Heh--that's what I said about twincest. I guess that can be used as part of the squick in itself, that it pretty much is like looking into a mirror, which is something in itself.
I think for me one reason I don't really get the appeal of twincest is that they're pretty much the same. They finish each other's sentences, both like the same jokes, etc. They don't interest me individually so I couldn't care less what they get up to when they're alone!
I always think there's probably loads of things that can happen when adult adopted kids meet their families. We seem to want to cling to this idea that there's a set format these things follow, that you meet your long lost brother and become brothers, or your long lost son and become mother and son. Maybe I'm just a suspicious person but I don't feel like it would happen that way. I just see lots of potential for awkwardness!
I hadn't thought about incest with Snape...the first thing that comes to mind when I think about it is maybe if you were writing about his past there might be something in his family tree that affected him. Maybe he read the story of a relative who had a doomed affair with her brother and he just fantasized about what she was like and tried to speak to her portrait.
Lol see, that for me is why incest fics are so squicky. As an identical twin (the type that Fred and George are, we can assume), twincest seems like the absolute negation of a twin's identity. "They're practically the same person anyway, why wouldn't they have sex?" But damn, we're not the same person lol. People find it appealing possibly because 1) they could imagine having sex with themselves (masturbation, only not!) and they think that's cool, or 2) What's better than one girl/boy? TWO girls/boys!
Either way it's pretty offensive and gross, at least for me if not for most twins. I fit even more into that catgory of Same Person than most twins; I'm a mirror image twin, which is a fairly rare form of identical twins that goes like this: fraternal twins come from two eggs. Identical twins come from one egg that splits into two. If it splits between the first 10 days, identical twins. If it splits between the 11-13th days, mirror image twins. Anything after that are conjoined twins. Identity is pretty important when you already share identical DNA with a person lol.
Since obviously I see family relations through pretty colored glasses, it's hard for me to seperate the identity/competition issues that twins face from normal sibling relationships.
Oh, I think twin stuff is fascinating! And I have heard of mirror twins...does that mean that everything is reversed? Like you're mirror images of each other rather than identical if standing side by side? That always seemed sort of "cooler" to me. Yes, I am a dorky non twin fantasizing about magical wonder twin powers.:-)
But the identity thing seems like such an obvious problem as well. When I think of twincest I remember some of the weird stuff in the book/movie Dead Ringers. Those were twins who had an affair and it was even more unhealthy because they were identical twins. I remember there was this interesting passage where one twin told of a story he read about two twins separated at birth. One started looking for his brother when he discovered he existed. As it happened the pursued twin moved away at that time so it took a long time for him to finally catch up to him. Just as the one twin would arrive at where he'd move, he'd move again.
And the character wound up feeling like the pursued twin was unconsciously running away to keep his identity. Once they met they wound up sharing an apartment, which to him was kind of scary, like now he was caught. I may not be explaining it well but it was sort of like...the idea that this person is your "other self" can be neat but also very stifling, and he of course was in this smothering relationship with his own twin. It was bizarre!
I also remember the book describing how people looked at them when they met after a while in a crowd and embraced the way two brothers would do. There was just something offputting to other people, he felt, that they were twins. There's just really anything attractive, for me, in the image of two people who look exactly alike in a romantic situation. I think I probably go more for contrasts, myself, aesthetically speaking. Or at least a mixture of sameness and contrast.
So yeah, I think that's part of why I don't find Fred/George at all appealing. If anything they need to make friends outside of each other. If they were fraternal twins it would almost be different, especially male/female. But with identical twins it can get weird somehow, like they're almost failing some big challenge...? That they need to fight to be different as well as enjoy this unique sameness? Something like that.
Lol yep! My sister and I have identical, reversed thumbprints. I'm lefthanded, she's righthanded. The sworls of our hair go in opposite directions. We actually used to loose teeth in a mirror fashion - I'd lose one on the top left hand side, she'd lose one on the right. We don't finish each other's sentances, but we talk very very fast when we're with one another, because when you've known someone for that long, you know what they're going to say and what story they're going to tell lol. We're not psychic, but we're both very empathetic people ... we tend to make very close connections with other people, and we both work better in a pair then in a team or by ourselves. Oooo, magic powers!
That book you described sounds exactly like my adolescence. I was the twin that was being pursued ... did the whole hair dye/crazy clothes/crazy behavior thing so that I wouldn't be like anybody, most of all my sister. It wasn't until years later that I realized that she took it personally, that it hurt her very badly that I wanted to get away from her, when I had thought of at the time of just needing my own identity. You nailed it completely when you said that we need to fight to be different as well as enjoy this unique sameness.
