Suspension of disbelief - Being dependent

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182493

Betsy Hp wrote:
<snip>
> 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.

Carol responds:

The Aurors seem to have done a pretty good job taking out the DEs
after Voldie was vaporized at Godric's Hollow, killing Wilkes, Rosier,
and the unnamed DE mentioned by LV in GoF as "dead in his service
(unless he means Regulus, in which case, he has no idea how and why
Regulus died) and arresting Dolohov and Mulciber and Karkaroff (who is
essentially traded for Rookwood after K. informs on him) and others,
including Bellatrix, the Lestrange brothers, and Barty Jr. Except for
barty Jr., rescued and kept under the Imperius Curse by his father
when he ought to have died in Azkaban, and Karkaroff, who did a plea
bargain, all of those DEs were in prison until OoP, after Wormtail had
resurrected Voldie. It seems that the DEs were formidable only when
they had a leader (and more so in VW1, before Voldie heard the
Prophecy, which certainly distracted him from his takeover and led to
his vaporization and, ultimately, to his death. (I'm not sure whether
that what you mean by a side project, but Voldie certainly does have
that tendency: first the Potters, especially Harry; then getting
Harry's blood for the resurrection potion (and killing Harry
afterwards); then hearing the Prophecy; and finally, obtaining the
Elder Wand. (I didn't list stealing the Philosopher's Stone as a side
project because he needed to obtain a body of his own before he did
anything else.)

I'm not sure what you mean about what happened with Regulus spelling
hid doom. I don't think that voldie had any more idea what happened to
regulus than anyone else in the WW. Here's a boy recruit who offers
him the use of his House-Elf, loyally serving the purposes of the Dark
Lord. Next thing he knows, the boy has vanished from the face of the
earth. Maybe he thinks that Regulus died "in [his] service"; he
certainly had no idea that Regulus had stolen the locket Horcrux,
which he thought was safe on its island in the cave, protected by
powerful Dark magic (the potion and the Inferi), as well as various
forms of magical concealment that only a highly skilled Wizard
(certainly not the barely of-age Regulus) could detect.

At any rate, large numbers of people were Imperiused in VW1 and others
were intimidated into doing LV's bidding. those who resisted, notably
the Order members, were systematically killed off. Once Voldie fell
and the Imperius Curses lost their power, it became fairly easy to
capture his followers (unless they could disguise themselves as rats).
Even those who pleaded the Imperius Curse were discreet about their
law-breaking and illegal activities. But it was different when Voldie
was in power and no one trusted anyone else.

As for the followers being at each other's throats, I'll grant you
that there's jealousy and rivalry, and we do see Karkaroff bargaining
for his own freedom by giving the names of other DEs (it doesn't
really matter that Rookwood is the only one that isn't already dead,
imprisoned, or protected by Dumbledore), but we never see the DEs
actually at each other's throats and willing to kill each other to sit
at Voldie's right hand. And I really don't see why you think that
finding Voldie and bringing him down is so easy. Certainly, he
couldn't hide in a crowd with his missing nose, but there are other
ways of hiding in the WW.

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. <snip>

Carol responds:
Either my post was unclear or you're mistaking my meaning. I did not
say that Voldie was an idiot with no special powers. What I said, or,
at least, what I meant is not that Voldie doesn't have special powers
but that we see disappointingly little of those special powers in DH.

Voldie *does* have special powers. To reiterate, we learn early on
that he's a Parselmouth who can control Basilisks and that he can
possess people, both powers being scary and rare. In GoF, he comes up
with potions (in at least one case, accompanied with incantations)
that first give him a fetal form and then restore his lost body. And
we learn that he can break through very strong Memory Charms and learn
whatever his victim is concealing or has forgotten (Bertha Jorkins).
In OoP, we learn about his Legilimency, which is shown in DH to be
truly formidable (if we look at what he does to Gregorovitch, we see
exactly what Snape is enduring even as he hides part of the
information through his supersubtle Occlumency--and what no one but
Snape, and probably Dumbledore, can resist). And we see his duel with
DD in the MoM. In HBP, we see his early ability to do wandless magic,
controlling objects, animals, and people, torturing them without a
wand. We see the Inferi and that potion, and we see the results of the
curse that Snape confined to his hand. In DH (aside the Legilimency he
uses on Gregorovitch), we see Bathilda!Nagini. However, the only other
bits of unusual magic that we see from Voldemort in DH are not
particularly Dark: he can fly without a broom (but so can Snape) and
he creates a protective bubble for Nagini, into which he sucks poor
Severus. (Okay, that part is pretty Dark, as is his control of
Horcrux!Nagini.) We do see the operation of one of the Horcruxes, the
locket, but we don't see the cup or the tiara doing anything, so
that's disappointing. And so is his loss of control and his reliance
on the old stand-bys, Crucio and AK. (The only "idiotic" behavior is
killing off his own followers and being sidetracked by the Elder Wand
instead of consolidating his power. the Elder Wand is also
disappointing; we don't see what he does with it that makes him think
that his "extraordinary magic" isn't sufficiently extraordinary and he
needs to kill the man he thinks is the master of the wand. That, to
me, is a real weak point in the book though no one seems to agree with
me.)

So. LV can create Inferi. He can encase the twelve-foot Nagini in a
five-foot tall corpse. He can create really horrible potions. He can
persorm telekinesis. So why do we see him doing so little with those
formidable powers in DH? Only, as far as I can tell, because he's off
on what should have been a wild goose chase (and would have been, had
Harry not dropped the portrait of young Grindelwald in Bathilda's
cottage) for the world's most powerful wand. (Meanwhile, however, no
one can track him down; all they know is that he's out of the country.
And, if they did find him, who could fight him? Mad-Eye and Scrimgeour
are already dead and were never his match. Dumbledore, who *was* his
match, knew that he couldn't be killed because of the Horcruxes and
didn't try. (He also knew that Fudge and the Aurors were on their way,
so all he had to do was hold Voldie off and keep him from possessing
Harry, which it turns out that he can't do, anyway, until they arrive.)

