Delivered on October 16, 2020 at the Harry Potter Conference of Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia, PA. On September 25, 2018, Korean actress Claudia Kim was announced in the role of Nagini for Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald. Here is my five-item tweet from the moment I found out: That was a fun morning. I
Ph.D. student Parinita Shetty is the creator of the Marginally Fannish podcast, in which she uses an international lens to examine fan podcasts as sites of public pedagogy. For a delicious break from quarantine life, she invited me onto her show for an hour of talk about how much I love the character of Nagini
I was honored to be part of the keynote panel at MISTI-Con 2019 alongside Bayana Davis, Constance Gibbs, and Lawrence Neals, “Evanesco Representation, Accio Inclusion: Diversity in Harry Potter.” Moderator Robyn Jordan of Black Girls Create sent out questions in advance. Here are the answers I prepared to a couple of those questions. I’m going
Seventh blog post about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Yes, the Fantastic Beasts film series is about World War II. It is significant that Queenie and Tina Goldstein are Jewish, and that will become more apparent in later films. The final showdown between Dumbledore and Grindelwald takes place in 1945. The series locations will continent-hop, with
Sixth blog post about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Did Leta Lestrange temporarily host an Obscurus before passing it to Credence? That was a listener theory from Episode 75 of the SpeakBeasty podcast and it seized my imagination immediately. It would make a lot of things click. The Absence of Love We learn in this movie
Fifth blog post about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Grimmson, a “beast hunter for hire,” is the opposite of Newt Scamander. When the Ministry wants someone to kill Credence to prevent Grindelwald from using him as a weapon, Grimmson looks at an image of Credence’s face and says, “Is that it?” “It.” Not “him.” Newt
Fourth blog post about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Content warning for discussion of sexual assault and racism. Previous blog posts about Crimes of Grindelwald: Closer Than Brothers: What does it mean? Your Brother Seeks to Destroy You Credence in Search of His Story “My father owned a very strange family tree. It only recorded the
Third blog post about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. The first two posts: “Closer Than Brothers” and “Your brother seeks to destroy you.” Who is Credence Barebone? He’s not Credence Barebone. That name was given to him by the Puritanical adoptive mother he killed. He had a story before he had that name. He’s not
This post builds upon my previous blog post about Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald. Header image shows the prop used in the film to represent Credence Barebone’s adoption certificate. Who or what is Credence Barebone? Grindelwald has an answer. Whether it is completely true or not, he has a story that he is telling to
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t yet seen Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, be warned that the following blog post contains spoilers. When a hostile Ministry official accuses Dumbledore of once being “as close as brothers” with Grindelwald, Dumbledore corrects him: “We were closer than brothers.” What did that mean? Possibly over 99% of the theater
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