Tom Riddle: The Man, the Mystery, the Maniac

The Carnivorous Muffin and Vinelle give their interpretation of who Tom Riddle even was, and what he was trying to accomplish.

What is Rank Heresy?

Discussion, analysis, and exotic opinions surrounding fandoms like Twilight, Star Wars, Harry Potter, the MCU, and far too many animes.

[00:00] Vinelle: Welcome to the newest episode of Rank Heresy. Today we will be discussing Tom Riddle.

[00:06] The Carnivorous Muffin: At least one part of Tom Riddle. This ended up being multiple episodes but apparently it's what the people want to hear. So we're going to talk about Tom today.

[00:14] Vinelle: Who doesn't want to talk? Talk about Tommy Riddle. Also, I should just mention yes, we mean Tom Riddle, aka waldmore. It's just that we usually refer to him by the name Tommy and not Waldmore because a lot of people make that distinction.

[00:27] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, I guess that will inform you that things might be interesting right off the bat that we do not make that distinction. It's the same dude, guys.

[00:39] Vinelle: Yeah. So Tom is introduced to us as just ultimate evil. He is the serum of the Harry Potter books who lurks in the shadows and is always plotting various ways to kill Harry. When he is not plotting various ways to kill Harry he is killing other people. He is the plague runs around killing people and it's so terrifying that you do not even speak his name. It is the visiting world that has these general, almost superstitious fears of him. When it comes to more personal knowledge about the man we get it largely from Albus Dumbledore with a few sources as Horace Lughorn who knew him. We have established us and we have the insights that Harry gets into his mind and that's it. I think of course there's JK. Rowling but JK. Rowling says a lot of funny stuff so you just have to sort of tune out like right now.

[01:28] The Carnivorous Muffin: And we also, as we noted in our introductory episode, which I'm sure none of you actually listen to, this podcast is not about taking the author at their word. We pretend they don't exist and we don't listen to a word they say and I'm sure what we say offends them greatly.

[01:44] Vinelle: Yes, we're like a teenager saying you can tell me what to do to the creators.

[01:48] The Carnivorous Muffin: The stage is my life, mom. Back to our sources. Our main source of this is going to be the half bloodprints when we start getting those flashbacks in the pensive. And Tom is doing actually really innocuous things such as working retail and he doesn't actually do anything in the scene we see. And then Dumbledore afterwards will tell us what evil thing he did immediately afterwards or how what he was doing right there was evil. Or he'll be eleven and he's in a room and he's evil or he's applying to a job that he doesn't get and it's evil.

[02:28] Vinelle: On the one occasion Harry displays empathy with Tom Riddle, tomato immediately rebukes him. Harry is appalled that Nera didn't fight. Harder to tell him. And Dummy says, and I quote could you possibly be feeling sorry for Lord of Baltimore? To it. Harry replies no. And then Harry is to explain himself it was just a poor mirror, didn't fight. Dummy proceeds to explain how sometimes women choose to die in childbirth in real life is the takeaway that you shouldn't feel sorry for Lord Voldemort even in such circumstances as his mother being too depressed to live to raise him because it's Lord Voldemort domado's point with his presence is supposed to be to show that Tom Riddle is human and here is how he texts what he is constructing is a subhuman concept that isn't deserving of empathy at any time dumbledore.

[03:19] The Carnivorous Muffin: Has an agenda we talked about this last time and the power of love but we're going to hit it again is that he has a very clear reason that he's doing these lessons it is that he is dying he knows it. He has very limited time left he has set Snape up to kill him by this point already Snape has made an unbreakable vow that either Draco will do it or he himself will do it should Draco fail and he needs Harry Potter to die ideally he needs Harry Potter willing or able to do it by his own hand and this has to be after Dumbledore himself is dead he has to leave all of that to them and he needs to do this because he knows Harry is a Horcrux and for Baltimore to be defeated Harry must kill himself there's not much time. Dumbledore has to convince Harry that any future in which Baltimore is alive must be prevented at any cost even his own life. He has to be the most evil evil to have ever existed so that Harry is willing to do this great sacrifice for the good of the country. What we were getting out there is that we have very little insight into Tom Riddle as a character and it's from very biased sources who have their own reasons for saying what they do. So we got to go a bit left field with what we actually think about him and what do we think about him. The bottom line upfront is that he's a nihilistic sad sack who doesn't believe a word he says and just wants to blow up his own ridiculous country by setting them up to destroy themselves. This doesn't make him good we're not that people no guys this isn't a dumbledore is bad therefore Tom must be good. He does awful things. He leads a terrorist organization that murders many people we are told whether we see these murders or not is a different story and he murdered a baby this one time and his organization stands for this blood purism ideal which is.

