Seamus Finnigan & the Making of "Irish McIreland"

Summary

Critical Magic Theory: An Analytical Harry Potter Podcast

Episode: Seamus Finnigan & the Making of “Irish McIreland”

Host: Professor Julian Womble

Release Date: May 20, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this thoughtful and multidimensional episode, Professor Julian Womble dives into the character of Seamus Finnigan from the Harry Potter series—one often relegated to the periphery, but whose portrayal is rich with implications about nationality, ethnicity, and the pitfalls of representation. Julian invites listeners to look critically at how Seamus’s Irish identity is constructed in the text and films, and what this tells us about broader questions of stereotyping, intra-white dynamics, and diversity in fantasy. The episode is also laced with humor, interactive listener survey responses, and signature Julian “bops.”

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Major Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. Why Seamus Matters

[01:00–03:40 & 14:18–16:54]

• Seamus serves as a unique lens to examine how Harry Potter handles nationality and ethnicity compared to other characters, especially among secondary figures.
• “What we do get from Seamus is a discussion about something that we've not really discussed for other characters in a meaningful way, which is the role of nationality and ethnicity.” – Prof. Womble [02:28]
• Julian highlights that, while Seamus is often a background character, the details around him—particularly his "Irishness"—are loaded and intentional, especially in the film adaptions.

2. Apologies and Admitting Wrongdoing

[14:18–20:07]

• Prof. Womble expresses deep appreciation for Seamus’ apology to Harry in Order of the Phoenix, a rare moment of accountability—especially between boys in the series.
• “It is courageous to say that you’re sorry that you were wrong about something... Seamus is a citizen of a society that... is particularly, in that moment, in Order of the Phoenix, infiltrated with propaganda that makes it so difficult to know what is true.” [16:03]
• Draws parallels between Seamus’ experience and contemporary struggles with disinformation and propaganda.

3. Survey Results: One Word for Seamus

[21:12–22:10]

• Listeners overwhelmingly chose “Irish” as the top descriptor; “stubborn” and “loyal” were distant runners-up.
• Julian promises to return to and critically analyze why “Irish” is so dominant later in the episode.

4. Is Seamus a Good Person?

[24:35–30:46]

• 86% of respondents say yes, 0% say no, 14% are unsure.
• Listeners say Seamus does nothing to suggest he’s bad—he’s “curious and enthusiastic,” just “takes a while to come around.”
• Commentary: Much perception of Seamus is colored by Harry’s POV. Julian notes, “We are in Harry’s point of view... so when we see someone not believing it, we're like, hello, do you know anything?” [31:00]
• Buying into propaganda and being an “uninformed citizen” doesn’t make him bad—just typical.

5. Is Seamus a Good Friend?

[30:48–42:24]

• 57%: Yes | 20%: No | 23%: Don’t Know
• Mixed listener responses—some highlight Seamus’ accountability and subsequent loyalty, others note his silence when Ron microaggresses Dean, or his slowness to support Harry.
• Julian’s take: “Sometimes our friends get up to hijinks, madness, absurdity, foolishness, and we have to be the ones to be like, 'I'm not standing with you on that.' That doesn't mean we're a bad friend.” [38:20]
• Highlights Seamus’ growth and the difficulty of breaking from “trusted adults,” especially for a child.

6. Is Seamus a Good Gryffindor?

[43:27–51:21]

• 68%: Yes | 9%: No | 23%: Don’t Know
• Listener defense: “He took the Carrows’ torture on the chin, literally, with a face so bruised and beaten that Harry barely recognized him at the Room of Requirement. That's Gryffindor bravery in its purest, most stubborn form.” [43:40]
• Julian’s analysis: Gryffindor is not only about brash heroism—Seamus’ apology and willingness to change are themselves acts of courage.

7. Is Seamus a Good Half Blood?

[52:27–58:10]

• 40%: Yes | 17%: No | 44%: Don’t Know
• Seamus is socially magical, aligns with wizarding culture—his Muggle father is not in the picture.
• Julian: “He is as good of a half blood as we might expect him to be given the circumstances... he doesn't subscribe fully to the strictness of pure blood supremacy, because you could lie and he doesn't.” [57:22]
• The idea of “bridging worlds” is explored, but Seamus is ultimately coded as comfortable in the magical hierarchy.

8. Is Seamus a Hero?

[59:44–79:16]

• 51%: Yes | 24%: No | 25%: Don’t Know
• Listeners cite his role in the DA and Battle of Hogwarts, despite risk as a half-blood without pure-blood privilege—heroism “peaks at the Battle of Hogwarts.”
• “The fact that he was willing to do that... he could have died and no one would have thought anything of it... the fact he was willing to endure and kept fighting, and kind of wore it as a badge of honor, tells us something very specific about who he is and what he's willing to endure.” [60:40]

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Deep Dive: The Construction of “Irish McIreland”—Representation and Stereotype

[~61:00–79:16]

• Unprecedented survey result: “Irish” is the main word listeners use to describe Seamus—listeners never used “Black” for Dean, “Asian” for Cho, etc.
• For characters of color, Rowling signals ethnicity with names or brief description, but rarely builds on it. “For Cho Chang and the Patil twins, the harm of erasure is that there is nothing to hold on to. No interiority, cultural life, or sense of what it means to be them. For Seamus, the harm of caricature runs in the opposite direction. There is too much of the wrong thing to hold on to.” [78:00]
• Seamus’s “Irishness” reappears as comic pyrotechnics, hotheaded arguments, an overbearing mother, and Quidditch World Cup paraphernalia that borrows heavily from British stage caricature and American pop stereotypes, not native Irish culture.
• Listener quote: “JKR basically named him Irish Mac Ireland and stopped creating his personality there” [63:45], and “None of these [World Cup] things are Irish. They both come from exaggerated depictions from the British stage and American pop culture. Our names and our culture don't matter to them. They never did.” [73:30]
• Films exaggerate the stereotype, turning Seamus’ “explosions” into a running gag and a personality, contrasting with the Weasley twins, whose chaos is celebrated as entrepreneurial rather than dangerous.
• “It is no accident that a British author would present an Irish boy as a hot headed person who is hazardous. Same behavior, different frame. The frame is doing the work... the character is not allowed to do on his own.” [75:55]
• Deeper analysis of intra-white dynamics: British/Anglo normativity is “apex whiteness,” and Irishness is a marked, lesser status. JKR didn’t invent this system, but inherited it and reified it uncritically.
• Core thesis: “Seamus Finnigan deserved a story, and what he got was a stereotype. The fact that we all learned to read it so fluently, easily, that’s the dangerous part.” [78:45]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Apology:
  “It is courageous to say that you're sorry that you were wrong about something... for Seamus to have to come to that realization and name the idea that I was wrong and I'm sorry for the way that I treated you. I love that moment. Because, again, it's not something that we get very much in these books.”
  – Professor Womble [16:12]
• On Stereotyping:
  “JKR basically named him Irish Mac Ireland and stopped creating his personality there.”
  – Listener, as cited by Prof. Womble [63:45]
• On Representation:
  “For Cho Chang and the Patil twins, the harm of erasure is that there is nothing to hold on to... For Seamus, the harm of caricature runs in the opposite direction. There is too much of the wrong thing to hold on to.”
  – Professor Womble [78:00]
• On Intra-White Supremacy:
  “Whiteness has a hierarchy. There is what I would call an apex whiteness, a default... It's simply the standard against which everything else is measured... and the page keeps telling you.”
  – Professor Womble [73:35]
• On the Films vs. Books:
  “The films turn [Seamus’ pyrotechnics] into signature, a running gag and a personality. The ethnic stereotype really comes through when comparing the Weasleys’ twins chaos... to Seamus’s, which is framed as dangerous and disruptive. Same behavior, different frame.”
  – Professor Womble [75:35]

