← Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast
Prof Responds: The Power, The Pettiness, and The Pretty
00:49:58
In this lively and deeply engaging episode of Critical Magic Theory, Professor Julian Wamble responds to the fiery post-episode discussion about Tom Riddle. From dissecting the many hilarious and shady nicknames the CMT community bestowed upon...
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Professor Julian Womble
If you work in quality control at a candy factory, you know strict safety regulations come with the job. It's why you partner with Grainger. Grainger helps you find the high quality and compliant products your business needs to inspect, detect and help correct issues. And the sweetest part is everyone gets a product that's as safe to eat as it is delicious. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. 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 y'all, I'm responding to our Tom Riddle episode. I knew that you all would bring it because it's just simply what we do here at Critical Magic Theory. But the post episode chat was too late to quit. This is going to be a vocal episode and I just hope that you all are ready for the music because it's coming and y'all, I was reading through some of the comments as I was preparing for what I was going to respond to, and what I found is that some episodes really do bring out certain things. And you know, sometimes everyone coalesces around one simple topic. And so the episode is very simple. This one though. This one, not so much. There is a lot of ground for us to cover and I cannot wait. And I, you all, you just, you just get me. And I think I get you. And so y'all, I don't even want to get into the nitty gritty and the madness of it, but just suffice it to say, this episode is going to be a lot of fun. We're going to be talking about some things that may be a little bit uncomfy, but it's couched within certain things that are more fun. We will be having a conversation surrounding love potions and sexual assault. And so to that end, if those things are things that might trigger you or are sensitive to you or might make you think that this is not necessarily the episode for you, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you when we're gonna talk about that and you can either skip ahead or, you know, not listen to the episode altogether, the choice is yours. But before we get into all of that, I love these episodes because there's no pomp, there's no circumstance. It's just cold, hard facts and a cold hard bop along to the theme song. You see what I did there? I really do try to give you all as much as I can in terms of time so that you all can get yourselves together. Because I don't want you pulling anything because you know that I'm not liable for that. So I hope you stretched. I hope you've done whatever provisions need to be done so that you can bop effectively. Some of you have told me that you have perfected your bop and no one has said anything about ending up in any sort of medical facility. So I'm assuming that you all have done it correctly. If you haven't, that's not my business. We're here for you in spirit only and no other sort of compensation. Okay? So if you are ready. If you're not, hit pause. But if you are, let's keep this party going. We're gonna bop in three and two in one. Let's bop, y'all. We need to talk about Harry Pot. I truly hope that you danced. If you didn't, I hope you bopped. And if you didn't, that's your business. I'm not going to try to place onto you what you should do. We're diving right into this, y'all. There are a couple things that came up in the post episode chat on Patreon about this episode, and I want to make sure that we get into all of them. There are basically four big things that I want us to discuss. The first, though, y'all, y'all are my people. You know, I. When I started making up these little nicknames for old Tommy Ridz, I didn't mean for us, us to start a trend. But you all took to the Patreon and really came with any number of incredible nicknames for Tom Riddle and we have to do it for Voldemort. And then what I think I want to do is do a kind of special edition shirt that has as many of the iterations as we can get onto one piece of fabric without making it look completely and utterly absurd, y'all, I'm so, so, so dead that you, unlike Voldemort, that you all really took on the mantle and said, oh, is this the assignment? Watch us work. And shout out to Cassie, who aggregated all of these without me even asking so that she could post about it on Instagram. And this makes my life a lot easier because now I can just read them off. Okay, so here are the names that we came up with. TR JR Jr Tom Tom, Tiny Tom, Little Tommy J TRJ TMR Jr Tompkins v. Baby Riddler, Toddling Thomas Baby Toms with an S Baby Toms with a Z, Tommy R, T, O, M, M, I, A, R, R, Tom Juniors, Tommy J. Riddle me this, riddle me that. Tim Riddle, Voldy Voldvoldi, V slash Senior, Senior, Junior, Good Golly Hot Valdi, Tommy Ladd, Tommy Boy, and incredibly, the Lost Kardashian. Y'all, you just. You just really do take everything to heart in a way that I think we just cannot and should not ignore. 