Why I Dislike The Twins

Wed Aug 28 06:11:46 UTC 2002

No: HPFGUIDX 43272

I commented that "everyone else" likes the twins, and Debbie leapt 
into the fray, crying:

> No! No! Everyone else *doesn't like the Twins." I don't like the 
> Twins. I do not like them playing jokes. I do not like them hissing 
> folks. I do not like them here or there. I do not like them 
> anywhere.

<appreciative grin>

I do not like them making mock.  I do not like them picking lock.  I 
do not like their gambling fix.  I do not like their Toffee tricks.  
I do not like Canary Creams.  I do not like their business schemes.  
I just don't *like* that Forge and Gred.  I do not *like* them, Elfun 
Deb!

<smile slowly fades>

Uh, yeah.  Well, okay, so that last bit didn't really rhyme.  It's, 
uh...

<Elkins thinks for a moment, then reaches deep down to access her 
Inner Eustace Scrubb.>

It's *assonance.*

Really, though.  Why *don't* we like the twins?

Debbie wrote:

> I'm probably being a bit Snapelike about this, as in RL I have a 
> tendency to wish for people who flaunt the rules for laughs, and 
> gain enormous popularity for doing so, to be taken down a notch or 
> two. But the Twins *are* mean...

Yeah, I think they're mean, too.  And although I don't share Debbie's 
feelings about rule-breaking, it really does bother me a *lot* when 
people (or fictional characters, for that matter) gain popularity 
primarily through their habit of abusing others.

But at the same time, you know, Snape is mean and abusive -- and I 
yet feel a great deal of affection for Snape.  So it's hardly the 
case that meanness is, in and of itself, enough to make me dislike a 
character.  Neither is bullying: Snape is a bully.  I feel far more 
moral disapproval for treachery and murder than for teasing, and yet 
I still feel a lot more instinctive sympathy for Pettigrew than I do 
for the twins.  And sometimes, trickery in the canon just *thrills* 
me.  I just love the way Crouch Jr. manages to pull the wool over 
everyone's eyes all the way through GoF.  On rereading, I was all but 
cheering him on -- and little Barty was, well, just plain evil.  Yet, 
I truly did like him.

So why on earth should it bug me so much when the twins get away with 
things, or when they trick people, or when they are unkind to 
others?  Why the heck do I dislike them so very much?

Some time ago -- quite a long time ago now, in fact -- I wrote a post 
in which I asked people what precisely they meant when they said that 
they "liked" a character. I came to the conclusion that there are a 
number of different things that people can mean by that.  Sometimes, 
we mean that we simply enjoy reading about them.  Sometimes we mean 
that we appreciate the narrative function that they fulfill.  We can 
like characters because we identify with them -- they remind us of 
ourselves -- or because we associate them with other people we have 
known and loved.  Or, we can like them because we think that we would 
probably enjoy their company in real life.

One of the things that I hoped to point out in that message was that 
often, when we talk about "liking" or "disliking" a character, we are 
actually evaluating them by the same criteria that we apply to real 
people in real life -- and that if moral virtue is among those 
criteria at all, it is usually pretty far down on the list.  

The message number was 34058.  This is an excerpt:

<excerpt begins>

This interests me in part because so much of the discussion
here seems to center on the use of canonical citation to evaluate 
the HP characters on *moral* grounds. Evidence is presented to
support or condemn characters ethically, or philosophically, or
even spiritually. 

I strongly suspect, though, that more often than not what
is really at issue is simple personal affection. We like
some characters and dislike others in very much the same
way, and for very much the same reasons, that we like or
dislike real people; and as in real life, our reasons
rarely have all that much to do with moral virtue. 

People generally don't choose their friends based on a strict
weighing of their moral flaws against their strengths
of character. (Surely we all know virtuous people whom
we just can't stand to be around?) Attachments are far more
often, it seems to me, formed on the basis of things like 
sense of humour, and temperamental compatability, and shared
interests, and even shared dislikes than they are on any
strict accounting of moral virtues.

