LogFAQs > #959989480

I don't dislike her, but I don't really like her either. So...

no

Like...of the three students who are basically declared as tertiary characters at the end of book 5, Luna, Neville, and Ginny, I really like both Luna and Neville, and just...don't have a strong opinion on Ginny. Didn't leave much of an impression on me.

Part of this is a writing flaw, I think. Ginny is prominent in book 2, then kinda just disappears for two books. Like...basically doesn't exist in book 3 and 4. Exists again in book 5, but sets up no real foreshadowing for her future role. (There is foreshadowing for the romantic pairing, but it's all self-contained in book 6. The kind of foreshadowing I liked was foreshadowing between books. Like...literally the fandom figured out that Petunia saying "I overheard that awful boy telling her" about Dementors, the fandom actually correctly deciphered who the "awful boy" was before the book came out--that was a cool moment).

Alright, so anyway, no real foreshadowing before book 6, fine whatever. Won't matter to people entering the fandom after the books are written, which is probably most of the fandom today and I'm just old. Now that this whole romance has been set up in book 6, what's done with Ginny in book 7? Oh right, Harry's like "we're gonna save the world, sorry, you can't come with us", and...she's basically not in the book. You know, before the series ended, my friends and I speculated that the trio would expand to the six with Luna Ginny and Neville, and eventually to 7 members because "7 is the most powerfully magical number" (the obvious 7th member being Draco Malfoy). But nope, none of that, only the trio. Now, there was still room for people to have a cool moment in book 7. Harry's confrontation with Lupin is flat out one of the best scenes in the book. Luna doesn't do too much in the book, but we get a nice long scene with Luna's dad, and it feels like character development for Luna. There's some redemption arcs for characters previously portrayed as villains; I'll avoid spoilers there. A bunch of good guys get some really memorable moment in the big final battle. Hagrid does, Neville does. Ginny moments in the final battle...well...she, Hermione, and Luna do end up in this three-on-one duel against a death eater. But like...a different weasley steals the spotlight from all three of them. Even After all the bad guys die, and Harry sneaks away to have a personal moment...he doesn't sneak away to have a personal moment with Ginny, though, he sneaks away to have a personal moment with Ron, Hermione, and a painting.

The end result with Ginny is a character that...is just in and out of the series--in some books almost absent, basically a minor background character about as important as, say, Kingsley Shacklebolt in books 3, 4, and 7. Her disappearing in books 3 and 4 is fine--she's not really marked a major character yet, but her general absence in book 7 feels really, really weird. And then the books where she is important, 2, 5, and 6, she's like...a different character with a different role in each of the three books. With not a lot of setup for the character shifts. Not that characters need to have on-screen character development--Neville Longbottom is an example of a character who mostly has an off-screen training montage, which makes sense, Harry doesn't dislike Neville but he doesn't have a reason to be paying more than normal amounts of attention to Neville. But he does have a reason to be paying more than normal amounts of attention to Ginny, and even if he arguably doesn't before book 6, Ron does.

Meh...I want to like her, she's an archetype I often tend to like, but I feel she wasn't executed all that well, and...in the end I think there's about five or six Weasleys I like more than her.

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