Ambition and Audacity: The Two Faces of Quirinus Quirrell

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Welcome to critical magic Theory, where we deconstruct the wizarding
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world of Harry Potter because loving something doesn't mean we
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can't be critical of it. I'm Professor Julian Womble, and
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today we are diving into the mess, madness, absurdity, and
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foolishness that is Quinnerous Quarrel. Now. I will only be
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saying his first name that one time because I can't
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say it, and the fact that I got it right
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is a miracle. And so I hope that you liked that,
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because you won't hear it again. Okay, y'all. I am
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so excited to discuss this character, one who we only
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meet in one book, one who is often overlooked but
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still plays a really big role in the way that
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the series unfolds hashtag bars. And I'm really excited because
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even though there was a lot of error on my
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part in preparing for this episode, there's still a lot
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for us to unpack and I can't wait to do
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that because this character, Quarrel, is a mess. He is
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a mess, and I think that there are some things
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we tend to overlook when we think about him. And
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I also think that he serves as a really good
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example for a lot of other characters that we meet
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later on in the text. Have you ever wondered what
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was Quarrel thinking when Voldemort said, yeah, we're gonna drink
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some unicorn blood? Or what does it mean to be
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a raven claw if your intellect is used for manipulation?
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And could Quarrel have said no? Or was his fate
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sealed the moment he met Voldemort? Y'all, we are getting
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into all of it. But first, Oh, but first, y'all,
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we have to bop along to the theme song, and
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so I hope you are ready. You know, we move
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faster now in the beginning. You know we do. So
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you were stretching before this even began, Before you hit play,
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you were already doing your calisthenics. And if you weren't, well,
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I've given you a little bit more time. But we
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are starting the bop in three be into in one.
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That's Bob. I still don't know why that's the voice
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we need to talk about. Harry Potter. Y'all, welcome back.
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And I hope you didn't throw out your back when
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you bopped along to the theme song. Okay, you know
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that I will not take any blame for that. Welcome
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back everyone, Thank you all so much for being here
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and listening to this episode, and thank you all so
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much for those of you who participated in the post
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episode chat and in the survey for Minerva McGonagall. Y'all,
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it was good. I know that we didn't have a
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prof Response episode for McGonagall, and that is because I
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was on vacation and I had anticipated taking my portable
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mic with me on vacation so that I could record
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that episode, and I left it, and I took that
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as a sign that I needed to maybe not do that,
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and so I'm back. I'm refreshed, y'all. I got sunburned
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for the first time, like real, my first like real
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big boy sunburn. I don't know how people do it.
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It's not for me. It won't happen again for me.
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Once burn me once, shame on me, burn me, you
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can't burn me again. So yes, I'm thinking that we
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will do a two fur for the next prof Response episode,
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and so we'll start with McGonagall and then we'll move
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into Quarrel. So it'll be a little bit of a
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longer prof Response episode, but we're going to get all
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the responses in okay, so worry not, We're going to
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get it. If you are not on Patreon and participating
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in our post episode chats, it's time for you to
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join us. You can join us for free. You can
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join us for the post episode chats. You can join
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us for the question of the week. You can also
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join with via paid subscription as an outstanding owl, a
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deep diver, or a chronic overthinker, where you get access
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to extra content. There are ad free episodes, there is
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behind the scenes chaos. There's a lot of things there. Okay,
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And now that I'm rested and relaxed, I'm ready to
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give more on the Patreon, So join us there Patreon
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dot com slash Critical Magic Theory. Okay. If you would
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like to become a paid subscriber, please feel free to
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do so, but do it on your browser as to
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not get charged extra money. Okay. Speaking of overthinkers, I
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would like to welcome three new individuals who are joining
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our ranks. So a special shout out and thank you
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to Addie, Rachel and Nicole. We just can't wait to
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have you join in our community. In all the ways,
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all the days or whatever days work best for you.
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There's no pressure y'all. You already know there's merch. I'm
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thinking we need to do maybe something else. I don't
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know yet. Okay. If we have ideas, let me know,
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for like a new shirt or something. If you haven't
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gotten your voldiv shirts, now is the time do it. Okay.
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I warm mine while on vacation and everyone love them.
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It is a hit. Okay, please feel free to like, rate, subscribe,
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do all the things that one does wear pods are
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cast y'all. We're going from one messy defense against the
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Dark Arts teacher to another because the next episode is
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going to be on the one and only mm hmmm,
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winner of Best Smile Award five years in a row. Okay,
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he took down the band in bandshee, Yes he did.
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He actually did it for real, for real, the one
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and only guilderre Lock cart. Okay. I am going to
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drop the survey on Thursday on Patreon and Friday everywhere else.
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I won't forget this time, y'all. I was burnt out. Okay.
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I know I'm normally pretty decent about getting these things out,
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but my brain was not functioning on all cylinders. But
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now it is. I'm back. I'm back in the habit.
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I'm back in action. So we did not have as
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many people for this episode's arithmesy lesson because of me.
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It is my fault. But that's okay because we still
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got things together and now I'm in a place I'm good.
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I laid out, I did burn, but I also relaxed
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a lot, okay, and so now I'm ready. Are you
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ready if you're not ready to get ready, because here
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we go. When I had to think about my favorite
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moment that involved Quarrel, I was like, what moment do
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I really like with him? And the first one I
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thought of was like when Harry literally turns him to dust,
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because I was like, that's what you get, but honestly,
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and then I thought of another moment, which I just
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think is funny because it's like hermione and her unhingedness.
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That's a word that I made up, and we're going
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to go with it literally like toppled him over by
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setting Snape on fire. Like I just think that scene
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in the movie is so funny because of the way
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that it looks. But neither of those moments really rose
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to the top for me, but it does involve both
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Snape and Quarrel. I love the moment where Snape clocks
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quarrels tea and it's like, something's not right with you.
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You need to get yourself together and you need to
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figure out where your loyalties lie. I just love this
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moment because it's a moment that I really do believe
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that Quarrel thought he had been like so surreptitious, so sneaky,
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so conniving that and so just like better than everyone else.
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And he even like as he's recounting it to Harry,
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he kind of is resentful of the fact that Snape
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caught him so quickly, And like, I love this moment
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because I think it reveals so much. It's a very
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quick and easy exchange, and it really is a moment
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that just shows just how nosy Harry is. But it
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also feels like a moment where we really get a
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sense of who Snape is and how good he is
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at really kind of seeing past people's bs, And I
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think it reveals a lot about like who Quarrel is
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as well, right, because he really is putting on quite
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a show. The stutter, the trembling hands, the like, oh,
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I don't really know, the whole vibe vibe, and Snape said, baby,
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I can smell a fake from a mile away, because
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Game always recognizes Game. I know when people are up
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to something because I'm always what up to something? And
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I just really like the fact that in that moment,
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the kind of brilliance and the messiness of Quarrel is
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exposed and kind of laid bare. And it's so I
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think indicative of how we can understand who Quarrel is,
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right because so much of the way that when we
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meet him at the end, which I think is a
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revelation of who he truly is this kind of very
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embittered individual. He's like, I did all of this for
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the sake of trying to throw people off my track, right,
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And it's so fascinating because I also think that there's
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such a solid parallel between this performance that Quarrel gives
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and the belief that no one can really clock his
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tea and the one that Voldemort gives as it pertains
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to the horcruxes, and the belief that no one could
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ever figure out, you know, the locket being connected to
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him or you know, the ring, and so he does
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all of this stuff and it's like no one will
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ever figure it out. And one of my favorite moments
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in the entire series is when Harry enters into Voldemort's
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mind and he at the moment that they've escaped from
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Green Goods, and Voldemort realizes like, oh my goodness, like
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they are onto me, and it's like, yeah, you idiot,
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because you decided that you were going to make these
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things so super personal, to the point where all someone
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had to do was, I don't know, go look at
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the freaking annals to figure out what your name was.
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And Dumbledore already knew your real name. And you underestimated
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literally everyone else around you because you thought you were
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so freaking brilliant that no one was going to figure
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it out. Then your tea got clocked and you got
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paid dust just like Coral. Well, I guess not. And
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that's only in the movies that Dumbledore that Voldemort turns
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into life. I don't know, pieces of paper that are
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in a campfire, not in the book. In the book,
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it's just a body. But anyway, dust to dust, ashes
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to ashes, it all comes out the same. And I
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think the parallel is really good and it's something that
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I want to talk about throughout the episode, which is
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the idea of like thinking that you're better than everyone else,
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and how that particular belief structure serves as the perfect
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kind of pathway to an untimely demise. And so I
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love this moment between Quarrel and Snake because I think
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it really does embody a lot of the arrogance that
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Quarrel has, even with Voldemore on his head, like both
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of them were doing this and not thinking about the
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thought that like someone's going to catch on to the
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fact that this stuff is happening. And I think that
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for me, it's so indicative of so many things that
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we see later on the books, as it pertains to
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who Voldemort is. But I love that we also get
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to see it for Quarrel because we look at Quarrel
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and we're like, well, he's such an idiot, and it's like, yeah,
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you know what, so is the dude on the back
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of his head. So is the dude on the back
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of his head. When asked what word best describes Quarrel,
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the top three were weak, coward, and pathetic. Someone wrote
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he stuttered and wore fear like a costume, but underneath
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he was someone who thought he was smarter than everyone else. See.
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I love that, and I think that that to me
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is like, it's an interesting thing because when we think
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about the kind of the notion of weakness, we tend
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to think about it as the opposite of strength. But
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I think in this context with what stands out to me,
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and the thing that makes him weak is not to
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say that he isn't strong, but he's stupid. And he
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really does weaken his kind of position by way of
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making really stupid choices. And I think some of it
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is born out of cowardice, but I think a lot
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of it actually is born out of arrogance. Someone else
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wrote the way he thought he was fooling everyone. Baby
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Snip clocked you by Halloween, That's what I'm saying. Like
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we didn't even get that good into the year. They
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show up at the beginning of September, and by October
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thirty first you were cooked and you're out here whimpering
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and a wailing and like you are to me, the
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weakness and the cowardice, and even some end the patheticness
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comes from the idea that like you thought you were
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so much better than everyone else that you actually didn't
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even try. Really, and again it just reeks of Voldemore,
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and some of us may say, well, like he is
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being possessed by Voldemort. I want to preface this very
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early on and say, like, I don't think he was
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being possessed by Voldemort. I think he was hosting Voldemort
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on his body, but he was the one making choices.
