#but like. I don't think that it's a critique with authorial intent. I don't think Alex thought about it. doesn't seem like the type to

[admiral-blackwood]

you all are giving alex way too much credit, I honestly think he just thought it was a funny idea to use exaggerated gen z slang

[korovaoverlook]

I Sacrificed My Writing To A.I So You Don't Have To

I was thinking about how people often say "Oh, Chat GPT can't write stories, but it can help you edit things!" I am staunchly anti-A.I, and I've never agreed with this position. But I wouldn't have much integrity to stand on if I didn't see for myself how this "editing" worked. So, I sacrificed part of a monologue from one of my fanfictions to Chat GPT to see what it had to say. Here is the initial query I made:

Chat GPT then gave me a list of revisions to make, most of which would be solved if it was a human and had read the preceding 150k words of story. I won't bore you with the list it made. I don't have to, as it incorporated those revisions into the monologue and gave me an edited sample back. Here is what it said I should turn the monologue into:

The revision erases speech patterns. Ben/the General speaks in stilted, short sentences in the original monologue because he is distinctly uncomfortable—only moving into longer, more complex structures when he is either caught up in an idea or struggling to elaborate on an idea. The Chat GPT version wants me to write dialogue like regular narrative prose, something that you'd use to describe a room. It also nullified the concept of theme. "A purity that implied personhood" simply says the quiet(ish) part out loud, literally in dialogue. It erases subtlety and erases how people actually talk in favor of more obvious prose. Then I got a terrible idea. What if I kept running the monologue through the algorithm? Feeding it its own revised versions over and over, like a demented Google Translate until it just became gibberish? So that's what I did. Surprisingly enough, from original writing sample to the end, it only took six turnarounds until it pretty much stopped altering the monologue. This was the final result:

This piece of writing is florid, overly descriptive, unnatural, and unsubtle. It makes the speaking character literally give voice to the themes through his dialogue, erasing all chances at subtext and subtlety. It uses unnecessary descriptors ("Once innocuous," "gleaming," "receded like a fading echo," "someone worth acknowledging,") and can't comprehend implication—because it is an algorithm, not a human that processes thoughts. The resulting writing is bland, stupid, lacks depth, and seemingly uses large words for large word's sake, not because it actually triggers an emotion in the reader or furthers the reader's understanding of the protagonist's mindset.

There you have it. Chat GPT, on top of being an algorithm run by callous, cruel people that steals artist's work and trains on it without compensation or permission, is also a terrible editor. Don't use it to edit, because it will quite literally make your writing worse. It erases authorial intention and replaces it with machine-generated generic slop. It is ridiculous that given the writer's strike right now, studios truly believe they can use A.I to produce a story of marginal quality that someone may pay to see. The belief that A.I can generate art is an insult to the writing profession and artists as a whole—I speak as a visual artist as well. I wouldn't trust Chat GPT to critique a cover letter, much less a novel or poem.

[aroanthy]

hi!! i know u talk a lot about aromanticism a lot on here, but i don’t think i’ve ever seen u talk about aromantic anthy. would u mind discussing/elaborating on it or linking to a post where u do because i’m very curious!!

i got a similar ask half a year ago or something ridiculous like that on my main blog, but i’d like to really do justice to my url right now and explain it in more concrete terms.

i will say, it’s important to bear in mind that this reading of anthy’s character is very much informed by my own experiences, and a lot of those experiences are ones im not keen to talk in depth about. but you know. let’s make some nebulous gestures towards ideas of being traumatised, being autistic, struggling to meaningfully connect with others and honestly not really wanting to do such because of how they treat you.

like ive previously said, an aromantic perspective on the world would, i think, really benefit anthy. when youve lived your whole life experiencing violence at the hands of these patriarchal structures, of which romance is absolutely one, it’s kinda like. damn. im uncomfortable buying into those ideas.