What worries me, I think, is that I suspect that all too
often, we form our judgements about the characters based
on these sorts of factors first, and only *then* go searching
for evidence of their moral wrongdoings, or their hidden 
virtues. It's only human, I suppose: we readily forgive the
people we like for precisely the same behavior that we roundly
condemn in the people we loathe; my friend's Endearing Little
Foible is my enemy's Horrible Great Sin.

<excerpt ends>

That was January, and I see that at the time it was "worrying" me.

It's worrying me a bit again here now, actually.

See, Jenny's original question was this: "The twins are really mean.  
So why do we like them so much?  Or do we?"

My response was: "Well, *I* don't like them.  Not only are they mean, 
I also think they're bullies."

But that wasn't really answering the question, was it?  After all, 
just because someone is a bully doesn't mean that he is at all 
unlikeable (indeed, most bullies are quite popular, and you don't 
achieve popularity by being unlikeable).  Just because someone is a 
bully doesn't mean that he lacks redeeming qualities.  Just because 
someone is a bully doesn't mean that one "shouldn't" like him.

HF and Catherine both shared their experience with real life Twin 
analogues by way of explaining why they feel such great personal 
affection for the twins. While Catherine's twins were not bullies, 
HF's RL Fred-or-George, she grudgingly conceded, was rather.  She 
concluded, however, by writing:

> But I find that I can't dismiss good qualities wholly in favor of 
> the bad.

No.  And there is absolutely no reason why you should.

I'm a little bit worried here, actually, that by arguing so 
strenuously for my reading of the twins as the Bullies You Know, I 
may have given the impression that I don't believe that people 
*ought* to like people (real or fictional) with bullying tendencies, 
far less identify with them personally; or that I think that just 
because someone bullies, that makes them inherently evil or rotten or 
deserving of nothing but being shunned by all decent folk.  

That is not really my belief, and so it bothers me to think that I 
might have given that impression.

Nor was it ever really my intention to persuade other people *not* to 
like the twins. I was most dismayed, for example, to read this, from 
Jo Serenadust:

> In fact, when I finished it, I found that even I had come to like 
> the twins a little less. This was dismaying, since I'm very fond of 
> Fred and George as I am of all the Weasleys, so I decided after 
> reading all the back and forth arguements, to go back to the books 
> to see if I've missed some subtle undertones to the twins antics.

And my feelings of unease were exacerbated when I saw that HF had 
signed off with:

> --who politely acknowledges the power and validity of Elkins' 
> argument, but who will nonetheless remain unconverted and persist 
> in *liking* F&G.

Oh, dear me.  

No.  You know, I really *wasn't* trying to convert people to 
disliking F&G, although I *would* like to convince others that they 
behave like bullies, because I really do think it quite painfully 
obvious that they do.  But that isn't the same thing as wanting 
to convince people to dislike them.

The question of why different readers like or dislike certain 
characters is one that absolutely fascinates me, and so I suppose 
that also I wanted to see if I could put my finger on my own reasons 
for feeling about them the way that I do.

But these are separate issues, and unfortunately, I did conflate 
them.  Now I'm really wishing that I hadn't, not only because it has 
muddied the discussion, but also because it wasn't even all that 
honest.  The fact that I believe the twins to be bullies does have 
quite a bit of *bearing* on my feeling such a strong personal dislike 
for them, yes.  But it is not the *only* reason that I dislike them, 
nor do I even know if I believe that it is the most important 
reason.  After all, I do feel affection for other canon characters 
who bully.  I even feel affection for some characters who are 
downright wicked. 

So leaving out the twins' bullying behavior altogether for now, why 
*else* do I dislike them so much?  What sorts of things can lead a 
reader to feel such a strong dislike for a fictional character?

Well.  We might want to consider our own personal experience with 
people who resemble those characters in real life.  Fiction relies on 
the reader's ability to sense patterns, to fill in the gaps in the 
text with their own understanding of human nature -- understanding 
derived from real life observations.  We know what a character 
is "like" not only from what the text tells us, but also from 
extrapolation from what the text shows us.  We derive our
impressions of character in part by generalizing from type.

