That Moment When Someone Verbalizes Your Experience AND SHARES IT

You said in another post you don’t believe the Knights of Walpurgis (aka Death Eaters 1.0) were all that plausible. Why is that?

Oof, this is a larger ask than I think you intend that gets into a lot of controversial things. Though, I suppose that’s what this blog has become.

Remember when I just talked about my weird fanfiction? Remember those days? I remember those days.

I guess to start out we need to go at a high level and acknowledge a few things.

For all we know about Tom Riddle’s life we know very little that came from himself. Most of what we know came to us via The Halfblood Prince, in Dumbledore’s lessons to Harry.

Think what you will about Dumbledore, benign or evil, but we can all acknowledge that the man had a clear goal and agenda in Halfblood Prince. Dumbledore was facing his imminent death, suddenly he no longer was looking at years but a few months to accomplish everything he needed to. He knows Harry is a horcrux, knows he himself no longer has time to hunt down Tom’s horcruxes himself, and instead must leave all his work to Severus and, partly, to Harry Potter.

Specifically, he has to groom Harry for suicide.

By the time Severus relays the truth to Harry (never mind that this very nearly didn’t happen in canon and what would Dumbledore do then) Harry must be prepared to sacrifice his own life to stop Voldemort. That, or Severus will have to murder the shit out of him, and that was probably plan B but Dumbledore would prefer it if Harry went along willingly so that the whole thing’s a little less shady. Dumbledore’s not murdering children if the children murder themselves!

This means, in part, convincing Harry that Voldemort is such a monstrous evil that his presence on this earth cannot be tolerated. Voldemort cannot be allowed to survive, even if Harry’s death does not guarantee Voldemort’s destruction, Harry must do it because Voldemort is that bad. There must be no hope, no recourse, and the only action Harry can take is martyrdom. 

And so, that is essentially what Dumbledore does. 

He gives Harry a series of lessons, hand selecting memories of Tom Riddle’s past (often shockingly innocuous), and then narrates them to tell Harry exactly why Tom Riddle is so evil today. The flimsy excuse of Harry wheedling information out of Slughorn is nice, but not necessary, as Dumbledore has no reason to believe this memory contains information he himself doesn’t already know (indeed, that Tom actually did make six horcruxes as he told Slughorn is a very strange coincidence as we rarely end up doing what we thought or being where we thought we would when we were sixteen). 

Per Dumbledore, Tom Riddle was born evil by his very conception, is doomed to be a lowly miserable creature, and that murdering him is effectively putting him out of his misery.

Right, how does this relate to this post?

Well, neverminding what JKR says outside of canon, we learn about the Knights of Walpurgis/Tom’s schoolboy syncophants from Dumbledore. Per Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, while a highly respected and charming student was Evil McEvil who had junior cultists galore. So, you see Harry, the man must die (ergo you must kill yourself).

However, this is frankly ridiculous and not in any way believable.

First, the Hogwarts era when Tom’s in school.

Personally, I believe Tom was regarded 100% as muggleborn. Tom went into Hogwarts with the last name Riddle coming from the muggle world. When he gets sorted into Slytherin he can point to know family members at all (and even if he could would, at best, be considered a low class halfblood). Tom doesn’t know the significance of parseltongue and likely tells no one (I’ll get into this in a few paragraphs). Tom may insist that he could be a halfblood, he knows nothing of his father, but given his origins he himself probably believes he’s muggleborn until he stumbles across the hereditary nature of parseltongue.

Regardless, Tom is impoverished, comes from lower class muggle London, has the last name Riddle, no relatives to vouch for him, and you want me to think that the purebloods sign up to be his cult members?

Even though Tom is terrifyingly talented and brilliant, he will be fighting for respect every inch of the way. At best, I see the Slytherin’s tolerating his presence. Riddle’s tolerable, for a muggleborn, it’s a shame that he has such dirty blood but they’ll admit he’s a talented sort.

However, as soon as he’s out of Hogwarts they’ll drop him like it’s hot.

