#i've been thinking about how he would conceptualize his own age and how the affects his relationship with yinu

[gamebunny-advance]

A Random Collection of "Heart and Soul" and "DSYNC" Thoughts

Recap: "Heart and Soul" is a corny fanfic I wrote about 1010 meeting Yinu for the first time. I like it, but the ending is kinda bad.

This is, as the title says, a "random collection of thoughts," so don't expect anything too coherent. Jump around, skip stuff. Don't force yourself to try and sort this out.

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I think it'd be funny if 1010 referred to Yinu as "big sis" since she's technically older than them.

HaS doesn't necessarily occur in the DSYNC!AU, but I still base White's relationship with Yinu as though it had happened. In DSYNC, besides other NSR staff/public appearances, White will usually go out of his way to hide his bad mood when she's around because she's the one person he legitimately doesn't want to upset. Yinu kinda knows that something is wrong with him (try as he might to hide it, but she can usually smell the tobacco on him), but considering the last time she got involved in 1010's home situation, she got him erased, she doesn't want to pry any more than she needs to.

Sometimes I wonder how White conceptualizes his relationship with Yinu. Currently, they consider each other friends and there is a sibling-like quality to their relationship, but I wonder if that would change when she becomes an adult. In my headcanon 1010s are programmed with the inclination to flirt with basically anything that moves baring a couple of exceptions, both of which Yinu falls under: she's a child, and she's employed by NSR. Their restriction against NSR employees would bar him from flirting with her even when she becomes an adult, but the moment that either of them aren't employed by the same company, that restriction gets lifted. So I wonder if he considers that previous bond significant enough to continue to think of her as a close friend, or if it disappears the instant she meets their flirtation criteria. Perhaps by that time, their AI would be robust enough to process the nuances of their relationship.

1010 has already considered that even if he has a long "life", then all the humans in his life are going to out-grow him while he remains a 'young man' for eternity. But, what he considers more likely is that he'll be considered obsolete and *retired before Yinu even grows up.

*Although 1010 considers all previous versions of himself to be the same person, he also feels that part of him "dies" with every upgrade too. He's in a constant cycle of death and rebirth, and every MK update he gets further and further from what he originally was. Very Thesisus's ship paradox.

When I was writing the sequel, "Heartaches" there was a scene where Yinu accidentally reactivates the MKI 1010 while she visited Barracca Mansion.

I never quite explained why Neon J. felt the need to erase 1010's memories, but it was because it was considered too dangerous to allow 1010 to so blatantly disobey his Captain's orders, so that needed to be fixed as soon as possible.

It was determined that 1010's accidental harm of Yinu is what caused the sudden shift in his priorities, but the way that 1010 processes information means that it's not as easy as simply deleting a random chunk of his memory to reverse the effects. 1010's A.I. is like a giant web of connections. It *isn't easy to just cut some connections without causing another part to fail or become unstable.

*Strictly speaking, it is technically possible to comb through 1010's memories and delete very specific parts of it, but the parts are so interwoven and dense that it would take decades of manpower to search through and correctly identify even 1 minute of memories that needed to be erased without affecting other areas, which just isn't practical.

In extreme cases like the Yinu incident, the easiest thing is to *roll-back his memories, either to a previous state or do a complete reset.

*Rolling back his memories is still unideal, but the consequences of rolling back are more predictable vs. deleting something "in the middle" where the consequences will be unknown until it's already caused another problem.

Since 1010 met Yinu the same day that he malfunctioned, he wasn't able to keep any memory of her until the next time they met.

However, Neon J. also doesn't delete these malfunctioning versions of 1010 since they still provide useful research information. So, when MKI is accidentally revived, he still has memories of the incident up to getting retired, but he isn't up-to-date with anything else, so he identifies the MKIII 1010s as threats to Yinu and proceeds to destroy them while they try to get Yinu back to safety and away from him.

Neon J's tendency to use memory erasure to solve 1010's problems was also supposed to be a major point in DSYNC, where Neon J. "solves" the problem by factory resetting White and Green. If they have no memories of the past, then neither of them can have trauma about it. However, since the memories are still stored somewhere, they can still find a way to access them, even "subconsciously." This caused Green to still avoid White even though neither of them knew the real reason why. Since White can't do his job as leader if one of his subordinates keeps avoiding him, he decides to seek out the reason himself.

They are forbidden from directly accessing these memories, but there's a loophole in that they can still get the information indirectly, such as loading a bootleg (aka Garage Band 1010) with the old memories and asking them about it. Reset!White was then supposed to learn about his past abuse from the old White which is what allowed him to finally find the courage to confront Neon J. about their issues and get everyone some well deserved therapy.

[bookoftheironfist]

Hi! I was thinking offhand about the IF Netflix show this morning and figured I ought to get the opinion of an expert — the fanon Danny characterization that I’ve seen in people’s fics (basically a goofy and oblivious golden retriever) seems a bit different from what I saw in the show, but I also know next to nothing about the personality of the character in the comics. Are the three of them distinct (comics, show, fanon) or would you say there’s similarities between them? Is there anywhere in particular that the fanon characterization seems to come from, in your opinion?

Hi, it's great to hear from you! I love this question.

