#the boy and the bird guy are adopted son and father btw

[cowardlybean]

merry christmas here’s a bunch of random oc art (the guy with bleached hair or the big ol black splotch for his roots is @locutia’s guy)

[terristre]

Could we perhaps get some info on your OCs? Their designs are so cool and they seem really interesting :)

jidsajidoasjiodas SCREAMS sorry its been like a week im just so happy i needed it to be good

uhh heres a good place to start for lore-grounding! alexander graves is a ghost from the 1500s who now serves in the court of the queen of monsters, notably being the only male member of the high court. hes far from a strong fighter, though his strengths are that as a ghost he cannnot die- and that for a ghost, hes VERY good at pretending to be alive

he has a confident, well-spoken air about him but its not hard to pin him as a more introverted, even shy person under it. the sort of person who would prefer keep their head down and go back to their business quietly, but one who holds the people close to him in an adoring regard. (hes NOT in the high court for his power after all- his value is in his kindness) hes been a diligent seamster since a young age & in-canon most of the clothing designs of characters under the queen can be credited to him lol

marcus deangelo THE BIRD BOY OF ALL TIME is alex's notably more introverted angel son. he tends to take the role of the silly goon/errand boy in the queens court & forms a light-hearted team rocket-esque duo with the plague doctor to take back pandora's box, stolen from the queen & brought to the monster hunters

marcus is an immediately curious character because he fits the high-energy genki archetype like a glove & has nothing but positivity for others- but his philosophy towards his own life & future are absolutely bleak. and the thing to pin about him is, he isnt really all that dumb- its more a mix of lack of worldly knowledge & this ascetic fold of catholicism where Bad Things Happen To Me Because I Somehow Deserve Them so he has LITTLE self-preservation & accepts misfortune without a fight

alexander holds the same self-poisoning principles, but marcus is the only one naive enough to say the quiet parts out loud. its not something the man ever pushed upon his sons but rather something they adopted themselves after seeing it from their role model. congrats to them for inheriting all their fathers positive traits AND his negative traits theyre both adopted btw

YES THIS IS AN INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA PLOTLINE anyways marcus talks to animals all the time & it makes other people think he actually has the power to communicate with them but He Does Not. also sometime his misinformed beliefs about the world will coincidentally line up with what europeans thought in medieval times & its like. who told you that buddy. HOMESCHOOLING if i dont know it you dont either LMAO

OUR BAT FRIEND IS THE PLAGUE DOCTOR! appearances can be deceiving my friend shes a recently-turned vampire whose only powers, really, are turning into a bat & burning in sunlight <:3c she refused to swear loyalty to the queen of monsters but couldnt bring herself to return to her old life Now Thats Shes A Monster so shes just kinda been. tossed around the court until she tragically rattled down to The Fuckers Whose Entire Personalities Are Being Catholic

if there is a musical episode the plague doctor is the one who goes WOAH WAIT WHATS GOING ON every day she wakes up & tries SO HARD to understand whats happening around her. shes definitely struggling to keep her miserable life together but despite that her kindness & good humor tend to shine through, most of the others actually quite enjoy her company the problem is shes always like "IM BETRAYING YOU GUYS FIRST CHANCE I GET"

but yeah as mentioned she makes for a good duo with marcus, hes great at fighting & she actually understands human society so together they make One Functional Person when venturing out of monster society lol. curiously for someone who doesnt want to be there, the plague doctor chose to assist in the chase for pandora's box of her own free will

[reginasrandomthoughts]

So I watched Crimes of Grindelwald...

 ...yesterday, opening night (in my country), after a long day, and all I got from it was confusion, a bit of anger and this water bottle:

(and yes, I doctored the image because, just like most of the film, it has dull, dakr colours. I hate it, thanks) Full spoilers beneath because I am just pissed (I think I will think about the positives separately).

So... let’s start with the ladies. Leta Lestrange. 

I will only mention it in passing that here is another Slytherin character getting the shaft, because as much as it bothers me, this is not the point here. By my count there are three black characters named AND with speaking roles and Leta is one of them. (the other female chara is Seraphina Picquery who is gone after the first 4 minutes, the third is Leta’s half brother’s but we’ll talk about him later)