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He might have been taking counsel from Voldemort, but he
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was making choices. You know, the notion of using the
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troll He's the one who's like, I'm good with trolls,
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Like these were some of his plans, and that's why
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he was getting punished because he was the one kind
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of executing these things. He was not under the kind
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of spell or his body wasn't being used by Voldemort
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to make these things. Like Quarrel was the one making choices.
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And I think that's really important, and we're going to
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talk about that throughout the episode. But I think when
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we think about you know, these words weakness, coward or yeah,
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weak coward, pathetic, I think a lot of them operate
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in a very specific way. But I think for me,
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what undergirds a lot of it is the fact that
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like those things are words that I think he's trying
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to get away from, right, Like this notion of that
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there's no good or evil, there's only power. Like he's
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trying to get away from these things, which I think
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probably defined him even before all of this stuff was
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going down with Voldemort. And it's his pursuit of trying
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to get away from being seen as weak, as being
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a coward, as being pathetic that ultimately leads him to
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beat those things even more so than he already was. Right,
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like you trying to run away. Maybe it's a circle
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and you're back where you started, but now you have
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a man on the back of your head. I'm sorry, y'all.
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I will never forget reading that moment when I was
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I don't know eleven, ten or eleven, and I gasped
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because I couldn't believe it. And I remember seeing the
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movie and freaking out because I was like, how are
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they going to do this? You put a man on
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the back of your head because you thought that this
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person was going to make you stronger. I mean no,
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And now, to me, those those words probably are the
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very words that drove him to say yes to Voldemore
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in the first place, when voldemorre offers him power, because
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this was his truth, and we can assume even canonically
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that this is the case, because he comes back and
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he puts on this role right, and he talks about oh,
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poor stuttering Professor Corol, like no one would have ever
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seen me coming, Like he uses those words as a
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shield of sorts to be able to do what he
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thinks he's doing right, to like engage in this level
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of subterfuge when in reality he's not acting, he's simply being,
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and he's just kind of upping it. He thinks he's
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caused playing this person, but he really is that person,
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and he is that person because he refuses kind of
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be truthful with himself about the fact that you're not
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that great. You simply aren't. And so it is fascinating
278
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to watch him operate this way because I think these
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words are the words that describe him really well, and
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he knows it, and he tries to use it to
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his advantage, but ultimately plays more into those words. And
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that's the irony of arrogance. For this episode's Arithmecy Lesson,
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we had two hundred and fifty seven responses. Again, that's
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my fault. I didn't send out the email with the
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survey to the people who are on the list. Serve
286
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I didn't follow up the way that I was supposed to.
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So the lower number is simply because of me. It's
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not your fault, it's my fault, am I Quarrel. We're
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not getting into that. I'll talk to my therapist about it,
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but we are gonna do what we do anyway with
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the wonderful responses that we have. The first question is
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is Quarrel a good person? One point two percent of
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us said yes, seventy eight point eight percent of us
294
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said no, and twenty percent said don't know. Someone wrote
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good person has to be no. How are you going
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to meet a slim a slim, a slimy little body
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Voldie and just not walk away? And then you go
298
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try and kill an eleven year old on a broom
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because there's no good or evil, only power. Absolutely not,
300
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and they're honestly Hello. Someone else wrote he was spineless
301
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and let Boldie's propaganda get to him. He made his
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bed go lie in it. I know that there are
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00:19:00.079 --> 00:19:02.440
some people who will say, well, it's really hard for
304
00:19:02.519 --> 00:19:06.039
us to know what was Quarrel and what was Voldemort.
305
00:19:06.319 --> 00:19:08.799
But I again, I don't think he was possessed. I
306
00:19:08.839 --> 00:19:12.759
think he was manipulated. I think that Voldemort saw something
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in him that he could turn into evil behavior. I
308
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don't think that he was like we see or we'll
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00:19:20.799 --> 00:19:24.160
see Ginny in the second book, where she didn't know
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what she was doing and would wake up and kind
311
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of feel like she was losing her mind. Right, I
312
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don't think that that's what's happening here. I think that
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he is a parasite on Quarrel's body. He may be
314
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whispering things to him, he may be guiding him, but
315
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he is not controlling him. These were the decisions made
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by someone who wanted to get something out of Voldemort
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and thought that this was a quid pro quo, and
318
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so he was making decisions, and those decisions involved as
319
00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:54.920
alluded to in the comments, you know, bringing a troll
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in to distract people, trying to kill Harry off of
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a room, like all of these things, and those are
322
00:20:01.359 --> 00:20:04.200
the actions of someone who was not good, Okay, Those
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00:20:04.200 --> 00:20:07.920
are the actions of someone who is trying to garner
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power in a very specific way. And I think that
325
00:20:10.839 --> 00:20:14.480
what's so fascinating about it is like there are ways
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that people can go about making particular kinds of decisions
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about gaining power and subverting you know, whatever power or
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authority in order to get what they want. Right, Like,
329
00:20:26.880 --> 00:20:31.559
when we look at Percy, he made some really bad choices.
330
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What I said that he was a bad person. No,
331
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I would say he's a really complicated person who made
332
00:20:37.759 --> 00:20:41.319
some bad choices. Right, person didn't try to kill anyone. Yeah,
333
00:20:41.480 --> 00:20:44.960
he stood by when the ministry was being a problem,
334
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but so did most of the magical world. And he
335
00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:54.000
made some choices that were simply not good. But that
336
00:20:54.200 --> 00:20:57.640
is different than the choices and he made those choices
337
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because he was trying to get ahead. Quarrel made some
338
00:21:05.160 --> 00:21:08.640
bad choices in his attempt to get ahead, but like
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00:21:08.960 --> 00:21:13.880
his involved murder, and that feels like a little bit
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of a difference to me. And so I think that
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when we think about, you know, what does it mean
342
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to be a good person, what does it mean to
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kind of make decisions that we might not agree with?
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I think there's gradation. I think there's variation. And I
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think that what we see from Quarrel is someone who
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is more than willing to go above and beyond to
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prove themselves to you know, the Voldie on the back
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of the head. Then someone like a person who is
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willing to go above and beyond within a certain kind
350
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of constraint. And I think that that's a really important
351
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distinction to make, because I think it drives home the
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point for me at least, just how bad a person
353
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Quarrel is. And again, while some of these things they
354
00:22:04.759 --> 00:22:07.640
are attached to Voldemore in the same way that he's
355
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attached to Quarrel physically, Quarrel is making these decisions. And
356
00:22:14.119 --> 00:22:17.119
I'm not willing to say oh no, Like, well, he's
357
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doing it out of fear. He said yes to Voldemort,
358
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Like I don't care what Voldemore promises me. Baby, if
359
00:22:25.160 --> 00:22:28.119
you're out here looking like who shot Bill? And who
360
00:22:28.119 --> 00:22:32.440
Evodika dav John, I don't want it. I don't want it.
361
00:22:32.559 --> 00:22:35.359
Stay right where you are. There's nothing. How are you?
362
00:22:35.400 --> 00:22:38.880
I mean? Because here's the thing, y'all, this is what's crazy.
363
00:22:38.960 --> 00:22:43.519
You had to have believed that Voldemore was pretty amazing
364
00:22:43.920 --> 00:22:47.440
to somehow come across him in Albania, in whatever form
365
00:22:47.480 --> 00:22:51.359
he was in, realize like, oh, you are barely hanging
366
00:22:51.400 --> 00:22:53.119
on to life, but somehow I think You're going to
367
00:22:53.160 --> 00:22:56.599
make me powerful if I'm bring you back. Baby, You're
368
00:22:56.640 --> 00:22:59.279
barely here now, you see what I'm saying, like, it's
369
00:22:59.359 --> 00:23:04.160
crazy to think think about, because it really does mean
370
00:23:04.240 --> 00:23:09.480
that Quarrel must have had some kind of sense of
371
00:23:09.759 --> 00:23:12.799
awe and maybe the away was you're supposed to be
372
00:23:12.880 --> 00:23:15.559
dead and you're nots and Voldemort kind of used that
373
00:23:15.680 --> 00:23:20.200
as his in. But the idea that this kind of
374
00:23:20.279 --> 00:23:27.559
bodyless being could manipulate you so much that you brought
375
00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:33.680
him to back to London and then upon failure at
376
00:23:33.720 --> 00:23:38.039
Green gods were like, oh, yeah, somehow I'm just gonna
377
00:23:38.079 --> 00:23:44.200
let you take over my body. No, No, you are
378
00:23:44.240 --> 00:23:47.279
not a good person by virtue of the fact that,
379
00:23:47.400 --> 00:23:50.599
like you were able to even be seduced by someone
380
00:23:50.640 --> 00:23:53.680
who didn't even have the power to have their own body.
381
00:23:54.079 --> 00:24:22.319
You weren't even trying, and it shows is Quirrel a
382
00:24:22.359 --> 00:24:26.680
good raven claw? About thirty one percent of us said yes,
383
00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:30.119
about forty two percent of us said no, and about
384
00:24:30.119 --> 00:24:34.119
twenty seven percent of us said don't know. Someone wrote
385
00:24:34.279 --> 00:24:38.079
he's inquisitive, sure, but so inquisitive he ended up with
386
00:24:38.160 --> 00:24:40.440
a guy on the back of his head. That's not wisdom,
387
00:24:40.680 --> 00:24:45.079
that's wild. And someone else wrote the plan he used
388
00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:48.599
to try to get to the stone, lazy like troll
389
00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:52.160
in the dungeon. That's your master plan. This is what's
390
00:24:52.200 --> 00:24:55.880
so fascinating. And I think that you know, I know
391
00:24:55.920 --> 00:24:58.920
that many of us are raven claws, and so I
392
00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:04.119
knew this question my ruffle some feathers. I do think, though,
393
00:25:04.519 --> 00:25:12.359
that this is kind of the downside of like one's
394
00:25:12.440 --> 00:25:17.079
pursuit of knowledge sometimes, right, And I think that when
395
00:25:17.119 --> 00:25:22.000
we take on the adage knowledge is power. I think
396
00:25:22.039 --> 00:25:26.079
that sometimes that can feel very abstract, and I think
397
00:25:26.079 --> 00:25:30.279
that other times we can we can experience that idea
398
00:25:30.559 --> 00:25:34.680
and say, like, yeah, knowing things means that you can
399
00:25:34.759 --> 00:25:39.079
make like informed decisions that are better than if you
400
00:25:39.119 --> 00:25:42.599
didn't have the knowledge. But I think that for some people,
401
00:25:44.319 --> 00:25:50.200
knowing certain things is actually power, right, Like I want
402
00:25:50.279 --> 00:25:54.160
to know you know how it is that you survived
403
00:25:54.519 --> 00:25:58.359
the killing curse when no one else should, because that
404
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:00.640
means that there's a chance that I can do it too.
