[HPforGrownups] Re: Twins and Duddley

Magpie belviso at attglobal.net
Wed Dec 28 22:43:44 UTC 2005


No: HPFGUIDX 145528

> Alla:
>
> I may have missed something, even though I followed the thread for
> the most part. I am wondering who said that Twins cannot help what
> they did? IMO they definitely knew what they were doing, namely
> punishing Dudley AND testing their products

Magpie:

People have said that Dudley's tongue swelling up is all his fault.  Thus it 
is not the twins fault--despite the fact that they are the ones that created 
the candy, went to Dudley's house and dropped it on the floor hoping someone 
would eat it.  I don't know how else to say that all those actions are not 
their fault unless they somehow can't help what they did.

Alla:
>
> But I completely disagree that they did not have good intentions
> here. Punishing the tormentor of your friend is IMO good intention,
> so yeah, I think they had altruistic reasons too,among others of
> course.

Magpie:

Yes, I'm sure the fact that Harry would like seeing his old bully tormented 
was part of their thought process. James probably had similar thoughts when 
he flipped Snape upside down.  He was a dark wizard and I suspect did plenty 
of awful things to other people.

Alla:
>
> I consider Twins to be in many instances the tool which JKR uses to
> punish bad guys. I would probably evaluated their behaviours a bit
> differently, if they were less sketchy characters, as it stands now,
> every time Twins acted, they were smacking the guys who needed to be
> smacked IMO.

Magpie:

What they happen to wind up doing in the narrative is not the same as what 
their motivations, though.  I don't think the twins always act just to smack 
down a bad guy, nor do I always agree with their ideas of how to smack down 
those they think are bad.

Alla:
>
> Again, I may have evaluated their behaviours a bit differently in RL,
> but in the books, I love them.

Magpie:

I like the twins just fine too.  I can like them without seeing everything 
they do as good or feeling the Toffee thing has to be all Dudley's fault.

Alla:
>
> Here is again a great example of JKR appeasing the readers who think
> that Twins behaviour crosses the line, IMO. I think that she is going
> to close  the issue of Twins behaviour by showing that they learned
> their lesson with selling powder to the wrong hands.

Magpie:

We'll see--and of course they also were instrumental in getting DEs into 
Hogwarts when they decided someone deserved something for trying to take 
points away from them (perhaps if someone had spoken up about what had 
happened to Montague during those long weeks he was in the infirmary they 
would have gotten rid of the Cabinet).

But my point here has never been to say the twins have to be punished-that's 
not my thing.  I'm just not going to see them as being all that heroic when 
they're having a laugh.  I got into this thread to respond to the idea that 
what happened to Dudley with the toffee was all his fault by saying that the 
twins engineered the Prank.  The response to that has been to say that 
Dudley was mean to Harry and that Dudley is fat and can't stop stuffing his 
face and I just don't think that makes the *kind* of difference it's being 
given here.

Alla:
>
> Do I think Twins will become DE? Not a chance in the world, if you
> ask me. IMO of course.

Magpie:

Not sure what that's in answer to.  Where does the possibility of their 
becoming DEs come in?

-m 






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