burn book | character rants

Ginny Weasley (i)

Ginny Weasley is the worst; @ me all you want.

Wow, Ginny.

Ok, so, I've beaten this horse to death, but not on a story kind of post. Also, I'm bored in the house and I'm in the house bored. So I'm gonna go there. Again.

I don't like Ginny Weasley.

I don't think she "had a personality in the books, but Movie Ginny was done dirty." I think Book Ginny AND Movie Ginny were both done dirty. They could have both been developed in a much more organic, believable, all-around better way.

Ginny's character was developed poorly, almost lazily. Everything about her character is told to us, not shown. We never see her do whatever Bat Bogey Hex thing she's apparently so great at - we just hear about how great it was, after the fact. We don't see how she develops into a skilled Quidditch player, practicing in secret. We're just randomly told this at some point in the books when Harry and his friends are playing Quidditch together.

Like, give us a scene where she hexes someone and everyone sees and it's amazing. Give us moments that hint at Ginny's character having that inner fierceness, underneath her shy exterior. Give us hints of Ginny trying to make something of herself, whether through Quidditch or whatever, rather than just inventing what sounds like the most badass, least-emotionally-high-maintenance character and then shoving that down our throats.

This is what makes Ginny's character development feel so lacking. It almost feels like, midway through writing the series, JKR's editor was like, "But Harry should have a love interest," so JKR quickly took inventory of all her female characters, picked Ginny because hey, red hair like Harry's mom, and then just totally rewrote her to be the Perfect Teenage Boy's Dream Girl, without taking any time to organically develop her character.

It's fine for Ginny to ultimately be developed into this fierce, independent character, but we have to see how she gets there. We have to relate to her own growth as a person, and see some semblance of ourselves in the character. I mean, we feel this way about the Golden Trio, but we also feel this way about more minor characters like Neville and Luna. We see a bit of ourselves in those characters - in Neville's journey of getting over people's (mostly low) opinion of him and finding his own self-confidence; in Luna being unapologetically herself, quirks and all, even while knowing that people laugh at her. These are all struggles that humans relate to. Ginny's character should have been given this same treatment.

We can't just have this totally new-and-improved, independent, badass character shoved into our faces, without that character earning that development.

Speaking of independence and badassness-I think Ginny gets a bit more credit here than perhaps she deserves. No doubt, she has some degree of fierceness, but in the many instances people love to cite as evidence of said fierceness, Ginny kind of just sounds straight-up mean.

She hexes Zacharias Smith because he annoys her, instead of just, I don't know, ignoring him or walking away. And it wasn't because he was harassing her, or bullying her. He just asked her what really happened in the Department of Mysteries which, even if Zacharias is kind of annoying, can you blame him? Everyone was talking about that event, and after it happened, the Ministry just backtracks on every mean thing they'd ever said about Harry, and suddenly Voldemort is back. It's natural to be curious about that. It's kind of a big deal.

Ginny also has a temper. In Book 6, after Harry s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶l̶y mistakenly uses the Sectumsempra spell, Hermione (rightfully) gets upset with him. The following exchange ensues:

"Give it a rest, Hermione!" said Ginny, and Harry was so amazed, so grateful, he looked up. "By the sound of it Malfoy was trying to use an unforgivable curse, you should be glad Harry had something good up his sleeve!"