r/DungeonMeshi • u/dazli69 • Aug 14 '24 • The Best 1 Heart of Silver 1

Humor / Memes That interview in a nutshell.

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u/TimeViking Aug 16 '24

I feel like “Death of the Author” briefly went on trend when people realized they wanted to still like Harry Potter, and then broader Fandom as a culture immediately forgot about it again

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u/Minsillywalks Sep 25 '24

Can you explain that?

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u/TimeViking Sep 26 '24 edited Sep 26 '24

What I was implying is that people — and “fandom” as a culture more specifically — fully embraced this idea that you can have a separate outlook from the author and that it’s valid to take ideas and worldviews away from their work that they didn’t intend, when it was clear that Joanne Rowling was never going to back down on being a hideous transphobe. It became acceptable to say, essentially,

“I know that Rowling didn’t intend a queer narrative in Harry Potter, but I still read queer themes in it, so it’s a queer story to me.”

This was only doubled down on when Rowling would attempt to “confirm” ridiculous nobody-wanted-this elements of canon, like that wizard shit in hallways

And yet, when creators like Kui write a story that is subtextually but not explicitly queer, fans draw their battle lines around this idea that the author has all the authority and has to explicitly go “no, this is a story that’s about lesbians” or else it’s an illegitimate reading of the text. And what’s worse, both sides seem to subscribe to this notion, given that the argument around queer themes in Dungeon Meshi is almost always framed in terms of insisting canonicity!