Spoiler-free COG feelings/essay/thoughts before I see the movie. Spoiler-free because the movie isn’t out here til the end of the week but obviously, I’ve picked up info from trailers and interviews and things like that so sort of common knowledge stuff but I guess if you’ve avoided all the promos for the year I wouldn’t want to ruin it for you now so don’t read until after you’ve seen it if that’s the case (again, I only know basic info).

I have a lot of feelings that I’ve been sitting on for a while because frankly, large parts of the Fantastic Beasts and Harry Potter fandom terrify me. It’s why in my nineteen years (okay, thirteen years – I had to learn how to read) I’ve distanced myself from engaging in the fandom too much and when I do, I try and stick to as safe, neutral content as possible.

But I’m going to write a little bit a lot (my anxiety’s poppin off the charts right now) not to antagonise anyone or personally offend people just to get this pent up crap off my chest before I see the movie. 

I have Māori and Pākehā parentage. Although I am proud to be a Māori girl and I’m definitely not white-passing, I do acknowledge that out of my family, I was born with the lightest skin and being a lighter-skinned/mixed poc among my family and friends has made me recognise my privilege. That isn’t to say I haven’t experienced lifelong struggles with racism, bullying and discrimination but I will never experience the same micro-aggressions and experiences that they have. Although, I do have light-skinned privileges and I don’t ever want to take away the struggles of my family that I won’t experience on the same level, growing up looking a little different opened me up a lot of feelings of invalidation within my own culture. When I experienced racism as a child, I was also met with disdain for being upset about it when I wanted to talk about it. This was when I was a child and I didn’t understand lighter skinned privilege or the animosity from some of my own people. I am far more educated now, but during that confusing time I, like most children, turned to literature (which in turn is what helped me make sense of the world).

I’ve gotten a little off track – this isn’t overly important to what I’m writing about, but it is introducing my opinion as coming from a woman of colour who has experienced racism and horrible bullying, but I always feel the need to clarify my position as a lighter skinned poc before giving my opinion based on those experiences.

Obviously from my content, I love Leta Lestrange. Perhaps it started out as a matter of representation, but I feel like over the past year, I have become intrigued with her for a number of reasons. She’s striking me as a Sirius, Regulus and Andromeda Black type character. Different to her family and caught in a struggle of light and dark (magic, not skin colour). Loves magical creatures. I haven’t seen it yet but it seems like she is one of the centre point characters of the film. She seems to be connected to many of the main characters in one way or another and has always striked me as the most intriguing.

I really do hope I am wrong but the ‘other’ love interest’s in the Harry Potter universe are usually treated terribly. They experience character assassination to further the development of the canon/new interest.

I really hope this film doesn’t do the whole blow out a woc character to make the white, self-insert, classically beautiful, ‘im not like other girls’ character shine brighter.

Before everyone comes for me, I wouldn’t say I’m a Tina ‘anti’ whatever that is. There’s no like extreme hatred at all! I would say I don’t like Tina as a character, or Queenie for that matter. Not yet anyway. The new trailer gives me hope that this movie might win me over finally. It doesn’t need to be upsetting or offensive to anyone. There are lots of people out there with favourite and not-so-favourite characters. A lot of people dislike Ron, Dumbledore, Snape, even Harry…and there are people who have those characters as their favourite.  

There are a lot of reasons I don’t like Tina and Queenie. I may address them in a different post if being vague upsets people more than going in-depth but at this point, I am trying to stay as unconfrontational as possible but I have seen people get extremely furious when they don’t deem your reason for disliking them to be ‘good enough’ so if not saying exactly what I find uncomfortable about them is not as preferable as telling people then I can write it up as respectfully as possible if I’m treated the same way. All I’ll say is that I think Tina is a good person, but, in my opinion, not a great character. Queenie is the opposite. I would not like Queenie as a person but I have to admit, she’s a good character. But I’ll hold the rest of my opinions until after the second film. 

