(no subject)

[aedifica]

Thank you, Hydra! (So, in our world, thank you Hydra's player and Tosha's player.) Your post about what you saw when you legilimised Dolohov* answers a lot of questions for me--especially the question of what Selwyn's request to him was.

* Apparently I can't call him one thing, either!

Comments

[teceler]

And he was glad Barty wasn't there either when Selwyn made his request or when he fulfilled it.

I'm pretty sure that significant--or at least direct evidence for some conclusions we've been drawing.
I'm not sure where to extrapolate from there, though, so I'm just going to leave this here and go back to my current research project.

[batrachian]

That explains...a lot.

(It is also serving to further illuminate Draco being a right arse. I'm glad Justin has a wallotext to hit him with in response.)

[aedifica]

Have you seen Draco's response to Justin's wallotext? I'm really enjoying that conversation now, and what it shows about both of them.

[batrachian]

Just read it. I'm still far more firmly on Justin's side than Draco's, and while I can see the point Draco is trying to make, the tone and language he's using is extremely accusatory and insulting, and that gets my hackles up regardless of any actual content.

is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[sporky_rat]

And it's leading to lots of conversations about things between different House's views of things.

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[batrachian]

needs a Hufflepuff icon

[contrariwise]

Personal favorite:



Loads more here, too. :)

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[lucky_guess]

It's a nice parallel for Snape and Macnair's conversations about morality/what they are prepared to do compared to the other Order members.

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[sporky_rat]

!markdown

I love when I can have morality conversations because of a game! It makes me so happy.

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[kiya]

Since I'm a Slytherclaw, I have a distinct thread of "Draco is right not just because knowing how to fight is knowing how to fight, but because more complete knowledge IS POWER. Especially when it's knowledge about THE MECHANISMS OF POWER."

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[kiya]

... which means I'm with ... Ron.

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[sporky_rat]

Ron is being surprisingly sensible about this whole thing. I have to wonder how the rest of the ISS falls in the debate and what Terry and the Twins and Lee would think.

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[kiya]

We've got Terry now!

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[adeliej]

Seconded. The approach of "I don't necessarily want to be using this in fighting, but knowing it is very useful for defence" is one I agree with.

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[aedifica]

Yay inter-House breeding! I'm either a Ravenpuff or a Huffleclaw, myself. (I change my mind from time to time which I am.)

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[kiya]

I had a conversation a few months ago that went something like:

"I am happy to be identified as a Ravenclaw in public."
"How Slytherin of you."

Re: is on draco's side here, but sees justin's view as well

[batrachian]

Another Huffleclaw here. :) (Ravenpuff sounds better in my mind, but it's hard to sort out which is more dominant.)

so, uh, yeah. :)

[kiya]

Copying my comment from the Dolohov thread because it's specifically on-topic here and we haven't hit comment collapse yet. ;)

Okay so, we have Hydra's read on Dolohov's state of mind.

* He was straight-up horrified to have been fighting the kids.
(Because they were his students and thus in his care? Because they were acting in a manner that was going to get them killed by someone? Because it reveals he doesn't know something significant about their inner lives?)

* He really wants to know what the heck they were doing.
(Duh.)

* He wants to know where the Selwyn kids are.
* He will not ask where the Selwyn kids are, because he will feel obliged to go get them if he knows.

* He tortured Selwyn for information; Selwyn, as we had more or less guessed, asked him to spare his kids.
(We might guess that this combined with the his-students thing is why he diverted Barty for a bit, because his inaction in that regard would fulfil his brother's last wishes and let the his-students not get themselves killed?)

* He was glad Barty did not witness Selwyn's requests of him, presumably because he knew Barty would interfere with his acting upon his "scruples".
(Probably the thing about innocents that Barty was twitting him about.)

* Power/cruelty/enjoyment/regret is an interesting combination for a crucio.
(Dolohov takes the chosen family thing very seriously, and his brother being sufficiently "ill-advised" that he had to die makes him sad? As a read on that? Duty still dominant, but the duty is not embarked upon joyfully even though he enjoys its execution? Dolohov appears to get off on the usage of this kind of power on an abstract level, almost.)

* He appears to be really disturbed by V, in a constant-loop kind of way, and associates that with Selwyn's comment about being toyed with and destroyed.
(Plays into his comments about loyalty going both ways as something that might really inspire doubts in him.)

* He is really pushy about wanting to train Justin in particular. Justin is unenthused.
(Unimpressed Draco's unimpressed at this is pretty epic.)

