Ginny VS Harry

[delwynmarch]

No: HPFGUIDX 135305

Julie wrote:
"I think this is because of the genre in which she is writing the 
books.  It is a mystery/fantasy genre, not a romance genre.  I do
expect very little in the way of romance in the HP series, and what
little I do expect is more along the lines of teenage angst for
character development."

Del replies:
I don't really agree, for several reasons.

First, JKR is writing *her* books. She doesn't care about sticking to
a genre. I seem to remember that she actually said so in an interview.

So, JKR is writing Harry's story, and we are reading Harry's story. Up
until the middle of HBP, we've been privy to every little detail of
Harry's every day life. JKR only stopped short of telling us when
Harry takes his showers or when he goes to the bathroom. In
particular, when Harry started having butterflies in the stomach
because of Cho, we knew all about it. When he went into shock after
their first kiss, we knew all about it. When he went on a date with
her to Hogsmeade, we knew all about it. And so on.

But now that Harry is apparently living a real, deep love story, we
know *nothing* about it! We saw Harry do all those things with Cho, we
saw him having all those different feelings for her, we saw him
dealing with the effects of his crush, but we don't see *anything*
about how his true love story affects him! This is simply wrong.
There's no way JKR can pretend that the second half of HBP is truly
Harry's story, if his romance with Ginny is not shown. The second half
of HBP is *not* Harry's true story anymore: it is a highly edited
version of it, a version where the most important part of Harry's life
is completely dismissed (Harry is 16, remember. There's hardly
anything more important than love at this age, even for the Chosen
One). It's a cheat, nothing less.

In a way, it's JKR's fault if so many people are disappointed. *She*
is the one who set the high standard. She's the one who so brilliantly
told us about Harry's first girlfriend and their story together. She's
the one who demonstrated that she *could* and that she was *willing*
to spend time on romance. So now I find it absolutely normal that we
expect her to satisfy our desire to participate in Harry's deep love
story with Ginny. JKR *trained* us to live in Harry's skin, she
*trained* us to care for him, to live every little up and down of his
life with him, so there's no way she can get away with not showing us
that major part of Harry's life: his first true love story.

To me, her not showing us his love story with Ginny is as much
cheating as if she decided to not show us his final show-down with LV,
if she just hopped to 10 years later when Harry is telling his own
story to his kid, and he goes "after all that, when I finally fought
LV, it was actually quite easy, you know, I just AK'ed him (or
whatever), and, well, he just died, you know."

Those books are Harry's story, and there's no way the author can avoid
showing us Harry's great love story.

But of course, this is just my opinion ;-)

Del