I still hate Ginny Weasley!!!

[phoenixgod2000]

No: HPFGUIDX 131790


> Pippin:
> I think development is being confused with exposition. If Ginny
> had really changed from a shrinking wallflower to a bold and 
> cunning wench, we might  expect to see her doing it. But most of 
> the change was in her perception of Harry and Harry's perception
> of her. The talks a lot clue tells us that normally she's not 
> shy. 

Which is it? Did she experience a transfromation in personality like 
some people argue all teenagers go through? OR was she always this 
way and only her getting over Harry allowed her full personality to 
come out around them? Either way, it was handled badly. There are 
ways to lay out real clues that just didn't happen. Regardless of 
whether the transformation was supposed to be an actual change, or a 
change in perception, it needed to happen in a way that is less than 
a giant ton of bricks landing on our heads. While that might happen 
in real life, in books there needs to be foreshadowing--and a lot of 
it when the change is as big a one as Ginny goes through.

> We know she's a powerful witch because as a second year
> she made a singing greeting card that nobody could shut up,
> though we learn in GoF that that kind of spell wears out
> very quickly as a rule.

Then her supposedly being very powerful makes even less sense. In 
book two, by Valentines Day, the diary had already been drinking her 
life force for months. Shouldn't she have been even weaker than 
normal. And we don't know for a fact that the greeting card was even 
hers, do we?

 We know she has a sense of humor
> because she sent that singing valentine to Harry. We know
> she was interested in Quidditch because she went to the QWC...

Didn't she fall asleep there instead of staying up talking about the 
game with the others. Hardly the indication of someone who is 
apparently as in love with the game as she is only a year later.

> We know that she's not too dainty to steal --she stole
> the diary from Harry, and no one ever suspected it was her.
> We know she can be deceptive -- look at her saying that
> she didn't know the diary was dangerous...balderdash!
> She threw it away, didn't she?

I read the scene almost like she was a junky on a fix. She *needed* 
the diary back. That sort of addiction would lead people to do all 
sorts of things that might be outside their normal character. I don't 
think that her willingness to steal is supposed to be anything other 
than an action born of sheer desperation and not part of a 
mischevious nature.
 
> They're subtle clues -- but if they were any more obvious,

That seems like a dig at everyone who disagrees with you. I don't 
think the clues are 'obvious' at all.

Honestly, only part of my problem is with the How of writing Ginny. 
Part of it is also that I find her character deeply, deeply, 
obnoxious. I find her unlikeable and unsympathetic. She just annoys 
me on a number of different levels both character and literary.

But the important part of this thread is now no one is talking about 
Snape:)

phoenixgod2000