No.

Of course, it would be nice if people would stop doing stupid things like swallowing their damned cell phones, but that’s probably too much to hope for.

Sure, but again . . they have an 800-year head start. So if you look at how long it took them to apologize . . . just sayin’.

Yes! And not to mention the fact that so many people ended up on the continent from so many different places and cultures that there should be a conglomeration of basically every magical tradition along with the native ones. There should be just as much contribution from Mexico, China, various African countries, etc,…

They’re not mutually exclusive though. Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov both did a pretty good job juggling world building (sometimes literally) with compelling storytelling. The trick is to not make the storytelling BE your world-building.

I agree the whole ‘magical world’ thing was going to have problems scaling up (or even going backward in UK history to, say, the Blitz), but with effort and research there’s no real reason it couldn’t work writ large.

Exactly. And much of our early history as an independent nation involved distancing ourselves from things that were considered ‘Traditionally British’, even going so far as to run horse races in the opposite direction and make a conscious effort to adopt entirely new nomenclature for our heads of governmental…

Completely agreed. I’m not even going to approach the whole Native-American-culture can of worms, but this doesn’t feel at all like America - it’s America as seen through the lens of a British person who assumes the rest of the world is like the one they personally know.

(So this is what it’s like for the rest of the…

Similar to my thoughts. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. I really like the idea of American wizarding roots being in Native American culture and history. But it seems difficult to do that without white guilt or social justice warriors saying you are pandering to them or trivializing them.

I’m native American/white. I’m angry at myself and feel guilty about it.

You should, because to think they have any reason to feel bad is idiotic. You know what doesn’t help Native American culture? Pretending it doesn’t exist. You know what NOT using any Native names or imagery does? Pretends we don’t exist.

I would beg the Sorting Hat to put me in Tellerpenn

The whole thing feels ridiculously out-of-touch with anything remotely ‘American’, and just as with the ‘History of Magic’ thing, the parts that don’t sound foolish and/or offensive just sound like a British person who’s never left their island, or read all that many books, thinks America must be.

It has been an unpopular opinion when I’ve expressed it out loud, but I honestly think Rowling is torpedoing her franchise with every little new thing she puts out. Joined by others, of course.

CG. Tony Stark will be played by a tennis ball on a stick with a smiley face drawn on.