It's really interesting the way these things can kind of get covered over and fudged when they're supposed to be jokes. For instance, while this post is still up I wound up going off on this tangent in a thread about Draco here. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/reddiej/95705.html?thread=1033177#t1033177)
I think you know I find the whole line of reasoning in that thread disturbing, but it comes back to what threeoranges is saying as well, that perhaps the idea is that the twins are good because we should see them as having been giving an "evil detector" by the author, so that everyone they hit turns out to somehow deserve it or at least to have done something not so nice themselves. That, of course, brings me back to a lot of the way compassion is dealt with in the series--there really does seem to be this idea that compassion is something you *earn,* often by being an orphan and a hero and picked on before you get it. But I think looking at the twins the way they are in that thread is important, because they are sort of sadists with a noble edge. Like, you see there how they're always picking on someone who "deserves it" and when they can't be said to be doing that then the hurt they cause is played down.
I guess I just often feel like the books do sometimes seem to lend a noble cast to perfectly selfish impulses. If you wish you could grind the popular kids in school into the dirt we'll make them evil so you're doing something noble by doing it.
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Date: 2005-03-21 01:24 pm (UTC)I think you know I find the whole line of reasoning in that thread disturbing, but it comes back to what
I guess I just often feel like the books do sometimes seem to lend a noble cast to perfectly selfish impulses. If you wish you could grind the popular kids in school into the dirt we'll make them evil so you're doing something noble by doing it.