General Discussion

Meh. Personally I stopped bothering with pottermore/don't check her social media anyways; since HP universe kind of re-surged a bit in popularity i n recent years, it isn't terribly surprising this is happening again.

??

My problem is that she’s fixated on fixing the already established characters and story where she instead could be putting the diversity and changes into the newer works in the universe.

Nagini didn’t have to be the same character who we know later becomes a thing to Voldemort: in Fantastic Beasts she could have very easily been another character going through the same or similar condition she has. People got upset because her reveal already showed that ‘yup, she’s doomed’, and the audience doesn’t like nor approve of the tragedy of her story and how it ties to the main series. The fact that she was a WOC too was just ... oof.

The thing is, she needs to also stop believing that everything needs to connect to the main series she got her fame from. It doesn’t. People were excited for Fantastic Beasts because a) more of the beasts of the magical world and b) we get to see Newt, a character that we knew of from one book but that wasn’t already really established in the main canon. The minute she decided to start tying it to characters like Dumbledore, and then deciding she doesn’t really want to even talk about or expand on the add on that ‘Dumbledore was gay’, people got upset. It was a direction the story didn’t need, and it wasn’t inclusion. There was nothing stopping her from giving more indication to it, or even introducing gay characters and showing their struggles in the time and setting as well as how that equates in the new wizarding world we were being introduced to.

I also don’t really like her shutting down theories and opinions that the fans thought up / like to think on, but that’s another topic and more on the argument of fan theorising vs. author intent.

TL;DR, if JK really wanted to be as inclusive as she wants us to think she is, the opportunity was there when she decided to play in a new setting with new characters in a way that was unattached to the existing material many love and grew up with.

Honestly, the Dumbledore thing I have no problem with. His love life wasn't discussed in the books whatsoever, so, fair enough. And it does add a new dimension to his relationship with Grindelwald. If it contradicted something that she already established, then it would be an issue, but it didn't.

She does seem to be going a little bit haywire recently though.

She certainly means well.

And I don’t have Twitter.

Therefore I’m indifferent.

[quote name="RabidWhovian" date="2019-07-28 10:16:41" ] She certainly means well. And I don’t have Twitter. Therefore I’m indifferent. [/quote] I understand you about indifference. I used to be like that as well. I only had the moral panic when I realized J.K. was going to be ignoring the "Fantastic Beasts" in [i]Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.[/i] I always thought it was a bit weird that the Chinese Fireball's were shoved under the "unintelligent man-eater" label. It seemed like some unintentionally rude indifference to their actual story in mythology. Sometimes I guess it's difficult to discern between the importance of [i]intent[/i] and the importance [i]impact.[/i] Perhaps, as an alternate theory, Joan sometimes forgets this? Oh well, I already struggle socially, it's not it's anything new I deal with. I'll just go back to rereading [i]Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them[/i] five times while ignoring the J.K. Rowling chaos surrounding me.

[quote name="Demonically" date="2019-07-20 15:10:54" ] [quote name="Charias" date="2019-07-20 15:00:13" ] My take is that retrospective inclusivity doesn't "count". If you wanna be inclusive, do it from the start. Don't retcon a bunch of changes that often directly contradict established canon just for "woke points". It's frankly insulting. Fact of the matter is, whether she's genuine or not, at this point it just feels like she's doing it for attention. It doesn't feel candid, or meaningful. It feels like a shallow cash-grab, like she's trying to monetise inclusivity and quelling anything that doesn't further her own ends. That's... what it looks like. I dunno if that's really her intention, but regardless of the purpose - she really needs to reassess her priorities before she loses every fan she has left. [/quote] ^this. It just kinda screams "Look, look! I'm being inclusive to the El Gee Bee Tee, too!". [/quote] I completely agree. Though in some ways I can see how this might seem like a good idea from a moving forward perspective. For example, now that she's made (or at least tried to make) Dumbledore gay it adds new context between him and Grindelwald's relationship. When I watched the newest movies I had a new sense of wonder for the wizarding universe that honestly wasn't there for the Harry Potter Universe. If she really wanted him to be gay she has to do so from the start and I have a hard time imagining this was really her idea for him to be all along. But I do prefer whats happening in the newest movies. But ultimately I probably would have come to these same conclusions based off allusions to the relationship of Dumbledore and Grindelwald on my own and having her just sort of throw it out from nowhere when until that moment there was absolutely no context is not how proper writing is done and she should know better, but since she didn't from the start she likely felt she had no choice but to spell it out for the fans who would also likely catch on to their relationship that is being alluded to in the newest movies. Like I said, I highly doubt this was her plan from the start, and if she wanted it to be involved at least somewhat in the newer movies then she just needs to have faith that the people who watch the movies will be smart enough to catch on to what's being implied and stop just adding random details to the universe and pretending like that's how it was all planned and meant to be from the start. Ok, so maybe my rant isn't completely over. Beyond whether this was intended to be a part of the original story or not (it clearly wasn't). Beyond whether or not her next installments to the series will do well. I think her comment to 'just make him gay' is honestly more harmful to the lgbt+ community than it is helpful. In recent years this community has gained more ground and broken down more walls for people around the world, and some might take her comment to have her character also be a member of that community as a helpful inclusion, it is truly not. No matter who reads the books or watches the movies, they will never gain any real grasp on Dumbledore's sexuality. There is no context of it at all. If the lgbt+ community is a train, then her making him gay is the same as her just grabbing ahold of some outside fixture of the train, and riding to the destination with it. She has not paid for a ticket, she is not properly on time for its departure, she is not conversing with any of the train's members. They can just see her flounder around in the wind on the outside of the train and think she's nutts. She has not made any contributions to the community with his character. One would literally only know that she wants Dumbledore to be gay if they simply heard it from her or heard it secondhand. There is no other way. Her books did not break any ground for the community, he [b]is not[/b] gay in the books. One could make the argument that he is but we never see it as he's just a character, that we can no more discern his sexuality than we can some random once off character, the information just isn't there to see it. Which is exactly my point, if he really was gay the whole time then it is purposely hidden the entirety of the books, there is no way anybody could have known before she just arbitrarily decided it so. She is mostly just piggybacking on the community just for the little extra popularity from those who might not know better, whilst contributing nothing until this point. I think if I had been the one to have written the series I'd have made him gay too, but definitely from the start, and would have found some way to sneak in allusions to it through out for some of the deeper readers to find. I understand some publishing companies may not have liked this inclusion, but honestly by the time the third or fourth book was out, there was no way she was going to get denied the ability to write more. She had full power to make him noticeably gay, and it just didn't happen. Moving forward I think it's still an interesting plot point and we can see it causes visible harm in Dumbledore not being able to stop Grindewald. Him being gay is certainly making the story better. It's just a shame it's something she just decided to tag on later for more popularity instead of actually showing she has real support for the community she's attempting to draw more fans from.