anthy also has this lovely line in ep 19 where she says to utena ‘romance either happens or it doesn’t’ and it’s just sooooooo. so very interesting to me, actually, that anthy would say something so black and white about ‘romance’, a topic that anthy knows better than a lot of rgu characters is hopelessly confused and arbitrary and often enabling violence. and utena (fellow aromantic gaybo) says 'yeah, i know, but...'. these simplifications, these elisions. what is and isn't articulated. but what? maybe things are much more complicated than we'd like to think.

anyway enough of that tangent. one thing i as a trans and aromantic person always return to when discussing trans and aromantic readings of characters/texts more broadly is that there's no singular piece of evidence that can really cement these readings as Undeniable. it's like. okay. there's a critique of romance as a patriarchal structure in revolutionary girl utena. there's an ambiguity about anthy's feelings towards characters like utena, where there is clearly a queer connection but it takes shape in unconventional and complex ways. me, i'm aromantic, i see all of these pieces and i go oh well that's because she's an aromantic lesbian. you know, there's plenty of little moments i can evidence but those moments can be used to argue for an alloromantic lesbian anthy too. romance is a very arbitrary thing and i think everyone should take their own approach to it unapologetically. of course, mine is that it's hellish and i want nothing to do with it, but im just one guy. and im okay with that. i feel strongly about this reading and it is personal, and id be dishonest to say otherwise, but i do also find that it's well-evidenced in the text. as one of my lecturers once said, don't worry about authorial intent, it isn't real <3

[bimboficationblues]

is fight club a left or right wing movie?

part of what I like about the film is that it is politically idiosyncratic in a way that I find interesting, but I think I’d be hard-pressed to defend it as “leftist” without giant screaming caveats in a way I really wouldn’t if I wanted to make a rightist case. So take that as you will. I wrote about my feelings on it here so apologies if you read that and I repeat certain points below

Like another hotly debated Fincher movie, Gone Girl, I think that there’s a preoccupation with how we construct gendered identity and how it is shaped by class and conspicuous consumption and media systems. I find that quality really interesting, but I wouldn’t call it meaningfully leftist per se except in like an Adbusters kind of way - an interest in “authenticity” is something I’m both personally skeptical towards and also a grounding value of reactionary politics

I think it’s pretty unambiguous that Tyler Durden’s politics are a kind of nihilist, revanchist manhood, and his picture of an ideal society is a weird sort of “retvrn” take on primitivism. As far as authorial intentions go I think it’s likely that Palahniuk shares Durden’s worldview at least in part (which I personally don’t feel totally translates into the screenplay adaptation, perhaps in part due to the diminished homoeroticism) and Fincher seems at least sympathetic to it in his public comments, though he also seems to focus more on the economic aspects. But I don’t think author intent is the end-all of cinematic critique and I’m a lot more interested in how stuff is framed and structured and shot

I think what really seals the ambiguity is the lack of a meaningful alternative to Durden’s worldview even though that worldview is presented as wrong (quite literally delusional). Like, the reveal that Tyler is an idealized self looking to complete suicide and take the world with him (“liberating” it in the process), does sap the power of some of the salient critiques of consumption and advertising and alienation - the tradeoff being that it also undermines the stupid male resentment stuff. It almost becomes a kind of anti-politics. Is the idea that everything is actually fine? Is the critique unqualifiedly correct but the solution wrong - perhaps there *is* no appropriate solution and the status quo should just be accepted? Are the critiques a hodgepodge of semi-accurate complaints about modern capitalism distorted by male entitlement and fear of feminization, which leads to (or rather, justifies) bad solutions? That last one is probably closest to my personal reading, but I’m cognizant of the fact that it’s the one that most closely aligns with my own views, in that it resonates with how I understand certain reactionary modernisms. One of the most interesting details for me that supports this is how the fight club is meant to offer an alternative individualism to consumer culture’s pseudo-individualism, but the fight club is eventually subsumed into cultic, conformist behavior, the exact sort of mass manipulation that advertising and culture-industry engages in: people who dress the same, repeat rules they don't understand and had no participation in making, follow arbitrary orders, and only have identity in death.

