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

[madderbrad.livejournal.com]

He could have simply ignored Harry Potter. And gotten on with the job of taking over the wizarding world. Harry wouldn't have been able to stop him.

He could have persevered with the *proven* attack of book #5 - mental intrusion - and continued sending Harry visions. The boy wouldn't have known what to do. Indeed, the exact 'dangling a loved one as (vision) bait' trick might work again! (Instead the author had Voldemort cease using this attack, *proven successful* in book #5, in the subsequent novel ... and then two books later had Voldemort become a mental midget, actually pushing his *secrets* to his arch enemy. Because otherwise ... Voldemort would have won! And we couldn't have that. Or Harry shaping up as someone with actual prowess or skills in defeating a dark lord. So instead the dark lord voluntarily decides not to press on with a *successful* attack strategy. And then - 'master of mental magics' that he is (that's a quote from the books, isn't it?) - he suddenly, unknowingly, transmits his every plan to Harry. Just when it's convenient to the author for him to do so. Pfah. Pathetic villain. Pathetic author of pathetic villain.)

He could have instructed his followers that it was open season on Harry Potter - "just bring me his body". Or that the Chosen One was to be captured on sight, if not killed. But no. Instead, we have Snape, at the end of book 6, easily defeat Harry in a duel - the boy couldn't even *engage*, he wasn't in the same league as Snape - but Snape tells all of the other Death Eaters that the fallen Potter is to be left alone, 'we are to leave him!'. When they could have either (a) AK'ed the boy right then and there, or (b) stunned him and carried him away. Absolutely *nothing* stopping them from doing this as they *run past the 'wandless and defenceless' 'hero'*. Except for Rowling's desperate need to keep her protagonist alive ... and being unable to come up with any decent reason. Other than making Voldemort a pathetic villain, issuing pathetic orders to his henchmen.

He could have ignored Harry's long melodramatic cliched boring monologue in the final battle and just AK'ed the boy then and there.

Or, when Harry tells him that he is *not* the Master of the Elder Wand - in that very same monologue - Riddle could have simply Summoned another wand, and used that wand to kill the Boy Who Told His Enemy How To Win. But no. Rowling's writing, at this stage, was so embarrassingly artificial, she was so desperate just to get Harry over the finish line and the series ended, she just went ahead and wrote the most embarrassing series closer known to man:

Harry: Voldemort, If you use your wand against me you'll DIE!

Voldemort: *uses Elder Wand against Harry*

Voldemort: *dies*

[mary-j-59.livejournal.com]

All of these are brilliant! I especially like the "just ignore Harry" ploy; it's a lot more sensible than anything Voldemort did in the books. I'd add, Voldemort is supposed to be seductive, in the "glamour of evil and false promises" sense. We never saw that - never saw him being genuinely persuasive. He's just an over-the-top, melodramatic, cackling villain. It's impossible to see why any reasonably intelligent, ambitious youngster like Sev or Regulus would join up. I would have loved to see Voldemort - perhaps through a trusted proxy like Remus- making a serious, partly-successful bid for Harry's allegiance. That would have made things so much more interesting! It would also have made some sense of the constant Severus/Harry comparisons, which were just wasted in the end.

[oryx_leucoryx]

When he came to Godric's Hollow he could have Imperiurized Lily to stand aside and watch him kill baby Harry. Or he could have Imperiurized Lily to do the act.

In the Quidditch game in PS, once he realized it was Severus countering his curse, he could have just stopped cursing Harry's broom (maybe spelling a bludger to hit him n the head instead). Depending on how Severus' counter-curse worked, without the force of the original curse Severus may have ended up causing Harry to fall, and if not, there's still that bludger.

At the end of PS he could have summoned the troll's club and spelled it to bludgeon Harry to death.

In GOF he could have killed Harry before he even summoned the DEs. He certainly shouldn't have given Harry his wand back. Of course by new DH rules he might have ended up merely destroying the Horcrux but he didn't know any of that so no reason not to do it.

[ladyzenobia.livejournal.com]

He could have left Hogwarts to intelligent capable Death Eaters (assuming such exist) in DH, instead of the Carrows who got off on torturing children, apparently. All the more so because students needed blood status to attend at all so the Carrows were actually torturing children of wizarding families, whom Voldemort claimed he wanted on his side.

And instead of having the muggle studies class be all about what ignorant savages muggles are he could have introduced something like a wizarding culture class. Children would learn all about old wizarding traditions (and let's face it - the bloodier those were the more impressed most of the Gryffindor kids would be) and about how muggleborns don't respect their culture (Christmas being celebrated instead of Yule and etc). And in muggle studies the kids would be told about the threat muggles pose to the wizarding world with their global warming and pollution of the environment and weapons of mass destructions. But that would require giving the muggles some credit I guess :)

[sweettalkeress.livejournal.com]

These are all good ideas, but for me, what it all boils down to is giving Voldemort an actual personality and clear goals, rather than have him be simply a stock evil overlord. Actually give him a logical reason for going evil and hating those without magic, or else show how the rest of the Wizarding World shares his same prejudices and could become like him. Make him do genuinely horrible things to magic people on a regular basis, which are actually relevant to the story, rather than making Nazi allusions for no clear reason. Don't make him born evil; make him born okay and go evil at some future point. And so on.

[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.

[for-diddled.livejournal.com]

"•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."

He could have arrested all Harry's friends and have them slowly and publicly tortured to death, one by one, until Harry agreed to give himself up.

[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.

[charlottehywd.livejournal.com]

I hope that I am not coming in too late here, but I feel like one of the main things that could have improved Voldemort as a villain would have been to have thrown out all of the "dark lord" villain trappings. I can understand in some ways why she would keep them- after all, I am an amateur writer myself and have always had a hard time with creating believable villains, but I feel like she just took the easy way out and it made Voldemort less of a unique, frightening and interesting foe than a standard villain would would be equally at home in a Saturday morning cartoon. What's weird is that she was able to create a quite good villain (Umbridge) in the same series. I'm not sure why she would cop out on the ultimate villain when she put such time and effort into a secondary one.