So my complaint is not that Voldie is a joke of a villain. It's that
JKR doesn't make better use of the powers she has already shown him to
have and instead shows him losing control and killing off his own
followers with, apparently, repeated AKs. (We don't hear of some
spectacular spell, cast with the yew wand since he didn't have the
Elder Wand yet, that killed numerous people at one time. And the
wandless Lucius Malfoy somehow managed to flee the scene and survive.)
That's the sort of thing I object to in DH, especially since we don't
see the number of Voldie's followers significantly diminished in the
Battle of Hogwarts. Just whom did he kill, anyway? Nor does his action
seem to have any effect on the loyalty of his followers, with the
exception of the humiliated Malfoys.)

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.

Carol responds:

But we don't see any fellow mob bosses because no one can match
Voldemort's Dark magic. We don't see anyone else turning themselves
snakelike and claiming to have taken measures to make themselves
immortal. (Dumbledore has seen to that; no one else can make a
Horcrux.) So we have unethical but essentially lazy types like Lucius
Malfoy, who get their way by money and connections; and we have
bright, ambitious boys like the young Severus Snape and Barty Jr. who
apparently want scope for their talents; and deluded kids like
Regulus, who think that Voldemort will put the Pure-Bloods in power
where they belong by virtue of the natural aristocracy; and cowards
like Peter Pettigrew, who see that the likes of schoolground bully
James Potter is as nothing to the power of the Dark Lord; and people
like Dumbledore and Mr. Crouch who use their own power to fight him.
Any gifted Slytherins (unless they're of an older generation like
Slughorn) are more likely to join him than oppose him. And when he
goes away, if they're not in Azkaban or dead (or following their own
aganda like Snape), they go back to their old lives and wait for a
new, really powerful Dark Lord to arise. The likes of Grindelwald and
Voldemort is not often to be found. And if some upstart, say Lucius
Malfoy or an evil Snape, were to attempt it, they'd find themselves
dead on Voldemort's return because, unlike him, they don't have Horcruxes.

Now I *would* like to see Voldemort struck by an AK to see whether he
can resist it, and it would have been lovely if Wormtail had found the
courage to dump Fetal!mort in the incomplete potion and abandon him
there, without adding the requisite blood, bone, and flesh, but that
didn't happen. so, all we have is the duel with Dumbledore (and Voldie
duelling three opponents at once in the Battle of Hogwarts) to show
that no one else was his match. Maybe a Snape who was truly master of
the Elder Wand could have killed him *with* the Elder Wand after all
the Horcruxes, including Harry's scar, were destroyed, but JKR didn't
write it that way.  

Betsy: 
> 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. 

Carol responds:
But where did you get the idea that these people were mob bosses?
Sure, the Blacks (even Sirius as a teenager) consider themselves to be
some sort of natural aristocracy, but they lead the lives of country
squires (Lucius) or secretive Dark Wizards hiding from Muggles (Orion
and Walburga Black). We don't see anyone other than Voldemort,
Grindelwald, and the young Dumbledore interested in world domination.
The Lestrange brothers are Pure-Bloods probably attracted to LV's
agenda for much the same reasons as Regulus Black. And Bellatrix has a
desire to torture and control others but is not at all daunted by the
idea of serving a "master" who can teach her more Dark magic.

As for LV's followers being "stupid thugs," I'd say that's only
partially true. Snape and Lucius aside, some of them appear to be
quite intelligent (Travers and Mulciber, for example, or the sadistic
Dolohov, whom we see at his evil worst in OoP.) Possibly their wits
were somewhat dulled by Azkaban (though Travers still seems pretty
sharp until Harry Imperios him twice). And none of those who were
arrested can have their original wands, which would have been
destroyed before they were sent to Azkaban, which raises the question
of how Bellatrix could have the wand that Ollivander sold her way back
when. Even the brutal-faced Yaxley seems reasonably intelligent. But,
yes, the Carrows, Thorfinn Rowle, CrabbnGoyle Sr. and their sons, who
may or may not have been recruited, seem no more intelligent than
Fenrir Greyback and the Snatchers (none of whom is a real DE). I would
have liked to see the more intelligent DEs put to better use. I guess
we have to make do with the seeming DE, Snape, in "The Dark Lord
Ascending" to see how an intelligent DE in LV's good graces would
behave. (Imagine Lucius Malfoy still loyal and armed, for example.
Voldie made a serious mistake in his mistreatment of the Malfoy family.)

Anyway, a mob leader can rise to power through sheer ruthlessness and
brains, as long as he has followers to back him up. But, while the
former DEs might have rallied around Harry Potter if he'd shown
himself to be a Dark Lord in the making, with extraordinary powers
that enabled him to defeat LV as an infant, they weren't going to
support anyone else. (We can imagine an evil Snape putting all his
intelligence and subtlety and talent and power into rivaling
Voldemort, gathering followers who were either loyal or feared to
question him, but nothing of the sort happened, and Snape was known to
be a Half-Blood, anyway. But it doesn't matter. Snape, for all his
intellect and powers, was an ordinary mortal. He could be killed.
Voldemort couldn't. And that, along with those Dark powers that we
don't see enough of, IMO, made all the difference.)

Carol, who has finished and mailed her income tax forms, hooray! 


 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)
>