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Timestamps by Segment

• Main Topic Intro: Seamus’ significance and identity [03:40]
• Best Seamus Moment/Apology: [14:18]
• Listener Word Association: [21:12]
• Seamus as Good Person: [30:46]
• Seamus as Friend: [30:48]
• Seamus as Gryffindor: [43:27]
• Seamus as Half Blood: [52:27]
• Seamus as Hero: [59:44]
• Reflection on Stereotype, Representation, and Irishness: [~61:00–79:16]
• Closing Reflections: [81:08]

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Episode Tone & Style

• Prof. Womble’s tone is simultaneously analytical and playful—mixing rigorous social critique with humor, signature catchphrases (“hijinks, madness, absurdity, foolishness”), and musical allusions (“Loyal is back and it's here to stay. New hit single!”).
• Engages deeply with listener responses, quoting extensively and using them as springboards for analysis.
• Encourages ongoing discussion: “Let's talk about it in the post episode chat. Friends, I'm fighting on this one and I don't really know what's going on. I don't know, like, what to think, what to feel. You'll tell me. You'll tell me.” [28:55]

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Key Takeaways

• Seamus Finnigan is both more and less than he appears: His character is made legible primarily through national stereotype rather than personal interiority, serving as a case study in how representation can both include and flatten minority (or in this case, “marked white”) identities.
• Rowling’s diversification is revealed as superficial: It places characters in the room without considering “what it costs” for them to be there, resulting in erasure (Dean, Cho, Patil twins) or caricature (Seamus).
• Critical media literacy matters: The episode invites listeners to examine not only “who is in the room,” but what being in the room does to those characters—and, by extension, those in the real world who recognize themselves in these portrayals.

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Final Thoughts

Julian closes by urging everyone to keep examining and discussing these issues: “Representation requires engaging what it means to live in a particular body with a history and context... It did not mean asking what it cost to be in the room, what these individuals bring into the room with them, and what the room requires them to leave behind.” [78:15]

Join in on further conversation through Patreon and Discord, and get ready for the next arc featuring the Battle of Hogwarts, “half-blood superlatives,” and the deep dive into Harry J. Potter.

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[Be critical and stay magical!]

Transcript

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Life doesn't wait. The kids outgrow the old couch, the fridge stops working, and sometimes you just want to treat yourself to a bigger tv. That's where errands comes in. Shop thousands of products from top brands in furniture, electronics, appliances and more. Find what you love, take it home, pay over time, and once you're done, it's yours. Because getting what you need for your home should feel easy. Shoperrands.com or visit your local errands store today. Approval not guaranteed. Restrictions apply. See stores for details. 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 we are finally getting down to business and talking about Seamus Finnegan. If you didn't get that reference because you were too young, you need to learn your history. And we're going to be talking a little bit about history in this episode. So it's apropos to say that you need to know your Disney history. And yes, Disney's Mulan from the late 90s is fraught with all kinds of problems, but the music is boptastic. And so perhaps you should invest your time in learning about it and knowing your history. That's the problem with the I'm not even going to get into it, friends. I'm not going to get into the details, the nitty, the gritty, because we have things to talk about. Okay, we are talking about Seamus Finnegan today, and I am really excited Because Seamus takes us on a journey, even though he's not very well represented in the text in meaningful ways across the series, as some of the other secondary and tertiary characters are. What we do get from Seamus is. Is a discussion about something that we've not really discussed for other characters in, like, a meaningful way, which is the role of, like, nationality and ethnicity. Right. And how we understand those things. And so we are going to be diving into all of that for this episode. We didn't get that many people taking the survey on Seamus, which I totally get, because many of us may not have even had any thoughts on Seamus. We, many of us are saving and biding our time for Harry Potter. And I get it, I understand it, and so let's honor that. But what we did get in the survey is rich. I'm talking Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, vaults in the bottom floor of Gringotts, guarded by a dragon. Rich. Like, there's a lot there for us to unpack and discuss.

