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Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Merope Gaunt and the space between victimhood & villainy
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Professor Julian Womble
Welcome to Critical Magic Theory, where we deconstruct the Wizarding world of Harry Potter. Because loving something doesn't mean we can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Womble, and today is our one year anniversary, y'all. Huh? Can you even believe it? Because I can't. Where did the time go? Only I can't say, because I don't know. Bars. I am so sorry if you somehow thought that one year in I was gonna become more serious, because I. Unfortunately for all of you, I'm only going to become more unserious. And I'm not talking about serious. Black. Aha. You see what I did there? Anyways, I am so excited that we have been at this for a year, and I wanted to reserve this episode for a particularly chaotic character. And I did. Okay, because based on your responses, y'all, chaos is imminent. And I cannot wait. I cannot wait. But I want to begin by offering a trigger warning, because we will be discussing topics surrounding sexual assault, harassment. And so if you are a person for whom those topics are very sensitive, this may not be the episode for you. If you are a person who shares this podcast with your children, I would advise you to navigate this in whatever way you feel is best, because we will be having these kinds of conversations, and it's unavoidable discussing this particular character, because today we are going to be discussing Voldemort's mother, Merope Gaunt. And there is a lot to be said about Merope. There is a lot to be said about the way that she kind of operates, the way that we come to understand her. And I think that there's a lot of things for us to be able to discuss. Have you ever wondered what effect Merope's abuse had on her magical ability and morality? Did she actually use a love potion on Tom Riddle Sr. And does it matter whether or not she did? And how do we reconcile the life with her father and brother with what she ultimately does to Tom Riddle Sr. We are getting into all of it today. We are celebrating one year of being together as a community. I am so grateful to all of you, and I can't wa. I cannot wait to dive into this episode because in my perusal and kind of dissection of your responses to the survey, y'all, I don't know that we've quite had a character thus far who has been this kind of. Not necessarily divisive, but one for whom we have lots of differing opinions. Some of that stems from the fact that we don't know a lot about her. Right. We only get to know her from a memory. But. But we all have very, very strong feelings about her. And some of those feelings come from the post canonical conversations surrounding her, the post canonical conversations surrounding Tom Riddle, Voldemort, and how it is that he arrived at the place that we meet him. When we start the series in Sorcerer Philosopher's Stone, we're getting into all of it. But. But you know, you know what we have to do. You know that the time has. And I'm so excited because my dear friend Mark Miller, who wrote the theme song that we bop along to, I said to him, I said, hey, listen, listen, listen. It's our one year anniversary. We need something a little different. We need a vibe. We need something new. Not necessarily for every episode, but certainly for this one. And he said, say less. And he put in the work, y'all. And so this is a little. This is not necessarily like our drummed up bop. It's a more of a piano vibe. It's a little bit classier, which is not necessarily where we're going to end up, you know, in this next year of this podcast. But it's always nice to cosplay class sometimes. And some of you are classy. Me, well, who's to say? It depends on the day. Hashtag bars. I'm really killing it today. I'm really knocking it out of the park. Anyways, anyways, I'm too excited. It's been one year, y'all. Anyways, it's time for us to bop along to the theme song. Loosen up those shoulders, y'all. The time is coming in three, two, one. Let's go, y'all. I did like a Walt situation. Like, I felt very, very kind of sense and sensibility, like Jane Austen vibes. I don't know about you. I don't know, maybe some of you dropped it low. And that's okay. We accept that here. Okay. That we're not judging how you bop along. As long as you bop along. You see what I'm saying? You get it? I want to take this time to welcome new listeners, y'all. We are growing and expanding. I know I've been saying that for the last couple episodes, but, y'all, it's giving exponential. Okay? It's giving. We are really bringing people into the fold. All right? And so I want to take a moment to welcome those of us who are joining us for the first time, whether it be joining us for the first time ever. Joining us for the first time after a bit of a hiatus Joining us for the first time after catching up. Welcome, y'all. We are here and we are really about to get into it. I want to thank those of you who joined in on the Gaunt Men conversation on Patreon. It was unexpectedly deep. We really went there and I will confess I'm going to be real with you. When I started that episode, I said, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to give everyone. Like, I'm just going to hope for the best. And people said that they really liked the episode and really liked kind of what we talked about. And I think a lot of it will make a big difference for us as we dive into Merope because we have a sense of who we're dealing with as it pertains to her father and her brother. Speaking of Patreon and speaking of growth, I want to thank our new Chronic Overthinkers who have joined the merry throng that is the Chronic Overthinkers on Patreon. I want to thank Cassidy, Haley, Nunula, Kelly, Kate, Kate T, Norma, Shelby, Nicole, Amy, Lauren, Sarah and Alex. Y'all, thank you so much for joining this band of chaos that we are out here building. Thank you for being willing to give of yourself financially and of your time and your energy to kind of be a part of this community. I really appreciate it. For those of you who joined as deep divers in the intervening time between the last episode and this one, please know that your names will be listed in the episode summary. Speaking of allowing people to kind of know that we're out in the world. Okay, Merch, it's here, it's happening. I have been really out here in my designer bag. Okay. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend, and again, I want to emphasize the fact that like the quality is actually good, which is not always a foregone conclusion. And so I'm very pleased that it is. If you are by chance listening and have not heard anything about our Patreon, please feel free to go check it out. Patreon.com criticalmagictheory There are lots of options. You can join for free and be a part of our post episode chat. You can join as a paid subscriber and get all kinds of perks. I've also instituted this new thing that I really like that went really, really well on this past Sunday where I did like a question of the week and everyone kind of chimed in and talked and was into convers with one another and I thought you know, I really want us to be in conversation and discuss Harry Potter. And it doesn't necessarily even have to be about the episode, just like questions. And so this week's question is, and was when I posted it, what effect do we think that Harry being raised by the Dursleys had on him? And people have been giving incredible answers and the conversation is Chef's kiss. So I highly recommend going there. I highly recommend signing up for the Patreon. But remember, if you are joining and you want to become a paid subscriber, I highly recommend doing it on your desktop and not on your Apple device, if an Apple device is what you use. Because Apple's doing skullduggery, madness and absurdity. And we're not here for just grabbing money because they're grabbing money. Okay? So if you're gonna join as a paid subscriber, definitely do it from your desktop in a browser. Save yourself, the app is great. But don't subscribe in the app. Okay? You heard it here first. Okay. If you want to follow me on social media, please feel free to do so. It is Prof. JW on Instagram. Prof. Underscore. JW on RedNote. Yeah, I'm on RedNote, y'all. Okay. And honestly, I'm gonna give you my TikTok, which is Prof. W. But y'all, it's giving sketchy, it's giving weird. I don't like it. And so I'm not quite sure how much I'm going to be posting on my TikTok after the madness. That was the kind of quote unquote ban that turned out to just be a publicity stunt. I'm tired. I'm not going to get into it too much, but just know that we were not