As amazing as Fantastic Beast is with all of the interesting creatures and additional lore, I loathe the take on the American Magical World. And not because American pride (‘Merica🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅) but because that might work in New York, but that social structure sure as fuck don’t work the farther west you get.
Each state is different, it gives them their charms, and each state also has… drumroll please 🥁🥁🥁🥁
NATIVE AMERICANS!!! Yes the people who’ve been on these lands since before the first of the 13 colonies even existed!!!
Can you imagine Magical America? The creatures who lived alongside tribes? The giant forests? Hell, the other sentient beings like the centaurs, goblins, elves, etc.? Imagine:
The great Rivers and Lakes guarded by the merfolk and swimming with the great salmons, occasionally assisting the tribes along their borders so they all may share what the waters have to offer them
The great Plains and Forests with centaur tribes being mighty and powerful, guardians of the lands and occasionally allying with the human tribes
Elves that are still short but mighty and healthy and who get mistaken for native children when they live alongside human tribes
Goblins living deep in the caves of mountains, living happily with little human interaction besides for trading for safe passages and materials.
Imagine the werewolves loving their inner wolves and having their own tribes and living peacefully in their homes.
Imagine that, for thousands, and hundreds of years they lived in peace, occasionally waring against themselves but things happen of course but they way the magic and earth had never been so healthy as it was. Gods imagine Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon? Or the Mojave Desert? The great basins, the plateaus…
And then, when the Europeans started claiming the land that the magical beings fought to protect the lands they have lived on for centuries, the creatures of the forest hiding the remnants of their great lands from human eyes and hands, protecting the magic that slowly dies as the land gets destroyed and the magical beings who called those lands home started to die and could no longer protect the land.
That they tried to cling and hide and fight for their homes with whatever they could, but when the magical Europeans got involved it just went to hell for the magical beings.
The Native Reservations, National Parks/Lands, and deep into the mountains, are some of the few places that magical creatures can live in relative peace. The centaurs are not as many, and the elves either live on the reservations or the forests. The goblins are not like their European kin, but they are not the same as they were, now instead of trade for safe passage it is trade for protection of human materials or trading for goblin creations. The merfolk have perished in most lakes and rivers where humans have polluted or hunted their food to extinction. The magical creatures who once lived on the land are either hunted down for sport or for being declared born of hell.
Now imagine Ilvermorny, created by a mother who wanted her children to learn magic, and turned into a way for tribes to take shelter and teach their ways as well as learn other ways for magic. The school cropping up in the midst of Magical Americas downfall becomes a place that the few tribes not driven out of their home learn different form of magic while creating a foundation for Native American magic to survive and be taught in the school. Imagine multiple sister schools (because America is too big for there ti be only one school) to the original Ilvermorny being created to teach, to embrace and preserve a culture they refuse to let be erased.
Years later and it is a core course that gets taught, and keeps a part of a culture alive that was on the bring of complete erasure.
Imagine that when African slaves started appearing and become enslave, those who escaped and found themselves at Ilvermorny schools, they started teaching their magics as well. Then as more minorities started to appear in America, so did the lessons in certain Ilvermorny schools where these minorities were prevalent.
America is a cauldron full of magical cultures being mixed, and Ilvermorny is the first to openly teach different magical cultures. The southern schools involve more Mexican, Spaniard, some French, and African magical courses, while the north is more French. The east coast is more influenced by British magics, while the west coast is influenced by the Spaniard, Chinese, and Russian.
They all had their own mix and all have the main course shared by the people who lived their first, but magical america is sooo much more more fascinating and so young still! There is still so much that I can’t possibly cover without a month of research! And we haven’t even reached the southern hemisphere!
Fantastic Beast is great, but it’s missing the uniqueness and complexity of America. And I can only dip a finger into the endless possibilities of the magical American world.
