i can’t blame henry for absolutely anything imagine you have a demonic alien entity in your head and you go home and this is what your mom puts on the table for dinner
opinions that would get me jumped pt 1 : I personally love dc’s modern characterisation for jason todd, him as robin being ‘angry’ at the world and he gets flashbacks during a fight and the situation is adjacent to his trauma so he becomes more irrational and aggressive , it would make total sense for how he grew up to be this way, id headcanon that he only became that way when he became a teenager because he started thinking about how this world has wronged him and continues to do the same for other kids, but i feel like ppl aren’t comfortable with that characterisation because him making rash decisions ultimately was what lead him to the joker, that and the fact that him not being 100% sweet and perfect all the time and actually having other complex emotions like anger would mean he isn’t the ‘perfect’ victim, and for some reason people hate supporting victims that aren’t perfect.
My thoughts on the character: I feel like the idea of this character is actually so cool. The son of the dark lord, who attends the same school as the boy who survived his father. I mean, the layers of this character are multiple, he would be probably one of the most complex characters of the whole Harry Potter universe. But unfortunately, since i discovered his existence, i saw many many people minimizing him, making him just another hot slytherin boy, toxic, evil, who likes to fight, who hates everyone, who would have soft spots, who would be worse than his father and so on. I just feel like he is much more complex than just "an evil slytherin guy who likes to throw fights", he's just much more layered.
So i started to make an idea of him. I read many headcannons, finding some good ones and some very bad ones. I read many takes on his backstory and read some (many, like, really a lot) stories.
So this is how i see Mattheo Riddle.
Hobbies, interests and exterior
Firstly, how would he present himself?
I don't personally see Mattheo caring about his looks, It's certainly not one of his priorities, It's not like people would change their mind about him because of how he dresses. But, the uniform is a statement, isn't it? And Mattheo is pretty good at making statements. The first (and probably only) thing Mattheo really wants people to know about him is that he is not his father. He is not Tom Riddle, and will never be.
So, if Tom was a perfect, smart and charming student during his school years, best believe Mattheo is going to be the complete opposite.
He keeps his uniform messy, always crumpled, shirt never fully bottomed, tie always loose, different shoes, his robe most of the times forgotten. He doesn't do it for attention, he just hates the idea of fitting into the standards, of following precisely the rules. (it wasn't always like this, for his first years, Mattheo really tried his best. Hogwarts was an escape from his life, and he wanted to make the best out of it. But soon enough, he discovered what everyone thought about him, how people already had a bad view of him due to his last name, how no one ever tried to give him a chance. So he stopped caring).
Mattheo shows up late at class, he speaks whenever he wants to (which is not often, but always unrequested), says whatever comes to his mind, and if he doesn't enjoy that class, he's not paying attention. He's smart, but not academically, he's the type of guy who finds a way out of any situation, who solves fastly any type of problem, but please, don't ask him to learn the preparation of a potion by heart, because he won’t be able to do it (and he wouldn’t want to).
Then, what are his hobbies and interests ?
Mattheo likes to be alone. He learned to be alone at a very young age and he enjoys being with himself. It’s not that he doesn’t want, deeply, to make connections, he desperately wants, but he can’t, he’s not able to, especially with people at Hogwarts. Mattheo soon discovered that Hogwarts couldn’t become his home, no one wanted him there, and he didn’t feel like he fit into the school either. So he decided to make Hogwarts his quiet safe place. (That’s how he found his best, and only, friend, Theodore Nott. When he stopped searching for friends, when he started to accept that he wasn’t going to find the things he desperately craved for in that school, he found a real friend).
Alone, Mattheo wandered through the entire castle, that’s how he got to know it better than anyone. And alone, he started to develop some hobbies to spend all that time he had. Since of course, doing homework was not contemplated.
He draws, he likes it, and he's good at it. When he is attending a boring class, when he finds himself at a social event he doesn’t want to be at, or when he is alone beside the lake, he draws anything he found inspiration in.
He loves nature, especially animals. Animals are quiet, they don’t judge, and they sense how someone really is beyond the appearances. He loves animals, he has a huge soft spot for them, he’s not particularly good with them, since he doesn’t really know how to be gentle, (how could he have learned it?) but he tries his best in oder to never scare them. I can see Mattheo silently adopting a Thestral. He would be one of the few students who could see them, and he would notice them instantly in second year. He was fascinated by them, he found them intimidating but yet so pretty. He would go to the forest and feed him, sit near him, draw him, spend time with him. So with that being said, his favorite subjects to draw would be animals and landscapes.