I've actually always thought that JKR was a relative or a close friend of twins, and that she handles Fred and George really well. I could be wrong, but I don't think they ever really DO finish each other's sentances in the book. The biggest thing that ever struck me about the way that she writes them is that in her narrative, she never refers to them as "the twins." Always as Fred and George. Not even my family does that lol! I think that you're right that they need to have other friends ... they'd probably be a bit less dominating, to the benefit of students younger than them, if they were seperated from their pack-of-two. Thinking of it that way makes me afraid they'll end up somewhat like the San Francisco Twins. I see them all the time and they scare the hell out of me every single time.
Although at the same time that I think I come to the conclusion that twins, especially identical twins, need to have an identity seperate from each other, the absolute worst thing that I can think of is to lose that identity, as a twin. Not even to death, but ... to be so seperate from each other that you're no longer a twin at all except in name.
I can see how that would really be horrible, to have this person who was so like you and be distant from them. I remember seeing a site once for people who had lost a twin (to death, in this case) and you could see how it was just a unique experience. Talk about knowing somebody for a long time!
I remember when I was at my summer job in college I used to see this set of twins just like the ones you linked to and it was very bizarre. They were just this pair of kind fo old ladies always walking down the street together dressed *exactly* the same and it made you think...good lord, what is your life like? I mean, why would you do that every morning?
I can really see where both you and your sister were coming from--and I'll bet that happens all the time. It's got to be hard to tell the difference between wanting to be yourself and wanting to not be like YOU in that situation. So you can have one person feeling like they're trying to be accepting in going along with the changes, but that just makes the other person need to change more!
You know, I think I also even remember reading once that when twins were separated at birth they often wound up having remarkably similar lives--moreso than if they were raised together. And they felt that the reason was probably just this. When each of them thought they were only children and just went with what they wanted their desires were often similar. But growing up together they made a point of doing what the other person wasn't. It's hard to tell if either situation is better--they're just different.
Unfortunately, I do know how that is. I've lost my twin - not to death, but to REALLY bad life choices and complete indifference to our family (and some pretty cruel and bizzare pranks **eyeroll**). And most likely, it's because of the exact same thing that I did to her when we were in high school; ignoring everything in order to forge an identity unique to the other, not even realizing how much you're hurting the other person. And yeah ... there's nobody else that you've known that long! I'm a single minute older than her. There was only one minute in my life where I didn't know her. Pretty crazy, huh?
Yeah, twins like that are grade-A creepy. I'm at the other end of the identity spectrum, obviously, but I don't understand how anyone would want to completely submerge their identity into anothers. As I understand, they live together, they're always dressed exactly alike, and nearly everytime I see them, they're doing the same loops around Union Square, ending up in the same resturant, the Cheesecake Factory in Macy's, every single time.
You know, I've never heard of an explantion as to why seperated twins do things like that, that made so much sense. I think that maybe it would be worse, growing up seperated even though you were free to develop however you like. Imagine going through life knowing all the time that there was something vital missing, half of the single person that you could have been ... poof, gone. Although that does raise the interesting (uncomfortable?) question of how much of "the same person" twins really are, if when allowed to grow up without making the point of being different from one another.
That is really sad about your twin. Although hopefully you could still reconnect in the future.
Although that does raise the interesting (uncomfortable?) question of how much of "the same person" twins really are, if when allowed to grow up without making the point of being different from one another.
It really does make you wonder. It brings up all those questions--what is a person at all, really? How much of it is DNA? And how about two twins raised apart but in very different circumstances? Could they just assume that, had they been reversed, the would have had each other's lives instead of their own, whereas regular siblings might have wound up very different?
Thanks :). If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, ah well.
Yeah, I find all of those Nature vs. Nurture questions very interesting. I've always wanted to try one of those Boardwalk type picture booths, you know, where it blends two peoples' faces together to see what their kids would look like, and see what I'dve looked like if I was just one person. I'm more on the side of Nurture because I've turned out so differently from my sister, but thinking about how much of the how I am is because I didn't want to be like her is sort of chilling. It really makes me wonder, though, about the dynamics of twins that don't seem to struggle against each other, like Fred and George or the San Francisco twins. Is it unhealthy not to struggle for your identity, or more healthy because you're not battling who you'd really like to be?
I think that for Fred and George, most of how they function comes out of their family. With a family that large, they would have always been grouped together. "Here's our oldest boys, here's the twins, and here are our youngest, Ron and Ginny." They're the middle range, a sort of cut of between the siblings, you know? Although I'd think that being in a family that large would make one stuggle more for your identity the way that Ron and Percy do, they seem to have closed ranks and stayed content as a duo.
