I am perplexed. The author of the Harry Potter books has recently been quoted as saying that one of her characters is gay. There has been a hue and cry and a large amount of commentary about this announcement. Now, does her statement mean that she intends for that to be part of future novels (I had thought she had finished with that series, anyway), or is she asserting that she knows this about that character, although it has not been revealed in the literature? It sounds as if she is treating this fictional character as someone she actually knows, and is revealing facts about his life to us, because the books would not really indicate those facts. It’s as if she has told the world something that he told privately only to her. If this is so, then she is clearly off her rocker. This is, after all, a fictional character. What has happened here?
From what I know of it, Dumbledor is gay. Apparently, he liked some guy back in the day, and that factors into the plot somehow. I don’t really think it’s “off her rocker”, it’s just wierd. It’s no different, really, than saying they have blue hair. She’s the author, she gets to make that call.
Long, meandering post deleted. More summarized version:
They’re her characters – she can do what she wants with them.
She probably has extraordinarily long biographies written about every major character, just to make sure that the continuity stays correct. Those bios will have tons of “facts” about the characters that aren’t in the books. But as the creator of those characters, she gets final say on what is and is not accurate.
Authors of fictional worlds often come up with a lot of backstory that doesn’t show up explicitly in their novels (some, like Tolkien, have more backstory then story). Presumably it helps them give their world a more realistic feel. So it’s hardly beyond belief that JKR made Dumbledore gay without actually using the fact in her books. In anycase, it’s pretty common, and I hardly think it means JKR is “off her rocker”.
Moving to CS from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
The director of an upcoming movie was about to put in an incidental romantic interest between Dumbledore and a female character, which prompted JKR to quietly point out that DD is gay. Now the cat’s out of the bag (or closet).
This is obviously just a cheap ploy to pump book sales.
Good thing, too, because the Harry Potter series never sold very many books.
It isn’t that she out of the blue announces he’s gay for no reason - it sheds some light on an episode that occurs in the last book: it adds to the motivation as to why he was so attracted to that Grindelwald fellow.
Actually, when reading the last book, I was sort of wondering if those two were romantically involved. The answer we now know is “yes”. There were already plenty of hints that this was the case, and it explains a lot about their interaction - first as inseperable “best friends”, later as violent opponents.
She does know the character, she created him. Her revealing to us that Dumbledore is gay is no different from her telling us after the fact that Harry went on to become an Auror. Just another fact about the a character people are interested in.
Why is she off her rocker? It’s her character. As others have said, all fictional characters have backstories in the authors’ minds, much of which never makes it into the book itself.
I honestly do not understand why some people are having problems with this. Both that Dumbledore is gay, and/or Rowling saying so in a Question&Answer session. What’s the big deal?
That’s hilarious!
See here: we’vecoveredthisonceatleast
I dunno, it’d be braver to just say Dumbledore was pretty much asexual; that he was too busy delving into the mysteries of the universe to care about forming personal relationships, rather like Isaac Newton. Having a gay character isn’t groundbreaking anymore; one that dismisses sex with a shrug would be relatively novel.
Yep. Since there’s already a thread about this, I’ll go ahead and close this one.