First of all, I am contractually obligated to gesture in the direction of my big ol' Iron Fist reading guide, if you do happen to have an interest in checking out some comics...

I don't read fan fiction myself, so I can't really comment in an informed or specific way on how he tends to be written or conceptualized by the MCU fan community at large, but I have heard MCU Danny described as a "golden retriever" before and I think I have the general gist. I don't have any problems with that-- Danny is very sweet and endearing and kind, and this is true in the comics as well. There is also a whole lot more going on with him, though, at the heart of which is the fact that he has been shouldering massive amounts of trauma in most of his MCU appearances so far, some of it (if we look, for instance, at Danny in The Defenders) very recent. (In this regard, the treatment of his character in The Defenders drove me a bit nuts. Yeah, okay, let's repeatedly tease and belittle the guy who's just had his home destroyed and his people massacred by the villains and then physically prevent him from getting any closure. Aren't team-ups fun?)

Anyway, to answer your question, I don't see much of a difference in personality between comics Danny and MCU Danny. This is a situation in which context is key, and one of the things I've always found so compelling about Danny as a character is the fact that while he is capable of great kindness, positivity, generosity, and affection-- and is, to me, one of the least emotionally constipated male superheroes out there-- he is also capable of immense darkness, hatred, and violence. Danny has an exceptionally horrific origin story in the comics: at the age of nine, he gets dragged high into the mountains on his father's desperate bid to return to K'un-Lun, where his father is then murdered and his mother eaten alive by wolves. Having barely escaped with his own life, Danny finds a new home and family in K'un-Lun, but he has been transformed by his experiences and becomes razor-focused on the one goal that matters most to him now: killing Harold Meachum, the man responsible for his parents' deaths. When ten years pass and the portal to Earth reopens, Danny is faced with a painful choice: to remain in his beloved K'un-Lun and put aside his desire for vengeance, or to leave in pursuit of Meachum and be locked out of the city for a decade. As much as he wants to stay, and as much as his mentors insist that this revenge quest will destroy him, the rage and trauma that have been festering in him all this time are too much for him to ignore. Nineteen-year-old Danny storms back to New York City, haunted and out for blood.

His personality in these first issues is rigidly serious, emotionally locked off, driven, bitter, and quick to anger. Even when his revenge quest fails and he decides to let his parents' killer live, he comes out of it lost and broken, homesick for K'un-Lun and unsure of who he even is on Earth and what kind of life he could possibly build there. His answer comes through the friends he makes-- Colleen Wing and her father, Misty Knight, Rafael Scarfe, Luke Cage, the Sons of the Tiger, and so on-- who extend kindness and love to him and give him a place to belong. As this happens, Danny's personality softens. There's a key moment that I think beautifully illustrates the beginning of this shift. Danny gets invited to play some casual softball with Rafael Scarfe and his team, and ends up getting knocked on his butt. His first reaction is to feel angry and humiliated. But then he does something nobody expects. He laughs:

"You hear laughter as you hit the ground, and for a moment, it angers you...after all, you have been made to look the fool... So what? It won't kill a man to look foolish among friends. And you do look...funny." Scarfe: "I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. The great stone face finally cracks up. I dunno, Daniel Rand. After all Lee* told me about you, I didn't think you had a giggle in you. Nice to see I was wrong." Marvel Premiere #24 by Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick, Phil Rache, Vinnie Colletta, and Karen Mantlo *(Lee is Colleen Wing's father, who was employing and keeping an eye on Danny at this point.)

The reason I've been focusing specifically on early 616 Danny here is because this is largely the context in which we have seen MCU Danny so far. He is, relatively speaking, barely out of his origin story, and while many of the details differ, MCU Danny and 616 Danny still have similar origins and similar emotional responses to them. (In the years since the show first aired, I've seen people try to claim that MCU Danny was out-of-character in the first season, and while out-of-character-ness is, of course, up to interpretation, I tend to take this opinion as an indication that someone has only read modern Iron Fist comics. To me, season 1 was very obviously drawing from the original Marvel Premiere issues in its tone, themes, and approach to Danny's personality.) What's very neat to me about MCU Danny is that due to the changing of one small detail, the structure of his origin story was completely flipped. In the comics, he watches Harold Meachum kick his dad off a cliff and abandon him and his mother in the mountains. He knows exactly what happened to his parents, and he knows exactly who is responsible, and so his trauma response has drive and a target. For this reason, the very first version of Danny we meet in the comics is angry and serious, battle-hardened and focused on his mission to the exclusion of all else. It's only afterward that his character, over time, morphs into the lighter, more relaxed Danny with whom modern readers are most familiar. He still has that darkness and rage inside of him-- the 2014 Living Weapon series, for instance, was all about revisiting that aspect of his character-- but modern Danny is, on the whole, in a place that reflects the tremendous character arc he has traveled over the past 50 years.

