clio-jlh:

auld-langsyne:

elvabarr:

In the first draft for Half-Blood Prince when Harry’s at the station and Dumbledore comes to meet him, in an early draft of that script Dumbledore said to Harry “I remember a young woman with eyes of flushing whatever… ravened hair” I read this and I scribbled on my copy of the script “Steve, Dumbledore is gay!” Shoved it up the table and Steve goes “ohhh”.

NO you know what this is actually such an uncool moment that it makes me a little vomit-angry to think about it. the thing is, you as a young adult novelist, have this fantastic opportunity to show young kids (LIKE ME; I WAS A YOUNG KID THAT READ THESE BOOKS) that being gay is awesome and normal and acceptable. instead, what you do is write a series of books where the only romances that are depicted are heterosexual, actually, the books are so straight that no one notices you actually even had a gay character until you say “oh yeah that one’s gay! whoops sorry forgot to mention it!”

you might think that it’s super duper progressive that you consider sexuality so irrelevant to character that you don’t even mention it, but the matter of the fact is that you do need to mention it. we need gay role models in pop culture and dumbledore can’t exactly be a gay role model if you make him out to be an sexless wisdom dispenser. talking about being gay and gay romances and gay experiences would have been wonderful and damn relevant in harry potter because straight romances and straight experiences were a really big focus! being gay is not a throw-away detail! it’s pretty fucking important!

so, idk, i don’t give jo a whole lot of props for this little thing she forgot to mention that no one even noticed, because i needed gay role models in my mainstream pop culture when i was growing up, and you missed a fantastic opportunity by not talking about it the same way you talked about being straight.

perfect commentary.

preach.

(via tachiagare)