You know JK Rowling. She's the author of the wildly successful Harry Potter series, as well as the writer of the Fantastic Beasts movie series.
Well she's currently facing backlash for her comments during an interview she gave as part of a special feature for the BluRay release of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
In the interview, she said the characters Dumbledore and Grindelwald were in a relationship...
"But as happens in any relationship, gay or straight or whatever label we want to put on it, one never knows really what the other person is feeling. You can’t know, you can believe you know." (Continue)
...one with a "sexual dimension."
"So I’m less interested in the sexual side – though I believe there is a sexual dimension to this relationship – than I am in the sense of the emotions they felt for each other, which ultimately is the most fascinating thing about all human relationship."
Fans were quick to call out JK, despite her seemingly good intentions:
us: actual queer representation in the books! jk rowling: https://t.co/MT9YFYKMzd
One person brought up her history of glossing over queer characters and said Rowling is missing the point of previous criticisms:
Like, way to miss the point and undermine everything you COULD have done to rectify the mistake of leaving Dumbledore’s orientation out of canon. This further reduces queer relationships and queer characters just to sex in media commentary. Which is the last thing we needed.
Others pointed out that the characters are not gay in the books or movies:
J.K. Rowling Confirms Some Characters in Her Books and Movies Are Gay Everywhere Except in the Books or the Movies https://t.co/Y5gcbMWNB9
jk rowling can log on here and tweet “dumbledore was a dom top” all she likes but the fact remains she actively leaves out any LGBT rep in her books and films so her profit isn’t affected
jk rowling: oh btw dumbledore is gay everyone: oh, worm, where in the books? jk rowling: nowhere, i just made it so everyone: well that's bullshit jk rowling: uh *throws darts at a board* well it's ABSOLUTELY 100% gay if he fucked for sure right everyone, exhausted: please stop
People were just not here for the whole quote:
@EricDSnider I'm sick of Rowling and her half-assed inclusivity. It doesn't count if she's telling us after the fact. That's not being an ally. That's trying to get brownie points. She loses nothing this way. Put it in the text or don't talk about it all. Same thing with Hermione's race.
jk rowling reappearing every 2 months to say something literally no one asked about is me adding more random details to my essay to up my word count https://t.co/70D37Xez76
There were some fans who defended the author:
I can't believe people are this up in arms about JK Rowling. Holy shit no one is ever satisfied. It's a book series. We all loved it. It was amazing. STFU and enjoy it.
can everyone leave JK Rowling alone?lol. She’s in charge of the canon. That’s it. That’s the whole tweet. HP was an amazing series, and she wants to keep proving that she can be progressive as the franchise evolves. There are worse moves to be made with people’s body of work!
Rowling has yet to comment on or address backlash.
If she does, this post will be updated.