The show, though, changes a key detail of the story: Danny's parents die in a plane crash, murdered by Harold from a distance. I wasn't too disappointed or even really surprised by this change (when that first teaser trailer dropped, my co-blogger and I went, "yeah, makes sense"). Live action tends to highlight concept weaknesses that are more readily allowed suspension of disbelief in the comics, and a plane crash feels a bit more rational than Wendell Rand taking his young child for a fun jaunt through some of the harshest terrain on the planet. Of course, all of the Netflix shows made all kinds of origin story changes, some of them for no apparent reason and to what I'd consider to be the detriment of the stories (here's my co-blogger and I griping about some of the strangest changes made to MCU Matt Murdock's origin, for instance, if you're interested). But what impressed me so much about this change to Danny's backstory is that they didn't then just carry on as if the change hadn't been made. The showrunner/writing team actually thought through what it would mean for the rest of the story, and what it meant was this: With Harold not obviously involved, Danny does not know that his parents were murdered. He is burdened with the same degree of grief and trauma, but without anyone to blame, with no outlet for his emotions, no goal to strive toward for closure. It means that he initially has no revenge quest. When we first meet MCU Danny, he is suppressing a lot of harmful emotions (I mean, a lot a lot), but he is also hopeful, because he comes to Earth not to murder a guy, but looking for healing and seeking to reconnect with the Meachums: beloved extended family that he has not seen in fifteen years, welcome remnants of a life he can barely remember. He is in an optimistic frame of mind, thus allowing us to see that trademark happy, dorky Danny who we don't meet until much later in the comics (that first link offers a direct contrast between Danny walking into the Meachum building in the comics versus the MCU, so it's worth checking out).

And then! Things immediately go horribly wrong. Danny is naive, out of his element, and easily manipulated. He gets psychologically brutalized by the Meachums, by Madame Gao and the Hand, eventually by Davos, he discovers more and more of the details surrounding the crash, he begins to spiral, his suppressed emotions break free, that darkness and rage come forth, and the story of Iron Fist season 1 climaxes with the realization of the revenge quest that was always bubbling beneath the surface. That glimpse of happy, well-adjusted Danny is gone, consumed by the grim, dangerous, extremely unhealthy Danny more familiar to Marvel Premiere readers. One major difference to note is that there's something uncontrolled, almost feral about MCU Danny at his absolute worst, symptomatic of the fact that he has been actively repressing these emotions, while 616 Danny spent ten years honing and focusing them. I find that distinction really interesting.

Having defeated Harold Meachum and found closure for his parents' deaths and peace for his identity struggles (I haven't talked much about those, but I've written a lot about them in my coverage of Iron Fist season 1, so feel free to go check that out), we see that default happier, hopeful, peaceful Danny return. This moment always brings me immense joy:

(I can't overstate my love for this tiny scene. Here's Danny at his most carefree, finally returning home, ready to plunge back into his training, accompanied by someone he loves. That's my guy: distilled.)

However, Danny barely has time to heal before he is shattered again by the...whatever the heck happened to K'un-Lun (this plot point was never, ever clarified, and I'm sad about it! Augh! Marvel!!). In the post about The Defenders that I linked waaay back at the beginning of this post, I point out that Danny's traumatic flashbacks to his parents' deaths get replaced by nightmares of K'un-Lun's destruction, a new source of trauma overlaying the old. In The Defenders, Danny's personality is perhaps closer to that of his Marvel Premiere counterpart. He is no longer out-of-control berserker raging; now, his grief and anger are focused. He knows his enemy. He knows what they did (maybe? Augh...). He knows what he must do to them to avenge his people and correct his perceived mistakes. But at the same time, he is still open to building friendships and connections, even longs for it (he has lost so many of the people in his life, he has been betrayed so many times...He and Colleen are alone at this point). He forms a bond with Luke (of course), once they are able to put aside their own demons enough to listen to each other. His interactions with Luke are very reminiscent of his first interactions with Colleen in IF season 1, in which he sees someone he thinks is cool and interesting and goes "Friend. Friend, yes? Friend?" (This isn't really a thing in the comics, but it's a cute feature of MCU Danny that also underlines how desperately he needs human connection. In the comics, his Found Family(ies) just kind of happens organically. In the MCU, Danny seeks out those bonds.) Something else that pops out strongly in Danny's personality in The Defenders is an admiration for his teammates, carrying on from his open admiration for Colleen's skills in his solo show. Danny in the comics is a kung fu mega nerd. He's a perfectionist when it comes to combat and will openly criticize his enemies for sloppiness or lack of skill, but the flip side of this is that he also has tremendous respect for and interest in the skills of others and is just as quick to offer complements. I love this about him and was delighted to see it show up in the MCU.

