Half-Blood Prince: Chapter 7: The Slug Club

Aug 21, 2005 14:10


This is my first summary, so be easy on me. :) Sorry if this is a little long, I think I got carried away…

Chapter 7: The Slug Club

Harry is spending a lot of time over the last week to figure out why Malfoy was in Knocturn Alley, and why he was in a good mood. He came up with an irrational suspicion that Draco could be a DE. To make matters ( Read more... )

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cadesama August 22 2005, 18:41:05 UTC
Actually, a Mary Sue isn't necessarily a self-insertion, because a self-insertion isn't necessarily a Mary Sue. A Mary Sue, on the most basic level, is a non-main character who distorts the plot and other characters around himself or herself. Hermione isn't a Mary Sue because not every character instantly loves her with no substantial explanation from her textual behavior. Fleur is sort of a mockery of a Mary Sue, what with the swooning from men that always instantly occurs -- yet, even she isn't a true one because Harry reacts to her as a real person, and the female character aren't nearly so endeared to her.

Ginny though . . . why is she (to all appearances) popular in OotP? Nothing of her personality that had been established in PS/SS-GoF would lead us to think that she's a spunky, charismatic leader among her peers. Why is do even the Slytherins think she's hot in HBP, when we've heard no descriptions of her looks, nor seen her as attracting much male attention before? Why are things that many in the fandom perceive as character flaws (her temper, her attitude toward Fleur, her sense of "humor") not only portrayed as character strengths, but embraced even by characters who are negatively affected by them? She doesn't distort the plot, but she does seem to distort characters. Why does Luna think that Ron can be mean, but that Ginny is wonderful? Why does Harry overlook how cruel Ginny is to people he likes? Why does Slughorn think a simple hex is enough for his club, when all the other members have prominent political connections or are actually the Chosen One?

A lot of it goes to poor set up, more even than the active effort on JKR's part to convince us that Ginny is The Girl For Harry. JKR could have made Ginny's personality in CoS something other than a red herring, but she didn't. She could have introduced us to the "real" Ginny in PoA, but she didn't. She could have showed Ginny's personality via Harry eavesdropping, being invisible, or coming into a conversation where Ginny is speaking but hasn't yet noticed him. She even could have shown us the summers of CoS and HBP spent at the Burrow, or excerpts of the wonderful times Harry was having. She didn't. So, yes, many of us find the compression of Ginny's true introduction to us as a character into the previous two books very sloppily and unconvincingly done.

And, to briefly defend Fleur, she's not the self-centered girl you had experience with. We know that both because of GoF and the end of the book. Why didn't Ginny know that to react appropriately? My guess is that she never gave Fleur a chance. Familial protectiveness is all well and good, but treating people like trash isn't.

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