It was just four years ago today...
When JKR said in a Radio City Music Hall reading/event that Dumbledore was gay.
On twitter today, a friend of mine asked about how society had changed since then, and I started thinking about how fandom had changed since then - or actually, since 2000/2001.
I found an essay by Tinderblast (different pseud now, but I won't link to it unless she says it's ok) written in 2000 or 2001 about slash and the HP fandom - you can read it here. It says, in response to the flames many slash writers were receiving:
All right, then, let's take a look at the most oft-cited justifications of the flames, and see what they say.
...
2. Slash pairings are out of character.
When you think about it, no fanfic is completely in character, simply because the fic writers aren't writing the characters as the author originally planned - so what J.K. Rowling was thinking when she wrote the books isn't really an issue until she tells us straight out about the leanings of the characters. And how many POVs are the books told from? One. Harry's point of view. Not having seen the inside of most of the characters' thoughts, we can't say for sure which ones are homosexual, which ones are het, and which ones are bi. Okay, sure, having seen the Yule Ball, we can say that the majority of the characters, if not all, are heterosexual. But that doesn't eliminate the possibility of their being bisexual. In fact, Harry might be bisexual, too - people don't always realize they have homosexual leanings the moment their hormones start working.
While we're at it, how is Remus and/or Sirius having a long lost girlfriend/wife any more plausible then their having been lovers in the past? We have no evidence pointing either way - they could have sworn themselves to celibacy, for all we know.
Putting the last two paragraphs into two words, prove it.
Well, that's certainly an argument that hasn't been made in the last four years. From 2000 through 2007, though, it wasn't uncommon for people to say that if JKR had intended for there to be gay wizards, she would have said so and since she hadn't, there weren't any.
There were threads like this one on FictionAlley, and two vendors at Nimbus who were shocked SHOCKED at the drawing in the Program of Harry and Draco embracing, so much so that they were harassing our attendees, and were asked to leave the vendor room (yes, we refunded their fees).
So today, there was a story on the news that 53% of all Americans believes that there is nothing morally wrong with being gay, and that's a number that's significantly higher than any from 2000 or 2004 or even 2007. Did Dumbledore make that much of a difference? No, probably not in the wider world - but perhaps in fandom? Is it possible that some Harry Potter fans who thought that there couldn't possibly homosexuality in the wizarding world, who thought that to see that some characters in the books were, or might be, gay or bisexual or transgender was to inherently misread and defile JKR's stories... is it possible that some of them have, since October 19, 2007, changed their minds?
On twitter today, a friend of mine asked about how society had changed since then, and I started thinking about how fandom had changed since then - or actually, since 2000/2001.
I found an essay by Tinderblast (different pseud now, but I won't link to it unless she says it's ok) written in 2000 or 2001 about slash and the HP fandom - you can read it here. It says, in response to the flames many slash writers were receiving:
All right, then, let's take a look at the most oft-cited justifications of the flames, and see what they say.
...
2. Slash pairings are out of character.
When you think about it, no fanfic is completely in character, simply because the fic writers aren't writing the characters as the author originally planned - so what J.K. Rowling was thinking when she wrote the books isn't really an issue until she tells us straight out about the leanings of the characters. And how many POVs are the books told from? One. Harry's point of view. Not having seen the inside of most of the characters' thoughts, we can't say for sure which ones are homosexual, which ones are het, and which ones are bi. Okay, sure, having seen the Yule Ball, we can say that the majority of the characters, if not all, are heterosexual. But that doesn't eliminate the possibility of their being bisexual. In fact, Harry might be bisexual, too - people don't always realize they have homosexual leanings the moment their hormones start working.
While we're at it, how is Remus and/or Sirius having a long lost girlfriend/wife any more plausible then their having been lovers in the past? We have no evidence pointing either way - they could have sworn themselves to celibacy, for all we know.
Putting the last two paragraphs into two words, prove it.
Well, that's certainly an argument that hasn't been made in the last four years. From 2000 through 2007, though, it wasn't uncommon for people to say that if JKR had intended for there to be gay wizards, she would have said so and since she hadn't, there weren't any.
There were threads like this one on FictionAlley, and two vendors at Nimbus who were shocked SHOCKED at the drawing in the Program of Harry and Draco embracing, so much so that they were harassing our attendees, and were asked to leave the vendor room (yes, we refunded their fees).
So today, there was a story on the news that 53% of all Americans believes that there is nothing morally wrong with being gay, and that's a number that's significantly higher than any from 2000 or 2004 or even 2007. Did Dumbledore make that much of a difference? No, probably not in the wider world - but perhaps in fandom? Is it possible that some Harry Potter fans who thought that there couldn't possibly homosexuality in the wizarding world, who thought that to see that some characters in the books were, or might be, gay or bisexual or transgender was to inherently misread and defile JKR's stories... is it possible that some of them have, since October 19, 2007, changed their minds?