More on Dumbledore (ooh, that rhymes!)

[darcydodo]

With all of my replying to other people's Dumbledore posts in comments, I thought I should collect my opinions here. (All of these are culled directly from comments, so some of the context shifts may be a little abrupt, and there may be repetition.) More to potentially be added as I reply to comments further

Comments

[darcydodo]

Muahaha. ;)

Actually, relevantly, the friend who liked Farthing whom I mentioned on your post said as follows: "However, Walton does make one character choice that puzzles me: almost everyone in this book is gay, or at least bisexual, to the point where it began to seem a little ridiculous and bad-fanficcy. Because unlike in real life, in a novel that kind of thing is a choice-on the part of the author, and I'm really not sure what Walton was trying to say with it. Except maybe that when they think nobody's looking, even the crustiest Tories are all indiscriminately schtupping each other, the bloody hypocrites. Okay, but I already got that they were hypocrites, and also racists and very bad people. They don't need to be hypocritical, racist, very bad gay people, do they? Though on second thought, that does sound increasingly like the Republican party in this country. Never mind."

[judytuna]

what really? wow i'm glad i have you to spread this to me like wildfire. i hadn't heard haha

[catamorphism]

If it's a question of JKR's "bravery," as some people are saying, then I think saying it after-the-fact is really just as brave as saying it in the books, because look at how it's spreading across the internet like wildfire - everyone's going to know.

Oh, c'mon. You really think it's just as brave to make this revelation *after* millions of copies of the books were sold already, as before?

[darcydodo]

I think that if someone had asked her while she was still writing, "Why don't you have any gay characters?" she probably would have told them about Dumbledore. Sure, maybe she didn't say anything before because of sales, but you can't say that's definitely why she didn't.

Also, someone likened this to guerilla tactics of getting books with Teh Gay into the houses of anti-gay folks, and while I doubt that was actually her intention, I find it a highly amusing comparison.

[once_a_banana]

(duplicating my response to your comment on my post which is repeated above... y'know, for discussions sake

[darcydodo]

who kept his secret until beyond the grave

We don't know for sure that he kept it secret. Sure, the thing with Grindelwald was secret, but so was the fact that they were friends at all, which is rather different. We don't know that McGonagall didn't know, we don't know that Hagrid didn't know, we don't know that, oh, Arthur Weasley, if you like, didn't know.

[once_a_banana]

Oh come on, Rita Skeeter totally failed to dig it up. Dumbledore could not have kept this juicy gossip from her if anyone else were in the know. In fact she's such a master of gossip that her failure to discover it is inconsistent with her character and pretty much seems like an arbitrary author decision (assuming JKR had actually decided AD was gay at that point).

[darcydodo]

Given that she actively quashed a female love-interest for him in one of the scripts, I think this wasn't a post-publication publicity decision.

And I think "anyone" isn't consistent with "anyone who wouldn't tell Rita Skeeter." Sure, if Fudge or someone from Dumbledore's youth knew, RS would have been able to dig it up. And yes, it means that most people didn't know. But that doesn't mean his closest friends didn't know. So he wasn't out, fine, we can take issue with that if we really want. But I don't think that having a character who's gay and not out is somehow worse than not having a gay character.

[peacekeeper]

I think the 'Dumbledore's Gay' thing was handled /very well./ I went back and read the book and looked for clues, and it's actually pretty obvious the way it's written. In the first book, American version, the fact that Dean was black was actually omitted, and Angelina's colour wasn't even mentioned IIRC. This is a good way to write books. The subject of Dumbledore's sexuality NEVER CAME UP, so there was no reason to include it.

In reply to once_a_banana, Darcy's right, there's nothing that said it was a HUGE SECRET, it's just that it wasn't necessary to the story. It's very likely that the people in the OotP knew, I'm certain Grindelwald knew :D I mean, it wasn't really a secret, but like was mentioned in the OP, you don't describe someone as 'tall, old, and oh yeah! GAY.'

(OT: i love this icon.)

[once_a_banana]

Just to be clear, if you look at my comments and my entry, I totally agree that AD's sexuality wasn't necessary to the story. My point has always been that this revelation really brings to light the total lack of any appropriately visible gayness anywhere in any of the stories (i.e., among other folks, bit characters, students in the hall, and so on), even though we get hit over the head with all kinds of traditional normative snogging, dating, flirting, and so on.