#artykyn

Wow I just watched Fantastic Beasts and wow that...

What didn’t you like? :(

Spoilers for Fantastic Beasts if anyone cares

Technical Issues:

Multiple instances of poor or no lighting on characters’s faces during dialog scenes.

Sloppy cinematography that is completely disinterested with the story

Expecting us to be wowed by 100% CGI scenes and creatures we have no emotional attachment to

The visual design of the Obscurus is incredibly lazy and derivative

Character Issues:

They’re really boring?

Like really, they hardly show any emotion besides at peak stress levels and have such thin characterization to go off of.

Jacob’s character feels so pointless, he mostly just wonders around in awe and enjoys the ride and makes no lasting impact on the story

The romance between Jacob and Queenie feels completely forced and unnecessary.

We really need to be told more about Grindelwald and what his deal is

Newt is a hard-to-understand, bumbling exposition machine and he’s not interesting to watch

Thematic and Other Issues:

The movie shows the psychological damage of a child living in an abusive household, but has zero compassion for him even as it is the precipitating event that leads to the climax of the film.

MACUSA is a horrifyingly cruel and indefensible organization (complete judicial failure, clinic executions, child murder under the guise of “following the rules”), but helping maintain the status quo and forgetting about the child they just executed is played as a happy ending because all the animals got back in the suitcase and i guess this is just the way the world works. Tina is happy to go back and work for them.

Unnecessarily dark. The creepy witchhunt cult, the child abuse, the execution chamber, the child murder, the complete lack of humor.

Grindelwald’s appearance playing into the queer-coding villain trope, which goes along with the whole franchise’s terrible track-record with queer representation.

The Deus Ex Machina of AoE obliviate + repair everything to instantly erase all consequences of any actions feels so narratively cheap, no matter how much visual spectacle and emotional musical swell they put behind it.

Poor narrative focus: too many plotlines that don’t convincingly tie into each other.

Overall there’s a lot of injustice shown in the film : child abuse, failed judicial system, magical segregation. But there is no one fighting against that injustice in any meaningful way, which would’ve made a much stronger core narrative.

I’m sure this isn’t everything, but it’s late and I want to get my thoughts down while they’re fresh. To me, that movie was cringe-worthy, morally bankrupt garbage.

1) When you have cereal, do you have more milk than cereal or more cereal than milk?

A: More cereal than milk so you get a spectrum of crunch

6) Do you keep plants?

A: Not personally, but my sister has a yucca and we’ve got some cacti and living herbs in the kitchen. We’ve also got a bunch of stuff in the garden if that counts: Strawberries, swiss chard, rosemary, a bunch of ivy and native flowers, as well as a prince of wales bush, a rose bush, and some jasminolia (amongst other bits and bobs). Also I want to grow some saffron in the summer so that’ll be fun! If you want pics of any of them lmk :D

10) Do you sleep on your back, side, or stomach?

A: Side but if my back is particularly fucked I’ll try sleeping on my back though I always end up on my side anyway.

12) What’s your favorite planet?

A: I had to choose one now because I’ve never done so before. Probably Saturn? I’m a big slut for planets with rings, I mean look at this.

 Also its got some cool moons!

15) Go google a weird space fact and tell us what it is

A) Triton (one of Neptune’s moons) orbits backwards for some reason and is the only known large moon to do so.

28) Sunrise or sunset?

A) Sunset. Sunrise is too early but I’m sure they’re very nice as well.

31) Think of it: have you ever been truly scared?

A) I mean I scare pretty easily so it depends on what you mean by truly scared. The story that springs to mind is when I was walking back home from school with a friend. And the friend stops dead in his tracks, grabs my arm and goes “Woah, woah, woah, theres a tiger there!” or something to that effect. I look over into a driveway and see an orange and black striped mass on the ground so I fucking book it. I’m talking full Usain Bolting it down the street. Cut to my friend laughing hysterically because it was a stuffed tiger toy lol

38) Tell us about your pet peeves!

A: Chewing with your mouth open and the sound of someone sucking their finger after eating finger food

41) What’s the last book you remember really, really loving?

A: I mean the depressing answer is I don’t remember, haven’t read any outstanding books recently. The Burning White drew me in a lot and I can’t remember being that glued to a book for a long time, but I had a lot of issues with how it ended and certain threads coming together that didn’t quite work. A Storm of Swords was just a bullet train of great storytelling but that was maybe 5 years ago now?

90) Talk about your one of you favourite cities.

A: Ehhhhh the boring answer is that I don’t think I have one? Košice was great though so I’ll go with that. It had really cool historical things to look at (cathedrals, coat of arms, etc), the food was very cheap and really good (I had the best crepes of my life there), and it was well connected to other parts of Slovakia which made potential hiking trips and visits to nearby castles fairly accessible. Just a great city to stay, eat, and explore, would highly recommend!