Loving The Complexity Of Madeline Ushers Character: A Woman Who Declares She Doesnt Want To Be Limited

Loving the complexity of Madeline Ushers character: a woman who declares she doesn’t want to be limited by men, who’s life is defined at every turn by the decisions and actions of her brother.

……

Madeline Usher is doomed by her attachment to her brother, and it is the root of all her eventual pain.

When Verna offers them the deal, it’s Roderick who ‘charges forward, straight at it’ and accepts the terms despite the fact that the only ‘next generation’ they current have are his kids. Madeline agrees afterwards but only once Rodrick makes it know he is already in. I don’t think she’d have gone for it if he had objected, she’s always had a very ‘both of us or neither’ kind of attitude.

And then she is as much these kids parent (from what we have seen) as Roderick is. Granted we see next to nothing of the kids biological mothers so we have to assume they weren’t very involved (either by their choice or other circumstance) with their kids after Rodrick got his claws into them.

That first scene when we meet Perry Madeline and Roderick are equally dismissive of him, but she is the one asking questions and prompts: you’ve had a year to come up with an idea, is this it or is there more? How are you going to make this successful? Why will your pitch be different? She even asks Roderick to jump in ‘anytime now’ to help her handle this train wreck. And Rodrick has just received the news he’s dying but I think it’s telling that Perry is looking at both of them for validation, for support. They are equally intimidating but equally supporting him.

With Camille we don’t get 1-2-1 interactions between her and her father (despite her own obsession with winning his approval) but we do get a scene with Madeline. After Perry’s death Camille lobbies to be given the power to lead the family’s PR response, and Madeline takes her seriously and asks what she would do. When Camille lays out her plan it’s Madeline who gives a proud nod of approval and okays her actions.

Leo unfortunately gets no parental interactions from either senior Usher. Victorine only gets it right at the end just before her monstrous actions are revealed. Otherwise all she gets from Roderick is pressure and the interactions of an investor, not a father.

Tammy gets the most parental interaction from Madeline, which is tragic as she’s trying to show her father that she can be the heir to his empire. But her aunt is the one who shows up to her presentation, who gives her the pep talk, consoles Tammy (in her own way) about the failure of her marriage, who believes Tammy when she is terrified by someone in the crowd.

Frederik is always focused on his father so Madeline doesn’t get many moments with him, but again Roderick is more of a CEO or boss than a father: focused on how to protect the company, how to secure the future. Little to no concern or support to his son as he mourns his wife’s injuries, as he deals with his siblings deaths, as he takes on more pressure from the world and the family. Roderick only mourns his son (as opposed to his heir) after Fredrick is dead.

Added to this: the security on all the kids? Madeline arranges it. When more kids die? We see Madeline demand it be doubled. She’s the only one still fighting for them, fighting fate itself.

With Lenore we see more interactions with her and Roderick but her interactions with Madeline are just as sweet and show a close, loving relationship. Lenore even calls her Granny Madeline. And Madeline is the one planning to preserve Lenore via AI: this must have been the main reason she begged Roderick to kill himself. Not to save her to but to spare Lenore. What’s the bet that she started working on the AI project in earnest when Morelle announced she was pregnant?

Madeline tracks down the supernatural entity they made a deal with and tries to negotiate a new deal: again (now we know the original terms) this is likely for Lenore’s benefit, not hers. She faces down a power far beyond herself and tries to save or protect what’s left of her family. Not Roderick.

Madeline took steps to preserve and protect her nieces and nephews, and grand niece while her brother did next to nothing. Once you know the nature of their deal with Verna, Roderick’s attitude to his remaining children after they remember who Verna is is just baffling.

Madeline even makes reference to birth control that she took on the off chance the deal was real. She says to Tammy that she didn’t want children with her first husband and hasn’t since, but she has been a mother to Rodericks kids. This lack of biological motherhood hasn’t spared her for the heartbreak of loosing a child. Or a grandchild.

