Something that really bothers me about people’s hatred towards Ron is that unless you grew up really poor you have no idea what it’s like and how much it affects you. Especially if you grow up poor surrounded by rich friends. The jealousy seriously eats you alive and the way Ron acted was perfectly understandable.
Over twenty years later, I’ll still never forget the day one of my classmates told me to just ask my parents for more money, as though I was literally too thick to work out the obvious solution. Because in her world, it was that simple. Or the day my teacher gave me an ‘are you even trying for a believable lie’? look when I had to tell him my parents couldn’t afford to send me on a low-cost excursion. Or how for an entire school year, I had to wear a school uniform skirt so small it left angry marks on my waist every day, because my mother begged me to make it last just one more year. The day everyone thought it was hilarious to ruin my pencil case, and even more hilarious that I was so upset and claimed that my parents would be furious with me – LOL, that silly girl! They’ll just buy her a new one, it’s not that difficult! (Spoiler, they couldn’t and it was). And yeah, I had my fair share of second-hand underwear too, like another character who grew up in poverty. The utter shock I felt when I realized other families not only had air conditioning, but also used it regularly… the jealousy I felt when everyone else had nice formal wear and I had whatever my parents could manage to get… the list goes on and on. And that’s on top of a bunch of other struggles and disadvantages I had.
But to hear Ron critics talk, he was the worst person alive if he ever even dared to want nice things for himself instead of just nobly being happy other people had them. ‘Why is everything I own rubbish?’ is not a permissible attitude, not even for a moment.
I see a lot of people making fun/disapproving of how Ron is always stuffing his face with food and it INFURIATES ME.
When you grow up fucking poor you learn to take advantage of free food when you have it.
Asshats.
What kills me about the Ron hate/fandom-wide failure to recognize the classism he faces (in the fictional world and the real one) is that we COULD be having really nuanced conversations about how Ron’s various priveleges (as a Pureblood, white, heterosexual wizard) intersect with his experiences of classism…
But no, instead the conversations are all about how much Ron sucks and is a terrible friend to Harrt and doesn’t deserve to be with Hermione because he has the audacity to voice unhappiness with being poor and being treated like crap for it.
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marlowfication 