This is evidenced by a few things. Upon graduation, Tom Riddle struggles to secure employment. He tries for the Defense position but is unvested and a recent graduate, and so is rejected (and when he later tries again Dumbledore laughs in his place and says, “Bitch please, I will never hire you, I just accepted your application so I could spend this interview laughing in your face!”) He does not enter the ministry, which would likely have been far more beneficial to getting him a leg up in society.

No, Tom instead secures employment as a clerk and purchaser at Borgin and Burke’s the wizarding world’s shadiest pawn shop equivalent where he spends his time miserably wooing older women so they’ll sell him their fine goods. Dumbledore tries to convince us this was Tom’s plan, that he somehow knew about the locket beforehand, but this is bullshit. How the hell would Tom know that the heirloom undoubtedly locked away under safe and key had been sold to Borgin and Burkes? And even if he did, why would Tom take up this miserable position doing nothing he wanted to do? 

Whatever minions Tom is supposed to have, whatever friends, they dropped him completely, pretended they never knew him, and did nothing to secure Tom’s future.

Now, back to the parseltongue bit since I made a promise. I believe Tom told no one. Had Tom told the Slytherins he was the Heir of Slytherin, this would have spread like wild fire not only across the house but the school. All the staff would remember Tom as Tom Slytherin, Tom would likely have changed his name, and frankly Tom probably would have been able to get into the ministry with a name like that. Tom Riddle’s life would have looked very different.

More, had the Chamber of Secrets episode happened in a world where Tom proves his heritage, he would have immediately been caught. Someone in Slytherin, even if only a few dormmates knew, would have narked on him. Someone would have been jealous, scared, etc. and would have turned him easily over to the authorities. A secret like that simply cannot be kept, it would spread, and there would be no needing to frame Hagrid and none of Tom getting off. 

More, I always got the feeling very few knew that Voldemort had once been Tom Riddle. First, it would make recruiting very difficult. Voldemort is the mysterious, beautiful, heir of Slytherin who has come back from abroad to save their country. Tom Riddle is a dirt poor mudblood who comes from decades of incest and squalor.

Given the wizarding world at large does not know who Tom Riddle is (proved by The Chamber of Secrets) I would suspect the vast majority of Death Eaters and Order members didn’t either. Dumbledore was the one who pieced it together thanks, in part, to a ten-year-old Tom Riddle confessing his parseltongue abilities.

If Tom Riddle had told most people he was a parseltongue, far more would have made the connection, it would be common knowledge. Which means, of course, Tom Riddle has no ability to prove his heritage and is thus muggleborn swine.

More, I think Tom wouldn’t want Tom Riddle to be associated with Voldemort. When he becomes Voldemort, he will transcend his lackluster origins and become far more than an ordinary, mortal, man. He will leave the name Riddle behind and no one will remember that boy. He will eclipse his past.

Not to mention, that if Tom gave them the excuse of his heritage, it means giving himself the easy way out in Hogwarts. They won’t be forced to acknowledge him, acknowledge that he’s better than them despite his roots, but instead given the easy excuse of “oh, it’s because he’s the heir of Slytherin, duh”. And I think Tom would loathe the idea of that.

Tom wanting to eradicate the memory of Tom Riddle is especially why I think Voldemort came out of nowhere in the 70′s.

Tom doesn’t want to be recognized as Tom, he wants to be mysterious and originless, to give the purebloods everything they want to believe in. If it’s people he went to school with, they’ll recognize him, he’ll be just an ordinary mortal to them. If it’s their young, stupid, children well then he has a real chance. 

Voldemort is a figure of myth, something that appears to come out of legend itself, the savior of his country.

He cannot have origin let alone Tom Riddle’s. 

Not to mention the idea that multiple people waited on Tom Riddle for generations, even for decades where we know he went abroad and travelled the world, is utterly ridiculous. Why would they ever do this? What do they even gain from this? And why would it take so long to take over this ridiculously incompetent country THAT ALL OF TOM’S RECRUITS ARE PRACTICALLY SET TO CONTROL (the beauty of the Death Eaters is that they form a good chunk of the Wizengamot, and in using them, Tom Riddle effectively destroys the country from the inside out, which I believe was his true goal the entire time). 