On the flipside, there’s also a kind of interesting thread where like, the narrator is homoerotic with Tyler and views Marla as an invasive presence right up until the point where he’s reached disillusionment with Tyler and Project Mayhem, and at that point he pivots hard to a reaffirmation of his heterosexuality through desire for Marla. This might be a discomfort with M/M sexuality (note the adaptational change from the narrator meeting Tyler on a nude beach to meeting him on a plane), suggesting that the film's underlying anxiety is not Tyler's fear about emasculation and feminization creating a weaker society, but a fear of male homoeroticism and its supposedly destructive, anti-civilizational quality

These are all a lot of different, potentially mutually exclusive readings but I guess it points towards the answer of "I dunno, it depends on where you place your emphases."

[rawliverandgoronspice]

the more time goes on and the more I think that the way communication breaks over the way people criticize totk and why is perhaps the doylist/watsonian dychotomy, but I also believe, from having seen several things, that it also hinges a lot on whether we come at the game relying on assumed authorial vision (Nintendo's) for clarity, or if people follow more a "death of the author" sort of approach (to simplify immensely).

I don't think either model of criticism is ideal to be honest, but I have seen a Ton of people rebutting some of the criticism going "but Nintendo would obviously want to tell a great story about good heroes fighting against true evil, not do [whatever the criticism is]", which assumes Nintendo's intents as what should be extrapolated upon and taken into account first and foremost, while a lot of the critique side is like "this is the game I have in my hands, this is what it reminds me of, this is the connexions I pull from it, and they make me think about X, Y, Z, which I don't think is ideal", and either does assume intents of Nintendo, or leaves Nintendo and the makers out altogether --but still asks questions about why this wasn't considered or adressed while the game was being made.

Which seems very difficult to comprehend for people from the authorial group, from what I have noticed, since their reply is, surprisingly often, "But why would you assume Nintendo wants to do bad?"

And then we're stuck at a stalemate of mutual incomprehension at what the other doesn't get about the point we're trying to make, and I get weird asks and even weirder reblogs.

[scarlet--wiccan]

House of Harkness obviously sucks but I think Avengers Academy is showing really groundbreaking work with regard to queer sexuality - seeing an HIV+ character get to RECUR and HAVE SEX in a comic is something I never imagined would happen, for example. The characters are all on panel as of age...Aaron is 19, Justin is 18. I'm kind of shocked you'd write a post like this tbh...That comic is doing amazing work...agree that Age Gap Discourse comes up way too much, but this comic even carefully established they're of age???

Please reread the post. I stated, multiple times, that I don't actually have a problem with the content, I acknowledged that the characters are of age, and I lauded the series for representing HIV positivity in such a healthy and progressive manner. I complimented many of the things I like about the series and specifically said that this storyline is one of the most compelling plots I've ever read on the Unlimited platform. So, what, exactly, is your problem?

I was prompted to speak on the inclusion of explicit sexuality in the series, and I gave an informed critical response. And when I say "critical," I don't mean belittling or negative, I mean "giving critique"-- as in, an objective analysis.

I wanted to have a nuanced conversation about tone, intent, and execution, and the awkwardness that can arise from having a mixed cast of children and young adults in a series that presents itself as a high school adventure. To that end, I attempted to articulate a delineation between gratuitous and non-gratuitous sexuality, and what I personally find appropriate for teenagers-- a delineation which I am careful to acknowledge is subjective and context dependent. I gave multiple assurances that I'm not trying to problematize or condemn the material, and that I think the issue is mostly arising from formal and editorial disorganization, not authorial intent. And in the following post, I acknowledged that I was being nitpicky and that I don't actually think it's all that big of an issue.

If you can't handle that nuance, even when it is couched in such assurances, then you need to work on your reading comprehension and your understanding of media analysis. Do not try to twist my words.

