[ SECRET POST #4290 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4290 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 21 secrets from Secret Submission Post #614.
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

[(Anonymous)]

Correct. The master of secrets and lies was not an openly gay man in the original series.

[(Anonymous)]

LOL

[(Anonymous)]

My point that he wasn't written as a gay character, not that he wasn't openly gay.

If your argument is that any mention of it by anyone would have been totally anathema to the character, OK, but it doesn't change that he wasn't written as a textually gay character.

[philstar22]

This. That she picked the most secretive character to be the only gay one does not win her brownie points.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt but I'm gay and I thought it was really fucking cool that she announced Dumbledore was gay. So it didn't happen in the books, considering she's basically the best selling author of all time with one of the most enormous fandoms of all time, it's not like she wasn't taking a risk by announcing it. It doesn't really matter much that it wasn't in the books as far as impact. Anyone interested in HP knows he's gay. So she can have my brownie points if you won't share!

[(Anonymous)]

Okay but I have to ask, as Obviously Not the Author, how do you know he wasn't written as a gay man? Sure, maybe she didn't intend it all along (but like I said, and someone else said, it sure as hell comes across subtextually if she didn't...) and maybe she just did it for buttpats, but there's still a pretty decent chance from what some people picked up on that she intended for him to be gay but didn't want to rock the boat by being too 'out there' in a 1990's children's series that she was literally staking her living on at the time.

[(Anonymous)]

What I mean is that the character in the text as it actually exists isn't gay, isn't identified as being gay, doesn't show up as being gay, except arguably subtextually, and there somewhat weakly. A reasonable person wouldn't conclude on the basis of the book that Dumbledore was certainly gay. I don't know what was in JKR's mind. The text she wrote doesn't identify the character as being gay.

And, WRT subtext, I did pick up on the subtext at the time. But it's not, like, all-pervasive or inarguable subtext. It's details that leave open a suggestion, it's not direct coding or direct implication.

Why she did it, and how much credit you want to extend in her direction as regards the difficulty of writing a queer character in the 1990s, that's your call.

[tree_and_leaf]

it's not direct coding

Disagree - sort of. The way Rita writes about him in "The Life and Lies" is pretty much exactly how British tabloid journalists in the eighties and nineties signalled "this bloke is a [insert homophobic slur of choice] but we haven't got a smoking gun and we're worried we might not win a libel case so we're not going to out him, but take our word for it, he's definitely one of them"

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you'll forgive me if I say that I still think that's fairly indirect signaling. Especially given how unsympathetic Rita is, and the fact that it s just her hinting and dissembling.

to be clear, I'm not saying that Dumbledore being gay was surprising. I just don't think you could conclude it, or come close to concluding, on the basis of the book itself. The most you could do was wonder.