[ SECRET POST #3512 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3512 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 35 secrets from Secret Submission Post #502.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[diet_poison]

Do people in the HP fandom actually argue that Dumbledore is not gay?

His creator says he is, so he is.

Like you can write fanfic of him however you want, or headcanon whatever you want, but it's the canon's creator that determines what is canon. Otherwise they hold no weight at all.

[(Anonymous)]

Not everyone goes by Word of God canon. Plenty of people only consider things in the canon to be canon.

[diet_poison]

That mindset is weird to me. What makes canon itself the arbiter over anything else the creator has said? That only thing that makes canon distinct from fanon is that the creator is the one who made it.

I can accept that some people separate WoG from canon, it just doesn't make any sense to me. Why?

Not to mention it seems really disrespectful to claim that something a creator said about their own character isn't true.

[(Anonymous)]

Because sometimes creators will say things in interviews or whatever that contradict what is in the actual canon. They don't always remember every single detail of the canon off the top of their head; they're human and can make mistakes just like anyone else.

[diet_poison]

Some canons contradict themselves though.

[(Anonymous)]

Which is enough of a mess to deal with on its own without adding things that the creator says outside of the canon itself into the mix.

[(Anonymous)]

It seems more disrespectful to me for a creator to insist something they didn't include should be treated as if it was. This is particularly true of Dumbledore because Rowling did try to insist that she included. I don't know if she still does. But it's not limited to that: the canon is the canon, adaptations are adaptations, headcanons are headcanons, and what a creator says about their work after the fact is irrelevant.

[tree_and_leaf]

Does the narrator explicitly say Dumbledore is gay? No. Does the text of "Deathly Hallows" strongly hint in that direction, yes it does. In particular, the way Rita writes about him is exactly the way British tabloids used to dogwhistle a celebrity's sexuality. Between that and the tone of his letter to Grindlewald, I inferred that we were meant to read him as gay.

[(Anonymous)]

That really depends on where you draw the line. I'm pretty firmly in the 'if it's not shown in canon, it's not canon' boat, because I hate trying to keep up with all the extraneous little details and interviews and stuff and also because I feel like, if it was important, it would be in the canon, be it the book, the movie, the tv series, what have you.

Everything else to me is just headcanon, even if it's from the author themselves. I don't care if other people want to take it as canon, but I'm not going to take it as canon. If they wrote a sequel and the relevant facts showed up then, sure, it's canon. But until it's more than just something the author said, I personally don't take it as canon.

[(Anonymous)]

THIS, TIMES A THOUSAND!

[diet_poison]

How can authors have headcanons about their own work? What distinguishes it from canon? Formal publication? If so, why?

I don't go to any trouble to keep up with interviews and I'm ok with missing out on important bits that way. And I usually learn it through fandom osmosis anyway if it's important. If I write a fic that contradicts something the author said, oh well. Sometimes fic contradicts WoG canon, sometimes it contradicts "official" canon. Doesn't change what is and isn't canon though.

(I just don't understand the "WoG doesn't count" approach is all I'm saying)

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Formal publication? If so, why?

Because the rigorous process of iteratively editing a work is critically necessary to separate the good ideas from the bad, and to transform good ideas into a form worth reading. We're not obligated to consider undeveloped ideas equivalent to ones that have been fully developed.

[diet_poison]

Meh, I think some canons are pretty underdeveloped, self-contradictory, and just overall not great. But I see your point.

[(Anonymous)]

SA.

What cbrachyrhynchos said, basically. Formal publication means it's set in stone, it's done, it's formally canon. It's an idea that's been deemed good enough, solid enough, and relevant enough to be placed into the published canon. It's not a 'three am wake up from a dream with a thought that so-and-so in the story might so such-and-such a thing' that anyone can spit out on their blog, whether it is a good idea or a bad idea. Some of the things in the canon probably started out that way too, don't get me wrong, but anything that's made it through formal publication has been distilled down to the 'best ideas' for the work.

Which is why I don't consider anything that didn't make it into that to be hard-canon. WoG tends to be an irritating mess of contradictions that's prone to changing as they change their minds. It's great if you like that sort of thing, but I'd rather work with the facts in the formal, published canon.

[diet_poison]

I get that, but some canons are very mushy and not well-developed, and some WoG statements/shared thoughts are very carefully thought-out.

[(Anonymous)]

Then they should have been in the canon.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt but I disagree. I also think only what's in the writing itself is true canon. Obviously I'm the last person to argue that Dumbledore isn't gay, but he's not expressly gay in the canon, period.

Plus, if Word of God automatically becomes canon, then Lestat from Interview with a Vampire series becomes a repentant Christian when the author goes through a religious crisis, despite that being completely out of character. Just one example why to me, what an author says will always be separate from the writing.

[diet_poison]

Hm. Not familiar with that particular canon, so I can't comment on it.

[arcadiaego]

I was *literally* just agreeing with @diet_poison in my head and then thought 'yeah, but Anne Rice'. I suppose I take Word of God as canon depending on how much sense it makes.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

He's not anything other than a bunch of words on the page. If those words fail to clearly communicate after hundreds of hours of development, editing, editing, and more editing, the author/artist has failed.

"Word of god," is bullshit because not all ideas are equal. Authors/artists create entire notebooks and sketchbooks filled with bad ideas, of which only a handful are put into development, and only a minority of those make it through the editing process unchanged. If an author or artist feels the published work didn't express those ideas clearly, they can go through the rigorous process of creating a new edition.

Meanwhile LGBTQ fantasy for all ages has moved forward with openly LGBTQ characters. So it's a bit outrageous to keep giving Rowling cookies for a texts that are even more ambiguous about their gay characters than The Count of Monte Cristo.

[(Anonymous)]

"Word of god," is bullshit because not all ideas are equal.

This x1000. I think it's also important to note that there's a big difference between a creator making a statement ex post facto about something like a character's favorite ice cream flavor or something else trivial that might never have had a reason to come up in canon versus something that is a significant part of a character's, well, character. The latter is something that there is absolutely no excuse for not including in the canon itself.

[diet_poison]

That is true, but does Dumbles being gay count as a significant part of his character? I think his storyline with Grindelwald makes sense either way. I mean I think the gay bit makes it more interesting, for sure, but the overall gist of his character isn't that significantly altered, especially considering that some platonic relationships are very intimate and powerful.

[(Anonymous)]

It does make sense either way, but the knowledge of his sexuality adds another dimension to the entire storyline that isn't there if you're viewing it from a purely platonic angle, and I think that makes a difference.

[diet_poison]

To the entire storyline? Do you mean the entire Grindelwald storyline or like, the entire series? Most of the series isn't about Grindelwald. Much of Dumbles' characterization has nothing to do with that storyline. It's an important element, but not the only one.

[diet_poison]

...I am not "giving Rowling cookies" and I don't know what I said to imply such. I think you're reading more into what I said than what is there. I'm talking about WoG, not representation