Fantastic Beasts and oH NO THE POTTER FANS HAVE COME OUT OF HIDING (Part 1)

US cover to the original "textbook" that will inspire the next Potterverse film.

US cover to the original “textbook” that will inspire the next Potterverse film.

Christina Harrington and Michael Fiorilla attempt to read the cards and divine the future of the Harry Potter Franchise, by obsessing over the newly announced film: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Penned by author JK Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will focus on young wizard Newt Scamander’s travels to the United States in the 1920s. Here are their prognostications and predictions.

Editor’s Note: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is both a fictional book and a real one: it’s a textbook within the Harry Potter book universe about magical creatures, as well as being a real thing released by JK Rowling in 2001 with all royalties from the book going to Harry’s Books, a nonprofit that helps children around the world.

What We Want to See

Christina: The number one thing on Christina’s List of Things to See in FBAWTFT is Flapper Witches. (That abbreviation needs work.)

Fio: I’d like to make it a matter of public record that I fully support the Flapper Witch referendum.

Christina: I just want to see some wizard and witch slang pertinent to the time period, too.

Fio: That’d be pretty solid. My main concern is that they actually pull a lot of material from the book, because there’s some cool stuff there.

Christina: I didn’t think about that, pulling stuff from the books. I’m mainly concerned with learning things we have never heard about in the HP series, namely: American Witch and Wizard culture.

Fio: Like you get brief mentions of things in the books themselves, but nothing as in-depth as we’re bound to get with these films.

Christina: I don’t think I want something as epic as the books, to be honest. I want a film that fully immerses us in this world without apology and then goes from there.

Fio: Yeah, I’m not looking for a 7 film fantasy epic, but the idea being bandied about of this being steampunk wizard Indiana Jones sounds like it’s right on the money for what I’m looking to get out of the series.

Christina: Steampunk Wizard Indiana Jones is exactly what I want to see.

Fio: I’d be perfectly happy treating it like a pulp adventure story, with each new film being the chronicle of some wacky misadventure Newt’s found himself embroiled in this time

Christina: I NEED to see Dumbledore in this film. Even just a cameo. He’d be in his forties so it’s plausible.

Fio: Can Tumblr withstand the waves of fangirl that would surely be generated at a cameo from a hotdad Dumbledore?

Christina: I think the site would implode under all that pressure, to be honest. But hey! At least that would get Loki off my Dash for a couple of days.

Fio: I had someone pictured in my head for Scamander and was scouring IMDB to look him up but then I ended up remembering I was thinking of Aaron Tveit… who is American… and I’m *still* a little on the fence about it.

Christina: Oh man. He’s such a cutie. But he can do the accent right? Didn’t he do it in that really sad French movie? The one with the singing?

Fio: I think he did “Generic European Accent US Audience Expect in Fancy Films” I’m not sure that’d fly in the Potterverse.

Christina: We are going to need a lot of American actors in this film…and oh god now I just want to see a Potterverse film set in the Old West. LOOK WHAT SHE’S DONE TO ME. I have so many expectations now.

Fio: Alternate Potterverse films are going to be the new Assassin’s Creed Pitch Meme: Potterverse film starring a female french saboteur attempting to infiltrate Grindewald’s inner circle; Potterverse film dealing with the underlying wizarding politics that sparked the powderkeg of wars during the Sengoku era.

Christina: I guess if we’re going to be honest, this movie has to be about Scamander actually writing and compiling his book: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Which has like a ton of possibilities to be something amazing and interesting and not at all as boring as that description makes it out to be: some dude writing a book.

Fio: I think you might need to qualify that description as “as boring as it sounds to mainstream audiences.” If you gave me a movie that was an hour and a half of adolescent Snape trying out various hair products, I’d see it. Twice.

Christina: As would I! So long as Snape accidentally sets fire to himself at some point along the way. I really want this film to be a mainstream hit (like the HP movies were) because that’s how we’re going to get more Potterverse films, not even just about Scamander. The endgame that would make all of my fangirl dreams come true being a fucking TV show about The Marauders.

Fio: I’m just glad the universe is expanding, that we’re moving beyond the characters who are already established, you know? It’s the Star Trek route, building out to tell different stories that exist in the same universe but can be digested without exposure to the original material.

Christina: And jumping through time, too, though I think it’s more organic and proper for the HP ‘verse to be going backwards, rather than forwards. I don’t really want to know what Harry’s kids are like. I want to know about the world before Harry Potter.

Fio: I’m also psyched at how far back we jumped that we get to see a Wizarding World without a dark lord (as far as we know, really).

Christina: Yeah! Like, what is Dark Wizarding like in this world? I imagine it’s just as shunned and reviled.

Fio: Just not as well organized. No Death Eater bake sales in the roaring 20s. Which is totally the name of my next punk band.

Christina: No Death Eater Bakesales in the Roaring 20s?

Fio: Coming soon to a rec center near you.

Christina: Cover charge: 50 cents. Includes one (1) drink.

Christina: Can I play Tambourine?

Wizard rock band The Weird Sisters (as seen in The Goblet of Fire) must have ragtime contemporaries.

Wizard rock band The Weird Sisters (as seen in The Goblet of Fire) must have ragtime contemporaries.

Fio: The Wizard music scene could really do with some expansion, all we really get in the books are the Weird Sisters and Celestina Warbeck. I’d like to know if there were any really famous Jazz artists who were really wizards.

Christina: ALSO ALSO! What in the heck is our wizarding school called? And where? Would we have two because our country is so much bigger? I’ll start taking bets that one of them is in Salem, Massachusetts.

Fio: If we’re going by population alone, the US would need 5 schools at Hogwarts capacity.

Christina: So one in the North (Salem), South, West, Southwest, and Northwest?

Fio and Christina: NEW ORLEANS.

Fio: Salem, New Orleans, Portland (have you seen Portlandia? If there’s not a wizard school there I’ll eat my socks), where else? Roswell!

Christina: I lied, that’s it. That’s the Number One thing I really need to get from this movie: the name of the school that forgot to send me my letter when I turned 11.

Editor’s Note: Tomorrow, after hours throwing runes and drinking gallons of tea to read the tea leaves, Christina and Fio will present to you their visions of Newt Scamander and his travels!

Post By Christina Harrington (23 Posts)

Deadshirt Assistant Editor. Writer. MFA. Find her fiction in Crack the Spine and Eunoia Review.

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3 thoughts on “Fantastic Beasts and oH NO THE POTTER FANS HAVE COME OUT OF HIDING (Part 1)

  1. Quick corroboration: I’m definitely sure that they mention a wizarding school in Salem in Quidditch Through The Ages, which is the other real-not-real Hogwarts Textbook. It’s the only one that’s mentioned, though, so there’s definitely room for expansion there.

    SPEAKING of which, I super want to hear more about Quodpot, the sport that’s apparently more popular in America than Quidditch. (According to the HP Wiki there’s also apparently a Quidditch team based in Sweetwater, Texas, which HOLY CRAP GIVE ME THE THING)

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