50 points to everyone's house, because frankly, you all, it wasn't even an assignment, and you still did it with gusto. And that, you know, I have to reward it. I have to call it out. I have to say thank you. Okay? But one of the things that came up as I was thinking through all of these names and all the names that we gave them, someone brought up the idea of, like, how hilarious it would be if people weren't calling him, you know who, because they were, like, afraid, but really that they were just being shady. And it was like, you know, you want us to call you Lord Voldemort? We don't even have wizarding royalty, and yet you want us to call you what? No, girl, we're just gonna call you you know who. And wouldn't it be so funny if people, like, there are people who actually never knew his real name and didn't even know that he was called Voldemort, and so they were just like, you know who? Like, no, girl, you know who. And it was really only the people who were like, who called him, you know, he who Must Not Be Named, who really kind of knew, but everyone else who was like, you know who. It could either have been that they were actually afraid and. Or they were like, I actually don't know what we call him because I'm not calling him Lord, because we don't have that over here. So how embarrassing that he would even think that I would so, like, you know, you. You know who. You know who. And that if, like, I want to go back and reread the series now and think of you know who through the lens of this, like, really, really petty shadiness of just, like, girl, I don't remember that person's name, you know who. Like, who was it? It was, you know, it was, you know who. No, I. I don't know who, but you know who. Like, there's something about that that is so funny because he would be so upset at the prospect, right? Like, after all the work he did with his, like, chatgpt diary to come up with the anagram of I am Lord Voldemort to then turn around and people are like, who? No, you know who, you know who. And that. And that's what kind of spawned it is in not. It's not coming from a place of fear, but rather from a place of just sheer pettiness, lack of a desire to even know what to call him or what the right title is. And that. Yeah, I love that. I absolutely love that. One of the things that came up for many of us in the post episode chat was this kind of discussion about how we square, you know, Tom Riddle's confidence, right. And how do we reconcile a lot of his actions with, you know, what I deemed as insecurity. Sarah H. Wrote the points about him adding quote, unquote, Lord is a good point toward the imposter syndrome argument. I'm still not convinced though. I think him finding out about his Slytherin hair, ancestry and all just validated his own feeling of I'm different, I'm better, I'm him. Because didn't Dumbledore say he didn't seem at all shocked about being told he was a wizard, but rather that there was a community? I guess, like he was like, I knew I was special. And I think that this is a really interesting and important point for us to think about because there are a lot, there are lots of moments where we see, particularly once it is revealed that he is a magical person, that he seems to be like, I knew it, I understood. And I think that that is true. And when I think of like his imposter syndrome, I think of the fact that that doesn't necessarily manifest. Maybe until he shows up at Hogwarts and realizes like, oh, you're special amongst non magical people, but to the extent that you're special in a space where everyone has magic, right, like if everyone is magical, then what sets you apart from them? And I think that what we then see is when he gets to Hogwarts, once he enters into the magical world, that's where we're really able to see a lot of his kind of insecurities manifest in particular because he's in a house that prizes something that he doesn't even know he has at the onset. And so that there is this kind of thirst and this desire to prove himself as being worthy of being in the space. And for me, I think that there are two ways that we can look at this, right? Like we can look at what he does and I think that when we look at what he does, we might say these are the actions of someone who is just extremely confident in their ability to do magic, in their ability to kind of be superior to everyone else. But then the way that I look at it is, why is he doing all of this? Why is he working so hard to prove himself? Like, why not, like I said in the episode, why not just take these people down to the Chamber of Secrets? Like, doesn't that do the work for you to go the extra step as to be like, not only am I going to go down here, I'm going to get the basilisk train, the basilisk, and then I'm going to have it attack someone, right? Like, this is over. This is overkill. You don't need to do all of that. Like, everything he does feels like such a reach to be able to prove that he has to do that. He is like that girl, right? And to me, I just wonder why he's doing it. And it's in the why that I find high amounts of insecurity. Because why do you need to change your name, right? Because you know that riddle holds no meaning in this space, and you need to prove to everyone that you are special. So you literally sat there and did some weird anagram chatgpt type thing to make this work for you so that