i was a fool for thinking that ‘dumbledore’ only meant albus. a jester and a fool.

trothplighted:

queer history in The Secrets of Dumbledore

• the café where Albus and Gellert meet is in Piccadilly Circus; Piccadilly became famous enough as a place where queer people (usually gay men) went looking for casual sex that “dilly boy”, short for “Picadilly boy”, became slang for “male sex worker” in Polari, a dialect of English with deep ties to the gay subculture (it’s where “butch” and “fruit/fruity” come from)
• Lally’s style of speech is lifted from Oscar Wilde, with her character also influenced by James Baldwin - Wilde is of course well-known, but Baldwin was a talented gay and Black writer whose use as inspiration signals a lot about how Lally is meant to be perceived
• much ado has been made about Gellert’s lavender tie, and the lavender in bloom outside Hogwarts, but just for the sake of inclusion: lavender and violets were historically a covert signal/slang term for homosexuality and claimed by both gay men and lesbians
• Vinda’s black suit and more masc-of-center costuming might potentially be calling back to the tradition of lesbians wearing tuxedos (as seen in photographs taken in the famous Parisian lesbian bar Le Monocle) but regardless of whether or not this is direct inspiration, she’s definitely signaling she’s not cishet in period-appropriate ways
• a major portion of the film takes place in Weimar-era Berlin, which was well-known as a queer haven with a thriving community in the interwar period - if you’ve seen Cabaret, or you’re aware of the works of Christopher Isherwood (or you’ve seen the BBC adaptation of Christopher and his Kind) you’ll begin to get an idea of what it was like

I’m definitely going to be reblogging with additional things I remember but uh. this is a really queer movie guys.

brehaaorgana:

j.k.r. needs like one close friend to sit her down and go: “okay, but, go over this with me again. you decided the evil snake your dark wizard kept as a pet and vessel of his fragmented horrific soul - the one that has to be murdered in order to defeat the evil wizard - is in fact….an asian woman who was cursed to eventually become a beast and monster in her own body. am i getting this right? the asian woman turns into a snake because her bloodline is cursed and then she becomes the pet of a white supremacist with magic. you invented a body curse specifically for turning women into monsters and your first thought was not like, subversion of fairy tale misogyny but….to add a layer of racism? just trying to understand here.” 

I’m also trying to understand why they cast a Korean actress when the etymology of and the mythologies related to the name “Nagini” have South Asian origins??? And don’t get me wrong, it would still be extremely problematic even if they cast an Indian (or South Asian in general) actress, but this is just baffling to me. JK Rowling was very adamant about the movies hiring British actors for the original series, but suddenly things like that don’t matter for this role even though she definitely did the research when she named Nagini. Another instance of her being disrespectful to mythologies and religions of non-white cultures. smfh