[ SECRET POST #1290 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1290 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 108 secrets from Secret Submission Post #184.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 3 4 5 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 3 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom.livejournal.com]

162. http://i45.tinypic.com/24g58ck.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Feeling one female character has Mary-Sue traits =/= misogynist, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Not this shit again...look, this might be hard to comprehend, but just because everyone doesn't love EVERY FEMALE CHARACTER EVA!!111 doesn't make them sexist.

[(Anonymous)]

I like Ginny, but she is kind of a Mary Sue. She's talented with spells and popular(in the story) and gets the hero. What's your argument again?

[(Anonymous)]

uh. I'm not even going to touch the Mary-Sue bit.

my problem with the Harry/Ginny thing is that it reeks of ~mommy issues~.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with the other two commenters. Also, if anyone aside from JKR had written a character with the exact same 'development' as Ginny in a fanfic, it would be trashed immediately as a Mary Sue. She does have Mary Sue traits, not the least of which is having even the bad guys (who HATE her) talk about how hot she is, conveniently for Harry to hear it. She also has a thousand people talking about her talents and intelligence, but it's never actually used for anything useful. She's like a shiny doll who is just being groomed to be Harry's love interest. I can see why people like her but she does have Mary Sue traits that aren't erased just because JKR is actually capable of writing characters that aren't Mary Sues, and personally I think she's ridiculously boring.

[(Anonymous)]

Every single character in HP and every single pairing has people who dislike it. Why would this one character or pairing require "hatred of woman" to dislike it?

I think in the 6th book Ginny is one MS moment after another. Though to be fair it's not so much to promote Ginny herself as Ginny as Harry's female half.

[kiraya.livejournal.com]

It's not that she's a Mary-Sue, it's just that... there's almost no development of her character (let alone her relationship with Harry) that's on-screen (show, don't tell, JKR!) and makes genuine linear sense. She has a crush on him from the get-go, sure, but for Harry it seems she's just "ok, Ron's sister" for the majority of the books until all of a sudden it's "heyyyyy Ron's sister :D" -- which, um, where the heck did that come from? And then she disappears for most of Deathly Hallows only to show up and kick ass and get the guy at the end. Ookay then.

</two cents from someone who read the books but isn't in HP fandom>

[(Anonymous)]

Um...but there are actually good reasons for people to dislike Harry/Ginny? HP has quite a few awesome female characters, but I just don't feel like Ginny is developed enough, or complex enough to be one of them.

I don't hate her, I just think she's kind of a meh, and hate the way she was shoehorned in as Harry's Love Interest.

[lacunaz.livejournal.com]

I like Ginny, but I realise that her character had some problems. Unless the person who hates Ginny also happens to hate every other female in the series, I don't really think it's a case of women hating on women. But that's just me. I only get annoyed when people can't pinpoint exactly what they don't like about her and instead go for the blanket "Mary Sue".

So more importantly:

OMG people stop saying Mary Sue

YOU KEEP USING THAT WORD

I DON'T THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS

Yes, this rant again. Sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think that hating one character makes someone a misogynist and I was really disappointed by Ginny's lack of character development and the (boring and annoying, in my opinion) "relationship".

BUT I almost always HATE the use of the term Mary Sue to describe a canon character, partly because I DO see definite misogynist trends there. Very few people call Harry Potter himself a Mary Sue or Gary Stu, despite his being the Chosen One, famous, eventually popular, blessed with luck and the adulation of the girls at his school. Meanwhile, I see Katniss from the Hunger Games slapped with the label all the time, despite not matching nearly as many of the commonly identified elements, in my opinion.

I don't think fanfiction characters and original work characters should be held to the same standards. Of course many main characters from original works are portrayed as extra special, especially in genre fiction. Of course they're the center of attention. Rant over, then. I don't like later-books Ginny, but I would call her a poorly developed and ultimately poorly written character, not a Mary Sue.

[steph313.livejournal.com]

I agree about the Mary Sue thing. And the misogyny surrounding Ginny is absolutely disgusting.

BUt people are allowed to hate H/G.I enjoy them, but I can understand why people wouldn't. Even I would have preferred them to be fleshed out more.

[michygeary.livejournal.com]

Ginny being flawless makes her a Mary Sue, not people's dislike of her. In fact, many people who LIKE Ginny admit she's a Mary Sue.

[seesnapefly.livejournal.com]

Am I hating on women if I dislike Ginny/Harry but like Luna/Harry?

Really?

And I agree, Ginny isn't a Mary Sue. But she definitely isn't a person that I'd ever want to spend time with for more than five minutes.

[savioto.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. Obviously it's possible to dislike a female character without being sexist, but because it happens so often, it's really hard not to think "I wonder if people would hate this character as much if she weren't female?". Especially when it comes to Ginny, because so many of the complaints about her have been things like "she's a slut."

Also, I'm starting to really hate the term Mary Sue, especially when it's applied to canon characters.

[missing-mile-15.livejournal.com]

I don't think hating Ginny has to do with misogyny. I think it's due to her being a one-dimensional and Harry/Ginny being out of nowhere and extremely boring.

