[ SECRET POST #2216 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2216 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 120 secrets from Secret Submission Post #317.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - personal attack ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

09. http://i49.tinypic.com/33wta0y.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

She could've, you know, not said it at all. Or even declared him officially straight. Would that have been better?

[dreemyweird]

NO

I... I just don't get the whole "I hate X because of its/their fans" thing. Especially when it concerns a person or a work of fiction. I could never figure out how people manage to hate something because of somebody else's activities and attitude towards it.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, I'm still gonna worship someone who lost her billionaire status because she donated too much money to charity.

[(Anonymous)]

I excuse JKR on the Dumbledore thing because seriously, if she had put it in the book, that would be the only thing people who read the book would talk about. No one would care about the plot, just "OMG DUMBLEDORE'S GAY". Hell, even when she broke the news after the fact, it was STILL the only thing people talked about. That's what really bugged me: that a gay relationship/reveal can't just be slipped into a story like it's nbd. Nooooo, people have to throw a shitfit over it and retroactively completely redefine the character based on his sexuality.

Plus, I kinda loved how the way she broke the news showed that it WASN'T a big deal. Dumbledore's love for and relationship with Grindelwald was an important but minor plot point when it wasn't confirmed as romantic, and it being romantic didn't really change anything important about it. The belated reveal kind of throws a light on how awful and hypocritical people are, making a big stink out of something that they had accepted as perfectly normal before a small inconsequential detail was revealed.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think rowling thinks of herself as a beacon of gay rights tho. she was basically like "oh yeah, I always thought dumbledore was gay and whatever" and that was it. I don't think she expected or wanted praise for it

[(Anonymous)]

people acting like she's a beacon of LGBT rights is an idiot. but people whining and going "weh weh well she could've inserted something about dumbledore being gay in the books!!!" are only promoting the idea.

while i'm sure jkr is a supporter of gay rights, it's very obvious she's not someone to look to for changing gay presence in literature. she didn't label dumbledore as gay because she wanted to be ~supportive~ or go "i'm an ally!!!". she did it because it was something about her character she wanted to talk about and wasn't thinking about the backlash, good or bad. it wasn't brought up in the books because it didn't seem important to her and there wasn't a point in bringing it up, since her intention wasn't to be an ally.

not every straight person is aware of their privilege and how their actions might effect things and arguing about it years after the fact doesn't make a single fucking difference. the only thing that matters now is that new people getting into the series do know he's gay, anyone claiming she should've inserted something about it is under the assumption that she's an ally, which she's not. she's just a straight woman who got a lucky break writing a series about stupid people pointing wands at each other and made one of her characters gay.

[making_excuses]

Ah this again:

You don't have to tell people about your sexuality, ever not in real life not in fiction. A character (or person) can be gay without actually running around saying it constantly.

Oh and this reminds me of the Neil Gaiman (?) book where basically every character was black, he just never mentioned their race. And people got angry with him for not saying it.

Anyway where was I? Oh right: Dumbledore was the HEAD MASTER! when should he have come out in the books? During his speeches? Or his talks with Harry? I would have loved to see that written: "Welcome to Hogwarts! I hope you will have a great semester, oh and btw I like men." or "Harry, you know Voldemort is trying to kill you and we have to figure out a way to stop it. Oh and before I forget, I like dudes."

[(Anonymous)]

IDK why it fucking matters when Dumbledore's sexuality was announced. Fact is he was an awesome dude who did remarkable shit, and he was gay when he did it. RME at all of you whining that you didn't know he was gay when he did it, like it makes a fucking difference.

[(Anonymous)]

Nothing turns me off a work than fans at times. I can barely watch certain directors works because I know their fandom is insanely crazy and tries to lever them into any conversation.

JK just gets the author version of that.

I get the LGBT thing, but at least she did something. It would impress me more if she'd had the guts to do it while the books were still coming out, but I'll take any small step in the way of progress. We still don't have enough LGBT role models in fiction, especially for kids.

[helenadax]

I totally agree.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not the be-all and end-all of anything, and there are a lot of things about JK's books that make me headdesk, but I thought her mentioning that Dumbledore was gay was brilliant. Of all the fanon pairings to give authorial validation to, Dumbledore/Grindelwald was ... practically no one was taking it seriously before she weighed in on that, not because the subtext wasn't there, but because it was so unheard of for an author to make someone that important, that central gay. And we've had so many stories where the powerful old mentor is straight-by-default, but functionally asexual. Remember the shit fit some male LOTR fans pitched because the actor playing Gandalf was gay? And Dumbledore's sexuality is a minor part of who he is around a 12 to 17 year old boy he's mentoring, and it may be a minor part of his life after his thing with Grindelwald went so very wrong that his sister died in the crossfire. So I don't see what JK did as "hiding his gayness." To some extent, the fact that wizarding culture as she's written it is so free about what it's okay for a man to wear, what drinks he can order, how long his hair is, and how swishy he can be, that you really can't tell who's gay based on any of the sorts of cultural hints people use in our world is kind of extraordinary.