Honestly, the film adaptions leave some of my favourite book characters to be desired. Maybe if FB was a novel, I’d like Tina but I really dislike her in the movies. I have seen people blow up when this is said. I try to understand the outrage. I think one of the reasons I dislike Tina is one of the reasons why people love her. She is, at this point and in my opinion (which is ONLY an opinion), a self-insert character. Any Newt x Reader fanfiction can easily read as a Newtina fanfiction and vice versa. I know. Because I’m a FB fanfiction writer myself and tried to write her. Sometimes when you attach yourself to a character so much, it can feel personally offensive when someone says something as harmless such as they don’t like then. I don’t experience this as often. Every Reader/OC fanfiction is, perhaps unintentionally, but nearly always aimed at a white person in description. In actuality, nearly every character in literature is, intentionally or not, described with textbook white features or assumed white by the fandom/readers/watchers.

I know people are going to hate this opinion because I’ve seen people jump down other people’s throats when this gets brought up. I do believe, whether it is conscious or not, Leta not being white COULD, subconsciously, be a factor as to why she is so inherently hated. I’ve seen more hate for Leta than any other character – even the antagonist! I hate what they did to Lavender Brown, book and movie wise, but even she, being as over exaggeratedly unlikable as a romantic plot device, received and still receives far less fandom hate than Cho Chang (who was also eventually written to be ‘jealous, hysterical, unlikeable’, etc, etc – I don’t agree btw I love, understand and appreciate Cho and Lavender)  who was smart, talented, kind, traumatised, and until it was no longer convenient to the main characters romance for her to be ‘likeable’ anymore.

I wish I could enjoy going through the Leta tag but often, her and Newt can’t even be in a scene or photo together and people lose their minds with anger and hate. Literally, the comments on any scene/photo they are in are all along the lines of ‘stay away from newt!/poor tina/urgh, don’t flirt leta/leta WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’. Sorry, to break it to you guys but it isn’t a love triangle. It’s a love conga line. The only person getting in the way of ‘Newtina’ is Newt. Instagram is even worse. By worse, I mean horrible beyond belief. The better comments are the ones are the ones merely (though still grossly) comparing her to Tina and how much they dislike her, the other ones are wishes that she’ll get killed or join Grindelwald. It’s literally not even hidden the fact they wish either of these things happen so Newtina can happen faster. I’m not a Newtina shipper at all (Yet. Again, this might change if the films improve) but this would be one of the worst ways to further your ship. That is literally not going to change the fact that Newt’s still in love with her (you can have feelings for two people at the same time. The filmmakers confirmed - in fact, one of the first things about the new movie that they confirmed - that Newt is ‘absolutely still in love with her’), it just makes her conveniently unattainable. I do have a feeling that Leta might die and if it happens, it better not be because she’s unwillingly in the way of a ‘love triangle’ that people have forced these three characters into. If Newtina is going to happen in a way that isn’t awful, rushed and horrible, it will be slow-burn and it’s in own time AFTER Newt has healed and properly fixed things with Leta. You can’t be best friends and in love with someone for 15+ years and fall out of love with them immediately after they die, turn bad and settle for a woman you met for like two days and collectively spent maybe ten hours with. It might be a Ron/Hermione situation where it’s slow and eventual. That’s the only way I could possibly get on board and I think it could be done tastefully if they don’t resort to lazy writing. I do have my fingers crossed I’ll start to like the Goldsteins before this happens and I can enjoy it as much as everyone else does.

To be honest, after seeing the trailers, I see only two endings for Leta (and I hate them BOTH):

She joins Grindelwald: If this is the plot twist, it’s the shittiest plot twist ever. Pretty much 90% of the fans since seeing the first film have assumed/liked to believe she’s pure evil. Probably the characters themselves all assume she’s evil from her last name. I was worried the whole ‘haha, I was on Grindelwald’s side all along!’ situation was going to happen. We know JK hates Slytherins. My ‘Leta joins Grindelwald’ theory would be that she has always been on the good side – or trying to be – and after YEARS of oppression and discrimination and being distrusted by maybe the central characters in this film no matter how hard she tries AND maybe finally realising that Newt isn’t going to ever forgive her she just snaps and goes all ‘f*ck you guys then’ (I wouldn’t blame her tbh). HOWEVER, I doubt this. In a trailer, you literally see Leta THROW a fucking spell STANDING BY HERSELF (what u doin bby?) at Grindelwald. Trust me, if this was Tina it would have been all everyone was talking about but of course the fandom was all ‘yeah, see, she’s in the same frame as Grindelwald SHE’S EVIL’. One of the trailers is literally titled Leta vs. Grindelwald. Everything in the trailers/promos points to Queenie joining Grindelwald but *shrugs, I guess*.

