Now we know: J.K. Rowling has said in an interview that Dumbledore was gay, and that his love for Grindelwald was 'his great tragedy.'So, on the one hand, kewl. Ten points to Gryffindor -- Rowling's said that's her favorite House -- for inclusiveness. It's a little sad, though, that the only known gay character in the books should be so . . . sad ( Read more... )

Okay, I know this is an eternal fannish question, but unfinishedch80 brought it up when we were talking and now I'm curious: if the Lord of the Rings characters went to Hogwarts, which Houses would they be sorted into ( Read more... )

If travel broadens the mind, then I suppose I'll just have to broaden mine some other way, because I hate travel. I like having traveled. But actually traveling? Ick. I spend most of my time getting lost, asking silly questions of strangers, and struggling to buy the crucial items I forgot to pack. Time that should have been devoted to the ( Read more... )

What would happen if a Muggle got on a wizarding broom? Would it work for them, or work, but unreliably, like a wild horse they couldn't control? Or would it just sit there, like an ordinary broom?

In Quidditch Through the Ages Rowling seems to imply that racing brooms gradually improved as their aerodynamic qualities improved and the charms on ( Read more... )

I have a favorite new word -- well, new to me -- for talking about fantasy series like HP and LotR: understructure. It's a word that Lois McMaster Bujold uses to talk about the effect she hopes to produce in a series of books focused on a set of recurring characters. Books like these, she says, have not just one plot, but two. There's a plot ( Read more... )

Warning to those of you with children or who plan to have them: you probably should worry about your own safety if your kid goes to the Career Fair at school and decides that she wants to be a hero. Have you noticed how many heroes have parents who are dead, missing, or otherwise off-stage? It's sad, but also, well, convenient, particularly in ( Read more... )

No doubt this has been discussed at enormous length in the HP fandom, but at the most inappropriate time possible today (during a conversation about my health insurance benefits) it suddenly occurred to me that Harry isn't going to kill Voldemort. He can't. Rowling has made such a huge fuss about Draco not being a killer; how can Harry possibly ( Read more... )

There were many things I loved about the new HP book. My Inner Hufflepuff is beaming and baking cookies for everyone, my Inner Ravenclaw is contemplating an abstruse treatise on the nature of love, and my Inner Gryffindor is making the satisfied grunts by which it generally signifies contentment. But now that my initial period of incoherent ( Read more... )