Building a Better Voldemort

[sunnyskywalker]

Last December, charlottehywd asked if there was a list of things that would make Voldemort a more effective villain. I figured there's no better place to compile one!

Some initial ideas to kick things off:

He could have Apparated into the Potters' house right past the anti-Apparition wards which would stop any normal wizard.

He could have actually killed Arthur with Nagini.

He could have arrested one or more Weasleys in DH and released stories about how they were being subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques" on suspicion of blood treason in the Daily Prophet to lure Harry out. (Hey, dangling a loved one as bait worked on the kid before, why not give it another shot? It's not like it'll cost Voldemort much even if it doesn't work.)

He could have Imperiused someone close to Harry - Ron, Hermione, Lupin, Molly - making it hard for Harry to know whom to trust.

He could have turned someone close to Harry to his side by other means, either coercion or brilliant manipulation.

He could have unleashed the Inferi instead of leaving them boxed up in the garage.

We could have seen more of the damage the Dementors caused after they went AWOL after the DE breakout from Azkaban.

I'd love to hear more ideas!

Comments

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

* He could have a realistic motivation for acting as he does. We’re told that Voldemort wants to conquer death, but trying to take over the wizarding world has… absolutely nothing to do with achieving this goal. If anything, it would tend to get in the way, since by threating the wizarding government he’d naturally make himself a target for their aurors, and hence increase his chances of getting killed.

* He could have used his great dark arts powers once in a while to show the readers why he’s so feared (and no, the Superman impression in DH doesn’t really satisfy).

* He could act in such a way as to make his minions’ loyalty more believable. As it is, they don’t seem to have any reason to follow him: he treats them appallingly, and it’s not as if he’s ever suggested sharing his secret of immortality with them.

* Related to the above, he could have shown signs of actually being a charismatic, intelligent leader, rather than a cackling cartoon character with no apparent skills to justify his status as the century’s most notorious dark lord.

[aikaterini.livejournal.com]

/We’re told that Voldemort wants to conquer death, but trying to take over the wizarding world has… absolutely nothing to do with achieving this goal. If anything, it would tend to get in the way, since by threating the wizarding government he’d naturally make himself a target for their aurors, and hence increase his chances of getting killed./

Yes, exactly! Voldemort says in GoF that his goal is to "conquer death," but then we learn in HBP that the only kind of death he wanted to conquer was his own. If all he wanted was to be immortal, then why even bother with the pureblood-supremacist agenda? And why does he want to be immortal? JKR never explained that either.

[sunnyskywalker]

Definitely. Either he should have good reasons for both wanting to become immortal and taking over the world, which conflict with each other, or he should have his priorities clearly ranked (eg, being immortal makes it easier to take over the world, so it's a step toward that goal, or something). A Voldemort who wants to become immortal and thinks this requires quietly murdering a lot of people and sucking their essence Dementor-style or something like that, and has a small cult of similar murder-for-eternal-life acolytes but doesn't bother with the political angle, could be pretty scary too.

The weird thing is that Tom Riddle did show signs of being a charismatic manipulator with leadership qualities. How is it that JKR can write that, but not after the character gets magical plastic surgery and red contacts?

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"The weird thing is that Tom Riddle did show signs of being a charismatic manipulator with leadership qualities. How is it that JKR can write that, but not after the character gets magical plastic surgery and red contacts?"

Probably because the most realistic parts of HP are those which are alluded to but not fully depicted (cf. Percy/Penelope and Draco/Pansy, which are probably the only really believable romances in the books). So when JKR’s dropping occasional clues about Tom’s earlier career, we can fill in the gaps with plausible information, but when Rowling shows us more detail, it ends up falling apart due to her poor characterisation skills and lack of basic logic.