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And I cannot wait to do that because, again, I think in a way that I was actually surprised by as I was preparing this episode, I think Seamus offers us something really, really insightful. And also there are a lot of things working underneath the hood. And we're also going to be spending a little time talking about the movies, which we do on occasion, but we're definitely going to do here because I think in a way that is similar to, say, the Patil Twins and maybe less so Cho Chang, there is a way that Seamus's Irishness is projected to us on the page in certain ways. But when we look at it in the context of the movies, there is a clear directive and a clear intention behind some of the choices that were made, but that were created for the films and not for. Not in the books. Right. And so we're getting into all of it because I think that there's a world where we have to kind of be intentional about what we. How we understand this character. Right. Have you ever wondered whether the boy who blew up his feather in first year and then showed up beaten and unrecognizable in seventh was the same person? Or whether there was a kind of development and thinking specifically about how we understand his identity as a half blood in the midst of that? Or whether believing your mother over your roommate is a character flaw? Or just what 15 looks like inside a propaganda machine? Or whether the hardest thing Seamus Finnegan ever did wasn't fighting the Carrows, but walking across a dormitory to tell someone he was wrong, y'. All. We are getting into all of it today and I can't wait. Hashtag bars. But before we get into it, you knew. You knew what was coming and you were ready. You're already ready. You are. You're preemptively bopping because the bop is coming to you. In three, in two, in one. Let's bop. We need to talk about Harry Potter. Sa. I hope you danced and if you didn't, I hope you had a good reason for not dancing. If you're driving, don't dance. If you're injured, don't dance. You know, I haven't said it in a while, but it bears repeating. I'm not in charge of any issues that occur if you bop too close to the sun. I've told you the tale of the one time when I was in college I bopped too close to the sun and gave myself whiplash and had to wrap a blanket around my neck for a couple of days because my neck muscles were so sore. Don't do that because I don't have that kind of insurance. So like just bop within the constraints of your physical ability because I can't be made responsible for any sort of physical related injuries that are sustained while you're bopping. All right, friends, welcome back. Welcome to those of you who are catching up. To those of you who are joining us for the first time. To those of you who have been here since the very beginning. I am so happy that we are back. I'm so happy to be talking about Seamus because there's a lot for us to unpack and I think that many of us will have many things to say in the post episode chat on Patreon. Patreon.com criticalmagic theory because some, some of us came with some pretty hot takes and I think that some of my takes might be a little hot today too. So get ready for that. So join us on Patreon for free to join in that post episode chat if you are an outstanding OWL or a deep diver or chronic overthinker. You also get perks if you sign up for a paid subscription. So feel free to do that. If signing up is not something that you feel comfortable doing or you're not in the position to be able to do, that's that's totally fine in this economy with the price of gas and groceries and literally everything else as they are friends, I get it and I completely respect the decisions that we are making to try to just make it day by day. But you can also support in Ways that don't require you to swipe a card. You can tell your friends, you can rate, you can support, you can leave comments on the Spotify, you can post it on your social media. I love sharing it on Instagram when you all are listening. And again, and I don't care what episode you're on, like, just share it. I love letting people know that other people are listening and that they should get on it too. Because that's what we do. We pressure people in a good way to do something good. Okay. Nothing bad, nothing untoward. Okay. If you're a chronic overthinker or a deep diver, you can join our discord where we have all the conversations. There's a live episode chat that tends to happen. There are many a thing and that gives you more access to me if that's a thing that you're interested in. If you're like, I have enough when I listen to the episodes. Also understandable. Also speaking of, I have been doing a lot of guest spots on podcasts as of late. So I was on the most recent episode of potterversity and I think the most recent episode of the Retold podcast where on that podcast we talked about like the greatest hits of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was a lot of fun. And so if you're interested in hearing me talk more things about more things, please feel free to check those out. I will link them in the episode summary. I will also be linking in the episode summary the Harry Potter survey because I think it's time. I want to give us as much time as we possibly can to get prepared for Harry J. Potter. It's going to be a time I know we have thoughts. I'm still trying to hold off a little bit for the purposes of making sure that everyone who is catching up, because I know that that is many of us are as close as possible. Okay. Cause I'm looking out for you, I care for you and I want you to be here on this journey as we talk about the titular character. So after the Prof. Response episode on Seamus, we're gonna talk about the Battle of Hogwarts and we're gonna go through and kind of do like who is the best half blood hero type vibe. Because a lot of that conversation is being had here and it's all being had in the context of the Battle of Hogwarts and whether people were involved and how we understand the role of that battle in terms of determining who is deserving of the title of hero and who is not. And it's come up for a lot of characters. And I wanted us to get through Seamus so that we could be fully informed when we have this conversation. And then we will do Harry, and then we will do kind of the Best of the Best, our Superlatives episode on Half Bloods. And then we're going to have a conversation about various topics that you all will choose. I'm going to put out a survey and you all are going to tell me what you want me to talk about for the summer. And we're going to do that over the summer so that we can just kind of vibe out. And then in the fall we will return with the conversation about Muggle Borns. And I've already decided that we're going to start with Lily Evans coming in hot. And so that's, that's our plan. That's our plan. But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to back it up, back it up, back it up and talk about Seamus. So I'm going to play some music so that you can get your thoughts and minds ready for that. And then we're in it.

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When I had to Think of my favorite moment involving Seamus. I really had to dive. Dive in because Seamus is one of these characters, like many of the Half Bloods, that we've talked about thus far, who kind of is on the periphery there, but not really there. Just kind of like doing a thing until he pops up, does something of consequence, and then kind of fades back again. And so. But then there was a moment that I thought about a lot, and I thought, oh, actually, this tells us a story. And I really do appreciate this moment. And it's the moment, in Order of the Phoenix, where Seamus has to apologize to Harry or doesn't have to. That's the whole point. He doesn't have to where he apologizes to Harry. And I think in a series where people do not apologize a lot for a lot of the wrongs that they do, right? There's a way in which, like, many of these characters operate from a space of, like, it's totally fine that you made me feel like crap. And, like, we can just kind of look past it. We'll gloss over it, you know, and the people who probably should be apologizing aren't apologizing. And so it is really a novelty, at least to me, when there is a character, particularly a boy character, who plucks up the courage because it is courageous to say that you're sorry that you were wrong about something. And there's a way that, you know, we can. Can hold the righteous and, like, warranted indignation that Harry has towards Seamus and his treatment of Harry. We can hold that in conversation with the fact that, like, Seamus is a. As a citizen of a society that, like, is particularly in this. In that moment, in order, the Phoenix infiltrated with propaganda that makes it so difficult to know what is true. And we are currently, many of us across the world are living in a time where we are navigating what is real and what is not, right? The AI of it all, the fake news of it all, the propaganda of it all. Like, we are really trying our hardest to try and grasp as best we can, truth. And there was a time where it felt very easy to be able to discern that. But now we're operating in spaces and places where it is really difficult to truly know what's real, what's not, who is a trusted source? How do we navigate biases, right? And so that the idea that this child, because it's something you all love to remind me of when I am coming for our favorite girly one, Hermione Jean, that, like, these are children in A world that has conditioned them to trust the system blindly under the auspices that it cares about them. And it is doing all of that it's doing to protect them from lies. And up until Order of the Phoenix, we've had no reason to fundamentally believe that the Ministry of Magic was operating from a space of deception. There was no reason for us to believe that. So there's really no reason for us to kind of operate from the idea that, like, Seamus is completely off base and that Seamus's mom is completely off base. Because the reality of the situation is everything leading up to this and even post this, right? Like Harry, Ron and Hermione are always shaken to their core when they find out that the Ministry is up to hijinks, madness, absurdity and foolishness. And it's like, but were you all there when they did this? And so there is a fundamental trust in the system that all these children have and that all of the parents and most. Well, I shouldn't say all, but most of the adults have. And so with that as the backdrop to then turn around after, you know, you see kind of the Ministry for what it is and say, hey, I'm sorry. That is not easy. Many of us don't like to apologize for things when we know we're wrong. Maybe I'm just talking to myself and if so, okay, I don't love an apology. I'm a Gemini. And especially because I love being right. And so for Seamus to take that on and really apologize for believing in the thing that you've been conditioned to believe in. Right, like, that is not. If we blame people for that, then we are all at fault because there are truths that feel right to us that are not true. And I think we operate from a space where. Where truth is objective, but the reality is, is that it simply is not. And there are a lot of things moving around, right? There are. There are. And we spend a lot of time talking about characters who operate in this kind of gray space. And I think we're living in a time now where we're also living in the gray space. The what? The gray space of truth. And for Seamus to have to come to that realization and name the idea that I was wrong and I'm sorry for the way that I treated you. I love that moment. Because, again, it's not something that we get very much in these books. And it certainly is not something that we get very much in real life, either.

