Getty J.K Rowling attends the UK Premiere of "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald."
J.K. Rowling is the subject of a new meme following comments she made about two of her fictional characters. As part of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald‘s Blu-Ray and DVD bonus content, the Harry Potter author revealed that Grindelwald and Dumbledore had a sexual relationship, an assertion which fans and critics on Twitter pointed out lacks evidence in Rowling’s source material for the franchise.
In the bonus content video, J.K. Rowling said “Their relationship was incredibly intense. It was passionate, and it was a love 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… 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 relationships.” Back in 2007, ABC News reports that Rowling told an audience at Carnegie Hall that Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts, “is gay, actually.”
Dumbledore’s sexuality is not explored in either the books nor the movies, so fans and members of the LGBTQ community were hopeful that Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, would include it. Since it was absent from the franchise’s newest blockbuster, the resulting jokes and backlash on Twitter comment on Rowling making statements about her characters and their world without seeming to incorporate those ideas into the work itself.
Here are some of Twitter’s top memes about JK Rowling, following her statement about Dumbledore and Grindelwald (Please be advised that some of the tweets below make reference to mature content):
Nobody:
JK Rowling: You know what else was nine and three quarters?
— Genki (@Genki_Rocket) March 17, 2019
The most popular J.K Rowling meme adopts a joke format that was already used on the social media site. The format shows a fake dialogue in which one person, unprompted, present a completely outlandish or random idea that “nobody” asked about. Many Twitter users are using the meme to joke about what other explicit comments Rowling could make about her characters and their sexualities.
me:
jk rowling:
me:
jk rowling:
me: i —
jk rowling: arthur weasley likes to watch
While some of the memes elaborate on the nature of Dumbledore’s “intense sexual relationship” with Grindelwald, most focus on secondary and tertiary characters about whom Rowling has not offered new or clarifying information in the past.
No one:
JK Rowling: Dumbledore was a massive Sevilla fan
The Sevilla Fútbol Club team Twitter even got in on the joke, writing that Rowling’s next reveal should be that Dumbledore was a fan of their team.
JK Rowling reveals that you, the reader, are gay.
Since the meme surfaced on March 17, J.K. Rowling has not commented on the joke nor the accompanying backlash from her comments on the Blu-Ray and DVD video content.