405
00:26:01.640 --> 00:26:06.000
And I don't think that the pursuit of that knowledge,
406
00:26:06.400 --> 00:26:10.440
even though it feels silly or weird or stupid or whatever,
407
00:26:11.519 --> 00:26:14.319
I don't think that that disqualifies him from being a
408
00:26:14.319 --> 00:26:18.559
good raven claw. I think that it complicates the understanding
409
00:26:18.559 --> 00:26:21.240
of how we understand what it is to be a
410
00:26:21.279 --> 00:26:23.880
good raven claw, right, And it makes me think of
411
00:26:24.119 --> 00:26:27.279
Helen a raven claw, because we know she runs off
412
00:26:27.319 --> 00:26:31.640
with the diadem partially because she was envious of her
413
00:26:31.680 --> 00:26:34.519
mother and she wanted to kind of know what it
414
00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:38.160
was to be like her, And so she takes this
415
00:26:38.480 --> 00:26:42.039
you know, thing that's supposed to increase you know, what
416
00:26:42.240 --> 00:26:49.359
you know. And I think that sometimes knowledge can be
417
00:26:49.640 --> 00:26:53.680
dangerous and and and it makes me think about like,
418
00:26:53.839 --> 00:26:57.079
and sometimes knowledge can be dangerous, and sometimes knowledge can
419
00:26:57.119 --> 00:27:01.240
be painted as dangerous even when it isn't. But when
420
00:27:01.240 --> 00:27:05.799
it as it pertains to Quarrel. I think that, you know,
421
00:27:07.759 --> 00:27:12.599
his desire to explore the world and figure things out.
422
00:27:13.640 --> 00:27:19.240
I think that's reasonable, But there's clearly something that Voldemort
423
00:27:19.319 --> 00:27:25.319
was able to tap into and exploit. And I think
424
00:27:25.359 --> 00:27:30.559
that sometimes knowledge can be a thing that leads to
425
00:27:30.720 --> 00:27:34.680
a downfall, because knowing something doesn't always mean you know better.
426
00:27:36.079 --> 00:27:38.160
You know what I mean, Like, I'm going to say
427
00:27:38.200 --> 00:27:41.880
that again mostly for me, Like, knowing something doesn't always
428
00:27:42.000 --> 00:27:44.920
mean you know better. It doesn't mean you know better
429
00:27:45.039 --> 00:27:47.240
than to not do that. It doesn't mean that you
430
00:27:47.319 --> 00:27:51.079
know better than to not trust that. And so like,
431
00:27:51.119 --> 00:27:54.759
there are instances where I think that, you know, we
432
00:27:54.839 --> 00:27:59.559
can easily see how and why raven clause may fall
433
00:27:59.680 --> 00:28:02.119
prey to some of this. And we talked a little
434
00:28:02.119 --> 00:28:06.599
bit about this with with Luna, right, and that like
435
00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:11.799
her brand of knowledge and wisdom also lends itself to
436
00:28:11.880 --> 00:28:17.079
be easily manipulated, right like, and I remember making the
437
00:28:17.079 --> 00:28:20.319
the claim, you know, we could see Luna being someone
438
00:28:20.319 --> 00:28:23.680
who would like end up in a cult or run
439
00:28:23.720 --> 00:28:31.359
one herself, honestly, right, because she believes certain things that
440
00:28:31.400 --> 00:28:36.519
are simply like not true, and that leads to dangerous outcomes.
441
00:28:36.599 --> 00:28:40.119
It reminds me of you know, in deathly hollows when
442
00:28:40.519 --> 00:28:43.240
Hermione tells the in aphiliates like that's in a rumpin' horn,
443
00:28:43.319 --> 00:28:46.039
and he's like it is not, it's a whatever whatever whatever,
444
00:28:46.680 --> 00:28:52.240
And like his desire to believe that was true meant
445
00:28:52.240 --> 00:28:55.559
that he had this really really dangerous thing in his home.
446
00:28:56.240 --> 00:29:01.720
And I think that sometimes knowledge and awareness and wisdom
447
00:29:02.279 --> 00:29:06.319
are all great things, but they are not above corruption.
448
00:29:08.400 --> 00:29:12.200
If the foundation on which they are being built is
449
00:29:12.279 --> 00:29:16.799
not solid, they are easily they easily slip away. And
450
00:29:16.839 --> 00:29:18.880
so when we think about like what it means to
451
00:29:18.920 --> 00:29:21.480
be a good raven claw, right, like the pursuit of
452
00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:26.240
knowledge and wisdom is great, and it's kind of the
453
00:29:26.279 --> 00:29:28.319
trademark for a lot of raven claus. And I'm sure
454
00:29:28.359 --> 00:29:30.440
that many raven Claws will write in the post episode
455
00:29:30.519 --> 00:29:33.119
chat and will correct me on this, and you know,
456
00:29:33.200 --> 00:29:36.200
I welcome it. There's a couple that I'm thinking about explicitly,
457
00:29:36.240 --> 00:29:39.559
and I'm hopeful that you all will will chime in.
458
00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:45.079
But I think I think he's I think he is
459
00:29:45.119 --> 00:29:50.839
a good Raven Claw. I think that what happens, though,
460
00:29:51.039 --> 00:29:54.000
is that if you are not careful, your pursuit of
461
00:29:54.079 --> 00:30:00.079
knowledge can lead you to make some really bad choices
462
00:30:00.200 --> 00:30:03.880
and or to be manipulated in ways that you are
463
00:30:04.039 --> 00:30:11.359
too unaware to see because you're so thirsty for what
464
00:30:11.440 --> 00:30:15.240
you need to know. Because the pursuit of knowledge is
465
00:30:15.279 --> 00:30:19.640
not always the pursuit of facts, the pursuit of knowledge
466
00:30:19.680 --> 00:30:22.839
of knowing things. There are a lot of things that
467
00:30:22.880 --> 00:30:26.440
one can know. You know, whether the truth is among
468
00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:31.079
them is unclear. That's a quote from Harry Potter and
469
00:30:31.200 --> 00:30:37.880
Deathly Hallow's part one spoken like a true politician. Anyways,
470
00:30:37.920 --> 00:30:40.920
I've watched those movies too many times. That's the point.
471
00:30:41.279 --> 00:30:44.759
The fact is, though, that sometimes people want to know things,
472
00:30:44.839 --> 00:30:46.359
but they don't want to know facts. And we are
473
00:30:46.359 --> 00:30:48.920
living in a time and I think this is global,
474
00:30:48.920 --> 00:30:51.200
but I'll own it for the United States, where lots
475
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:53.359
of people know lots of things, but the truth is
476
00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:55.799
not as rarely among them for some of these people,
477
00:30:56.400 --> 00:31:00.039
and when presented with the truth, they deny it. And
478
00:31:00.079 --> 00:31:04.160
we could say, well, that's stupid or they're not wise,
479
00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:10.279
but I don't know that. Like wisdom, it's hard to
480
00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:13.680
be able to capture exactly what it is that defines
481
00:31:13.720 --> 00:31:15.680
a good raven claw? Is it the pursuit of wisdom?
482
00:31:15.720 --> 00:31:18.039
Is the pursuit of knowledge? Is the pursuit of truth?
483
00:31:18.400 --> 00:31:22.400
Whose truth? Is it? The pursuit of facts? What facts? Right? Like?
484
00:31:22.599 --> 00:31:26.359
When you're operating in such an intellectual and cerebral space,
485
00:31:26.720 --> 00:31:29.279
there's a lot of nuance and a lot of like
486
00:31:29.319 --> 00:31:31.920
wiggle room as to what that looks like, which then
487
00:31:32.079 --> 00:31:36.039
means that you can be someone who has a lot
488
00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:42.720
of capacity for knowledge and truth that can easily be warped.
489
00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:45.440
And it can be warped either because you're too stringent
490
00:31:46.599 --> 00:31:49.920
or you're not stringent enough. And we have characters in
491
00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:52.680
these texts that kind of give us both sides of
492
00:31:52.680 --> 00:31:55.559
that spectrum. So when we think about whether or not
493
00:31:55.640 --> 00:31:58.319
Quarrel is a good raven claw, I think his pursuit
494
00:31:58.359 --> 00:32:02.799
of knowledge and wanting to know more things makes him
495
00:32:02.839 --> 00:32:05.880
a good raven claw. I do think though, that without
496
00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:11.680
the proper safeguards and awareness of, you know, what evils
497
00:32:11.839 --> 00:32:18.720
lie in the forest, you're easily manipulated because Voldemort can
498
00:32:18.759 --> 00:32:23.240
promise you knowledge, He can promise you things right like
499
00:32:23.279 --> 00:32:29.319
he can promise you information, and that is I think
500
00:32:29.319 --> 00:32:34.200
that makes you, or makes a person more susceptible to
501
00:32:34.359 --> 00:32:38.359
that his manipulation. And so I think he is a
502
00:32:38.400 --> 00:32:41.200
good raven claw, and I think he's a good raven
503
00:32:41.240 --> 00:32:57.119
claw to his detriment. Is Quarrel a good half blood?