amused. And like, you're playing with people's livelihoods in a way that I think is really problematic so that you can look and feel better about yourself. I said I wasn't getting into it. Okay. Anyways, that is there as well. Like rate, follow, subscribe. Y'all have been leaving some beautiful, beautiful reviews on Apple Podcasts, and I really, really appreciate your support in doing that. That's a pretty low stakes way of supporting the podcast and getting the word out there. So if that works for you, that works for me. And one last thing. Next episode is going to be a continuation of chaos, because that's what we are all about here. Chaos. And we will be discussing Lavender Brown. And I will be having a conversation with one of our chronic overthinkers. I'm not gonna tell you which one yet? You will find out when you listen to the episode. But just know that it's gonna be an amazing time. I always love having people on to bring in different perspectives and also just give us something to think about and just really kind of upping the ante when it comes to the chaos. So we are going to be doing that. I'm so excited. But now let's get into Merope Gaunt. Let's get into it. It is admittedly difficult to think of a quote, unquote favorite moment for Meropi because we only meet her one time in a memory that is out outlandishly harrowing. And so when I reflected on kind of what was a moment that really I felt was meaningful to me, the thing that I kind of walked away with was less of a moment and more of a sentiment. And that was this moment where Morfin and Marvolo are taken away and she's there and she's able to kind of get her power back. Right. Like, we know that Marvolo kind of accuses her of being a Squib because she's unable to do magic in his presence, but it turns out that she's not a magical person who was born without magical abilities, but rather a person whose magical abilities were stunted because of the abuse that she was having to endure. And that there's this kind of mind, body, magic connection that exists that's really difficult to do when one of those things is not fully functioning because of external sources. Right. And so we see her get her magic back. And I think that there is something really beautiful about that particular reality of, you know, not having your oppressors oppress you anymore and really being able to kind of step into who you are. I don't, however, and this is an important caveat, love the way that she then uses that power. And I think we're going to spend a considerable amount of time discussing this kind of dichotomy that exists because of how Merope operates, because we recognize her as a person who is, in fact, very much dealing with a lot of abuse, both from her father and from her brother. We are. We know that the kind of inbreeding that the Gaunts were doing has meaningful effects on the development of their. Any of any number of factors in their lives. And so when we think about, you know, who Merope is as a person and then we meet her and we recognize kind of the background story of all of these things, what becomes very clear is that we're looking at a woman who is Struggling just in general. And there is something so amazing about a woman who is able to kind of figure out their way out of that struggle and find their power. And so there's a bit of empowerment here. One of the comments that somebody wrote in their survey is something that I kind of took a snippet of and posted it on Instagram to kind of promote the survey and get people to fill it out. And they said something that hit me like a ton of bricks. And some of you communicated to me that you felt that too, which is that Merope is what Harry could have been if he had stayed at the Dursleys full time. And I think that there is something very interesting about their parallel perspectives and experiences as people growing up in abusive households. Because what we see is that, you know, Merope finds her power and uses it in a way that many of us may not agree with, very similar to Harry's own kind of quest into feeling powerful. And that what we can see, right, is that abuse really does something to the way that people come to understand themselves within a space. And that there is a really interesting way that we can understand these journeys that both Harry and Merope go on. And that the way that they then kind of reconcile their upbringing and the way that we can reconcile and understand that upbringing is something that I think is not a parallel that I'd ever thought about before. And I think that many of us brought it up in the Patreon conversation surrounding the effect of the Dursleys raising of Harry on the way that he kind of enters into the magical world and what that means for him. And so I think that, like, there's, like, even just in this moment where we see her, you know, figuring out that she can still do magic and that she still has power, I think that what we see on the other side of this, right, when we do a juxtaposition to Harry, is the way that our choices really do make a difference and what it means to have people surrounding you that can push you and pull you in a direction that doesn't necessarily perpetuate some of the ills that you were socialized around. And this is something that many of you brought up in your own discussions at Merope. And the fact that she doesn't have a lot of really good examples of people in her life to kind of guide her in a way that would be what we would call, quote, unquote, good. When asked what word best describes Merope, the top three words were desperate, tragic and abused. I think these words really do encapsulate a lot of how we come to understand who Merope is as a person. Right. Because the notion of desperation is not just. I think it could easily be misconstrued as something that is, you know, she's desperate to, you know, find love. But it could be that she's desperate to get away. She's desperate to feel some sense of agency, to feel something other than just kind of the numbness that comes along with the kind of monotony of the experience of being abused. Right. And the recognition of all of these things, the desperation to be magical again, the desperation for all of these things. Because what's true, right, is that you can be a person who is in a situation and you kind of have a sense of what you don't have. Right? I mean, we know, and we see her in the memory, looking outside and kind of. And longing to kind of be away. And we recognize that she's looking at Tom Riddle Sr. As he's kind of, you know, gallivanting along. But I also think that there's just a desire and a desperation to get just in general out of the house, out of the absurdity that is living with her father and her brother. That this desperation is something that goes beyond just a desire for a man. And the desperation is more than just kind of, you know, a connection with someone else, but it's a desperation to just live a different kind of life. And I think that so much of what we see as motivators for Merope is this desperation. So many of the decisions that she makes are ones that are made out of desperation, and that we don't get a lot of information about what it is that she wants. But we can guess, and we can guess based on the decisions that she ultimately makes as to kind of what are the things that she was desperate for and how did she manage to go and kind of get those things? The desperation is such a fundamental part of not only who she is, but the choices that she ultimately makes that I think are the ones that give us pause. And so it's important for us to think about not only the desperation itself, but the origin of that desperation as we consider who she is and why she makes the decisions that she makes. And the reality is that, you know, lots of people are desperate and lots of people are in situations and circumstances that lead them to make particular kinds of decisions. But the circumstances that Merope finds herself in when we meet her through Bog Ogden's I Did It Again, Bob Ogden's memory, and we only meet her in the circumstances where she is a shell of herself. And that this tragedy that she exists in this space of both. Tragedy in terms of the abuse that she's enduring, but also the reality that she is navigating abject poverty and squalor while living with a one man. Right? Because Morphin is just kind of doing whatever his dad said with a man who is longing for the past and clinging to realities that simply don't exist and doing nothing to try to help their circumstances. And also someone who is so kind of stuck in the ways of the old times when they had means that, you know, she is subject to abuse not only because of any. Of any number of things, but also because she is a woman, right? And so that she is