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

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Lots of the ideas here are great (I hear plotbunnies gathering....). I'd add that Voldie ought to pay more attention to getting and gaining support once in power. Although JKR's pasteded-on-yay Nazi imagery galls me, taking it and running with it for a minute, I could see an effective Voldie doing what Hitler did and giving the population at large reasons to love him: for example, some wizarding version of the Nazi "Strength through Joy" program making trips, sporting activities, prizes etc. available; also praising sectors of the population who often get ignored, like the Nazi celebration of the laborer. Or big shows and spectacles (think Triumph of the Will), making the most of new technology/magic in an impressive way. Things like that.

I'd also like to see Voldemort do *unexpected* things to get the WW off-balance. For instance, I'm reminded of a wonderful/chilling fic by pogrebin that I read a while ago, "unsticking the shadow." In it Voldemort makes excellent strategic use of the Daily Prophet: he issues a statement that immediately and radically changes how most people look at non-purebloods by drawing attention to a certain simple fact. I HIGHLY recommend the fic, but also just having Voldemort think that way, casting the terms of the war/debate in a new light, can be effective and so deeply creepy.

[aasaylva.livejournal.com]

My dear condwiramurs, these few sentences alone show you've got way more knowledge about Nazis and what made them attractive to the Germans and Austrians than Rowling ever had. In fact, my grave suspicions are she got her Nazi-idea from American movies where Nazis are evil and stupid (so why then would they have been dangerous?) - which is - alas - not how reality works. At all. But then love and romance and ethics and sports don't work as depicted as well, so....

[condwiramurs.livejournal.com]

Aw thanks. I study this stuff for a living, so it's kind of a sore point for me to see people use it really, really badly, arg. I am completely with you on JKR getting her idea from (bad) movies, where everything is presented in terms that are so simplistic that the actual *logic* of history falls apart. Also I suspect that JKR's allergy to history and historical understanding comes into play here: as Jodel has pointed out elsewhere, in the books JKR seems not to grasp the idea that people at different times, in different circumstances, thought differently and had different amounts of knowledge about things than we do. Hindsigh, it's a thing, JKR.

But then love and romance and ethics and sports don't work as depicted as well, so....

Bwahahahahahahahaha! You win. Totally agree - how many fronts can JKR mess up on at once, I wonder? Sports!! Seriously.

[oryx_leucoryx]

If rhetoric about 'having purebloods in charge' really appealed to many of them as Sirius said then we should have been shown power going to some other group and purebloods trying unsuccessfully to get it. Instead young Tom tells Horace he has no hope of being Minister because he lacks the right [family] background, and Horace's special club only started including Muggle-borns towards the end, when Lily showed up and surprised him by not being a pureblood. Lucius has the Minister's ear at all times (until his arrest). For years DMLE was headed by pureblood Crouch. (We don't know the blood status of Fudge or Amelia Bones - they may be purebloods or half-bloods, certainly not Muggle-borns.)

As for sports - I can imagine Rowling thinking 'why are people excited about sports? Must be the balls. That's it! I'll invent a game with many balls!'