Orson Scott Card flames J.K Rowling

[Jenison]

Originally Posted by Lithose

Fuck yes sir, exactly what I said in the "Dumbeldore was gay" thread and he is spot on..

Why? in what context would it have come up in the books?

"Harry entered Dumbledors chamber for his weekly lessons, which he looked forward to every day. He walked up the stairs into the room and to his surprise saw Dumbledor on his knees, mouth full of cock and Snape standing infront of him, eyes rolled back in his head."

seriously...it was implied in the books. but there was never a situation where the sentance " ... because Dumbledor is gay" would have come up. I went my entire school career without talking to one of my teachers and asking them directly 'so I hear you suck cock'

EDIT - Even before the last book she knew Dumbledor was gay. They wanted to give Dumbledor a love interest in one of the movies, but she said he cant because hes gay.

damn it...now you have me sounding like I'm a huge fanboi. I didnt start reading the books until book 6. I enjoyed them.

[Asmadai]

Originally Posted by Jenison

Why? in what context would it have come up in the books?

"Harry entered Dumbledors chamber for his weekly lessons, which he looked forward to every day. He walked up the stairs into the room and to his surprise saw Dumbledor on his knees, mouth full of cock and Snape standing infront of him, eyes rolled back in his head."

seriously...it was implied in the books. but there was never a situation where the sentance " ... because Dumbledor is gay" would have come up. I went my entire school career without talking to one of my teachers and asking them directly 'so I hear you suck cock'

EDIT - Even before the last book she knew Dumbledor was gay. They wanted to give Dumbledor a love interest in one of the movies, but she said he cant because hes gay.

damn it...now you have me sounding like I'm a huge fanboi. I didnt start reading the books until book 6. I enjoyed them.

If it truly was 'implied' in the books, how come no one ever mentioned it one god damn time prior to Rowling coming out and blatently saying it hmm?

I don't recall a single bit of speculation of 'Is Dumbledore possibly gay?' after that book came out. Not a single damn bit. The ONLY time the whole thing came up, and the ONLY time people like you saw the 'implied hints' in the book was AFTER the bitch said he was gay.

So sorry, but she did it for the exact reasons Orson said she did.

[Lithose]

Originally Posted by Jenison

Why? in what context would it have come up in the books?

"Harry entered Dumbledors chamber for his weekly lessons, which he looked forward to every day. He walked up the stairs into the room and to his surprise saw Dumbledor on his knees, mouth full of cock and Snape standing infront of him, eyes rolled back in his head."

seriously...it was implied in the books. but there was never a situation where the sentance " ... because Dumbledor is gay" would have come up. I went my entire school career without talking to one of my teachers and asking thedirectly 'so I hear you suck cock'

EDIT - Even before the last book she knew Dumbledor was gay. They wanted to give Dumbledor a love interest in one of the movies, but she said he cant because hes gay.

damn it...now you have me sounding like I'm a huge fanboi. I didnt start reading the books until book 6. I enjoyed them.

You mean she edited the 6th movie, after the final book was in editing?

If you want your character to be gay, you don't have to be overly-zelous with its implementation, its not like dumbeldore needed to fuck Harry in the ass for me to catch the drift "hey he is gay". Subtle innuendo's of his affection though would have been great, you know, like nearly every other adult character with a "love interest" past or present had.

Rowling kept sex out of the book, but small affection was extremely prevalent, except in characters that were "gender neutral". This does reek of an author trying to be modern and hip, but the fact is that it is a slap in the face to anyone who is homo-sexual.

Dumbeldore is gay? Fine but why then in all of his flash backs in the little fucking dream thing, in all of the stories, there isn't clue one until the last book, where there is some extremely, extremely subtle hints that you might construe as "gay" if an author told you he was, indeed, gay.

It would annoy me just as much if she jumped in and said "Hey guys Dumbeldor was a ladies man, fucking all kinds of women when he was young"..Yeah, because that fits the 7 novel-length long character right, I mean, sexual orientation isn't an important part of anyone's lifestyle, right? All the subtle, cutsie romance between the characters (harmless but there) was only for heterosexuals, obviously, silly fagots need to keep their desires zipped up super tight.

Thats why Orsan is angry, and normally I don't agree with him, because Card is a fucking prick..But he is absolutely correct in this sense.."Footnotes" after the books have sold by authors are fucking terrible. Write the book to stand on its own and accept the interpretations people give. The fact that no one had the first fucking clue he was gay before she said something should speak volumes of her "clues".

[Greyform]

Originally Posted by Asmadai

If it truly was 'implied' in the books, how come no one ever mentioned it one god damn time prior to Rowling coming out and blatently saying it hmm?

I don't recall a single bit of speculation of 'Is Dumbledore possibly gay?' after that book came out. Not a single damn bit. The ONLY time the whole thing came up, and the ONLY time people like you saw the 'implied hints' in the book was AFTER the bitch said he was gay.

So sorry, but she did it for the exact reasons Orson said she did.

I have to agree here. I don’t consider myself a homophobe. People can do whatever the hell they want with a consenting adult it’s their genitals.

But I don’t ever remember anyone saying they thought Dumbledore was gay before Rowling’s decided he was.
And why would he be? It would have lent nothing to the story or the fantasy subject matter. No I think Card called this one correctly.

I won’t take his “facts” as absolute, I really don’t follow this stuff, but if she truly did use his (Vander Ark) website as a reference than I agree she is being hypocritical now.