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[A]

When I asked you all, what is one word that you would use to describe Seamus? The top three words were Irish by a wide margin, stubborn and Loial. Loyal is back because it never goes away. Loyal is back and it's here to stay. New hit single, it's called Loial, coming to a streaming platform near you. Soon, and very soon I am going to spend more time on the Stubborn and the Loyal because the reflection is going to talk about the Irish part. And so we have to wait. And I know that's me being a tease and I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not, partially because I think that the reflection is very good. Now, admittedly I wrote it, so I'm biased, however, simultaneously, concurrently, and I think you'll like it and I think it'll give us a lot to talk about. So stubborn again. You know, I think that a lot of this comes from the kind of his unwillingness to believe what we as readers observe as what's right in front of him. And I think, and we'll talk about this a lot, because I think this particular moment in the series is one that a lot of us have at the forefront of our minds when we think about Seamus. But the reality of the situation is, is that so many of us are motivated by what we don't want to be real and true. Like, I think there's a world where some of us operate as like I want, I always want to know what's true. And here's the thing. Ignorance is bliss. It truly is. And the older I get, the more I realize that. And I think that I don't condone what Cornelius Fudge and the other kind of higher ups at the Ministry do in terms of the propaganda machine, the lies. But we can understand, at least in part, why the. Why the citizenry is absolutely not interested in hearing that Voldemort has come back. As I've been reading up on all of this stuff on the hantavirus that has been kind of circulating, I'm very much like, it's not back. I'm reading anything and everything that tells me, like, chill, it's not what you think it is. Because I just don't want it to be true now, when I have to get faced with it, that's one thing. But, like, in this current time, this moment in which we find ourselves, I'm like, no, sorry, girl, I don't want it. You can keep it. Like, send it back, return to cinder. Does that make me stubborn, really? If even. And granted that this is a different example because, like, the medical professionals are telling us this thing, right? But, like, there's a way in which I think, again, that that subjectivity of truth coupled with the thing that you simply don't want to be true. And there's a way that, like, that's hard to navigate because, like. And maybe he is stubborn. Maybe it is stubbornness to say, like, my mom says that that's not true and that you're a liar and that his mother's motivations are both, you know, for her own reasons of, like, I simply don't want to believe it. I don't want to go through this again. It also, like, it's like, the circumstances that occurred were crazy and feel, like, very off kilter. So it's like, yeah, I'm not interested in that. And maybe it is. Maybe it's stubborn, but also, like, yeah, maybe it's stubborn. Maybe it is. Friends, I don't know. I'm conflicted about this. Personally. I am conflicted because I'm like, stubbornness, to me suggests that he actively is just denying what is undeniably true. And in this moment, no one has seen Voldiva. And I get the idea, though, right? Like, on average, we are so trustworthy of Dumbledore, we've trust him for literally everything else. And then on, at the drop of a hat, we don't trust him anymore because we don't want to believe that what he's saying is true. But wouldn't we want more evidence? Wouldn't we want, like, I don't know, y'. All. I'm struggling with this. I'm struggling with this because I. I understand part of it is saying, like, yeah, he's being stubborn. And stupid. Because obviously Voldemort's back. But like, is it obvious at the beginning of Order the Phoenix, Is it obvious? But he's back. And what's more is you're asking me to go against the very structure and machine that I've put my entire faith in for so long. Like, many of us fight against a lot of our impulses to trust the powers that be, especially when we have been the recipients of privileges that come along with buying into whatever the machine is pushing out. And now all of a sudden, we're supposed to not believe that machine anymore. Like, it feels like a very high bar to hold someone, especially a child, especially a child who's listening to their parent. Is it stubbornness? I. I don't know. Let's talk about it in the post episode chat. Friends, I'm. I'm fighting on this one. And I don't really know what's going on. I don't know, like, what to think, what to feel. You'll tell me. You'll tell me. You'll tell me what to do. And I appreciate you all for that in advance. And loyal. We love this word. This is our word. This is our word. I think Cassie's doing a count. And so we will have, by the time we finish this entire kind of arc of our character study analysis, we will have a full tilt, empirical investigation into the words that came up the most across all of the characters. And that is gonna be fun. And I feel very strongly that loyal is gonna be number one. And I do think that there is a loyalty here in Seamus, not only because he apologized, but then he joins the da. He is there getting battered, bruised, beat and destroyed by the Karrows, while the trio is on the Horcrux hunt. And he's fighting the good fight. He's fighting the good fight. And there is a way in which, like, you have to have a kind of loyalty to something. And what's more, watch this. Watch this. Watch, watch, watch. Watch what I do. His loyalty might be the reason why he is behaving in ways that we would characterize as stubborn, right? Because he's loyal to the Ministry. And why wouldn't he be? Like, why wouldn't he be loyal to the Ministry? Again, up until this moment, we've been given no reason to believe that they're lying. Even though we know, right, as readers, we know that they've been lying. But even then, like, even about Sirius, even about all of these things, right? Harry still has faith in the Ministry. Harry can't believe what's going on at the beginning of Order of the Phoenix? Like he has to be repeatedly told and then shown the propaganda machine against him. Right. And even he is shook by it. So why wouldn't we expect Seamus to be? I didn't mean to come back to stubborn, but I think that Seamus loyalty to the Ministry makes him do things that make us see him or makes Harry see him and then us by proxy see him as stubborn. And that is something I hope we get to talk about, As always. Is Seamus Finnegan a good person? Is our first question. About 86.2% of us said yes, 0% of us said no, and 13.8% of us said don't know. Someone wrote, there's nothing there to suggest he's a bad person. He is curious and enthusiastic. He's quite funny in places. And there's just nothing there that makes me think he's bad. Really? The falling out with Harry in Order of the Phoenix, maybe. But it's not enough to make me say he's not good. Someone else wrote, we all know a Seamus. He's not inherently bad, but he's stubborn and takes a while to come around. He's more interested in himself than helping others, but will be there when it counts. Someone else wrote, I don't think Seamus is a bad person at all, but I think he is the least kind of the five Gryffindor boys. Then again, we're probably biased looking at him from Harry's POV because he's definitely the least fond of Harry as well. It's my turn.

[B]

Oh,

[A]

