On Ginny

[donnaimmaculata]

Apparently, there are those who say that Harry only went for Ginny because she's Lily II. Regardless on whether or not this is true - would that be that bad if the boy fell in love with a girl who reminded him - if only superficially - of his mother? I know that I tend to go for boys who have something in common with my father. I'm not attracted to my father at all, but I've read a silly little poem he wrote in my diary when I was ten recently, and I realised that I could so fall for a man who writes like that. And then I thought, OMG, it's my father! And: But the poem's so cute and witty!

What I'm trying to say is that there's nothing wrong with being attracted to someone because there are certain characteristics about them which remind you of your parents. Unless there's something seriously wrong with me, which I wouldn't quite rule out.

I've always liked Ginny. She's the only female character in the novels who's ever showed a sense of humour. Her newly developed ability of being entertaining is a logical extrapolation of her capability of laughing at silly things, which she had shown from the very beginning. She's unnecessarily bitchy? Growing up at Molly's daughter, she had to find some way to deal with her pent-up frustrations.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

See, I believe exactly the opposite. You can definitely have Mary Sues in canon--sometimes they're even done in such a way that it doesn't matter they're a Mary Sue. They can even upset the balance of canon, despite being in canon. I loved reading somethng where apparently an editor of Madeleine L'Engle criticized her character in exactly those terms--X is always right, she lectures even adults on right and wrong, everyone loves her but she's completely insufferable. Luckily L'Engle changed this, but it still seems like the criticism is the same--you've written a Mary Sue here, and we don't like her!:-) So I tend to think of them as canon creations first with the fanfic version just being a secondary one, one that's probably more easily spotted and abused.

[mafdet.livejournal.com]

One of the big problems with calling a canon character a Mary Sue, besides all that a_t_rain and others mentioned above, is that if you define Mary Sue as partially a self-insert, how do you know that the character is one? Unless one knows the author personally, it's a mite arrogant to say, "So-and-So is Author X's self-insert."

Sometimes authors will say that they based a particular character on themselves - which JKR did with Hermione and also Harry (people overlook this latter). But otherwise, a reader can't assume that a particular character is a self-insert, unless they know the author. Unless the reader is some kind of Legilimens and can read inside the author's mind.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

One of the big problems with calling a canon character a Mary Sue, besides all that a_t_rain and others mentioned above, is that if you define Mary Sue as partially a self-insert, how do you know that the character is one? Unless one knows the author personally, it's a mite arrogant to say, "So-and-So is Author X's self-insert."

But why would that only apply to published authors and not fanfic?

[mafdet.livejournal.com]

With fanfic, it can be easier to guess that a badly written OC who takes center stage and has all the canon characters bowing before her in awe and acting totally OOC may be a wish-fulfillment vehicle.

In a sense, all fiction - fanfic, original fic, published or otherwise - is wish-fulfillment on some level. Or at the very least, some kind of "what if?" fulfillment.

But when "self-insert" is used as part of the term "Mary Sue" it usually means "idealized self-insert, the author as s/he wishes s/he could be." Where things get a bit tricky, and it's more dangerous to just assume that Ginny, or Tonks, are people JKR wishes she was (I've heard people say Tonks is JKR's self-insert too). Maybe JKR really wishes she was everyone in the Potterverse!

She has gone on record as saying that Hermione carries a bit of herself, and Harry too. But Harry's the hero, and it makes more sense to have the hero, the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived blah blah blah, be a "self-insert." Ginny is really a secondary character. We hardly saw her at all in PoA and GoF.