Do the twins remind us of anyone?

HF, to whom I misattributed a quote, wrote:

> HF *DID NOT*, but someone else did, write...

AARRGH!!!

Oh, man.  I'm *really* sorry about that, HF.  You see what happens 
when you try to cut and paste from a gazillion posts?

Go on, then.  

HF:

> I think I can safely say I'd be the last person to trust in the 
> parity of older schoolkids to keep the balance of playground power. 
> Partly, that's because I was the kid who hung upside down on the 
> monkey bars until she got a good buzz on from the blood rushing to 
> her head. 

Oh, hey, yeah, I remember you!  I always wondered how you could do 
that for so long without being sick all over the macadam.

I was that kid who was always sitting right up against the wall of 
the school, where the teachers could keep an eye on me, reading my 
book and only occasionally looking up to glare out over the crowds 
and entertain myself with Columbinish fantasies of bloody vengeance.  

Except right after it had rained, of course.  *Then* I became the kid 
running around trying to rescue all of the stranded worms from the 
pavement and put them safely in the grass before Fred and George 
could organize all of the other kids into a "worm-stomping party."  

I can pretend to know HF, because I remember the kid who was always 
hanging upside down from the monkey bars.  

I *feel* that I know the twins, because I remember the kids who 
resembled them.  

I didn't like them much.

<HF's real life Twins>

> And if that's too personal a statement to make in an otherwise 
> psychosocial debate... the heck with it. So be it. 

Yes.  So be it.  I don't really see how we can speak *honestly* about 
our reasons for liking or disliking certain characters without 
occasionally bringing up their real life analogues.  When characters 
remind us strongly of people we have known in real life, that has an 
*enormous* impact on how we view them.  To refuse to acknowledge 
that fact just constrains the discussion, IMO.

Needless to say, I had my own twins.  They lived up the street from 
me, and were quite a few years older.  Not that that ever held them 
back.  They were downright *mean,* they were, and yet strangely, they 
had this reputation as kind, good-hearted, chivalrous protectors of 
the weak.  They were indeed very nice to their younger brother and 
his friends, and to the other kids that they liked.  In fact, they 
even did mentoring work with disadvantaged children!  What a pair of
saints!  But how they treated younger kids they *didn't* like?  
<shudder>  It was impossible to get anyone to take complaints about 
them seriously, of course.  Everyone knew, you see, that they were 
such good guys.  Jokers sometimes, yes.  But harmless. No harm 
in 'em.  Hearts of gold, they had.  Honest.

One of my closest childhood friends also had two younger brothers who 
remind me far too much of the twins (or should I say, vice versa?).  
They were just as merciless as could be, and they made his life one 
great big ball of agonized stress, until he finally escaped them by 
leaving home.

The twins also remind me a good deal of my third grade teacher.  Boy, 
did everyone love him!  Except for the three or four kids he 
regularly reduced to tears in the classroom, that is.  But you know, 
those were just the priggish humorless kids, the ones who couldn't 
take a joke.  Their loss.  I'm sure that he was just trying to
teach them to lighten up.  <snort>  Yeah.  Sure.  Right.  It's a 
funny thing, though, see, because I was *certainly* a priggish and 
humorless child, and yet I was virtually *impossible* to reduce to 
tears -- or, for that matter, to force any response out of at all.  I 
would just stare at him blankly until he looked away.  Now surely, if 
anyone needed to be taught to "lighten up," it would have been me, 
don't you think?  And yet I noticed that after a while, he stopped 
dealing with me at all.  He just kept teasing the kids who would get 
visibly upset.  Yup.  Funny how that works.  But I'm sure that he had 
their best interests at heart.

And then there was a summer camp counsellor who didn't actually bully 
the kids in his care, but who did in a whole host of ways encourage 
bullying among them.  Since he was officially the authority figure, I 
really didn't appreciate that.  And he was a lot like the twins too.  
So much fun!  So well-liked!

So yes.  The Fred and George analogues that I have known in real life 
certainly *do* contribute to my feelings of profound dislike for the 
characters.  No question about it.

