Harry Potter

True, this series got quite a bit darker after about book five.

Yeah, soon as Cedric died, the series definitely got far more mature.

@ Redmess: Given when it's set and what's to come, it'd be more like a wizard born in a muggle concentration camp. Or is that Magneto?

J.K. Rowling Reveals Dumbledore and Grindelwald Had an ‘Incredibly Intense' Sexual Relationship

What? I thought the whole thing was basically a one-sided crush on Dumbledore's end.

The books are rather vague on it, they at least had a fantastic bromance together, whether or not it was sexual in any way is left up in the air. There's enough gaps left in the text for an entire broadway musical's worth of gay in the books, so she can certainly slide that in without causing any problems for the canon.

So, is this better or worse?

Depends, really. Either this tells how manipulative G is or how far Dumbledore let himself fall for him.

Of course, it's all about how it's used, so... Probably worse.

The headline is misleading. Like she says it was an intense relationship, and separately describe it having sexual aspects, but doesn't use the two together.

Still sucks that she brings this up despite never actually exploring the emotions she claims to be more interested in tho.

I feel like Rowling's only saying this stuff to gain political brownie points.

I'm not sure it really changes anything besides confirming what most already did suspect.

Which is fine. That's one of the good uses of Word of God. We're only grumbling about it because she's been saying so much stupid stuff recently.

I honestly don't mind J.K. Rowling wanting to celebrate diversity, but can she write a book series surrounding that instead of trying to needlessly Retconning the Harry Potter verse again and again? Rowling clearly wrote the books during a time when diversity wasn't this massive thing in media entertainment, can she just admit to that instead of awkwardly forcing all these inclusivity elements onto characters that weren't meant to be such in the first place?

I mean Dumbledore was always meant to be gay wasn't he?

Not really? The books never said anything about his sexuality, and his relationship with Grindelwald could easily have been explained as Heterosexual Life-Partners. Him being gay was subtext at best, until Rowling confirmed it online, AFTER the series was finished.

In fairness, this was in a time where the LGBTQ community was still a bit of a pariah, though less of one than it had been. Still, no part of the books ever indicate that Dumbledore was gay nor had the hots for Gellert Grindelwald. The movies joked about it from time to time, especially in Movie 6 after the reveal, but the books themselves contain nary a hint.

Like I said, there is enough gaps in the text for it to be possible, but a gap can hardly be counted as representation.

It's the principle behind Death of the Author. Word of God can explain things, but they shouldn't have to.

"A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations." (page quote)

Edited by Rytex on Mar 22nd 2019 at 10:36:23 AM

Yeah, Dumbledore and Grindelwald's relationship in the books is subtext at best. It's easier to read into it post-reveal, but without that knowledge it'd be very easy to read them as "two bros chillin in a hot tub five feet apart cause they're not gay" bros.

Edited by Spottedleaf on Mar 22nd 2019 at 11:03:47 AM

I forget where I read this, but I read that if she had confirmed Dumbledore to be gay in-text it would have gotten the books banned at the time, though given just how popular they were I'm unsure about that.

Edited by lalalei2001 on Apr 1st 2019 at 3:27:55 AM

What if it's just her catering into shippers?

If it was catering into shippers, I'd have expected her to make a student gay, not a 150 year old who is dead at the end of the series.

I propose Draco. He's already a frail pretty boy who likes hanging out with big burly boys. Might as well go all the way.

Edited by Redmess on Apr 2nd 2019 at 10:20:28 AM

Then we would get canon Drarry.

x3 Yeah, I call shenanigans on that 'justification'. This is about the time we got Willow in Bt VS, right? Representation at the time wasn't great but movement was starting to happen. Given how protected from the editors she'd gotten by that time, if she wanted to drop Dumbledore x Grindelwald intext she could have (rather her drive by tweeting after the fact).

Just because a book gets published doesn't mean libraries and retailers will carry them.

There's this book here that someone wrote about being whatever the fuck a trueheart brony is. Yyyyyyeah, wonder why that one's not in a library. No one carries it and no one buys it because it's just a bad book.

Hell, I only know of it because someone brought it to a bad fanfiction reading panel I was running and said "Read this instead" so I did and it was worth the decision. Oh my god it was so narmy.

HP is a well-written story, but if it trampled on too many norms at the time, it easily would have ended up banned from most places, which is far different from if it were just so bad no one wanted to carry it.

Edited by Rytex on Apr 3rd 2019 at 4:17:53 AM