the one who's kind of put in charge of doing the cooking and the cleaning and all of these things while also navigating the abuse of her father and her brother. And so I think that there is something to be said about the tragedy that is her life. And again, what she then does to try to escape that and the desperation that that tragedy brings to bear. And, you know, the third word is abused and the way that the abuse that she endures informs that tragedy, which then informs that desperation. So these three words come together and really compound into a story as to why we get what Merope does. And I wanna be clear that at no point am I trying to absolve Merope of the decisions that she ultimately makes. I think that they are terrible decisions, but I think that what is clear to us is that they are not coming from a place that is uninformed by the circumstances in which she lives. Right? Like she is someone who is taking the sum of the parts of her life and her life. Oh, my God, we're gonna keep going the sums of the parts of her life. And she is making decisions based off of that and that none of this is coming from nowhere. And that she has made these choices because of the abuse that she's endured and the reality that, you know, she's lived a tragic life that she's desperate to escape. And all of these things come together to bring us to a place that we ultimately know she goes, right? And ultimately leads to that orphanage where she has Tom Riddle Jr. And all of the decisions that she made leading up to that are the byproducts of the desperation, of the tragedy and of the abuse. And so we can't really divorce all of those things from one another because they all compound to really give us this story that is just Such a sad story about Merope and everything that happens to her based on the decisions that she ultimately makes. Before we get into today's arithmetic lesson, I just want to acknowledge the fact that some of us were not pleased with the yes, no, don't know format. And as a person who writes surveys for a living, I know that that question format is not ideal for the level of nuance and critical thinking that we do on the podcast. However, also, and concurrently, simultaneously, I also recognize that it helps us synthesize and provide a concise way for us to understand where we all sit. And that's why I offer the ability to kind of write out in long form your answers to these questions or a single question or what have you, because that's where the nuance gets to come in. But at the onset, we just need to know the nitty gritty. And I know that sometimes the questions are hard to answer because it's like, I have a lot of caveats, and that's okay. But one of the things that I learned in, like, writing surveys is that what is true is that, generally speaking, even with all the caveats, you have a yes or no in you, or maybe a don't know, and don't know is an answer and tells us something. And so while I know that some of us will get frustrated and will continue to get frustrated because it's gonna be like, oh, like, this is not that simple, I want you to know that I know. Also, I want you to know chaos. Okay? Like, I recognize that, and I purposefully did it this way because I wanted us to be able to kind of be able to come to a consensus. And that's really hard to do because nuance is great, but it doesn't always lend a to the creation of a consensus. And that's what the written responses are for. And so I just want to say that I want you to know that I know and that there is a kind of a rhyme and a reason to the way that we are operating. And so promise. I promise you it's all good. If there's some nuance that you feel is not being explored, write it out. It can be a sentence. It can be many sentences. People have written 1600 word essays in that little box. All right? So don't you feel ashamed? I'm never upset about it. I find it amazing. I love that you all take the time to do that. And so feel free to unleash all the nuance you want. All right? Okay. Now let's get into the Arithmancy lesson. We had 717 responses for this episode's arithmancy lesson. And the first question is, is, is Merope Gaunt a good person? 54% said no, 35% said, don't know, and 11% said yes. Someone wrote, merope is such an interesting character. She is so abused and so traumatized and so entitled and so powerful, and she is given no model on how to be a good witch or a good person. She was never shown love, so how can we expect her to know how to love a partner, a baby, or herself? Someone else wrote, merope tried to be a good person. However, in my opinion, she failed in this attempt, but not out of choice, but because she was a victim of her strict upbringing and the society in which she grew up. In an attempt to find happiness, she turned against her family, which I think took a lot of courage. But by using a love potion on Riddle, allegedly, she crossed the line. I assume that she didn't see the harm in that because it seems like she never learned what healthy love looks like from her family. And one more person wrote, merope isn't necessarily a good person, but she's not a bad person. Loneliness is one of, if not the strongest of negative emotions that can lead to a lot of other decisions. Heartbreak has been shown in real life and in the magical world to impact a person's health or magical ability. For example, Tonks and I think she was just so broken that she couldn't help herself, even if it meant helping her son to be. This is what I'm talking about, y'all. It's so incredible that a character like Merope, who we, again, only meet one time in a memory that wasn't even her own, can bring out so much of the nuance and the kind of complexities that exist within people as humans and that we, even in this simple chapter, get to understand so much of how she came to be. And so that when we think about kind of what does it mean to be a good person, generally speaking, we're talking about a lot of our characters. We spend a lot of time talking about the Weasleys, and most of them were considered to be good people, right? Because fighting against Voldemort. And so we are like, no, those are our good guys. They are in the Order of Phoenix. They do all of. But then once we get to some of these other characters for whom we're not quite sure where their allegiances lie, the metric that we use to determine what is good and bad kind of goes out of the window. And I think that for Merope, this is even more difficult because, again, she lives in this gray space. And I think that, you know, this is one of the moments where we have to remind ourselves that this is a children's book with adult implications. Because I think that a lot of the way that we understand and that the way that Merope is introduced to us, right, is that, like, we don't get a lot of that nuance that you all are asking for in the way that she's described to us by J.K. rowling. We. We get this story of the abuse, we get the story of the kind of ensnaring. We get the story of her giving birth to Tom Riddles Jr. And then she dies. And so that it really does take a little bit of time and reflection for us to kind of arrive at, you know, what does it look like to be a good. During a time where we're not really thinking about, you know, Voldemort and prejudices and we don't really have a sense, because at no point do we ever. In that chapter where we get to kind of experience her. She never speaks. So we have no sense of who she is, what she believes. All we have is the word of these two crazy men who are completely and utterly just, like, out there on a number of dimensions. And so we don't know who she is and we don't know what she wants, but we know what she does. You know, there's a lot of speculation about, you know, what that looked like, right? Because what we get from Dumbledore is all presumption. But what we know is that Tom Riddle Sr. After a stint of being away from his family, came back and said he had been bewitched or bamboozled. And so something happened wherein Merope used her magic to control him and keep him with her. And we could argue about whether or not we believe that to be true. But one thing is clear to us is that, you know, the likelihood that somehow he got over the outlandish amounts of vanity that comes from someone in his social position and was willing to, with his own consent and volition, move into this place with this woman who we know, based on the description that was given to us, is not conventionally attractive at the other woman that he was found with, right? Like, there are lots of reasons for us to believe that something overrode his will and he was making decisions that were not of his own volition. And with that information, how then do we reconcile the choices? Now, we could take into account