504
00:32:58.160 --> 00:33:01.839
About nine percent of us said yes, about fifty three
505
00:33:01.880 --> 00:33:03.880
percent of us said no, and about thirty eight percent
506
00:33:03.880 --> 00:33:07.119
of us said don't know. Someone wrote, I mean, since
507
00:33:07.200 --> 00:33:11.880
Baltimore was literally inside him, was he technically a half blood?
508
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:17.160
For a bit? What are the logistics here? Plot twist semantics?
509
00:33:17.519 --> 00:33:19.039
You know, when I we just talked about the pursuit
510
00:33:19.039 --> 00:33:21.519
of information and I actually don't even want to know
511
00:33:21.599 --> 00:33:26.240
how those logistics work. The notion of Baltimore being inside him,
512
00:33:26.680 --> 00:33:30.799
that takes us to a different place, and this is
513
00:33:30.839 --> 00:33:33.680
a family friendly podcast, so we're not going to get
514
00:33:33.680 --> 00:33:35.880
into that that. I'm sure there's a podcast somewhere. I
515
00:33:35.920 --> 00:33:37.960
mean that, well, I'm sure there is a podcast. I
516
00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:42.000
also I'm sure there's a fan fit somewhere, you know.
517
00:33:42.079 --> 00:33:44.039
I think this is an interesting question, and obviously we
518
00:33:44.079 --> 00:33:47.720
have to keep it within the theme. I think this
519
00:33:47.839 --> 00:33:50.960
is one of these moments where we just don't have
520
00:33:51.000 --> 00:33:54.039
a good sense of who Quarrel is as a person.
521
00:33:54.599 --> 00:33:56.480
We don't have a sense of kind of what his
522
00:33:56.640 --> 00:34:01.160
background is canonically, postcononically, we don't really know, right, and
523
00:34:01.200 --> 00:34:04.359
so I think for this question, we don't have a
524
00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:08.320
sense of it now. I think again, if we were
525
00:34:08.360 --> 00:34:10.760
to kind of extrapolate out from what we do know
526
00:34:10.800 --> 00:34:15.440
from the canonical text, right that, well, this isn't canonical.
527
00:34:16.599 --> 00:34:20.119
The Internet has told us that like he was teaching
528
00:34:20.199 --> 00:34:24.360
Muggle studies before he went on his like you know
529
00:34:25.119 --> 00:34:28.480
quest and then came back and then was teaching defense
530
00:34:28.480 --> 00:34:30.320
against the Dark Arts. But I think that that's not
531
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:34.519
clear to us whether how true that is. There's no
532
00:34:34.800 --> 00:34:40.519
kind of information that helps explain that. And so when
533
00:34:40.519 --> 00:34:42.440
we think about, you know, the two ways that we've
534
00:34:42.440 --> 00:34:46.440
thought about, you know, good half bloods, the first being
535
00:34:46.920 --> 00:34:50.480
our more idealized version of someone who is building a
536
00:34:50.519 --> 00:34:53.639
bridge between the muggle and the magical world. We get
537
00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:58.599
no sense of that from him. And also and then
538
00:34:58.599 --> 00:35:00.239
when we think about the second one, you know, someone
539
00:35:00.239 --> 00:35:03.599
who's willing to you know, prop up the system and
540
00:35:03.920 --> 00:35:10.920
maintain pure blood supremacy. I mean, I think attaching yourself
541
00:35:10.960 --> 00:35:12.840
to someone who was very well known to be a
542
00:35:12.880 --> 00:35:17.280
pure blood supremacist and buying into whatever propaganda he gives.
543
00:35:17.320 --> 00:35:19.960
And the notion that there's you know, no good or evil,
544
00:35:20.119 --> 00:35:23.400
just power tells us a very specific story because again,
545
00:35:23.599 --> 00:35:27.719
like this, the soil has to be fertile for seeds
546
00:35:27.960 --> 00:35:31.639
of that nature to take root. And I'm like, were
547
00:35:31.639 --> 00:35:35.199
you just sitting in the forest talking to Voldemort? Like
548
00:35:35.280 --> 00:35:38.280
what was going on? But either way, right, like, there
549
00:35:38.360 --> 00:35:42.599
has to have been something inside of him that said, yeah,
550
00:35:42.800 --> 00:35:44.960
and I think that there's something to be said about
551
00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:48.320
you know, one's desire to get ahead and again, what
552
00:35:48.400 --> 00:35:52.199
people are willing to forego. And we don't know the
553
00:35:52.239 --> 00:35:55.039
composition of his half bloodedness, if he just has two
554
00:35:55.039 --> 00:35:57.199
half blood parents, if he has a Muggle parent and
555
00:35:57.280 --> 00:36:01.199
a magical parent or yeah, we don't know. So this
556
00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:03.519
question is a bit harder to answer for him because
557
00:36:03.519 --> 00:36:06.320
we simply just have no sense of like what is
558
00:36:06.400 --> 00:36:09.000
true for him, and we don't really get to see
559
00:36:09.079 --> 00:36:12.920
him or know him that well until we're really watching
560
00:36:13.039 --> 00:36:17.400
him Shenane and Shnan again, you know, And so this
561
00:36:17.480 --> 00:36:19.639
is a harder question I think for me, I would
562
00:36:19.639 --> 00:36:22.280
have to say don't know for this, I think, although
563
00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:24.079
I would say that with the caveat of like you
564
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:27.599
attaching yourself to a known pure blood supremacist in pursuit
565
00:36:27.760 --> 00:36:32.360
of power tells us a story about at least where
566
00:36:32.480 --> 00:36:36.119
your ideology was sitting before, because there's no way that
567
00:36:36.159 --> 00:36:39.119
you just stumble upon Voldemore and say, hey, I think
568
00:36:39.159 --> 00:36:41.119
you have something good to say and I'm willing to
569
00:36:41.159 --> 00:36:46.800
listen to it. You disembody disaster, because like, no, that
570
00:36:46.840 --> 00:36:50.719
doesn't make any sense. And so I think if we
571
00:36:50.960 --> 00:36:57.400
just taken into account the allure of Voldemore, there's something
572
00:36:57.440 --> 00:37:02.480
to be said about how we understand, you know, what
573
00:37:02.719 --> 00:37:06.480
his half bloodedness meant to him, and maybe they connected
574
00:37:06.480 --> 00:37:08.800
on the grounds of being half bloods. Who's to say,
575
00:37:09.119 --> 00:37:12.440
Maybe that's conjecture, but I do think that if you
576
00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:17.599
are willing to align yourself with a known pure blood
577
00:37:17.679 --> 00:37:25.440
supremacist like terrorist cult leader, something is not quite right.
578
00:37:26.239 --> 00:37:29.239
And so to the extent then that we think about
579
00:37:29.599 --> 00:37:31.960
the kind of more realistic definition of what it means
580
00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:35.119
to be a good half blood by way of upholding
581
00:37:35.119 --> 00:37:38.000
the system of pure blood supremacy. By us trying to
582
00:37:38.039 --> 00:37:41.599
assist in bringing Voldemort back, you are contributing to that system,
583
00:37:41.599 --> 00:37:44.079
Which would thein mean that by that definition you are
584
00:37:44.119 --> 00:37:47.159
a good half blood. So maybe that's the answer, But
585
00:37:47.199 --> 00:37:50.079
we don't really have a lot and that's you know,
586
00:37:50.320 --> 00:37:54.199
me basing it on my own conjecture. So take that
587
00:37:54.280 --> 00:38:12.079
as you will. Is quirl a good teacher? Ten percent
588
00:38:12.119 --> 00:38:16.639
of us said yes, sixty one percent of us said no,
589
00:38:17.000 --> 00:38:20.719
and twenty nine percent of us said don't know. Someone
590
00:38:20.760 --> 00:38:25.719
wrote he's not respected, he doesn't model, and he straight
591
00:38:25.800 --> 00:38:31.119
up curses students. Next, listen, the people are bringing the
592
00:38:31.199 --> 00:38:35.360
sass in these comments. Someone else wrote, bad teacher. Can't
593
00:38:35.400 --> 00:38:39.480
remember him teaching Harry anything. Also, maybe don't set trolls
594
00:38:39.559 --> 00:38:43.519
loose in the building. You know, this is tricky because
595
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:48.719
we don't actually get a sense of who he is
596
00:38:48.760 --> 00:38:52.519
in the classroom. Although I think that Harry mentions a
597
00:38:52.559 --> 00:38:56.480
lot of the fact that, like Quarrel spends a lot
598
00:38:56.480 --> 00:38:58.719
of the time teaching the class, but seems to be
599
00:38:58.800 --> 00:39:03.159
like afraid of everything, which, knowing what we know, right,
600
00:39:03.239 --> 00:39:06.119
knowing that Voldemort is on his you know, the back
601
00:39:06.159 --> 00:39:08.400
of his head, and that this is all an act,
602
00:39:08.480 --> 00:39:12.679
I feel like he's to commit it to the bit,
603
00:39:13.159 --> 00:39:16.480
Like I feel like he's overplaying his hand, and so
604
00:39:17.079 --> 00:39:19.559
he can't be a good teacher because he's too busy
605
00:39:19.599 --> 00:39:22.199
trying to be a good Hinchman, right, Like he can't
606
00:39:22.639 --> 00:39:26.440
actually teach them anything because he's pretending that he's like
607
00:39:26.519 --> 00:39:30.400
so afraid of everything. And that's so fascinating to me
608
00:39:30.480 --> 00:39:34.320
because I'm like, so you said I would sooner sacrifice
609
00:39:35.559 --> 00:39:38.599
by job, because like, who's gonna need it when Voldemort
610
00:39:38.599 --> 00:39:40.320
comes back once we get our hands on the stone,
611
00:39:40.480 --> 00:39:46.039
you know, And so yeah, I don't I think, yeah,
612
00:39:46.039 --> 00:39:49.639
he doesn't get the respect of the students, which is
613
00:39:49.679 --> 00:39:53.719
one thing. But when we think about the instances where
614
00:39:54.079 --> 00:39:59.719
Harry does mention Quarrel being a teacher in any capacity,
615
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:02.920
he says things along the lines of like he's seemingly
616
00:40:02.960 --> 00:40:07.159
afraid of, you know, talking about vampires and all he
617
00:40:07.199 --> 00:40:11.480
does is like like he seems afraid to run across
618
00:40:11.480 --> 00:40:14.480
one again, and it's like, but he's actually not right,
619
00:40:14.559 --> 00:40:18.960
like he's just trying to pretend, which is so crazy
620
00:40:19.000 --> 00:40:22.519
because then when you think about and you juxtapose, you know,
621
00:40:22.719 --> 00:40:26.400
how committed to the bit Barti Crouch Junior was, It's like, honestly,
622
00:40:26.440 --> 00:40:29.679
that's not even a good excuse, because he actually taught them.