What else can contribute to a subjective feeling of dislike for a 
character?

Well, dislike of the narrative function that they serve is another 
really big one, I'd say.  Oliver Wood, for example, is a bit of a 
flat-liner for me, not due to anything intrinsic to the character, 
but more because the Quidditch subplots don't interest me all that 
much, and that is the milieu in which he appears.  I have no strong 
emotions one way or the other about the Quidditch scenes.  Therefore, 
I have no strong emotions one way or the other about Oliver Wood.

I simply *loathe* comeuppance humor, though.  I always have, ever 
since earliest childhood.  I can tolerate it now that I am an adult, 
but as a child, I detested it so profoundly that I was truly 
incapable of enjoying any form of fiction that utilized comeuppance 
humor.  I would never have been able to read these books when I was a 
child. 

I don't hate it that much anymore, but it is still by far my least 
favorite aspect of these books, and the twins, as many have pointed 
out here, are often used as the author's agents of the books' 
slapstick comeuppance humor sequences.  That is one (although unlike 
Abigail, I do not believe that it is the *only* one) of their 
narrative functions within the text.

So that contributes to my sense of dislike for them as well.  I don't 
like their narrative function; therefore, I do not like them.

Sometimes readers just have plain old preferences in personality, 
preferences that influence their tastes both in real life companions 
and in fictional characters.

I, for example, always prefer the sensitive and the neurotic to the 
callous and the Tough.  I prefer the twisted to the straight, the sly 
to the straightforward, and the Edgy to the blunt.  

So this influences my tastes in characters as well.  Even the 
downright *Evil* characters can inspire fondness in me if they happen 
to possess the personality traits that I favor.  I love Crouch Jr., 
for example, who is as malicious as they come.  He is *sadistic,* but 
that is a type of cruelty that at least requires a certain degree of 
sensitivity and cleverness and insight, all of which are traits that I
like.  

Brutishness, on the other hand, I find utterly distasteful.  It 
leaves me feeling cold and unsympathetic; I find it so completely 
charmless that, as weird and irrational as this may sound, the 
slightest hint of it in a character can instill in me feelings 
of profound dislike that even the most flagrant displays of 
*sensitive* viciousness are powerless to inspire.  This is not so 
much a matter of morality as it is one of aesthetics.

The twins aren't very witty.  When they are mean to people, they are 
mean in blunt, direct ways.  Their practical jokes are well-crafted, 
but they don't strike me as really all that *clever.*  I mean, sweets 
that make you turn into an animal, or that make your tongue swell 
up?  Dressing up and jumping out to go "boo!" at people?  Wands that 
go all floppy?  They're all just rubber chicken gags, really, 
aren't they?  And as for their verbal humor...

Eileen (with whom I really *do* sometimes disagree, you know.  
Honest, I do.  We don't see eye to eye on the Crouch family!) gave a 
perfect example of their verbal humor here, in message #43155:

> "It's because of you, Perce," said George seriously. "And there'll 
> be little flags on the bonnets, with HB on them - "
>
> "-for Humungous Bighead," said Fred.
>
> Everyone except Percy and Mrs. Weasey snorted into their puddings."

> Oh yes, Percy really was just asking for that one, wasn't he? So 
> remarkably witty too. 

<Elkins snorts into her own pudding>

Yeah, that was pretty much my reader reaction as well.  I rolled my 
eyes and thought: "Oh yes.  How terribly clever."

Eileen quoth:

> "Then Fred said abruptly, "I've told you before, Ron, keep your 
> nose out if you like the shape it is."

And again, yes.  That's nice, isn't it?  Nasty, brutish, and short.

This is a place where aesthetics and morality collide.  Brutishness 
is a *type* of aggression that I find particularly unsympathetic.  I 
therefore may well judge it far more harshly than I judge sadism.

Sometimes we like or dislike characters based on whether we think 
that we would enjoy their company in real life.  What determines our 
taste in casual companions is rarely ethics.  It is sense of humor, 
shared interests, shared dislikes.

