[HPforGrownups] Characters and the revelation model (Was: Re: Depth?)

[Katharine]

No: HPFGUIDX 139947

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > JKR certainly leaves enough holes to allow a reader to go       
> > astray.  But I really don't think she cheats in what she does   
> > definitively state.

> >>Alla:
> One word - Ginny. Now, I love her and Harry together and I        
> swallowed new Ginny, because I muttered to myself that Harry did  
> not really notice her and that is why everything is possible, but 
> I really did not see any signs of new Ginny prior to OOP.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Exactly!  Thank you, Alla, this backs my point up beautifully. <g> 
JKR fell down when it came to Ginny's character, and the cries of 
foul throughout fandom show it.  I see enough evidence in the books 
to think that JKR really did see Ginny as the spitfire girl from the 
get-go, but she bungled in sharing that information with her 
readers.  Frankly, I think JKR sees the romances as a bit boring so 
fleshing out the character of Ginny (as Harry's prize) was never top 
of her list. [Just a note: I'm talking purely of character here, not 
the ship.]

Katharine:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed the emergence of Super!Ginny Sue in OoTP and HBP--in which she goes from being a largely peripheral, average person, to beign perfectly perfect in every way--suddenly she's gorgeous, excellent at Quidditch a la Charlie Weasley and Harry, a female version of Fred and George, is the Queen of Bat Bogey Hexes, and is one of the most popular girls at school to boot.  In her infamous interview JK said that she hoped that the audience gradually came to realize, just as Harry did, that Ginny was the perfect girl for him.  Well, it's hard for it to have been a gradual change when Ginny is hardly in the first four books--even in CoS, in which she's the one actually opening the chamber of secrets, she has less pagetime than in OoTP.  Then suddenly JK gives Ginny a dramatic literary makeover in OoTP, and suddenly Ginny's everywhere, and then in HBP, Harry suddenly has a monster inside him telling him to be with Ginny, out of the blue, when at the end of OoTP he brusquely tells Ginny to go away when she tries to help--this being after things fall apart with Cho and the Cho goggles are removed.

So yes, JK definitely did mess up as far as introducing the "real Ginny" to the readers in a gradual and realistic fashion.  But then she messed up in actually presenting Ginny's new superhero self as well, by taking the old literary rule of thumb "Show, not tell" and turning it around--with Ginny, JK "tells, not shows."  For example, to date we have not yet once seen Ginny perform one of her infamous bat bogey hexes, nor much magic at all really--we've just heard about it from other characters (where as with Hermione we've seen her brilliantly perform magic countless times--yet Ginny is supposedly just as good of a witch, despite never really seeing Ginny perform).  Then there's the quidditch--before HBP we never see Ginny play a quidditch game--we just hear about how good she is, and how well she did.  

As far as JK finding the whole romance business boring, however, I can't imagine that to be too true--otherwise why would she in turn make the romance plotline at least a quarter or probably more of HBP's overall plot, so that especially in the middle of the book it seemed like one was reading "Sweet Valley Hogwarts" rather than a Harry Potter book?  And why would she say in the infamous interview that she had loads of fun while writing it all?

-Katharine