And it’s even the decision of a man (again her brother) which is going to end her family’s legacy in another way. His marriage to Juno, his treatment of her, his denial of her fight to get clean and his horrible reference to himself as Victor Frankenstein and Juno as his monster - this is what pushes her to sign away the company when she inherits it. Madeline speaks about the board choosing her and moving the company away from pharmaceuticals, into the fields of AI and tech. Sure Madeline then died but a lot of the groundwork was likely there, and it could have been a possible path for the company. If Juno didn’t inherit it all and break it apart. Because of Roderick, and the way he treated her. Once again Madeleine’s legacy is destroyed by her brothers actions.

The irony of 1970’s Madeline declaring she doesn’t want to be limited by men’s choices or by a man, taking steps to protect her self and her heart, focussing her work on things outside of medical drugs in the hope that one day that can be what they become known for… then being doomed to more heartbreak and failure by every one of her brothers careless actions is so sadly tragic.

It’s almost like the Usher children *knew* they weren’t going to live long and so they intentially left no marks upon the world.

Camille’s speech about how none of the kids actually makes or does anything is so startling: here is a group of people given all the opportunities and access money can buy, all of whom have had this their entire adult life, and they haven’t used it to create or build anything.

You can almost sense Roderiks disappointment in them, in his speech to Perry. He has this hyper focus on what his ‘investment’ money will fund, and says that ‘Ushers change the world’. But outside of himself and Madeline, not one of them has.

Frederick took the money, if he ever got any, and probably funnelled it back into his house or the company. By the looks of it he doesn’t have anything other than his family and his job, so there’s nothing for Roderick to invest in.

Tammy funnelled the money into a lifestyle brand, but one that wouldn’t have her at the front and centre. She scathingly reveals to Bill that she selected him to be her husband based upon his brand and marketability, showing she was ready to create this new empire but with her pulling strings in the shadows. From the outside it probably looks like she hasn’t created anything at all and that it’s all Bill, using his wife’s money. On top of this, the running gag of her storyline is that her brand and ideas aren’t even original, but are ripped off of Goop. So she hasn’t made anything new, and if Goldbug has any impact at all it will be no different to another more successful, more well know product. Hardly ‘changing the world’.

Victorine has some medial training but she looks to be a supporting role to her partner within their clinic, in which Al is the talented surgeon who people come to see and Victorine is a kind of silent partner. So she decided to go into medical devices or smart medical tech, but she relies upon the ideas and skills of others. As Camille said ‘the mesh is the surgeons, that’s why she’s fucking the surgeon’. And her medical knowledge seems to be limited if she thinks just her word and some money will move their experiments into human trials. So she also hasn’t ‘changed the world’ she’s just found someone else who was trying to and co-op-ed their ideas. You could even argue she poisoned those ideas, as Al mentions that the pain medication Victorine has been supplying looks like street drugs and wouldn’t stand up in any medical paper or research study.

Camille is, like she said, spinning furiously and going nowhere. She looks skilled in her field (from the analysis scenes we get, and Madeleine’s signing off on her PR analysis post Perry’s death) but she works from the shadows and hasn’t ‘created’ anything that wasn’t there before. There have been PR spin doctors before and there will be more to come; Camille offers nothing new ans hasn’t ‘changed the world’ in any measurable way. From what little we see of her work she hasn’t recreated a PR agency, hasn’t trained up other spin doctors under her, hasn’t created a brand or company which will outlast her. She leaves nothing behind to show what her skills or talents were.

Leo is shot down quickly when he claims he makes games: he doesn’t, he gives money to people who do. So he too will leave little to nothing behind when he’s gone. His references to past boyfriends show no long lasting relationships in his life and he has no other hobbies or pursuits we know of. Like Camille he hasn’t created a company to help with game design, hasn’t trained up others within this field he claims as his own. Even with the gaming ‘world’ it sounds like he changed very little. Fredrick’s throw away comments about Leo’s flat reveal that Leo hadn’t even had input in the decoration or style of his own home: he just latches onto the styles, ideas, aesthetic of his current boyfriend and goes with their ideas and plans. It’s such a small tiny thing but he truly has no original ideas in any aspect of his life.

And finally Perry, who’s desperate for that start up money but clearly has no plans or ideas on how to use it. He’s had a year and his main idea is an exclusive whisky bar. Even this idea, for all its crude intentions, shows his lack of vision: he doesn’t understand that to get the reputation he claims his bars would have will take time. You don’t just ‘create’ a consequent free bar celebrating decadence and privilege overnight. Reputations take time and as Madeline asks ‘what will be different about this one’ to draw people in to begin with? Studio 54 (which he compares his club to). only operated for 3 years before closing: not the smartest inclusion in an investment pitch.