[teceler]

Okay, now that I have a normal-sized keyboard again, I'm going to reply to this over here for the same reason it got cross-posted.

* I actually expected more confusion/conflictedness there than straight-up horror, so that's interesting. I wonder...
I wonder why, and... I guess how that would play into other situations.
(Although the horror partly being at HE HAD NO IDEA could be a good point too)
(I'm kind of curious what he thinks they think of him now)

* Of course he does!

* Can only agree again on this one
* Less sure on that one. I think there might also be an element where if the kids are involved in something deeper (--note how he mentioned thought of Malfoy Manor as a possibilty?) he's not sure he wants to know.

* Yeah, I'm wondering what information they were after specifically
(Well, we'd guessed that already. I wonder how much was each?)
(Oh, and on that subject (the torture-for-information, not Selwyn's request), what is it with them expecting/apparently getting? reliable information out of that? --they do it fairly regularly, and I haven't seen it blow up on them yet. Well, not that I remember.)

* Oh, yeah, that one was significant as confirmation of something I'd been thinking-- he's keeping information from Barty to protect people, or allow him to act in a way Barty might disagree with (Cinnabris, Selwyn's request, the ISS and their escape, etc.)

* Yeah, I spent a while trying to detangle that one. I think you might be right on the abstract level thing.

* Yeah, I'm curious if he'll pulling that in in association with all the rest of this or if he has that going on in the back of his mind a lot.
(Oh, oh, yes.)

* Poor Justin. He really doesn't like this.

[kiya]

I can only assume they are, being wizards (of the particularly smug asshole kind, for the most part), completely ignorant of muggle knowledge that torture produces unreliable results, or believe that magical torture is more effective, or believe that if you just apply enough torture the results improve. But yeah, that's something I'd love to see them get bitten on the ass by a few times.

On the abstract thing, I'm wondering what gives him the high. Clearly, massive blood magic rituals do it for him for quite some time; I'd read this bit as suggesting that crucio also does it for him. Is it specifically magic-causing-suffering that does it? I don't think so, that seems more like Barty's bag and maybe Bella's, and in the wards ritual with Seamus he said that if someone had to die (which was the crux of that) it was better they not suffer, right? Magic-of-power-over-others might be a better read? He misses the challenge of the early days?

(Fuck, now I'm wondering if he gives particular reverence to Set, because as a Setian I'm suddenly going, "If it's a display of strength or a proof of competence to face up to a challenge that he gets off on, um, I... ... suddenly get it. In that kind of awkward, embarassing, 'please knock before coming in next time' kind of way.")

What else gives him the high? (I have weird fantasies of someone coming up with a way of, like, growing crops with "Dark Magic" or at least something else that sends him on a happy trip, and setting him to getting his fix in a way that makes sure nobody in the Protectorate gets scurvy or something. Like the folkloric thing about cursing the basil. Shit, now I want to get the book called "Cursing the Basil" immediately and theorise about Noble Arts Involving Herbology. What the fuck is wrong with my brain? ;) )

[alt_player]

It is, in fact, understood by many wizards that torture does not produce reliable results in interrogation. From Sally-Anne's post about the Cruciatus Curse, some years back:

There's pretty much nothing the cruciatus curse can accomplish that another spell can't do more effectively, except cause pain for its own sake. If you want to distract someone there are about a million possible spells. If you want to get information out of somebody, legilimency and veritaserum will get it much more quickly than cruciatus and people are less likely to lie. One of the books I read for Dark Arts had a chapter on the cruciatus curse and its use during interrogations, and the author thought using cruciatus was a bad idea -- not because he objected to it morally, but because he said people who are being tortured will say whatever they think will make the torture stop. He said five minutes of cruciatus will make most people claim to be a basket of dried peas, if they think their interrogator wants them to be a basket of dried peas. And the object of interrogation is supposed to be USEFUL information. He thought it was far more worthwhile to learn how to brew veritaserum but he seemed to have a bias towards potions generally.

Hydra has suggested that Bellatrix uses torture in conjunction with legilimency because pain weakens people's resistance to having their mind read. Although Minerva's comments today (and Hydra's experience) suggest that nonconsensual telepathy is ALSO not as reliable as one might assume. (It can be hard to show this on the surface of the game, though.)

[kiya]

Rereading the memory post, I suddenly wonder if Selwyn was being tortured for compliance rather than information, which would be more consistent.

(Unfortunately, 'many wizards' isn't going to be universal, though I suspect Dolohov does in fact have that knowledge because Dolohov knows a fuckton of things.)