JK Rowling reveals Hogwarts secret

[WayneLigon]

Somehow, I doubt it.

Rowling beats her by a fair margin. Forbes reports Queen Elizabeth's personal fortune is $818 million in 2004 (most of this sum is due to a nest egg put aside for her by her father), while Rowling's earnings topped $1 billion that same year.

 

[doubleplusgood]

Prediction: The hottest Halloween costume this season will be gay Dumbledore.

 

[GSHamster]

Well, it actually adds a bit more dimension to the backstory in Book 7, between Dumbledore and the German wizard who went evil (I forgot his name).

 

[Plane Sailing]

Some of the posters in this thread sound like they think Rowling made a big deal out of it. She didn't. She probably wouldn't have even brought it up if it wasn't for the question of a child during a Q-and-A session. It's not like she made a press release.

Even in that context I don't understand why she answered that way though. The question wasn't 'is dumbledore gay', the question was whether dumbledore found 'true love'. The answer to that might have been yes, no or maybe without even bringing up the sexuality question.

It isn't an apparent issue in any of the books, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with any aspect of the stories, it seems to me to be an irrelevance which she has introduced for shock value at this point, for reasons unknown.

Strange.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

Rowling beats her by a fair margin. Forbes reports Queen Elizabeth's personal fortune is $818 million in 2004 (most of this sum is due to a nest egg put aside for her by her father), while Rowling's earnings topped $1 billion that same year.

Yup. I think the royal family still have the most land in the world, but Rowling beats them in overall worth.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Even in that context I don't understand why she answered that way though. The question wasn't 'is dumbledore gay', the question was whether dumbledore found 'true love'. The answer to that might have been yes, no or maybe without even bringing up the sexuality question.

It isn't an apparent issue in any of the books, it doesn't seem to have anything to do with any aspect of the stories, it seems to me to be an irrelevance which she has introduced for shock value at this point, for reasons unknown.

Strange.

I agree.

If I were the author (oh, I wish) my answer to questions like that would be, "I've written the books but, now that you have read them, those things left unwritten are up to you to decide in your own imagination." Which of course would be wholly unsatisfying to the people asking the questions.

 

[Vocenoctum]

It comes off to me like she has the characters a lot more fleshed out than what she had room to put into the books. She left out his sexual preference since it wasn't germane to the story, but when she was directly asked about it she gave the information asked for. She didn't make it a big deal. I don't know what the sexual orientation of most of my teachers were it didn't have any relevance to what they were teaching. That doesn't mean they didn't have a sexual orientation though.

Partly true, but like the other "post book" stuff she's said, it doesn't speak to her consistency about her characters. Not that saying Dumbledore was not gay or anything, but next week in an interview, he might not be. Except for what is in the book, it's hard to judge whether this was something she always "knew" or something she thought of, then discarded because it added nothing to the story, or what it might have been.

I mean, the gay headmaster of the school taking his young male prodigy off on trips all alone...

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, most of Hogwarts was decidedly asexual. Kissing was shocking behavior after all.

 

[Mark Chance]

It's important for the obvious reason: it presents children with a gay character in the most popular series in children's literature who is portrayed positively and who is held out as a role model of wisdom and kindness; not as a lecher or an aberration.

I'm both a parent and a teacher of children. Never once did the alleged obviousness of this supposedly important reason ever enter my mind. YMM obviously V, but this much ado about nothing strikes me as little more than pandering.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Ironically, the slash fics shall run free!

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

It comes off to me like she has the characters a lot more fleshed out than what she had room to put into the books. She left out his sexual preference since it wasn't germane to the story, but when she was directly asked about it she gave the information asked for. She didn't make it a big deal. I don't know what the sexual orientation of most of my teachers were it didn't have any relevance to what they were teaching. That doesn't mean they didn't have a sexual orientation though.

Totally; apparently, there's a lot more to Dean Thomas than made it into the books, just for starters.

Brad