Obviously, the twins' sense of humor does nothing for me.  Nor do I 
suspect that they would care very much for my own.  They seem to 
believe that Percy is humorless, for example, while I see a good deal 
of dry wit in many of Percy's lines.  I therefore suspect that they 
would think me humorless as well -- and vice versa.

We don't share interests.  The twins are interested in...well, let's 
see.  Quidditch.  Practical jokes.  Gag items.  And, uh, well, that's 
about it, really.  All of those topics bore me.  What sorts of topics 
bore the twins?  Well, Percy tries to talk about the WW's safety 
regulations, and they make fun of him for it.  They think that 
he's being boring.  Now me, I would *much* rather talk about that 
sort of thing than about sports.  In fact, it always rather irks me 
when Percy's monologues on the legal ins and outs of the WW get shut 
down, because I want to hear them.  So there's not much common ground 
there.  We don't share interests, we don't share likes, we don't 
share dislikes.

That contributes to my lack of affection for them too, surely.  It's 
hard for me to avoid the suspicion that we would not like each other 
much in real life, and that in turn makes it hard for me to avoid the 
suspicion that they'd probably be very aggressive towards me, because 
as far as I can tell, the twins seem to believe that simply not 
liking someone is grounds for abuse.  They don't just ignore people 
who annoy them.  They actually go *after* them.  They think that it's 
okay to harass people just because they have a *personality* that 
they find obnoxious.  That's why they tease Percy.  So that makes it 
hard for me to like them as well.  I figure they'd probably be going 
after *me* if I lived in their reality.

And then, finally, there is a meta-textual phenomenon that probably 
has more to do with the depths of my feelings of dislike for these 
characters than any other factor.

You see, the thing about charismatic bullies that makes them so 
incredibly infuriating is that *nobody will ever believe that they 
are bullies.*  Everyone *except* for their victims (and maybe the one 
or two by-standers who have caught onto them) thinks that they are 
the nicest guys imaginable.

Now, I had always assumed that everyone more or less read the twins 
the same way that I did.  Certainly all of my housemates read the 
twins as bullies.  All of my friends read the twins as bullies.  My 
husband was never bullied as a child, and yet even *he* immediately 
identified the twins as bullies.  He identified them with his own 
brother, in fact, whom he absolutely adores (as do I), but who was a 
bully as a child -- albeit one of those terribly useful Bullies You 
Do Know -- did I mention that my husband was never bullied?  Yup.  
One man's bully is another man's bodyguard. ;-)

I mean, I just figured that *everyone* read the twins as bullies.  In 
the post-GoF evaluation within my circle, when the subject would turn 
to the twins, the conversation would always go pretty much along the 
lines of: "Oh, I know, those horrible great big bullies, aren't they 
just awful?  And they're really getting worse, too."

So I was absolutely shocked -- shocked and indeed more than a little 
disturbed -- when I first discovered that in fact, outside of my 
immediate circle, these characters are *wildly* popular.  It came as 
a very nasty revelation, and it led me to dislike them even more, 
because it had the effect of actually *replicating* the charismatic 
bully dynamic, only now on the reader level, rather than on the 
character level.  Not only doesn't *Harry* realize that the twins are 
bullies, and not only doesn't *Dumbledore* realize that the twins 
are bullies -- but even the *readers* don't realize that they are 
bullies!  They actually think that they're funny!  They actually 
think that they're cute!  They actually think that they're nice!  And 
they actually think that Percy is *asking* for it!

Yes.  Well, that's a dynamic that touches on quite a few hot buttons, 
and quite a few raw nerves as well.  It does have the effect of 
making me feel a great deal more hostility towards the twins than I 
ever did *before* I encountered the fandom -- because oh, don't you 
see?  Don't you see what's happening?  They're getting away with it.  
They're getting away with it yet AGAIN!

Debbie wrote:

> Well, the Twins are not lacking in charisma. 

<Elkins, thin-lipped, nods grimly>

No.  No, they most certainly are not.

So even aside from their bullying, that's why I don't like the twins.