I wonder if being the twins just gave them a united front against the rest of the family, being in the middle, so they played it up because it made them unique while privately battling for independence. So the twin thing is almost like an act.
I wrote something about two brothers who have an older brother and younger sister and always feel kicked around in their family because of it. They're not twins, but a year apart (sharing a birthday, another thing that sucks about being them, they think-if they were twins at least they feel it would be cooler). They fought all the time, but also were naturally closer, like twins would be. So they do fight for their own identity, particularly the older one always wanting to make a big deal out of being older because they're quite close in age, while the younger one is always fighting against that. But they also wind up battling against all outside forces together.
Erm, I just read this post and thought Id comment on it. My appeal for twincest (outside of HP too) was always that I imagined twins would have a deeper connection to each other then most people would. Being together in the womb, and then being born together, I always imagined there would be a special connection that most people would never experience, and that was why the idea of twins being together always appealed to me. Im an only child so Im in no way experienced about it, and I really wouldnt know, but...thats what I always thought about it.
Oh that makes perfect sense to me--being a non-twin (I have an older brother and sister but there's a pretty big gap between me and them, making me sort of only child) I've always had that view of it too. I'm not interested in twincest between Fred and George, though, I think because they seem too much alike, it's a different dynamic. So in HP if I was going to read twincest I'd probably prefer the Patil twins because they are alike and have that bond, but are also very distinctly different people.
I think for me one reason I don't really get the appeal of twincest is that they're pretty much the same. They finish each other's sentences, both like the same jokes, etc. They don't interest me individually so I couldn't care less what they get up to when they're alone!
I always think there's probably loads of things that can happen when adult adopted kids meet their families. We seem to want to cling to this idea that there's a set format these things follow, that you meet your long lost brother and become brothers, or your long lost son and become mother and son. Maybe I'm just a suspicious person but I don't feel like it would happen that way. I just see lots of potential for awkwardness!
I hadn't thought about incest with Snape...the first thing that comes to mind when I think about it is maybe if you were writing about his past there might be something in his family tree that affected him. Maybe he read the story of a relative who had a doomed affair with her brother and he just fantasized about what she was like and tried to speak to her portrait.
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Either way it's pretty offensive and gross, at least for me if not for most twins. I fit even more into that catgory of Same Person than most twins; I'm a mirror image twin, which is a fairly rare form of identical twins that goes like this: fraternal twins come from two eggs. Identical twins come from one egg that splits into two. If it splits between the first 10 days, identical twins. If it splits between the 11-13th days, mirror image twins. Anything after that are conjoined twins. Identity is pretty important when you already share identical DNA with a person lol.
Since obviously I see family relations through pretty colored glasses, it's hard for me to seperate the identity/competition issues that twins face from normal sibling relationships.
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But the identity thing seems like such an obvious problem as well. When I think of twincest I remember some of the weird stuff in the book/movie Dead Ringers. Those were twins who had an affair and it was even more unhealthy because they were identical twins. I remember there was this interesting passage where one twin told of a story he read about two twins separated at birth. One started looking for his brother when he discovered he existed. As it happened the pursued twin moved away at that time so it took a long time for him to finally catch up to him. Just as the one twin would arrive at where he'd move, he'd move again.
And the character wound up feeling like the pursued twin was unconsciously running away to keep his identity. Once they met they wound up sharing an apartment, which to him was kind of scary, like now he was caught. I may not be explaining it well but it was sort of like...the idea that this person is your "other self" can be neat but also very stifling, and he of course was in this smothering relationship with his own twin. It was bizarre!
I also remember the book describing how people looked at them when they met after a while in a crowd and embraced the way two brothers would do. There was just something offputting to other people, he felt, that they were twins. There's just really anything attractive, for me, in the image of two people who look exactly alike in a romantic situation. I think I probably go more for contrasts, myself, aesthetically speaking. Or at least a mixture of sameness and contrast.
So yeah, I think that's part of why I don't find Fred/George at all appealing. If anything they need to make friends outside of each other. If they were fraternal twins it would almost be different, especially male/female. But with identical twins it can get weird somehow, like they're almost failing some big challenge...? That they need to fight to be different as well as enjoy this unique sameness? Something like that.