If Tom Riddle is so terrible, so horrifyingly competent, then it can’t have taken him fifty years of constant work to topple the country. 

So, yeah, there were no Death Eaters 1.0.

Vox: What do you want?

Charlie: We're trying to find Alastor.

Vox: And you came to me? Do you think I keep tabs on him at all times? That I follow his radio waves every second of the day?

Vaggie: Well, do you?

Vox:

Vox: ...yeah, just give me a second.

Okay but if you told me this was canon dialogue from a future episode I wouldn't even be surprised

I was waiting for someone to mention Dan’s shapeshifting! 

And I love time travel Danny&Dani shenanigans. Why stop at Dan though? Damian also has a few clones scurrying around.

Danny-Dani-Dan Trio deserve to spook some assassins and save their clone siblings. As a treat. 

Or they can go back and stab Dani’s other clone siblings with ecto-dejecto and really get the sibling train started. 

Bruce has got a big storm coming. 

DP X DC Prompt

Damian, who’s never seen danny before this moment: we’re twins.

Danny, choosing chaos: triplets, actually. I have an identical sister. 

Damian: what.

Bruce, listening in from a roof: Talia hid THREE children from me?!

Talia, on a different roof: Father stole one of my children?! >:(

OR ALTERNATIVELY

Danny: Quadruplets actually. You owe so much child support

Bruce: what-

Dani & Dan: pay up bitch

yeah so,

Imagine if Vaggie and Alastor bond together over their hatred of men.

There'd be a whole funny song about it, only for the final verse to be Alastor saying, "I've always felt like a woman anyway!"

The song would proceed to end due to Vaggie short-circuiting over what Alastor just said.

In all timelines, in all possibilities…

Larry: I figured he'd love it or hate it, y'know

Cliff: So he seems to kinda love it

Larry: He's been playing with it all day, and refuses to come back to me. Think that's good?

Cliff: What if he loves it cos plasma balls and shit are like crack to negative spirits. What if you're giving your baby hard drugs right now

Larry, falling over running to turn it off: SHITSHITSHITSH-

Okay so we all know Alastor absolutely LOST that fight with Adam but can we appreciate the fact that Adam was forced to show more of his power and stop joking around in order to land a single blow?

And keep in mind, this dude not only killed Pentious but disintegrated him, the egg bois, and his entire fucking ship in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile Alastor DOESN'T get ripped in half by a direct hit from Adam, DOES manage to escape, AND manages to heal himself or at least block the pain enough to pretend like nothing happened later when he meets back up with the Hazbin crew.

I know we like to make fun of him, man absolutely deserves to be humbled but this shit is still impressive.

Headcanon that all spider people get what’s called the “Spider-Zoomies” (which is a sudden burst of energy but it’s expressed through Spider-like behavior) except for Miguel because he didn’t get bitten, so every time he makes the mistake of going to HQ in the middle of the night, he gets jump scared by at least one Spider-Man:

Scuttling across the ceiling (Pavitr)

Hissing into the void (Miles)

Bench pressing a building (Peter B)

Jumping fifty feet into the air without warning (Margo)

Building some intricate contraption in complete darkness (Hobie, emphasis on trap)

Running extremely fast without making a sound so you don’t know they’re there until it’s too late (wtf Mayday)

Or crouching into a corner, completely still like a predator watching its prey, and the moment he gets close to them, they whisper “Hey” making him scream so loud that he throws his empanadas in their face (Gwen)

It’s essentially like you’re walking through a building full of eldritch horrors, and you don’t know where any of them are, but they all know exactly where you are, and they win bonus points if they scare the shit out of you. Miguel hates it here.

shout out to ace and aro kids who are constantly bombarded with the opinion that sex and romantic love are directly connected to living a happy life.