Leta dies: I get this may seem the preferable way to appease the Leta haters and the Leta lovers especially if she dies after redeeming herself or heroically or whatever but urgh, no. I know everyone’s like ‘DoNt MAKe ThIS AbOUT RaCe’ when the woc character inevitably is killed but I’m sorry. To have been able to sit in a theatre as a little girl and see Leta Lestrange in the wizarding world would have blown my tiny mind. Honestly, as an older teen seeing Zoe Kravitz in that little photo frame in Newt’s case in the first film was iconic enough for me. After growing up being made to believe I was ‘unattractive’ because of how I looked, seeing total dreamboats like Callum Turner and Eddie Redmayne’s characters being all heart-eyes over Leta is, like...wow!  And I do have an uncomfortable truth for people who want Leta to die. That would possibly be the WORST thing to happen for the Newtina thing (would pretty much be the last nail in the coffin for me ever coming around to it). I’ve seen it happen in my family when someone you love dies. Your feelings for them essentially FREEZE. You can’t fall out of love with someone who is dead. That’s of course not to say that you don’t love again and just as much as the first time. But it takes time (LOTS of it) and there’s a little part of your heart that’s like…permanently sealed off. I don’t even like Newtina yet and I’m hoping for the sake of the Newtina fans that Leta doesn’t die because freakin’ yikes. Just let them heal and connect and be besties again goddammit, its POSSIBLE (and bet your ass I’ll write it my god damn self to prove it if they don’t). 

I know these are highly unpopular opinions and I HOPE that I am wrong, and they do her character justice and don’t discard her via death or the dark side.

In summary, I suppose my biggest struggle with Leta’s character is definitely the overwhelming fandom hate which I still can’t quite comprehend. I really want to believe it isn’t a race thing. Though, I have seen horrible posts about Leta, mean comments on nearly every Leta promo, Zoe Kravitz literally being called a c*nt in the comments of a Leta post on tumblr, a lot of fanfictions having her be primarily evil, selfish, manipulative, in some a rapist even, ugly, cruel, etc. But honestly, she’s literally not interfering in Newt having a relationship with anyone at all??? She’s literally been villainised because her friend can’t get over her (getting Snily nostalgia). But buggered if I’ve been able to find next to anything of that calibre about Jacob’s fiancée (literally a Queenie doppelganger) who left him, like, the day he met Queenie. I get that it was a deleted scene for those non-hardcore fans, but Leta-hate was literally kicked off by a picture in a photo frame and a comment made by a, in my opinion, kind of not-nearly-as-infallible-as-people-think character that barely knows Newt breaking into his head non-consensually (after being repeatedly told not to) who had an agenda to hook him up with her sister. Sooo…*shrugs*.

Even I personally have tried to keep out of the fandom debates, but I wrote a Leta and Newt story (still ongoing) that I stopped for a while because the kind of disgusting comments I was receiving about people hating the pairing. Which, I get. You don’t like a pairing, that’s cool? Why are you going and seeking out a piece about them and then taking the time to leave a comment? Whenever I start to read a story about Leta being this horrific monster of a person and being torn apart and compared and occasionally borderline racist, I just…click out? I know it’s only a small patch of weeds in what is likely a garden of roses, but I have never come across such an insecure fandom for a literal canon ship. If the relationship was that pure and strong, you wouldn’t feel the need to kill or villainise the (non-existent) ‘threat’. I just hope the writers feel the same way. You can write healthy closures and strong women of colour characters without casting them aside for plot development/man pain/stereotypical Caucasian romance/plot device, etc... I’m going to go into the theatre at the end of the week slightly optimistic to be fair but I’m also fully expecting to be disappointed but honestly, Leta could avada kedavra every character and she’s still going to be my favourite, I don’t make the rules.