[05:15] Vinelle: Horrible to get into why we think this is that for a villain who supposedly wants to take over the world he is just remarkably bad at it and he's supposed to be brilliant he has a brain and yet he makes these not even rookie mistakes but these kinds of decisions that look to us more like self sabotage. He is completely inefficient he will drag his feet for months upon months for such simple tasks at stealing Mifilat's Bristone or springing his staff leaders from a band in Deathly hallows he has won the broadest ice fingertips and what he does with all that power is that he is just throwing himself into this hunt for Harry Potter and he doesn't even do that effectively it's just traveling around on the European continent looking for a special want he has one of Harry's closest friends. Luma Lovegood right there in a stungen doesn't use her rest of Harry's social circle there at Hogwarts in the borough easy to find he could have taken hostages he could have killed Maggie Bonds by the hour in diagonally until Harry turned himself in he could have put Harry's loved ones under the Imperior so they would sell him out should he get in touch with them he does none of the things a supposedly ruthless wizard would do just as he doesn't go after any of the kids of non members of the order instead it's just traipsing around on the German countryside and I think the best example of this self sabotage would be the Battle of Hogwarts not only did he not participate himself even though he's an extremely powerful wizard who could definitely have made a difference in that battle he didn't sneak into the castle to get his sock rocks while everyone was distracted his side was doing rather well harry's side would dying Enmas and Harry himself would either die in the battle of Flee and be known as a coward and no longer be the symbol that needed to be destroyed wilma just needs to sit back and I will be destroyed one way or another what did he do? He offers a ceasefire 1 hour when everyone can tend to they're dead and they're wounded and Harry can turn himself in so this fight can be over and this is why of course leads to his enemies rallying and putting up a much better fight against him later on and you could say it was a strategic mistake and you could say it was a strategic mistake but we are going to go ahead and say that he didn't want to slaughter to continue and he used Harry Potter as an excuse to call that ceasefire another example of Tom avoiding bloodshed would be seen as humans lovegood who prints things in his paper that are damaging to Tom's cause tom's response is to take Luna hostage and he add that it's a very bad thing to do and he definitely of horrible ethos in affiliates and Luna but why didn't this bloodthirsty and ruthless villain just kill her or her father above? She's not useful and she's not used to anything she's not turned to the dark side she's not tortured or used as target practice she's just chilling in the basement not getting killed fred and George. Known friends of Harry Potter who make toilet jokes about Tom in their shop window in the middle of Diagonally they are placing themselves in the line of fire and yet he never goes after them of course they closed their shop in Deathly Hallows but he had every occasion in Half Blood Prince they were not in hiding and if it was just one instance. One person he neglected to hurt it would be another matter but this behavior seems strangely consistent hostage it doesn't take people he doesn't hurt like the battle of Hogwarts. The Lovegoods. The Weasleys. Any of Harry's friends to a loved ones. Hogwarts students just so many kids of the order waiting to be taken out he never does it so the villain.

[08:46] The Carnivorous Muffin: I like to think of and nobody I'm sure will have seen this from our audience or maybe like two people is that there's an anime called now and Then Here and there it's fairly old now but it's very good and the villain is a man by the name of Hondo and Hondo is an excellent villain who has gone utterly mad the consequences of his actions are devastating to his people and to others and they are also completely erratic he will change his mind on a whim he will make his underlings do these pointless tasks a prisoner who he has captured he will be hot and cold he will try to woo them in 1 minute and then be threatening them in the next you cannot predict what this guy is going to do next and that is a mad villain who has over the top amount of power and that's not Tom because he's not doing any of that we don't see that erratic behavior from him or even the devastating consequences from him in Hashtag Prince.

[09:48] Vinelle: We are told that there are Zambi armies the mentals everywhere muggles. Muggle. Bones they are being tortured so many people are getting murdered and you never see any of it there is not a single person talking about a zombie attack you don't have people being dementia skipped by the scores in depth of Halos yes. There are people who are losing their want and all that but to my recollection. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think that time is actually the mentors kissing or killing people he just takes their wounds. Breaks them and off they go it's.

