I Hate Ginny Weasley!!!!

[antoshachekhonte]

No: HPFGUIDX 122413


 "phoenixgod2000"  wrote:
> > 
<snip>
 I separate her from Ginny in the rest of the 
> series 
> > because she bears no resemblance to book 1-4 Ginny. Am I the only 
> > person who was annoyed by her sudden prominence in OOTP?  She 
> burst 
> > onto the scene like a bad fanfic character, suddenly good at 
> > everything without a cohensive explanation and it certainly 
> detracted 
> > from my enjoyment of the book.  Was I the only who felt that way?
> > 
> > Phoenixgod2000
> 
> It didn't annoy me. I was glad to see more of her. She has clearly 
> been deeply involved in previous plots without appearing to until 
> the end (CoS). She has never appeared to be bad at everything, so 
> why would JKR need to show why she's good? With that many brothers 
> to learn from, she's bound to have had some sort of head start. We 
> never had an explanation as to why Bill and Charlie were good enough 
> to be head boys. I'm guessing they just had the brains and aptitude.
> 
> I think it's possible that Ginny needed to be brought more to the 
> front because I think that she's going to be seen to be far more 
> actively involved in future books. We already see her determined to 
> do something positive in joining DA. JKR already said that some 
> things in CoS foreshadow some things which will happen in HBP. Seems 
> to stand to reason that Ginny will be involved.
> 
> Just my opinion of course!
> 
> Becky

Antosha:

Starting with the admission that I am rather fond of Ginny, I'd like to address the 
interesting question of whether Ginny has crossed the line into Mary-Sue-dom....

Unlike phoenixgod, and like Becky, I _welcomed_ Ginny's blossoming in OotP. And I 
disagree that the character has gone through a sudden change. Rather Harry's PRECEPTION 
of her goes through a transformation. 

In PS/SS, we barely see Ginny--though the brief glimpse is very sweet. Running after the 
train? Come on...

In CoS, of course, we get to see much more of her. Of course, she barely talks, but Ron 
tells us early on that this isn't the normal Ginny. Lunkhead that he is (emotional range of a 
tea spoon, and all), he can't figure out why, but we get it quickly enough. Her interactions 
with Harry (and therefore, her appearances in the book) are limited to reminders of her 
crush--the squeaking, the humiliating valentine.... We do see one brief glimpse of the true 
Ginny early on though: she tells Malfoy to back off of Harry at Flourish and Blotts in a 
manner that  shows some real spunk. And she goes through one of the more horrific 
experiences endured by any character not named Potter in the books... and is still able to 
tease her brother Percy with a smile....

In PoA, Ginny returns to the shadows a bit. The crush continues, and so Harry's perception 
of her--and ours--is limited to glimpses. When Ron blows her off at the beginning of the 
train ride up to Hogwarts, she at least has the spirit to be properly offended. (It's 
interesting--and not surprising--that aside from Harry, Ginny seems to be the one most 
affected by the Dementors.) We get another sweet humiliation--the get-well card.

In GoF, the crush--we later learn--has started to wane. She's still blushing when Harry 
shows up at the Burrow that summer, but we also see her laughing with her siblings, 
flirting with her oldest brother, hanging around with Hermione. She's almost 
sympathetic to Ron after he asks Fleur to the Yule Ball... Until Harry mentions that he's just 
been turned down by Cho. From that point on, (well, actually, from the point that she is 
forced to tell Ron that _she_ can't go with Harry either), she no longer blushes around 
Harry--of course, we barely see her through the rest of story, which is tightly focused on 
the Tri-Wizard Tournament--Harry hardly talks to anyone not directly involved with the 
tournament aside from Ron and Hermione.

It isn't until OotP that the opportunity for Harry truly to get to know Ginny appears. It's not 
that _she's_ gone through a transformation: we've been told before that she's talkative, 
good with hexes, etc. It's that, for the first time, she isn't tongue-tied around the point-
of-view character, and, for the first time, they have the opportunity to spend time 
together, first at Grimmauld Place, then in the DA--remember, Harry and Ginny never had 
any classes together before this year. I could enumerate her behavior in book 
five ('lucky you', her participation in Fred and George's pranks, her central role in 
recruiting and forming the DA, the easter egg-in-the-library scene, her participation in 
both break-ins into Umbridge's office and her unwillingness to be left behind on the way 
to the Dept. of Mysteries, to name the most salient) but that's not the point of 
phoenixgod's objection, I think. Rather s/he doesn't like the fact that all this pluck/spunk/
whatever has come from nowhere. But I don't think it did, as I've pointed out above. 

I think there are two things going on, one coming from the character, the other from the 
needs of the plot. Ginny herself is growing up. She's not the eleven-year-old victim from 
CoS. She's trying things on. She's pushing the rules. At the same time, she's doing things 
normal fourteen-year-olds do: dating. And she's also finally learned to open up to the one 
person whose experiences most nearly match her own: Harry. That she's finally able to 
stand up to him in a way that none of his other friends can comes out of the fact that she 
has been forced to come to some kind of self-knowledge, both by the passage of years 
and by her experience with Tom Riddle. 

Too, she knows _Harry_. She has watched him, both as the 
object of her affections and as her brother and Hermione's best friend for _years_.  At the 
same time, the plot demands that someone slap some sense into Harry--he spends the 
first half of OotP wallowing in self-pity, doubt and anger. Whether that's because he's got 
a direct line to LV's subconscious or because he's a fifteen year old boy is a topic for 
another day. But Harry needs someone to wake him up, to be the voice of reason, and 
Ron's ill-suited, as are Hagrid and Sirius, Lupin's too distant, Dumbledore's actively non-
presnt, Hermione herself tends to panic when really scary stuff raises its head... So who 
else should JKR turn to remind Harry that the sun doesn't rise and fall on his navel?

Ginny.

But I don't think she's become the sort of Uber-Sue that phoenixgod mentions. Harry 
isn't suddenly mesmerized by her flashing eyes or her glistening hair. Her spells are good, 
but she doesn't whip the DEs single-handedly. (Trust me, I've read those fics, they're 
dreadful.) At the DoM, it's _Neville_ who's the last one standing at Harry's side--Ginny's 
broken her ankle. And it isn't Ginny who salves Harry's grief after Sirius's death: it's Luna.

And on the train ride back, it's all six of them riding together: the trio, Ginny, Luna and 
Neville. 

I think that we will continue to see growth in Ginny's character (Neville's and Luna's too, 
for that matter). I think it's likely that, at some point, Harry will suddenly become at the 
least attracted to Ginny. Whether that becomes an actual romantic relationship, or whether 
they end up settling for a friendship, I don't know. I think it would be unusually wasteful to 
have spent all of that effort to build up a one-sided romantic relationship in the first four 
books... just to throw it away. Though I could be wrong. But I am sure we'll see more of 
her--and I am comfortable that what we see has been set up by what has come before.