Luke Cage season 2 and Iron Fist season 2 see MCU Danny move toward that more modern sensibility for his character; they feel very much like the Iron Fist/Power Man and Iron Fist volume 1 era in the comics, in terms of both his personality and the direction of his life (apart from the end of IF season 2, which I don't feel I can cover properly here because it still just makes me go "???!?!"). With more stability, we get to see more sides of Danny that we haven't seen since the very beginning of his solo show, before his life went to hell-- the side that is open and friendly, that gifts Misty Knight her bionic arm, that is eager to spar with Luke, the side that is settled enough in himself to offer advice to others. We see Danny enjoying having a job-- not as a Hero for Hire in this universe, sadly, but working for a moving company, earning an honest living. We get to revel more in one of my favorite things about early Danny: his naïveté and unfamiliarity with Earth. This Danny is smiley, a little bit mischievous, open and caring to a fault. We see him reveling in what he does best: using his skills, kicking some butt, being the best there is at what he does (sorry, Wolverine). In Iron Fist season 2, we also see Danny connecting with his Iron Fist identity, really connecting with the chi of Shou-Lao for the first time in a way that makes him feel empowered. Danny's relationship with his role as Iron Fist, and with the city of K'un-Lun, is rocky and tumultuous in the show and even moreso in the comics, but it also means everything to him and brings him comfort and pride and a sense of grounding. With Iron Fist season 2 existing alongside the Luke Cage team-up episode, we also get a great example of something that is notable in the comics as well, which is a distinction between the way Danny is written in his solo series versus in team books, particularly in the modern era. In team-ups and cameo appearances, he tends to be comic relief, a bit more lighthearted, a bit goofier, while in his solo stories, faced with problems that are personal and strike deep, and where we are closer to his POV, he tends toward being more introspective, serious, troubled. This is to be expected, but is still worth noting in all discussions of Danny's personality. He exists on a spectrum, just like any other character.

This post is so long, and it feels like there are still a million more things to say. But I will, I think, end it by emphasizing that one of my favorite things about Danny is the breadth and depth of his personality, and one of my greatest joys regarding the Netflix shows was seeing a character I adore explored further, in a new medium and a different context, while still aligning with the same basic set of recognizable personality traits. Danny Rand is a hardcore, deadly martial artist who wields immense power and a soft, kind sweetheart who loves his friends and would do anything for them, or for anyone else for that matter. He killed a dragon with his bare hands, and he's so, so bad at business. He's straightforward and confident-- he's one of the best fighters in the entire Marvel Universe and he knows it, not as a boast but simply as a fact. He's a tangled, self-questioning mess, trying to find his way as an Immortal Weapon in the Capital Cities of Heaven and as a superhero on Earth and frequently failing. He's honest and sincere. He's a bit awkward. He's curious, a lifelong student (as all the best martial artists are). He's fearless. He's a huge dork. He transformed a skyscraper into a giant chi-powered mech to punch a god one time. He got his identity stolen by a sentient plant one time. He teaches little kids kung fu, and is an eager mentor to his protégé Pei and a kickass uncle to Luke and Jessica's daughter, who they named after him. He's a philanthropist and a Hero for Hire, and Rolling Stone named him the 77th Hottest Avenger. And while we were unfairly robbed of the time to explore every facet of MCU Danny's character, we were nevertheless gifted a wonderful range of stories and a powerful character arc (Shou-Lao willing, someday the MCU decision-makers will take their eyes off Charlie Cox long enough to remember that the other Netflix Marvel shows also exist and we'll get to see more of this version of Danny). And my hope for people writing Danny into their fan fics is just to remember his complexity, to keep in mind the forces that shaped him, and to have fun with how multifaceted and strange and unique a character he is. And if you or anyone else is ever looking for an Iron Fist nut to chat with, I'm always up for, um...writing extremely long posts about my guy.

Thank you for the question!

[idleglowingpixels]

HEY HELLO HI, I HATH RETURNETETH \(OoO)/ AND WITH AN UPDATE! (probably not one you all expect tho)

Unfortunately I have a teensy bit of bad news, but for good reason, let me explain:

TL;DR, the job I had gotten in February around XYY Chapter 1's release didn't really work out. And I only just started a new one this week, so it's been pretty hectic in my personal life lol, not gonna go into detail but sometimes it just be like that! XD

But because of that, I haven't had the chance to really give Chapter 5 a proper overview & edit, which every other currently released chapter has gotten and deserves imo, so Chapter 5's gonna be a bit delayed. :'(

At LATEST it'll be held until June 14th, but I have this Saturday off of work, so I'm gonna make sure I dedicate time to going over it and making sure it's how I want it to be. If you want to know why this particular chapter is gonna take a second, read the next few paragraphs at your own discretion.

Also, if this is your first exposure to my fic from the great beyond that is Tumblr, you can check out the first 4 chapters of XXY here!

(SPOILER ALERT) This chapter introduces some new characters, including two of the updated 2016 reboot villains, who I want to make sure I introduce properly. I have the tag "Updated 2016 reboot villains" or something like that on the fic and I PRAY that wasn't a turn-away for people! Most of them are minor characters, who are one-offs for an arc of chapters, but there's one or two that recur as antagonists.

A lot of older fans reading the fic might not recognize them, think they're OCs, or do know them but not fondly (XD), and I hope the changes I make to them will have readers a bit more hyped about them. In earlier drafts of the story, I wasn't going to use any of the 2016 characters, but it's a teen AU for the Puffs/Ruffs, I try not to make OCs if I don't have to, and all of the other baddies are older in age --I'd imagine some of them got other stuff going on 11 years after the events of the original show HAHAH!