the why we could take into account the what, we could take into account the where. And I think in doing that, it really complicates the kind of bifurcation. And listen, I wrote the question, so I know that, like, this is really difficult to do, but I think that it's really hard for us to be able to say, we can say. And I think that this is something that many of you have brought up in other episodes about this particular question, because we can say that what she did to him was bad, it was problematic, it was terrible. And for that reason, she is a problematic person. But then I can imagine a world where people would say, yes, but the circumstances under which she made those decisions, the fact that she herself was abused, the fact that she has really no sense of understanding and that in some ways, like her understanding of the world around her is very childlike. And I don't know, that gives me a bit of the ick because I'm not necessarily as comfortable taking that stance for someone who removed the agency and like the humanity from a person. And we'll get into that. And so suffice it to say that this is a really difficult question. And I think that I would have had to put don't know. I would have put don't know because I think it would have been too easy for me to say she is a bad person or she's not a good person. I think that we have to find that nuance. And the nuance for me is found in the. I don't know. I don't know how we square these things because what she did was awful. There are lots of reasons why she arrived at that place. And I struggle with this one. I do. And I'm not even gonna front or pretend like that's not the case. And we can talk about it in the post episode chat, but this is a hard one for me to kind of try to figure out and to square. Is Merope Gaunt a good mother? 61% of us said no, 25% of us said, don't know, and 15% said yes. Someone wrote, as a mother, I had to say that she wasn't a good. That she wasn't good because she didn't seem to fight to stay alive for her son. I'm not discounting how dangerous childbirth can be, but as Harry points out in Half Blood Prince, she could have used magic to secure necessities for herself and her unborn child. So much of Voldemort's resentment as a child comes from the fact that his mother died and left him. And if there was a possibility that she could have remained to provide him with the love that he needed, maybe Tom wouldn't have turned into Voldemort. Someone else wrote, as Merope had no chance to be a mother, I don't know if she would have been good or bad. She definitely did not have a good model for healthy family dynamics. And someone else wrote, and this is a bit of a long one, so let's go on this journey, they wrote. Personally, I have always hated the explanation that Merope was complicit in her death choosing not to live. Women die during childbirth all the time, especially in the 1920s, and especially when they give birth away from medical care. There were no healers or doctors around. We aren't told whether or not there are midwives in the orphanage. As far as I remember, nobody else in the wizarding world is criticized or blamed for their own death. But Dumbledore saying that about Merope feels like a cop out to me. We don't get to see whether or not Merope is a good mother. She tried to take care of herself during her pregnancy and to get herself to a place of safety. When she was in labor, she ensured her son was kept away from all of his relatives, which I believe was an attempt on her part to ensure his safety. I answered, don't know. But I think she had the potential to be a good mother. I think she wanted to be y'all. This. I don't know what I was thinking with using Merope because there is just so much that's so difficult to navigate here. Because I think, and this is. I know you all criticize me all the time for this about using the notions of good and bad. But. But we'll get into the more nuanced questions in the next iteration of these characters, but right now we're getting down to the bare bones, nitty gritty of it all. I think that it is impossible for us to truly imagine what it must have been like to be in a circumstance where you are finally exonerated from the prison, that is the abusive relationship that you had with your father and your brother. You were completely and utterly disconnected from the thing that. That made you you. Your magic, the thing that makes you and your family feel superior to everyone else around you. And you have been disconnected from it because you are in spaces and places where the people around you are sapping every bit of your identity to make themselves feel better. Now they're gone. You have, by one way or another, secured the person that you have been longing for. And when you believe that you are in a place where this is real and you are trying to live out a reality, a life that you have envisioned for yourself as you've stared out of the window, and that very person leaves you and you are left with his child, I cannot imagine what that looks like. Because now it seems like the thing that you have been longing for, the power, the magic has betrayed you. And one of the things that we've talked a lot about, right, is the notion of magic being both the problem and the solution for so many things in the magical world. And this situation with Merope is one of these instances, right, where she gets her magic back and she uses it to get the very thing that she wants. But what we know both from Dumbledore and from Slughorn, right, is that any sort of mental shift that comes along with magic, whether it be a love potion or some sort of modification of memory or understanding, does not actually elicit the real feeling. And it's very possible that Merope didn't know that. That she had no idea that she wasn't gonna be able to get the real thing. She wasn't gonna get that storybook love that she was probably envisioning in her mind. And so she's got this baby now, and her magic has betrayed her, and so she doesn't use it anymore. She goes back to living this life, and she has a child now, and she makes a decision. And I think that the latter quote that I came, that I pulled from the survey is really interesting because I'd never thought about the work that it must have taken for her to go and take him to this orphanage and to try and do her very best to successfully give birth to him in a place that. That, for all intents and purposes, her family would have said, how dare you? Like, she went to a Muggle orphanage for this. And that feels like both intentional but also important. I think that she. I don't necessarily. It doesn't resonate with me that the idea of, like, she doesn't seem to fight to stay alive for her son. And I, again, this is important caveat. Like, I'm not a parent, but. But I think that there are lots of ways that we understand that what she is going through is so far beyond the scope of recognizing, you know, what it looks like to kind of make those kinds of decisions on behalf of a child, especially when she, again, is coming out of a space and a place where she doesn't know what that looks like. Her father would never make that decision. And again, we don't know the circumstances that has led us to a place where we don't get to meet her mother. We can assume that her mother. Well, I guess I would assume that her mother has died because it seems unlikely that a man like Marvolo would allow someone to leave him because of all of the other things that we talked about in the last episode. And so maybe this is what she understands. Maybe this is how she understands what this looks like. And her last act of love for her child was to say, even if I stayed alive, I am in no position, mentally, emotionally, to take care of this child. And I think it's something that we see a lot in this series where children pay the price for the actions of their parents. Right. We see Harry having to live with the decisions that James made as it pertains to Snape and other people. And in this moment, I think there's an interesting parallel to Harry for Voldemort as well. Because could you imagine what it would have been like if she had stayed alive? Because we also don't know, right? Like, there's no sense of whether or not this was a complicated pregnancy. We don't know if this was the decision that she made to just say, I'm giving up. There are so many ways and, like, there are so many things that could have happened that led her to ultimately die after giving birth. And I don't know that I'm 100% buying into the idea that she was just like, this is it. But even if that was what happened, like, if she had decided, quote, unquote, that's important. I'm using air quotes, that she was going to stay, what would that have meant? Because, like, we're assuming