But this raises another issue.  Is it even considered *okay* to talk 
about ones reasons for feeling dislike for characters on this list?  
Is it okay to wish ill upon them?  Is there some language short of 
profanity that is unacceptably vituperative to direct towards 
fictional characters in this forum?

Some people have taken some umbrage with my tone on this thread.  
Both Pippin and Catherine registered objections to my use of the 
word "cads" to describe the twins.  Someone else (sorry, can't 
remember who) protested my choice of vocabulary overall.  

Too harsh.  Too insulting.  Not nice.

Um.  Well, as someone who tends myself to sympathize and identify 
with and "like" *extremely* unpopular characters (and as the founding 
member of S.Y.C.O.P.H.A.N.T.S.), this accusation interests me very 
much because honestly, in comparison with the pure ranting and raving 
*abuse* that some of *my* favorite characters regularly receive on 
this list, words like "cad..."  Well, words like that strike me as 
downright friendly, to tell you the truth. 

So I do find myself wondering if my own tendency to identify with 
terribly unpopular characters may have desensitized me somewhat to 
how other people feel when they see verbal abuse hurled at some of 
their own.  You see, I've grown used to that.  I've *had* to get used 
to it.  I've even had the experience of declaring that I *identify* 
with a character, only to have the very next reply first quote my 
statement of personal identification, and then follow it up with a 
stream of vituperative language.  That has happened to me more than 
once.

I always figured that this was okay.  A little bit insensitive 
perhaps, but still well within the bounds of okay.  After all, when 
people do this they are abusing the *character,* right?  Not me.  So 
while it might have been nice for the people who have done this to 
have prefaced their screaming rant with some statement along the 
lines of "yes, Elkins, but I'm sure that *you're* not a..." before 
they just started venting, I never really considered it obligatory.  
I just took it as read that they were exempting me, in spite of my 
points of identification with these characters, from their abuse.

But now I am beginning to wonder if perhaps this real/fictional 
distinction isn't quite as clear as I had thought that it was.

HF, for example (who might want to rest assured that -- in my 
experience, at any rate -- most people really *don't* grow more 
vindictive and spiteful as they grow older), wrote:

> I find it difficult to understand how you can so eloquently argue 
> against F&G based on their mean-spirited thuggishness and then 
> conclude a post that seems toned in such a way as to echo that mean-
> spiritedness condemned earlier.

Mean-spirited?

Heh.  Oh, that was nothing.  Debbie once, I seem to recall, spoke 
with understated yet undeniable relish about the possibility that the 
twins' cooperation with DEs in future canon might be coerced in part 
by someone shoving their own Ton-Tongue Toffees down their throats.  
Gave me a real chuckle, that did.

But forget the *twins.*  You want to talk about mean-spririted, check 
out some of the fates that people on this list have wished on 
*Pettigrew* in the past! Man!  Some people around here have some 
pretty twisted imaginations, I can tell you.

All *I* said, in comparison, was that the thought of the twins 
Getting What's Coming To Them makes me smirk.  Just like so many 
readers smirk -- or even laugh out loud -- when Dudley or Draco get 
what's coming to them.  Is that the same as what the twins do?

No, see.  It isn't.  Because there is a very big difference between 
wishing ill upon a fictional character, and taking hostile action 
against a real person.

It comes down to the difference that HF described here:

> I personally find it strange that I'm going to bat for the twins, 
> mostly because if I knew them in real life I probably wouldn't be 
> able to stand them. I would wish long, agonizing deaths and 
> unspeakable torments for them in their afterlives, and place curses 
> on their firstborn children. . . .Now however, I  find myself 
> reacting... well, in a maliciously juvenile sort of way, much like 
> Harry. Maybe it's because F&G are very safely on the printed page, 
> whereas I am not, I don't know.