you could figure out a way to rechristen yourself, to leave the life behind. Why do you want to leave that life behind? Because it is marred with disappointment. It is marred with unimportance. And you want everyone in your orbit to understand and know that, like, no, I'm an important person and you all need to know that. And I think that coming into the magical world really does kind of throw into sharp relief all the magic that he could do when he was living at the orphanage and torturing those kids. Keisha said something interesting as well. She wrote, I find the difference between how Voldy and Harry treat their insecurities to be interesting. Voldy tries to overcompensate with her with his theater works. While Harry doesn't take joy in being in the spotlight and doesn't have a positive outlook on his skills, Voldy was acting more like Ron with his need to be complimented. Right. When we. And this comparison came up a lot in the episode, right? The comparison between Voldemort and Harry, particularly thinking about how they were socialized and brought up right, both in places and spaces where there wasn't a lot of love. And yet we see very two. We see two very different outcomes. Harry is someone who is, for the most part, fairly humble, fairly unassuming, much more interested in kind of human connection and being normal, then Voldemort, who is like, I want you to see me. Choose me, love me. I am the one. And the whole quest to find out who he is was, in my mind, a quest to prove his worthiness. And so while, yes, he's able to do any number of really extraordinary things, if we ask ourselves why he had to go to the lanes. He had to go. It's because he wants to be able to sit in a group of people and be like, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. You know what I did? I split my soul into. Into six pieces. Yeah, that's what I did. What about you? Have you split your soul recently? Really? He's the worst person at any dinner party that you go to who just, like, any topic you bring up, they're just, like, rifling off all of the things that are even, like, remotely related to this to prove how amazing they are. Like, it's. And when you clock it, you're like, ooh. Like, this is someone who is really struggling with some level of insecurity because. Why are you doing all this? We'll talk about it in the next episode on Voldemort. But, you know, just the scene of them in the graveyard. Like, girl, why are you out here monologuing like this? You've just done, like, what was thought impossible and come back from the brink of death. And now you have a body. You've done all this stuff. You have masterfully brought Harry to you, and instead of just taking him out right there, you call all the girlies, the girls, the gays, the days, all of them, and you make them stand in a circle while you recount the moments from the past 13 years, giving us drama, trauma, madness and sadness. It's not giving confidence, it's giving. I need you to know how hard I worked on this. Like, it's giving. I went to the teacher because they didn't give me a good grade, but I worked really, really, really hard on this, and I need them to know how hard I worked so that they can give me a better grade. Like, that's the vibe. That's the. You're working too hard. There's no need to work this hard. You have already done an incredibly difficult, magical feat, and yet somehow, that's not good enough for him. And I think that when we think about why he does some of these things, it really does shine an important light on kind of the reality of his insecurities. His imposter syndrome, his constant drive and quest should Be seen as someone who is worthy of being in the magical world despite all of the other things, right? Like, at the end of the day, he still just wants to be accepted and liked and loved by people who hold power. It really does kind of make me think of this whole moment that we're in right now with all these tech billionaires in the United States, these tech billionaires cozying up to Trump and trying to, like, prove themselves. And it's like, what do you have to prove, Mark Zuckerberg? Huh? Like, what do you have? You. You. You're a billionaire. Like, why do you. You all want power. You want to be affirmed because you're insecure. Like, your money isn't doing enough for you. And so you need to feel powerful. So you're doing all kinds of things to create a conte. People can recognize you as a powerful entity. It's giving, you know, all of these men that we're watching right now do all of these, like, ridiculous antics for someone who, on any given day, probably couldn't really care that much about them. And so that there is this insecurity and that. That insecurity really does drive a lot of the behavior that we see exhibited by Tom Riddle. And ultimately, right. Like, this is a through line for. For Voldemort as a character. And I think that when we do the juxtaposition between him and Harry, what we really do find is someone whose drive for, like, notoriety is such a clarion call for how insecure he is and how much he needs external validation. This is something that came up in the episode but was kind of glossed over. And I do think that is important, and Amy brought it up, which is that Tom Riddle senior is an absolute