<p>perhaps now sir ian will at last exchange his gandalf robes for dumbledore’s and we can enjoy a proper headmaster in upcoming film treatments</p>
<p>Great idea, rorosen!</p>
<p>mythmom</p>
<p>I think you and I have a lot in common, but I LOVE reading about the larger story the creator has/had in mind. I like that these are living, if not breathing characters, not static on the page. One of my favorite devices of JKR’s is the photos and portraits coming alive.</p>
<p>Thank you mathmom for that link (though come to think of it you might have broken some terms of C/C-no?).</p>
<p>Well, I guess for me JKR doesn’t seem clear about whether her characters are archetypes or individuals. And I just felt that info after the fact to “flesh out” an archetype was confusing to the intention of the narrative.</p>
<p>But from responses here, I can see that I’m in the minority.</p>
<p>I also seem to be in the minority in that I love Michael Gambon. I like his strength and virility in the part. To me, Dumbledore is the the lynchpin in fighting evil, and I really liked that he isn’t as frail as Richard Harris was. And I loved McKellen in LOTR, but I say, “Let Gandalf be Gandalf.”</p>
<p>Again, though, I seem the dissenting voice.</p>
<p>Rowling is a great spinner of yarns, as WashDad said, nbot a great writer. If she were a great writer, she would decline to give interviews with back-stories. She should have taken a page from a truly great writer’s book, JRR Tolkien. He didn’t give back-stories; what he wanted us to know about Frodo and Gandalf, etc. he left in Appendices and the associated volumes (Lost Tales, Road Goes Ever On, Silmarillion, etc). I resent Rowling’s interview statements about allegorical subtext for the series, likening Voldemort’s forces to Bush and Tony Blair (for the record, I campaigned for John Kerry and currently support John Edwards). I see the allegory more like Nazi Germany vs the Allies (purebloods vs muggles and mudbloods).
I thought Book 7 was so weak overall that it killed an otherwise enjoyable series for me. Really killed it. My D’s feel the same way.<br>
As for Dumbledore being gay, rather irrelevant now that the series is over. You could read Dumbledore’s love in Book 7 as misplaced adolescent admiration for Grindelwald, commonplace but not homosexuality. Was Gandalf gay or did Gandalf need a sex life as motivation?</p>
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<p>WE MAKE IT NEWS. Someone even felt the need to start a thread on this topic for heaven’s sake! The media will feed us what we want. Hopefully, society will continue to evolve and not make a big deal in the future of things that should not be…</p>
<p>The amusing thing about this is the reaction of the far-right blogs. Hilarity is ensuing as we speak. ;)</p>
<p>I think it’s okay to link to dot orgs.</p>
<p>I like Michael Gambon much better than Richard Harris. I think Ian McKellan would have done a great job, but not necessarily a better job. The movies (but especially Harris) made Dumbledor older than I had imagined.</p>
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<p>Guilty as charged! </p>
<p>But I should point out, everyone here felt the need to click on that link and post on this topic, for hogwarts’ sake!</p>