[(Anonymous)]

lol related kind of... I always see people get onto threads about secrets like this and make it all about shipping. Like people can't dislike Ginny just because they ship something else and I don't think that's true. Because I don't like Ginny but I can't ship Harry with anyone because his romantic side has always struck me as like the crushes you have when you're 5 years old, like totally nonsexual. I never cared who he ended up with because I can't actually imagine him *with* anybody. When people talk about ships I can usually see the other half of their pairings being interested in Harry, he's described in a way that makes him seem pretty cute and he has enough good things about him, but I always think he would be totally unaware of their interest and if they are in a relationship it's just so AWKWARD to me. Like really, Harry Potter being smooth in a relationship? I just can't see it. I mean I don't like Ginny either but that wasn't what bugs me about the ship, it's just that it feels awkward and forced when I read it and it feels weird, like she's macking a kid who is not really into it.

Totally OT

[masakochan.livejournal.com]

I'm just liking the fact that the image the OP used makes Harry look like he's just a little shorter than Ginny. <3 Personal head-canon, here I come. xD

My two cents on what's the problem with Ginny

[sara-rojo.livejournal.com]

The problem with Ginny is that she acquired all her supposed awesomeness offscreen. We didn't get to see her evolve, she simply changed from a little shy mouse girl into a SuperAwesome SuperPopular Hot Action Red Head in one summer. The character is perceived as a Mary Sue because she was written as one. It's not her characteristics that make her so, it's the way she gets there.

Hermione ends the series being an attractive successfull sharp open-minded young woman of extraordinary intelligence and skills (possibly more intelligent than any other character, since her emotional maturity is quite higher than Dumbledore's and Voldemort's in comparable ages), and she was sought after by a very popular famous seeker and by one of the main characters, she appearred on the media in canon, people speculated about her relationship with the hero, and canon females were canonly jealous of her. You know why she isn't perceived as a Mary Sue? Because she got all of that in front of us. We saw her becoming all that, from another shy little lonely insecure girl, into that astounding woman. Ginny didn't get that, and her supposed awesomeness was forced down our throats suddenly.

tl;dr: Ginny is a case of bad writing

[callmejude.livejournal.com]

I love Hermione. I love Luna. I love Mrs. Weasley, and Katie Bell and Angela Johnson and in a love-to-hate kind of way that villains are, I love Bellatrix Lestrange, Patricia Dursley (well, she's not really a VILLAIN, but you get me) and Narcissa Malfoy.

Cho Chang was slightly annoying because she came out of nowhere and was suddenly Harry's favourite thing to think about, but whatever, I got over her midway through the 4th book and considered her with neutrality from then on.

But Ginny was...I don't know. Kind of the same way. Her sudden cutie background character-to-hottie main character transformation was more than a little aggravating. She just hadn't been an important enough character to suddenly be such a major focus. :/

[gabzillaz.livejournal.com]

She is borderline Sue. And I love her. I think Rowling could have developed her better, but well.

People who rage over her and HG make me LOL, though.

[angary.livejournal.com]

It's not that I hate her nor do I hate Harry/Ginny, I just felt that JKR didn't really develop their relationship or Ginny's characterization in as good as way as, say, any of the trio's, and I don't think that the "Ginny=Mary Sue" argument lacks total merit. I get that we saw Ginny through Harry's POV and yeah, in a way it seemed realistic that once she grew up and became popular he'd be all "HOT DAMN", but it's the apparent likeness between her and Lily that bothers me as well as the peripheral, major switch in Ginny's nature.

Then again I wasn't really hung up on whom Harry would end up with, if anyone at all, so in the end I'm happy that he and Ginny got a happy ending, along with Ron and Hermione. But as always, it's the writing that contains issues/virtues and therefore should be criticized or praised, not so much the actual characters, IMO.

[fight-the-sky.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't go as far as calling her a Mary-Sue but she's definitely one of the most poorly written characters in the series

[(Anonymous)]

I have seen a lot of misogyny when it comes to Ginny. It really is horrific at times. Of course, that`s not always the reason but sometimes it is.

I don`t get the Ginny hate though because I love Ginny She`s awesome and badass. It was pretty apparent that her crush on Harry was a limiting factor till she got over it which is natural and realistic. She actually stands up for herself and others and what not before OoTP but maybe people don`t remember that, I really didn`t think there was a personality change, it was just a very believable development - just someone gradually maturing and no longer being intimated by a crush. I`ve seen it happen to lots of people at that age. People do grow up and mature fandom and just because someone is popular, it does not make them a sue.

Plus, all this we`re told but not shown blah blah. You see her befriend the losers, be good at sports, be loyal, funny, brave, resourceful, grow as a person, fight and so on so I don`t see the complaints. She`s certainly better developed than a large portion of fandom favourites who are VERY poorly developed or not developed at all so part of me wonders if it`s because she ends up with the hero that there are complaints. When there are characters like Umbridge and Voldermort and Bellatrix and Snape and people can only hate on Ginny it makes me go o_O. And

I also don`t think she`s a Mary Sue. Too often people use that to mean female character they don`t like and Ginny is no exception - she`s so flawed I can`t see how that makes her Sue. On one hand, people complain that she`s a major bitch and on the other hand, she`s a Sue, don`t get it.

[luxis-lil.livejournal.com]

No, we're hatting on bad writing and bad character development.