[gemsofthegalaxy]

tbh i agree with Sarah Z

. acting like no celebrity Could be queerbaiting when their public image is a carefully crafted by a marketing team is like.... silly. it is fully possible that someone who is straight and cis and does not personally feel a connection to an ambiguous or otherwise queer aesthetic might still dress like that or make queer-seeming media etc, in order to get the queer audience dollars

but, ultimately, it's not worth it to try to snoop and speculate and drag people through the mud for not "coming out" or forcing them out of the closet, because that is a very shitty thing to do, and people don't deserve for it to happen to them.

thinking specifically of Becky Albertalli and queer creators, i do think it's challenging when it comes to trying to critique a depiction of queerness by taking the author's own sexuality and intent into account. because, well, looking into authorial intent and the circumstances around someone's writing is not an unfair thing to do. to compare it to something that may be similar, like. if a white person from California is writing about/from the perspective of a black person from the south, personally i think it might be worthwhile or at least relevant to know that the author is white and from California when evaluating how you feel, or how well you think the author did with their subject matter. it is NOT to say the white person from California shouldn't have touched the topic with a ten foot pole, they very well may have done an excellent job with their story, but those details are still relevant when it comes to understanding the text in some ways. maybe.

i don't disagree that it gets heated and nasty, though, because it did when it came to Albertalli's work, she was lambasted as a straight writer catering to a straight audience with a gay love story. but she isn't straight. and, well, she's still not a gay man, but... believe it or not, even queer people can write queer media that some queer people hate (lol)

tangent: i fucking haaateed the movie The Kids Are All Right and low and behold, one of the directors was a whole lesbian. i was surprised! it seemed like such a fucking shitty and annoying depiction of a lesbian couple (including scenes where a lesbian who proclaims she's exclusively a lesbian sleeps with a man several times. no mention of the notion she might be bisexual. the lesbians also watch gay male porn which i guess was supposed to be transgressive and showing that sexuality was complex, but to me it was so eye-roll worthy like what's wrong with showing women who are... into women? sorry im getting off track. maybe there are lesbians who love this movie. im bisexual so /shrug)

anyway. unfortunately, being queer does not mean you will tell an amazing queer story. and knowing an author is queer does not mean you have to like the way queerness was used in the story even if you think it was bad. but, still, i am usually more likely to at least be lighter with criticism if i know the author depicting the story is of the same community or has lived experience, even if i still dislike the overall depiction. maybe that unfairly absolves them of a shitty story, idk. btw this isnt to say Simon vs the Homo Sapiens was bad, it was, like, fine tbh. some of the plot points annoyed me, but that's common in YA novels by now. one of my advisors who is a gay man really loved it so that also made me like it more bc it was cute seeing how much he enjoyed it (ironically, lol)

not sure where i was going with this anymore. but it's an interesting, challenging topic to address "real people queerbaiting". ultimately i think it CAN be done, by celebrities who are crafting an image to market to fans, but that it's not worth the harm of pushing people out of the closet to try to "stop" the "problem" from occuring.

[mandy4ever69420]

do you read fanfiction? if so, do you have any recs?

ok obviously you mean shameless fanfiction with this but how funny would it be if i started dropping links to the weirdly stellar fanfiction i've read for the world's most dogshit television w/ absolutely no relevance to shameless. anyway the answer is "yeah a little"

i have 2! for you. both pretty short, which is sad, because i love longfics and really admire the people who make them. but i wanted to reread both of these because giving recs makes me nervous & i'm extremely specific about characterization for things i recommend

this take on the 'gay friends' plot (5k words) is by far my favorite - very much this is to my taste as fanfiction as a ruse to do some character work +matching source material tone. i want to note a very shameless-esque behavior in the setup here where it has a perspective that initially makes me a little upset (wrt: mickey's response to "who dies first?") and then upon thinking about it i actually decide it's actually fucking phenomenal. couple very sweet moments dotted in. :)