disaster of a person and is not kind and is not good. And I said this in the episode, but I want to re. Emphasize this particularly for what's gonna be the next part of this conversation, because I think, again, so much of the way that we understand who Tom Riddle Jr. Is is through the lens of his actions. And, you know, we don't really ask ourselves the nature versus nurture question a lot because we know that he was brought up in an orphanage. And so the kind of nurture part of it doesn't necessarily map onto the way that we generally understand that particular kind of dichotomy. Right. Because normally that's in a space where you're with your family and he wasn't. So we can imagine why it is that, you know, we don't necessarily think about it in those terms. But if we just think about what he has working within his genetics, we know that Tom Riddle Sr. Is a disaster. We know that his grandparents were also people who were not particularly liked, right? Like we learned that in Goblet of Fire. And so that, like, within him he already has this kind of snobbery that exist and some of that is socialized, but some of that is not. And when you take the notion of snobbery that is made manifest by way of one's actual kind of tangible wealth with the snobbery that comes with the Gants, where there is no tangible wealth, but there is this kind of internal understanding of where you sit in one's like, hierarchy, it then makes sense as to why he believes he should be in a very specific place. And it also might explain to us why he's so willing to take on the kind of very Muggle moniker of Lord Voldemort. Right, because he comes from kind of the landed gentry within the kind of British space. Like, I don't know if his grandparents are within the aristocracy, but we know that at a certain point when you have that kind of money, when you have that kind of manor house, that there comes with it a lot of things. And so maybe the lord is a reclamation of what he believes he lost, because by the time he does this, I'm pretty sure he's either contemplated and or has already killed his grandparents and his father. And so that there is a lot at work there that he's trying to overcompensate for and kind of reconcile in a lot of meaningful and important ways. And so, like, we cannot forget that even from the Muggle side, something is not right. Things are off. And I think, you know, Amy, bringing it up in the post episode chat is really important because we don't think about Tom Riddle Sr. That often, not in the context of him being someone who played a part in the kind of personality disorder that we understand that Voldemort has, right. That, you know, but at the end of the day, right, his dad was not a good person and lived a life of immense privilege. His dad was basically Draco Malfoy. Oh, oh. His dad was basically Draco. And Tom Riddle resented that because you could imagine a context in which also, right, like they lived in this big manor house and he goes and he kills his dad and his grandparents, but then also in Goblet of Fire goes back and stays in that house, right? Like his birthright. We know that in Doublet of Fire, in Deathly Hallows, we know that he's staying in the Malfoy manor. Right? And some of that. Right. Is the byproduct of his desire to kind of get the accoutrement that comes along with being pure blood, but it also may be, you know, the accoutrement that comes along with being pure blood, but also the accoutrement that comes along with being someone who comes from immense wealth in the Muggle world. And so those two things come together because there are two times where you see him in a manor house. One is his. His parents is great, his dad's and his grandparents, and then it's Lucius's. And both of those things are symbols of the things that he lacks because, again, those are not. That is not behavior of someone who is content with the life that they lead. That is someone who is trying to, like, make more than they can or should with what they've been given. And Tom Riddle Sr. Is a part of all of that. And when you, you know, they say you can't miss what you never had. But he finds out, you know, who his dad is and he finds out where they live and he goes to see what is going on over there in that village. And you can imagine how upset he would be, right? Because at this point, he's older, he's been in Slytherin house with all of these people. And the thing about Insec is that sometimes it can yield a very, very high level of entitlement. Just like Draco, right, Where Draco lives a very privileged life, but also has an expectation of the things that he believes he is entitled to. Right? He wants to be top of the class, and he believes that he should be. He wants to be the one who all the teachers love. He believes that he should be everything in his life and all the things that he has suggests that he should have more. And we see, right, like Tom Riddle operate with a very specific kind of mentality that is similar to that. So then you find out that there are things that you should have been entitled to that you didn't get because your father abandoned your mother and you don't even know the circumstances. Right. Like Tom Riddle doesn't know about whatever magical thing his mom did to have his dad be a part of his