#tom riddle problems

[weareallfromearth]

Dursleys

People who know me probably think I'm almost always a gentle, patient person, and that is what I strive to be, sometimes to a damaging extent because it stops me remembering to actually defend myself when unfairly attacked, or say no when I mean no, or even realise when things bother me. But sometimes when people perceive me as gentle and patient, it's because they haven't seen my biggest irrational enormous rage trigger in action at its worst: abusive/neglectful parents. It isn't kind and it isn't fair and I can usually - in fact, always - remember things like the cycle of abuse and the need to treat people with compassion and kindness in order to deal with these things for long enough to manage the anger and respond appropriately, which is bloody necessary because of my area of professional interest. But whenever my defences are down, whenever I'm not feeling especially patient or kind, whenever I'm already exhausted by compassion fatigue or my own problems, and I encounter a case of a parent who looks at a phrase like "best interests of the child" (which I consider to be flat out sacred and nothing less) with dubiousness or disdain or disgust, when I find out about the things some of my friends' parents did to them or failed to do for them, I ... I feel so full of fury that I don't know what to do. I feel like screaming and crying and going up to fight God for not stopping what happened, I feel like challenging my friends' parents to duels, I feel like becoming a foster parent (which I suspect I should never ever do, but who bloody well knows), I feel like finding someone to drive out to the middle of a field with so that we can scream and scream and scream. There is cruel, unfair, shitty anger in me, and this is the soul and centre of the place where it lives.

[weareallfromearth]

When you punish a person for dreaming his dream don’t expect him to thank or forgive you. The best ever death metal band out of Denton will in time both outpace and outlive you.

"The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton", The Mountain Goats

[weareallfromearth]

The Dumbledore problem

Dumbledore theory: he overcorrects for his past mistakes, always.

He really cocked it up with Tom Riddle, assuming the worst and dealing with him in an authoritarian fashion, because Riddle reminded him of the same levels of power he and Gellert once had, and the same levels of ambition, but darker.

Then, realising he cocked that up so thoroughly, when he saw the same kind of damage on Snape as there had once been on Tom, and seeing far more remorse though not nearly enough insight, he trusted Snape to teach, assuming that if only he had trusted Tom more he would have gotten better results. 

Similarly, he got way overinvested in Gellert’s vision, having found his intellectual equal and, let’s be real, first and perhaps last real romance, and way overinvested in the idea of basically ruling the world as a benevolent fascist.  So in order to avoid making that mistake again, he shied away from both power and relationships, but didn't step in when his soft power could have fixed things at the Ministry, and also didn't confide in anyone about his full plans, which - if he had - could really have resulted in more happiness for Harry because someone would have told him not to trust Petunia to be a good carer.

No one was his equal in his eyes apart from Gellert, which was a huge problem for him, because he needed the counsel of someone who was much more mistrustful than him - Aberforth, perhaps, who saw his power and his merits but didn’t worship him, or McGonagall if she felt more empowered to disagree with him and was less prone to the hero worship everyone indulged in when it came to Dumbledore. Hell, Tom Riddle himself, had Dumbledore gone the right way with him, could have provided exactly the counterpoint he needed. Both Dumbledore and Voldemort gathered cults of personality, after all.

[weareallfromearth]

Have you heard that idea that the explanation for so many of human history's wars and miseries and so many of our mistakes is that the majority of us as humans for most of history have been carrying around heaps of PTSD and trauma? That idea gives me so so much hope. Because it is the opposite of original sin. Because it means that it is possible for things to change, for us to heal, for us to not make the same mistakes next time around. It is possible that someday we will not mostly be the walking wounded. It is possible that someday we will mostly be free.

[weareallfromearth]

Rules for my own writing

If your villain is the most interesting person in your story, you have not written a sufficiently compelling hero. If no one ever wonders whether your villain is right, you have not written a sufficiently compelling villain. If you genuinely can't choose which of them you care about more or want to spend more time with, you're on the right track. If you are no longer comfortable using the words "hero" or "villain" in relation to them, you're where you should be.

[weareallfromearth]

I could totally rename my "Tom Riddle problems" tag "Elsa problems" and we'd all get more sympathetic. I mean, there absolutely is a difference in the way it all played out and what Riddle did vs what Elsa did, because Elsa was always petrified of hurting others whereas Riddle used it to keep himself safe and powerful, but also, Elsa knew she was loved, even though her parents absolutely did not do right by her. Riddle got the full neglect and punishment experience. I think I'm going to start using an "Elsa problems" and an "Anna problems" tag set. Really, the closest analogy to "Tom Riddle problems" without the negative connotations is "Matilda problems", but even then, Miss Honey and the librarian were there for her really early in her life and that made a huge difference, and she was raised by good stories because she was allowed access to good stories. She didn't spend her formative years unseen and unloved. It's like how Harry's first encounter with the Wizarding world was Hagrid and he immediately got to hear stories of the parents who once loved him. That made a huge difference too.