Suspension of disbelief - Being dependent

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 182491

> >>Betsy Hp:
> > Right.  Actually, my thinking is that Voldemort should have been 
> > beaten before Harry was born.
> > <snip>

> >>Pippin:
> I agree, Voldemort should have been stopped when he was a real baby,
> not a stunted imitation of one. But that would have taken a world   
> that pays far more attention to the fate of its children than the   
> WW -- or ours.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
Actually, the Muggle world *did* recognize something wasn't right 
about young Tom Riddle.  That's why Dumbledore was warned about him, 
and that's why he was afraid Dumbledore was there to take him to a 
mental hospital (IIRC).  Though I do agree, the WW is beyond terrible 
with how they treat their children.  Or each other.  It's a world of 
tooth and claw that happily eat their young.

Within the WW... well, since Dumbledore decided the best thing he 
could do was nothing, and since there are no real police or 
detectives or anything of that ilk in the WW, they missed Tom's OTT 
psycho-killer behavior.

However, once Tom shed his past ties (and his nose) and took on the 
name, "Voldemort", he should have been stopped.  And fairly easily 
from what I saw displayed in DH.  The WW mainly disliked him and his 
agenda; his followers were thugs, inches away from turning on each 
other; he ripped his powerful followers to shreds (what happened to 
Regulus should have spelled his doom); and he was obsessed with his 
side project.

> >>Mike:
> > <snip> 
> > I do think JKR tried to paint Voldemort as a very powerful
> > and demonic figure. What with all that "you-know-who" BS...      
> > <snip>
> > But, she failed and she failed in DH specifically because we got 
> > to see sooo much more of him than we got in the other six books   
> > combined.
> > <snip>

> >>Carol:
> > <BIG SNIP>
> > I don't think the problem is that we see so much of him in DH (I 
> > think for example, that seeing Godric's Hollow from his          
> > perspective worked nicely) as that, as you say, he's using       
> > mundane magic--the same old Unforgiveable Curses we've seen so    
> > much of already...<snip>

> >>Alla:
> Well, to me neither what Mike described nor what you are saying is a
> problem on its own, but probably a mixture of two and plus something
> else.
> <big snip>
> So what I am trying to say I guess what I would love to see more    
> from Voldie is using his bold head with red eyes more often and more
> effectively.
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
I lean more towards Mike's thinking: Voldemort becomes more and more 
of a joke the more we see of him.  When Voldemort was a shadowy 
figure we knew nothing about, other than that he brought the WW to 
its knees, he seemed pretty bad.  It's when he's dragged into the 
light in DH, that we see the main villain is humorously naked.  

But I also agree with both Alla and Carol that part of that nakedness 
is that he's an idiot without much in the way of special powers. 
Plus, while he does have the WW gripped pretty firmly within his 
fist, we don't see how he managed it.  Voldemort certainly puts 
little effort into it.  I think one guy gets Imperioused and another 
gets killed, and Bob's your Uncle, he's running the show?  Really?  
Just like that?

And unfortunately, rather than feeling that JKR was making 
an "important point" about how easily societies can fall to men like 
Voldemort, I feel more like she was just phoning that part of her 
story in.  She wanted to concentrate on the Voldemort vs. Harry 
aspects of Voldemort's story, not his taking over things.  But rather 
than broadstroke in some background stuff we could fill in ourselves 
(as she did so well previously regarding VWI) she decided to rely on 
handwaving.  Which strikes me as lazy and insulting.  And it has the 
side-effect of making every member of her Order out to be incredibly 
incompetent.  Or (in my case) her story highly unreadable.

> >>Pippin:
> The WW also didn't have a lot of civil rights in the first place.
> There's no free press, no right to counsel,  due process is more
> honored in the breach than the observance, and croneyism is the rule
> rather than  the exception, as is discrimination against minorities.
> <snip>
> We keep invoking grass roots resistance movements as if everyone
> should know such things are possible. But do they?
> <snip>

Betsy Hp:
For me, because the WW has such a wild west feel to it (the strong 
survive, the weak best find someone strong to cling to), the idea 
that the various king-pins who must have been around would have 
fallen so easily to Voldemort seems highly unbelievable.  So it's not 
so much grass roots resistance in a grand and noble manner that I'm 
thinking of.  More, fellow mob-bosses not rolling over easily for 
this new kid in town.

Again, we'd had hints back in the day the Voldemort *did* recruit 
the "old families" that we (or at least, I) assumed were the mob-
bosses of the time.  The Malfoys and the Blacks being prime 
examples.  But then in DH we see it ain't so.  His followers are all 
fairly stupid thugs.  Not a king-pin among them.  Which means the 
laws of rule and order should have been working.  Only apparently 
they weren't because there's Voldemort, unstopped.  Wich means, 
nothing about his rise or the WW for that matter makes much sense to 
me.  Which means I see the author moving furniture willy-nilly so her 
designated hero can have his day.

> >>Pippin:
> In any case, it's perfectly legitimate for an author to be more
> interested in  why people fail against tyranny than in how they    
> succeed.

Betsy Hp:
Sure. Only, I'd prefer it be a recognizable tyrant, not a make-
believe monster that we're only *told* is really scary and able to 
defeat the people who fought him.  I don't think JKR told a story 
about why people fail against tyranny.  I think she was more telling 
a story about a really cool little boy named Harry and his super 
awesome totally neat-o adventures.  With a "tyrant" pasted on.

> >>Betsy Hp: 
> > Yes, I was talking about Harry having that horrible moment when   
> > you realize your preconceived notions are wrong.  

> >>Pippin:
> Why should that be horrible?

Betsy Hp:
Generally people don't like realizing they've been an ass.  But, 
depending on your sense of humor and also, the amount of pain your 
preconceived notion may have caused, that moment may be less horrible 
and more plain embarrassing.  Personally I like a lot of sturm und 
drang in my stories, so I'd have prefered Harry's moment to be pretty 
big.  But that's just personal preference.  I'd have been pleased 
with anything, really. <g>

> >>Pippin:
> <snip>
>  Of course, if you were independent, then you'd have to blame       
> yourself if  your world wasn't as lovely as you'd like it to be.

Betsy Hp:
Or, if you were an adult, you'd feel the need to take responsibility 
for your own actions and the consequences they wrought.  (Part of 
being independent, yes.  And part of the attraction of remaining a 
child.  It's always nice if you can blame someone else for any bad 
behavior on your part.)

> >>Pippin:
> And Harry did feel that way in OOP. He couldn't stand to blame     
> himself or  the people he loved for Sirius's death, so he chose to 
> blame Snape instead.

Betsy Hp:
Right.  And, IIRC, he's never acknowledged the part he played in 
Sirius's death.  That would have been a nice little moment of 
realization on his part to move him into adulthood. But...

> >>Pippin:
> But if everyone is deeply interdependent, then you never have to    
> feel uniquely to blame--you can focus on trying to heal the world   
> without obsessing over who is at fault for it.

Betsy Hp:
Yes, and (as I see it anyway) you may childishly refuse to take any 
responsibility for your own actions.  Something Harry continues to do 
right up to the end.  Which is why the WW remains as ugly and brutal 
as ever.  The kind of tooth and claw, hate filled, hard scrabble 
world that a world run by children *would* look like, IMO.  And Harry 
remains forever a spoiled little boy, prince of his world without any 
effort on his part, always beloved, never blamed, living the Dursley 
dream.

Betsy Hp (who read "Lord of the Flies" and actually thinks wizards 
being locked into perpetual childishness explains a lot about the 
state of the WW)