NOT A STORY CHAPTER – COMING SECOND HALF OF MAY

I'm happy to have some criticism from reviews. A guest provided some insightful comments, and I agree with a lot of issues he pointed out. Addressing the problems will take time, and I decided to post them in order to tell you why. (I'm not posting positive reviews, but know that I read and appreciate them. They do help keeping me writing. I do want people to enjoy this). Here follows the comments and my thoughts on them:

If it's supposed to establish sympathy or understanding for Riddle it does not. If it's supposed to make him look like a brain damaged psychopath, it does. The problem with that is most of the time people with damaged or defective brains cannot recover and change. You showed Riddle as he would be believable in becoming Voldemort. Someone that damaged is not really able to change. They don't want to change. A Tom Riddle as messed up as you showed would never be able to or desire becoming any type of hero. The whole point of someone like that hurting the cat directly and the kids mentally is that true psychopaths have no empathy or desire to understand other people. They think it's all stupid and something for them to take advantage of.

I do not believe anyone should be feeling empathy for Tom Riddle at this point. I'm happy I could pass that to my readers. This story starts following a person that can become one of the most vicious wizards of all time, precisely because that person is not normal (in the head). I completely agree with you. Tom Riddle cannot become a good person just like that, and the younger he is, the closer he is to JK' Tom Riddle. I will develop this thought later.

Also, the way you portrayed the younger kid and Riddle did not seem very realistic for two guys at that age and in that situation. if Riddle knew he was stronger than the other kid he would have hit the younger kid the first time when the kid threatened him. It was not a realistic portrayal of how two guys fight or handle that situation.

As the days passed, the less 'satisfied' (I never was, but felt like I needed to release the chapter) I was about how I wrote the other kids. I will address this and change accordingly.

Ok, now this seemed stupid. Riddle did nothing wrong as far as the orphanage knows. For Riddle to be declared a delinquent because of a fight that he did not start, is absurd. Boys fight all the time especially in an institutional setting. Almost every boy in there would be declared a delinquent if your rule is followed. If the other kid threw the first punch Riddle was defending himself. The other kid is the one who looks like the loose canon. This is an old style orphanage setting. This is not some modern school with a claimed zero tolerance for fighting where everyone gets punished. He beat the crap out of the other kid. From the administrators perspective the other kid was asking for it by looking crazy enough to start a fight with an older kid. If the investigate then the other kid looks crazy for accusing Riddle of killing the cat when Riddle had arrange for a good alibi.

Yeah, I think you are right. This chapter really shows my lack of experience with this setting, and the fact I tried to reach a certain set of points in just two chapters didn't help at all. This will also be addressed at the next changes.

Sophia was the same age as Taylor. You have her running around as an independent hero shooting people with live crossbow bolts at 13? Not saying it's impossible but it seems a little hard to believe.

This is canon. Sophia triggered in 2007, Sophia and Emma had their incident in the Summer of 2009 and Taylor triggers in 2011. Since this story happens 2008-2009, this is pretty much when Shadow Stalker would have started her career, although I will admit I'm being less than accurate about when exactly it happened.

Yeah, if you're not familiar with it, you should google what a psychopath is and their characteristics. If you read them, you'll see it's what JKR patterned Riddle after. Unlike what your AN says, these are people who cannot change because they literally have something wrong in their brain. They also do not want to change. They think they are right about their outlook on the world. They think other people are stupid and deserve it. The idea that all they need is some love or attention is where you really seem to misunderstand things. If they were normal people then sure you'd be right but the problem is normal people don't think about the world and other people the way psychopaths do.

This might seem strange, but I do agree with you. I'm definitely having trouble in putting myself in Riddle's shoes, as well as properly signaling what is causing him to 'change'. It is not the same emotional gain others feel. It is much closer to fulfilling his interests, and he craves being superior to everyone else. Thus, if wants to prove that to himself, he must be able to have what everyone else has, because every psychopath wants to have more power and control over others.

I will take an example of the story, such as Riddle wanting people to keep him company on the walk home after school: he doesn't actually enjoy the company, in the same sense he doesn't actually enjoy 'having friends'. He is envious because others have things he doesn't, and we have seen in canon that he has no qualms about stealing and hurting people to get what he wants. Problem is, when you are aiming at having people close to you, you sorta need to know how to navigate people's feelings. In canon, it becomes clear that Tom went through this to get the things he wanted. We know from book canon that Tom Riddle learned about the utility of different masks, so he must have felt consequences that made him realize that he needed to do things in a more subtle way to not be caught.

This entire story is based in the one in a million chance (or fourteen million if you think this is harder to happen than defeating Thanos) that Tom Riddle deals with the right consequences at the right times in the right places in order for him to tend to a goodish human being. He doesn't start that way though, this story is how he gets there, and he starts very much at the same starting point as canon Riddle. He faces certain situations that make him realize, in a very cold way, that are better ways to get the things he wants. By consequences (that is, feeling the burn), because sure as heck no one can actually convince Tom he is wrong by force of argument, Tom will become 'better' because he will start failing at his objectives in a way that, whe he adjusts himself, he coincidentally becomes a better person. Not because he wants to, but because luckily that's what happened.

Right now, I'm the first one to say that he is a terrible person. You might be wondering now, why the hell does Alice stick close him, and why Tom ever felt any connection to Alice. Without spoiling things too much (skip the rest of this paragraph if you don't want to know this): by a set of coincidences, Alice did things in the beginning that Tom didn't believe to be possible. For a mind of a child, he saw Alice's independence as simply impossible for a blind girl (remember, Tom doesn't know about the actual idea of magic yet, just that he can do the impossible, so the official wall between wizard and muggle doesn't exist). With time, however, he would come to realize her limitations. Now you ask, why hasn't that happen? It is because his magic is subconsciously helping Alice to overcome normal barriers, which in turn further reinforces Tom's view that Alice 'could be a witch' (or in simpler terms, almost an equal to Tom). You can see here a snowball effect. In turn, Alice feels better when she is around Tom. And since Tom sees Alice as this impossibility, he wonders what she could if she wasn't blind. Of course, he would never help her in that way, because that could mean helping someone else compete against him. But doesn't he love her? Heh, its complicated. Call it tends more to possessive feelings than love, although that hasn't yet been clearly shown. This story definitely needs more chapters. These are enough spoilers.

The fact I have had to write this tells me two things: the backstory chapters I wrote are not good enough at passing my message to my readers adequately, and that I should actually write maybe a couple more to expand on Tom's character. I think I should have one which particularly tackles why Alice was able to tame Tom, or better, why does Tom have any sort of 'empathy' with her despite being a book case of psychopath. This will take a while. I'm not a good writer, and this would demand some nuance which I'm not sure I have even with my first language.

I'm really divided on this, because the younger and the more unaffected by Alice Tom is harder to write too. The closer he is to the original Tom Riddle, the ore he is closer to a terrible person. This may, however, provide a better understanding of his character, not just to you guys, but to myself as well. This is why I will take some time for my next update, which I expect to happen in the second part of May.