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The Woes Of Fanfic Ginny.
Sat, 10/03/2009 - 12:21 — parakletos
Poor Mrs Potter, or, in my nightmares Mrs Weasley Potter.
I can cope with endless descriptions of that 'flowery scent'. I can, with a few perscitpion drugs, accept the 'hex first, ask questions later' temper. What I find unacceptable is the 'if I can't have Harry, I'm going to hook up with A New Dark Lord/someone who treats me like dirt because I'm so desperate/etc.
Ginny is a smart woman, after all, its why Harry loves her, right? So why does she lack any common sense in chosing partners? /rant.
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Amen to that
To me it's part of the inexplicable "doormat Ginny" phenomenon. Where in canon is the evidence that she tolerates crap from anybody? It's baffling.
Poor Ginny, eh?
Fortunately for fanfic writers canon Ginny is a bit of a cipher. The canon plot is Harry versus Voldemort, not Harry and Ginny hook-up. There are a number of fic writers who think Jo got Ginny wrong. Remember the outcry at OotP Ginny? We became used to the "Shy Ginny" seen in the previous four books and the "Shy Ginny" persona remains in some fanfic today. Good lord, just look at the fanfic.net HP summaries!
The "hex first, ask questions later" attribute seems to be a misread of Molly and the twins. For some reason the quick temper is equated with red hair and the Weasely family. Look at Arthur, Bill, Charlie, and Percy; they get angry, but not like Molly. In my opinion the quick temper is a Prewett trait.
The "flowery scent" bit ties in with Harry's sense of belonging and comfort. He doesn't realise that the scent he remembers is Ginny's, but that is part of the fun in reading his discovery of her.
I agree that a door mat Ginny is unacceptable. The last thing Ginny will to do is hook up with someone who treats her like dirt. This is the character who fought, alone, against a Dark Lord in her head for almost a year. Her will was conquered, not surrendered. Nope, can't see her doing the battered-wife syndrome.
Ginny is Harry's equal because she too has an indomitable will, a tendancy to blur the line between brave and foolish, a keen mind, and an intense love of all who are important to her.
You have every right to rant, but the Ginny bashers are not going to listen. [insert frustrated sigh here]
Could be far worse…
The meme I hate and despise is slut!Ginny which seems to be a favourite of so-called "extreme Harmonians". Not content with showing that Hermione really is the only girl for Harry, they have to show just how Ginny is so not, usually by turning her into the most scarlet of all scarlet women.
I can quite understand the potential of having Harry and Hermione come to an understanding much earlier in the story, leaving Ginny to proceed at her own pace. I just cannot understand why people have to over-egg the pudding by making out that Ginny is so obsessed with Harry that if she can't have him she'll have anybody and everybody else.
No, I know that sentence doesn't make sense, it wasn't supposed to.
In general, I hate and despise all forms of "Weasley-bashing" but that focussed upon Ginny gathers my special ire. Why do so many people see the need to demonstrate their hatred for a teenage girl…a fictional teenage girl at that?
NotACat wrote: I can quite
I can quite understand the potential of having Harry and Hermione come to an understanding much earlier in the story, leaving Ginny to proceed at her own pace. I just cannot understand why people have to over-egg the pudding by making out that Ginny is so obsessed with Harry that if she can't have him she'll have anybody and everybody else.
No, I know that sentence doesn't make sense, it wasn't supposed to.
Hey, it made perfect sense to me...
NotACat wrote: The meme I
The meme I hate and despise is slut!Ginny which seems to be a favourite of so-called "extreme Harmonians". Not content with showing that Hermione really is the only girl for Harry, they have to show just how Ginny is so not, usually by turning her into the most scarlet of all scarlet women.
My thoughts exactly. For the Harmonians, (not the extreme ones either) she seems the worlds biggest easy because she's pretty (I'm talking canon, not films) and dated before Harry. She tricked him by various love potions (that flowery smell) into marriage. It doesn't stop there. I stumbled on a story that had Harry as a battered house husband, bullied by a demanding Ginny. Naturally a light bulb lights up over his head and he "rediscovers" the beauty (not canon, films) of Hermione who is married to the village idiot, Ron. You'll always get that because for once, the heroine of the books (Hermione) does not get the hero at the end. An interloper did.
I hope you understand…
No, I know that sentence doesn't make sense, it wasn't supposed to.
Hey, it made perfect sense to me...
…how this in itself is not necessarily completely reassuring ;-)
I've always been puzzled by
I've always been puzzled by all of that--as well as the fascination with Draco as a potential partner for ginny/hermione/harry. Draco is not a good person. He is not a bad boy who needs rescuing. He laughed when Cedric died, he calls Hermione mudblood more times than I can count, and buys into the whole pureblood supremacy thing. Ginny may not end up marry Harry but how could she possibly ignore what a miserable bullying racist coward Draco is--and his family tried to kill her which is something different than Montague/Capulets so why do writers want to see her paired up with him. Same thing with Harry, while I'm at it. OK, so he's gay, and wants to date boys. I don't see that in canon but its not impossible. Why would he pick as his partner Draco over all the other men in the world who haven't tried to kill him, and who aren't the miserable bullying racist coward like he is. There is a wide spectrum of opinion from "wanting to kill someone" at one end to "wanting to sleep with them at the other end". In between are such logical stopping points like "don't want to kill him but wouldn't mind someone else doing it" and "want to never see again but am relieved I didn't kill him" to even "feel some sympathy and can be civil when requried but don't like or trust him".
I also don't understand the whole Ginny throws a temper tantrum when Harry comes home from war--I can understand her not wanting to date him again. and I can understand her not immediately jumping into his arms, but the fanfic concept that she is going to be angry with him, yell at him, try to get him banned from the Burrow, etc makes her sound like the most superficial character imaginable--thanks for saving my mother's life and pretty much everything else I hold dear in the world--but you were a bad boyfriend for not putting me first over everyone and everything else so I hate you forever and everyone else I know has to also.
I just don't see anything in canon to support Nymphomaniac Ginny, or Blindingly Irrational Ginny or Ginny Malfoy or Doormat Ginny.
Cipher
Fortunately for fanfic writers canon Ginny is a bit of a cipher.
Chuck, this is certainly the core of the problem. Anyone who focuses on the romantic elements in HP -- as self-described "shippers" do of necessity -- is faced with the fact that canon is a hero saga, not a love story, and so the raw information on the love story is nearly nonexistent. Consequently the raw information on the love object is very sparse. We know very little about Ginny - a fact highlighted by the repeated, unrelenting, ad nauseam repetition in fanfic of those few details we do know. Endless bat-bogey hexes, flowery scents, blazing looks, etc., etc. *sigh*
Heck, if I were writing about Ginny frequently enough, I might turn her into a Hungarian vampire just to avoid boring myself...
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