So this thread began with somebody asking about the mindset of fangirls and why they prefer slash; then it went to a discussion on slash itself and the reasons why people hate it or can somewhat tolerate it. *breaths* Then afterwards, it shifted back and forth between the two leading to something about Ginny being a slut...wait what?

 

EVERYONE hates Ginny because she's hot, athletic, popular and NOTHING ELSE. JK Rowling didn't exactly fill her in much as a character.

 

That is quite literally your own opinion. Canon says she's popular and well-liked; her own siblings have given repeated instances of how clever she is. If you feel bound and determined to believe that she has nothing else going for her besides looking pretty and throwing quaffles, then that's your business.

In fact, it's so mindless that I'll assume you're trolling.

 

What I am sayins is that Ginny is a Mary-Sue. Any faults that JK put in to make her seem more 3 dimensional only ended up aiding her in whatever endeavours she had, we were given almost nothing about her as an actual person rather than just a love interest plugged in to the plot to fit the formula.

 

"Monster in his chest."

That is all.

 

Well, she has some characteristics of a Mary-Sue, but since they've all essentially come from multiple viewpoints/opinions (such as her brothers saying that she's clever, when there's no direct evidence to the reader that she is), she isn't that well fleshed out.

And that's both the problem and the reason why she can't be a defined Mary-Sue: JKR made little to no character/plot development with her.

Instead of being blended into the pizza as a cheese, she was stuck on to it during the last five minutes of cooking.

 

What formula, exactly? All evidence suggests that Harry should've "logically" fallen for Hermione, so what formula are you talking about?

None - because you're spouting nonsense.

 

Since when was being called clever a sign of Mary-Sue? Loads of people are clever. There's likely quite a few clever people at Hogwarts that we don't know of. Mary Sues aren't clever: they're geniuses at the age of 6 (and with such great hair too).

 

Don't forget the eyes! With such colors as "chocolate brown", or "emerald green", or "violet like amethysts", or "amber as Bear Grylls' piss after he drinks the same piss 10 times", how could you fail to accept a Mary-Sue's awesomeness?

 

I fully agree. Though I'm not the greatest fan of some Harry/Ginny pairing I've never really understood the hate against that character. It wasn't the characters problem that JKR simply fucked up the whole romance angle.

 

Taure, I was just thinking that.

I pine for the intro forum.

 

So. What I hear through this entire thing is:

How the hell is any of this new/relevant information? This feels like it could be HoS material.

 

^ I agree with this to a degree.

I was actually really excited about Ginny as a love interest for Harry in book five. When she was working with the DA, traveling to the Dept. of Mysteries, and hexing Slytherins, I was looking forward to seeing her develop in the sixth book. Here's a chick who's getting her shit together, I thought. It seemed like she had crossed some critical point from being Ron's little sister with the embarassingly huge crush on the famous boy to being an interesting person in her own right.

But Rowling dropped the ball. HBP Ginny isn't a person; she's a string of adjectives. The readers don't get a chance to see that Ginny is anything particularly special, they're just told that she is and expected to accept it. She plays quidditch and snogs people. Both of those things are a-okay, but I was waiting to see a girl who had developed naturally from that budding strong witch we saw in Order of the Phoenix. And don't even get me started on the travesty that was Ginny in Deathly Hallows.

Still, there's nothing to hate about Ginny as a character...mainly because she's a blank slate at the end of the series. I guess fangirls have wasted so much hostility on her because it's annoying to have to accept the god-author telling you that Ginny is perfect wife material for Harry without having seen anything in two books to back up that claim.

^ I don't think anyone (well, except for diehard anti-Ginny fangirls) would argue with this. The problem is that "canon says she's popular and well-liked," but girls see very little reason in the books for that to be the case. Compared to even a minor female character like Luna (who we see enduring hardship, showing courage and compassion, and developing into a complex adult), Ginny just falls flat.

I sincerely hope this isn't true. I would rather not delve into the psychological dramas of teenagers. But, I have to say as a female who dislikes how Ginny was written, that I myself have never thought another girl was vapid, snobbish, or a bitch because she was prettier, fitter, or more popular than me. That applies ad infinitum to fictional girls.

 

Ginny is perceived by many as a Mary Sue because most of her time in the series is in HBP, when she is seen through the lens of Harry's infatuation. He just happens to be hopelessly smitten with her, if you recall. Fuck, the guy's speaking of his feelings as a Monster in his Chest--does anyone really expect him to be objective? Ginny has her faults ("phlegm" cattiness, e.g., though her having dated a few guys in school hardly makes her a slut), but like any hormonal, preoccupied sixteen year old with the hots for someone, Harry doesn't notice them. JKR, because of the POV employed in her series and the circumstances of when Ginny came into the fore, couldn't write the kind of balanced, nuanced Ginny character that would make Tinn Tam happy--not without wrecking her characterization of Harry, whom the series is ultimately about.

If Hermione's screen time were limited to just that of Ginny's, she'd be thought of as far worse a Mary Sue character.

