#rubatosisism.meta

[effervescentism]

I have… so many thoughts about Harry Potter it’s actually embarrassing so I’ll be spewing them here 🫶

FOR REFERENCE: Fuck (is cursing bad here??) JKR. Her ideology is shit and I hate her but I will be talking about HP because the character building is decent and interesting to build off of

With that in mind: Tom Riddle & Voldemort (I’m separating them since I will talk about both differently)

TOM RIDDLE: Honestly Tom is one of the most interesting characters in HP solely because of the information given about him. The only time we see him in childhood is completely through Dumbledore (who I don’t hate but definitely is a capital b biased person that I also wanna explore in another post but).

The memories mostly comprase of the whole wardrobe on fire scene (awful way of introducing magic to a child btw) and Tom’s penchant for stealing items from children at Wools Orphanage and harming Billy’s rabbit as revenge. For me, this set the scene as a child that is trying to gain and find power wherever and however, possible. I think that his experience in Wools formed him into a Survior, willing to do anything to find power he feels he was deserved. We also see this kind of behavior when he goes to Hogwarts, forms the Knights, and so forth. This blatant disregard for everyone around him and his singlemindness to get to the top does kind of resonate of ASPD (Anti-social personality disorder) to me (not like a medical professional so take lightly).

I do think that Dumbledore’s whole thing about Amortentia and unable to feel love is kind of B.S. because it feels like a cheap way to say that he was doomed from the beginning. It doesn’t make sense considering how would it even work to create a child incapable of feeling just love? (Weirdo magic thing probably since potions usually aren’t based on a lot of logic) but you would think that it would be illegal, not just banned at Hogwarts if creating it in the first place if that’s a possible side effect. It seems like an excuse of why Dumbledore fundamentally thought something was wrong with him even as a small child (more of dumbledore’s rigid thinking). Also, there was little to no mental health services in the world as far as aware- especially in 1930s it was greatly unlikely that either world would have any access to them. This makes Tom’s conditions, whether it be a mental disorder or just traumatic issues from growing up feeling unwanted and both of his parents gone, difficult to understand especially for a man terrified of making the same mistakes from his youth.

Only other information that we have is from the diary, which does not actually reveal a lot about his exact life or memories. We can see that he is clearly a charming, influential person, although some of the influence might be a side effect from the horcruxes nature, and we see that he obviously knows how to manipulate people and get what he wants. He has a clear blood bias that we see, and he also clearly detest being a half blood in contexts when he talks about his “filthy” muggle father. He also seems to kind of have a superiority complex that only gets further in as he goes farther in the horcrux path, (greatest wizard of all time, etc). Although it’s assumed that he’s already created his first horcrux and the after effect is the diary, but we actually don’t know. I do wonder if this kind of overly confident shade of him was done after he split his soul in a two or if it was him naturally.

He also, has this clear fear of death that is why he created the horcrux assumably, but this is likely onset by the blitz and his want to stay at Hogwarts full-time (which is such an interesting parallel between him and Harry it’s obvious that they are supposed to be parallel characters, but the direct comparison between two scared children is truly fascinating and how dumbledore deals with it is eye-opening).

All that I have talked about are most of the actual facts surrounding Tom Riddle and his youth, but I also do have opinions. It’s clear that because of his Muggle-sounding name (riddle isn’t on the pure blood 28 list and likely not recognizable to purebloods) that he was probably treated badly in his first years before he could gain real power (from his studies and his heritage). I do wonder what he did if there was people that did that to him? Did he try to take revenge on them, or did he just rely on the fact that he is superior to them (in insert ways) so he cannot be harmed by them. 

What i find interesting, that I feel like a lot of fans misinterpret, is his personal beliefs. It’s assumed that he hated muggles & muggleborns to an extent, he talks about filthy Muggles, blood purity, and all of his politics hinge around those ideals. He clearly goes with pureblood ideology, and he leads a pseudo cult that is about exterminating muggles & muggleborns from society. But, he is a halfblood. which makes me wonder what was his true reason for doing all of this. Since to truly believe these ideals, he would have to consider himself lower than purebloods, something that he would never do. Was it for power, a mix of both or did he just kind of turn insane after too many splitting of a fundamental part of him? Also ends up working with multiple magical creatures, such as werewolves, and dementors making me believe either that was a false agreement, or he believes them to be semi-equals, which is also contradictory to the rest of the pure blood beliefs. It’s a question I can’t answer but undoubtably his blood & origin makes a major impact on his decisions, especially regarding Halloween and the prophecy.

Overall, he is a fascinating character to examine in his youth, and although I think we make too much distinction between him and Voldemort, since they are truly two sides of the exact same coin and acting like they are different people is smoke and mirrors, I feel that if we don’t distinct between them, we will lose a lot of interesting discussions. Tom did make the decision to split his soul, but did he actively participate in some of the stuff father along when more horcruxs were made? Or was that only Voldemort? When does the line between Tom riddle and Voldemort begin to blur and when does it fade? Ultimately, Tom is a good jumping point to wonder about choices in life. For how much emphasis Dumbledore places on the power of love, I truly think choices and decisions ruled the difference between Harry and Tom because they were in essence so so similar yet so different and that’s what makes me interested in the both of them.

if any of you liked this one, I’ll do dumbledore and Voldemort (or I’ll do it out of my own volition when I get too bored lmao)