I realize a lot of people wanted Sirius or one of the younger characters to be visibly gay. (Though potentially as much for 'I ship it' reasons as because it would have plot-justification.) But I think having the most brilliant wizard in the series, the most stalwart defender of 'the good side,' and the headmaster of a flippin' school be gay is already a lot. I lived through the stupid flailing about scout masters needing to be straight. The fact that there isn't a peep about it in a British boarding school story, not from his supporters and not from his detractors, makes a pretty great on-the-ground case for it not being grounds for discrimination in JK's headcanon. AFAIK, no one has asked her open endedly if any of the other characters are gay. They've just asked about a few characters that fandom really, really wishes were. You could argue that assuming that, because she brought up Dumbledore and not a list of characters, he's the only gay in the whole story is kinda suspect too.

[(Anonymous)]

Everyone freaking out about how we could've heard him mentioning it at some point... dude, no one knew that McGonagall had a husband at one point, or a big love with a Muggle dude before that. And her past/personal life wasn't even specifically kept secret for lots of reasons, like Dumbledore's.

I wonder how pissed fans would've been if it had been revealed that McGonagall had had a wife. It wouldn't have been any more relevant than the fact that she had a husband, but... not canon enough for them?

Fans =/= Author

[nyxelestia]

JKR never tried to be a gay ally or anything like that. She just mentioned in an interview that one of characters happens to be gay - and that after a relationship went spectacularly wrong in his youth he's lived largely asexually since then, which is why it didn't come up. It wasn't a shot at gay visibility, and the reason why she's not an LGBTQ activist isn't because she failed at gay visibility, but because she was never trying to be one in the first place.

Don't let Tumblr affect your opinion of her or her works (or anything, for that matter - Tumblr is extremely unreliable that way).

[(Anonymous)]

That's not really a fair judgement to make. We learn very little about Dumbledore's personal relationships in general, unless they relate directly to Harry, Ron, or Hermione's experiences and teachers talking to students about their private sex lives is more than a little weird.

[(Anonymous)]

There are a lot of closet cases on the nets. You're never going to get people like that to understand about the importance of things like visibility and the repudiation of shame.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, personally I'm sick of people falling over and saying how ~amazing~ the writing was since...honestly? To me it came off as a lot of cliches getting mixed together in a way that's been done to death. [Unicorns are good! Dragons breath fire! Witches ride brooms! There's plenty more.]

That said, I don't hate her/the series for it, or judge her too much over the Dumbledor thing. It really wasn't important to the plot, and while there were a couple ways she might have been able to push it in there...it just wasn't important.

[(Anonymous)]

Ugh, I feel you, anon. I've been waiting since I was 12 years old for people to get the fuck over this basic bitch and her mediocre books.

[maverickz3r0]

I think it's really cool she said Dumbledore was gay. I mean, he's the Big Good of the entire story. That's pretty awesome.

Sure I would've liked for there to be a canon gay couple--Remus and Sirius was the big one for a while, Tonks could've mentioned being late for a date with her girlfriend at one point or something, there could've been a same-sex couple at the Yule Ball--but honestly? Given when the books were planned and published, I'm good with what we've got.

And a lot of people like the books. I don't think they're going away any time soon. But I sympathize, since there's plenty of popular stuff I don't like that seems to be everywhere, too. There's something like that for everyone, really.

Kind of Off-Topic But...

[kikuko-kamimura.livejournal.com]

Can we talk about how incredibly MEH The Casual Vacancy was? It clearly won the Goodreads best fiction of the year just because OMG JK ROWLINGGGG HRRRRRRGHHH and not because of the BOOK. It was like she was trying to shoehorn in everything she thought people reading the book because she's the Harry Potter Lady would be scandalized by, and she let the only really intriguing characterization points she had drop like a cement-bricked mob boss.

Please let me not be the only person who feels this way. =/

[(Anonymous)]

Totally off topic and ~shallow~ but god does her hair look GORGEOUS in that picture. I want it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think JKR ever expected to be worshipped as a spokesperson for the LGBTQ crowd. I felt like she made the statement about Dumbledore being gay to show people that homosexuality doesn't define a person, it's just a part of who they are, no biggie. It's just people reacted to it like it was a huge deal and missed the point.

I agree that JKR isn't a god of a writer. When I was younger and was gobbling the books up I loved the hell out of them, and I still do, don't get me wrong. It's fun to read such a well thought out world, but a lot of it, looking back, wasn't as world changing or original as I thought. Such as Harry being The Chosen One. The first two books felt a lot like something CS Lewis would write for his Chronicles of Narnia books, and I do think JKR was going for that. As the years went by I think JKR realized her young readers were growing up so she wanted to take more risks and it didn't always work out well.

But hey, at least I find her works entertaining. Not perfect but who is?

And Tumblr can ruin a lot of things for a lot of people. I'm sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

OP I'm gay, and I don't listen to a dam thing that comes out of Tumblr. Take everything you read on there, with a huge grain of salt. I'm serious.

[(Anonymous)]

Ya know I always thought that stereotypes were wrong, and that we were suppose to be working against seeing folks as a stereotype of anything.

Now it would seem that if you aren't a stereotype, you aren't 'genuine'.

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who has never really been impressed with her as an author since HP book one, I can safely say... that the Dumbledore being gay reveal has ZERO to do with how I feel. I could give a shit how much she donates and to where. Fact is that people worship her writing like she's god's gift to children's lit, and you know what, as far as I'm concerened, she really isn't. Good job to her, did decent work, glad she got a lot of kids into reading and all that. But no. My opinion != fandom's opinion and they can worship her all they want, but nope. Nope, nope.

So yeah.