I think that's it, really.  Although, um, kind of in reverse. ;-)  

See, from my perspective, Fred and George are just fictional people 
on a page.  That means that I can feel free to hate them to my 
heart's content: to think ill of them, to wish all manner of evils 
upon them, to snigger at their misfortunes and fervently hope for 
their bloody demise.  Because they are fictional, I can wish all 
sorts of things upon them that I would never be able to wish as 
purely or as intensely or as comfortably upon someone I knew actually 
to be *real.*

>From the twins' perspective, though (and yes, I do realize that this 
is, on the face of it, a rather absurd notion), people like Percy and 
Dudley and Quirrell and little Malcolm Baddock are *real* people.  
They occupy the same degree of reality.  They live in the same 
fictional space.  So the twins' attitudes towards the other canon 
characters strike me as significant in a way that *listmembers'* 
attitudes towards those same characters really just don't.

You'll notice, for example, that I have never once insinuated that 
Jenny, say, is callous or thuggish or vindictive or mean-spirited 
just because she happened to find the Ton-Tongue Toffee scene funny.  
Jenny isn't any of those things.  She's just someone who took 
cathartic pleasure in the "just desserts" slapstick humor of that 
particular scene.  I didn't happen to share that reaction, but I 
don't think that makes me a better or a more compassionate person 
than Jenny at all.  It just means that as readers, we have very 
different instinctive reactions to certain types of scenes.

Similarly, I don't hold it against listmembers if they snicker at 
Draco getting ferret-bounced, or if they're hoping to see Snape 
hideously tortured before the series ends, or if they feel furious at 
even the *notion* that Draco might be redeemed in canon (thus 
avoiding the fate that they feel he so richly deserves), or if they 
want Pettigrew to die really *hard.*  Indeed, people on this list 
express violent and bloody desires toward the canon characters all 
the time -- Draco, the Dursleys, Voldemort, and especially Wormtail 
come in for a lot of that treatment.  

In fact, I seem to remember people planning some kind of barbecue a 
month or so back, in which everyone was joking around about burning 
books, and hanging people in effigy, and things of that nature.  I 
gather that this had something to do with readers not liking Draco 
Malfoy, probably because they think of him as a future member of an 
organization that is kin to the Nazi party, or to the Klan.  

You know, organizations that do Bad Things.  Bad Things like burning 
books and forming lynch mobs.

<shrug>  

Hey.  Whatever.  It's okay by me.  I know that none of you people are 
*really* book-burners, or the sort of people who form lynch mobs.  I 
feel fairly well convinced that nobody here (well...very few, anyway) 
would *really* enjoy watching someone killed or horribly tortured.  
Not in real life.  It's all just in fun, isn't it?  These are 
fictional characters.  As far as I'm concerned, serving as an outlet 
for those sorts of emotions is a big part of what fictional 
characters are *for.*

I do find it interesting, though, that when I express my dislike of 
the twins, or when Jenny admits that she just can't stand Hagrid, 
people do tend to object in ways that they simply don't when others 
articulate similar feelings about Draco or the Dursleys or Pettigrew 
or Rita Skeeter or Fudge, or even really *harmless* characters, like 
Lavender and Parvati.  It's okay not to like certain characters.
It's okay to verbally abuse certain characters.  It's okay to joke 
about fantasizing about the death and even *torture* of some 
characters -- a few of them characters with whom I happen to 
sympathize a great deal.

But, boy!  You really do have to watch your step when you talk about 
characters who happen to be *popular,* don't you?  Jenny disses 
Hagrid, or I call the twins great big bullies, and suddenly all 
manner of strange accusations are coming out of the woodwork.  
Accusations of misreading the text.  Accusations of distorting the
story.  Accusations of "over-analyzing."  Accusations of engaging 
in "unconscionable" behavior.  One or two "I don't want to hear your 
unpopular views, so why don't you just shut up already?" posts.  And 
a couple of straight-out ad hominem attacks.

Yup.  I'd say that people really are held to different standards when 
it comes to their discussions of popular characters than they are 
when it comes to their discussions of unpopular characters. 

The relevance of this observation to the entire question of the 
character of the twins themselves, as well as to the question of 
whether or not their aggressive behavior towards a few of the less 
popular characters in the canon can be said to constitute "bullying 
behavior," is one that I will leave as an intellectual exercise for 
the astute reader.

-- Elkins