yeah. I have to keep those briefer. That was. That'll probably be the longest one in the episode because we have things to discuss and I don't have time to give you a full solo, friends. We've got things to talk about. I think Sheamus is a good person. I certainly don't think we have enough. And I think that the 0% of people saying he's a bad person is very telling because it is rare that we have that zero. I think we. There's a level of ambivalence. Right. And again, I think part of our perspective on Seamus is born out of the fact that we are in Harry's point of view, as somebody wrote. And so we know that we know what is meant to be perceived as the truth. And so when we see someone not believing it, we're like, hello, do you know anything? And the answer is no. He doesn't know anything. He only knows what we are allowed to kind of. He only knows what he's allowed to know. And I think that this is what makes Seamus so fascinating in this regard, right, is that it really does invite us to have to answer a meaningful question about, you know, the wizarding world's citizenry, right? Because in many ways Seamus is a rank and file member of the citizenry, right? He is just a regular person. He's a regular half blood boy doing regular half blood boy stuff. And we spend so much time in the kind of extraordinary space that Harry occupies that we have an expectation of everyone else based on Harry's particular and specific circumstance. So that when we start to juxtapose what is good and what is bad, in some ways I think we're a bit skewed for some of our characters because, yeah, like does he buy into the propaganda machine? Sure. Was he the only one? No. You know who else bought into a propaganda machine? Molly Weasley. And some of us were very mad at her about that as well, me included. Because when she read that Rita Skeeter article and sent her money that small a. I said, sis, what are we up to? Right? Like this is something that people do. They read the news, they believe it, they keep it moving because there's a belief in the truthfulness of the powers that be. And so I don't think that being a citizen of a society makes you bad. Seamus barely even acts on it. I mean he is dubious of Harry, sure, but like I'm sure that there were a lot of people who were dubious of Harry during that book and I don't know that we would call them bad people. They have every reason to be dubious of him because this kid has brought mayhem, madness, absurdity and foolishness to Hogwarts since day one. Since day one people have are out here, get. I mean these people thought Harry was the heir of Slytherin. Why wouldn't they think that he's a liar? Like clearly the wind blows one way and everybody goes with the wind and then it blows another one and they're going in the opposite direction. Like that's just the way that things work sometimes. And if that's the case, if that is true, that those people are maybe gullible, easily influenced, but not bad. And so I think that this makes sense. There's a reason why almost 87% of us said he's not a bad, he's a good person. Because yeah, like he's a child who believes in the system. How many of us were, are could be those people? And I don't know that we would allow that to characterize. I don't know that we would use that as a means by which to characterize us or other people in our orbit as bad. Uninformed, perhaps, but not bad. But I'm also interested in that delineation. Like how do we arrive at, at what point does that become bad? Like what would we have needed to see from Seamus? Because many of us have thoughts on him, but none of us said he was a bad person. And I'm wondering, and it's interesting to think about what we would have wanted to see in order to make that distinction. Because I think that there is something there for us to think about. And maybe we'll talk about that in our Superlitus episode. Perhaps, if you're up for it. Is Seamus Finnegan a good friend? 57% of us said yes, about 20% of us said no, and about 23% of us said don't know. This is chaos. Welcome back my old friend. I knew this question was gonna be the one that was crazy. Anyways, you get it? It's my new hit single, Good Friend, also coming forth on the upcoming ep. So just, just keep a lookout for that. It's going to be called Shanann again. I don't know why you all put up with me. Someone wrote picture this. Your roommate comes out of the arena with a corpse and tells the headmaster that the most evil wizard ever is back. The wizard government and media immediately say nope. And your trusted adult believes the government because why wouldn't she? Yeah, I don't think I'd be a perfect friend in this specific scenario either. Someone else wrote Seamus is one of the only examples we see of non toxic masculinity in the series. His running at his best friend after seeing him return justice for Seamus. He deserved better than to have his name dragged through the mud for not believing Harry in Year five. Someone else wrote, it's not every day a child or any person has the strength and conviction to not only recognize their wrongs, but fight their parents and push back on their ideology's forefront. He sent Harry's interview in the Quibbler to his mom and was like, you're wrong. Another person wrote, when Ron is microaggressing Dean, Seamus stays quiet and doesn't defend Dean. He's quiet when his voice could really matter and loud when his opinion is is a regurgitation of what someone else has told him. And finally, someone wrote, once he accepts that Harry has been telling the truth all along, he really becomes a ride or die friend and is completely committed to the cause. I think his biggest moment of growth is when he finally breaks from his mother, admits he was wrong and sides with Harry. That's not an easy thing to do. And it really speaks to the very definitions of bravery embodied by so many Gryffindors. And here we have it. Is Seamus Bennegan a good friend? Well, it's my turn. I think so. I think there is a world where the sheer act of saying, you know what? I have to make a decision for myself. And I've decided that I'm gonna stand with this person, which is to say nothing of his relationship and friendship with Dean, which we know is so tight and basically brotherly. Fanfic might offer us another explanation, but we're not gonna get into it right now because we're talking about friends. But I think that there is a way that being a friend doesn't always mean. Okay, here's why I'll say it. I had to get my mind together. Sometimes our friends get up to hijinks, madness, absurdity, foolishness, and we have to be the ones to be like, I'm not standing with you on that. That doesn't mean we're a bad friend. Like, sometimes you have to use your own discernment. And sometimes it takes you a little while to get on board with some of the things that your friends are saying and doing. Like, yeah, the stakes here feel high, of course. But again, it's also difficult to go against the trusted adult in your life and say you're wrong as a child, as a person who has to go back to that home and navigate life with that person over the summer and just be with that person. You spent your entire existence trusting this particular person, and now all of a sudden, you have to jettison that. I think that there's a world where, like, the journey that he goes on to arrive at recognizing Harry's truth is one that many of us have been in. In one shape and. Or form. And that there is a world where we have to be generous enough to recognize that particular reality. That what Seamus, how he navigates that space is not so kind of outside the realm of understanding that we occupy. Like, many of us will say, like, I'll support, you know, Hermione's rights and her wrongs. And there's a way that that is great. That doesn't make you a good friend, though. In some ways it could make you an enabler. That's not a good friend. You have to arrive at things in your own time and in your own way. Like, that's just truth. And I would never ask my friend, like, if they don't believe in what I'm doing, that's a conversation to be had. Also, I'm almost 37 years old. I'm not 15. At 15 the world feels very black and white. It's like, well, it's true. Or it's not like, think about your friendships at 15. And what's more is like Ronald Milius Weasley was dropping Harry and Hermione for less. And people still argue that he and Will argue you down to the ground that he was a good friend. So I just, I'm not convinced that like for those people who are leveraging his, his dubiousness over Harry's revelation in order the Phoenix as a means by which to say he's not a good friend. I think, I think that what the passages that I read here offer us is the kind of counter to that, which is, yes, but when the time came and he came to the conclusion, not only did he apologize, he literally said, mom, you're not right. Like he, he, he pushed back against his mother and said, no, that's my friend. I'm going to stand beside him. And that is telling some, that is so telling about who he is and the substance of which he is made of. Of which he is made. Of which he is made. I was trying to be fancy when I said that and just didn't hit. So anyways, you get what I'm saying. I think that Seamus is a good friend and I think that seeing his friendship with Dean offers us that. To see, offers us the ability to see that as well. And that didn't really come up a lot. But I do think that it's very meaningful to watch these two boys be, be such good friends. Especially because, like, while, yeah, we know that Harry and Ron are good friends, like their friendship feels very stilted in some ways. But that's just me and we'll talk about that for Harry's episode. I'm just throwing it out there. Okay, I'm just throwing it out there. But for me, I think Sheamus is a good friend.

[C]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[B]

This is the story of the 1. As a procurement manager for a hospital system, she keeps every facility in her network stocked and ready. That's why she counts on Grainger to be her single source for thousands of products, from disinfectants to lighting, air filters, and more. And with fast, dependable delivery, Grainger helps her keep every facility facility stopped safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[A]