I scrolled through the fan wiki as well as recalled a couple from my attempts at watching the reboot, found some newer baddies I liked conceptually and took a peek at some of their episodes, and found ✨ POTENTIAL ✨ XDDD (Also shout-out to Shadow Streak's videos covering every episode of the reboot, I still have yet to watch every single one, bless him :'D XD)

The newer characters all have general-to-major changes from the reboot, but their main character gimmicks remain intact. They're also completely separate from the way they're written in the reboot, practically different characters haha (Given I'd never write characters the way the reboot did lol, it had its moments but they were few & far between). (END SPOILER ALERT)

It's a pretty long chapter tho, and considering it's in Boom's POV I'm happy I could give him a big chapter length since he's one of the more difficult POVs for me to write (aka not one of the Reds LMAO they're so easy for me to write for dgvvdfvdcsc).

Big apologies for not dropping it tonight or updating sooner! I didn't think the new job would tire me out so much, and I've been doing a ton of unrelated things in the background that have kept me busy as a bee. :')

Like I said, the latest this chapter will release is next Wednesday on the 14th, but may release sooner depending on my time schedule. This will not affect updates for Chapters 6 & 7, which will still be released on the 7ths of July and August respectively.

Thanks for all of your support 🙏 See you soon, stay hydrated, and have a wonderful day or night!

[sk1fanfiction]

the many faces of tom riddle, part 4

-attachment, orphanages, and yet more child psych: time to add yet another voice to the void-

FULL DISCLAIMER THAT THIS IS JUST MY OPINION OF A CHARACTER WHO DOESN’T HAVE THE STRONGEST CANON CHARACTERIZATION, AND THUS ALL THIS IS BASED ON MY CONCEPTUALIZATION.

I'm going to be super biased, because my favorite portrayal of Tom Riddle is actually Hero Fiennes-Tiffin as eleven-year-old Tom Riddle, in HBP and I get to chat about child psych in this one, sooo here we go.

First of all, I’m just so impressed that a kid could bring that much depth to such a complex character.

This is the portrayal, I feel, that brings us closest to Tom’s character. Yes, Coulson’s brought us pretty close, but by fifth year, the mask was on.

We don't really get to see Tom looking afraid very often, but it's fear that rules his life, so it's really poignant in our first (chronologically) introduction, he looks absolutely terrified.

The void being the fandom's loud opinions on a certain headmaster. I wouldn't call myself pro-Dumbledore, but I'm certainly not anti-Dumbledore, either. (Agnostic-Dumbledore??)

Since I'm not of the anti-Dumbledore persuasion, I decided to poke around in the tags and see what the arguments were, so I don't make comments out of ignorance.

Most of the tag seems to be more directed towards his treatment of Harry and Sirius, but a few people mentioned that Dumbledore should have treated Tom with ‘exceptional kindness’ and tried to ‘rehabilitate’ him.

As I said in Parts 2 and 3, I am 100% in favor of helping a traumatized kid learn to cope, and I don’t think Tom Riddle was solidly on the Path to Evil (TM) at birth, or even at eleven. Not even at fifteen.

Could unconditional love and kindness have helped Tom Riddle enough for the rise of Lord Voldemort to never happen? Possibly, but...

Yes, I'm about to drag up that Carl Jung quote, again.

“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

The problem with this is that if you’re going to blame Dumbledore for this, you also have to blame every other adult in Tom’s life: his headmaster, Dippet, his Head of House, Slughorn, his ‘caretakers’ at the orphanage, Mrs. Cole and Martha, and possibly more. In fact, if we're going to blame any adult, let's blame Merope for r*ping and abusing Tom Riddle Senior, and having a kid she wasn't intending to take care of.

Furthermore, you cannot possibly hold anyone but Tom accountable for the murders he committed. (I should not have to sit here and explain why cold-blooded murder is wrong.) And if you like Tom Riddle's character, insinuating that his actions are completely at the whim of others is just a bit condescending towards him. He's not an automaton or a marionette, he's a very intelligent human being with a functioning brain, and at sixteen is fully capable of moral reasoning and critical analysis.

I've heard the theories about Dumbledore setting the Potters up to die, and I'm not going to discuss their validity right now; but he didn't put a wand in Tom's hand and force him to kill anyone. Tom did it all of his own accord.

And while yes, I have enormous sympathy for what happened to Tom as a child, at some point, he decided to murder Myrtle Warren, and that is where I lose my sympathy. Experiencing trauma does not give you the right to inflict harm on others. Yes, Tom was failed, but then, he spectacularly failed himself.

We also have no idea how Dumbledore treated Tom as a student.

In the movies, it’s Dumbledore who tells Tom he has to go back to the orphanage, but in the books, it’s Dippet. We know that Slughorn spent a lot of time around Tom at Slug Club and such, yet I don’t really see people clamoring for his head.

I regard the sentiment that Dumbledore turned Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort with a lot of skepticism.

But let's hear from the character himself -- his impression of eleven-year-old Tom Riddle.

“Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time?” said Dumbledore. “No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I was certainly intrigued by him. I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others’ sake as much as his."

Now, assuming that Dumbledore's telling the truth, I'm not seeing something glaringly wrong with this. No, he hasn't pigeonholed Tom as evil, yes, I'd be intrigued, too, and it's a very good idea to keep an eye on Tom, for his own sake.

“At Hogwarts,” Dumbledore went on, “we teach you not only to use magic, but to control it. You have — inadvertently, I am sure — been using your powers in a way that is neither taught nor tolerated at our school."

Again, it seems like he's at least somewhat sympathetic towards Tom, and is willing to at least give him a chance.