To be fair to Perry though, looking at what the other siblings did or didn’t do with their loan money it seems a bit unfair that his ‘Blow job whiskey bar’ was shot down so decisively and cruelty. Assuredly Leo’s ‘video game studio for just myself’, Camille’s ‘PR agency just for me with my two assistants’, Victorines ‘medical training and clinic where I help out other surgeons’, Tammys ‘subscription lifestyle brand ripped off from a celebrity’ and Fredrick’s ‘I’d just like to work with you Dad’ were all clearly given the green light. But Perry apparently wasn’t good enough. Maybe this was a reaction to Roderick getting the news he was dying as so he wanted Perrys investment at least to actually change something, but still. He might as well give him the money either way at that point.

And I think it’s probably intended as a commentary on the ultra wealthy. Like of course people with more money than most counties have no plans to leave anything for the next generation. They have achieved their high levels of success by being solely focused upon themselves and so are honestly incapable of considering others. They are solely interested in enjoying the life they are currently living and why strain themselves to fight and build something when they don’t have to?

But it also works so well as a supernatural legacy and ironic conclusion to Roderick’s deal: he agreed that none of his bloodline would outlive him, and so none of them built anything that would.

*spoilers for One Day*

For people saying ‘it’s tragic, Dex and Em only got 3 years together’ no. They got 15 years together.

Glossing over the span of their life together to sum it up as ‘only 3 years together’ misses all the love and time they had together that wasn’t solely romantic.

Why is their relationship only ‘important’ or ‘counts’ when it’s a romantic one? Maybe there was always romantic love buried in there or growing steadily but there was a whole lot of platonic love there too.

For 15 years they were the most important person in the world to one another, they described each other as their ‘best friend’ and the person they reached out to at every high and low moment. And for the last 3 of those years they were also a couple.

There are loads of examples of Dex reaching out to Em when he’s at his lowest: the last birthday with his mum, then he’s reeling from his divorce, when he’s scared people will hate him on TV. And you *could* read that as pathetic and Em being his emotional crutch, with Dex latching into her. But you could *also* see that as when you’re struggling and low, you just want your best friend. Because they *get* you. And part of being a best friend is being there in those low moments.

And Em has done the same with Dex, just in different ways. That first year out of uni Em had no idea what she was doing; in a job she couldn’t wait to leave, a relationship that didn’t make her happy, not sure where she was going in life or what she was doing. Em writes to Dex often, and doesn’t need him to reply to her, just to read her letters and be *her* emotional crutch and person to vent to.

Even at that breakup-dinner, Em has things she ‘needs to talk about’ and she’s reached out to Dex to do it. We don’t see her discussing it with Tilly, we see her trying to talk about it with Dex. She’s at arguably her lowest moment (hates her job, hates her partner, hates her home) and she wants her best friend to listen to her. Just like he did when she was 24 and thinking about giving up and leaving London, and Dex convinced her to stay and keep going.

So they are emotional crutches *to one another*. That’s also part of being someone’s best friend.

And for all the low moments Dex also wanted to share his best moments with her too: when he’s excited about the TV pilot he calls Em to say ‘the only person I want to share this with is you’, and begs Em to find a way to be there. Yes this is also him dismissing and ignoring her achievements, yes this is self absorbed and rude and at the height of his egomania, but in that moment of triumph he only wants his best friend there with him.

When they see one another again at Tilly’s wedding Em is brave and self assured when she reveals she’s ‘thought of you every day, missed you every day’, and that even though they are friends again now the fact that Dex will have a wife and child ‘feels a bit like loosing you all over again. Because people with families have different priorities…’ That’s how close they were before.

The sentiment that ‘we grew up together’ is really true, for the both of them. They were very different people throughout their lives, and if they had tried to be a romantic couple earlier there is no guarantee that version of them would have lasted the course.

Would Emma have stayed with a peak-of-his-tv-fame Dex, partying and living life ‘to the full’? Or would they have explosively ended and decided they were too different for one another for it to ever work?