I love the HP series, but I really have no respect for J.K. Rowling after she started openly supporting terfs. I personally approach the HP series in the same manner as Ender's Game: appreciate the books for their own merits, support peoples writes to headcanon, and actively disregard the author's views.

I grew up with the Harry Potter books and later with the movies so this series will always hold a special place in my heart. That being said, I really don't like how JKR tries to be inclusive by adding and changing stuff in retrospective that goes against canon. I'm a fan of "show, don't tell" and if there's no diversity shown in the original books, there's no real way the author can convince me it's "always been diverse, I have always pictured it this way in my own head."

Let's take black Hermione, for example: JKR said (after the uproar regarding Cursed Child) that she had always pictured Hermione as black. Thing is, she never mentioned that in her books. She explicitly mentioned the race of side characters (Lee Jordan, Dean Thomas, Angelina Johnson, Cho Chang, Parvati and Padma Patil, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Blaise Zabini) but somehow forgot to write that one of the main characters is black? I call ******** on this one.
If I remember correctly, when they started casting actors for the first film, the producers wanted to cast a white boy to play Dean Thomas but JKR intervened saying that Dean Thomas is black in her books so they should cast a black boy to play him. Again, if she did that for a side character, why not for one of the main characters as well? Again... just ********.

Regarding Dumbledore being gay: I can live with the fact that it wasn't explicitly said in the books. After all, they're written from Harry's perspective, and how many students know about the sexuality of their teachers? Plus, Dumbledore was very secretive about his life -- he didn't even mention the innkeep of the Hog's Head is his brother -- so in a way, I can understand why he wouldn't have said anything about his sexuality.
BUT, with Fantastic Beasts out, I expect to see more than just hints (hand holding, "We were more than just brothers.") about gay Dumbledore. Otherwise, it would be... I don't know how to word this... "forced diversity that wasn't even shown but it's definitely there because the author said so"? I hope you get what I mean.

In Fantastic Beasts 2, when Dumbledore was looking into the Mirror of Erised, he saw himself with Grindelwald in their youth. In this scene, they could have easily added some smooching but no, they chose a bit of hand holding and the creation of the blood pact (?), none of which are clear signs for homosexuality. The blood pact could be seen as sign for a great friendship that shall never be broken, and the hand holding... well, if they were girls, this would be normal bonding between girl friends, but because it's two boys (and people in Western society have a stick up their bum when it comes to physical contact between men) it's supposed to be seen as a special sign they're gay? Yeah, no...

Speaking of the Mirror of Erised: As the name suggests, this mirror shows the heart's deepest desire of whomever looks into it. This bit of lore was established more than 20 years ago in Philosopher's Stone. It makes no sense that Dumbledore saw his past when he looked into the Mirror. Unless you twist it in a way so that Dumbledore wishes to have the good old times back, there's no way he should have seen what he saw. If the producers wanted to show bits from the past, they could have used a pensieve, not the Mirror.

And don't get me started on other topics like Nagini (***?!), or the fact that apparently wizards just relieved themselves and vanished their bodily waste. Someone please take twitter away from JKR.

Jk rowling was really naive when she wrote harry potter; she had no clue that in a school of like, thousands of kids, there is gonna be a crap ton of gay, trans, poc people. OBVIOUSLY. Especially in england. But she was caught up in her own white cis straight privileged world and forgot to mention these people exist apart from her token characters that aren't white e.g cho chang and the patil sisters. As for saying she always pictured hermione as black, well that's her trying to seem inclusive all along instead of admitting that the harry potter books are not very diverse. She said she wanted dean to take seamus to prom or something, but "didn't have time" to write it in. it only required one sentence, but ok joanne......... she has proven herself to be a disgusting terf and only made dumbledore gay as a reason to explain his history with grindelwald, not actually treat that aspect of his character with any respect. i don't like jk at all. the harry potter books were my childhood but since i've grown up, i've realised jk rowling is pretty trash to be honest.