actuallyclintbarton:
darren-freakin-criss:
takealookatyourlife:
heroicallyfound:
svetlana-del-rey:
Was she going to slap you because you never in any way made him gay in the actual books, taking zero risks/doing absolutely nothing for gay characters in literature, and only announcing your “authorial intent” afterwards for a cheap shot at looking like an ~ally~
^^^
Gay people are just normal people. We are not told about any of the Hogwarts professors love lives, other than Snape, and it would be completely out of character for Dumbledore to walk around telling everyone about his sexuality.
Did you want her to make him dress in glittery platform boots, a crop top, and decorate his office in rainbow flags to make it more obvious for you? Would that be enough of a stereotype to appease you people? Or what? Please tell me. I’d like to know how you think a gay character is supposed to be portrayed.
And did you miss the Grindelwald chapters in the ‘actual books’? Or was that also not obvious enough for you? Did Dumbledore need to whisper “always” wistfully in order for you to connect that he had romantic feelings for Grindelwald? Maybe you are American and need them to gaze longingly into each others eyes with awkward close ups of their fingers almost grazing each other that Hollywood thinks means ‘true love’.
It didn’t fit into his relationship to Harry to ever say “I’m gay”, and so it was not stated explicitly (you might have noticed the book was told from Harry Potter’s perspective).
The point is though, that he is a homosexual, well respected, powerful, and very loved wizard- and his sexuality doesn’t matter because no one else thinks it matters. a.k.a. no one care that he loves men, and that is wonderful.
Yeah, but the fact still stands that people try to give JK Rowling LGBT Ally Points for it when she should be getting none.
All it would’ve taken to make this canon was one throwaway line while discussing Grindlewald with Harry, something like “I loved him.” Just casually thrown in there. Easy to miss. AND HE WOULD HAVE BEEN CANONICALLY GAY. Or hell, even have Aberforth mention something about how he thought Albus was sweet on him or something. That would have at least been better than what we got.
I’m sorry but Word of God after the fact, in the case of representation? Means absolutely fucking ZILCH to a great many queer people, myself included.
Also wow glittery platforms? Stereotypes? takealookatyourlife you should examine your url and apply it because that is a really fucking insulting paragraph and it actually makes me want to punch a wall a little bit from how asinine and bigoted it is. NO ONE was asking for stereotypes or even non-stereotyped IN YOUR FACE SEXUALITY. We’re saying that retroactively (from the POV of a reader who has not been privy to your unmentioned worldbuilding) making a character gay does NOT do anything for representation and should not earn you ally cookies.
Also, what I find problematic with Dumbledore being the character she chose to make gay is that he has one relationship, one romance, and his life goes to shit. His lover turns out to be evil, his sister dies, and Dumbledore goes, “woah, shit, okay, CELIBATE FOREVER IS THE ANSWER.” So any positive is vastly outweighed by the negative of Dumbledore being punished and punishing himself for his entire life for falling in love with a boy when he was young. The message queer kids take away from the story of Dumbledore is one of internalised homophobia, self-censorship and heartache, not that of a role model who became the most powerful wizard and was also queer. To become that powerful person, it’s heavily implied that Dumbledore’s chance at a relationship, love and companionship had to be sacrificed. Dumbledore is not a positive gay role model, because to make him gay, JKR had to castrate him, and then, only show him through the eyes of others – the friend who loved him, unrequitedly, from afar, and the tabloid press, who burned him in effigy.
Oh, and further, I have seen a comment floating around that she thought about making Dean/Seamus canon but ‘thought it would detract from the main characters/story’. No. It wouldn’t. A line about them going to the ball together. A kiss when they reunite in the Room of Requirement. A sentence about them standing on Platform 9 ¾ with Junior Thomas-Finnegan, waving him off to school. Any of these things would have taken a few sentences at most, but would have given queer kids representation, and couple of characters they had grown to know and love that they could now identify with. What JKR means when she says ‘detract’ is that she chose, deliberately to a) practice erasure and b) conform to heteronormative standards as to how we portray children before they are of sexual majority, to which I say fuck you.
knitting in the dark 