Would Dex have even tried for a career in TV or a full year of travelling if he’d become a couple with Emma after Uni? Or would he have done something else but grown resentful of what-could-have-been?

If they had sorted out their issues and apologised after their fight and Em had left Ian, would Em have found the strength to turn rock bottom into a spring board and finally write her book? Would she have even hit that bottom at all? Or would the hook have remained a pipe dream while she continued as a teacher, happy with Dex but professionally unfulfilled?

We will never know what could have been, and that doesn’t necessarily make those alternatives the ‘better’ option that they ‘missed out on’.

Maybe they would only ever have had 3 years together as a couple and getting it in their mid 30’s the way they did was their most mature and peaceful version.

So yes at times their relationship feels like it’s moving toward the inevitable conclusion of a romantic partnership. But the time before they get there wasn’t wasted or unimportant or unnecessary. And they were always together.

Argh the hypocrisy, misogyny and wilful misunderstanding around women as fans is so infuriating!

Matt Rife wants to ‘assure’ people that he doesn’t ‘cater to women’ in his new comedy special. If so that is a fucking *stupid* decision.

Because if you’re an artist then a largely female fan base is a great marker for success.

Some of the most successful global artists right now? Taylor Swift. BTS (and K-pop to a greater extent). Harry Styles. Beyoncé.

The majority of their fanbase? Female.

IMPORTANT: I’m NOT saying men don’t love/support/consume these artists, or that they shouldn’t. Huge numbers of men love and support these artists, and they should continue to do so. I’m stating that the majority of these fanbases are made up of women.

And women show up for you as an artist, on every metric which currently tracks ‘success’. They stream your songs/interviews/skits; they buy your album/record/dvd; they fight over tickets and pay astronomical fees to see you live; they tune into your award shows/guest stars; they watch your movies/documentaries; they post about you and your activities; and they go to bat for you in arenas you aren’t even aware of.

The colleague at work who heard a BTS song on the radio? Oh yeah, it can be intimidating if you don’t know who they are, here let me help you understand more and show you their best attributes and why you might like to learn more.

The family member who doesn’t ‘get’ why this singer is all over their TV? No worries, let me explain their songs and why they resonate, how they connect with their fans and why they’re incredibly talented.

And when ‘real’ artists are brought up to compare them against, not only do they pick an artist who’s peak years were decades ago, they try to rewrite history.

‘Yeah they might be successful but they’re not the Beatles!’ Okay so you see the Beatles as legitimate, successful, global artists with talent. Shall we look at Beatle Mania? A huge part of their success was the women who supported them, who bought their records, showed up to their performances, who funded their financial success and drove their pop culture relevance.

‘Yes they’re a good singer but they’re not Elvis!’. Oh are you referring to ‘The Hips’ who’s gyrating style of dancing ‘drove women wild’? Who’s success in music meant he was *able* to make movies and tour the country. The women who consumed his music, came to his shows, followed his personal life in the news, who watched his movies - they’re the ones who financed his life. Guys wanted to be Elvis, to dress like him, because women loved him.

Why is having a majority female audience seen to delegitimise you as an artist? When they are the ones who got you to where you are now, why are they suddenly not good enough?

Just finished The Fall of the House of Usher and wow I have thoughts.

……….

Verna is fascinating!

My interpretation (I have read literally NO Poe so sorry if this is obvious) if that Verna is a personification/demon/something for Choices and Decisions.

When she first meets the Ushers she offers them a choice: here is a possible outcome of the decisions you’ve already made, which might well happen on its own, but would you like to *ensure* that it happens? What would you choose to give up to get what you want? I don’t think she’s *creating* this outcome (as it’s literally what Madeline said would happen while they bricked the CEO into the wall) but she’s saying she can make sure certain possible outcomes are the only ones that happen.

Death and killing might be part of her powers but at least in the case of the Ushers she’s only killing the children because the deal was none of them survive Roderick.

I think her deal with Madeline and Roderick is a mix of be careful what you wish for as you’ll get it in unexpected ways, and exposing their own hypocritical choices. The Ushers believe they are entitled to the company due to their father, that it is their legacy, that if he had only acknowledged them and planned for them to continue the company in their name they would have everything they deserve. But in order to get that legacy, they have to behave in the exact same manner their father did, and think only of themselves while not plan to leave anything for their children.