623
00:40:30.159 --> 00:40:34.239
It was bad, it was torturous, but they learned. Harry
624
00:40:34.360 --> 00:40:37.239
learned how to fight off the imperious curse. So it's like,
625
00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:38.840
you can be committed to the bit, you can be
626
00:40:38.880 --> 00:40:42.280
committed to Voldemore, and you can still be a good teacher.
627
00:40:42.599 --> 00:40:45.039
And so the fact that Quarrel isn't is you know,
628
00:40:45.199 --> 00:40:47.480
Voldemort is not an excuse in this case, because we
629
00:40:47.519 --> 00:40:50.119
have another person who admittedly did not have Baltimore attached
630
00:40:50.119 --> 00:40:53.559
to the back of his head, but he was kind
631
00:40:53.559 --> 00:41:00.079
of deranged and was not only cause playing a t
632
00:41:00.440 --> 00:41:06.719
but cause playing an ex orror who was unhinged and
633
00:41:07.079 --> 00:41:10.760
also still teaching the students as that person. Like that
634
00:41:11.199 --> 00:41:15.239
is the real deal. That's the kind of commitment to
635
00:41:15.280 --> 00:41:17.840
the character that I'm looking for. Whatever the heck, Quarrel
636
00:41:17.960 --> 00:41:20.719
is giving. It's not giving that. And I think that
637
00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:26.440
I think that everyone is right, and so far of
638
00:41:26.800 --> 00:41:29.559
being like he's not a good teacher, I had to
639
00:41:29.599 --> 00:41:32.280
go back into the text because I was like, I
640
00:41:32.480 --> 00:41:36.000
know that they described it, and so this is what
641
00:41:36.280 --> 00:41:39.920
is said in chapter eight The Postings Master and a
642
00:41:40.360 --> 00:41:45.800
Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone. The class everyone had really been looking
643
00:41:45.840 --> 00:41:48.880
forward to was defense against the Dark Arts, but Quarrel's
644
00:41:48.960 --> 00:41:50.880
lessons turned out to be a bit of a joke.
645
00:41:51.280 --> 00:41:54.480
His classroom smelled strongly of garlic, which everyone said was
646
00:41:54.519 --> 00:41:58.039
to ward off a vampire he'd met in Romania and
647
00:41:58.159 --> 00:42:00.280
was afraid would be coming back to get him him
648
00:42:00.480 --> 00:42:03.639
one of these days. His turbine, he told him, had
649
00:42:03.639 --> 00:42:05.920
been given to him by an African prince as I
650
00:42:05.960 --> 00:42:08.920
thank you for getting rid of a troublesome zombie. But
651
00:42:09.000 --> 00:42:11.719
they weren't sure they believed this story. For one thing,
652
00:42:11.920 --> 00:42:15.519
when Seamus Finnegan asked eagerly to hear how Quarrel had
653
00:42:15.519 --> 00:42:18.960
fought off the zombie, Quarrel went pink and started talking
654
00:42:18.960 --> 00:42:21.719
about the weather. For another, they had noticed that a
655
00:42:21.760 --> 00:42:25.159
funny smell hung around the turbine, and the Weasley twins
656
00:42:25.239 --> 00:42:27.760
insisted that it was stuffed full of garlic as well,
657
00:42:28.039 --> 00:42:32.719
so that Quarrel was protected wherever he went. So the
658
00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:37.440
class wasn't giving and everyone was expecting something. Now, admittedly
659
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:41.039
that passage comes from like the first couple of weeks,
660
00:42:41.519 --> 00:42:44.360
but at the end of the day, he's not effective.
661
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:48.239
And again, and now I'm questioning everything because I'm like,
662
00:42:48.920 --> 00:42:53.159
so why are you Is it all a lie? Is
663
00:42:53.199 --> 00:42:56.039
the stammering and the stuttering and is that all a lie?
664
00:42:56.280 --> 00:43:00.199
Are you faking it? Because like, now that I'm revisiting this,
665
00:43:00.280 --> 00:43:06.000
I'm like, if your cosplaying this well and not being effective,
666
00:43:06.119 --> 00:43:10.480
that's crazy. And like we know that Bartikrus Junior was
667
00:43:11.920 --> 00:43:16.320
mentally elsewhere after having been under the Impiris Christ for
668
00:43:16.400 --> 00:43:19.519
so long. So now I'm asking questions because I'm like,
669
00:43:20.199 --> 00:43:21.719
and this is let's I want us to talk about
670
00:43:21.719 --> 00:43:23.960
this in the post episode chat. Do we think that
671
00:43:24.000 --> 00:43:27.480
this was all fake the stuttering and the handshaking and
672
00:43:27.559 --> 00:43:30.079
all of these things, or was it that he was
673
00:43:30.199 --> 00:43:33.760
legitimately terrified, even more so perhaps because he had voldemortre
674
00:43:33.760 --> 00:43:35.599
on the back of his head. And now that I
675
00:43:35.679 --> 00:43:39.119
say those words out loud, can you imagine trying to
676
00:43:39.159 --> 00:43:42.360
teach a class with the dark Lord on your head,
677
00:43:42.760 --> 00:43:45.239
and like the anxiety of what it would have been
678
00:43:45.360 --> 00:43:48.639
like to have something like that, Like that you're hiding
679
00:43:48.679 --> 00:43:51.719
in a castle with Dumbledore, with Snape who's already suspecting you,
680
00:43:52.159 --> 00:43:56.199
with all of these people, and like you're so freaked
681
00:43:56.280 --> 00:43:58.679
out about the prospect, like what happens if the turbine
682
00:43:58.679 --> 00:44:01.880
falls off on accident? Like what do you do? Then?
683
00:44:02.199 --> 00:44:04.239
I don't know that I could effectively teach if I
684
00:44:04.239 --> 00:44:07.280
had Voldemore on the back of my head, honestly, for true,
685
00:44:07.679 --> 00:44:10.079
Like I don't know that I could do it. I mean,
686
00:44:10.239 --> 00:44:12.480
least of all defense against the dark Arts, but like
687
00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:15.400
I would be so freaked out because like you can
688
00:44:15.480 --> 00:44:17.920
feel this man on the back of your head, and
689
00:44:17.960 --> 00:44:21.360
you want me to teach kids about anything, I couldn't
690
00:44:21.360 --> 00:44:24.519
do it. I know that I completely changed my tune
691
00:44:25.440 --> 00:44:28.840
very quickly, and I'm not editing this to make it smoother,
692
00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:31.719
because I need you all to get my thought process, okay,
693
00:44:32.599 --> 00:44:37.000
because maybe you will also change your mind, and maybe
694
00:44:37.039 --> 00:44:38.760
we won't say he was a good teacher. Maybe the
695
00:44:38.800 --> 00:44:40.559
answer is even more so now that he was a
696
00:44:40.559 --> 00:44:42.280
bad teacher. But now at least we have a little
697
00:44:42.280 --> 00:44:45.239
bit of context as to why, Yeah, you got Voldemore
698
00:44:45.280 --> 00:44:48.000
on the back of your head and you're teaching these
699
00:44:48.039 --> 00:44:51.679
classes with this fool. Now, honestly, I would have been
700
00:44:51.719 --> 00:44:53.719
pissed because I would have been like, now, you're really
701
00:44:53.800 --> 00:44:56.719
good at magic, Voldemort. You could at least give me
702
00:44:56.760 --> 00:44:59.719
some tips, you know what I mean, You could at
703
00:44:59.800 --> 00:45:01.960
least helped me out a little bit. But I digress.
704
00:45:02.639 --> 00:45:05.760
This changes my perspective. I still think he's a bad teacher,
705
00:45:05.800 --> 00:45:08.000
but for the reasons that have nothing to do with
706
00:45:08.199 --> 00:45:10.760
his inability to cosplay correctly and everything to do with
707
00:45:10.800 --> 00:45:13.519
the fact that he had Voldemorre on the back of
708
00:45:13.559 --> 00:45:15.400
his head. And there's no way that I could effectively
709
00:45:15.400 --> 00:45:19.400
teach children when I have the dark Lord like literally
710
00:45:19.559 --> 00:45:22.400
siphoning my life force so that he can sustain some
711
00:45:22.440 --> 00:45:25.480
sort of carporeal form while being a parasite on my body.
712
00:45:26.480 --> 00:45:30.119
Like when you say it like that, his bad teaching,
713
00:45:30.320 --> 00:45:39.639
his stuttering, all of it makes much more sense. Is
714
00:45:39.840 --> 00:45:46.199
Quarrel a victim? About thirty nine percent of us said yes,
715
00:45:46.480 --> 00:45:49.280
about forty two percent of us said no, and about
716
00:45:49.400 --> 00:45:52.320
nineteen percent of us said don't know. I knew this
717
00:45:52.360 --> 00:45:54.280
question was going to be a little bit chaotic. When
718
00:45:54.280 --> 00:45:56.800
I posted it online, people were like, what, I can't
719
00:45:56.800 --> 00:46:00.679
believe that this. Many people are not are saying that
720
00:46:00.800 --> 00:46:06.159
he is. Someone wrote, there's a strong element of personality
721
00:46:06.199 --> 00:46:08.760
possession here. We don't know how much of what we
722
00:46:08.840 --> 00:46:12.199
saw was truly him. Someone else wrote, he might have
723
00:46:12.239 --> 00:46:16.360
started curious, maybe even well intentioned, but he opened the
724
00:46:16.400 --> 00:46:21.519
door and Voldemort just walked through. This is We're back.