Is Seamus Finnegan a Good Gryffindor? About 68% of us said yes, about 9% of us said no and about 23% of us said don't no, someone wrote. While the Golden Trio was off hunting Horcruxes, Seamus stayed on the front lines of the student resistance. He took the Kairos torture on the chin literally, with a face so bruised and beaten that Harry barely recognized him at the Room of Requirement. That's Gryffindor bravery in his purest, most stubborn form. Someone else wrote, Schleamus is loud and proud to be Gryffindor almost as much as he is loud and proud to be Irish in Quidditch, in the House cup, and in general in Goblet of Fire, when everyone's talking about who could be the Hogwarts champion. Cedric shows active disdain for Cedric and states that he wants a Gryffindor champion. And through the series he definitely shows bravery, culminating in Deathly Hallows when he is part of the DA Resistance movement all year while the castle is under Death Eater rule, fighting in the Battle of Hogwarts and surviving to the end of the but that's not just a Gryffindor thing. Several members of other houses also do this. Bravery can exist in any and every house. He's definitely a proud Gryffindor, but I'm not totally convinced about a good Gryffindor. And one more person wrote, I think it's important to remember that Seamus is Irish and is stereotypically quote unquote, controlled by his mom. It's hard to pass a judgment on who he is as a person as they make it or break it as the make it or break it moment for him was in order of the Phoenix and he chose to follow his mom's orders until the Quibbler article comes out and he and his mom are forced to reconsider their views. This made me answer don't know. For the bravery and Gryffindor questions, Is it brave to go against the rest of the boys in your dorm and stand by your mom. Or was it his own belief? It's my turn. Yes, it is. And I have some things to say. Say. I think that at the end of the day, when we think about how we reconcile what Gryffindor ness is, I think that there's a world where Seamus occupies the space, right? There is this kind of like, you know, I know that we don't like the word reckless. I know that Gryffindors tend to really be mad at me when I use that language to describe them. And I understand it kind of. But I do think that Seamus occupies a space that is very experimental, we'll say, right? Like, he's brave enough to try to turn water into rum. Like, why? Just because you want to see if you can do it in a world where, like, things could go wrong so easily. He just seems to be very willing to play around. And there is a bravery in that experimentation. And I know that some of us would say, well, maybe that curiosity is more Ravenclaw and perhaps. But to be clear, he's not like, reading up on anything. He's just like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. I want to see if I can do it right. There is just a space that he occupies that I think there is a. A lack, there's a lack of. Or there's a greater amount of abandon that he has that he's just like, well, we'll try it out, see what happens, hope for the best and go with it. And I love that. And I also think that that is very Gryffindor. And I also want to bring us back to the. Bring us back to something that someone else wrote earlier as it pertains to him apologizing and what it takes to actually apologize to someone and admit you're wrong. And, you know, one of the things that Dumbledore says of Neville in the first book in the series is, you know, it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends. Right. I also do think, and I would add to this the idea that it also takes a great deal of courage to admit when you're wrong, not only to yourself, but to the person who you wronged. And the fact that Seamus does that and does it in the face of his mom, Right? And, you know, we don't need to lean on any stereotypes that may or may not exist about, like, Irish individuals and their. And their parents, right? But for. Because for any of us, right, for those of us who have tight relationships with our moms or with maternal figures in our lives, there is a way that doing that actually is a really difficult and brave thing to do because you don't really know what their reaction is gonna be. And so I think that there is a world where Seamus offers us a diff. Well, both the kind of traditionally understood idea of what it means to be Gryffindor, but also a different side that I think actually, and some of us may disagree with this, it leans a little bit more in the Neville camp because there are other moments that are simply much kind of more muted versions of bravery. Things that, you know, don't require Bronn, but rather just require empathy and understanding and growth. And it's interesting because in some ways, I'm like, Seamus gives us an arc in Order of the Phoenix. Like, we actually do see him have to shift and change. And changing is brave, especially in a world where, like, you don't have to. Because here's the thing, right? And I know we've talked about this ad nauseam, but I think it is really important to recognize the bravery of what it is to not only stand in the face of your mom, but like the rest of society. Everyone wants to believe that Harry's a fraud. Everyone wants to believe that he's crazy. Everyone wants to believe that Dumbledore is, like, out here just peddling nonsense for the sake of trying to get power from the ministry. And so the gag is, is that Seamus is in the majority for the front end of Order of the Phoenix, right? Like he is with everyone else. And whether or not they are wrong or right in some ways is inconsequential to the fact that, like, his decision to turn around and support Harry is him going against the grain in a way that puts him in jeopardy in, like, societal danger in no uncertain terms. And so there's a bravery in that because it is significantly easier to go with the flow. It's so much easier to just let what other people are thinking and saying and allowing that to be the current that you ride until such a time where you decide whether or not this is a space you want to stay in. And he doesn't do that. He goes against the grain. He goes against his mom. He goes against what everyone wants to believe, maybe even what he wants to believe. And that, to me, is brave and some might say reckless, because you're challenging the system. Like, in a space where even before Voldiva takes power, we're moving into an authoritarian space, right? Like, we're moving into a space where the Minister of Magic is controlling the narrative by way of controlling the media. And Seamus is like, I'm going to read the Quibbler and that's going to be the thing that I now allow for me to change my mind. It's kind of brave, I think. I know. I believe. Foreign.

[C]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more, and all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So you, your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[B]

This is the story of the One As a procurement manager for a hospital system, she keeps every facility in her network stocked and ready. That's why she counts on Grainger to be her single source for thousands of products, from disinfectants to lighting, air filters and more. And with fast, dependable delivery, Grainger helps her keep every facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[A]

Is Seamus Finnegan a good half blood? About 40% of us said yes, about 17% of us said no, and about 44% of us said don't know. Someone wrote, Seamus and Dean are kind of two sides of a coin. They're both half bloods, but Dean has been raised with a Muggle family and Seamus with a magical one. Seamus definitely does assimilate well into the hierarchy of the wizarding world, but he does bring some of his passion for his homeland as well, and fights in his own way against pure blood supremacy. Someone else wrote, he in no way references the Muggle world or tries to bridge the gap to the point I would say he wouldn't even know he was half blood if it wasn't for the fact that he brought it up himself on the first night of school. His Muggle father doesn't seem to be in the picture at all. And another person wrote, you would think he would be the kind of character that can actually bridge those Muggle magical worlds. Yet I don't recall him ever really talking about Muggle culture. It's my turn. I think that this is one of these moments where what's interesting about this is the fact that obviously Seamus was socialized very much in the magical world, right? Like him having a Muggle dad doesn't really mean that much in terms of his own kind of understanding of the world. Right. Like it seems to me that either his father is very much like, you know, you are magical and so your mom gets to teach you all the magical things. We don't know if his dad is in the picture. We don't know what the circumstances of that are. We only really get to hear that one moment about his dad and how his dad was shocked when he found out that his mom was a witch. But what we do know and what's clear, right, is that both he and his mom are very, very, very much part of the magical community. And so in that way I think, you know, he does not try to bridge the world. Like that's not his goal. I think for him he is someone who is of the half blood contingent that when you are socialized in the magical world, the invitation is to leave behind anything that is not magical. And there's no reason for us to believe that he would even feel compelled to bridge that gap. I think Dean is one of the few half bloods that we meet who offers us the opportunity to see what that would even look like and to truly understand it. And what is fascinating about it is that he is a Muggle raised person who didn't know he was magical. And that is meaningful because, and what's more, he's not like Harry who is trying to get away. And when you are socialized in a world where your entire understanding is, well, we are inherently better because we can do magic, why would you bridge the gap? Why would that be an inclination that you have? Bridging the gap suggests that there is not an identity in the kind of biraciality doesn't work here, but like in the, the coupling of magical and non magical, that there is a uniformity, right, that there's an equality of experience and appreciation that a person embodies. And why would you have that? If you're Seamus and you are living and growing up in a magical space? We know how they socialize people to think about these things. And there's no reason for us to believe that he should, he would or should be exempt from the pre existing ideas that are put forth by the magical society and thus undoubtedly by his mother. And if indeed his dad is part of the picture, he's not, he doesn't seem to be pushing that hard to have Seamus appreciate anything about the non magical world. So in some ways I think Seamus is as good of a half blood as we might expect him. To be given the circumstances. Because here's the thing. The fact that he's willing to talk about his dad at all and say this is who I am, tells us that he doesn't subscribe fully, at least to the kind of strictness of pure blood supremacy. Because you could lie and he doesn't. And he not only. And the composition of his half bloodedness is inclusive of a non magical person directly like he is. He's got a dad who's not magical. Which is a very different dynamic at work than say someone who has two half blood parents or a pure blood and a Muggle born parent. Right? Like he has a non magical parent and that's meaningful. And so there is a pride in that because he tells everybody about it from the beginning. He doesn't. So maybe pride isn't the word. But he's not ashamed of it. And I think that that is telling, especially given the nature of the wizarding world and society and the expectations they're in. So I'm gonna go with that. I think he is as good of a half blood as he can be given the circumstances that he's in. And that is what we call, my friends, a cop out.

