Why is HPMOR's Quirrellmort so much less violent than HPMOR's Voldemort?

HPMOR paints a Voldemort fixated on punishing his inferiors, a Voldemort who never used persuasion or inspiration when he could rely on suffering.

• Voldemort amused himself by inducing in Bellatrix a love so knowingly one-sided that it was not a happy thought for her.
• Quirrell asserts Voldemort slaughtered an entire monastery rather than simply impersonate an appropriate student.
• Voldemort's rule was so coercive and terrorizing that Lucius Malfoy finds it best to claim he was not merely deceived or misled but forced to obey him.
• If Harry's "dark" thoughts under the Dementor's influence represent Voldemort's mind accurately, Voldemort's reflex inclination was to punish or kill anyone who didn't slavishly obey.

Yet Quirrellmort, for all that he talks cynically and is prepared to kill or memory-charm, prefers not to punish when he can benignly persuade or inspire.

• Quirrell is verbally much less insulting than an army drill sergeant, let alone how Snape treated students.
• The "Quirrell point" system is all about achieving rewards, not avoiding punishments.
• Quirrell's entire plan revolves around patient impersonation and feigned subordination - the kind of behavior that the old Voldemort allegedly refused at the monastery.
• Quirrell is explicitly disapproving about the old Voldemort's approach to persuasion.
• We've been in Quirrell's head when Harry and Dumbledore weren't around, yet his violent acts have always been to "eliminate my enemy", not to "instill fear of me in my intended lackey." The author's had 70+ chapters to show Quirrell or even H+C tormenting a hireling of his with no one else around, and neither has done so.

In HPMOR, Voldemort was grandiose, cynical, and punitive. Quirrellmort is grandiose, cynical, but not punitive. We see him kill to remove danger, but we don't see him torment to instill subordinates' fear of him. Why the change? Options:

• 1: Maybe Quirrellmort is still as punishment-oriented as old Voldemort, but the author doesn't want to show us that ugly side of him quite yet. But if Quirrell doesn't deserve our sympathy, isn't it a good idea to make us lose it? Or if the author wants to hold off on admitting Quirrell is Voldemort until the last moment, why not have H+C be the punisher instead of Quirrell?
• 2: Maybe Voldemort had bad publicity; he was ruthless with enemies, but it's only propaganda that he abused his own people. But Bella and Dementor!Harry are both private evidence that Voldemort was abusive.
• 3: Maybe Quirrellmort has realized the practical downsides of being punitive with those under your authority, and no longer uses those tactics. But if he could figure he was wrong about such a huge part of his leadership style, why is he so deaf to all the other ways he could be wrong about what to expect from people? Where did that open-mindedness go?
• 4: Maybe Quirrellmort doesn't have Voldemort's abusive impulses, because Horcrux!Harry is holding onto them. But why would Quirrellmort not believe in terrifying his subordinates anymore, when he still believes that nobody has any reliable kindness or loyalty? It's cynicism as much as anger that inspires rule-by-fear, and Quirrellmort has full cynicism.

Of those four, my bet is on Horcrux!Harry, but even that doesn't quite make sense to me. Why'd you change, Quirrellmort?

Not HPMOR talk, just a suggestion for these discussion threads:

I think that it would make far more sense to start a new thread after every new update rather than when they reach a certain number of comments. New people starting in this thread will miss a lot of good ideas posted in the last one, and also that it is better to have all ideas in one thread than scattered so we can refer to them. Having two threads without any new update in between could also create unnecessary rehashing of old posts.

Since the update schedule seems to be spaced about a week apart, there will probably be about 500-1500 comments in the meantime so there is little chance of having to create new threads too early. In the rare case, a minimum number of comments can be assigned if updating is too frequent.

Harry's suggesting that Voldemort's tactics involve not just hate but an incredible degree of cynicism.

Both "Make Bella love you despairingly, on purpose" and "Mess with Hermione's brain intimately over a long period of time" reflect a person who can get to know people closely and accurately and yet not care about them at all.

A lot of evil comes from people doing bad things to people they don't bother to think about in the first place. Voldemort clearly took the trouble to get to know Bellatrix and (somewhat) Hermione rather well - solely for the purposes of undermining them.

Some police trained as hostage-situation snipers find they can't actually pull the trigger on real criminals, because they watch them so long and so closely they empathize with them. Draco Malfoy, in the fic, was coming to empathize with Hermione Granger.

Harry is observing that Voldemort seems to be immune to natural empathy, and that creeps him out.

(Agree that Harry having "Voldemort plot detection powers" as a general rule would be bizarre.)

What happened here?

The Veritaserum was brought in then, and Hermione looked for a brief moment like she was about to sob, she was looking at Harry - no, at Professor McGonagall - and Professor McGonagall was mouthing words that Harry couldn't make out from his angle. Then Hermione swallowed three drops of Veritaserum and her face grew slack.