725
00:46:21.559 --> 00:46:23.920
We're back to the question of like, how much of
726
00:46:23.920 --> 00:46:26.000
what he does is him and how much of what
727
00:46:26.079 --> 00:46:31.159
he does is Voldemort. I am not again, and I'm
728
00:46:31.320 --> 00:46:33.400
this is obviously getting repetitive at this point, but I
729
00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:36.079
just want to keep driving home the point. I think
730
00:46:36.079 --> 00:46:37.920
that one hundred percent of what we see him do
731
00:46:38.480 --> 00:46:41.400
is him. And I think the reason why I'm of this,
732
00:46:41.559 --> 00:46:44.039
of the mind that this is a thing is because,
733
00:46:44.920 --> 00:46:49.719
like in the underground cavern, where the little mirror of
734
00:46:49.719 --> 00:46:52.079
Araseat is not so little, but where the mirror of
735
00:46:52.079 --> 00:46:57.360
Araseat is, he literally has to give commands to Quarrel.
736
00:46:57.840 --> 00:47:00.800
He has to say like get the boy or use
737
00:47:00.880 --> 00:47:04.960
the boy or and he and Quarrel's like, Master, you're
738
00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:06.719
not strong enough. And he's like I have strength enough
739
00:47:06.719 --> 00:47:09.280
for this. I don't think Voldemore was in the position
740
00:47:09.400 --> 00:47:13.440
to be able to control Quarrel, like he could again
741
00:47:13.599 --> 00:47:17.440
manipulate him, make suggestions, but Quarrel had to be the
742
00:47:17.480 --> 00:47:21.079
one to go and drink the unicorn blood, right like
743
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:25.119
Voldemort was the one who was like, go get the stone, right,
744
00:47:25.199 --> 00:47:28.239
Like he couldn't like take over his body. I don't
745
00:47:28.239 --> 00:47:31.920
think he had the strength enough. So when we think about,
746
00:47:32.000 --> 00:47:36.639
you know, the choices that were made. Ye, yes, Voldemort
747
00:47:36.719 --> 00:47:43.280
was on him, but Voldemort wasn't like puppet mastering him,
748
00:47:43.679 --> 00:47:49.000
not physically at least mentally, definitely emotionally probably, But Quarrel
749
00:47:49.159 --> 00:47:53.079
is making these decisions, like Quarrel is making these choices
750
00:47:53.800 --> 00:47:57.360
and saying, yes, I will do this, Yes, Master, these
751
00:47:57.360 --> 00:48:00.280
are the choices that I will make for you. And
752
00:48:00.360 --> 00:48:03.360
in that same way, right, Like that is why I
753
00:48:03.440 --> 00:48:05.760
don't want to use the language of possession, because I
754
00:48:05.800 --> 00:48:09.159
think that he and I think even Voldemort uses it.
755
00:48:09.199 --> 00:48:11.639
But at that point we hadn't really seen what it
756
00:48:11.679 --> 00:48:15.000
was like to be possessed. But when we meet Ginny
757
00:48:15.199 --> 00:48:18.639
and we get to see that she is not in
758
00:48:18.679 --> 00:48:20.800
control of her body, She's not in control of her
759
00:48:20.800 --> 00:48:24.440
functions like Tom Riddle vis a vis the Diary is
760
00:48:24.519 --> 00:48:29.719
taking over her body and her mind and her memory
761
00:48:29.719 --> 00:48:31.559
to the point where she doesn't remember what's going on.
762
00:48:31.960 --> 00:48:35.400
That's not happening for Quarrel. Quarrel is being told to
763
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:38.400
do something and he is doing it like any of
764
00:48:38.400 --> 00:48:40.760
the other death eaters that we know. The only difference
765
00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:43.079
is that Voldemort is on his body. So I'm not
766
00:48:43.119 --> 00:48:46.440
willing to take away kind of his agency and autonomy
767
00:48:46.480 --> 00:48:49.519
in this, And so I think that everything that we
768
00:48:49.559 --> 00:48:54.119
see him do is him. It's a choice that Quarrel makes,
769
00:48:54.880 --> 00:48:59.320
and he does it in pursuit of getting Voldemort back
770
00:48:59.320 --> 00:49:02.119
to power for the sake of him getting back to power,
771
00:49:03.239 --> 00:49:05.400
or not back to power, but for him getting power.
772
00:49:05.960 --> 00:49:08.360
And so when I think about whether or not I
773
00:49:08.360 --> 00:49:13.360
think Coral is a victim, I don't. He made his choices,
774
00:49:13.679 --> 00:49:17.440
and he made them with the full knowledge of what
775
00:49:17.719 --> 00:49:22.559
was going on, and Voldemort was not powerful enough to
776
00:49:22.800 --> 00:49:25.280
assert himself he could punish Quarrel. We don't know how
777
00:49:25.320 --> 00:49:28.239
exactly he did that, but even then, I mean, you
778
00:49:28.280 --> 00:49:31.840
were whimpering. He wasn't, you know, performing the Cruciatis curse
779
00:49:31.880 --> 00:49:34.079
on you. He couldn't he didn't have that kind of magic.
780
00:49:34.559 --> 00:49:38.559
He was literally just trying to stay alive. That's why
781
00:49:38.599 --> 00:49:40.800
he had you out here drinking that unicorn blood. So
782
00:49:42.000 --> 00:49:44.760
we're talking about someone who you could have vanquished off
783
00:49:44.760 --> 00:49:47.159
of you if you wanted, because he was not strong
784
00:49:47.239 --> 00:49:51.239
enough to do much else, and you didn't. You made
785
00:49:51.280 --> 00:49:54.039
a decision. You made a choice, and I think I
786
00:49:54.079 --> 00:49:57.800
am not willing to take that away from Coral and
787
00:49:57.880 --> 00:50:01.119
so as a result, I'm like, no, you weren't a victim.
788
00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:05.840
You were a fool. And just like this person wrote,
789
00:50:06.639 --> 00:50:09.360
he might have started off curious and well intentioned, but
790
00:50:09.400 --> 00:50:12.679
he opened the door. And that's the thing. He opened it.
791
00:50:14.599 --> 00:50:18.440
He opened it and like, yeah, he might have been manipulated,
792
00:50:18.480 --> 00:50:21.519
obviously he was, but he opened it and kept it
793
00:50:21.559 --> 00:50:24.840
open because at any point he probably could have gotten
794
00:50:24.880 --> 00:50:27.960
rid of Voldemore because Voltimore did not have the kind
795
00:50:27.960 --> 00:50:31.199
of strength And they literally said that that's in the text, Master,
796
00:50:31.280 --> 00:50:33.320
you are not strong enough. I'm strong enough for this.
797
00:50:33.440 --> 00:50:36.400
That's Voldemort actively admitting that there are things that are
798
00:50:36.440 --> 00:50:39.320
beyond the scope of his ability because of the state
799
00:50:39.360 --> 00:50:44.039
that he is in. And so Quarrel could have been like,
800
00:50:44.119 --> 00:50:48.159
I'm not doing this and he still did it, and
801
00:50:48.199 --> 00:50:52.280
so I'm like, yeah, you know, I don't think he's
802
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:55.519
a victim. I think he's an idiot, and I think
803
00:50:55.519 --> 00:50:58.320
he made a choice that is foolish. I think he
804
00:50:58.400 --> 00:51:02.639
made a choice that he kept deluding himself into thinking
805
00:51:02.679 --> 00:51:04.119
that he was going to be able to get something
806
00:51:04.119 --> 00:51:08.679
out of it and with absolutely no return. And again
807
00:51:08.800 --> 00:51:13.079
I'm like, I just you must have believed that Voldemort
808
00:51:13.159 --> 00:51:16.920
was so incredible, because there's no way that I'm looking
809
00:51:17.039 --> 00:51:20.880
at this person who literally needs to attach themselves to
810
00:51:20.920 --> 00:51:23.760
me to stay alive, this person who is saying that
811
00:51:23.880 --> 00:51:27.039
I have to go and drink unicorn blood, this person
812
00:51:27.079 --> 00:51:29.960
who is making me do their bidding because they can't
813
00:51:29.960 --> 00:51:33.199
do it themselves, and thinking you're the key to my power,
814
00:51:33.440 --> 00:51:35.239
You're the key to getting me to where I need
815
00:51:35.280 --> 00:51:38.400
to be, Like, there's no way my brain does that
816
00:51:38.559 --> 00:51:44.559
leap unless like I am in it to win it myself,
817
00:51:44.800 --> 00:51:48.320
and like I'm fully bought in to the belief that
818
00:51:48.360 --> 00:51:51.840
this is the greatest wizard ever, and so I need
819
00:51:51.880 --> 00:51:55.079
to like, really, you know, buck up and shut up
820
00:51:55.119 --> 00:51:56.559
and just do what he says so that I can
821
00:51:56.599 --> 00:51:59.760
get what I want. That's the only way that that
822
00:51:59.800 --> 00:52:04.159
word and so no, he's not a victim. As far
823
00:52:04.159 --> 00:52:23.480
as I'm concerned, he is a fool. We've now reached
824
00:52:23.480 --> 00:52:25.760
the point in the episode where I am going to
825
00:52:25.840 --> 00:52:33.079
reflect on quarrel. Y'all, let's talk about ambition, like, let's
826
00:52:33.079 --> 00:52:36.599
have a real chat about ambition. From the very beginning
827
00:52:36.679 --> 00:52:40.039
of these books, ambition gets a really bad rap. It's
828
00:52:40.079 --> 00:52:42.880
treated like a red flag, like a warning sign, something
829
00:52:43.000 --> 00:52:45.480
dark and slippery and dangerous that lives in the dungeons
830
00:52:45.480 --> 00:52:48.920
where's green and may or may not speak parcel tongue.
