nocountryforlesbians:

i love when someone says ‘can i ask your opinion on something’ like yeah absolutely! i was ready to give my opinions on a range of topics completely unsolicited!

hotgirlsrk:

if capitalism didn’t exist what would your dream job be. btw if you say something like ‘engineer’ i’ll kill you

(Dug this out from a blog I had a very long time ago lol. But I think what I wrote still stands).

When we are first introduced to Tom JK Rowling presents a textbook image of a charismatic psychopath. One of the most prominent symptoms of this personality disorder is ‘shallow emotions’, someone who can imitate but never truly feel. While Tom presents the persona Voldemort as cold and calculative we must remember that Voldemort is not an actual person. He is a mask that Tom created at a very young age, and thus has had decades to perfect. However, despite his best efforts Tom Riddle

is not

Lord Voldemort. Although, Voldemort is a mask, Tom has convinced himself that he is Lord Voldemort. This means that while they may inhabit the same body, and technically be the same person, they will not share many of the same emotional responses.

Lord Voldemort is:

• emotionally detached
• a pure-blood
• inhuman in both personality and appearance.
• able to recognize his own mistakes
• stable and controlled in every sense.
• above all immortal

It’s in the instances when Voldemort is most present that death becomes a mere tool. His mindset towards those would be “it’s nothing personal, just good business.” An example of this would be when he killed Snape because of the elder wand. Up to that point he  had no idea that Snape had been a double agent. He killed him because he wanted the elder wand and the other was in the way. Similar to many charismatic dictators, Tom Riddle immersed himself in Voldemort so complete as to detach himself from his true persona, the one he hated so thoroughly that he tried to recreate himself. However, despite his desperation to eradicate any traces of Tom, he could never do so completely. Throughout the books we are shown glimpses of Tom through Harry’s own empathetic connection and the stories Dumbledore shared of Tom’s behaviors before arriving at Hogwarts. The picture we are given is that

Tom Riddle is:

• emotionally unstable, often having sharp shifts in mood. Such as extreme happiness when his fellow Death Eaters are released from Azkaban.
• Unforgiving, a great example would be his treatment of children at the orphanage.
• general loathing for himself and everyone around him, which is exemplified in not only the creation of Voldemort but also when he eradicated the muggle portion of his family tree.
• fearfulness that often exhibited itself in extreme acts such as splitting his soul into seven pieces.
• impulsive decisions made based on personal feelings and distrust towards others.
• a soft spot for snakes, which led him to speak to them even before his arrival at Hogwarts, and carried over into his Voldemort persona.
• mortal

It was at times of deep stress that his mask would slip, and Tom’s emotions would break through, causing him murder others through fear or vengeance. We are given very little information from Voldemort’s side of the First Wizarding War, but given the fact that he chose to personally kill  James and Lilly, and Dumbledore’s comments of his distrust towards others, we can assume that these traits weren’t adopted during the Second Wizarding War, but rather amplified.

The devolution of his emotional stability seems to have begun during his time in Albania, and was only worsened by the destruction of his horcruxes. The first two books we are given the closest image of what Voldemort’s personality was like during the first war. However, as the books progressed Harry began having an increasing amount of pain, which points to Voldemort becoming increasingly unstable.

Many people who create another identity can only continue so long as their original remains stable. However, between the stresses of losing his horcruxes, Harry Potter, and conducting a war. We begin to see less of Voldemort and more of Tom Riddle.

Evidence of increased instability include:

• Speaking of himself in third person
• violent mood swings that lead to indiscriminate killing, most notable when he lost the Hufflepuff cup and murdered a room full of magical creatures and his own followers.
• increased paranoia, such as no longer trusting Death Eaters such as Bellatrix.
• increasingly self-destructive behaviors, which are most obvious during the Battle of Hogwarts where he continued his attempts on Harry Potters life even after he became mortal.

In fact, almost all of Tom’s actions at the Battle of Hogwarts completely contradict his personified character. It can be best summed up in the two most prominent examples of how far his mental state had devolved.

• When Bellatrix died his reaction was compared to the explosion of a bomb, and he attempted to avenge her death.
• His refusal to surrender even after he becomes mortal and no longer has an army can be seen as a form of suicide by cop, because to any other person it would have been clear that this was a lost battle. Even if he was successful in killing Harry Potter, there was no doubt that vengeance would come from every direction.

Despite his best efforts, in the end Tom achieved a state worse than death. Forever stuck in a limbo, and beyond anyone’s help.

Harry Potter’s greatest shield wasn’t his mothers love, it was the plot armor Rowling wrapped around him.