The Second-Time Commitment (14k words) this one does draw a conclusion from canon facts that isn't part of my read, but i don't think it's unfounded or poorly supported. i read it first because i appreciated it going into the nitty gritty sucky bits of bipolar beyond being depressed which is more familiar to more people. didn't expect it to take a dive into mickey's character which was also carefully done and lovely. i urge you to mind the tags but nothing is explicitly detailed in there. the sequel (16k) is also good but sadly unfinished. probably the only story i've encountered for which i enjoy the characterization on mickey, ian, AND mandy AND debbie (though she's barely there. sad!). i'm gonna compare about the conclusions this one draws to mine also but under a readmore in case you want to read the fic first

none of this is a critique of the story!!! it is very well done this is just my thoughts, as prompted by this story. also, some of this is kind of sad. Sorry

the author in this concludes from a handful of traits in the story that mickey was sexually abused prior to the series. when they draw their conclusion i think IMO it's a perfectly reasonable read, but my read was just that he was likely witness to sexual abuse. i mean, more or less exact canon, given where and how he grew up. probably sandy.

this is something that could not have possibly been written in intentionally, and a good place to point out that authorial intent is an interesting addition to a narrative, not the law you have to follow!

WRT: mickey alluding to resenting foster care, i absolutely see concluding that something worse must have been happening than at terry's house, but to me what comes to mind is a sense of abandonment. my read on mickey will always be that he really did love terry, even still in s11 when he didn't want to anymore. so feeling ditched by him would feel worse than being stuck with him.

[smute]

Hiii do you have any other literary trope/ device like verisimilitude that you'd like to nerd out about? I'm sitting in front of you, chin on hand, legs swinging ☺️

hell yeah!!! death of the author!

not a literary device but it's a term i come across almost every single day on this here webbed site (mainly in posts about hp and jk rowling) but NOT ONCE have i seen it used correctly so.. maybe i can clear some things up

(warning: this is gonna be extremely condensed and simplified so don't quote me pls lmao)

ok so the death of the author refers to an essay by roland barthes (la mort de l'auteur) which remains very influential in literary theory to this day. it's a pretty provocative title and barthes probably regretted his choice when he had to explain to someone for the hundredth time that "thats not what i fucking meant" hgjfhgf but ANYWAY. contrary to what the title may suggest, it is NOT about the disappearance of the author but about giving power to the consumer of a work of art (the reader).

basically, it's a critique of the dominant author-centered theories in literary criticism at the time (1960s) and the essay's central argument is that an author doesn't have sovereign authority over their text since, in the process of writing, they are not creating a wholly original work but rather a collage of impressions, experiences, other texts, etc. this idea of a disjointed text as an assembly of parts means that a text doesn't have a single "true" meaning and so it cannot be "understood". instead, meanings (plural) are co-created and re-created over and over again by the reader.

to reflect that separation of "authorship" from "authority" barthes introduces the term "scriptor". instead of a traditional author, who creates an original work through the power of their imagination alone, a scriptor combines existing words and texts in new ways, but they are unable to decide the meaning of their work. i think it's important to emphasize that he wasn't trying to diminish the creative effort of writers. he just explains that every modern writer draws on established conventions and traditions and other existing texts. for barthes, the figure of the scriptor is born with the text, "here and now", in the present moment, through the process of reading.

so... in a sense, it is about "separating the art from the artist" but not in a "jkr is transphobic but harry potter isnt" kind of way, which is what a lot of people seem to think. barthes was just trying to open up new ways of interpreting a text and he opposed the limiting veneration of a god-like author. thats why he connected the death of the author to the birth of the reader. the main idea is simply that authorial intent is only one of many equally valid interpretations. it CAN be an interesting pursuit to figure out what a writer meant, but barthes argues that it's impossible to find a definitive answer to that question, and that OTHER perspectives are just as important. texts can hold meaning beyond what the author intended, and they can even develop meanings that contradict the author's intentions. the scriptor assembles a text, but the unity of a text is created by the reader.

"The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted."

barthes invokes some important structuralist principles (every text is part of a larger context, etc) but in his critique of authority and his rejection of the search for a single objective truth he bridges the gap to poststructuralism. and thats why his essay was so important. the death of the author is not an excuse to put on blinkers and to consume the works of bigots uncritically. it actually encourages readers to be critical and to consider the broader context of a text.

to circle back to the example of harry potter: the death of the author does not mean "claiming" hp as your own and trying to detach jk rowling's fictional work from from her very real bigotry. (it's impossible anyway because one informs the other.) the death of the author is actually the death of the author's authority over their text. it is not an excuse to shield art from criticism against its creator. quite the opposite! in jkr's case, her hateful comments actually open up new perspectives for the re-examination of the harry potter books.

tl;dr: (1) it is impossible for an author to decide the meaning of their own work, (2) it is impossible for a reader to determine the author's intent through the process of reading, and (3) a cultural text does not have a singular objectively true meaning.