life. All he knows is that this rich Muggle left his mom who ultimately died. And it's like all of the stuff that you should assume being connected to Salazar Slytherin was actually kind of embodied in the life that this Muggle man was living. And you were denied that. And. And you're In a space with people who, in terms of kind of wizarding hierarchy, had all of it. Yeah. Like all of the insecurity and all of the mess and madness, the entitlement, like, all of that plays a part. And his dad is a big part of this. Even if he didn't know who he was. There are still aspects of this that I think play a really large role. And maybe it's like in that integral part where Tom Riddle is transitioning into Lord Voldemort, that we can see these things really mattering. But no matter what, no matter how you slice it, it matters. The other thing that someone brought up that I think is really, really important, and I did not bring it up at all, and it didn't really come up a lot in our. In our survey responses was how hot Tom Riddle was. Both Tom Riddle Sr. And Tom Riddle Jr. Savannah wrote, I think we should have talked more about his looks in this episode. As V he couldn't use them since they left his ass and nose. He followed the same script, but his tools changed since he chose to stop charming and straight up chose violence. Could you imagine wolf cut or 90s animated man hair? Demetri from Anastasia and Milo Thatch grown and sexy Vulde V He would have been given the world. Perhaps he used what he got while he had it since he found and made all but two Horcruxes while he was still attractive. I think that this is really, really, really important because we spend a considerable amount of time in these books really talking about pretty privilege and the things that it offers a lot of the characters in these books. And one of the things about Harry is that if you're hot, he's going to notice, all right? He's gonna call it out, he's gonna recognize it as being true. And one of the things that I think is fascinating is the fact that Voldemort really did kind of forsake his looks when he becomes Voldy B. But when he is Tommy Riddz, he's hot and he knows it and he uses it. And I think that, you know, part of the journey of creating these Horcruxes was kind of a forsaking of those looks. But we also get a sense, particularly when it comes to, like, Hapsiba Smith, right? Like, he was charming people left and right using the looks that his father gave him. Because it certainly wasn't his mother's side. We know that. Right? Like, he was a spitting image of his dad. And his dad was very conventionally attractive. And I think that in A lot of ways his looks make a really big difference in terms of how he is perceived in all of his accomplishments. And we know that J.K. rowling is very particular about who is attractive and what attractiveness means. And we also know that she really does kind of bestow the gift that is being hot and smart and competent really only to men, right? Like we see it for Voldemort, we see it for Cedric Diggory. We don't necessarily always see it for women or girl characters. And it is also rare that we see someone leveraging their good looks, right? Like Cedric was hot, but it wasn't the kind of thing that he was using as a tool to get what he wanted. But we see Tom Riddle really leveraging his kind of aristocratic, very well bred looks that he got from his dad. But I also do think that part of his journey into kind of Voldemort ness was forsaking some of that for the sake of being like, I am different. I am not human anymore. I am a God and I don't need to be hot because, like, I have this power. And especially because my looks have come from a place that is shameful to me and the people who follow me. I don't want that. And so we see him kind of let them go, but to Savannah's point, he uses them, right? Like he doesn't forsake them until they have done and served their purpose, right? Like he absolutely leverages them and knows exactly and knows how. And like, I can't imagine how much he got away with, you know, certain things when he was at Hogwarts. Because let me tell you something, a week and a smile goes a long way. I'm not speaking from experience per se, because I will not have you all asking me how I know that. But like I know that. All right? And so like it goes a long way. Like pretty privilege is a thing and we see it used a lot. And I think it is fascinating that for someone who is so anti Muggle and so, you know, anti his Muggle side, he definitely did use those Muggle looks though. And that's what I'm talking about, right? Like when we talk about, you know, who he is and how we understand, like the fact that he, he didn't go and blight his face before he left Hogwarts. It wasn't until after he left. Like he's very intentional about a lot of this. And I think that's really important for us to think about and to remember because it's like, no, no, no, no, no, there's an intention here. Like, you are intentionally making choices. And while, yeah, your politic is a very specific thing, you are not averse to making choices that stand in the face of your politic if it means that your ultimate goals can be achieved. And that is a through line for, for him as a character. Like, his willingness to stay