Bullies?

Me thinks you guys were just picked on too much IRL and dislike characters that remind you of that.

Fred and George in cannon aren't really bullies, no bully is that well liked with the student population. Now I can understand some fanfics have them portrayed as bullies, that is fine and all, if you like those sort of interpretations. However I think that they are geniuses and are generally alright guys.

I mean look at this list

You're telling me that they invent all this stuff by the age of 17, open a profitable shop, and they aren't geniuses?

Even Flitwick appreciated the swamp they made. So much so that he left a piece of it in their honor.

 

Personally the twins are my favorite characters outside of Harry. I percieve them as being geinuses, slackers, witty, creative, all around awesome. On the other hand I believe them to be complete bastards that you can't take your eyes off of.

 

Oh yeah, because those stereotyped Jocks who picked on the nerds weren't well liked by the general populace. How well someone is liked has nothing to do with their being a bully or not, but rather has to do with how often someone stands up for the person being bullied. Gryffindors hate Malfoy, therefore when he bullies someone, it's obvious that Harry would stick up for the person being bullied. If the twins are bullying Malfoy, no one really cares, especially not if it's funny. Even so, it's still bullying.

 

Meh, Weasleys all suck.

/thread.

 

The problem with Fred and George is that Fred is indistinguishable from George. You could really just have one character delivering all their lines and it would make no difference at all to the story.

Besides that, they are bullies, it's just that JKR approves of their bullying because they do it to the "right" sort of people. Though they are pretty clever, but the two things aren't incompatible.

 

Meh, I can accept that I guess. My idea of a bully was that big thug that wasn't very liked by anyone except his thuggish friends and he would threaten you for your lunch money. At least that's what we used to call bullying. What you described was just stereotypical Jock aka jack ass. While two different things in my mind, I guess I can see where you could call them bullies.

Still, Fred and George are win in my book.

 

BAWWWWWWWWWWW.

As is said above, dangerous stuff just doesn't mean the same thing i n Harry Potter. Their main sport is flying hundreds of feet in the air on sticks.

 

Harry making Draco bleed all over the toilet floor in HBP instead of just stunning him which he could have done just as easily is as "psychotic" as anything Fred and George have done as far as I remember. Besides, if the school nurse can cure it in two seconds flat it's not that big of a deal. Also bullying includes going after the same person time after time, I don't remember Fred and George ever picking a target just because of personal dislike or making it more than a one time thing.

What was that Time-travel fic you were reading btw, Reverse?

 

In fairness, he had no idea what the spell would do. All he knew about it was that it was "For Enemies". Draco certainly fits the description.

 

Besides, he had just tried to use the Cruciatus curse on him. As far as I'm concerned, that was perfectly justified even if he had known what the spell would do.

 

No he doesn't. Voldemort fits the description. While I'm not denying the idiot tried a Cruciatus on him, Draco never fits the bill of an enemy. A pest at best.

 

Fucking hell, this thread has gotten off-topic. Yes, from an adult's point of view, Draco could be seen as largely nothing more than an arrogant cunt that ought to be ignored. But Harry is himself still a schoolboy, who just happens to have the weight of the world on his shoulders with that whole prophecy deal and immortal sociopath out to kill him, so let's give the 16-year-old a bit of leeway in sometimes directing his anger a little to the left or right of the correct targets.

Add to that Harry's long-held belief that Draco is on a mission directly for Voldemort - a belief his friends not only roll their eyes at, but one that gets routinely poo-pooed by Dumbledore, the one guy in Harry's eyes who could and should be be taking the threat seriously - and you can see Harry's carrying a fuckton of pent-up rage, all courtesy of Draco Fucking Malfoy.