831
00:52:49.199 --> 00:52:51.320
You know what I'm talking about. And yes, I should
832
00:52:51.360 --> 00:52:55.119
preface this by saying that I am a Slytherin. Yes,
833
00:52:55.280 --> 00:52:58.079
yes I am, and I am an ambitious person. But
834
00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:03.119
don't let that color what I'm about to talk about,
835
00:53:03.239 --> 00:53:07.400
because I think that regardless of that, there's gonna be
836
00:53:07.400 --> 00:53:11.519
something in here for you to noodle on as you
837
00:53:11.599 --> 00:53:15.400
prepare to kind of come and drag me. Okay, you
838
00:53:15.400 --> 00:53:17.880
know this is where I think the housing system really
839
00:53:17.920 --> 00:53:22.679
fails us, because it tries to sort traits like ambition, bravery, intelligence,
840
00:53:22.719 --> 00:53:26.480
loyalty into these really tidy boxes as if they don't overlap,
841
00:53:26.599 --> 00:53:32.920
as if people like aren't messy. But they do, right like,
842
00:53:33.000 --> 00:53:36.679
these attributes do overlap, and we are we are messy,
843
00:53:37.400 --> 00:53:39.239
especially on this podcast. You know, we left mess and
844
00:53:39.320 --> 00:53:44.320
chaos here. Right. Ambition doesn't live in Slithering alone. It
845
00:53:44.440 --> 00:53:47.800
lives in every insecure young person who wants to matter,
846
00:53:48.199 --> 00:53:51.639
every clever mind who thinks they're immune to manipulation, and
847
00:53:51.760 --> 00:53:56.719
every person who confuses power with agency. But ambition is
848
00:53:56.760 --> 00:54:02.239
not inherently evil. Ambition is direction. It points you somewhere.
849
00:54:03.079 --> 00:54:05.440
The questions we have to ask ourselves about our own
850
00:54:05.519 --> 00:54:09.400
ambition are where are we starting from? And what are
851
00:54:09.400 --> 00:54:13.320
we hoping our ambition will get us? Because the problem
852
00:54:13.360 --> 00:54:16.920
isn't ambition. The problem is the belief that doing something
853
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:21.559
ambitious or reaching that ambitious goal will address our fear
854
00:54:21.719 --> 00:54:26.360
of not being enough. And that's where the danger creeps in. Right,
855
00:54:27.480 --> 00:54:31.159
That's why Voldemort doesn't possess people at random. He finds
856
00:54:31.199 --> 00:54:35.199
people with a gap, a wound, or something unhealed. We
857
00:54:35.320 --> 00:54:38.760
had this whole conversation surrounding Daddy issues in Voldemort, right, Like,
858
00:54:38.800 --> 00:54:42.840
he has a penchant partially because he's projecting his own
859
00:54:42.920 --> 00:54:47.440
insecurities and his own wounds and unhealed trauma onto these
860
00:54:47.480 --> 00:54:50.840
other people. And he recognizes it, right, because Game recognized Game,
861
00:54:51.159 --> 00:54:54.079
and he's like, you got daddy issues, I got daddy issues, right,
862
00:54:54.360 --> 00:54:57.039
And he tells them that they can have exactly what
863
00:54:57.119 --> 00:55:02.079
they've been denied, power, validation, greatness, a family, a friend
864
00:55:02.440 --> 00:55:05.519
if they give him something, and more often than not,
865
00:55:06.079 --> 00:55:11.280
what he wants is them. And that brings us to Quarrel,
866
00:55:12.400 --> 00:55:14.800
because that's at the heart of Coral's story, right, Like,
867
00:55:14.880 --> 00:55:19.599
he wasn't evil at first. He was curious, a little insecure, smart,
868
00:55:19.599 --> 00:55:23.079
but overlooked. But he wanted more. And while that's not
869
00:55:23.159 --> 00:55:27.000
a crime, the crime is what he's willing to do
870
00:55:27.119 --> 00:55:29.920
and offer the chance to get the more he desires
871
00:55:29.920 --> 00:55:35.440
so much. And when he failed, Voldemort didn't possess him
872
00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:37.679
in the way of a dark spirit might take over
873
00:55:37.760 --> 00:55:40.159
your mind like we saw with a diary. He didn't
874
00:55:40.159 --> 00:55:43.679
erase Quarrel's will, he didn't strip him of any control
875
00:55:44.039 --> 00:55:47.239
like he would do to Jinny. Instead, he just attached
876
00:55:47.320 --> 00:55:52.599
himself to Quarrel's body. He became a parasite. And so
877
00:55:53.920 --> 00:55:58.039
like all of that happens before Coral even gets to Hogwarts.
878
00:55:58.519 --> 00:56:01.159
So from the moment that we meet, he's trembling and
879
00:56:01.159 --> 00:56:04.760
stuttering and sweating behind that turban Voldemore is already there,
880
00:56:04.960 --> 00:56:11.000
already latched on and already whispering. But again, Quarrel still
881
00:56:11.079 --> 00:56:15.960
had agency. He made choices. Voldemort couldn't force him to
882
00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:19.679
do anything. He had to ask him to go after
883
00:56:19.719 --> 00:56:22.719
Harry in that underground cave again, right, He had to
884
00:56:22.760 --> 00:56:24.760
convince him to drink the unicorn blood. He had to
885
00:56:24.800 --> 00:56:27.400
punish him, and he had to be punished when he
886
00:56:27.440 --> 00:56:30.360
didn't obey. Because Quarrel was still in control of his
887
00:56:30.440 --> 00:56:35.800
own body. He wasn't overtaken. He volunteered. He looked at Voldemort,
888
00:56:35.920 --> 00:56:38.960
looked at what Voldemort had been able to achieve, probably
889
00:56:38.960 --> 00:56:41.119
the fact that Voldemort was still alive, despite the fact
890
00:56:41.159 --> 00:56:43.679
that the Evadaka Davakar should have killed him. And he
891
00:56:43.760 --> 00:56:46.480
said to him, take what you need and just give
892
00:56:46.480 --> 00:56:50.719
me something in return. And the thing about this, right,
893
00:56:50.760 --> 00:56:54.239
the reality of this situation is that, like Quarrel is
894
00:56:54.280 --> 00:56:56.719
not the only person in this series who does that,
895
00:56:57.280 --> 00:57:02.239
Ginny Percy, even Dumbledore. Right, Like, we see this pattern
896
00:57:02.320 --> 00:57:05.119
over and over again where people who have something deep
897
00:57:05.119 --> 00:57:08.639
inside that they don't trust, or it makes them feel uncomfortable,
898
00:57:09.519 --> 00:57:13.559
something that they haven't resolved, and then someone or something
899
00:57:13.599 --> 00:57:15.480
shows up and says, I see you and I can
900
00:57:15.559 --> 00:57:19.360
make you hold they listen. Jenny didn't want power, She
901
00:57:19.480 --> 00:57:21.639
just wanted to be known. She wanted a confidante. She
902
00:57:21.719 --> 00:57:24.239
poured herself into that diary because she didn't have anywhere
903
00:57:24.239 --> 00:57:28.360
else to put her feelings. Percy believed in rules and meritocracy,
904
00:57:28.599 --> 00:57:33.280
but underneath that belief that he wasn't being taken seriously,
905
00:57:33.719 --> 00:57:36.320
and then he needed to prove himself. Dumbledore knew he
906
00:57:36.400 --> 00:57:39.039
was brilliant, but he also knew that he had the
907
00:57:39.039 --> 00:57:44.000
potential to do harm, and that conflict made him more
908
00:57:44.039 --> 00:57:47.280
susceptible to Grenda Wald and his promised for righteous power
909
00:57:47.400 --> 00:57:50.159
and control and to be able to assert his brilliance
910
00:57:50.159 --> 00:57:52.480
in a way that he couldn't because his family had
911
00:57:52.559 --> 00:57:57.000
left him. It's the same pattern. So in many ways, right,
912
00:57:57.079 --> 00:58:00.760
it feels like Coral is a warning because he didn't
913
00:58:00.800 --> 00:58:03.440
fall into darkness because he was weak. He fell into
914
00:58:03.519 --> 00:58:07.280
darkness because he believed that power that Voldemort could give
915
00:58:07.360 --> 00:58:11.440
him would fix his weakness. And what's so crazy is
916
00:58:11.480 --> 00:58:15.679
I was like ruminating about this. I kept thinking like, yeah,
917
00:58:15.679 --> 00:58:18.320
this is not a magical problem, this is a human one.
918
00:58:18.599 --> 00:58:21.440
Because in the real world, right, people get radicalized the
919
00:58:21.480 --> 00:58:25.159
same way, not because someone breaks into their mind, but
920
00:58:25.199 --> 00:58:28.199
because someone speaks to something that is already living there,
921
00:58:28.280 --> 00:58:32.159
right like the ground is already fertile. There's a fear
922
00:58:32.199 --> 00:58:36.079
of insignificance, the need to be admired, the dream of
923
00:58:36.159 --> 00:58:39.800
being the one pulling the strings, the desire for superiority.
924
00:58:41.159 --> 00:58:43.880
That's when people start making choices against their well being,
925
00:58:44.280 --> 00:58:47.199
not because they're inherently evil, some of them maybe, but
926
00:58:47.320 --> 00:58:50.320
not all of them, but because they've been promised a
927
00:58:50.400 --> 00:58:52.599
power that will fix the thing that they've been carrying
928
00:58:52.639 --> 00:58:56.639
their whole lives that has made them feel less than,
929
00:58:57.079 --> 00:58:59.199
which is so crazy, right because you don't actually have
930
00:58:59.280 --> 00:59:03.519
to be less then to feel less than and to
931
00:59:03.639 --> 00:59:09.000
allow that feeling to motivate you, and the power that's
932
00:59:09.079 --> 00:59:11.480
promised will make them feel better than whatever group of
933
00:59:11.519 --> 00:59:15.280
population plagues them the most, so they can ignore the
934
00:59:15.320 --> 00:59:17.840
things that actually would make their lives better in pursuit
935
00:59:17.880 --> 00:59:21.159
of a fallacy that siphons everything from them, like Voldi
936
00:59:21.239 --> 00:59:23.559
v on the back of Coral's head, right like, we
937
00:59:23.599 --> 00:59:26.079
are literally living in a time right now, particularly in
938
00:59:26.119 --> 00:59:29.559
the United States, where we see this and many of
939
00:59:29.639 --> 00:59:32.000
us are scratching our heads like how is this possible?