What is it about fame and money that make people go batshit insane anyhow?

[Millie]

I've never read Orson Scott Card, and while I know of him, I know very little about him. Regardless, I'd like to chime in with my agreement on the whole "Dumbledore was gay? WTF?" criticism.

The whole Dumbledore-being-gay thing was a total afterthought that Rowling tacked onto the series after it was already finished. She'd sold tons of books, wrapped up her series, amassed her billion-dollar fortune, and had nothing to lose -- so she decided she'd try to add some "progressive" credibility to her series in retrospect. It was a cheap, calculated, after-the-fact publicity stunt. If she were really so progressive and free-thinking, she'd have had the guts to make him gay from book one onward and take her chances with the mass market.

[Ancalagon]

Originally Posted by Millie

I've never read Orson Scott Card, and while I know of him, I know very little about him. Regardless, I'd like to chime in with my agreement on the whole "Dumbledore was gay? WTF?" criticism.

The whole Dumbledore-being-gay thing was a total afterthought that Rowling tacked onto the series after it was already finished. She'd sold tons of books, wrapped up her series, amassed her billion-dollar fortune, and had nothing to lose -- so she decided she'd try to add some "progressive" credibility to her series in retrospect. It was a cheap, calculated, after-the-fact publicity stunt.

I'd like to just put forth that it isn't necessarily true that Dumbledore being gay was an afterthought for her. She may very well have decided upon this at some point during the course of her writing, though I HIGHLY doubt that she decided upon this while penning the first novel as an unemployed single mother. Even granting this though, I want to echo the sentiment of Millie and others: if you're not brave enough to put it in the book, shut the living fuck up. Just shut the fuck up. If you want to go to your grave knowing Dumbledore was gay, great. But if you're not going to put it in a book, leave it to the imagination of your fans and shut the goddamn fuck up. Bitch.

[Agraza]

What we really need is for some gay guy to tell her off.

[The Ancient]

FFS it's not like she had a press conference to announce his gayness. A question was posed to her about if Dumbledore had any loves and she said something to the effect of "Actually in my mind he was gay," and then SUDDENLY Media Frenzy! Dumbledore outed! Should she have lied in response to the question?

[Ancalagon]

Originally Posted by The Ancient

FFS it's not like she had a press conference to announce his gayness. A question was posed to her about if Dumbledore had any loves and she said something to the effect of "Actually in my mind he was gay," and then SUDDENLY Media Frenzy! Dumbledore outed!

Yeah, except here's her quote in reply to the initiating Dumbledore question:

"Dumbledore is gay, actually"


Not, I always thought of him as being gay; not, in my mind he was gay; just pure gay.

[The Ancient]

Well you are right, that's a little more direct and prone to controversy, but I think my point still stands. If she did in fact believe he was gay, how should she have responded to the question?

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Look at these nice cheesepuffs?

[Jenison]

You mean she edited the 6th movie, after the final book was in editing?

After JK announced that Dumbledor was gay, one of the directors of the movie stated that during screen play writing they were going to have Dumbledor have a love interest in the movie (I think they were working on 3 or 4 at the time). She crossed out the notes and wrote in the margin (Dumbledor is gay).

This would have been done before the final book was even written, if this is how it really played out.

EDIT - now that I think about it it was 4. Would make sense since they had the Wizard Cup Dance and everyone was snogging like crazy

[Heylel Teomim]

Bottom line is that if she had never made that comment, the flashbacks about Dumbledore and Grindlewald would have been seen another example of wizardly classmates who became enemies. The books are full of competing wizards. James and Snape, Harry and Malfoy, etc. Dumbledore and Grindlewald would have been viewed as two school friends like Harry and Ron, where one eventually became evil. In fact this is probably the parallel that she was going for before she thought up the gay angle.

J.K. Rowling deserves credit for completing a long and reasonably cohesive set of stories that have entertained millions, and nothing more. Instead she's been lauded as some great new master wordsmith, when in fact she's peddling the same derivative fantasy as dozens of other authors. There's nothing wrong with enjoying her work, or even the fanboyism that grows up around any popular fiction, but the reason academics rarely discuss her work is because there's not much there worth discussing.

I think Card is right in saying she wants literary respect. It has to be galling to have made billions off of work that your own peer group likely will never read. Trying to inject some post-modern hipness into the books by making a major character gay was just her way of grabbing at cultural relevance which will never equal greats like Tolkein or Lewis.

[Tagwen]

Originally Posted by James

An interesting link re: Card, Orson Scott Card Has Always Been an Asshat || kuro5hin.org

Interesting article, but I think that guy is full of it. It sounds much more plausible that Card was just insulted that his main character was being compared to Hitler. The author also thinks that Ender's Game wasn't actually written by Card.

[Heylel Teomim]

Yeah, that analogy doesn't really hold water for one major reason, imo. History gives no indication that Hitler was ever remorseful for genocide. Ender, on the other hand, was kept totally ignorant of the effect of his actions until the very end. The motivations couldn't be any different. Still, I'd be interested to read the actual essay to see what sorts of parallels she draws. I'm guessing that like most conspiracy theories, she latches on to shaky evidence and uses it to construct some grand theory with little basis in fact, but I'd like to know for sure.

The article's own author calls his friend who wrote the Hitler essay a fundamentalist Christian nutjob. I assume much of her interpretation is sourced in that background.