Ginny Weasley is a love her or hate her type of character. While some admire her bravery, spunk, and pluckiness, others despise her for being a Mary Sue and written to be the "perfect girl" for Harry rather than being a character in her ow right. For those who fall into the latter category, what changes could J.K. Rowling have made to Ginny's development, characterization, and personality that would make her a better and more likable character?
Alright I do like her, I think Ginny would be a more interesting character if she had sort of a 'Dislike' for Harry at first and saying something like 'I don't see why everyone likes him, so what if he stopped an evil wizard blah blah blah' but after being saved in the second she starts to like him, but doesn't fully show it until much later.
That's what I had in mind. Seems like the minute Ginny lays her eyes on Harry, she adores him. From the very first time they meet at the end of Book #1. She would've been more interesting as a character if she was mostly "meh" at Harry at first. Just another wizard her brothers like. Why bother with him? When he saves her, THEN she can start thinking, "Wow, he's awesome!"
You guys realize that is even more cliché than liking him right away, right? Maybe she would have been better if she idolized him at first, then got to know him and realized he was a real person, and then began feeling real love for him. That there was never some kind of transition like that was what bothered me the most about her, but to be honest I never gave Ginny much thought. I felt like we never got to properly know her. There were several far less important characters that I felt I knew a lot better than I ever got to know Ginny.
I think it's cute how Ginny 'loved' him right away. Remember when you first see Ginny in book one she's only ten years old. She met the hero of her world so young and it just seems natural that she be initially enamored by him. It was more of a hero-worship kind of thing. There are subsequent books where Ginny shows little to no interest in Harry romantically, a brief relationship with Dean Thomas if I'm not mistaken, and then there's Harry's thing with Cho or whatever. The relationship mirrors plenty of relationships I've seen in real life. Where one person likes the other initially but nothing comes of it, and they somehow eventually wind up together. Nothing seemed amiss in Ginny's character to me. She fits her role in the series well.
In the books she's relatively fine. And it wasn't just Dean Thomas. Dean Thomas is just who she was dating at the start of the sixth book. Over the summer through years around it she was known to be dating everybody, if I'm not mistaken. It's the movies that make her easy to dislike. She's good looking enough for a ranga (proud ranga speaking here, thank you very much), but she's a shocking actress. She enters scenes with very little emotion and kind of just blurts out her lines too quickly. Most of the movies were terrible for that sort of thing. The first three movies and even the fourth were all great because the actors and actresses hadn't gotten too arrogant (I can only assume that's what it was) and the storyline of the books was mostly adhered to. After that, they were all too old for it, and Ginny's actress was terrible and there was no obvious spark between her and Harry. And I agree with spklvr that making her dislike him at first would have been a terribly cliché idea. He's a hero of the wizarding world and she meets him when she's young and impressionable. She gets a crush. Harry keeps being great and she never grows out of that crush. The best thing for the series would have been Harry marrying someone else and Ginny growing out of the crush. As well as the "19 years later" being changed to, like, "19 years earlier" (or something) where Harry time travels back to destroy Voldemort before he can kill him and then invents the Tardis whereupon it's stolen by Barty Crouch Jr. who stops looking so creepy. Yeah. That would rule.
What would make Ginny a better character? Well, a personality would be a start. Seriously, what can you say about her other than that she is Ron's sister and Harry's (totally unconvincing) love interest? She doesn't do anything, she is barely even involved in any of the storylines, she's just there in the background, cheerleading for Harry and being worried about by her family.
Are we talking movies, or books? Because in the books, Ginny was a perfectly fine character. I would have preferred more page-time for her in the seventh book, but I think she was a great example of character growth and development, and her relationship with Harry was a great contrast to that of Ron and Hermione. In the movies, they needed a different actress. Then they needed to actually give her more than two or three lines per movie.