 So anyway: her background story: Leta’s mother, a beautiful black woman of high aristocratic standing was coveted, Imperioed, abducted and raped by Corvus Lestrange, Leta’s father, and I think she died while giving birth to Leta. I think this is the point where someone should have talked to JK about slavery, because if this story is raising redflags for me, a white European, it must be obvious in the US. Gosh. Going on Leta’s father remarries goes on to have another child, that child needs to be taken to America bc Yusuf Karma, Leta’s half brother, swore an unbreakable vow to kill what’s dearest to Lestrange. So now roughly 10 year old Leta is on a boat to the US with a half-elf nanny and the baby that refuses to stop crying and she trades the baby off with another baby boy on the ship (she intended to do it just for a little while) and then the ship sinks and the baby brother drowns. (Sidenote: the switched away baby is Credence). The image of the sinking baby is Leta’s boggart (good luck making that funny). In Hogwarts she was a troublemaking outcast whose only friend was Newt, and as an adult she is described as someone who nobody in the wizarding world loves. Also, she has this thing with Newt where she is totally in love with him but for some reason she is going to marry his brother? She also works at the ministry that is portrayed as one of the bad guys and oh yea, she dies at the end after a fake-out “will she join Grindelwald?” moment. She supposedly dies to protect Newt (Theseus?? I don’t know, her last words are “I love you” and she is looking at where both of them are standing together, so we shall never know).   By the way, remember the time Leta was described as a taker by Queenie? Apparently, her “being a taker” involves her thinking she doesn’t deserve to be loved by Newt because she thinks of herself as a monster. Also, apart from her backstory scenes she doesn’t do much regardless of how her backstory is kind of important for the central mystery of the film and how the final showdown takes place in the Lestrange tomb. 

 Now, next up is Nagini. Remember all the outrage caused by the sudden reveal that Voldemort’s snake used to be an Asian lady who turned into a snake against her own will? Remember how people brought up the submissive Asian woman trope in connection with that? It’s worse in the movie. After Credence and her escape from the circus where she is held she does nothing. She is just there to be Credence’s comfort blanket. She transforms into a snake twice: once in the circus and once when she is attacked but that doesn’t do much and Credence has to save her. (btw, I don’t blame her for it. If i knew that one day I won’t be able to turn back into a human I would, too, try to spend as much time as a human as possible.)  Also, two more things: she and Credence are posed as this couple and we are supposed to be feeling bad for her when Credence goes with Grindelwald to find out about his past rather than build a future with her. But their relationship is already undermined by the fact that Dumbledore says (I think it’s him) that the obscurus grows in absence of companionship and friendship and if Credence were to get it, it would disappear and in the film, Credence still turns into an funky looking angry black smoke bomb so...  REALLY hoping she gets a TON of development in subsequent movies.

 Queenie... Queenie is portrayed as a date rapist here. There is no tiptoeing around it. She enchants Jacob (presumably with a love spell that incapacitates him to the point he cannot cut his own food up) so she can whisk him away so they can get married because Jacob didn’t want to take the risk of marrying her and her being taken to prison for it. Jacob asks her when she planned on releasing him, when they were married with five kids? And Queenie has no answer for it. You know who else did something like this in the HP universe? Merope Guant, the woman who gave birth to Voldemort. Not a company you wanna be in, since it is heavily implied that it was because of the love potion she used that Voldemort became what he was. Also, can we just point out that Jacob already loved Queenie and just wanted to protect her and Queenie’s reaction to this was to take his free will and his ability to disagree away from him?   Queenie ends up joining Grindelwald to create a world where muggles can marry wizards, but Jacob calls her crazy for it and rejects her when she suggests that and she still goes! Her decision costs her the reason why she’s making that decision in the first place! What are you hoping for at this point, Queenie? Another enchantment? 

 I don’t really agree with this sudden shift in character, but oh well. Also, now apparently Queenie also has trouble with her legilimens abilities that can overwhelm her.Don’t know how I’m feeling about that, but how the fuck is a legilimens who can READ PEOPLE’S MINDS gets duped by the bad guys? 

 The other female characters I didn’t see enough of to have an opinion and TIna I mostly liked. She is finally showing bits of the badass auror she could be. Good luck competing with a ghost for Newt’s love though. She and Newt are portrayed as this “we are just getting together” couple but I always felt like Newt would ditch him if Leta wanted him back. Even though Tina is a way better fit. Liked their parallel scenes with the monkey-koi-kitten thingy. 

 Now onto the men. 

Yusuf Karma. Yusuf swore an unbreakable to kill what is dearest to Lestrange after he abducted and raped his mother which resulted in his father going insane. He assumes that most precious son is Credence so he is just going after him and at more than one points he says something along the lines of  “I have to do it, it’s either him or me”. This is not even the proper avenger philosophy because it is literally true, because if he doesn’t kill him the vow will kill Yusuf. Ofc, since a large part of the story is about sympathizing with Credence and wanting to save him Yusuf is portrayed as a villain for a lot of the time.  Also, while I’m throwing stones, isn’t Yusuf’s mother the “woman in the fridge” trope? Put there to create angst for a male character? She isn’t even the one Leta is angsting over. It is literally just Yusuf (and his dad who is never shown). 

