Yes, the Grindelwald/ Dumbledore ship is officially canon.

Oh, my inner slasher is going wild with love for this woman. I mean, a lot of us suspected, but it's so nice to have it canonically proven.

Of course, now we're all just waiting to hear how Sirius and Remus were really gay lovers too and that Draco's animosity toward Harry had a lot to do with his unrequited crush on him.

Yep, the slasher doth run wild! ♥ = JKR!

Hasani you make me cry with your Draco X Harry reference.

~Jojo, who spends most of her time trying to avoid the slash/yaoi parings.

Although I do accept them if they are cannon. Since this was confirmed I shall accept it. ^_~

Well, it isn't MY theory. Although personally, I think it's a good one, given all the stuff about the Room of Requirement in Book Six.

*runs away*

EDIT: But seriously, it is nice to see her admit this. I like knowing she supports that community even if it is in a small way and wasn't ever actively mentioned in the books. Big nod to JKR.

What does twincest have to do with anything? I agree; it squicks me out something awful. Especially now I'm in the Supernatural fandom, and so many people are rooting for "Wincest". Because they're Winchester brothers, see? Freaks me out. Incest is a kink, not an OTP.

I know it's nice that she supports slashers, especially considering the persecution the early slashers in the fandom went through.

Now I finally understand why Draco couldn't stop picking on Harry!!!

Ann

And so the next meltdown of HP fandom begins...

I'm pretty sure that Rowling is doing this deliberately, just often enough to keep the pot simmering nicely.

Oh, tell me you are joking! Where's an 'eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-yew' icon when you need it?

LabRat

I've been wondering about this phenomenon. I mean, granted, the Supernatural fandom is largely comprised of a very loyal, very rabid, very horny female following. So when you tell them," Hey, there are these two hot guys with loads of inner emotional conflict and trust issues, living on the road as fugitives, alone in a classic Impala," it naturally follows that they will immediately whip out their porno slash fantasies. However, what they can't seem to factor in is that they are BROTHERS. As in that their rough-and-tumble love for each other are more of the Hardy Boys kind than the Brokeback Mountain type. (Incidentally, I wonder whether they write incest in the Hardy Boys fandom?)

I blame it on the fact that so many people are only children these days. They can't see that the constant "bi***-jerk-freak-shut up-wuss" banter between the brothers denotes not UST but a fraternal love song.

I also blame Arundati Roy. Not all roads that stem from childhood trauma lead to eventual incest.

Oops. Totally OT in my own thread.

When Draco met Harry.... <whistles innocently>

Sorry, Hasini. I totally geeked out on the idea that Draco has a crush on Harry!

As for the brothers you talk about, I have no idea who they are, but I completely agree that any sexual intercourse between brothers is totally unappealing and disagreeable.

I also think that Arundati Roy probably thought that the incest between the twin brother and sister in The God of Small Things was just the final tragedy of all the tragedies in that book.

Ann

Well that's open to debate. Apparently, David Yates, the director of the fifth Potter movie, was clued in first. He had tried to include a line in which Dumbledore refers to a past romance with a girl in the script, just to make his character a bit more interesting. JKR had to step in and tell him that DD didn't really swing that way, sorry.

And you're right, Ann. I'm sure that was what Roy intended. People are just pervy, what can you do?

And FYI, Harry/Draco is one of my all-time favourite pairings. Some of the best fanfiction I've read has been written about them. It's amazing how well they work together, really.

Auughh!

Last night the Gay/Straight Alliance had a movie party at my house. This is a high school group, and they couldn't find a movie with gay characters that was not rated R. They ended up watching Little Miss Sunshine, which is a wonderful movie and got the R rating mostly due to its language. NOW you tell me that they could have just watched Harry Potter . . .

Okay, I think JK's smokin something trippy, but the only reason I say it is because I want to see some evidence in the 7 books we read.

JD

I don't know about that. For starters, look at the robes that man wore. And pink earmuffs. Could you get any GAYER?

And I thought it was a very strong possibility the minute I read the seventh book, although I thought it would just be something for fandom to chew on and fight over. I never thought she'd actually come out and CONFIRM it! I mean, I never thought much about DD's personal life until the 7th book. I mean, before that, it would have been like ruminating about Gandalf's sexual preferences. And then in the 7th book, we were presented with the boy who was Dumbledore - an arrogant, talented young man isolated by his own brilliance until he met his match in Grindelwald. You'll notice how everyone, including Dumbledore, sort of alludes to that summer they were together as if it was some kind of mad fling.

Or maybe you just need to have a naughty gaydar to see it. So it's no wonder I did.

Someone else pointed out that it might have been part of the reason why DD seemed to have such empathy with the ostracized and the outcasts of wizarding society.

I agree that DD suddenly appearing to be gay rings of JKR's trademark tokenism, of which she certainly has been guilty in the past. However, I don't think THIS is just tokenism. DD being gay just fit too perfectly into the story, at least in my view.

As for why it never appeared in the books, well, was there any real need? Unless DD was really out to scar Harry and a good potion of the younger HP readers for life by issuing a post-humus confession : "I had a hot summer fling with Grindelwald a hundred years ago!" If it really HAD appeared in the books, in any other manner than subtext, it would have been perceived as even more blatant tokenism.