More evidence (again, assuming Dumbledore is a reliable narrator):

Harry: “Didn’t you tell them [the other professors], sir, what he’d been like when you met him at the orphanage?” Dumbledore: “No, I did not. Though he had shown no hint of remorse, it was possible that he felt sorry for how he had behaved before and was resolved to turn over a fresh leaf. I chose to give him that chance.”

Now, I think Dumbledore is pretty awful with kids, but I don't think that's malicious. Yeah, it's a flaw, but perfect people don't exist, and perfect characters are dead boring. I am not saying that he definitely handled Tom's case well, I'm just saying that there's little evidence that Dumbledore, however shaken and scandalized, wrote him off as 'evil snake boy.'

It's also worth taking into account that it's 1938, and the attitudes towards mental health back then.

Why is Tom looking at Dumbledore like that, anyway? Why is he so scared? What has he possibly been threatened with or heard whispers of?

"'Professor'?" repeated Riddle. He looked wary. "Is that like 'doctor'? What are you here for? Did she get you in to have a look at me?"

"I don't believe you," said Riddle. "She wants me looked at, doesn't she? Tell the truth!"

"You can't kid me! The asylum, that's where you're from, isn't it? 'Professor,' yes, of course -- well, I'm not going, see? That old cat's the one who should be in the asylum. I never did anything to little Amy Benson or Dennis Bishop, and you can ask them, they'll tell you!

Tom keeps insisting he's not mad until Dumbledore finally manages to calm him down.

I'm really upset this wasn't in the movie, because it's important context. Instead we got these throwaway cutscenes of some knick-knacks relating to the Cave he's got lying around, but I just would have preferred to see him freaking out like he does in the book.

There was extreme stigma and prejudice towards mental illness.

'Lunatic asylums,' as they were called in Tom's time, were terrible places. In the 1930s and 40s, he could look forward to being 'treated' with induced convulsions, via metrazol, insulin, electroshock, and malaria injections. And if he stuck around long enough, he could even look forward to a lobotomy!

So, if you think Dumbledore was judgmental towards Tom, imagine how flat-out prejudiced whatever doctors or 'experts' Mrs. Cole might have gotten in to 'look at him' must have been!

Moving on to the next few shots, he is sitting down and hunched over as if expecting punishment or at least some kind of bad news, Dumbledore is mostly out of the frame. He’s trapped visually, by Dumbledore on one side, and a wall on the other, because he’s still very much afraid. uncomfortable, as he tells Dumbledore a secret that he fears could get him committed to an asylum (which were fucking horrible places, as I said).

It brings to the scene that miserable sense of isolation and loneliness to that has defined Tom’s entire life up to that point (and, partially due to his own bad choices, continues to define it).

And, when Dumbledore accepts it, his posture changes. he becomes more confident and more at ease, as he describes the... utilities of his magical abilities. 

"All sorts," breathed Riddle. A flush of excitement was rising up his neck into his hollow cheeks; he looked fevered. "I can make things move without touching them. I can make animals do what I want them to do, without training them. I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to."

Riddle lifted his head. His face was transfigured: There was a wild happiness upon it, yet for some reason it did not make him better looking; on the contrary, his finely carved features seemed somehow rougher, his expression almost bestial.

I do think Harry, our narrator, is being a tad bit judgmental here. Magic is probably the only thing that brings Tom happiness in his grey, lonely world, and when I was Tom's age and being bullied, if I had magic powers, you'd better believe that I'd (a) be bloody ecstatic about it (b) use them. And, like Tom, I can't honestly say that I can't imagine getting a bit carried-away with it. Unfortunately, we can't all be as inherently good and kindhearted as Harry.

Reading HBP again, as a 'mature' person, it almost seems like the reader is being prompted to see Tom as evil just because he's got 'weird' facial expressions.

So... uh...

Nope, let's judge Tom on his actions, not looks of 'wild happiness.'

To his great surprise, however, Dumbledore drew his wand from an inside pocket of his suit jacket, pointed it at the shabby wardrobe in the corner, and gave the wand a casual flick. The wardrobe burst into flames. Riddle jumped to his feet; Harry could hardly blame him for howling in shock and rage; all his worldly possessions must be in there. But even as Riddle rounded on Dumbledore, the flames vanished, leaving the wardrobe completely undamaged.

Okay, one thing I dislike is Tom's lack of emotional affect when Dumbledore burned the wardrobe, in the books, he jumped up and started screaming, instead of looking passively (in shock, perhaps?) at the fire. Incidentally, I can't really tell if he's impressed or in shock, to be honest. I think they really tried to make Tom 'creepier' in the movie.

This is one of the incidents where Dumbledore's inability to deal with children crops up.

I think he was trying to teach Tom that magic can be dangerous, and he wouldn't like it to be used against him, but burning the wardrobe that contains everything he owns was a terrible move on Dumbledore's part. Tom already has very limited trust in other people, and now, he's not going to trust Dumbledore at all -- now, he's put Tom on the defensive/offensive for the rest of their interaction, and perhaps for the rest of their teacher-student relationship.

Riddle stared from the wardrobe to Dumbledore; then, his expression greedy, he pointed at the wand. "Where can I get one of them?"