hot for as long as he needed to stay hot is hilarious to me because it's like, oh, so you actually don't care about, like, looking like your dad because it served a purpose for you. And I do think that that matters and I think is really, really important because I think it shows us a number of kind of nuances in his character that, you know, we don't necessarily always get just based on the, on a kind of surface level reading. But yeah, no, his looks, they matter. And we know they mattered because they are part of the reason why he was able to achieve what he was able to achieve. Like, power matters, but beauty, beauty does the work. I want to spend a little time revisiting this conversation surrounding love potions and how we arrive at who Voldemort or Tom Riddle is as a person. And so here we're going to be talking a little bit about, you know, assault and non consensual relations. And so, again, if this is a moment for you where these topics are sensitive for you, feel free to jump ahead and we'll see you on the other side. Okay, so this was a really big part of the conversation that we had on Patreon about people's belief and desire to kind of absolve Voldemort of at least some of what he does because he was born into what people kind of deem this loveless place, right? That, like, because he was born of a love potion, which again, I want to highlight the fact that we actually don't know that, like, that's conjecture on the part of Dumbledore, but that because he was born the way that he was born in this kind of bewitched state, that this informs how he arrives as a person, right. And explains the psychopathy, the sociopathy, the narcissism. And as I said in the episode, I am a firm believer in not that, like, I don't. I do not buy into this particular narrative surrounding him because I think that again, when you live in a society that is so patriarchal and is so bent on making sure that pure bloods exist, there are a lot of people in a lot of relationships that, where love is not part of the equation, and that's like historically grounded even in our own history. No matter where you live in the world, right, where a lot of particularly women were being forced into relationships with men who they did not love and bearing children and, and those children did not turn out to be psychopaths. And I think it's really important for us to recognize that, like, some of this has nothing to do with, like, the state, like, the circumstances that led to Voldemort's conception. Like, of course what happened was terrible and what his mother did to his father was absolutely unforgivable. But to take that moment and basically lay the blame of what happened on Merope and not account for the fact that Merope's family was an absolute disaster and had all kinds of other mental things at work here. And Tom Riddle Sr. Was also not a very good person. And we don't know what was going on in the genetics on that side other than being hot to lay all of that on. This one moment feels not right to me. And I know, and someone brought up in the comments, you know, this is a magical world. And so we actually, you know, we don't know the politics of these things. But even in a magical world, we can. It stands to reason that there are a lot of children who are in Harry's class who are not necessarily born of love, relationships that involved love, and they did not turn out like Voldemort. And I also think it sets a really bad precedent that children who are born of any sort of circumstance that falls outside of the conventionally understood and conventionally acceptable notion of, like, love are inherently bad or inherently problematic. That's such a really bad. That leaves a bad taste in my mouth because I think that that doesn't allow for individuals to make the choices about who they want to be as they grow. And Voldemort made choices like, yeah, we can, we can say that some of this is absolutely part of his antisocial personality disorder. But there were choices that were made. And I think again, you know, we have to really be careful about how we make excuses for some of his behavior. And I, I just want to kind of reinforce some of this. I'm not, I'm not telling you what you need to believe. I want to be clear about that. I'm not telling you that if you, if you want to believe that the, the love potion and the lack of consent led to him being who he is, no problem. I think that as long as you have given it the kind of thought and in depth kind of critiquing that it, that it is due, then that is your business. And I'm not here to kind of inform you as to what you should believe. But I, for me, I, I, I, I, I'm, I'm hesitant. And by hesitant I mean not at all willing to acknowledge that because I think, and, and the other thing that I think really gets me here, and I said this in Merope's episode, is that like she loved him. Like the conception may not have been one where love played a factor, although some could make the argument, and I don't know that it's a good argument, but it is an argument that could be made that like love was there, it was just one sided, it was unrequited hashtag bars. But like she loved Tom Riddle Jr. Enough to make sure that he was taken care of, to make sure that somehow she was taken care of. You know, she