He would be a huge music nerd. Muggle music too. He probably discovered randomly, by reading a book about muggle studies in the library or by overhearing some conversations by some muggle-borns in the corridors. The fact is that he would be obsessed. He would have earphones on for hours, and he would listen to music while doing everything. His favorite genre? Hip Hop
Eminem, Ice cube, Snoop dog, 2Pac, Gorillaz, Dr Dre, 50 cent.
They give him energy, and he loves the beats.
About sport, I don’t personally see Mattheo as a fan of Quidditch, but i think he would play in the team. He would be a beater. It’s a way of letting out his inner anger, his force, without lashing out directly on no one. It’s therapeutic, almost. Through the years, he develops a real interest in the sport, being a bit collaborative with the team too.
I also feel like Mattheo has this habit of zoning out. Growing up alone with his psycho mother, i feel like he naturally developed a huge fantasy. Mattheo had his magic and his fantasy to keep him company in the nights where he was alone and afraid, while his mother was doing salazar knows what out there. He zoned out a lot as a kid, and this habit remained as a teenager too. Once he sat in the hidden spot he chose for the day, after a long morning of listening voices and rumours about him, of avoiding every possible encounter with someone who would have made his anger come out, he would just stare at the horizon, earphones in, zoning out to not face everything that happened that day. It was his way of creating, even for a fraction of second, another life, another world to live in.
He likes reading, because books wake up his fantasy, but he never finishes a whole book. He just leaves them half unread, and he changes to the next. He loves reading stories, he likes to get lost in other worlds, but he just can’t stay too focused on one thing for a long period of time. His brain refuses it, he gets frustrated, angry, and he completely loses interest in whatever he was doing before, even if he was really enjoying it.
His personality
Let's start with saying that mattheo's personality is pretty complex, and that it has changed rather dramatically from his first years at hogwarts to his last years.
Mattheo grew up without his father, of course, but this didn't stop his father figure to be omnipresent in every aspect of his life. He was constantly reminded of who is father was, of what his great father did and how he was the heir of his project for the wizarding world. His mother praised his father continuously, but Mattheo soon aknowledged that all these great things his father did weren't so great after all. And soon enough, he became horrified of both of his parents.
How did he discovered it? Well, by experiencing them on his skin. Because yes, Mattheo grew up with his mother, so his father couldn't really reach him, but when your mother is Bellatrix Lestrange, Voldemort's most loyal deatheather, you don't get that different of a treatment.
Mattheo was raised to be a weapon, he should've been the perfect heir. Bellatrix believed that the best way of learning for his son was to feel everything directly. How could you learn a defensive spell against an unforgettable curse without knowing how that curse felt? How could you know what you are casting towards someone without seeing, or better, feeling it on yourself?
Mattheo knew how to defend himself, how to hide, how to survive a cruciatous curse, how to throw an unforgettable, All before knowing how to read properly. He knew what it was like to see someone die in front of your eyes before knowing how it was like to have friends.
But it was never enough for his mother. After all that sacrifices, Mattheo remained a failure to her. A disappointment for his mother and a stranger for his father.
So, when the letter arrived, Mattheo was more than eager to start school. He had the opportunity to create for himself a different life, one that didn't involve his mother, one in which he could feel like a normal kid.
Mattheo was a silent kid, he was reserved, closed off and slightly intimidating. He had this straight, diffident and weirdly strict expression for a kid and the other kids on the train were a bit reluctant to approach him. But someone did, and when those kids on the train started to joke and laugh with him, he felt some warmth in his chest that he never felt before.
When Mattheo was sorted into Slytherin, he made everything he could to ignore his cousin, Draco (Because Mattheo didn't want people to know who his parents were, he didn't want to be Bellatrix's son, Draco's cousin, or worse, The dark lord heir, he just wanted to be Mattheo, something he, unfortunately, never got the opportunity to be) and he spent time with other Slytherin kids.
In first year, Mattheo made some friends. He never trusted them fully, because after all, he never told them who he really was, but he wasn't alone, and he knew that he could spend time with those people if he wanted to laugh, or feel normal.
The fact is that Mattheo wanted to be alone, too. Not completely, he loved the feeling of having friends (well, at least until he realised they weren't his friends, not really) but he learned how to be alone at a very young age, and it was familiar for him. He enjoyed being with himself, because that's what he knew. He spent all those years staying with himself, he needed that time alone at hogwarts, too, like oxygen. That's why it hurt when everyone distanced themselves from him, but not as much as it could have hurt someone else.
But hey, everything was going great for those first years!
Well, at least until his precious father returned as a memory of his sixteen years old self and showed to none other than Harry Potter his name, his real name. The one Mattheo used to go by. Riddle.