that this means that she was going to, like, see this child and just, you know, be able to give him what she never got, which is a very tall order for anyone, let alone someone who has been abandoned on a number of dimensions by most of the men in her life. And I think that there's. We have to leave room for the fact that she did the best that she could with what she had and provided him with the best life that she could have tried to provide him. Because at the end of the day, Tom Riddle Sr. Was gone, the Gaunts had no money. No. Like, the house was absolutely in shambles, and she was not doing magic to clean it up anymore. And I think that there's a way that we can say, yes, but, you know, children change things. And I agree with that. But also, y'all Like, Merope was not in a place. If she had stayed alive, I don't know what that would have looked like. And I. It's possible that we might not have had a Tom who turned into Voldemort, but it is really, really, really, really, really difficult to give anyone something that you've never received. And she does not know what it is to give love. I mean, the love that she created with Tom Riddle Sr. Was fabricated. And so I think this, you know, and we'll talk about this a little bit as well, but the lore surrounding, you know, Voldemort's psychopathy in terms of, you know, the love potion, and he was born out of love, and he was born without any love, which I don't agree with, actually, because I think that, like, she loved this child because it would have been somewhat easier to have the child and not really worry about what was going to happen to it. And she didn't make that decision. She took care of herself enough to keep that baby alive, to keep herself alive, and to then go to a place that she knew was going to be able to take care of him. And we cannot and should not discount that as an act of love, because she didn't need to do it. And there are lots of ways that we could say, well, you know, that's not a good enough reason. I also want to invite us to think about the fact that. And this is something that someone brought up to me on Instagram that, y'all, we're hard on moms. We're really hard on moms. And, you know, I think this is one of these moments where I'm like, you know, if we could do an episode on Tom Riddle Sr. We don't have enough. But I hope that we would keep this smoke for him, because when he left, he had come to and he knew that she had had a kid, and he still dipped and went and got married to somebody else. So, like, I think we. I know this is hard. It's hard for me. Again, the next question's a little bit easier, I think, but we, we, we. We have to extend some grace to her when it comes to what she did. And I think we really have to ask ourselves a lot of questions about. About this notion of being born without love, because I think that that feels a bit premature to say. And it completely discounts a lot of what she ultimately does to make sure that her son actually survives. And I think to lay the entirety of his sociopathy and psychopathy on this decision that she made does not take into account what we talked about in the last episode, all the inbreeding and all the things that already existed inside the Gaunt bloodline. And if you go back to that conversation that we had on the Patreon, you will see that someone posted this conversation surrounding this kind of idea of nature versus nurture. And I think it really shines an important light on the way that we come to understand the pre existing things that might have led Voldemort to should be who he is without leveraging too strong a critique against his mom and the decisions that she ultimately makes. Oh my gosh. This episode is already really taking me through it. I guess this is what I signed up for. The next question is, is Merope Gaunt a good, good sister daughter? 25% of us said no. 37% of us said don't know. And 38% of us said yes. Someone wrote, is she a good daughter? No, not if we're defining it by meeting your family's crazy pure blood supremacist expectations. She is consorting with Muggle riff raff after all. Somebody else wrote, she is a good sister and daughter because she did stick around and care for those two abominable people. It takes a lot to care day and day in and day out for people that are loving and appreciative, never mind for horrible people that treat you poorly. And that is the tea. I told you this and this was gonna be easier for me. The fact that she didn't just like, dip out in the dead of night. I would have given both Morphin and Marvolo a sleeping draft. Okay. Hello. Hello. And I would have left in the dead of night and I would have taken that ring and I'd have taken that locket and I'd have sold both of them, gotten some money and been out. Okay. The fact that she stayed. And I think that this is the byproduct of abuse, right? Like, I recognize that it's very easy for me to so flippantly say those types of things with the recognition that she didn't have access to her magic in the way that she might have to be able to do this effectively. That they like, literally never left the house and that they had completely and utterly made her feel dependent upon them for any number of things. And so that, that she somehow like, like didn't get to a place where she said, oh, I'm going to like, I am so fed up. I think that, you know, she is there. She takes care of them to the best of her ability. She makes sure that they have the things that they need. She's cooking, she's cleaning. Like, she's doing those things. And we could easily say, like, she doesn't have a choice. And I think that part of that is true. But, yeah, it's like there are levels to this. And I think that she, even though she doesn't necessarily, like, agree or believe in the same things that they believe in, or at least we don't have any evidence that she does, because again, remember, in this chapter, we never hear her talk, we never hear her speak, so we don't know what she believes. The fact that she is present enough to be able to provide them with enough to stay alive is evidence enough to me that she cared enough for them to make sure that they didn't meet an untimely end, which is what they would have if I was her, because I would have, you know, she was able to get her magic once they left. What would have driven me is revenge. Okay? That would have been the thing that drove me. And I think that we cannot discount the fact that she stayed there. And I know that some of us may disagree with the idea that she could have had enough agency to actually leave. And I'm totally willing to engage in that conversation. But from my perspective, I do not want to discount the fact that she did stay there and she did take care of them out of some obligation to them, and that that is enough for me to say, yes, she's absolutely a good daughter and a good sister, because it couldn't have, wouldn't have been. The next question is, is Merope Gaunt a good pure blood? Now, you know, I love this question because. Chaos, okay, but this one, we actually have much more of a consensus on this question than I think we normally do. And that's due in large part to the fact that some of you were very explicit in the fact that you didn't understand the question and. Or didn't like it. And that, you know, thrills me to no end. And so 63% of us said, no, she is not a good pureblood. 24% of us said, don't know. And 12% of us said, yes, she is a good pureblood. Someone wrote, she's both bad at being a pureblood because she had a baby with a Muggle and a pureblood who isn't good, a good person. Deceptive behavior with said Muggle. Granted, her behavior is definitely colored with the abuse she has endured at the hands of her father and brother, but it doesn't excuse whatever method of manipulation she used. On Tom Riddle Sr. I feel for her, I really do. But reasons for bad behavior does not excuse it. Someone else wrote, I'm very interested in Merope's relationship with her pure blood wizard status. Her family is one of the most extreme examples of blood supremacy we get in the series. She, on some level, doesn't buy into the extreme pureblood Slytherin supremacy of her father. She is willing to have a child who is half blood and happy to be in a marriage with a Muggle. However, her treatment of Tom Riddle taking away his consent with a love potion and in my view, committing sexual assault indicates she did not really see Muggles as full human beings with the right to bodily autonomy. That tells me that she still buys into aspects of wizard supremacy and possibly pureblood Slytherin supremacy. Say that five times fast as well, whether she's conscious of it or not. Let's really zoom in on the notion of consciousness and because I think that what people are pointing to here is