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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurks-no-More" data-source="post: 3885839" data-attributes="member: 8226">John Scalzi, on <a href="http://scalzi.com/whatever/?p=93" target="_blank">What Authors Know About Their Characters</a>.It is obviously true that people can and do read more things into books than the author intended; sometimes they're seeing things that really are there but not intentionally added by the author, sometimes they're just projecting their own thoughts and beliefs onto the text, but in any case it doesn't mean the authorial intent is nonsenseBasically, Rowling as the author is the final word on her world and characters. She wrote them. And as her revelation that Dumbledore was, indeed, homosexual, doesn't contradict anything in the text, I see no reason not to accept that yes, she as the author knows what she meant.(The belief that the readers or the fans somehow "own" the characters or the setting is a related bit of rubbish. What you own is your take on the characters, setting etc., not the original thing.)</blockquote>