When Dumbledore announced Voldemort's real name, everyone froze. Thousands of eyes were suddenly pointed on Mattheo, all mouths shut, except for some older students, who were far from scared, they were angry.
And if someone had the nerve to say the words everyone were thinking of, asking if it was the same last name, the explanation was given to the students before Mattheo could defend himself. Yes, Mattheo Riddle was in fact the son of the Dark Lord.
From that moment, everything went downhill for our little Mattheo.
Not only his "friends" stopped talking to him, they were suddenly scared of him. People started to treat him like he was some sort of monster. And we all know how it goes with monsters, either you're too scared of them, acting paralized, waiting for them to kill you, or you hit them before they can hit you. And towards Mattheo, students had the same feelings.
The younger ones were too scared to even look at him. They avoided his gaze, they whispered stories in the corridors, they kept their distance, afraid that a wrong word would have sent them in the infirmary. The older students were intimidated from his last name, but not by him. For them, Mattheo was still a 12 years old kid. And soon, for them, fear became anger, and anger became hatred.
Older students started to bully him, because he wasn't a kid anymore, he was only the weak extension of his family. Bullying Mattheo was the best way for them to release the hate they felt towards his father and all the horrible things he did.
Mattheo didn't know how to act at first, he felt hurt, dissapointed, but not really surprised. Deep down, he knew that his "legacy" would have come for him at Hogwarts too. After all, he couldn't escape from who he was.
So, when those students started to pick on him, he tried his best, really, he kept quiet, he swallowed the responses he had for them, he ignored them. But then, they started to push him in corridors, to encircle him alone in the garden, and when they tried to fight him, Mattheo snapped.
Because when you're raised by a psycopath mother who spent all of your childhood torturing you to teach you how to fight properly, well, your body acts before your mind even has the possibility to stop it.
You think Mattheo wouldn't be able to hurt a fly? Then you thought wrong.
And no, Mattheo didn't react physically, because he knew he couldn't win that way, he was still a young kid against a group of teenagers. Mattheo reacted impulsively, his instincts flew to his wand, and his mouth spoke the word he learned to pronounce perfectly.
"Crucio."
In that monent, his mind snapped back to reality, and he froze. He looked at the friends of the guy on the ground, one by one, as they slowly retreated with a look of horror, and then he dropped his wand, sitting down.
They were right, after all, he was just like his parents. He couldn't escape. He was a monster.
That, is how Mattheo gained his reputation.
From that moment, Mattheo became the most feared and respected guy at school, secretely hated by everyone.
In third year, he associated with Draco, even if he didn't stand his cousin, he was still the only one who didn't treat him entirely as a monster. He started to follow his cousin, he bullied people with him, acted superior, but he knew, deep down, that it was wrong, that he had no right to act superior. he felt horrible, for what he did, for what he said, for what the other students thought of him.
In fourth year, he distanced himself from Draco. He couldn't really stand him, and he felt more and more wrong in acting that way. He became more silent, more reserved, lonelier. With the news of the Triwizard Tournament, the attention shifted, and he was no longer the main attraction of the school. Harry Potter was a champion, and the students were too focused on Harry, Cedric Diggory and the Yule ball for caring about him.
Mattheo wasn't happy, but he finally felt less like his father that year. He thought that maybe, that year, he could have had some peace. Maybe make some friends with people from the other schools.
He almost did.
Almost.
Because then, Harry Potter came back from the last quest with the corpse of Cedric Diggory, shouting how Voldemort was back.
Mattheo threw up. Not for Cedric, even if he stared at that body with horror. No, he wasn't a stranger towards death, it didn't shock him enough to make him throw up. He threw up because he believed Harry, and he felt his life collapsing.
From that moment, everything changed. Because not everyone believed Harry, people were too scared to believe that the Dark Lord was really back, but everyone thought that in Hogwarts, there was only a person capable of doing such horrible things, and that was Voldemort's son.
If Mattheo was feared and hated before, now he felt like he was the Dark Lord, not just his son anymore. After the fourth year, Mattheo realised that no matter what he did, he was the heir of Voldemort.
And if you think that from that moment he started to act like it, that he took pride in this information, well, you're wrong.
Mattheo hated his parents, both of them. He hated his father for who he was and his mother for how she raised him. But must of all, he hated himself. Mattheo swore to himself that no matter what he did, he would have never became like his parents. No matter how much of a shitty person he felt he was. No matter how explosive, angry, violent he became, he would have fought all of his life to never become that evil. From that moment, Mattheo swore to himself that he would have died rather than helping his father with his plan.
That is how Mattheo changed.
