[HPFGU-Catalogue] Friendly Fire

[Sean Dwyer]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 11:29:56PM -0000, Talisman wrote:

> Thrashing? Insecurity? What is all this posturing about?
> 
> Oh, I see...there, that  raggedy bit of something sticking out of 
> your aft pocket.
> 
> Isn't that page 3 of that little pamphlet they hand out when your 
> testosterone sets in? 
> 
>  "When you can't keep up with the banter: a) smile annoyingly; b) 
> redefine to win; and d) suggest her inadequacy."
> 
> Tsk, tsk. Cribbing from the book.  No points awarded.

Howls of derisive laughter Bruce. 

> The real secret is not to go about saying yes to the herds of 
> appreciated people trying to marry you.  It takes a bit more to sort 
> out who is actually capable of recognizing how (ahem) truly 
> marvelous you are, and who is only there to hear a lilting "good 
> boy" whenever he fetches in the paper.

Sage advice, way way WAY too late for me. 

<snip much of excellent dispostion>

> Molly is, among other things, the personification of the dream-
> basher. The worst sort really. Not someone from the other side of 
> the ring, whom you'd expect to throw a sucker-punch, but someone who 
> should have your back.  Molly is the vehicle for exploring the  
> friends, family members, and colleagues who think that what you want 
> to do is a joke, and who try to take you down--for your own good, 
> naturally.

If this is what the others have been getting at, then it was worth the wait: I
can see now how Molly riles the female List population. But it is also a male
fault: I never forgot my father's words "You can't eat expression!" when I
told him I would be an artist, to express myself, one day (think I was 9 or 10
at the time). Of course he was perfectly correct, and totally wrong :) Indeed,
expression is tough stuff to live on but I won't trade it for anything else.

And there you have a corollary: for every gain of a self-censoring "good
little" child, parents all too often inspire rebellion in other little hearts.
For every Molly there is a Gred & Forge, and you've shed light on why their
characterization seemed so simplistic to me, now it becomes obvious. Percy
becomes more tragic in retrospect.

> I understand how readers can like Molly.  Rowling plays her with a 
> comic touch.  The twins are in their room blowing things up, while 
> Molly scurries around burning order forms and confiscating toffees.  
> It's ingenious, really.  She is played as a member of the "good 
> team" just exactly so that she can dish out the sort of "friendly 
> fire" that Rowling reveals to be as undesirable as mutant toad women.

Perhaps the comic touch is there to remind us that these lessons are forever
repeated and all of us are students, no matter how nasty the classroom seems.
And Molly is increasingly becoming a bathetic figure, I suspect to temper
Rowling's judgement of her parental failings.

> The reason I don't like Molly is simple enough: I wouldn't have put 
> up with her when I was a kid, and I don't see any reason to start 
> now. 

I had no choice, but it was never a question of who was right or wrong. Never
threatened at gunpoint to become a lawyer or anything :)

-- 
When all you have are foxes, everything looks like a henhouse.