[10:25] The Carnivorous Muffin: Unclear we have that trial where the dementors are present but it's unclear what's going on what is clear I guess would say is that take the beginning of Half Blood Prince for a while. For a bit baltimore has acknowledged his back he started ramping up his attacks everyone's terrified only two murders are ever mentioned bones advance those are the only two we hear about people are terrified that these have happened it's just two and it's people who needed to be disposed of for him to progress they were not needless murders from his own end I know that's a weird thing to say about murder bear with us people. What I'm getting at is he had a very clear reason to attack these two they were not muggleborns yes and.

[11:12] Vinelle: You have device Lucy as I mentioned earlier very easy and very obvious target but they're simply left alone. Arthur gets attacked at one point because he was in Naguini's way that's it. Fred and George they have a shop where they make Merciless son of Waldemara and it will be so easy for him to make an example of them he never does.

[11:32] The Carnivorous Muffin: Funny also is she's in Hogwarts he knows she's Harry's girlfriend or at least he knows that she's a weasley her parents are all in the order of the Phoenix chances are she has connections and she is the sister of Harry's best friend he has access to her, she has never taken hostage.

[11:52] Vinelle: Just when you look at the list of confirmed victims for Voldemort it's oddly small the list of names it must be said yes the population is small but you hear singular names you don't hear and then he killed a dozen people peter Pedigree does that voldemort there's not a single foul on massacre that's ever described which really leaves us with the option that he only kills those he has to those that are necessary. We also told these disasters in the muggle world that he is collapsing bridges. There is a minister who now thinks he's a duck and there was a hurricane and out of season okay without it.

[12:40] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah we opened half blood prints and the minister is bemoaning it but there's never mention of a sky high death toll. This minister acting like a duck is brought up in the same sentence as this out of season hurricane and then the bridge collapsing. There doesn't seem to be a huge death toll or a huge even injury toll that has occurred with these actions. It sounds like Baltimore's teenage recruits high on cocaine going to cause mischief in the muggle world the deaf eaters are.

[13:13] Vinelle: Pranking the muggles that's what it sounds like and yes it's bad but it doesn't sound like anyone is getting mastered.

[13:21] The Carnivorous Muffin: By the dozen basically what we're trying to get out here is that it doesn't sound like the Voldemort we are described who is the ultimate evil and who will cause mass devastation to the muggle world to Muggle boards as soon as he has the opportunity he has the opportunities in the book for three of the books he has the means to do this. He doesn't and it's very strange and.

[13:47] Vinelle: One last example that we will bring off is the battle of Hogwarts because yesterday's carnage they finally use carnage and Waltmart then cuts off the carnage he gives his enemies an hour to regroup while asking Harry to surrender and this turns the tide of the battle. The defeat were winning Harry wasn't going anywhere tom could have had his debut march in Get Harry and instead he chooses to give harry, this opportunity to save everybody. Was he perhaps doing this because he didn't want anyone to die? Because it really both in context of his record and of the way that battle, he wound up losing that battle because of this decision.

[14:33] The Carnivorous Muffin: It was a very strange moment. And also strange was that, granted, this was parading the corpse of his enemy about the thing. But what he does immediately after killing Harry is he parades around his corpse and says, look, everyone, your hero is dead. Please go home.

[14:51] Vinelle: Stop fighting, it's over.

[14:54] The Carnivorous Muffin: Stop fighting, it's over, we're done here. And then it evolves because it turns out Harry shouts out, we are not done here. The battle continues again.

[15:08] Vinelle: So then there's the question of, isn't he a blood tourist? Honestly, we don't think he is. He says he is, but he is putting on this very dramatic show that's meant to appeal to his Blood purest audience. He has all these ambience. Lord Waldmark is a character, that's how we see him. Tamil is always playing a character and he is blood voldemort. There is a matter of what reason he would have to be a Blood purist. He was a Muggleborn himself, for all anybody knew. Nobody knew that his mother was Murray Kant. He had a muggle name. Muggle background. He would have been discriminated against in Hogwarts. And indeed, we do see that when he gets out, when he graduates, the only job he's able to get with his incredible grades is in retail.

[15:52] The Carnivorous Muffin: I know people will bring this up, is that he's working in an antique dealer and that could be seen as very high end, except he's in a bit of a sketch antique dealer. He's in nocturnaly, he's not in diagonale.

[16:05] Vinelle: And it seems that his looks are his selling point more than anything else. We see him at work and he's going to an old lady who he has been flirting with together to buy stuff from his employer.

