Sex! Love! Writing!

[Mike]

> > > Mike:
> > > <SNIP> Did anyone ever guess that DD was written as gay 
> > > before JKR's statement/answer? I know of nobody that 
> > > can claim to have ventured that guess. <SNIP>
> 
> > Heidi:
> > Oh yes, lots! Apart from the fact that there's a large and 
> > vibrant community of slash writers, there are a number of people 
> > who aren't slashers who wondered and posited this. <SNIP>

Mike:
LOL! I should have caveated the slash writers since it seems there 
are enough of them to Ship anyone or anything. But writing DD into 
slash is not like making a canon assumption that he's gay. After all, 
there are plenty of Harry and Draco slashes written and there is zero 
canon that either of them is anything other than Het, is there?

As to others that posited this, I suppose there were those like 
Magpie, who said:

> Magpie:
> Yeah, I saw it, but it never occurred to me that I was 'right.' I 
> just thought I was totally shipping DD/GG after DH.

Mike:
Rumaging the idea through your head is different than seeing some 
good enough clues to want to posit out loud that one thinks DD is 
gay. Not to disparage Magpie, because I don't doubt she suspected... 
something. In fact, I don't doubt that a lot of people wanted to read 
something into those scenes. But I do doubt that those scenes were 
suspiciously suggestive enough to make someone confident enough to 
post that they saw gay!DD. 


> > Heidi:
> > It's subtextual but it's there and many - but not all - 
> > people saw it. 
> > <Snip>
> > Seeing the subtext in the Dumbledore/Grindlewald 
> > relationship as written in the book is similar, IMO.

Mike:
I will say that, given more time to digest the book, some may have 
come up with gay!DD with no prompting from Ms Rowling. In fact, you 
may know of some that were confident enough in the subtext, as you've 
said, to come forward and be counted as sure that DD was gay. I saw 
no-one on this list posit that, well, none that I saw as a result of 
reading DH. But I must give some props to our dear friend Kemper. In 
a pre-DH thread on possible homosexual characters, Thu Jun 15, 2006 :

Kemper now:
Again, I rule out Remus. One who I think is never mentioned is also 
the most obvious: Dumbledore. I believe it was Carol who suggested 
that for an argument to exist many people from both sides have to see 
it (see any Snape thread). My canon support are, 
his office
his opening speeches
his demeanor
his creativity
his courage

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/153891

Mike again:
I can't say that no-one else said it on-list. I searched for "gay" 
and only scanned through about half of the 850, pre-Oct '07 posts, 
taking me back to 2003. Almost all of those posts were speculations 
on Sirius, Remus, Snape, or James. Those of you that can remember 
back further may also remember open gay!DD speculation, I don't go 
back that far.

I guess my point is, the subtext may give enough of a hint for some 
to have speculated. Most, I suspect, would have come to the same 
conclusion that Magpie admits to, 'It must be me'. And that is 
perfectly logical to me because the hints, subtext, or clues were 
insufficient to give anyone a solid feeling that their intuition on 
this was correct. 

So I still think that Dumbledore wasn't written as gay.

Mike