Verna even offers choices to the other people we see her interact with.

For Perry she reminds him he could choose to stop recoding people, choose not to peruse his brothers wife, choose to end the party. It’s not too late. Even at that party when she tells Morelle to ‘leave now’ it is still a choice, one Morelle doesn’t take which leads to its own consequences. And in the run up to the party we’re shown so many moments when Perry could have chosen differently and the outcome would have been different: having the party at all, inviting Morelle (he turns away and then back to offer her a ticket), Napoleon saying he’s better than this and doesn’t need to become a drug pusher, the building not having water and so choosing to use the assumed water on the roof… right up to the last moment when he chooses to give the signal for the sprinklers to go on.

And her conversation with Perry Verna almost admits it: the series of decisions which lead to him, some small ones, a big one, and then another smaller on and now here he is. Choices he wasn’t involved in have led to him being there that night. And she loves bad boys because they always make all the wrong choices.

For Camille she refuses entry to the lab multiple times and offers her the choice to turn around and go home: it won’t change her fate as she’ll die either way, but if she goes home she’ll die in her sleep instead of being torn apart. She doesn’t *need* to see everything with her own eyes, she already has the proof. But Camille chooses to revel in her sisters shame, to twist the knife, and so she dies painfully.

And Napoleon is told the cat he wants to buy isn’t for sale and to choose to go back home to his boyfriend (and likely confess his actions) but he pushes through with his money and demands that he should get what he wants. He even has a moment within his confrontation with the cat when he thinks this might be a drugged hallucination, but instead of stopping or calling his boyfriend he continues to destroy their home.

Victorine also gets choices: the file of perfect patient data is handed to her but she doesn’t have to call Verna back about the human trial. Verna asks at multiple points if this procedure is safe, if the surgeon has agreed, even if her patient data is safe in this clinic. And Victorine chooses to lie at every opportunity, chooses to sacrifice this woman’s life in the pursuit of her dream. And so she is haunted by her lies, driving her to a more gruesome death than necessary.

For Tammy Verna shows her how to make better choices from their first meeting: we only saw one other sex worker play out the fantasy scene pretending to be Tammy but their interactions with Bill were surface level. When Verna appears as Candy she plays fake-Tammy as caring about Bill, showing Real-Tammy how she could be a better partner from the get go. Verna compliments his cooking, says she’d been craving his ‘famous chicken Alfredo’, asks about his work earnestly and listens to his replies. Even later, when she is Tammys hallucination double, she keeps showing Tammy how she could choose differently: Bill would probably set your fight aside considering another sibling has died, you could call him? Bill would probably be concerned about your health, you could apologise? And after her breakdown Verna pretends to answer Bills call (which Tammy had thrown across the room) and apologises to him for how he’d been treated. The whole time Verna is telling Tammy ‘it’s not too late, you could choose to be kind, you could choose to make yourself happy’: like Camille it wont stop her inevitable death but it could have been easier. And again she didn’t have to die in this manner, she could have gone in her sleep but her chosen treatment of Bill and her own guilt over her decisions has been keeping her awake.

For Frederick, Verna even admits that she has chosen his manner of death *due* to the choices he made: he would have died in his car from a heart attack but he chose to take his wife home, chose to torture her, ‘chose to pick up the pliers’ and so here are the consequences of his decisions.

For Lenore, the only innocent in the whole family, Verna wants her to know that her *choice* to give a statement, her choice to break with her family and get her mother out, will have lasting consequences. That Lenore’s decision will have changed the world.

That Verna’s power focuses on choices is further emphasised with her knowledge of ‘what people would have been’ as I think that’s an expansion upon what different choices would have led to. Of people had chosen differently then this is what they would have become.

And in Verna’s interactions with Pym all of the moments she references are ones where choices are made: the choice to leave a man in the desert, to abandon a guide in the snow, to assault a woman in the arctic. Moments when a choice or decision was made.

So I think she is a bargainer, or demon of decisions, and while she isn’t inherently evil she has her own morality as seen when she chooses deaths which are painful or peaceful, depending on a persons actions.

And really the message of the whole show is choices and their consequences.

Just seen a post which reminded me anew of some of my frustration with the Fantastic Beasts series and the train wreck it became.