[16:16] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, it's not a job that well, first off, it's a job, period. He has to be employed. Lucius Malfoy has jobs that are not jobs. The truly rich do not have jobs. That's for the poor folk and the Muggleborn folk, like Tom Riddle.

[16:34] Vinelle: What we're getting at here is that the Muggleborn society, the purple of Supremacist Society, has done him no favor. He deserves, after his hard work at school, to get a proper job, to advance economically. He doesn't. And the question is, why would he want to propagate the system that discriminated against him? You could say that. Oh, yeah, the people do that. They have internalized x phobia. But I see him as very proud and wouldn't forgive the visiting society for viewing him this way, for treating him this way. And you certainly wouldn't adopt it like, oh, yeah, I guess they're right. So it seems. And his actions, they all lead to the destruction of the pure blood families. He takes their stance and just turns them into they do act like crack addicts. My nurse theory here that he was giving them drugs.

[17:28] The Carnivorous Muffin: I would believe it. I believe they're all addicted to cocaine. What's the time period for it too? It was the 70s. He'd have access to it.

[17:39] Vinelle: Yeah, like the victims of his campaign on both light and dark side are the Pure Bloods. The great houses are completely devastated by him.

[17:48] The Carnivorous Muffin: So take a look at the Black family. The Black family is completely wiped out by him. Serious. Black was his enemy and then died. Tonks married out. Not Tonks, Tonks mother. Andromeda married. Out married tent tonks. So she's sort of off the table. But then you have Narcissa via Lucius. She's gone because of what happened. They barely survived this. Bellatrix dies without a child. Regulus dies in a zombie cave. The family, whatever money they did happen to have, whatever estate, whatever they had, it is gone by the time he is through with them. Also gone. The Mouth boy family, he does his darndest to destroy them. And they know it in the book, they even talk about it. And I think it's because and it probably is in part because of what happened with the diary and then with the prophecy and how Lucius was personally involved.

[18:48] Vinelle: Both times you have been targeting the McKinnons, the Pruitts, Pure Blood families again. Potters pure Blood, yes. In the Potters, if you're supremacist, wouldn't he be sparing at least the kids like the younger generations, like Marlene, who was the same generation as James? Wouldn't he be killing the Muggle bones and the Half Blood first? Give the Blood traders a chance to, you know, god, what is redeem themselves? Yes, I am failing at English tonight.

[19:20] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, it's the ones that are his enemies that are the Pure Bloods. And then it's also the Pure Bloods that work for him that are devastated by the consequences of this. The entire governmental system seems to collapse because of this. They almost have to rebuild from the ground up and you get a whole new generation of people who shouldn't have all been hired in those positions all at the same time. You know, you get hermione gets to be very high up in the Ministry, presumably, and she very well probably would not have gotten that position had none of this happened. All right, Tinfoil Hattime, this is where we're coming from is that our ideas, once he has taken over the wizarding world, the first to go are going to be the Muggleborns. They're going to lose their wants and they're no longer going to be able to practice magic. And the Pure Bloods are going to feel great about themselves. This is going to be great. And then the Half Bloods are probably going to go, they're going to lose their wands and that's still good because they're not Pure Bloods either. And then it's going to be the Blood traders who are Pure Blood, but they're on the wrong side, so that's okay. And then the not good enough followers, or the followers who are messed up, and then no one's allowed to practice and it's the Pure Bloods. And then suddenly, for whatever reason, this entire society just collapses.

[20:40] Vinelle: We're mentioning that the visits we see, yes, the most talented ones can do some wantless magic, but that is they depend on their wants. Take the ones away from the wizards and their medals. It seems to us that he's trying to destroy the wizarding world in the long term. And in this nonviolent way, that is.

[20:59] The Carnivorous Muffin: Our theory, relatively nonviolence crackhead way.

[21:03] Vinelle: You guys know what I mean?

[21:05] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah. I hope we do. Crack head, Death Eaters. And then just the slow degradation of rights for everyone and the destruction of this society completely, and just all of it burns.

[21:20] Vinelle: Yes, it's all gone. And by then they won't be able to out of power. There won't be anything they can do about it because they have no ones. And those who would have been their allies have no one sider.

[21:31] The Carnivorous Muffin: Right. So I'm sure somebody is thinking this, aren't you looking a bit too deep into this? So let's do a little bit of real talk with JKR. I know we typically avoid it, but let's get into it.

[21:44] Vinelle: She hates villains. She is very much like a Marvel movie. Okay, I guess she has to have a villain. All right, you guys, you have a villain. He's blue, or in this case, he just never knows. You got your villain. Are you happy? Do I need to do anything more with him? I don't think so.