[thelifetimechannel]

You're getting a lot of praise for your focus on the alpha characters, and that's rad. I admit to being personally confused by it, though. I used to see a lot of complaints during Homestuck that characters like John or Roxy or Karkat were getting a disproportionate amount of screen time, and all I could think was "yes, they are the main characters. Jake and Aradia and Gamzee are secondary characters, so they don't get as much focus." It's okay for not everyone to get equal focus!

That raises some interesting questions about how one determines which characters are main/major characters. Is it based on initial authorial intent? How they’re introduced? Their impact on the story? The number of pages or lines they have? I would assume the Beta kids are supposed to be the MCs, since they’re introduced first and are the focus of the first 5 acts and the comic’s two most productive years, but if you look at Jade’s number of words/pages, especially near the end, she slides over to secondary. In contrast, the trolls were initially supposed to be much more minor but became major characters!

For our purposes, we’ve identified the 5 Betas, 5 Alphas, Calliope, Karkat, Terezi, and Kanaya as our “main” characters. The trolls on the bubble side of things, along with carapace agents, villains, and other characters I haven’t listed yet are more secondary, though the bubble trolls will get more of a showing later on. This is more or less in line with the gang shown in the canon finale, so it seems relatively on target. I have probably totally overlooked someone accidentally in that list in which case, whoops. The “MCs” get more story time in general, but we try to give most of the characters a decent sense of closure/resolution to the extent that they can manage that in one day. (Vriska’s a weird case where she’s on the bubble side of things but canon treated her as a major player, so she gets some more attention, but you’ll note it’s nearly all for personal development rather than impact on the story.) I think you’ll also notice some fluctuation in content levels among those “main” characters as well, based on what we think each needed. As a marker, it’s pretty arbitrary. 

And in the end, that’s the choice we made. Other people doing a project like this might just focus on the Betas, or might pull in the Dancestors, who we totally excluded. It honestly comes down to which characters we want to work with and what we want to do with them rather than a determination of which characters we think Hussie decided were important in the end. I have my critiques of some of those decisions, but this isn’t the place - this is just the story we’re choosing to tell. 

[may-shepard]

Hey I was just reminded of talalay's tweet and I know she might not know of a special or the writers' intentions but her words annoyed me... it makes me feel like they dislike us, but if she thinks so i don't understand some of her directing in tst (like sherlock being revealed in the chair and mary=thatcher smashed). How do you interpret this whole thing, if you don't mind me asking? P.s. I loved your the ring meta!

Hi!

Thanks so much for the compliment about my meta!

I only just learned about Rachel Talalay’s comment. I’m guessing you’re referring to this? 

I would say it’s worth disregarding, as is anything any creator has to say about work they’ve released into the world. 

Before I explain further, I just want to say that this in no way reflects any feelings or thoughts I have about Talalay’s skill as a director. I’m rewatching tst right now, and I think it’s very beautiful in many ways, despite the reservations I have about its reality status / the script / that wife / how we’re supposed to understand the episode. There’s nothing, I think, in the way it’s directed that gets in the way of the story that’s being told, and it has its own gorgeous qualities (that shark transition at the beginning is just...wow, really lovely.)

As for her comment, ugh. It was offered, it seems, spontaneously, in the context of answering a much more straightforward question about how a particular scene was filmed in Doctor Who, so it was unnecessary, to say the least. Now, I don’t know, I have no idea what has been said to her. I don’t know how much she’s had to deal with people coming at her for things over which she has no control, like the overall direction of the show. I don’t much care, tbh. Because I think that if you’re going to engage in social media interactions with people, you need to be cool about it. You should try to be gracious. Understand that people are excited about what you’ve made, which is, like, the point of making it? Isn’t it? 

