Dumbledore Pride T-Shirt

• John J.
  October 23rd, 2007 at 2:43 am

  Strike while the iron is hot. Or: WGAS?

• aware
  October 23rd, 2007 at 6:11 am

  WGAS = ?

• ted
  October 23rd, 2007 at 6:45 am

  I love the “don’t ask, don’t tell”. It perfectly illustrates my comment in the original article. In JK Rowling’s universe, the only good gay wizard is a dead gay wizard.

  Never, ever got even a sense that she writing him as a gay character (and I thought the first SpiderMan movie was heavily homoerotic). This indicates that maybe she was an even worse writer than people think, if the entire world missed her point.

• ted
  October 23rd, 2007 at 6:53 am

  Oops, my comment got deleted. Darn filters! And it was really witty, too.

  I love the Dumbledore’s Army one. Perfectly illustrates my comment in the the original one.

  If Rowlings really had him in mind as a gay character, she sure didn’t include it in the story. I never once got even an inkling that he could be involved in a relationship like that, and I thought the first SpiderMan movie was heavily homoerotic. Get ready for the Harry Potter/ Brokeback Mountain mashups - wait, I think we already have a few.

  I guess this just further goes to show how poor a writer Rowlings is, if everybody in the world missed her point about this character.

• Sid Morrison
  October 23rd, 2007 at 7:54 am

  Oh man, those are funny! But how long before Rowling or her publishers sue to stop the one with Dumbledore’s name on it?

• Alex
  October 23rd, 2007 at 12:22 pm

  @aware: I think it means “Who gives a sh*t”

• Michael Parkatti
  October 23rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm

  This whole story is pretty ridiculous, I mean it’s just totally inconsequential to make some wizard gay after the fact. Why don’t we just assume that more classic characters are gay, like the Merlin from The Old Man and the Sea?

  http://www.humblenarrator.com/2007/10/23/hemingways-estate-admits-gian t-merlin-from-the-old-man-and-the-sea-is-gay/

• Perceive
  October 23rd, 2007 at 4:13 pm

  I must be one of the very few people on Earth to get Rowling’s message in the book, and not from her meeting with fans. It was perfectly clear (perfectly queer?) to me that Dumbledore was gay in book 7. He was passionately in love with the then handsome Grindelwald. In fact, that bit of unrequited love was foil for another in the book: that of Snape and Lily Potter. In Dumbledore’s case, his love of someone so unscrupulous made Dumbledore forsake all the good things he stood for. For Snape, his love of Lily inspired him to be a far better person. Those were the two most poignant centerpieces of the book, both largely told in flashbacks when the people involved were dead.

  Dumbledore basically gave up on romantic love after that, and focused on redeeming himself. Thus, he never had any reason to say he’s gay. By the same token, Snape never said he was in love with Lily Potter, or anybody else, but he didn’t need to.

• alexa
  October 23rd, 2007 at 7:11 pm

  wat r u talking about ted?
  j.k rowling is a great writer, and ur stereotyping gays!!
  and u not having an inkling about dumbledore being gay doesn’t really say much, as u dont seem that smart

• Armadiller
  October 23rd, 2007 at 9:50 pm

  I don’t know about you, Ted but I got *more* than an inkling, at least in Book 7. And I know a lot of people who said the same thing (though we just thought we were being pervy initially–turns out we were right).

  If she’d come out and said this after Book 6, I’d be going WTF right with you (purple cloaks, high-heeled boots and love of knitting patterns aside) but there were anvils throughout Book 7. I wasn’t shocked that he was gay; I was shocked (and pleased) that she said it out loud.

• Chris
  October 23rd, 2007 at 11:06 pm

  I’m a man without any concerns for sexual inuendos, especially gay inuendos. Qualify me basic, I’m totally not on the bashing side, more on the WGAS side, everybody is free. When I read the books, it really did not cross my mind : you have good wizards, dark wizards, good turning bad, etc, like the force thing in Star Wars. I didn’t feel there was more to understand. Anyway, he’s gay now. Whatever. Good story.

  Now I wonder : is Yoda gay?

• ted
  October 24th, 2007 at 6:26 am

  Man, this filter business. So the original comment DID go through.

  “wat r u talking about ted?
  j.k rowling is a great writer, and ur stereotyping gays!!
  and u not having an inkling about dumbledore being gay doesn’t really say much, as u dont seem that smart”

  Thanks for your insight, alexa. I’m devastated that I don’t appear that smart to you, of course, but I’ll try to live on.

  How am I stereotyping gays? By assuming that not every relationship between two (fictional, of course) people of the same gender is sexual? I just didn’t get that from any of the books, and if the allusions were there (as some people say, NOW, after the announcement), they were too subtle for me. Not that we need to be hit over the head with sledgehammers, but it really wasn’t that obvious.

  Why is JK Rowling not great? Well, that’s a subject for another book. She’s not a bad author, but she’s not “great”. She tends to waste pages on useless stuff in the middle, then pack things in towards the end.

  I say Captain was gay - he was chasing after that big Moby Dick.

• Q
  October 24th, 2007 at 8:47 am

  Now I am going through every character in every book I ever read wondering was that one gay -was that one gay?

• Alex
  October 24th, 2007 at 12:15 pm

  @ted - sorry about the filter! It’s a built-in Wordpress function that works pretty well in trapping nonsense comments, but every now and then got a valid comment put into moderation.

  I try to clear the moderation queue several times a day (less the past couple of days due to the fire business).

• ted
  October 24th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

  No probs, Alex. It just threw me off. I didn’t see that “moderating” comment like before.

  As for this post, I left out Captain Ahab’s name. Oops.

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