[ SECRET POST #4789 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4789 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 54 secrets from Secret Submission Post #686.
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

[fscom]

07. https://i.imgur.com/iZJYiN3.png

[(Anonymous)]

Yep. Yep. Yep.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm almost certain it was an interview where she originally mentioned it. I'm pretty sure Twitter hadn't yet taken off at the time to the extent that celebrities were using it to interact with fans.

[(Anonymous)]

She talked about in 2007 when someone asked her if Dumbledore had ever been in love.

[(Anonymous)]

verified that was the year? because I'm 100% going to go with her if the actual text that she had to sit down and write, think about, edit, and approve to be published between 1995 and 2007 would not have included anything about Dumbledore's sexuality. fandom itself was still grappling with how much to say about gay romances and was still tagging fic with warnings for gay in 05-08 so. it's entirely possible that despite her being the author with the control over what words go on the page, she knew that it wouldn't be received or her editors would politely ask her to take it out or, since she wasn't a fandom-connected person at all in the first place, legit didn't think people would actually want to read that.

it's 13 years later and a lot has changed since.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

When the 6th and 7th books were coming out, JKR was one of the most popular, widely-read, and powerful authors in the world. The idea that her editors could stop her from including a detail completely lacks plausibility. Nor would JKR have been the first YA author to include gay characters (by a long shot).

I'm not even trying to address the question of whether she ought or ought not have made Dumbledore textually gay, or what was in her mind when she wrote the books, or any of that. But I find these arguments that it would have been impossible or really difficult for her to do so very much not compelling.

[(Anonymous)]

Witch Baby was 1991. Runaways and Young Avengers were out in 2004. The idea that Deathly Hallows had to be subtext because it was on the bleeding edge of LGBTQ representation in 2007 just isn't true.

[(Anonymous)]

yeah when it comes to things like this i'd rather the creator be up-front and admit that they just didn't think about it properly/consider it much at the time. it's still not the best reason sure, but i am much more forgiving of outright honesty, than acting like there was some ~greater reason~ for it when we all know that's bollocks.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think what Rowling did with Dumbledore was even really objectionable, in itself. It'd be better if she had addressed it in the text, but OK, she didn't, fine.

What annoys me is people acting like she did address it in the text, or like there's no possible way she ever could have addressed it in the text.

[(Anonymous)]

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I think there's enough in the last book to support her claim that she had always considered Dumbledore gay. A lot of people picked up on the subtext even before she said anything. But then of course a LOT of people picked up on Sirius/Remus, too, despite her not intending them to be read that way. So I'm not saying the text is at all clear on Dumbledore/Grindelwald, or that it's some great representation, but I also don't think it was an afterthought for her.

[(Anonymous)]

If "a lot of people" in fandom supposedly picked up on subtext, I take that with a big grain of salt. Fandom has a tendency to see lots of things through slash goggles and they also tend to think that absence of a het relationship/love interest is proof that there's gay smoke AND gay fire.

[(Anonymous)]

That's a very good point about Sirius and Remus. I'd argue that textually there's a LOT more evidence for them than for Grindelwald/Dumbledore, if we're going solely by what was actually written.

[ninefox]

YES HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN

BECAUSE RITA FUCKING SKEETER WROTE AN EXPOSE TRYING TO SMEAR AND EMBARRASS DUMBLERDORE AND 'FORMER SWEETHEARTS WITH WIZARD HITLER' WOULD HAVE BEEN THE JUCIEST SCOOP OF HER LIFE

NOT ONLY DID HARRY READ PARTS OF THAT BOOK

BUT EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE WIZARDING WORLD SHOULD HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT IT NON-STOP AFTER THE BOOK DROPPED

'HARRY RE-EXAMINING HIS BLIND FAITH IN DUMBLEDORE AND LEARNING SURPRISING THINGS ABOUT HIM' IS ONE OF THE MAJOR THROUGHLINES OF BOOK 7

IT'S ACTUALLY FUCKING IDIOTIC THAT IT ISN'T SPELLED OUT IN LITERAL NEON MAGIC LETTERS

[(Anonymous)]

It honestly does fit one of the major throughlines of the series as a whole, IE, how much of the series is bound up with styles and aesthetics from the first half of the twentieth century, when you actually would only be willing to hint about Dumbledore banging Wizard Hitler even if it was one of the central themes of the book, and a journalist like Rita Skeeter probably would only hint at it

But that's not, like, a defense of Rowling's choice there by any means, because she's not actually a pre-1960s writer, no matter how indebted she is to that period of writers

[(Anonymous)]

(different anon) But Skeeter and her storylines are based very much on 80s and 90s tabloid journalists despite the 20s/30s aesthetics.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sure that even if she did have Harry mention that he knew Dumbledore was gay people would just accuse her of trying to get points. As it is, I really don't think it's that relevant to the plot that Harry needs to acknowledge it in canon. (basically I don't really care enough about HP to have much of an opinion) The fact is that Dumbledore is gay and if knowing that just isn't enough that's just the way it is.

[(Anonymous)]

Accusations of "woke points" wasn't really a THING back then, though. It was by no means cool to support gay couples, so nobody would do it just to seem cooler.

[(Anonymous)]

Internet points, inclusion points, whatever. They were definitely a thing back then regardless.

[esteefee]

Kids know absolutely everything about their teachers. Including wild suppositions and crazy rumors, true, but also, often, their secrets.

[(Anonymous)]

I knew absolutely nothing about mine. Which is worse in my case because my mother was one at my school, which you'd think would give me an inside scoop, but nada.

[esteefee]

Oh, so close! I totally would have offered to bring her her lunch in the teacher's break room.

[(Anonymous)]

I went to two different high schools and the teachers gossiped like Mean Girls in both of them. Most of the students had a running knowledge of who was cheating and who was going through an ugly divorce and who was rumored to have a criminal record and who was a failed singer-songwriter before settling on teaching AmLit. You would think that sort of thing would be even worse in a community as isolated as Hogwarts where even the home furnishings gossip.

[(Anonymous)]

Harry and Dumbledore had a specific relationship that isn't exactly the same as the relation I had with my high school English teachers, especially in the 6th book.

[meadowphoenix]

I think there was plenty of reasons to read it in the text (like with actual textual criticism praxis you could write well-regarded articles about it and have them be deemed amazing), but no reason for her not to have made it explicit when dumbledore talks about his relationships with grindlewald for literally no plot reason besides harry wanted to know and was dead enough to be able to ask also dead dumbledore.