[21:59] The Carnivorous Muffin: The villain shows up and be afraid because they're scary and powerful and the stakes are high, but don't be that afraid because don't worry, they're never going to win. And this person is ugly. And the only people who actually listen to them are evil themselves. And no good character will actually fall for their ploys. And the closest you're going to get is Percy, who doesn't believe Dumbledore.

[22:21] Vinelle: And Percy later comes crawling back to apologize. So sorry, he didn't believe. And there's a whole lot of nonsense there. Arthur made him turn down a promotion because, oh, they only promoted you to get to me. And then Percy is vilified for saying, oh, let me have my job, damn it.

[22:40] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah.

[22:41] Vinelle: If you guys want an example, then usually the Fantastic Beasts is a very good example of this because Grindelwald, he's supposedly on the rise. He's going to become bigger and better than ever, and then he doesn't because a holy deer decided that he was not as worthy as Dumbledore or his other candidates. A holy deer gets to decide. And now Grindelwald sits in Christ and he loses all the momentum that he has had of the past three movies. It genuinely seems like JKR could not let her win and win even when it benefited the plot empire's back. She could never have made that movie. Oh, no. We would have had the cryofreeze machine just malfunction and then Ham cell, a shoe, stars waiter. Don't worry, guys.

[23:32] The Carnivorous Muffin: Well, we could never have a new Hope because she never let Palpatine have a Death Star. He'd have a Death Star, and it might almost shoot something down, but we learn it never actually shoots anything, and it just kind of sits in space, and then it gets blown up before it can do anything.

[23:50] Vinelle: And of course, Anakin would not fall either. It might have been a several snake. And he was good the entire time. Not at home.

[23:59] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, he had some secret deal with Obiwan that Obiwan tells Luke about as a Force ghost. Yeah.

[24:07] Vinelle: Just had to cut off his limbs on litter, on fire. All part of the plan.

[24:12] The Carnivorous Muffin: All part of the plan. God, that is exactly what happened in the Harry Potter. It is as if on Mustafar, if there's a secret deal where Obiwan cuts off his limbs and sets him on fire to make him the perfect double agent, sends him off to Palpatine to be this miserable husk for years, and then 20 years later, it's revealed he was a double agent for reals the entire time.

[24:46] Vinelle: And if it sounds super stupid, then don't question it.

[24:49] The Carnivorous Muffin: Don't question it. Yeah. So that's what JKR was really doing and what she really intended by all of this. But again, we have our theories of, like, I think he was trying to destroy everything. And for trying to do what he was saying he was trying to do, he was really bad at it in a very consistent way that oddly works towards other goals.

[25:17] Vinelle: It is worth mentioning that this is for another episode, but the man seems consistently very self destructive and suicidal, quite frankly. But you just have bag of cats in there.

[25:32] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, that's a bag of cats. For a different episode, there's a lot of bags of cats for Tom Riddle that we just do not have time for in this episode.

[25:40] Vinelle: He has so many cats.

[25:42] The Carnivorous Muffin: So many cats, so little time. Another day. All right. Bring out Tor Grim.

[25:47] Vinelle: I will.

[25:48] The Carnivorous Muffin: So for those of you who do not know and don't follow us is we have a patreon. You can support us. Please do. One of the perks, among other things, is that you get your name on a list and we run a random number generator, and you get a shout out if Python's random number generator, nicknamed Torgram for reasons, selects you. Hurry.

[26:14] Vinelle: Torgram blows up with Kale again.

[26:19] The Carnivorous Muffin: Wow.

[26:21] Vinelle: Getting strange. I run for their money.

[26:23] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yeah, huge run for their money. Well, congratulations, Rivka. You are now not even chunks anymore. You're a fine mist.

[26:33] Vinelle: Oh, you've been blown up so hard. I am so, so sorry. We like you as a patron. You're fantastic.

[26:41] The Carnivorous Muffin: Yes, support us on patreon. We have a Tumblr where we announce stuff, which is mostly just that the episodes came out. If you guys want to follow up that or you can send those questions there and let's wrap this up.

[26:54] Vinelle: You got to do it through the Alpha because Tumblr is a malfunctioning website that no longer allows DMs to be sent to rank here. They have not fix it.

[27:06] The Carnivorous Muffin: I don't think they will. Alright.

[27:08] Vinelle: Alright. In case I don't see you again, good afternoon, good evening and good night.