Wild guessing:
There's a lot of things said about Voldemort that don't really make sense. How did get killed by a child? Quirrel himself makes fun of the Dark Mark, and why would someone who wants to be an effective leader torture his own servants for fun? He destroys the martial arts school without learning anything. I'm starting to think that Voldemort makes far more sense as a propagandized creation of Dumbledore's side than as a real entity. It's pretty obvious that the known story of what happened at Godric's Hollow isn't what REALLY happened. Dumbledore was the winner in the historic conflict, and who knows how well a wizard, the supreme mugwump, gets to rewrite history in his favor. He instantly acts to suppress knowledge of a prophecy, and why would he do that if he didn't have huge secrets to keep? Which is the side that uses dementors?
If Quirrel is Voldemort, I think it's possible he isn't and never was the Voldemort known from canon. Is it more plausible that crazy violent dumb Voldemort would become Quirrel, or that he never really existed at all?
Tom Riddle needed a Voldemort for his plot so he became Voldemort for a time. Just as he needed a Quirrel and a Mister Jaffe.
The next discussion thread is here.
This is a new thread to discuss Eliezer Yudkowsky’s Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and anything related to it. This thread is intended for discussing chapter 84. The previous thread has passed 500 comments. Comment in the 14th thread until you read chapter 84.
There is now a site dedicated to the story at hpmor.com, which is now the place to go to find the authors notes and all sorts of other goodies. AdeleneDawner has kept an archive of Author’s Notes. (This goes up to the notes for chapter 76, and is now not updating. The authors notes from chapter 77 onwards are on hpmor.com.)
The first 5 discussion threads are on the main page under the harry_potter tag. Threads 6 and on (including this one) are in the discussion section using its separate tag system. Also: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14.
As a reminder, it’s often useful to start your comment by indicating which chapter you are commenting on.
Spoiler Warning: this thread is full of spoilers. With few exceptions, spoilers for MOR and canon are fair game to post, without warning or rot13. More specifically: