I didn't totally mind Snape being in love with Lily although it didn't actually make much sense.

[cabell]

In case you haven't yet heard (though as expected, there are several posts about it just in the top page of my flist):

Dumbledore is gay. For reals.

written_in_blue does make a good point that it's either unrequited or a really bad case of Fatal Attraction (hello, next week's discussion sections on love stories), but still. Dumbledore is gay!

Comments

[esk]

wow. well, that's interesting. i would never have expected her to reveal such a thing!

i'm torn between being impressed and being cynical. props for making such an iconic, admirable and generally well-loved character gay. boo for weaseling out of dealing with it in the text. (my REALLY cynical side says, oh, it must not be too hard to stand up for the gayz now that you've got a billion dollars in your pocket. man, i'm a hater. are my standards for progressive politics in children's literature too high?)

on the "wtf, fandom?" front, i don't quite buy the connection between having "no close relationship with women" and "OMG GAY," especially since the personal lives of everyone on the hogwarts faculty are generally depicted from a distance.

[inhumandecency]

My personal theory is that she just snapped for that one moment, and then decided to run with it.

[waterisblood]

i think she didn't reveal it in-text because it would be hard for a younger child to get, and there are probably some young children reading the series still. It would be awkward for parents to have to explain homosexuality for a younger child who didn't understand sex yet.

[esk]

oh, i don't buy it. the later HP books are quite dark and seem targeted towards an older adolescent audience, anyway. and the whole series deals with lots of things that would be hard for a younger child to get. betrayals and deaths and murders just for starters.

it seems obvious to me that queer rights is a battle she only joined once it was safe for her to do so. and ok, it's her prerogative to choose her battles - i'm just not going to pretend she made some great brave decision.

It would be awkward for parents to have to explain homosexuality for a younger child who didn't understand sex yet.

why? most children get their heads filled with all kinds of ideas about (straight) romantic love long, long, long before they learn about sex.

[annotated_em]

*rueful* It's just been preying on my mind lately that the queer folks never get happy endings in any mainstream media representation. It grieves me.

Also, if she'd really been brave, she would have made it text and not so much damn subtext. Grrr.

[cabell]

Yeah, I don't think Rowling is a particularly original or non-traditional person, myself. I'm still incredibly annoyed about her failure to include a single Slytherin on the right side in the final battle.

But this makes it a very good discussion point for my sections, both the fact that it's a Fatal Attraction/unhappy ending AND that she didn't even put it in the text.

[illegalseagull]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that was pissed off by the fact that everyone in Slytherin was automatically evil.

[foomanchoo]

I think it makes more sense that the Slytherins were automatically "bad". It seemed to me to be the wizarding equivalent of growing up in a KKK family.

Snape and Regulus weren't evil, either. Just misguided, which goes to point. It also explains why Sirius was a bit of a jerk. :p

[kres]

OMGAWESOME.

For real. Hah. Oh, Rowling. What's next?

[kicking_k]

I don't know that I'm THAT upset she didn't put it in the text; after all, she didn't mention any of the other teachers' orientations. I think it would have been jarring.

Dumbledore was old. Not only does that make it unlikely he'd have come out as a young man: the young protagonists probably don't want to know. Seventeen-year-olds' reaction to old people, even beloved old people, having a sex life or even having had one in the past? Mostly "yuck, shut up." The vast majority of readers, after all, are not in the fandom

It was surprising...

[waterisblood]

I saw it on Yahoo monday night, and my heart, I swear, skipped a beat. I stared at my computer screen with my jaw hanging down.

It's definitely a courageous thing or J.K. to do; she's exposed herself to a lot more controversy now. I kind of wonder when she decided it, before the series started, or did she get the idea later?