[HPforGrownups] re:harry/ginny

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

No: HPFGUIDX 136019

Danielle wrote:

> I'm sorry I thought jkr wanted this book to be smaller than oopt, I'm sure
> she wanted to write more scenes between h/g but if she had the book wouldv'e
> been 1000 pages long. I agree with all those that said that she left it up to
> our imaginations. I see H/G snogging and having long talks. Or just holding
> each  other while saying nothing. That and it is jkr's book, quit
> b*******. I understand for some they don't think it's well written, but  "the
> master" herself thinks it was written well, and that she has done a good  job
> foreshadowing the comming off H/G. That being said, I totally agree and
> always thought that Ginny will give Harry till the wedding and then kick his  a**,
> and tell him she's comming with him on his journey, assuming momma Weasely
> lets her.



I know I'm going to regret stepping in, but I could not help it when I
saw this post.

First, I consider Shakespeare to be one of the literary geniuses of
his time, but frankly, I still have much to say about his works, not
nearly all of it good..  Therefore, just because JKR wrote HP, it
doesn't mean she wrote them perfectly.  She's good, but she's still
human.

Secondly, the better a writer is, the more criticisms she's going to
get when she fails to deliver; a bad writer inspires bad reviews and
few readers.  JKR has convinced me that she's a good writer; I have
loved the past five books, not completely but quite immensely.  In
HBP, she failed to meet her standards.  That's not acceptable to me,
especially since, in JKR's interviews, I'm being accused of not
picking up the perfection of Ginny.  JKR's sins are two fold: one, she
"tells and doesn't show a story;" two, that now [in]famous interview,
which Sienna has eloquently commented about so I won't.

When a writer puts her works out there for the general public to read
and discuss, what she thinks she's done is no longer relevant, not in
the same manner as before.  It's now a matter of whether or not her
readers think she accomplished what she thought she accomplished.  In
this case, for many of us (though not all), JKR was thinking one thing
and the readers were thinking something else altogether.  It isn't a
case of a few people being too vocal in their opinions, it seems to be
the case that there's quite a number of us who did feel that JKR
cheated us, and one or two of those people are even H/G shippers.

And by the way, the book's length has little to do with *this*
particular matter.  As other people have said, we were inundated with
the Ron/Lavender scenes.  JKR couldn't take even *one* of those scenes
away to give us something more substantial on H/G?  I mean, JKR said
so herself; the H/Hr shippers are scary and numerous.  Shouldn't she
have at least *tried* to sell *them* on the idea that H/G & R/Hr was
not a worse idea ever?  And didn't it say anything to her that, even
after just one meaningful scene, a whole legion of H/Luna shippers
suddenly appeared from nowhere?  To me, that last one says that JKR
needed just one truly meaningful scene to win over some of us who you
claim are "bitching," which I found terribly rude since we've all been
very polite in our conversations.

As for leaving the H/G relationship to my imagination?  In my mind, I
saw a girl who's a got "knight in shining armour" complex and a boy
who desperately wanted contentment and happiness in love, thus letting
his hormones control him until he realized that both her and her are
better, and deserve better, than that.  In short, I saw a shallow
relationship where two friends got together and might have ruined an
otherwise perfectly good relationship.  What does JKR think I should
see?  She thinks that Ginny is *perfect* for Harry.  Really, when the
author's perceptions and the reader's perceptions differ so greatly,
you're still going to not even consider that the readers may have some
valid comments to make?

~Ali, who apologizes for ranting