things that make you go...wtf?
Remember that post yesterday, about wanting to resign from the human race? Maybe I'll just resign from fandom instead. It's no secret I'm a H/G shipper. Normally I'm a live and let live kinda gal. I don't really get involved in 'shipping debates. I can empathize with the fact that the H/Hr 'shippers are upset because their ship has been sunk. I
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2-Why did you spend so long developing Hermione's character and not Ginny's?
Answer: Because the books are told from Harry's point of view, not the author's. Let's look at how she *did* develop Ginny:
1. Ginny was one of the first witches he met, on the platform in PS/SS; he watched her running after the train as the train pulled away; and then she's not seen again in the book because she wasn't there. Nothing for Harry to comment on.
2. He does notice her in CoS, even in the beginning at the Burrow, but treats her with surprising compassion in a 12-year-old. He doesn't poke fun at her for her crush or for putting her elbow in the butter dish or any of the other cruel things that 12-year-old boys do, especially when confronted with a crush; he tries to talk to her kindly when he does talk to her; he goes on alone to rescue her from the Chamber. And then, at the end, when Ginny should have been REALLY embarrassed to talk to him on the train home, he asks her what it was that Percy didn't want her to tell. She giggles and says "Percy has a girlfriend." Now, personally, if I were eleven and I'd just had my life saved by my desperate crush, I'm not sure I could have giggled with him over my brother's girlfriend. Friends of my own, yes; Harry Potter, no. This is pretty amazing to me.
3. In PoA, Ginny's hardly there--but, then, she's not part of his close circle. She's got her own friends and presumably spends time with them. But Harry is a little busy worrying about the whole Sirius Black thing; I wasn't surprised Ginny wasn't there yet. He's only 13, she's only 12; that's a little young to be thinking romance anyway.
4. She's mentioned a few times in Goblet of Fire, but, again, Harry's a bit wrapped up in the Triwizard Tournament. He's got a lot on his plate, and it's not time for romance yet (though he does start noticing pretty Cho). This is not romance; it's a crush, though he's a little better at dealing with it than Ginny was. A little.
5. All of a sudden, after two years of practically not existing in the books, Ginny's front-and-center. Why? Because these are from Harry's POV. In other words, Harry is starting to notice her more. She's more interesting, she's got more to say, she's not so shy, and consequently, she becomes much more part of his world than she had been before. This was my first real encouragement that H/G really was going to be canon--I'd shipped H/G before that, but this was the first real argument for it in the books. Just the fact that, despite everything that's going on--Umbridge, Occlumency lessons, Quidditch ban, his OWLs, and so forth, he notices Ginny that much, indicates to me that there's something going on subconsciously.
Hermione is a smart, fussy, rule-following bookworm; she has been since the first book. Not that this is necessarily bad--after all, she and Harry and Ron have been friends all this time--but that's her character, period. When Harry gets angry at her, she backs away. Ginny, on the other hand, is smart, popular, pretty, and has few qualms about doing what needs to be done despite rules (to be fair, Hermione's like that too, about the important things, e.g. the Polyjuice potion in book 2). Ginny loves Quidditch, one of Harry's favorite things; she's a talented and skilled flier; and when he yells at her or gets into a temper, she uses a few well-chosen words to verbally thwap him upside the head and knock him back into place. And it works, in the way that Hermione's hand-wringing and "Oh, Harry"s don't. Ginny suits Harry; she can deal with his mood swings and his temper, she gives as good as she gets, she has her own friends so she doesn't need to lean on him, and she has interests that go well with Harry's. I fail to see the problem with their relationship.
Whew! Glad I got that off my chest. Thanks for letting me rant in your journal. *G*
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