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That book you described sounds exactly like my adolescence. I was the twin that was being pursued ... did the whole hair dye/crazy clothes/crazy behavior thing so that I wouldn't be like anybody, most of all my sister. It wasn't until years later that I realized that she took it personally, that it hurt her very badly that I wanted to get away from her, when I had thought of at the time of just needing my own identity. You nailed it completely when you said that we need to fight to be different as well as enjoy this unique sameness.
I've actually always thought that JKR was a relative or a close friend of twins, and that she handles Fred and George really well. I could be wrong, but I don't think they ever really DO finish each other's sentances in the book. The biggest thing that ever struck me about the way that she writes them is that in her narrative, she never refers to them as "the twins." Always as Fred and George. Not even my family does that lol! I think that you're right that they need to have other friends ... they'd probably be a bit less dominating, to the benefit of students younger than them, if they were seperated from their pack-of-two. Thinking of it that way makes me afraid they'll end up somewhat like the San Francisco Twins. I see them all the time and they scare the hell out of me every single time.
Although at the same time that I think I come to the conclusion that twins, especially identical twins, need to have an identity seperate from each other, the absolute worst thing that I can think of is to lose that identity, as a twin. Not even to death, but ... to be so seperate from each other that you're no longer a twin at all except in name.
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I remember when I was at my summer job in college I used to see this set of twins just like the ones you linked to and it was very bizarre. They were just this pair of kind fo old ladies always walking down the street together dressed *exactly* the same and it made you think...good lord, what is your life like? I mean, why would you do that every morning?
I can really see where both you and your sister were coming from--and I'll bet that happens all the time. It's got to be hard to tell the difference between wanting to be yourself and wanting to not be like YOU in that situation. So you can have one person feeling like they're trying to be accepting in going along with the changes, but that just makes the other person need to change more!
You know, I think I also even remember reading once that when twins were separated at birth they often wound up having remarkably similar lives--moreso than if they were raised together. And they felt that the reason was probably just this. When each of them thought they were only children and just went with what they wanted their desires were often similar. But growing up together they made a point of doing what the other person wasn't. It's hard to tell if either situation is better--they're just different.
Reply
Yeah, twins like that are grade-A creepy. I'm at the other end of the identity spectrum, obviously, but I don't understand how anyone would want to completely submerge their identity into anothers. As I understand, they live together, they're always dressed exactly alike, and nearly everytime I see them, they're doing the same loops around Union Square, ending up in the same resturant, the Cheesecake Factory in Macy's, every single time.
You know, I've never heard of an explantion as to why seperated twins do things like that, that made so much sense. I think that maybe it would be worse, growing up seperated even though you were free to develop however you like. Imagine going through life knowing all the time that there was something vital missing, half of the single person that you could have been ... poof, gone. Although that does raise the interesting (uncomfortable?) question of how much of "the same person" twins really are, if when allowed to grow up without making the point of being different from one another.
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Although that does raise the interesting (uncomfortable?) question of how much of "the same person" twins really are, if when allowed to grow up without making the point of being different from one another.
It really does make you wonder. It brings up all those questions--what is a person at all, really? How much of it is DNA? And how about two twins raised apart but in very different circumstances? Could they just assume that, had they been reversed, the would have had each other's lives instead of their own, whereas regular siblings might have wound up very different?
Reply
Yeah, I find all of those Nature vs. Nurture questions very interesting. I've always wanted to try one of those Boardwalk type picture booths, you know, where it blends two peoples' faces together to see what their kids would look like, and see what I'dve looked like if I was just one person. I'm more on the side of Nurture because I've turned out so differently from my sister, but thinking about how much of the how I am is because I didn't want to be like her is sort of chilling. It really makes me wonder, though, about the dynamics of twins that don't seem to struggle against each other, like Fred and George or the San Francisco twins. Is it unhealthy not to struggle for your identity, or more healthy because you're not battling who you'd really like to be?
I think that for Fred and George, most of how they function comes out of their family. With a family that large, they would have always been grouped together. "Here's our oldest boys, here's the twins, and here are our youngest, Ron and Ginny." They're the middle range, a sort of cut of between the siblings, you know? Although I'd think that being in a family that large would make one stuggle more for your identity the way that Ron and Percy do, they seem to have closed ranks and stayed content as a duo.
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I wrote something about two brothers who have an older brother and younger sister and always feel kicked around in their family because of it. They're not twins, but a year apart (sharing a birthday, another thing that sucks about being them, they think-if they were twins at least they feel it would be cooler). They fought all the time, but also were naturally closer, like twins would be. So they do fight for their own identity, particularly the older one always wanting to make a big deal out of being older because they're quite close in age, while the younger one is always fighting against that. But they also wind up battling against all outside forces together.
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