He was still silent and closed off. But he became rebellious, he started to hate rules, to break them silently, to follow his own morals. He hated bullies, he hated arrogants and spoiled brats. He stopped putting effort into things. He did the less he could to pass the year. He spoke whenever he wanted, however he wanted. He didn't care if he hurt people with his honesty, it's not like someone bothered of being empathetic with him, so why would he be?
After that, Mattheo met Theodore. They became friends almost instantly.
Theodore was quiet, creepily quiet, but Mattheo felt comfortable in that quietness. Theodore observed everything, he noticed details, he knew things about people without speaking to them. He was perfect for Mattheo. Theodore noticed, he noticed how Mattheo was actually struggling, he noticed Mattheo's emotions, he noticed, but he never spoke about it. He just acted for the situation, and Mattheo liked him for that.
With Theodore, Mattheo didn't have to pretend, he could be in his own thoughts without being alone, he could speak his mind without seeing a disappointed face in return. With Theodore, Mattheo felt like being himself was enough.
Mattheo wasn't nice, he was direct, he could be pretty rude, he had anger issues and an explosive personality. He was reckless, impulsive, sometimes a bit crazy. He was stubborn and he pushed everyone away. He negletted many of his emotions and he didn't knew how to deal with them. But somehow, he managed to find someone who liked him, someone who enjoyed being his friend, someone who didn't abandom him when he saw his dark mark, someone who believed him.
Because altough Mattheo is complicated, he is loyal. Once he found his real friends, Mattheo was ready to go to war for them at any given time. And that is something you don't find everywhere.
Well, those were my thoughts about my traumtised boy. I was thinking about making another post about his relationship with other students. Especially Harry, because i think their dynamic would be pretty complicated and interesting.
Anyway, i hope you liked my portrayal of Mattheo and i hope i didn't write anything too out of character, it's just the way i personally imagined him at Hogwarts.
I need to see The Phantom of the Opera turned into a buddy-cop comedy about the Persian and the Phantom.
The Persian gets exiled from his home country, learns Erik's living under the opera house, and keeps tabs on him to make sure he doesn't kill anyone.
The Phantom allows it, because it's not like there's anyone else he can show his death traps off to.
Meanwhile, there are little non-Phantom-related mysteries that pop up. The Persian, as a police detective, gets inquisitive.
He doesn't want to involve Erik, but unfortunately, this guy has an absurd number of skills and special interests that are helpful in these investigations.
So now the Persian's got a pet psychopath that he has to keep in line while also asking for said psychopath's help in solving various crimes.
The Phantom's the Shawn Spencer type who has ridiculous dramatic schemes (and who likes to show off his death traps).
The Persian's the Burton Guster who has to put up with these shenanigans. He is not being paid enough. (No one is paying him).
The Persian: Here are the details that are baffling the police. I need you to help me solve this mystery.
The Phantom: Why would I do that, daroga? This is art! You ask me to deprive a master artist of his liberty? Would you ask me to hang Michelangelo? Imprison Mozart?
The Persian: People are dying.
The Phantom: Great art requires blood! Is the artist the only one who must bleed for his work? True artistry is not tame and subdued. It is pure spirit that tears apart mere flesh through the sheer power of unbridled emotion--
The Persian: There's a cash reward.
The Phantom, thinking about the sweet new bedroom set he wants to buy for Christine: I'm in.
*
The Persian: This locked-room murder is the type of thing you could pull off.
The Phantom: You think I would content myself with such an obvious, amateurish stunt? These are the mere scribblings of a child compared to the masterwork I would create! Besides, I have been here for weeks, neither eating nor sleeping, as I pour my soul into Don Juan Triumphant.
The Persian: I know. Which is why I know you're innocent and I know you could solve this in five minutes.
The Phantom, turning back to the pipe organ: I am sorry, daroga. The muse has me in its thrall, and I cannot neglect my masterwork.
The Persian: I get it. You're baffled. I guess this guy has outwitted you.
The Phantom, rising in a cloud of wrath: HOW DARE YOU?! THERE IS NO MIND THAT CAN OUTMATCH MINE! I SEE ALL, HEAR ALL, KNOW ALL!
The Persian, unimpressed: Prove it.
The Phantom, trudging toward the staircase: Fine. But this better be quick.
*
The Phantom: I have come up with a fool-proof plan to catch the culprit!
The Persian: Don't say trap door.
The Phantom: It is...
The Persian:
The Phantom: ...a kind of opening...
The Persian:
The Phantom: ...in the floor...
The Persian:
The Phantom: ...that one, could, theoretically, use to conceal a trap...
The Persian: Please come up with a different plan.
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