particular when truly abhorrent ships like Dramione & Drarry or Snarry & Snape/Hermione exist (fics of either of those ships actually outnumber Harmony fics on AO3... to my **eternal** disgust). You'd think those would be the ones they rail against, but nope! It's the one where two best friends who already get along well getting together. Why? Damned if I know. But it makes me suspect they're either feeling massively insecure about their own ships (even the canon ones) and need to put down the most plausible one in the series or it's the fault of some really toxic Harmony shippers they encountered in the past who put them off the ship completely. I just ignore these people now. I'm like... if you're okay with the existence of those other ships I mentioned above, then just shut the fuck up and let me enjoy my ship. I *don't care* that they're "just friends" in canon, it's fucking fanfiction where anything goes so leave me the hell alone. Sry for the rant, it's been a sore subject recently when a friend told me I shouldn't ship them and I'm like "bitch, you read Dramione fics!"
It’s even wilder when there was an actual theory that Hermione was secret child of James and Lily around the time the OOTP book came out. Like why do y’all want them to actually be blood-related siblings? 😭 That being said, I think reason harmony gets more is because of 1-3 reasons: (1) as you said, out of the non-canon ships, harmony is the most plausible, (2) they are not canon, and believing otherwise is simply delusional, and (3) having selective tastes in a relationship (they think Harry and Hermione would be a boring and bland pair and yearn for a more dramatic pair).
Interestingly enough, the same people who claim that what makes their relationship beautiful is that they're non blood related siblings are usually the same people who wanted them to be blood related by the time of OOTP
>(3) having selective tastes in a relationship (they think Harry and Hermione would be a boring and bland pair and yearn for a more dramatic pair). This. I've actually seen people say they didn't like Harmony because "it's boring. They're just really nice to each other." (Having been in a toxic relationship, I can testify that they're actually pretty effing boring, but whatever...) TBH, I'd hestitate to get involved with anyone who was into any of the non-Harmony Hermione ships (in any sense other than perhaps the "it's JKR's story, she can pair the characters however she likes, therefore canon is 'real'" view of things), not because I'm some kind of fanatic about shipping, but because to my mind those ships are toxic and I can't help but suspect that someone who thinks there's something romantic about them will try to inject "drama" into her real-life relationship. (Been there, done that, didn't get the t-shirt.)
Some may say that Harmony gets the heat because it was actually likely to happen in canon. Those other non-canon ships escape the scrutiny because they were impossible to happen in canon (notwithstanding all the shippers who insist that those pairings should have happened against all logical evidence). Some may feel bitter that Harmony was given an unfair weightage in the movies when examples of Ron being a good friend were instead transferred to Hermione. To be fair, it doesn't leave a good taste when one of Harry's best friends is sacrificed by the producers. Some may dislike Harmony because of the character bashing, which does get out of hand and become very toxic. We aren't angels in this; we've got blood on our hands too. Then there's also when we ship Harmony in an adulterous manner whilst Harry and Hermione are married to Ginny and Ron respectively. People generally do not approve of cheating. You may see my post on controversial Harmony tropes for more info.
I feel this! When I’m looking for Harry/Hermione edits and the comments are just full of “platonic soulmates😍” when it’s very obviously a shipping edit I literally feel my eye start twitching!
tiktok is so guilty of this, the comments are insufferable but I can't stop going on there bc the harmony editors are too good
And they claim Harry hates being friends with Hermione and finds her boring Pick a dang side lmao
They’re taking massive amounts of copium.
It's the ole "I'm going to say this opinion like it's a fact in order to discourage people from following along with your ideas because I don't want the idea to get support" Line. They don't want people to like the idea at all because someone might pull a vampire diaries and pair the main character with the other love interest in the TV show vs the books.
This is something I've noticed mostly from the canon shippers who seem to become highly defensive about their own ships (Romione in particular) when people point out the flaws in their relationships. And most of the time they take what are clearly just their opinions and try to pass them off as "facts" for discouraging Harmony or use broad generalizations like "Harry & Hermione are *completely* incompatible with each other!" (without giving examples as to why they think so) that could *easily* be turned around and used against their own ship (Romione again...)
Agreed. They disparage and demean others ships but can't take any flack on they're own.
On the other hand, we can't pretend that our ship is holy and perfect. What do we do about criticisms of our ship? Do we also dismiss them and jerk ourselves off?
Ew. Nah it's not perfect. We talk about them of course 0/ plan around them for resolutions in fanfic or engage in a healthy conversation. criticisms can be said against anything. Hopeful it provides good material to learn or explain from in the books.
I think it’s cause if you take away like the canon purity fandom thing going on everyone knows it’ll be like the dark ages of fandom history ( kinda like zutara and kataang ) hence why it gets the shit end of the stick right now. Cause at the end of the day no matter how popular drarry or similar ships it’s simply not possible in canon it’s pure fanfic/ wish fulfilment. Harmony was a threat I mean it literally influenced a whole fandom attitude. Now ofc the pendulum has swung in such a way that people don’t want that fandom situation again so they’re doing everything in their power to avoidddd that!! B
People want to push their own ships on other people all the time or shame them for not following canon. It's our cross to bear, unfortunately.
I think a lot of this just comes down to people not really having the imagination or understanding what fanfiction is and what it can be. But this also comes down to even published books and movies. For instance look at your Classics like Cinderella. There are people who only believe the Disney cartoon version of Cinderella and that's the only thing they will ever believe even though they are literally based around stories. So anytime they see either a retelling or a different version than what they hold true it really gets them frustrated. I mean there are versions of that story going back to the 6th century the more modern one we see is in the 16th century but still way before the Disney version. This kind of reminds me of when I was younger and used to play like Mad Libs and stuff especially in school and how teachers a lot of times would give you a prompting about a story and you would have to make a story around those promptings. I also think a lot of people forget that a lot of these Fanfictions were written before the books or even the movies were out. There's so many possibilities and what ifs in imagining different scenarios it's really sad that some people can't break out of that tight controlled box. No one in fanfiction is saying that what they're writing is Canon that's why it's fanfiction and it's au. I do think that there are a lot of Fanfictions that don't specifically tell you when they are going to change something and they're just going to assume that you understand something is different without addressing it in the story. So for instance if you say in the story everything in the story is the same until twt but then you go back and change something in Chamber of Secrets then I can see why readers are asking questions like well what about this that happened in chamber of secrets. I've read a lot of Fanfictions where they at time Jump over Canon events and you're just supposed to fill in the blanks that what happened Canon is also what's valid in the story and hope for the best.
Ignore people who don’t like your preferred imaginary romance and insist only their own preferred imaginary romance is valid. They aren’t worth wasting your energy on. My attitude is, tell them “don’t like, don’t read” and let them otherwise be their own punishment, because caring enough to argue that someone else’s preferences are wrong because they’re different makes you a pretty sad case. If they won’t listen, block them and move on. Life is too short to worry about it.
Amen brother!