abandoned magic, but somehow was able to kind of maintain herself long enough to have this baby in circumstances that probably were not ideal because she didn't have any money. She went to this orphanage, gave birth. Like the circumstances were probably awful, but she, she did it. And that goes beyond the scope of just like having a kid for the sake of having a kid, which is someone's business, but to kind of remove her own emotional connection in this scenario as a justification really does, I think absolve him of way too much and also feels very akin to his own mentality of like, well, my mom couldn't have cared for me and she couldn't have been magical because she died. And like some of that came up in Merope's episode and many people pushed back against that. And I think that there's something very much worth pushing back against. And so I brought all this up because I think it's important for us to really think about, you know, a reality that sure, the circumstances that led to Voldemort's conception and birth and the death of his mother are all the byproducts, product of really, really, really heinous and awful things simultaneously. He made choices. He has a genetic pool that is filled with all kinds of rancor, animosity and terribleness on both sides. And so it strikes me that by laying all of this on Merope, by laying all of this on this moment, it completely absolves him of choices that he ultimately made. Even with the antisocial personality disorder, it still absolves him in ways that I don't think he's deserving of. And I think that we have to be mindful of the fact that like Voldemort made choices, Tom Riddle made choices. And yes, Merope made choices, but like all of those things play a part, but they are in no way the whole story. And to lay it all there and say, well, it's because he wasn't born of love number one. There are a lot of people who are probably not born of love in the wizarding world. A lot. A lot. And so listen, we don't know. The circumstances for anybody's conception are unknown to us for most of these characters. And so it feels like unless we have a bunch of people with this antisocial personality disorder running around and we just don't know which I don't think is the case. Some of this is Voldemort, some of this is Tom Riddle. And we have to be clear about that. Magical or non magical, the reality is, is that like again, like I said in the episode, if Bellatrix was gonna have a baby with Rudolphus, love is not part of the equation because we know she didn't love him because we never saw him. We never saw him. Okay. And we know that she really only had eyes for one. And it wasn't Rodolphus, it wasn't him. And so that, like. Are we saying that her kids would have been crazy? It's possible because she's not all the way there either. But are we saying that her parents didn't love one another? Like, is it like, what's happening here? Because. And that would mean, why not? Why are Andromeda and Narcissa seemingly unaffected if lovelessness was part of the narrative? Right? Like, we could go on this journey even within the magical world where magic exists, and we could really unpack this and it and that. And that particular theory would fall apart very, very, very quickly. And so I say all of that to say, like, let's use a little bit of discretion when it comes to absolving terrible people and let's not lay all of the blame at the feet of a woman I don't know. That just makes me not. I don't love that. And if you disagree, you know, that's totally fine. We'll talk about it in the post episode chat. I'm sure we will, but I just want to be very clear about that because I. Yeah, like, it doesn't make me feel great. That theory. I thought about it a lot and yeah, it's a no for me. It's a no for me. It comes from Merritt, who wrote one that you could look at for a bit longer is Voldemort's Nostalgia for Hogwarts. He wanted a part of him to stay at Hogwarts. I also understood Voldemort as a person without love. Love potion or not, but there's a spark of love for Hogwarts in there. I have to think about that further. Me too. Me too. Because what a plot twist. I Admittedly, I have not ever thought about his love for Hogwarts but when I do, I really do think about the relationship that Harry has with Hogwarts and his intimate familiarity with Voldemort's connection to it. And it's a question of like, does Voldemort have love for Hogwarts as an institution? Because it's a home for him. It created a space where he could finally be himself and feel kind of seen and heard and appreciated and where he was getting acknowledged for how special he was. Like, is that what Hogwarts means to him? Or is it just a space where he feels very connected to an ancient power? Right. Is it because he wanted to have something that locked him in as a space where he's like, I'm connected to all of these powerful people, all of these powerful objects, these powerful lessons and I don't know, part of me wants to say that he really does love Hogwarts. And part of the reason why I think that that is true is that even in Deathly Hallows he's like, I actually don't want to mess up the castle. Like, I don't want to mess this up. And it's not a place that he destroys. He actually is like, hey, I mean, they end up doom, like