[B]

This is the story of the 1. As a procurement manager for a hospital system, she keeps every facility in her network stocked and ready. That's why she counts on Grainger to be her single source for thousands of products, from disinfectants to lighting, air filters and more. And with fast, dependable delivery, Ranger helps her keep every facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[C]

This is the story of the 1. As a maintenance tech at a university, he knows ordering from multiple suppliers takes time away from keeping their arena up and running. That's why he counts on Grainger to get everything he needs, from lighting and H vac parts to plumbing supplies, all in one place. And with fast, dependable delivery, he's stocked and ready for the next tip off. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[A]

I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

[B]

So what's the problem?

[A]

That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.

[B]

Maybe there's no catch.

[A]

That's exactly what a catch Would want

[B]

me to think, wow, you need to relax.

[A]

I need to knock on wood. Do we have. What is this table wood?

[B]

I think it's laminate.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

[B]

Car selling without a catch Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply.

[A]

Is Seamus Finnegan a hero? About 51% of us said yes. About 24% of us said no. And about 25% of us said, don't know. Someone else wrote, not someone else, someone else. No. Someone wrote, he is a good person and friend in my eyes. He steps up when needed. He got beat the F up in his seventh year to the point of Harry being like, huh, is that Seamus? In order to fight the tomfoolery going on at that school. Someone else wrote, Seamus heroism peaks at the Battle of Hogwarts where alongside luna and Ernie McMillan he drives back a swarm of dementors. At the moment, Harry's own strength is failing. By saving the trio, he keeps the Horcrux hunt alive long enough to reach its conclusion. That's load bearing heroism. And someone else wrote, if Dean isn't a hero, Seamus definitely doesn't get that crown. We see the beginning of what could be a redemption arc in Deathly Hallows, but not enough to say, yes, hero. He does fight in the battle, but it feels like he's just there. It's my turn. This is a tricky one for me and part of me is like our barometer has always been Battle of Hogwarts participation as hero. That we've always said, if you fought in the Battle of Hogwarts, then you are a hero. And thus bing bang bong, that's it. And I don't know why that should change for Seamus. I also think that when we think about, you know, who was going up against the regime in Hogwarts, as Voldemort had taken over the wizarding world, as the Carols were doing everything, as Snape was headmaster, we had Luna, who is a presumptive pureblood. Ginny, who we know is one. Neville, who we know is one. And part of the reason why they were willing to do that was because they knew that they wouldn't navigate any. Well, they wouldn't die, right? They knew they were safe because they were purebloods. Seamus doesn't have that security blanket. And I'm sure that there were other half bloods who were also leading the charge. But the fact that Seamus had been so utterly abused and still kept fighting and kind of wore it as a badge of honor tells us a very specific kind of story about who he is and what he's willing to endure, both just as a student in general, but also as a person who does not have the safety net that is pure bloodedness. And the fact that he's willing and actively engaging in dissent the way that he is, tells us something very specific. And I think that's heroic because we often talk about skin in the game. And, you know, I think there is something to be said about using the Battle of Hogwarts as our barometer. And I'm excited to have that conversation in the next couple episodes once we do the Prof. Response episodes for Seamus. But I also think about the danger that he put himself in while being a student at Hogwarts and what that means and how he could have done what I'm sure many half bloods did who weren't willing to put themselves in danger because they could have been killed, because they don't care about half Bloods, they care about pure bloods. And sure, you're more privileged than Muggle Borns, but what are the bounds on that? What are the scope conditions? Are you always that safe? Are you always good? I don't know. I don't know that that's a safe bet to place. And so the fact that he was willing to do that, right, like Voldemort didn't want to spill pure blood, but Seamus doesn't have that. And if the abuse that he weathered is any indication of that, he could have died. He actually could have died and no one would have thought anything of it. We know that half bloods, particularly those who hold a certain ideology, are not seen in a particularly positive light. Right. Bellatrix calls Harry a filthy half blood when he tells her that Voldiva Voldema is half blood. So it's not as if they don't also navigate their own sense of subjugation within the broader space. And so the idea then that he's willing to engage in this kind of behavior in the face of the Karos and what could be death, and he does it anyway, is something, and it matters as far as I'm concerned in terms of thinking about what his heroism means outside of his participation in the Battle of Hogwarts. We've now reached the point in the episode where I, I want to reflect on the number one word to describe Seamus. Irish. Not loyal, not stubborn. Those were there not brave Irish that has in the history thus far of the podcast never happened where we've had someone be described by their nationality. When we asked listeners to describe Dean Thomas in one word, they said loyalty. Villainous for Umbridge, brave for Neville. We have never received nationality or ethnicity as the primary descriptor for any character. No one said black for Dean or Asian for Cho, or South Asian for the Patel twins. We named their choices, their relationships, the moral weight. When we got to Seamus, though, the word that came back is where he's from. And that teaches us something. Looking at how Rowling constructs identity across the text tells us very specific things about how we as readers are meant to understand identity for black characters. She simply tells us Dean Thomas is black. Blaze Zabini is not until he is. For characters of color, the name does the work, right? Cho Chang or other characters of color, I should say Cho Chang, Parvati and Padma Patil. The name signals race and ethnicity, but nationality remains unspecified, and nothing in the text reaches past the name to make the identity more noticeable or legible to us as readers. Its name is recognition and as representation. And then she moves on. And those characters exist in the story the way, I don't know furniture exists in any given room. It's there, you see it, but it's not anything that you are examining in any meaningful or deep way. The failure in that context is erasure. But in many ways, Seamus operates by a completely different logic. Because while Seamus Finnegan as a name already does a lot of work, it announces his ethnicity clearly enough for anyone paying attention. But white ethnicity tends to function this way when it comes to representation. You get the name, maybe an accent, and the cultural identity recedes into the background because whiteness provides a cover, the character gets to be without their difference, constantly interrupting them. But it seems to me that JKR doesn't just trust that the name is going to do the work the way that it did for Cho Chang or the Patil twins. She keeps returning to his Irishness as a source of content. The explosions, the failed attempts to turn water to rum, the hot headedness. His mom, apparently. Right, I should preface this by saying that I'm learning a lot from you all's open ended responses about these things, because I don't know if you knew this, but I'm American. Okay, Revelations. We've got to keep our relationship fresh, friends, so I'm just providing you with new information that you didn't know. As one listener put it, JKR basically named him Irish Mac Ireland and stopped creating his personality there. And another asked the question the text never asks or the text never answers. Why is the only explicitly Irish character, the only character who makes things Explode Irishness, it seems, for jkr arrives with a preconceived idea of what it means. It came with a set of associations that she could reach for. The way you reach for a font, right? Or not reach for a font, not because she chose them deliberately, but because they were available and she did nothing to question them. Right? Again, I'm American Shocker. So my understanding of what it means to be Irish, the history