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little-giddy:

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.

#THIS IS NOT REPRESENTATION

I don’t know how to feel about the commentary. On the one hand I agree with it completely. It’s not really meaningful if that aspect of him didn’t get any “screen time.” On the other hand, when I write characters (I write D&D campaigns, and I have a lot of NPCs), I flesh them the hell out. The fodder for my players to beat up, obviously doesn’t get any background really (though I have some exceptions to that), but the big bad, shop keepers, and any other relevant cohorts or enemies my players come into contact with do get legitimate histories, and a list of personality traits to go with them. My players never see probably about 80% of this. Do they need to know that Lena the innkeeper and town healer has four siblings, two of which are members of the Sword of Apsu, and one of which is a founding member of the Eastern Shields of Sarenrae? Will it ever be directly relevant to this particular story that Roland, the old blacksmith, is the brother of Karis the Willful, the only human known to have encountered a greater Fey one-on-one and survived? Probably not. Having these elaborate backgrounds helps me to do three things:

1) It gives me a source of more characters should I need them. My PCs need to meet an aging paladin, fallen from the service of his god. Anyone related to one? Maybe.

2) It helps me play a character more effectively. Old Roland might be less driven if he hadn’t spent most of his adult life in the shadow of his older sister’s success. Lena might have less appreciation for divine spellcasters had her siblings not been directly involved with such affairs.

3) It helps me build a stronger world. My players will probably never know these histories, nor will they probably ever find out all the significant historical events I’ve written for this part of the world, or the way I’ve decided arcane magic is harnessed by its spellcasters. If I wrote down everything I know about my campaign setting, in the detail I actually have it thought out right now, I could probably get a good sized book out of it.

So I understand the criticism of Jo, but I can also understand why she might have a lot of information about certain characters that was never put into the books, or even released to readers after the fact. Just thought it was interesting to think about that.

*Dons flame-retardant suit*

(via justjasper)

Source: billydarley