fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2791 ]

[ SECRET POST #2791 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2791 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 058 secrets from Secret Submission Post #399.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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Kind of inspired by #9, but I liked all of JK Rowling's ships - not always how she wrote them, Remus/Tonks in particular was awful in the last book (though I actually liked their twist in HBP and felt they were hinted at in OoTP), but generally I could see where they came from at worst, loved them at best.

Actually, in general I'm usually fine with canon pairings, pre-established or otherwise. Even if I didn't ship it before it became canon, I generally get on board pretty quickly.

I agree completely.

I LIKE Ginny. But I really dislike how Harry/Ginny was written because it just feels like horrible wish fulfillment for Harry.

She's red-haired like his mom! She's the only girl in the Weasley family so that Harry can "officially" become part of the family! She's apparently *so* pretty that she meets even Blaise's high standards. Sends out such great spells that it impresses even Slughorn! She's such a great Quidditch player!

At some point I was like "Give it a rest, Rowling, and stop fucking shilling so badly."

What do you like her for, though? She never struck me as having much of a personality outside of her relationship with Harry.

(to be clear, I absolutely do not mean to be hostile about this topic).

I liked her a lot in the fifth book. Her method of dealing with Harry and his worries about possession with Voldemort were pretty cool and I liked the role she played in the final battle. She was a cool character.

But then the sixth book came out and I was all *URGH.*

And, okay, if it was just Harry mooning over her, I could totally understand that (because he's falling in love). But Rowling seemed to go out of her way to show the Slytherins and Slughorn and freaking EVERYONE being impressed with her to sell us on how AWESOME Ginny is and how PERFECT she is for Harry.

And all I thought was NO. STOP. Go back to book 5.

I see. Yeah, now that I think of it, I suppose I agree. I totally forgot about TOotP!Ginny; frankly, I kind of didn't notice her behind all the huge events that took place in that book.

That's the only time she sounded alright to me, though. I'm with you on other counts: Rowling really isn't very good at character dynamics/characterization.

Rowling is amazing at characterization - the Harry Potter characters are some of the most vividly-drawn, distinctively-voiced, memorable people I've ever seen in a work of fiction. And I've read a LOT of fiction.

JKR just isn't very good at all at character *development* This doesn't really matter a whole lot until the 6th book, I think, but it gets really noticeable right about then. It's not just Ginny, IMO. It hits Harry and Hermione worst of all.

Do you mind giving some examples of Harry and Hermione?

Not trying to be confrontational. I'm just interested! :)

Because I never fell in love with books 6 and 7 as much as the others and I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Basically, Harry in Book 6 has very little continuity with Harry at the end of Book 5. It's not like the change is unfathomable or anything, but his changes all take place offscreen. He tells them to Dumbledore in the Weasleys' toolshed, but we never get to see it, which is a shame. And from then on, he never really fails. This is a problem. Ron got to fail, obviously, on multiple levels, in Book 6 and 7, which made him one of the characters who really did seem to have good character development. Harry never really failed, or gave up, or went "fuck this, I can't, go to hell" at any point after that amazing meltdown at the end of OotP. Again, it's not completely unbelievable, because Harry is nothing if not possessed of great strength of character, but it's wasted potential for a hero of his type, IMO.

Hermione actually doesn't really get smacked until Book 7, where she suddenly turns into a magical swiss army knife with very little personality or agency of her own. In Book 6 she feels technically good and appropriate for her age, but the regression from her being one of the awesomest, most fascinating teenage-girl characters I've ever seen in Book 5 (her detailed, perceptive awareness of the political context and what Umbridge is doing, the complicated mix of impressive maturity and intelligence and scary immaturity and shortsightedness in her attempts to make people act the way she thinks they should act, etc...that moment in the Department of Mysteries when she gets MAD at Luna for saying that there are voices behind the veil is something I read over and over again because I can't believe how well that was done) is kind of disappointing and frustrating. Not that I think a 17 year old girl wouldn't act the way she did in Book 6, just that I don't really want to think Hermione would go from her Book 5 characterization to her Book 6 characterization.

These problems actually bother me a lot less than it might seem from this comment -- they're actually just small nuisances to me. But they do stop me from, as you say, falling as much in love with 6-7 as with 1-5.

Oh God yeah -- I agree with you about the lack of continuity. I remember being SO CONFUSED at Harry's seeming lack of reaction over SIrius' death compared to Cedric. He freaked out at the end of Book 5 but he just seemed WAY too level headed in book 6 comparatively.

And Book 5 Hermione WAS great (although I"ll admit SPEW started to tire me out after a while, although I think that was intentional on some level).

It just seemed like Book 6 and 7 had so much wasted potential. What I really loved about Book 6 was the expansion of Tom Riddle's backstory. But almost everything else in that book felt disposable to me. Book 7 just seemed like…well…a mess to be honest.