a really important point, which is that it doesn't take a level of intentionality to be someone who upholds a system. You don't have to know you're upholding it to uphold it. You don't have to play an active role in upholding it to uphold it. All you have to do is not act against it. And in this moment, what we see from Merope is to this, the last comments point, she takes a non magical person. Now, it's not clear to us whether or not Tom Riddle's status or, you know, position as a non magical person mattered to her. It's possible that she didn't care and if he had been a wizard, she still would have been down for it. But something tells me that there is something exotic about the fact that he is a Muggle who she knows her family was absolutely against. That also appealed to her. And many of you also brought up the fact that he had, you know, the status of being a very wealthy non magical person and had the grandeur of all of that kind of playing a part. And so as she's kind of watching him and observing him, she's able to see a life that she herself is not able to live, even as a person who has the ability to do magic. And so that there are lots of things that might have drawn her to him. But the reality of the situation is that Morfin cast a spell on Tom Riddle Sr. To make him, you know, disfigured in some capacity. And that is why Bob Ogden shows up in the first place, right? Because he recognized that she fancied him. And so there's something about the fact that he is non magical that I think appeals to her. And I think that even if she didn't do it because she believes that she's better than him, one thing's for certain and two things are definitely for sure. She knew he couldn't fight her back, he couldn't ward off her magic, he couldn't, you know, discern what she was able to do. A magical person may have been a little bit more weary, they may have been some, a little bit more skeptical, but a non magical person who is as arrogant as Tom Riddle Sr. Was, there's no way in the world that he would have had any sense that she was up to some sort of manipulation in any capacity. And yet she was right. And so it's, it stands to reason that part of the attraction to him is the fact that his family or her family did not like him or think he was worthy of her. He had a status within the magic, the non magical world. That would have been something that she would have found alluring because it was so drastically different. And if you are seeking to escape, if you're so desperate to escape your family, what better way to do that than going into the world that they hate the most, right? And so in this way, he's a means to an end who just happens to be hot. And I think that a lot of that mentality still comes from a pure blood supremacist space of a recognition of like, I actually don't owe you any explanation, I don't owe you any agency, I don't owe you any of that. She still has power over him. And so in this way, I think she is a good pureblood because it's people like her that allow the system to persist. Because even when they're not actively trying to maintain it, they're still allowing the wheels to turn. They're still allowing the belief that they are superior for one reason or another, that that means that they can use their magic at whim against individuals who don't have the power to defend themselves against it. She is actively playing a part in upholding a. That is the same mentality that Morphin had when he cast the spell to disfigure Tom Riddle Sr. That is the same belief structure that she had when she did this to him. Even though there may have been some more, you know, pathos to the way that she approached it because she did have feelings for him and she found him attractive. The fact that she took away his agency and said, I actually am uninterested in whether or not you are interested in engaging in a relationship with me. Tells us a story and the fact that she. That was her first line of recourse, right? Like, at least as far as we know, it tells us a story about the way that she thinks and believes about non magical people. And honestly, y'all, I get it. Why would she have another belief? Where would she have figured out that, like, Muggles are people too? Where would she have figured out that the belief structure that her father and her brother were putting forth. Forth was negative? Where would she have gotten that? Right? Like part of the segregation that we see the gods engaging in means that she's not able to be exposed to the reality of what it means to be pure blood in a society where Muggles exist, right? And we even see this with Draco. When we first meet Draco in Madame Malkin's shop in Sorcerer Philosopher's Stone, it is so very clear that his only understanding of magical people are purebloods. And it makes sense because that's the circle that he lives in. So to that end, right, like there's no reason for us to believe that Merope should have known better. There's no reason for us to believe that she would have had another mentality about this other than the one that she had been socialized with in that house. And so it stands to reason that, yes, she saw a Muggle man who she found attractive and said, I can do this because, like, you're Muggle. And what does that mean to me? I may not have the same level of vitriol that my father and brother have have, but I still don't necessarily see you as fully human and a person with the amount of agency that I myself have to kind of abide by and respect. And I think her decision to enchant him in whatever way she does, whether it be love potion, whether it be another spell, whatever it, whatever she chose, that decision tells us a very specific story about who she believed herself to be in relation to him. And that is a person with power, and that is a person who is not concerned with the agency or consent of the other party. And that matches onto what we understand of purebloods and a lot of other magical people when it comes to dealing with non magical people, right? When we think about memory charms, when we think about love potions, when we think about all of these other instances within the magical world, consent is not a part of that. And I want to be clear, this is not an excuse. But when we think about the socialization that Merope undoubtedly underwent, even the best magical people that we meet are not willing or like open to getting consent from the people that they are casting memory modifications on whose memories they're erasing, who, you know, all of these other things that they are doing to non magical people. Merope's mentality is not that far off from that. So there's no reason for us to believe that she even had to be like a massive supremacist. All she really had to be was a person who had been sequestered in magical spaces with the belief that, like, I can do whatever I want because I can do magic. And I think that that's what she had. And so in that way, I do think she's a good pureblood because I think that society, no matter where she's getting that message from, would have reinforced this idea and that would have been the thing that would have promoted her desire to leverage her magical ability, especially newly formed, against an individual who could not fight back back. Finally, some consensus for the next question, which is, is Merope Gant A victim? 93% of us said yes, 3.9% of us said no, and about 3% of us said don't know. Someone wrote. She was a deeply conflicted person. While undoubtedly a victim of her family's circumstances, her actions were often fueled by self interest and a longing alleviate her own suffering. Her idealized view of Tom and their future together blinded her to the realities of his feelings and the potential consequences of her actions. Someone else wrote, Moreau Pigant is a victim of abuse by her family and is desperate for love. She doesn't learn any morals from them and doesn't seem to get away from them much, so she couldn't learn morality from anyone else. When she quote unquote falls in love with Tom Riddle, she thinks it's perfectly fine to drug him by making him think that he loves her, because in her mind he will. Maybe when she stopped giving him the love potion and he left her, she saw the error of her ways. But I can imagine that she just regretted not continuing with it. Merope is absolutely a bad person as well as a victim, but we don't know what she could have been like if she had grown up in a loving family. Someone else wrote, Merope was a victim of circumstance her entire life. A tainted bloodline, abusive father, forced reclusion and withheld from using magic. It's certainly a tragedy. Everything that we see and understand about Merope is evidence of her victimhood she is someone who lived a life that was not her own. She could not make