"Where do you buy spellbooks?" interrupted Riddle, who had taken the heavy money bag without thanking Dumbledore, and was now examining a fat gold Galleon.

But I'm not surprised Tom is 'greedy.' He's grown up in an environment where if he wants something, whether that's affection, food, money, toys, he's got to take it. There's no one looking after his needs specifically. I'm not surprised that he's a thief and a hoarder, and I don't think that counts as a moral failing necessarily, and more of a maladaptive way of seeking comfort. It would be bizarre if he came out of Wool's Orphanage a complete saint.

Additionally, I think given that the Gaunt family has a history of 'mental instability,' Tom is a sensitive child, and the trauma of growing up institutionalized and possibly being treated badly due to his magical abilities or personality disorder deeply affected him.

And there are points where it seems that Dumbledore is quick to judge Tom.

"He was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control."

"Yes, indeed; a rare ability, and one supposedly connected with the Dark Arts, although as we know, there are Parselmouths among the great and the good too. In fact, his ability to speak to serpents did not make me nearly as uneasy as his obvious instincts for cruelty, secrecy, and domination."

"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless?..."

And while this is all empirically true, these are (a) a product of Tom's harsh environment, and (b) do not necessarily make him evil. But the point remains that child psych didn't exist as a field of its own, and psychology as a proper science was in its infancy, so I'd be shocked if Dumbledore was insightful about Tom's situation.

But I've gone a ton of paragraphs without citing anything, so I've got to rectify that.

Let's talk about Harry Harlow's monkey experiments in the 1950-70s.

If you're not a fan of animal research, since I know some people are uncomfortable with it, feel free to scroll past.

Here's the TL;DR: Children need to be hugged and shown affection too, not just fed and clothed, please don't leave babies to 'cry out' and ignore their needs because it's backwards and fucking inhumane. HUG AND COMFORT AND CODDLE CHILDREN AND SPOIL THEM WITH AFFECTION!

I will put more red writing when the section is over.

This is still an interesting experiment to have in mind while we explore the whole 'no one taught Tom Riddle how to love' thing and whether or not it's actually a good argument.

Andddd let's go all the way back to the initial 1958 experiment, featured in Harlow's paper, the Nature of Love. (If you're familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, him and Harlow actually collaborated for a time).

To give you an idea of our starting point, until Harlow's experiment, which happened twenty years after Dumbledore meets Tom for the first time, no one in science had really been interested in studying love and affection.

"Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence."

I'm going to link some videos of Harry Harlow showing the actual experiment, which animal rights activists would probably consider 'horrifying.' It's nothing gory or anything, but if you are particularly soft-hearted (and I do not mean that as an insult), be warned. It's mostly just baby monkeys being very upset and Harlow discussing it in a callous manner. Yes, today it would be considered unethical, but it's still incredibly important work and if you think you can handle it, I would recommend watching at least the first one to get an idea of how dramatic this effect is.

Dependency when frightened

The full experiment

The TL;DW:

This experiment was conducted with rhesus macaques; they're still used in psychology/neuroscience research when you want very human-like subjects, because they are very intelligent (unnervingly so, actually). I'd say that adult ones remind me of a three-year old child.

Harlow separated newborn monkeys from their mothers, and cared for their physical needs. They had ample nutrition, bedding, warmth, et cetera. However, the researchers noticed that the monkeys:

(a) were absolutely miserable. And not just that, but although all their physical needs were taken care of, they weren't surviving well past the first few days of life. (This has also been documented in human babies, and it's called failure to thrive and I'll talk about it a bit later).

(b) showed a strong attachment to the gauze pads used to cover the floor, and decided to investigate.

So, they decided to provide a surrogate 'mother.' Two, actually. Mother #1 was basically a heated fuzzy doll that was nice for the monkeys to cuddle with. Mother #2 was the same, but not fuzzy and made of wire. Both provided milk. The result? The monkeys spent all their time cuddling and feeding from the fuzzy 'mother.' Perhaps not surprising.

What Harlow decided next, is that one of the hallmarks being attached to your caregiver is seeking hugs and reassurance from them when frightened. So, when the monkeys were presented with something scary, they'd go straight to the cloth mother and ignore the wire one. Not only that, but when placed in an unfamiliar environment, if the cloth mother was present, the monkeys would be much calmer.

In a follow-up experiment, Harlow decided to see if there was some sort of sensitive period by introducing both 'mothers' to monkeys who had been raised in isolation for 250 days. Guess what?

The initial reaction of the monkeys to the alterations was one of extreme disturbance. All the infants screamed violently and made repeated attempts to escape the cage whenever the door was opened. They kept a maximum distance from the mother surrogates and exhibited a considerable amount of rocking and crouching behavior, indicative of emotionality.

Yikes. So, at first Harlow thought that they'd passed some kind of sensitive period for socialization. But after a day or two they calmed down and started chilling out with the cloth mother like the other monkeys did. But here's a weird thing:

That the control monkeys develop affection or love for the cloth mother when she is introduced into the cage at 250 days of age cannot be questioned. There is every reason to believe, however, that this interval of delay depresses the intensity of the affectional response below that of the infant monkeys that were surrogate-mothered from birth onward

All these things... attachment, affection, love, seeking comfort ... are mostly learned behaviours.

