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themonsterblogofmonsters · 6 years

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Revealed FB:CoG Beasts

FUCKIN’ CALLED IT.

Matagot and Augureys HA. Also a few I didn’t get, and a few that have been only tangentially revealed. Some of these you may already know, but I’m going to collect the various things we have confirmed together into one place, for ease. Lets have a look-see, hmm?

1. Its a fuckin’ Kelpie

Yup, its confirmed. Even though it looks nothing like the depictions of a Kelpie we’ve been given so far, and there’s no sign of a bridle, that weird kelp-horse thing Newt’s shown riding is apparently a Kelpie.

This actually annoys me on multiple levels. Firstly, a Kelpie works because its capable of looking like a regular damn horse. Secondly, making it look like a horse made of kelp is just... really lazy creature design in my opinion? To just take the name and the fact its supposed to be an aquatic horse and make... that. It seems incredibly lazy when there are better ways of doing it and part of the horror of Kelpies comes from them looking just like regular damn horses.

Thirdly, its going to lead to a thing in fanfiction, I know it is. Where everyone gets to ride a Kelpie, even without a bridle, because Newt did, ignoring that Newt is a massive outlier and that, by all rights - by his own book! - Newt should be dead for attempting that!

You can find the Monsterblog entry on Kelpies over Here.

2. Augurey CONFIRMED.

I was right! It is apparently an Augurey, and look at its little confused peacock-potoo faceeee. Innit cute? Augureys have been in canon for a while and though for a long time wixes believed their calls to forebode death they actually predict the weather, specifically rain. Their feathers also repel ink - and presumably water as well - and they’re sometimes called the Irish Phoenix. You can read the Monsterblog entry on them over Here.

3. MURDER KITTY CATS

I love them. And they too are exactly what I suspected - Matagot. They’re a creature which I’ve covered on this blog before - you can find the post over Here - and they’re from French folklore. While they can take a variety of forms the way I interpreted them, and the way it seems Fantastic Beasts is interpreting them, is as cats of some description.

Now, I wonder what they’re doing in the French Ministry - are they, like the white hounds the British Ministry keeps, there to serve a Ministry designated purpose? Or is there going to be an attack on the Ministry by Grindelwald’s forces?

Mugglenet has their own speculation, over Here; based on Behind The Scenes information, Matagot apparently help with menial tasks around the Ministry - mousing, perhaps? Keeping out sneaky Animagi? - and can transform into something far more menacing when challenged.

4. We finally know what this thing is!

Its called a Zouwu, apparently, not Zou-ou or Taowu or anything else. This is not something I’ve covered, or, for that matter, found much on. To be fair, a lot of Chinese lore has yet to be translated, or is translated but uses one of multiple transliteration systems, making correct identification difficult. This is only made worse by JKR’s tendency to sometimes tweak names - we all recall how she had Ginny calling the Japanese Ho-ou a “hoo-hoo”, right?

The information from behind the scenes tells us the following:

The Zouwu is a monstrously large feline beast—as big as an elephant—with a striped body, scraggly mane, four fangs that curl up out of its mouth, and long sharp claws. Perhaps its most distinctive feature is its disproportionately long and ruffled multicolored tail. Native to China, Zouwus are incredibly powerful and fast, capable of traveling 1,000 miles in a day. The Zouwu in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald was captured by Skender, the owner and Ringmaster of the wizarding world’s Circus Arcanus, and bears the scars of its abuse.

Which... well it could be a few things, if we remember JKR’s tendency to rename mythical creatures on occasion. I am... currently rather confused, though it seems like Zouwu may be another transliteration of Zouyu, but some aspects of the description more resemble the Taowu interpretation I had a while back.

I’d love to get some feedback from any Chinese followers as to their thoughts, because apparently it was Chinese followers who corrected Redmayne’s own transliteration. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’s an error somewhere in the works here with regards to transliterating from Chinese characters to Latin alphabet and that’s what is causing the confusion.

5. Brief sidebar...

for two other creatures semi-revealed. Behind the scenes details finally gave us a name for these darlings:

Apparently they’re Firedrakes, according to This and This, and the description is as follows:

The Firedrake looks like a small flying lizard with long antennae. It could be mistaken for a dragon, except, instead of breathing fire, the Firedrake emits sparks from the end of its tail that set anything flammable ablaze.

This actually works quite well with my original interpretation of them as possible dragon hatchlings of some variety - they do resemble dragons!

The second was revealed by the new FunkoPop line - and I know plenty of you hate or love Funkos for a variety of reasons.