therein, the weight of the British Irish relationship and the particular texture of what these things mean and what these kinds of stereotypes cost individuals who live in bodies that experience them, it's not something that I can speak to as someone who lives inside of them. What I can see and speak to, though, is someone who does live in a body that is not unaffected by prejudice and stigma, who also comes from a people who have understood subjugation on a number of different levels. And as someone who, for a living, is trained in reading how power operates through representation as a kind of structural logic and the lived reality of what it meant to encounter a Seamus Finnegan as an Irish person in a particular moment, in a particular place that belongs to those people there. Their voices are not just illustration. The voices themselves offer us evidence. I did some research on this because it's what I do for a living, but also sometimes I gotta come correct. I can't just be making things up. And so JKR was writing this in the 1990s, during the final year of the Troubles, a roughly 30 year conflict in northern Ireland shaped by a long history of British rule in Ireland, sectarian division and constitutional struggle, and frequently represented in British media through bombings and political violence. Listeners felt the weight of that context immediately. Someone wrote, jkr created a character who is Irish and good at blowing things up. While all of this is set in the 90s, it's very difficult for me to believe that Seamus being Irish and good at blowing things up is merely a coincidence. An Irish listener who attended English school brought this to us from a personal space, writing it became very acceptable to bully Irish children in my school. From alluding to the IRA and the Troubles with his penchant for fire to being the only teenager in school, in the school trying to turn water to rum, I was on the receiving end. For some readers, the representation had a cost that extended beyond the page. And then there's the Quidditch World cup, the one moment where Seamus Irishness is allowed to be celebratory. Ireland wins. Seamus gets to be proud rather than comic. Even that moment, though, is constructed from the outside. The Imagery, Rowling reaches for the leprechaun, the banner. The iconography of Irishness on display is not actually Irish. Someone wrote, none of these things are Irish. They both come from exaggerated depictions of Irishness from the British stage and American pop culture. Our names and our culture don't matter to them. They never did. Rowling gave Ireland a World cup victory and dressed it in a costume that was never theirs to begin with. And the films take what the books imply and exacerbate it. In the text, the pyrotechnics are relatively contained. The films turn them into signature, a running gag and a personality. One listener captured the double standard precisely. Writing the ethnic stereotype really comes through when comparing the Weasley's twins. Chaos, which is framed as entrepreneurial and inventive, to Seamus's, which is framed as dangerous and disruptive. It is no accident that a British author would present an Irish boy as a hot headed person who is hazardous. Same behavior, different frame. The frame is doing the work the character is not allowed to do on his own. The argument has to go somewhere larger than Seamus though, and larger than jkr, because what we are actually looking at is how white supremacy works. Not between white and non white, but inside itself. An intra group dynamic. Whiteness has a hierarchy. There is what I would call an apex whiteness, a default for those of you who I mean. I think this is true for most, like word processors, but particularly Microsoft Word. It's kind of like a Times New Roman that does not call attention to itself because it doesn't have to. It's simply the standard against which everything else is measured. Now, my preferred font is Garamond. It's still a serif, it's still white, as we're following this metaphor, but it's not the default. And the page keeps telling you. So in the American context, true whiteness was something that was kind of made up, right? At one point it was British, Protestant, Anglo Saxon, the unmarked center. Polish immigrants were white, but not quite. Italian immigrants were, well, not quite Irish Catholics. No, until such a time when there were other individuals who weren't coming from white countries and they began to outnumber white people. And then we see the umbrella of whiteness broaden and so distinctions get attached to culture, religion, to history and stereotypes, to everything designated as a standard. So I want to be so clear about this because JKR did not invent this. She lives in it, she's privileged by it. And so she takes from that privilege and writes what she knows, what she thought was going to be able to create legibility. We could imagine a context in which she would say, well, I just wanted people to be able to see themselves. So I wrote an East Asian girl who's pretty and smart. I wrote South Asian girls who are pretty and smart and attractive enough that they can attract the attention of white boys who then throw them aside. I have an Irish boy who has a, and I quote, proclivity for pyrotechnics. End quote. Right. We could make an argument that this might have been intentional. We don't know. We have no idea. We don't know what was going on here. What we do know is in some ways that intention doesn't matter because the effect is still the same. That what was seen as potentially legible is actually just drawing on existing stereotypes and dangerous prejudices for the purposes of being seen and read in a very particular way for a particular audience. And it's interesting because there's a way in which, like, in some ways, the lack of intentionality is more insidious, but also more indicative of how we understand intra group and indeed inter group dynamics when it comes to prejudice. Right. There is a way that Rolling notices the things that she wants to notice because she addresses class with the Weasleys. It seems to me that she thought that there was something to be done about, you know, young girls being smart and not caring about their looks. It seems to me that diversity for JKR meant putting people in a room, just making sure that they were there and present in ways that we as readers could discern. It did not mean asking what it cost to be in the room, what these individuals bring into the room with them, and what the room requires them to leave behind. For Cho Chang and the Patil twins, the harm of erasure is that there is nothing to hold on to. No interiority, cultural life, or sense of what it means to be them. For Seamus, the harm of caricature runs in the opposite direction. There is too much of the wrong thing to hold on to. So much so that when many of us took this survey and were asked a single word to describe him, we didn't choose a personality trait like we always do. We chose a nationality. We gave back to JKR what was given to us because a framework that she built transmitted the lesson so efficiently that it didn't feel like a lesson at all. Representation requires engaging what it means to live in a particular body with a history and context of what's happening around these individuals. It requires not just asking who is in the room? But what does being in the room do to those people. It's true that JKR diversified her cast, but she did it without doing the work. She didn't do it for Dean. She didn't do it for Cho. She didn't do it for the Patil twins. She didn't do it for Seamus. And the result across all of this is the same characters whose identities are legible as markers and invisible as lives. Seamus Finnegan deserved a story, and what he got was a stereotype. The fact that we all learned to read it so fluently, easily, that's the dangerous part.

[C]

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[A]

This has been another episode of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and 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, y'. All, thank you so much. For those of you who filled out the survey. If you didn't, thank you so much for listening. I continue to learn so much from you all and I hope that you all continue to learn so much from these episodes and from one another please join us in the post episode chat patreon.com criticalmatchtheory if you are a paid subscriber, which you can become if you'd like to Outstanding owl, Deep Diver Chronic Overthinker. For the latter two, you can join us on the Discord. We'll be having a chit chat throughout all of this. I can't wait to see what the post episode chat brings us. I will have the Harry Potter survey up for you all. Until then friends, be critical and stay magical. Byee.

[C]

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