blowing it up and like doing all kinds of madness and absurdity to. But like even in Deathly Hallows, like, while Harry, Ron and Hermione are on the hog. The hog, the Hogwarts hunt. Oh my God. Are on the Horcrux hunt. Too many H's. We see that the school still exists and like they're still learning, right? Like, this was a safe haven for Voldemort. And whether or not he actively acknowledges it as a space that he loved, it is a space that holds immense meaning for him. It is a space where he feels like he can truly be who he is. And we really do see that because Harry understands it and Harry knows Voldemort very intimately because as many of you pointed out, they have a lot of things in common. And one of the things that they have in common is the lack of desire to re enter the Muggle world every summer. They never want to go back. They want to stay at Hogwarts. And we know, and I mentioned this in the episode that, like, the only reason that Tom Riddle goes and turns Hagrid in is because he's trying to stay at Hogwarts over the summer so that he doesn't have to go back to the orphanage because Hogwarts is his home. And there's something really crazy about that because this feels like. I mean, he feels like a person who is so detached from everything and yet his attachment to Hogwarts is irrefutable and he feels like he's plumbed all of its secrets. He hides a piece of his soul there. He's going and getting all of these other things. He's. He's really spent a considerable amount of time learning this place, the Chamber of Secrets, the Room of Requirement, talking to Rowena Raven, not Rowena, with Helena Ravenclaw. Like he cares about this place much more than I think he wants anyone to believe that he does. But for a person who has never felt at home in a place Hogwarts, is that for him? And I think even more so for him than for Harry, right? Because there are moments where Harry feels outlandishly isolated and alone at Hogwarts, particularly in Order of the Phoenix. And we don't know, but we don't really know Tom Riddle's past. But from what we can gather, he was loved by teachers. He was, you know, in the Slug Club. He had a group of cronies at Hogwarts. So, like, this is a place that matters to him. And it's so fascinating to think about it in those terms because we think about Voldemort as a person who, he doesn't know love. But I think it is very, very possible that the only thing he ever truly loved was Hogwarts. I think that that's the only place where he ever really felt he belonged. And for a person who has the high amounts of insecurities that he has and the need to belong in a place, right, Every aspect of his, his sense of belonging came from Hogwarts, right? Like the Chamber of Secrets opening up, the Basilisk. All of these are instances and places and spaces where it is a reaffirmation of his belonging in the magical world. And we even see from Harry's perspective, right, like it isn't until Goblet of Fire where we really do get a sense that Harry actually believes that he belongs in the magical world. Once he finds out that Sirius is his godfather, he really does really feel like this is a place for him. And so Hogwarts is meaningful to Voldemort in a way that goes well beyond a place of just learning and becoming powerful. It is a home for him and I think that if there is anything that he loves, it is Hogwarts Foreign this has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and y'all thank you so much for participating in the post episode chat on Patreon for our Tom Riddle episode. You know that we're talking about Vole DV next next week, okay? We're talking about Vole DV and I cannot wait. Please feel free to join us in the post episode chat for this episode because I know that there are going to be some things because I feel like I dropped a little bit of fire. I feel like this whole situation about him loving Hogwarts, I never thought about it had you. Listen, you have to sound off. You have to let me know. In the post episode chat on Patreon. Remember that you can join for free and be a part of those conversations, y'all. We're in Half Bloods. Like, we're in it now and we're going to. We're what? Why did I say going like that? We are going to have our first, first conversation about what it means to be a good Half Blood, y'all. We're having it next week and it's gonna be a doozy because as per usual, you all really just make my life so much fun, but also difficult. And I hope you're proud of yourselves, y'all. I cannot wait. Please feel free to like, rate, subscribe to do all the things that one does where pods are cast. If you want to follow me on social media, please feel free to do so on Instagram @Prof.JW on TikTok ROFW, y'all. This is just. I love these episodes because they're so much fun. The stakes are low. We get to be in conversation with one another in a more explicit way and it's just such a joy, y'all. Okay? But speaking of joy, I cannot wait until we talk about voldv. I can't wait to see what other nicknames we come up with for him because I know that we're going to come up with some good ones, some doozies, okay? For Voldville, the noseless fiend. Like, we let your creative wheels begin to turn now in preparation, okay? And until then, y'all be critical and stay magical. Bye.