her own choices. She could not do a lot of things. She lacked agency for a considerable amount of the time that we understand that she lived. And then Bob Ogden comes and is able to lift that oppressive cloud from her and in doing so allows her to have agency. And what we can see is that she uses that power in a way that is problematic. Now, we won't get into that until the next question, but I think it is undeniable to say that she is absolutely a victim both of circumstance, of experience, of her family, of what it means to be a member of a family that is so drunk on what was that they don't recognize what is and are unwilling to try to figure out what will be. And she is a victim of the stagnancy of the Gaunt name and what it means for her ability to learn any other way to live. But it doesn't mean that she didn't learn anything. I think it's safe to say that she learned a lot and absorbed even more from being brought up in a house with Morfin and with Marvolo and that a lot of those things you just can't shake. And I think that when we think about the relationship that she has with her family and all of these things, I think, you know, one of the things that we talk a lot about for Harry is that he seemingly is unaffected by the Dursleys and all of the things that they did to. I don't know that I fully agree with that particular premise because I don't think that you can be in a situation like the one that he is in or the one that Merope is in and walk out completely unscathed. What we can see here is that Merope is scathed and her decision making process kind of points us in the direction of just how affected she is by the ideology, by the actions, by the apathy, by the anger, by all of the things that Marvolo and Morfin represent and kind of demonstrate in her life. And so we're just going to move right into the next question. And what we can see in this question is that which, which is. Is Merope Gaunt a villain? About 43% of us said no, 44% of us said yes, and about 13% of us said don't know. Someone wrote, is Merope a villain? Being a villain involves bad intentions. Right? She didn't have bad intentions. She was heavily traumatized, naive and downtrodden. I don't think she was in any kind of mindset to make sound decisions, good or bad. Someone else wrote. Is Merope a villain also? 100%. She bewitched Tom Sr. And gets pregnant as a result of the assault and she abandons her child to go through life alone. Those are monstrous acts. As we have found again and again. The worst villains are often the most sympathetic victims before their crime, someone else wrote. The easiest questions to answer were the victim and villain ones. There's no question in my mind that she's both. She both had harm inflicted on her as a victim and inflicted harm on others as a villain. I think I put these questions together because again, as many of the comments pointed to, they work very much in tandem. And I think that what tends to happen, and we had this conversation a bit when we talked about Narcissa, is that we tend to see the actions of a person in kind of in a vacuum, right? And so we see what she's done to Tom Riddle Sr. And we say, girl, we see you. This is a problem. And I think that that response is correct. I think that what she does is bad. It's awful. She has removed the agency, the humanity from someone and used it to her own ends because of her own desires that she wanted to live out of fantasy and g agency or regard to the other party involved. At the same time, she is doing what she knows because it's all she knows. And she doesn't have the means by which to know or learn better. And so she makes these decisions based on the fact that she is someone who. This is just her truth. This is what she knows. This is what she knows how to do. When you are a magical person, you take what you want and y'all, I, I hate to say it, but like we see so many of our favorites do this very thing, particularly as it pertains to non magical people. And so in this way, she is the. I want to caveat that by saying what she does and how she does it is a problem. But to be clear, we have seen non magical people's memories being wiped by the government. Huh? The Roberts family in Goblet of Fire, the government, they were obliviating them left and right. They were using them for their purposes and then they were obliviating them. We have seen over and over and over again, Aunt Marge, all of these instances where the magical world is taking the non magical people and using their power against them. And so in this way, again, and I don't. And this isn't to excuse what Merope does. But it is to say that this is in a lot of ways par for the course. And when we think about the way that magical people understand their relationship with non magical people, there's almost this mentality that because of what happened in the 1600s and the witch hunts and all of these other terrible things that befell them, that they are a victimized class. And so everything that they subsequently do to non magical people is justified. Because they're like, you persecuted us and so now what we do to you is all in defense. And there are parts of that that feel outlandishly and ickily. That's the word that I'm using right now. And you're allowed to use it, but just make sure you use it correctly. Ickily familiar to me about the way that we understand certain aspects of our own society where it's like, oh, no, but you've done me wrong. So what I do to you is justified. And in this case, right, like this villain victim dichotomy, they. They work in tandem together, right? Because so much of the way that she understands her own space is, I was victimized by two men who made me feel powerless. And now I have my power back and I'm gonna use it, and I'm going to use it in a way that I know how I'm going to get what I want. Because that's what magical people do to non magical people. That's how we understand our own role. This is me taking my power back. And again, I don't agree with that. I think it's disgusting. But we can understand how she arrives at that place and what is true and what is disconcerting for me at least, is the reality that there are so many people in the magical world who do this very thing over and over and over and over again. And it just doesn't. It doesn't involve sexual assault, and so it doesn't hit the same, but it is just as problematic, just as dangerous, just as disgusting, just as bad. And she is in so many ways a reflection of so many things that already existed in the world. And she took it to a place that we just don't see in the same light. Because the way that we're conditioned to understand the decisions that the magical world has made makes sense to us and doesn't involve any sort of sexual anything. We've now reached the portion of the episode where I'm going to reflect on Merope. I'm going to draw from our conversation in the episode. So thus far, my own ruminations and some of the other things that you all brought to bear in the survey. One of the things that stands out to me about Merope, and it's something that I bring up often when I teach my class and we get to this portion of the series, is the fact that the way that we as readers come to understand who Merope is and the way that we come to navigate our own feelings about what she does is really filtered through J.K. rowling's gendered politics. And I think that at the root of that politic is the fundamental belief that CIS women cannot be dangerous. So often in these books, we're presented with a lot of different women characters and a lot of different gendered politics. But Merope is one of the singular moments where we actually see a woman perpetrate a crime against a man. When we see other women do what we might consider dangerous things, generally, it's in service of a man, right? So we have Bellatrix Lestrange. She does most of what she does to other women, but also for Voldemort. When we look at Dolores Umbridge, right, she's a person who is doing a lot of what she does for herself, yes, but also in service of Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry of Magic, broadly construed. When we look at Hermione, right, someone else who we might consider to be someone who has the potential to be dangerous. Most of her rancor and her vitriol and all of the different magical things that she exists, Zacks, are against women. Rita Skeeter, Marietta Edgecomb, like all of these people are women or girls. Merope is one of the few characters, if not the only character, where we see what she does to Tom Riddle Sr. And we now, through the lens of, you know, 2025 and the 21st century, are like, that is assault. That is dangerous, that is bad. But when we think about the way that it's relayed to us by Albus Dumbledore, it's presented