Firstly and mainly: Why did they align Grindlewald with ‘preventing the holocaust’?!

There was literally no need for this plot point as Grindelwalds viewpoint and justifications had had little to no fleshing out in the original material (HP1-7). As a result any subsequent opposition to him no matter how well intentioned, well reasoned, or factually accurate necessitates someone arguing that either the holocaust isn’t likely to happen (and so Grindelwald is lying) or has to happen ‘for the good of the world’. You can state that you don’t believe he truly wants to save more lives, that his current methods are violent, that his future plans also look to cause pain and suffering, that his actions will cause division in the magical community….. and still the only take away is that you have to argue in defence of the holocaust.

And one on my main frustrations coming off of this is there was so much you could have done with the character and they didn’t use *any* of it. All we know from the primary material is: grindlewald was a dark lord around the time of the 2nd world war; he went to durmstrang, he was expelled when he was 16 and spent the summer with relatives in the UK where he met and charmed/radicalised a young Albus Dumbledore; he was essentially a supremacist who thought that wizards were inherently better than muggles and therefore deserved to rule over them; when confronted about these views by Aberforth he fights him, during this fight Ariane is killed (and no one is sure who actually killed her); he eventually steals a wand which is the Elder Wand; he is defeated in a duel by Albus Dumbledore and imprisoned in his own jail; he dies regretful of his actions at the hand of Voldemort.

There is literally SO MUCH room to add things in there, and none of it called for explaining his actions as ‘he predicted the holocaust would happen and is acting to prevent it’.

And I just wish they had fleshed out those viewpoints more or have given any creative thought to that.

Grindelwalds supremacy system (to make it distinct from Voldemort’s) could have viewed magical ability as more important than breeding. It’s implied in the books that some people are better at or stronger at some types of magic (Gilderoy Lockhart is very talented at memory charms, Ginny’s bat bogey hex is particularly strong) so his system of oppression could be based upon magical strength. You could have assessment checks or test within his ranks that ensure only the magically strong progress; a magically strong muggleborn is more respected than a magically weak pure blood (think Hermione vs OG Nevil). This would also support his slogan Magic is Might, and the view that wizards are inherently better - it is clearly only magical talent that should be rewarded with promotion and responsibility.

And this system therefore has its own fundamental flaws - just as a system based upon class and breeding will encourage nepotism, stifle innovation, and reward mediocrity, a system based upon rewarding brute strength with access and approval will result in corruption, a strong gang mentality, and violence. Introduce characters that show this, just like the Malfoy’s did for blood supremacy.

And he should have been written as a supremacist: an eloquent, articulate, charming one but one with a flawed and corrupted world view. Someone who is able to win over people to his side, a charismatic leader figure. I wish they had modelled him more like a cult leader; someone who with the sheer force of their personality recruited wizards and witches to fight against the stature of secrecy (under which they and their families have lived their entire lives) and advocate for ruling over muggles. There’s something compelling about him, and once people are swayed by his view they find it hard to leave.

I wish they had orchestrated several confrontations with Dumbledore and Grindelwald where they fought head to head but circumstances always got in the way of them fighting to the death: one side was evacuating a position so one of them had to flee with the fighters to protect them, one was only on a recon mission and so fled to fight another day, one was injured in a previous fight and so was trying to escape the whole time, etc etc. There could have been a run up of fights (like Harry Potter and Voldemort had every year in the books - it’s formulaic but it works) leading up to the final flight between them at the end of the (supposed) 5th movie. The confrontation a long time coming and the audience dying to see them finally loose all against one another. And them not meeting before or outside of these fights? Harry/Dumbledore and Voldemort didn’t meet outside of specific fights, there are magical ways to hide and cloak yourself to prevent attack. Grindelwald stays in a secret location, unplottable and with few people around him: so the only times to attack him are when he moves into the open. There you go, lack of confrontations solved.

You could even have had him not graduate to violence right away, or have the violence be small and not able to be traced to him. Mirror the rise of the N*zi party and H*tler in that initially people don’t take Grindelwald seriously, then they won’t think the small time attacks are linked to him in anyway, then people start to agree with some of his points, and he is suddenly a leader of a ‘revolution’ and it’s too hard to oppose him now. The first few confrontations with Dumbledore or the audience stand in ‘good guy’ could even be before it’s known that he is behind any attacks and it’s literally a meeting of minds, a discussion of view points, the good guy thinks Grindlewalds behind these recent attacks but no one is going to believe him as Grindelwald is an upstanding public figure.