Btw, gakked from the lj community ohnotheydidnt:

Ok first Ohmygod, I love the People picture!

But second, you're right, there isn't a need, although your proposal is quite funny. JK's more than entitled to make statements about this fabulous world she created in her head. I'm just an extremely hard evidence kind of person, so I guess my latest conclusion is that I'm tending to take her statements with a grain of salt? Or I'll just pretend she wrote more books, and more subtle clues dropped in.

JD
who can see an 8th book as Dumbledore's tell-all: My Hot Summer Fling

And we know about them!!!




Ann

Hmm it looks like her statement didn't make everyone in the gay community happy (well i can't unhappy but dissapointed):

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1674550,00.html

Just wanted to post it up for discussion.

Oh fasciinating! Thank you for posting that!

Not to start up a whole gay/straight debate, well maybe I am anyway hah, but do you need to scream 'I'm gay' in order to be a happy gay? I picked up on that because the author made a point of saying how ashamed Dumbledore must be to never say it...I guess I really don't care whether or not the characters are straight to begin with because it's just not a conversation piece for me; whatever floats your boat.

JD

Maybe he just didn't think it was anyone's business. Shame does seem a bit of an assumption on the author's part.

LabRat

There are so many things wrong with that article that I don't even know where to start.

DD being gay was one of the many things that simply was not relevant to any of the other six books. Author-wise, if she had outed him as gay in any of the actual books, the resulting hue and cry would have drawn the readers' attention away from Harry's own struggles. At best he'd have been turned into a bit of tabloid gossip for fans or his whole identity would have been subverted into that of a gay icon and figurehead, or it would feel like a sell-out for political correctness in the part of the author, or it would merely be seen as more of JK Rowling’s perceived tokenism. Now, all Jo was doing when she said it was honestly answering an innocent question posed by a child - no fanfare, and definitely not as though she thought homosexuality was something shameful that children should be shielded from. If this fact was ever going to come out, I don't see a better way it could have.

Also, I think it's a pathetic state of affairs when an identity one has established over the course of seven books suddenly gets completely rewritten by the general public when the character is outed as gay. Apparently, your sexual orientation is such vital personality trait that one immediately becomes a gay icon and figurehead the minute a celebrity comes out of the closet, whether they want to or not. Maybe they should put that on his chocolate frog card too. "Albus Dumbledore's past relationships include Nicholas Flamel, Filius Flitwick and famed ex-Auror Mad Eye Moody." The Quibbler might've made a half-way credible article about how the only reason Lockhart was allowed to teach at Hogwarts was because DD was trading fashion tips for sexual favours with him. Because it might be that in the wizarding world, just like in the Muggle, everything you have ever done in your life will be nullified and skewed with to factor your gayness into it. As for all these comments about Dumbledore's 'unhealthy' interest in Harry looking even more sinister now that we know that he was not a kindly old mentor and guardian figure, but a GAY GAY GAY man, and EVERYONE knows homosexual equals pedophilia, I just want to say some very rude things about the state of their intelligence and their parents marital status and cast aspersions on their mothers' sexual integrity.

How does this person know whether he told anyone or not? Maybe he just let the people who needed to know in on it and didn't make a fanfare about it to the students - because really, it's none of the students' business. The books are written purely from Harry's perspective, and while he is not the most perceptive boy, bless him, I don't think it would be normal for a boy his age to ruminate about his grandfatherly headmaster's sexuality. For the umpteeth time, IT WAS NOT RELEVANT TO THE BOOKS. The only one of his relationships relevant to the books was his love for Grindelwald, which is the only reason we got to hear of it. Maybe the experience made him gun-shy enough not to let himself fall so hard again, but where is it written that he never had another relationship? But even if he did, I personally don’t want to hear about it, mainly because he’s a parental, guardian figure in the series and we DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT OUR PARENTS’ SEX LIVES, and because I now have this image of Moody and Dumbledore in my head. *rinses brain*

And what about the culture of wizarding society itself? As far as we know, wizarding society is fairly backward when it comes to tolerance. Wizards are rampantly racist, speciest and generally a an alternate universe version of what we would be like if we had never progressed past the Middle Ages. Would it really be in the best intersts for an iconic figure like Dumbledore to proclaim his homosexuality? Dumbledore has no qualms about ruffling feathers of course, but he ruffles them to a purpose. He's mainly a very private, secretive, Machiavillian personality, so I don't see him even wanting to divulge anything more about himself than he needs to. Or maybe the wizarding world, having been free of Church Dogma for a thousand years, thinks the occasional homosexuality quite as commonplace as heterosexuality while at the same time being conservative enough that people don't talk about their sex lives in public. In that case, DD coming out in wizarding society would be rather like if McGonagall had suddenly decided to stand up in the middle of the Great Hall one night at dinner, and announce, "I'm heterosexual...if anyone's interested!"

I can hear the ringing silence and see the fearful sweating of hundreds of adolescent boys.

It seems there are only two responses in our society to homosexuality - homophobia and homofanatica.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20154416,00.html

Another article that talks about it. I thought this one was well done. Though it may seem he is annoyed at first he makes good points about why this was a good thing.

I kinda think it's cool tha that DD is gay. I had a feeling he was after i read about his boyhood friendship with GG.

Haha, I seriously had no clue! *feels kind of stupid now*

Ghehe! Maybe at the next book signing event...