940
00:59:32.760 --> 00:59:35.440
But the reality is is that there's such a fertile
941
00:59:35.960 --> 00:59:41.000
ground for seeds of dissension and madness and power, or
942
00:59:41.039 --> 00:59:46.119
maybe not even power, maybe just like normalcy. However, you're
943
00:59:46.159 --> 00:59:51.440
contriving that to take root right, and that is a
944
00:59:51.519 --> 00:59:55.159
thing that makes the enchantment around the mirror of Aerosid
945
00:59:55.280 --> 01:00:00.280
and getting the stone so powerful and brilliant. And it
946
01:00:00.360 --> 01:00:03.320
also shows a level of self awareness that I often
947
01:00:03.360 --> 01:00:06.920
don't credit Dumbledore with having, because he knows that there
948
01:00:06.960 --> 01:00:09.599
are different kinds of ambition, right There's the kind of
949
01:00:09.639 --> 01:00:13.039
ambition that builds and the kind of ambition that consumes,
950
01:00:13.440 --> 01:00:17.000
and he knows that the kind of ambition that consumes
951
01:00:17.119 --> 01:00:20.079
is the more kind of prevalent one, and so he
952
01:00:20.199 --> 01:00:23.719
focuses his energy on the former. Because you have to
953
01:00:23.880 --> 01:00:28.159
want the stone but not use it. That is literally
954
01:00:28.280 --> 01:00:32.159
such a miraculous kind of mindset that you have to have.
955
01:00:34.039 --> 01:00:38.079
And it made me think of Wicked, mostly because I'm
956
01:00:38.079 --> 01:00:40.400
obsessed with that movie and the musical. I've seen it
957
01:00:40.440 --> 01:00:43.119
a thousand times. But one of the things that I
958
01:00:43.159 --> 01:00:44.960
really noticed as I was kind of going on this
959
01:00:45.039 --> 01:00:47.559
online TI rate about why I think Alpabu's a hufflepuff
960
01:00:47.599 --> 01:00:51.360
and not a ravenclaw, and it's certainly not a Slytherin
961
01:00:51.800 --> 01:01:00.559
is because Alphaba is basically promised whatever she wants. Madam Morrible,
962
01:01:01.079 --> 01:01:04.119
the Wizard, they both they all try to like appeal
963
01:01:04.199 --> 01:01:09.159
to her ambition and it doesn't work because she doesn't
964
01:01:09.199 --> 01:01:12.599
have that kind of ambition. She doesn't want power. She
965
01:01:12.719 --> 01:01:16.039
literally wanted to belong and then she wanted equal rights
966
01:01:16.039 --> 01:01:20.760
for the animals hashtag cufflepuff. Glinda, on the other hand,
967
01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:25.599
now she wants recognition, right like she wants the status,
968
01:01:26.320 --> 01:01:29.599
and that's the desire that they ultimately leverage to try
969
01:01:29.639 --> 01:01:32.159
to get her to get Alpha Ba back. I won't
970
01:01:32.239 --> 01:01:34.039
ruin part two for those of you who have only
971
01:01:34.079 --> 01:01:38.159
seen the movies, but just know that that's a theme, right,
972
01:01:38.679 --> 01:01:44.000
And it's so fascinating, right because in Defying Gravity, you know,
973
01:01:44.079 --> 01:01:46.960
she says, I I hope you're proud how you would
974
01:01:47.000 --> 01:01:50.639
grovel in submission to feed your own ambition. That's what
975
01:01:50.719 --> 01:01:54.320
Alphabet says to Glinda. And it's like, right, because there's
976
01:01:54.400 --> 01:01:58.000
something inside of Glinda that is not the same, right,
977
01:01:58.239 --> 01:02:00.760
because the other thing is is that Elfa but already
978
01:02:00.800 --> 01:02:03.320
has the power. She even says to the Wizards, like
979
01:02:03.360 --> 01:02:06.920
you have no power, and he's like, yeah, exactly. And
980
01:02:06.960 --> 01:02:10.400
that made me think of someone else with luscious hair
981
01:02:11.000 --> 01:02:14.440
and a pension for tossing it to get attention. Lucia's Malfoy,
982
01:02:15.039 --> 01:02:18.360
because it's such a fascinating juxtaposition. Like Lucius is bad,
983
01:02:19.199 --> 01:02:23.280
but he also has ambition, but not to fix anything
984
01:02:23.320 --> 01:02:25.679
inside of him, not to patch up a wound, because
985
01:02:25.679 --> 01:02:28.920
he doesn't think he's broken. He thinks he's better. His
986
01:02:29.039 --> 01:02:33.519
ambition comes from entitlement, not inadequacy. He doesn't want to
987
01:02:33.559 --> 01:02:37.159
become anything. He just wants to stay on top. And
988
01:02:37.199 --> 01:02:40.360
that's why Voldemort never has full control of him. And
989
01:02:40.400 --> 01:02:43.360
that's why Voldemort resents Lucius, and that's why he can
990
01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:46.360
threaten him and do all of these things because he
991
01:02:46.440 --> 01:02:49.599
never quite buys in the same way that I think
992
01:02:50.679 --> 01:02:54.280
Voldemort is used to these people buying in because he
993
01:02:54.840 --> 01:02:59.440
is fine. He is a death eater because it gives
994
01:02:59.480 --> 01:03:04.960
him static in certain circles. He's not a good person,
995
01:03:05.039 --> 01:03:06.920
like I want to be very clear about that, but
996
01:03:07.000 --> 01:03:10.360
he shows us something so important, right, him and Alphaba,
997
01:03:10.800 --> 01:03:13.559
two people I never thought I would group together. Ambition
998
01:03:13.880 --> 01:03:17.320
on its own isn't enough to make you malleable to manipulation.
999
01:03:17.960 --> 01:03:22.519
It's ambition when paired with insecurity. It's ambition when fueled
1000
01:03:22.519 --> 01:03:26.719
by an adequacy. That's where it gets dangerous. And that's
1001
01:03:26.760 --> 01:03:29.000
what makes Quarrel more than just a plot twist in
1002
01:03:29.039 --> 01:03:31.880
the book. He's a template for the way that we
1003
01:03:31.920 --> 01:03:35.880
see so many other characters enter into our space as
1004
01:03:35.920 --> 01:03:37.960
we go through the series. Right, Because at the end
1005
01:03:37.960 --> 01:03:41.880
of the day, Voldemort didn't take anything from Quarrel. Quarrel
1006
01:03:41.920 --> 01:03:45.320
gave it away piece by piece voluntarily. That's why I
1007
01:03:45.320 --> 01:03:48.239
don't think he's a victim, believing that it would give
1008
01:03:48.320 --> 01:03:51.480
him something that will make him feel whole, make him
1009
01:03:51.519 --> 01:03:55.599
feel better, make him feel superior. And after all of that,
1010
01:03:57.079 --> 01:03:59.280
he's literally dust on the floor of a cavern that
1011
01:03:59.320 --> 01:04:05.000
we never see again in right, Like, maybe Coral isn't
1012
01:04:05.119 --> 01:04:08.880
just this man with two faces. Maybe he's every person
1013
01:04:09.440 --> 01:04:13.159
who ever thought this time it'll be different and realized
1014
01:04:13.199 --> 01:04:15.559
too late that they were never the one in control.
1015
01:04:15.599 --> 01:04:18.639
Like we're literally living in that right now, y'all. And
1016
01:04:18.760 --> 01:04:21.960
maybe he's the question every ambitious person has to answer.
1017
01:04:23.400 --> 01:04:25.760
Do I want to be more or do I want
1018
01:04:25.800 --> 01:04:47.440
to be enough? If you felt called out by that
1019
01:04:47.519 --> 01:04:51.039
reflection on ambition. Just know that so did I, and
1020
01:04:51.079 --> 01:04:54.840
I wrote it, so you're not alone. That's just the
1021
01:04:54.920 --> 01:04:59.840
way the cookie crumbles. Sometimes sometimes we're called out together, okay,
1022
01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:03.840
and we just have to accept that as being true.
1023
01:05:05.119 --> 01:05:09.320
Thank you all so much for listening to this episode, y'all.
1024
01:05:09.960 --> 01:05:13.920
What a time. As always, characters I always think won't
1025
01:05:13.920 --> 01:05:18.119
do anything always leave me scratching my head like how
1026
01:05:18.159 --> 01:05:38.159
did you just do that? This has been another episode
1027
01:05:38.199 --> 01:05:41.119
of Critical Magic Theory. I'm Professor Julian Womble and if
1028
01:05:41.159 --> 01:05:44.920
you enjoy today's episode, First of all, thank you. Please
1029
01:05:44.920 --> 01:05:47.480
feel free to like, rate, subscribe, do all the things
1030
01:05:47.519 --> 01:05:51.679
that one does where pods are cast. Please please please
1031
01:05:51.760 --> 01:05:54.440
join us for the post episode chat on Patreon Patreon
1032
01:05:54.480 --> 01:05:56.760
dot com slash Critical Magic Theory. It's going to be
1033
01:05:56.800 --> 01:06:00.199
a good time. We're gonna have a post episode at
1034
01:06:00.519 --> 01:06:04.599
prof response episode for both Quarrel and McGonagall, So please
1035
01:06:04.920 --> 01:06:07.719
share all of your thoughts. Please feel free to check
1036
01:06:07.719 --> 01:06:11.119
out our website, Criticalmagic Theory dot com send me an
1037
01:06:11.119 --> 01:06:14.559
email at Critical Magic Theory at gmail dot com. Y'all,
1038
01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:17.360
there is so much that we have to discuss about
1039
01:06:17.400 --> 01:06:21.719
this episode, so join us, Okay, join in that conversation.
1040
01:06:22.199 --> 01:06:25.039
The Lockhart survey will be up for you all on
1041
01:06:25.079 --> 01:06:29.000
Thursday on Patreon. I can't wait for your thoughts. Until then,
1042
01:06:29.079 --> 01:06:32.159
y'all be critical and stay magical. Bye.