I have never been a big fan of the Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them series. I'm happy that more movies are being made about the wizarding world, but I wish that these were different movies. JK Rowling is clearly surrounded by yes men who let her write the screenplay for all of these movies, despite her not having any skills as a screenwriter. Her author brain wanted to insert ten million characters into Fantastic Beasts that nobody cared about. She wanted to flesh out all of their backst…

I'm sure everybody, no matter what Hogwarts house they're in, wishes they could spend their hours of study and leisure in the Gryffindor Common Room . None of the other common rooms could compare to where Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend their Hogwarts days inbetween classes. The Slytherin Common room would make you feel like you're surrounded by concrete, with the AC always turned up way too high. There's probably a lot of fluorescent lighting that would do a number on the complexion. Look at ho…

If there's one Harry Potter character whose hype I never really understood, it's Draco Malfoy . So many Draco fangirls see him as a misunderstood boy with secret depth and hidden pain. I don't think that the text of the books or the movies really supports that, but I believe they get this idea from the aesthetics of Harry Potter itself. Draco is in the dark Hogwarts house. He lives in the dark dungeons of the school and doesn't really have any other friends besides his lackeys. He is raised in…

One of the best things about the Harry Potter books is you can imagine yourself living in them. You might think that many children's series provide escapism and character identification. While that's true, the Wizarding World allows you to imagine yourself as just a regular person within the world. You don't need to be a heroic and brave Gryffindor to want to go to Hogwarts. Even though I'm not likely to be leading any revolutions, I still would like to attend that school. Many of Potterhead's…

One of the greatest mysteries of my life has been a question I'm sure all of us have asked: “what does butterbeer taste like?” This is. That is why I recently marched myself down to the Harry Potter store and spent 12 whole American dollars on a foamy butterbeer. Nobody had ever described what it tasted like to me, so I went in cold.