 

I think the thing that really killed the two as a favorite pairing for me was the end of HBP when she seemed totally okay with just watching him leave her behind. I expected her to join in the camping trip that happened in the seventh book anyway.
Actually, I may have even thought the doe patronus could have been hers, and we were just waiting for Ginny to show up and explain how she got the sword. There was some explanation about patroni with Tonk's changing, so it seemed like a good possibility. Way to blow that out of the water, Snape.

She really should have had a larger part in the last one, I would have preferred to see more character growth with the two of them before the slapped on ending.

 

If it's annoying to accept Ginny as a normal girl that Harry's attracted to, then it should be equally annoying to accept that Dumbledore is gay - because both of their romances mean dick-all to the plot, despite the fact that there's more than enough ample evidence within the series to mesh with any "mistakes" or retconning that JKR has engaged in with regard to their characters.

Given the larger context of the story, who Harry ends up with really isn't that hard to come to grips with. It should be "Okay, he married Ginny. Keep it moving," but instead there's this ridiculous rage and over-the-top justification for bashing her character in scads of wharrrbargl author's notes - to the point that making sure the audience realizes just how furious Jenny Fangirl is takes precedence over everything else (including, y'know, a plot).

I nearly choked on my motherfucking cranberry juice when I read this.

I wasn't aware that Ginny avoided any hardship during her time at Hogwarts, or that she failed to show courage or compassion. I don't need to hear about everytime she cried herself to sleep after nightmares about her first year, or her confusion over whether or not Harry actually liked her in her 5th year, or exactly what kind of torture she went through in her 6th year. I also don't need to know what Dumbledore and Grindelwald got up to went Auntie Bathilda left the two alone. I get a clear enough picture on my own, lol.

And I'm not even touching the "Luna as a complex character" argument, as I'll admit to having an irrationally angry response against her because of fanon. Someone else can beat that nargle horse.

I'm now dead-certain that people started skimming the books after Goblet of Fire. I'm not about to rape this thread with quotes and evidence to the contrary of what you just said, so pretend I did, and do the following: re-read the series.

Than you're either in a very small minority, or lying. Even as an adult, I'm always comparing myself to other guys who I think are better-looking or more well-rounded (personality- and intelligence-wise) than I am. I envy those for whom these traits come easily, and grudgingly admire those who work at it - because that's normal. IRL, 9 out of 10 times I can easily get along with such people, and most likely will see that my snap judgement of them as vapid, snobbish, or bitchy is misplaced.

But that doesn't mean I didn't entertain the thought at first. Those thoughts, once they take root within the mind of hormonal, no-one-understaannnnnds-me-WAAUGH! teenage girls, are the reason why they don't think about sex 24/7 like their male counterparts.

That said, it's not even something that bothers me irl, because most women will keep their misguided opinions to themselves (and I certainly didn't give a shit if some girl thought another girl was a slut. Sex-on-the-brain 24/7 teenage boy, remember?). In fanfiction, however, they think they've found some sort of cathartic release, and readers like us have to suffer through the bullshit and nonsense born out of self-perceived inadequacies. I had something else to say but seriously, fuck this. I'm white-knighting a fictional character based on somebody else's opinion and I should be outside wtf strike time

tl;dr @ Raining Ink: Fangirls are stupid, and you're giving real-life teenage girls too much credit. But we can agree to disagree, that's cool too - it's just fanfiction.

Memorize this, for it is truth.

 

Not necessarily. Sure Harry, as a teenager in love, would not see Ginny's faults but that doesn't mean the readers can't either. JKR can just show us through her actions and through other characters' reactions. It's been a while since I read the books but I think Hermione gets this treatment sometimes. While Harry's POV maybe neutral -strangely so- the dialogue or Ron make it pretty clear she's being nagging/know-it-all/overly dramatic.

Harry doesn't need to acknowledge these faults for us to pick up on them.

As for when "Ginny came to the fore", tough shit. JKR was master of her own universe, it's not like she was being forced to focus solely on Harry and Hermione and Ron for the first five books. It was a choice and this is the downside. Having a character just jump out of nowhere and be the it-girl is never going to go over well.

 

What about the scenes where she is being a bitch to Fleur, I am pretty sure that is a case of JKR showing a flaw in Ginny's personality. The hardships point is amusing seeing as how Ginny spends the entire first book possessed by Voldemort and unleashes a giant Basilisk on the school. The problem with the Harry/Ginny relationship isn't Ginny's character it's that the entire relationship takes place over 300 pages in a seven book series. It added absolutely nothing to the plot or characterizations of anyone. JKR threw it in there because in a fantasy series about characters Harry's age there is always a romance.

Let's compare Harry's relationship to Kvothe's with Denna in Patrick Rothfuss' books. Many of Kvothe's actions and the way his character responds to certain situations are based on his relationship with Denna, and if you removed this relationship the plot itself would be dramatically different. If you took out Harry's relationship with Ginny the only thing that would really change would be the epilogue, which was fairly shitty in it's own right.

The problem I have with Harry/Ginny in fanfiction is that, most of the time, it's just too easy. Generally speaking, a plot revolves around conflict and the Harry/Ginny relationship has no natural conflict. The only real way to contrive conflict is through Voldemort threatening her, and Harry already has Ron/Hermione for that purpose so she really adds nothing to the story.