This is apparently the Potterverse version of the Chupacabra. They’re keeping it canine, but giving it six legs and well um... that appearance. The Monsterblog interpretation of Chupacabras is rather simpler and rooted in the canine goat-sucker interpretation. For the various versions the Fantastic Beasts lot may have drawn on for it, I’d advise asking @cryptid-wendigo, who knows far more about the myriad versions of cryptids out there than I.

6. Conclusion. Um... What?

We’ve finally been told what the moose-monster is and apparently its meant to be a Leucrotta.

Apparently.

I take... many, many issues with this.

Most of you probably have no idea what a Leucrotta is so let me explain. Leucrotta is one of several names for something more usually called a Crocotta, Crocuta or Leucrocotta in old bestiaries. An excellent example would be the Aberdeen Bestiary, which you can find entirely online over Here. A compiled Bestiary also lists it, and you can find the Aberdeen Bestiary entry on it Here, and the compiled bestiary entry over Here.

The descriptions given are as follows:

The leocrota is a swift animal born in India. It is the size of an ass with the hindquarters of a stag, the chest and legs of a lion, [a horse's head and a mouth split open as far as its ears. It has a continuous jawbone instead of teeth].

[Aberdeen Bestiary]

Pliny the Elder [1st century CE] (Natural History, Book 8, 30): The leucrocota is the size of an ass, and has the neck, tail and breast of a lion, the haunches of a stag, cloven hooves, a badger's head, and a mouth that opens from ear to ear, with ridges of bone instead of teeth. It is the swiftest of wild animals, and is said to be able to imitate the human voice.

[Compiled Bestiary]

Note the first: where does it goddamn mention horns? Nowhere. At no point does it describe it like... like that. I know there’s always artistic license but after the depiction of Graphorns in the first Fantastic Beasts so blatantly missed their explicitly described horns I’m really kind of annoyed! They’re not sticking to the canon they’ve got, and now they’re not even really looking closely at the lore.

Look at its depictions!

Where are the goddamn horns, people, show me!

Sure. Sure. “JKR can do no wrong”, except that she repeatedly has.

You know something else about Leucrottas? They are very explicitly related to Hyenas in every record there is of them.

Taking from Wikipedia (yes I know its lazy but I’m mad):

Of the hyena, Pliny writes that it "is popularly believed to be bisexual and to become male and female in alternate years, the female bearing offspring without any male," and that “among the shepherds’s homesteads it simulates human speech, and picks up the name of one of them so as to call him to come out of doors and tear him to pieces, and also that it imitates a person being sick, to attract the dogs so that it may attack them; that this animal alone digs up corpses; that a female is seldom caught; that its eyes have a thousand variations of color; moreover that when its shadow falls on dogs they are struck dumb; and that it has certain magic arts by which it causes every animal at which it gazes three times to stand rooted to the spot. When crossed with this race of animals the Ethiopian lioness gives birth to the corocotta, that mimics the voices of men and cattle in a similar way. It has an unbroken ridge of bone in each jaw, forming a continuous tooth without any gum.”

Lemme repeat that for you:

When crossed with this race of animals the Ethiopian lioness gives birth to the corocotta, that mimics the voices of men and cattle in a similar way. It has an unbroken ridge of bone in each jaw, forming a continuous tooth without any gum.

It is stated. Just about every record conflates the Crocotta and Leucrotta - their names even overlap with the variant name sometimes used, Leucrocotta. They are explicitly hyena-esque not this goddamn golden moose monster!

I know we see only a little of it. I know it likely has no part to play in the actual story, or if it does it’ll be minor. But after how Graphorns were handled in the last one, after the goddamn “hoo-hoo” debacle... I don’t trust them to get it right. Bowtruckles were repeatedly described and shown as more twiglike than the green things we get. Nundu are just giant leopards, not leopard-pufferfish crosses. Graphorns have fucking horns.

They’ve been mangling their own canon, and we certainly can’t trust them with others. I know artistic liscense. I know its a film and they want to make it cool to look at. But honestly, its a voice-mimicking bisexual self-sex changing lion-hyena hybrid monster. Does it really need to be made cooler?

I’ve already done one take on these creatures, you can find my Crocotta post over Here. I may well do the canon Leucrotta - and I’ll be doing it under that name - but I want it on record that I am not happy about it.

Thats all there is for now. Hopefully we’ll get a new set of pieces from JKR before this film comes out just as we did with the last one which might just serve to explain some of the frankly worrying decisions that’ve been made with regards to monster design.

#fantastic beasts movie #fantastic beasts the crimes of grindelwald #hp meta

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