Ginny (was: Snape's AK Failed!!! with other comments)

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 134341

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "smartone564" 
<smartone56441070 at a...> wrote:
 
> 
> Many people dislike the seemingly sudden relationship between Harry 
> and Ginny, but it's not so surprising and far-fetched.  Ginny has 
> become increasingly important and part of the group, ever since she 
> hid behind Mrs. Weasley at the train station in SS/PS, to he CoS 
> involvement (key player, but minor in book), to MoM/DA, etc.  I 
think 
> it's wonderful how JK managed to slowly increase her importance 
> throughout all the books, and land her in one of the few logical 
> relationships left, unless you H/Hr's want to leave Ginny and Ron 
out 
> in the cold.  Of course..... ew, no, that stops there.
> 
> Finally, some of you thought suddenly falling for Ginny is very 
> unlikely.  Some of you are also not quite the same age as Harry 
> anymore, are you?  I happen to be 18, and had a girl in four of my 
> classes at school, when suddenly, after six months, I crushed on 
> (fell for, whatever you want to call it) her, for no reason.  It 
can 
> happen.
> 
 
Hickengruendler:

If only I could agree with you. But I found the Harry/Ginny pairing 
really awful, it was about the only thing in the book that I 
disliked. (Well, I also thought Remus/Tonks came a bit too much out 
of the blue, but since they hardly got any screentime I can accept 
that their relationship developed off-screen). And it really isn't 
that I didn't want this pairing to happen. I love Ron/Hermione and 
despite of JKR sinking the ship, I also have a slight bias towards a 
Neville/Luna pairing. As you can see, Harry/Ginny should be one of my 
favourite pairings as well, or at least I shouldn't mind, since it 
doesn't threaten one of my other favourite pairings.

I thinky my main problem with this pairing is Ginny. I can really 
think of no other character in the books (at least out of those with 
a similar amount of screentime) that interests me less. Since OotP 
I'm deeply dissatisfied with Ginny's characterisation and HBP did 
nothing to change my opinion. It seems to me that JKR simply hit us 
over the head with Ginny's "greatness". She's cool. She's funny. 
She's beautiful. She's spunky. She's popular. She's everything. And 
everyone agrees, even, as we learn in HBP, a Death Eater thinks she's 
hot. Really, has this girl any flaws left, that makes her character 
interesting? And if she showed some questionale behaviour, like 
snapping at Ron, than I didn't really have the impression that we are 
supposed to see this as character flaws, because the narrator IMO 
strongly implied, that this part of Ginny's "cool" character, and 
it's rather the positive side of this, namely that she isn't afraid 
of saying her opinion, that is emphasized. And this can't be simply 
explained away by the "Harry point of view", since nobody seems to 
acknowledge Ginny's flaws. If Harry hadn't cared about them, but 
somebody else had, than I would be much more satisfied and wouldn't 
write this post now.

Also, I'm not sure what message JKR wants to deliver with it. Is the 
only girl worthy of Harry Potter someone who is virtually flawless? 
That would be truly a pity, since Harry himself is a very well 
rounded character with many strengths and flaws, and I think his love-
interest deserves to be this as well.

I can see Harry becoming more and more interested her, seeing that 
her "real" character was kept from hin in the first four books. But 
what disturbed me was that Ginny said, that she never gave up on him. 
Because the problem is, that her crush was superficial. It has to be, 
because she already had a crush on him, before she even got to know 
him. I do think that we are supposed to think that she got to know 
Harry over the years and now fell in love with him as a person, but 
I'm not sure if this really possible if she never got over the crush 
on the boy who lived.

Hickengruendler, who now, that Draco got a bit more depth, really 
thinks that Ginny is his least favourite character