Suspension of disbelief -Idiots of War

sistermagpie sistermagpie at earthlink.net
Fri Apr 4 16:29:42 UTC 2008


No: HPFGUIDX 182406

> Magpie:
> That's a bit too creative to me--nobody needed to let Voldemort
> steamroller over them in order to get him overconfident. (Nor does
> anyone suggest they're doing that.) (Is this also why the Order
> seemed to politely give Voldemort a lot of time to get strong 
before
> they kicked into gear themselves?)
> 
> Lynda:
> 
> Now to me, what Pippin wrote above is exactly what I percieve from 
Rowling's
> text. Unquestionably. Without any doubts. 

Magpie:
You read that the Order was intentionally not doing anything because 
the plan was to wait until Voldemort got as strong as he could be 
and then keep him overconfident (with a couple of references to 
spying that never yield any information we hear about)? Is there any 
indication that the Order has organized themselves to make Voldemort 
confident, or that their doing so has any effect on him whatsoever? 
He honestly doesn't seem to care one way or the other. He's 
confident because he thinks he's immortal, which the Order doesn't 
know. 

Not that they couldn't have had that plan, since it does at least 
obviously fit what they're doing. But it still adds up to not having 
a resistance movement at all--and not because the resistance 
movement is in confusion. (The one thing we do see them doing is 
coming up with a radio show that says Harry will do something.)

But Pippin also said that Neville did nothing the Order didn't do, 
comparing the two to each other, and Neville is doing the opposite 
of this. He's not going along with the DEs to make them confident, 
he's making things better for the students and finding ways around 
their methods and standing up to them and writing graffiti about 
Dumbledore's Army and trying to steal the sword. 

So either they're doing stuff or they're not. If their plan is not 
to do stuff then that's their plan. But it's a plan of keeping 
themselves out of trouble, not an Underground movement that's 
runnign their own side war. Some readers might still see other plans 
as being better things to do or think back up plans would make sense.

-m 





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