Uh. I can agree with that if we are talking all the little details that make a character unique - dialogue quirks, mannerisms, stuff like that. But the instance it comes to something bigger and more important, things go awry. How can she be good at characterization but not very good at character development? Is the latter not an inherent part of the former? Or do you mean "characterization" as in "the first few bits of information the audience learns about the character" (no sarcasm/hostility intended)?

I mean that her characters really felt like real people until she started putting them into plots that ought to have forced them to change dramatically and gradually, and they kind of...didn't, really. Or did for a while but the change didn't last long enough (Harry in OotP for example), or changed in weird sudden shifts (like Ginny).

And no, I don't think character development is an inherent part of characterization? There are loads of really amazing and well-characterized fictional characters that remain pretty static throughout the canon source material.

I suppose it's a matter of weighing the positives of her characterization of the characters in each book/period of time against the negatives of the weird/unsatisfying/glossed over transitions between the characters' different periods between books and within different parts of the books. IMO the characterization of each segment = great, but most of the transitions = huh, what? More info plz? But I guess IDGAF about the problems with the transitions enough for it to really badly impact my love of the characters. *shrugs* Not that sort of book franchise for me, maybe? I did read the whole series as a kid between the ages of 9 and 15, after all. ;)

Edited 2014-08-24 21:04 (UTC)

I think this was a case of confusion over terms - "character development" referring to the initial creation of a character versus referring to the character arc throughout the course of a story.

Kind of, I believe - I was referring to the psychological exploration of the technically-static characters as well as to the actual changes in the personalities of the dynamic characters.

IDK. A lot of criticisms of Harry Potter are the kind of thing that fill me with a powerful feeling of "I totally understand this line of thinking logically but I cannot bring myself to actually give a single fuck about any of these problems you keep talking about, because it's like disliking my best friend for clipping her toenails on the carpet." The negatives always just feel so overwhelmingly and inarguably drowned out by the positives to me personally because, I think, of the context in which I first read them. It's like...magic. No pun intended. :D

I get what you're saying, but I do have a problem even with the parts that do not belong to transition periods. I guess my main issue with Rowling's approach to characterization is that if some of her characters are taken at face value, they really are quite awful, which is probably not the effect she was going for. There seems to be a discrepancy between the way the characters are supposed to be perceived and the way they are actually perceived by the audience (one of the notable examples being Snape), and IMO it's a failure on her part.

eta: I understand not giving a damn about the problems, too! It's just that I can't agree that Rowling's objectively "amazing" at characterization. At certain aspects of it, maybe.

Edited 2014-08-24 21:20 (UTC)

Re: Fandom Confessions

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Re: Fandom Confessions

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I think a lot of that could have been solved if it wasn't for POV issues because for the most part her only issue is losing her temper about three times and I think it was never truly 'on screen' just "Oh hey, they acted weird" "Yeah, because I HEXED them!" "Nice!"

She's red-haired like his mom!

I never understood this. I mean, yes, she's a redhead, but they're two different shades of red, Ginny being a ginger and Lily having more of an auburn hair.

You never see people say things like "oh well he's marrying a brunette, you know who else was a brunette? His mother."

It was just the idolization of Lily in the books (seriously -- Rowling writes her as a saint) and how Ginny seemed to be this weird vessel to channel her.

I can't really explain it -- it's just a feeling I got.

It just seemed like Rowling REALLY emphasized the hair thing. The same with Harry's eyes.

Because Rowling emphasized ALL the Weasleys' hair color? It was a major family trait, and sort of symbolized them.

Ginny didn't even have the same hair color as Lily. Lily's was dark auburn, Ginny's was bright red and she was freckled and ginger, which was never mentioned with Lily.

Exactly. One of my favorite pieces of fanart is this piece from Viria, comparing Ginny and Lily. http://viria.tumblr.com/post/14720061698/ginny-vs-lily

Didn't Ginny have a different shade of red hair than Lily, though? I never felt that was supposed to be indicative of anything.

Honestly, I liked H/G when I was reading the books, but looking back on them now I kinda agree. I don't hate the ship, but it felt a little, idk, it was like she paired them just to make a perfect friendship love square with Ron and Hermione.

I don't know that I feel the same way about Ginny specifically though. Harry notices the things about her that are the coolest, because he's seeing her through a lens of infatuation, and he's the narrator. It doesn't mean she's not flawed. And she was an awkward pubescent girl when they first met, and part of her development was her changing from the silly little sister Ron saw into a mature person of her own right, including growing out of the awkwardness and gaining a level of badassery.

Me too. I usually like canon pairings, and though the ones in Harry Potter aren't very well written I have enough imagination to love them. Don't really agree they can get married based on high school romance though

It's not really high school romance though? I don't think any real high school teenagers go through the amount of adult-level issues and problem-handling and development and maturity-enforcement that the teenager characters in Harry Potter go through.

I'm kinda the same about canon pairings.* I didn't have Strong Feelings for any HP pairings except for Ron/Hermione, though.

*this might be because there are relatively few pairings I actively dislike, and none of them have ever been canon in any of my fandoms

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