 Sidenote: Grindelwald has an Asian henchmen, who is so unimportant that I had to look up his name on Imdb (it’s Krall nolastname) who is the only one of Grindelwald’s followers who dies in the fire (fiendfire??) Grindelwald uses to test the loyalty of his followers. It was foreshadowed but I still don’t get how he betrayed Grindelwald because he wasn’t even on screen long enough to do so. It’s almost like he was only put there to die. BTW, I don’t even think there were any more notable Asian characters apart from him and Nagini. Good representation there JK.

 The other male characters I didn’t have much of a problem with. Newt I liked, Jacob was okay but was better in the first film, Theseus was an asshole but the Leta angst worked and I came to like-pity him a bit, Credence I felt for...  Surprisingly even Grindelwald worked. Even though he always looked like he was just about to fuck whoever he was talking to. I don’t know how I feel about Johnny Depp in the role, but at least it looked like he put in some work. 

 And now the plot.

So many fucking fake-outs. The whole plot is a fucking fake-out. So according to the plot Grindelwald is looking for Credence in Paris and Credence is looking for his birth parents and his true past. And there is this whole confusion because the half-elf servant of the Lestranges’ is the one who signed his adoption papers, and for a while it is thought that Credence is the lost Lestrange baby and Yusuf thus wants to kill him, but then Leta’s backstory is told and it turns out that this whole treasure hunt leading us on was pointless because it turns out that Credence is not a Lestrange and Leta has no idea who he is. At which point Grindelwald offers tot ell Credence who he is and Credence goes with him and BAMM, you’re Aurelius Dumbledore, Credence, Albus is your brother and wants you dead.  HOW???!!! So I read up some theories here but here is the thing, none of the theories that were born so far manage to help this shit make sense. Like, okay, let’s see the flimsy proof for it: Albus Dumbledore says that when in dire need a phoenix will come to a Dumbledore ans Credence finds a little bird and at the end of the film that baby bird turns into a full fledged phoenix. Cool.   But also, this scene ties Credence thematically to Newt, who also was shown nursing a baby bird (although a raven, which is the Lestrange emblem, so please @me any crazy theories about how that foreshadows that Credence is a Lestrange and how Newt will save him or how Credence is a Scamander or even ship things. all three would make more sense than Aurelius Dumbledore does)  So, the first reaction from people seems to be “Grindelwald is lying to get Credence to go after Dumbledore” because we know that he thinks that Credence is the only one who could kill Dumbledore. I am leaning towards this but at the same time I REALLY hope it’s not true. Why? Because then this whole fucking movie is pointless. Credence’s arc throughout the series would just be this shit: Credence you are an unimportant squib, no actually you are a powerful obscurus, no actually you are the lost Lestrange baby, well actually you are Aurelius Dumbledore and then presumably, actually I lied I have no idea who you are, probably just a nobody who just happened to be strong.   I can totally see it go this way, I feel like it will go this way, but can we just lay off the clichés please? Anyway, prime points supporting this conclusion apart from logic is: Grindelwald was looking for a much younger obscurus than Credence, a.k.a. he could not have been looking for a lost Dumbledore, Grindelwald knew about the Dumbledore family legend as well so he could have faked the phoenix (??), thematically this whole “your past is not as important as your future and it does not defy you” theme would play into this. 

 Now there are of course other theories, like “he truly is a Lestrange and the elf-lady had to die to hide that fact and the records were manipulated” but so were Leta’s memories then? Also, the elf-lady had to die so Credence would have no choice but to walk into Grindelwald’s trap for answers.   My favourite one has to be “Credence has Ariana’s obscurus in him” simply because of the how? That goes against HP canon, that goes against obscurus lore and that goes against Fantastic Beasts timeline. So... yea, I hope it is true, because at least that would be interesting. If we gonna go crazy go full crazy.

 Last but not least there were a few elements that mildly annoyed me. Like Yusuf having a weird eye parasite, which I read as a fake-out as to why he needed to kill Credence, but which went nowhere. The “Newt has an assistant at home who is in love with him went nowhere. And the best of all, Grindelwald is going to be brought down because a fucking niffler stole his fucking jewelry that binds him and Dumbledore to not fight each other. What the fuck is up with that. 

 Also, I just remembered it, which is a shame, but Grindelwald was campaigning for a wizard take-over by showing the future a.k.a. World War II to his followers, including the atom bomb, and saying this is what will happen if the muggles are allowed to rule themselves. CAN JK ROWLING PLEASE NOT LEAN INTO THE WORLD WAR II AND NAZI REFERENCES FOR ONCE??? Just once, look at the real world parallels JK and walk away! Fuck.