No biscuit.

[jlh]

Okay, JKR, your little victory tour where you're telling us all this stuff that you kinda forgot or was kinda too much of a wimp or whatever to put in the books? Like how Harry and Ginny were soulmates when they had, what, all of four conversations on the page? Or that no, the trio really do, erm, triple-handedly change the entire structure of the wizarding world in a few short years, thus ending the cyclical blood wars that have been plaguing the wizarding world for years, and yet we have to wait for Harry's kid to redeem Slytherin House?

Or, now, that a safely octogenarian and therefore safely nonsexual (and, as sistermagpie pointed out, apparently celibate since he had no affairs) character is gay? And I'm supposed to be all excited about this?

I'm not taking the crumbs, Jo. If it isn't on the page, it doesn't count. If you wanted us to know it, you should have written it in the books. If you wanted him to be gay, he should have been gay in the books. And maybe, just maybe, he could have had some past loves because gay people? HAVE PAST LOVES. I think we did away with the "gay people live tragic and lonely lives" trope back in the 70s, Jo. The Boys in the Band was a long time ago. This smacks of the worst kind of tokenism.

(Here's what you can do: ring up my uncle in CT. He's almost 80. He's gay. He not only has past loves, HE'S HAD THE SAME LOVE FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS.)

And let me say this again. If it's not on the page, IT DOESN'T COUNT.

Comments

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and somehow surrounded by all the almost OTT traditional romance it's like...it just didn't occur to you to tell us that? Or pair him up with somebody the way everybody else she can think of does?

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I mean, I'm totally guilty of wanting to pair everyone up at the end of my stories, and I'll admit that. But sheesh, like, one normalized gay pairing plz, not just the old lonely guy.

I just, these interviews? Just remind me how disappointed I was in the series, and how much I can't trust any one writing book or TV series anymore. My heart is BROKEN, I tell you. BRO-KEN.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I know--and now I keep realizing it's not going to stop because at every one of the stops on this book tour there's going to be more of these things. Seamus married one of the 2 girls in Gryffindor we don't know--she was Irish too! Angelina married Lee Jordan! Dean married Padma! Stop fancying Draco! (Apparently this is still a problem. Fancying Draco is beginning to seem like some low-level rebellion, like Draco wearing Muggle clothes in fanfic.)

I take comfort in Madam Maxime escaping being married to Hagrid, even if that seems to be held against her.

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

Seamus married one of the 2 girls in Gryffindor we don't know--she was Irish too! Angelina married Lee Jordan! Dean married Padma!

What? What?! No! Just, no. She's totally cheating!

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

No no! I totally made that stuff up mostly. Afaik we don't know who seamus, Lee, Dean or Padma married.:-)

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

Oh? Ok. *breathes* ;) I have not been keeping up with anything Rowling has said since DH came out.

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I was talking to slytherincess and I realized that all these little alerts just invalidate the way I read the books and reinforce the whole, there is one right way to read them and everyone else is "delusional" or whatever. It's almost like they're taking the books away from me.

And frankly, it makes me want to write my fic even more, and makes me feel like signing on for episodic fiction even less than I already felt this fall. No trust! No trust!

[conob.livejournal.com]

Word, indeed.

[lessthangreat.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with this post. Every single thing. Half of what she's said in interviews before have contradicted actual things she'd written in the books. This whole thing is BS. *rolls eyes*

[lake-effected.livejournal.com]

thank you for being so articulate! I've just been angry. I agree. Tokenism, and potentially more homophobic than the complete erasure of queer folks from the books. One unrequited crush as a teen? I think not.

[tarie.livejournal.com]

I completely agree. I'm so annoyed right now.

[calloocallay.livejournal.com]

Also, an extra layer of weird has occured because Remus and Lupin, who really DID present as gay IN THE BOOKS, she totally bent over backwards to get rid of (apparently unintentional) subtext, and did a shoddy job at it. Ms. R: All that stuff that made us believe those guys were gay, ie, being in love with eachother, living together by choice and not necessity, appearing to be bonded for life, giving Harry a joint Christmas present, crying over eachother, etc? That kind of stuff would have helped in Dumbledore's characterization if you wanted us to believe he was gay.

[andstillitmoves.livejournal.com]

I agree. Also, the slightly creepy older man with a tendency to manipulate children and who some others in his own world see as unsavory and malign him being the gay one? Er.

[sisterpandora.livejournal.com]

AMEN! Love it! So well worded and utterly true! JKR needs to stop talking (much like BSG's Ron Moore)! All this other stuff, this "what was really going on in the background while you were reading about Harry", is BOLONGA!

She could have done so much better. Sigh.

[shakespearechic.livejournal.com]

I see both sides, but I do agree with femmequixotic that: "Just because JKR may have said Dumbledore's love for Grindelwald was unrequited doesn't mean that she's saying that Dumbledore never did the dirty with any boys. Urequited love for one man =/= no steamy man!sex ever in over 100 years. Those statements are not in any way, shape or form the same and I'm kind of surprised as to how they can be interpreted in that fashion. Because there are a lot of us in this world who have a) had sex and b) experienced unrequited love at some point."

[jlh.livejournal.com]

I think it's the interpretation of this ¶ from the HPANA report:

Rowling also said she had read through Steve Kloves' script for the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling "Dumbledore is gay" over it.

So … Dumbledore is gay and can't have past loves? Because she doesn't say, "They should be male, as Dumbledore is gay" but "There is no reminiscing of past loves, as Dumbledore is gay." THAT was my problem with that passage. It has nothing to do with the Grindelwald thing.

[lillijulianne.livejournal.com]

disclaimer- you know i'm not in the fandom and only know what i hear from my kids/other people/the movies. but with this

Rowling also said she had read through Steve Kloves' script for the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and corrected a passage in which Dumbledore was reminiscing about past loves by crossing it out and scrawling "Dumbledore is gay" over it.

my first thought is that presumably they wouldn't have allowed him to have male past loves in the movie, and with that i sympathize, and so i can sort of respect that at least she wouldn't let them show females. i don't know. i can see the frustration, because regardless of the movies, presumably by the time she got to the third or fourth book she could pretty much write her own ticket. was she afraid of any specific backlash? it's so odd.

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

For accuracy's sake I think it may have turned out that what she said was she was in a script meeting and there was some line where Dumbledore was all, "I knew this girl once and her hair..." and she wrote "Dumbledore's Gay!" on the script and slid it over to the screenwriter.

So in context it's more like she's just saying Dumbledore doesn't have memories about being attracted to pretty girls. (Though it's ironic that Harry so often seems less than straight to me with his own hair fetish.)

But still, we'll see if the line isn't just changed to "I knew this boy once and his hair..." or if, more likely, it's taken as just that Dumbledore is gay and therefore can't say anything about past loves or attractions.