The main thing for me is, I’ve been on both sides of the creator / critic spectrum, professionally as a writer (on a really small scale), and academically as a literary scholar (at the highest level one can go). So I’ve thought about literary interpretation a lot, and thought a lot about its role, relative to literature itself. Here’s what I know: 

When people make a thing, a creative thing, they pull on all kinds of stuff of which they may or may not be aware. It’s an art. There’s planning, and there’s purpose, and there’s the story they know they want to tell, and then there’s serendipity, and the intuitive ways in which symbolism builds, and there’s the mass of art and literature that came before yours, there’s the direct source material (acd canon) and there’s indirect source material (the tons and tons of Holmesian pastiche); there’s tradition (like the Gothic); there are brands (Hammer horror, Bond, and, weirdly, the Muppets). It all goes into the mix, and out comes a thing that works, or doesn’t. 

This is why authorial intention is garbage as a concept: because literary texts are made from a combination of conscious and unconscious content.

And this is why all creator commentary about what they meant to do, or didn’t, is rubbishy bullshit at best. Ideally, I think, a creator should ask, “What did you think of it?” Rather than, proclaiming, “Oh, that’s not what I meant.” 

(I know, I know. We want there to be a plan. We want johnlock to be part of the consciously crafted content of the show. I obviously do. I want mofftiss to be good. I want them to be clever. I want the clearly inferior quality of s4 to be part of a meta-level Reichenbach arg. I hope it is. But even if it isn’t, even if they meant tfp to be a totally straightforward end to s4 and possibly the series as a whole, there is still much we can do in terms of reading it, interpreting it, enjoying it. This is not reaching. The subtext is practically hanging off the text like ripe fruit, begging to be picked.)

It is up to the critic, the literary analyst, the audience, to decide what the thing they’re consuming means to them. The symbols, tropes, character arcs, plots, etc., etc., which the creator has put together--all of this interacts with you, your personal experience, the other texts you’ve enjoyed, the symbols, tropes, plots, etc., that are part of your cultural experience, and there, in you, is where they make meaning. 

You can emerge from the experience of a text and say, this is what it means, and interpret it in light of what you know, and what you’ve felt, and back it up using the textual evidence that made you think what you did, and no one--that is to say NO ONE--can tell you you’re wrong. They can tell you they think there’s a better reading. They can tell you they think yours has holes in it. You can, if you wish, engage in discussion about it. But you don’t have to. Above all, you should do what makes you happy. This is supposed to be fun--which, it seems, is something that Talalay, with her snarky comment about “rationality,” seems to have forgotten. 

Nonetheless, for those of us who do choose to craft arguments out of our favourite readings of this, or any literary text:

There are good interpretations--ones that really hold water when you interrogate them and subject them to argumentation. There are less valid interpretations--ones that fall apart if you so much as breathe on them. 

Johnlock is a valid interpretation. It is as solid as granite. It has a metric fuckton of evidence backing it up. The only thing it doesn’t have, right now, is an explicit confirmation from the text that satisfies much of the audience who supports that interpretation. (Right now, there’s sort of a johnlock light reading we can glean from the most superficial level of the text. In my opinion, there’s a much more intense johnlock reading possible via the subtext.) 

There are, of course, other readings. Of course there are! But let me tell you, having had a run-in or two with the dude who made that anti-tjlc blog, WELL, he is far from rational. He transforms into a squalling infant if you so much as push on one of his ideas. And then tells you you’re bullying him. Methinks he enjoys being fighty. 

THE BOTTOM LINE IS: Once a creator has released something into the world, their role is done. It’s then up to the audience to take the thing and run with it. I am so glad--SO GLAD--to be part of a fandom that voraciously consumes, analyzes, critiques, and otherwise shakes the thing we love until all the best bits and pieces fall out. That’s the fun of it! For a creator to turn around and say, NO! You’re loving the thing I made in the wrong way--well, that is really small.

So: thanks for this ask, sorry to go on for so long but I have LOTS of feelings about this, clearly.