So, when Draco tries an Unforgivable on Harry (a curse Voldemort subjected Harry to, the one that drove Neville's parents mad, and the one curse, I might add, Harry tried and failed to use on Bellatrix a year before, causing her to laugh at him) you can imagine Harry is less than pleased and decides that the kid gloves are off, even if unintentionally. Frankly, I thought it was about fucking time he unloaded on someone besides yelling at Hermione or bitch-moaning about Snape. An author more interested in character development than out-of-left-field romance would have had Harry thinking, "Fuck. I didn't know that would happen, but I'll be damned if that isn't the first spell I unleash on the next cocksucker trying to kill me."

As for Fred and George, I certainly liked them in canon, but can definitely see where they push the envelope from the perspective of non-magic people. Still, what they do is tame in the magical world, and as for them bullying, their behavior towards other Houses seems to me no different than that of every other Gryffindor towards Slytherin and vice-versa.

I will say this, though: Too many people write stories where all the Weasleys get bashed EXCEPT the twins. If I had a nickle for every craptastic story summary I've seen along the lines of "Weasley minus twins bashing" or "Weasleys minus twins betray Harry" or "Twins swear oath and become Potters" I'd have, well not a ton of money but a lot more than I do right now. It's just dumb, making them abandon their family to back Harry, just because the author hates all the Weasleys except the twins and doesn't have the chops to write it any other way.

For that reason, I applaud JBern for his take on the twins in The Lie I've Lived and enembee for his psycho!twins in The Skitterleap. Even though their portrayal in Skitterleap didn't do it for me and I felt they were a caricature (I still can't put my finger on why, and I'm behind in the story so it may have worked itself out by now anyway), I still applaud his non-standard use of them as opposition to Harry. I think more authors should have the twins as antagonists to Harry, because they make for much more worthy (worthier?) opponents to a competent Harry than Malfoy ever could be. Of course, that means you have to write competent!Harry, because canon!twins would wipe the floor with canon!Harry.

TL;DR - Twins? Yes. Sectumsempra!Harry? Fuck yes.

 

A pest? Maybe before sixth year, but don't forget that he was a marked DE at that point, a fact that Harry was aware of. I don't know about you, but that qualifies him as an enemy in my book.

 

A failure of a Slytherin.
A failure of a Death Eater.
A failure of a Seeker.
A failure of a Prefect.

I miss anything?

 

I wartime, would you decide not to shoot an enemy soldier simply because he's incompetent?

 

I say that would be the best time to shot.

 

His gun would mis-fire as he attempts to shoot me in the back after my moment of mercy.

 

When I was reading the books, before I had even heard of fanfiction, I liked them a bit more than the rest of the Weasleys. Yes, they're shown to be very creative and stuff later on in canon, which makes them my favourite Weasleys. But then there's also the fact that they're Weasleys. Can you feel my hate? Didn't think so.

They're the typical relatively popular, cool to be friends with, humiliating to be enemies with, kind of guys. It depends on your own character whether you like them or not. They never were anything special to me, though.

But in fanon... I've come to hate them. Always there for Harry, always reliable, always have everything Harry needs, blah blah blah. And the fucking twinspeak. They don't even talk like that in canon!

Not writing much about them is a good choice IMO.

 

His competent fellow soldier, alerted to your presence by his friend's vehement swearing and attempts to clear his jammed weapon, shoots you in the back of your merciful skull.

Properly chastened by his brush with death, the incompetent soldier redoubles his efforts, becoming a fluid and deadly killing machine that wipes out your entire platoon. Following this bloodbath, the now-legendary hero kneels and thanks your merciful spirit and the guiding hand of his god which directed you to show him that mercy.

You and your race/country/religion/way of life are relegated to the dustbin of history, except, of course, for your women, whom were taken as slaves and concubines by the conquering hero's army. Your name lives on only in their tears and hateful lamentations.

Still feeling merciful?

The moral? War is hell, but if you're in it, for fuck's sake, be in it to win it.

 

NoFP, for one.

Regrettably, I find that I rather hate that fic now. Sure it's long, fleshed out (lol at homoerotic imagery), but it contains so many things I dislike in fanfiction that it quickly became one of those things which I can no longer read.