Just Another Book About Harry Potter Ships

Linny (Luna/Ginny)

SHIP NAMES: Linny, Lunny, Ginuna, Guna, Lovely, Luna/Ginny, G/L, GW/LL, S.S. Dreamy Redhead

THOUGHTS: Until very recently, the Harry Potter fandom has been seriously shortchanging its femslash ships and, more generally, its female characters except for Hermione. Thankfully, in the past four years that I've been collecting ship data, a small handful of femslash ships have moved into the top 50 most popular ships. Linny is at the top, as the most popular femslash ship in the fandom. Sadly, it still falls far behind the most popular slash and het ships. Linny has 4.3K tagged fanworks as of June 2022, while the most popular slash ship, Drarry, has 82.5K and the most popular het ship, Dramione, has 46.8K.

Let that sink in. Drarry is almost 19 times more prevalent, and Dramione is almost 11 times more prevalent, than the most popular femslash ship in this fandom. Even controversial ships like Snarry and Snamione are 4 times and 2.5 times more prevalent, respectively. If that doesn't say a lot about the fandom, I don't know what does.

HOWEVER, things are slowly but surely getting better. In May 2020, the numbers were even worse: Drarry was almost 23 times more prevalent and Dramione was almost 14 times more prevalent, while Snarry and Snamione were 5 times and 2.5 times more prevalent, than Linny. Since then, Linny has moved up several places in the overall fandom rankings and thus closed some of those gaps just a tiny bit.

Incidentally, I've warmed up to Linny quite a bit over the past couple of years. I was never cold to it, per se, and I gave it a generous rating because I wanted to like it, but I wasn't enthusiastic about it. We don't see much of Ginny and Luna's relationship in canon, and Ginny called Luna "Loony" at the beginning of book 5 (though she later stops people from calling her that). It just didn't feel much like relationship material for me, and I never felt a spark between them.

But since then, I've seen the gaps in canon that could be filled to make this a more interesting ship. Luna is clearly smitten with Ginny, saying once during her narration of a Quidditch match that she likes Ginny and that she's very nice, and throughout the last few books, it's clear that she cares a lot about Ginny. In return, Ginny learns to see Luna as more than just a very weird classmate, to the point where she actively stops people from bulling her, and there's plenty of room for development of their relationship at DA meetings, during and after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries, and during their tumultuous seventh year when they're stuck under the reign of the Carrows while the Trio is off hunting for Horcruxes.

Unfortunately, I'm still not super enthusiastic about Linny, even though I think they could be cute. I still don't feel any sparks between them, but also, sadly, the Harry Potter series has a dearth of well-developed female characters, which could be part of it. Hermione has the most character development and complexity out of all the female characters, and almost everyone else is a little (or a lot) two-dimensional. Ginny, Luna, Cho, Fleur, Pansy, Lavender, the Patil twins — they all could've been fleshed out more. Not to mention that female characters are rarely seen interacting with each other throughout the series. It all combines to contribute to my lack of enthusiasm for most of the femslash ships in this fandom, even though as a queer woman, I desperately want the representation. It's disappointing, but this is my life as a queer woman, always searching for scraps and getting mostly shitty canon representation, if I get it at all. (Pfffff, no, I'm not salty at all, why would you say that? I'm perfectly fine! Ahahaha. ha. ha.)

HOWEVER, I recently read this Tumblr post that was reblogged by one of my mutuals (link in the comments!) and it made me realize that even as a queer woman who loves wlw ships, I'm still sometimes guilty of writing off female characters as "less interesting" than male characters with the same level of canonical characterization; seeing more "inherent" potential in male side characters for fandom-developed complexity than female side characters; and thinking about female characters as women first and people second. So what if most of the female characters in Harry Potter are not very developed? People give to develop to random male side characters all the time — just look at how much this fandom loves random Slytherin men like Theodore or Blaise, even though we see more in-universe mentions of Hermione, Ginny, McGonagall, Molly, Umbridge, Luna, Petunia, Trelawney, Fleur, Tonks, Bellatrix, Cho, Skeeter, Pomfrey, Lavender, Angelina, Parvati, Lily, Katie, Maxime, Sprout, Narcissa, Bathilda Bagshot, Marge Dursley, the Fat Lady, Pansy, Alicia, Grubbly-Plank, Aunt Muriel, Arabella Figg, Hooch, Ariana Dumbledore, Madam Rosmerta, and Marietta than we do of Blaise, and even more of Bertha Jorkins, Amelia Bones, Merope Gaunt, Mary Cattermole, Rowena Ravenclaw, Hannah, Madam Malkin, Padma, Kendra Dumbledore, Leanne, Irma Pince, Romilda, Millicent, Demelza, Hestia Jones, Mafalda Hopkirk, Alecto Carrow, Walburga Black, Gabrielle, Helga Hufflepuff, and Augusta Longbottom than of Theodore Nott. So why aren't we giving these female characters the same amount of fandom characterization and development that we give the male side characters?

Anyway, Linny has a ton of potential, and I ship it because I desperately want more femslash content for the fandoms I'm in (and because I see its potential, of course), but at the moment, it's not a passionate love of mine. I prefer to add a third person to Ginny and Luna's dynamic to balance things out. My favorite is Chuninny (Cho/Luna/Ginny), but I also see potential in Linsy (Luna/Ginny/Pansy), Lunaminny (Luna/Ginny/Hermione), Hinuna (Harry/Ginny/Luna), and Ginevilluna (Ginny/Neville/Luna). But it's even harder to find poly ship fic in this fandom (and most other fandoms) than femslash, so I'm almost always starved for good content (or content at all). It is what it is, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

RATING: 7/10: I ship it and think it has a lot of potential, but I ship other things more.

FANDOM RANK (AS OF JUNE 2022): #16

What do you think? Let me know down below!

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