Don’t have him just waltz into a house and kill a baby for no f*cking reason just to remind the audience ‘oh yeah this is the bad guy, don’t like him’. Have him be charming and nice and persuasive to someone and then have a comment or a cut scene or something where he describes a future workforce of muggles to make magical products like someone describing a sweatshop, have him talk about managing the needs of muggles or ‘culling their breeding’ like a farmer would a herd of cows, have him mention the killing or maiming of a muggle like they are an animal or a pet. There are so many chilling ways to show lack of humanity or care, to show how beneath him he feels muggles are, and the absolute worst and most sloppy would be… to kill a baby in its crib for literally no reason.

And the magic system!!

I wished so much for something different for the USA but the system they got in this is just appalling.

And when you think about it, it could have been so much richer!

Like The Mayflower was 1620 and the Salem witch trials were in the 1690’s… so almost from the get go of the colonisation of America, the magical and non magically communities would have been separated. So for the majority of the colonisations cum settlement of the USA witches and wizards would have been in hiding.

In the UK we see magical enclaves hidden away in muggle surroundings (fake doors and walls, additional buildings squeezed between others) but these places and cities have been around since long before the Statute of Secrecy. London was the Roman city Londinium. So when the statue came into effect they had to seal away their magical districts and houses, but they still existed in the same space as previously integrated but now solely muggle architecture.

Not so the case in America. Chicago for example wasnt ‘founded’ as a city until the 1780’s. You could argue that as the magical community had been separate for almost 100 years at this point they might have walled off a whole section of the city for themselves to live in. Or even founded their own cities, which you needed magic to access. As colonisers/settlers moved West you could imagine a group of solely magical people creating their own enclaves. Society and muggle/wizard culture would have evolved completely differently than what it had been and became in the UK due to this concurrent growth and settlement.

Americans think about their national identity in a way unique to them, due to how recently their country was ‘created’. Wouldn’t this translate to the magical community? Would magical family’s talk about coming over on the ‘first Portkey’ the same way people claim they can ‘trace their family back to the Mayflower’? Would they measure their standing in the magical community not on wether they were pure blood, or from a Noble House… but instead on if their ancestor helped found a city, or settle a state?

Immigration/emigration/refugees, what makes someone American, the fight for American citizenship… does this translate to the magical community? Do they view European Wizards or Asia-pacific wizards as ‘not American’ if they’ve only recently moved, or working on a temp visa? Do they worry about other wizards and witches overstaying their visas or their welcome, and disrupting the American system of government? Is their a feeling of the ‘old world’ magical communities being slow and behind, stuck in the antiquated past?

In the UK setting of the HP books grounding the racial struggle in the class system worked perfectly as anyone living within that system understands it and accepts it intrinsically - the arguments and fights over blood purity are just British classism given a different name. But what’s the American version? Is it how recently you settled (is something like ‘first Generation witch’ similar to mud-blood, but it implies your parents only recently came to the USA and so you’re not a real citizen yet?) or if your family has been here from the start (Mayflower Mast families is slang for those who came over with the first port-key, the Mast of the first ship) or where you settled (just as some cities in the USA are seen as historical or ‘established’, is there a similar viewpoint to living in an all magical city vs living in a muggle city and hiding).

And due to the long lives of magical people you could have introduced characters in America who were the Malfoy’s or the Black’s - not due to pedigree or age or being titled, but because their grandparents founded/built/created the American St Mungos, the USA’s diagon Alley. Heck even have someone at MACUSA is called Ilvermorney because their grandmother founded the school. They have a younger sibling still there but they are working their way up the Autor ranks, likely going to aim to run MACUSA at some point, their aunt did in the 1870’s…. Basically make them the Kennedys of magical America.

The list just goes on and I get so angry when I think about what could have been! There were so many cool things they could have done when expanding the world of HP to another country, or when fleeing out the main villains methods and plot. And to see that waste on what they did do, which is now cancelled anyway… it’s just so soul destroying.