Over.

Orphanages, institutionalized childcare, and why affection is a need, not an extra.

His face is lit the exact same was as Coulson’s was in COS (half-light, half-dark), and I said I was going to talk about this in Part 3. I think perhaps it's intended to make Fiennes-Tiffin look more evil or menacing, but I'm going to quite deliberately misinterpret it.

Now, for some context, Dumbledore has just (kind of) burned his wardrobe, ratted out his stealing habit, and (in the books only, they really took a pair of scissors to this scene) told him he needs to go apologize and return everything and Dumbledore will know if he doesn't, and, well, Tom's not exactly a happy bugger about it.

But interestingly, in the books, this is when we start to see Tom's 'persona,' aka his mask, start to come into play. Whereas before, he was screaming, howling, and generally freaking out, here, he starts to hide his emotions -- in essence, obscure his true self under a shadow. So this scene is really the reverse of Coulson's in COS.

And perhaps I'm reading wayyy too much into this, but I can't help but notice that Coulson's hair is parted opposite to Fiennes-Tiffin's, and the opposite sides of their faces are shadowed, too.

Riddle threw Dumbledore a long, clear, calculating look. "Yes, I suppose so, sir," he said finally, in an expressionless voice.

Riddle did not look remotely abashed; he was still staring coldly and appraisingly at Dumbledore. At last he said in a colorless voice, "Yes, sir."

Here's an article from The Atlantic on Romanian orphanages in the 1980s, when the dictator, Ceausescu, basically forced people to have as many children as possible and funnel them into institutionalized 'childcare', and it's absolutely heartbreaking.

There's not a whole lot of information out there on British orphanages in the 30s' and 40s', but given that people back then thought you just had to keep children on a strict schedule and feed them, it wouldn't have a whole lot better.

The only thing I've found is this, and it's not super promising.

The most important study informing the criteria for contemporary nosologies, was a study by Barbara Tizard and her colleagues of young children being raised in residential nurseries in London (Tizard, 1977). These nurseries had lower child to caregiver ratios than many previous studies of institutionalized children. Also, the children were raised in mixed aged groups and had adequate books and toys available. Nevertheless, caregivers were explicitly discouraged from forming attachments to the children in their care.

Here's a fairly recent paper that I think gives a good summary: Link

Here, they describe the responses to the Strange Situation test (which tests a child's attachment to their caregiver).

We found that 100% of the community sample received a score of “5,” indicating fully formed attachments, whereas only 3% of the infants living in institutions demonstrated fully formed attachments. The remaining 97% showed absent, incomplete, or odd and abnormal attachment behaviors.

Bowlby and Ainsworth, who did the initial study, thought that children would always attach to their caregivers, regardless of neglect or abuse. But some infants don't attach (discussed along with RAD in Part 2).

Here's a really good review paper on attachment disorders in currently or formerly institutionalized children : Link

Core features of RAD in young children include the absence of focused attachment behaviors directed towards a preferred caregiver, failure to seek and respond to comforting when distressed, reduced social and emotional reciprocity, and disturbances of emotion regulation, including reduced positive affect and unexplained fearfulness or irritability.

Which all sounds a lot like Tom in this scene. The paper also discusses neurological effects, like atypical EEG power distribution (aka brain waves), which can correlate with 'indiscriminate' behavior and poor inhibitory control; which makes sense for a kid who, oh, I don't know, hung another kid's rabbit because they were angry.

Furthermore...

...those children with more prolonged institutional rearing showed reduced amygdala discrimination and more indiscriminate behavior.

This again, makes a ton of sense for Tom's psychological profile, because the amygdala (which is part of the limbic system, which regulates emotions) plays a major role in fear, anger, anxiety, and aggression, especially with respect to learning, motivation and memory.

So, I agree completely that Tom needed a lot of help, especially given the fact that he spent eleven years in an orphanage (longer than the Bucharest study I was referring to), and Dumbledore wasn't exactly understanding of his situation, and probably didn't realise what a dramatic effect the orphanage had on Tom, and given the way he talks to Tom, probably treated him as if he were a kid who grew up in a healthy environment.

In case you are still unconvinced that hugging is that important, there's a famous 1944 study conducted on 40 newborn human infants to see what would happen if their physical needs (fed, bathed, diapers changed) were provided for with no affection. The study had to be stopped because half the babies died after four months. Affection leads to the production of hormones and boosts the immune system, which increases survival, and that is why we hug children and babies should not be in orphanages. They are supposed to be hugged, all the time. I can't find the citation right now, I'll add it later if I find it.

But I think it's vastly unrealistic to say that Dumbledore, who grew up during the Victorian Era, would have any grasp of this and I don't think he was actively malicious towards Tom.

Was Tom Riddle failed by institutional childcare? Absolutely.

Were the adults in his life oblivious to his situation? Probably.

Do the shitty things that happened to Tom excuse the murders he committed, and are they anyone's fault but his own? No. At the end of the day, Tom made all the wrong choices.

And, for what it's worth, I think (film) Dumbledore (although he expresses the same sentiment in more words in the books) wishes he could go back in time and have helped Tom.

"Draco. Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."