J.K. Rowling Made The Internet Post Gross Harry Potter Sex Memes All Weekend
Bloody hell.
Last week the British blog Radio Times found and published quotes from J.K. Rowling taken from a special feature on forthcoming "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Crimes of Grindelwald" Blu-ray DVD. In them, the Harry Potter author confirms that the relationship between Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald — two characters from her beloved children's book and movie series — had a "sexual dimension":
"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."
That's fine! This sort of retroactive exposition isn't out of character for JK Rowling either — in fact, the 2007 reveal that Dumbledore was gay and had some sort of relationship with Grindelwald was the first big thing she added to the story after the final book was released. We might as well accept that Rowling, and the Harry Potter-affiliated brands around her, are going to keep going back to fill in weird stuff about the wizarding world, even when nobody is asking for it.
But man, with this latest "reveal" things just reached a weird, gross, and magical-flavored fever pitch:
Twitter gave J.K. Rowling and her new "revelation" an extreme version of the "nobody:" treatment. A meme that's been floating around on the internet for at least a year, "nobody:" has always been a slow burner. You could read about the joke over at Know Your Meme, but I think the most thorough explanation of the school of thought behind it can be found in this here tweet.
Anyway. Back to J.K. Twitter gave her the whole Hogsmeade, and some of it got pretty gross. Consider this a content warning.
The memes transcended this simple format, however. As strong as it is, the internet's need to clown on Rowling grew too powerful for it.
This thread from writer/director Ben Mekler was a nice fugue on the riff.
Finally, the sheer number of these jokes started to rub some folks the wrong way, drawing blowback against the format:
Whew. That was exhausting. Almost as exhausting as the time Lily and James Potter had a canonical fivesome with Hagrid, Snape and Sirius in do–
Oh no, I think my brain is cursed…
