Your perceptions are astute! These are the same thoughts I had while writing it. He needs to be credible in his actions, but not so credible that he's evil. He needs to have a reason for what he's doing, but we can't be too descriptive in what he wants to do so as to be disgusted by it. And there needs to be some salvation for him, to complete his transformation into somebody decent, to show that he's not entirely unreasonable and is just a troubled teen burdened with his own unique world view (probably like most of us were).

Thanks for reading @zakludick!