to us as this kind of unrequited. This kind of instance wherein Merope fell in love with this man from afar who lived a different life and was so distant in a way. And she lived this kind of downtrodden life that was terrible and filled with all kinds of terrible things, both of which are true. And she. Once she gets her power back, she goes and she uses it to get the thing that she wants and is able to kind of live out her dream. And Dumbledore tells us the story, and he doesn't ever really highlight the reality of what she's done. And I think that that's due in large part to the fact that what she did, you know, despite the heinous nature of it, is very much in line with what we see magical people do, just in general to non magical people, but also because at the root of it, it's a woman perpetrating her will against a man. And that is not something that J.K. rowling believes is like, legitimately as dangerous. If the tables had been turned and we were looking at a man doing this to, I think the conversation would be very different. And I don't think that Dumbledore would have been written to kind of just pass it off as this kind of weird love story that with a magical twist. But because there is a fundamental belief that Merope does not have the power to actually be as dangerous as she is. I believe that the way that we are presented with this is in such a way that we are not meant to be as critical of her. We look at her life, we look at the victimhood, we look at all of the things and we say, this is just a person who's struggling and she's made bad decisions. Yes, but those are decisions that are informed by all of those things. I don't think we would have had as much empathy and concern if the tables had been turned. And in some ways, right, it's difficult for us to even conceptualize what that might look like. But as someone else pointed to, it would look like Harry. It would look like what we see Harry going through. And would we be okay if Harry did what Merope did? If Harry was older and made these kinds of decisions? I don't think we would be. And I think we would look at Harry askance in a way that. And I think we would have been invited to do that in the text in a way that we are not invited to do for Merope. And I think that that's due to the fact that J.K. rowling has a fundamental belief about who gets to be dangerous and who doesn't. And what kind of magical tools warrant our skepticism. Right. And we are, as readers, conditioned to look at what Merope does. And by the time we get to this particular memory, we've gone through six years in the magical world. We ourselves as readers have been socialized to see this, especially as children. Right. Like as children, where our minds aren't going to the reality of what this means, the reality that this is assault. The reality that a woman is using her literal power over a man to get the thing from him that she wants. And when we put it in those terms, it becomes very clear that she is a dangerous person, right? Like she is someone who has the power to inflict her will against another party. But we're not presented with that as a reality. And so it becomes even more difficult for us to see the truth of what Merope has done, because what Albus Dumbledore's explanation offers us is a much more kind of romanticized version of this. And I think that at the root of our understanding of kind of J.K. rowling's gendered politic is the idea that women, cis women in particular, cannot be dangerous. They can be victims. They can make decisions that we may not agree with. But at the end of the day, those decisions are always informed by something that makes us say, well, we kind of get it. And we've been kind of doing that throughout the episode, right? Making a lot of justifications for what she did. And I think that in a lot of ways, we're invited to do that with the way that the text is written and with the explanation provided to us within the text. And I think that this is one of the moments, not even the few moments, one of the moments in the vast array of moments within these books where we're able to see the kind of fundamental belief of who the villains are meant to be and who they aren't meant to be. And this downtrodden woman who was in an abusive situation at home is not meant to be this dangerous person. She is meant to be seen as a woman in love. And we buy it. And there are lots of reasons why, right? Society tells us this truth. It's not just J.K. rowling. J.K. rowling is using it in these books, but society tells us this about women, that there is no danger in what can be posed. When we think about, particularly in the 90s, even in the early aughts, the idea of women as predators, you know, we don't see that's not part of the narrative. And some of us could say, like, I could spin this narrative about Merope and say all of the other things that are negative are true. And yet she still prayed after Tom Riddle Sr. She still sat at that window and watched him every day, longing for a life that was not hers. And she concocted a plan and a scheme to get him. And if I were to do that and tell that narrative, people would say that that's a little bit disingenuous because it ignores all these other things. But, y'all, it's the truth. It's what she does. We just don't call it predation because it's coming from a body and a person that looks a very specific way. And we experience it so specifically because of the memory and the way that it's written and the way that everything that happens subsequently is retold to us from Albus Dumbledore. And so there is no criticism of what she does. There is no calling out of her the misuse of her power, power against someone who is powerless against her. And a lot of that comes from the source of this text, which is J.K. rowling and her fundamental belief of who gets to be dangerous and who gets to be a predator and who gets to be a problem. And we read this moment and we read about this character, and we have to confront the reality that a lot of the things that we are kind of critiquing right now in this episode are things that we ourselves have been socialized to believe outside of this text. And so it's a bit easier for us to believe and buy in to what J.K. rowling is giving to us. One, because many of us were children when we were reading these books. And two, even as adults, society is constantly reifying this particular idea. And so that when we think about Merope, I think when we are trying to reconcile this kind of victim and villain dichotomy that we've been talking about for the latter part of this episode, what is real and what is true is that society wants us to see her as a victim who cannot be a village foreign. Thank you all so much for listening to today's episode. This was a blast. Thank you all for writing in such amazing comments in the survey. Thank you all for taking it. Thank you all for just being open to having these conversations. This episode was not necessarily an easy one, and this survey was not necessarily easy one to take. So I really do appreciate you all taking the time and bringing the truth and honor honesty with you. And, you know, this is what we're doing. This is. This is the task. You know, we are thinking critically. We've been doing it for a year and we've got many more years to go, y'all. This is just the beginning. And I'm so grateful for you all. And I do not take for granted the time that you all take to be a part of this community. And I'm not gonna cry. I really, really, really, really, really, really appreciate it. It is not lost on me that you all are are bringing your A game every single time for every episode and engaging with me, a crazy man who is inviting you to think so deeply about a book that you could easily just disregard if you wanted to and would have good reason to do so. And so I am so appreciative of the time and the energy and the thought and the thinking and the thought and the thinking. Okay, enough, enough. Thanks, y'all. This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and thank you all so much for listening. If you liked today's episode, first of all, thank you. Please feel free to like, rate, subscribe and do all the things that one does where pods are cast. I really appreciate, appreciate you all taking the time to do that. If you want to join us on Patreon, please feel free to do so@patreon.com criticalmagictheory that's where the post episode chat is going to be and I already know that it is going to be lit. Okay, like you all need to join us at the podcast post episode chat. All right. The next episode is going to be on Lavender Brown. The survey will be available to you on Friday. I can't wait for your thoughts. The chaos continues. Until then, be critical and stay magical, my friends. Bye.