i am normal about this parallel i promise

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I think the biggest problem in this fandom is everybody literally refusing to apply critical reading/thinking to legitimate subtext (rather than the “muh interpretation” idea fandom confuses with subtext) and getting mad that things aren’t textually presented exactly the way they want it to be.

This doesn’t just apply to ships and stuff, but also other interpersonal dynamics that character stans then take to offense and drive home.Like, this character didn’t phrase it *to the tee like this*, so we will reject all sentiment very obviously attached to the idea and instead go into bitter stan rampage. 

At some point this fandom really became confused amidst its arguings of “just subtext,” because of the want to divorce all “subtext” from the show, even if most “subtext” usages tend to be “interpretation of content with or without substance, often the latter”, which is not... actually... subtext. But this confusion has also led to the belief that any form of subtext isn’t canon, and then apply the same broken hammer they use to knock down, say, ship talk also to abject refusal to apply critical thinking to the other interpersonal or mytharc subtext elements in the name of being full of rage from their perspective.

Believe it or not, no matter what anybody on the internet tells you, you CAN get bad scores on lit interpretations, and not all interpretations are equal, no matter how many people that want to be bitter about (concept) circle the wagons around the bitter screaming of that interpretation.

There’s something I’ve been trying to put into words for a while, I’ve posted about it repeatedly, but again I’ll cite what @dimples-of-discontent posted recently,

“In my professional life, I often teach literature (which is what my PhD is in) and tell my students that an interpretation is as valid as the argument you can make with compelling evidence from the text (so that, yes, in fact, there are wrong answers in an English class). Like, you can try to argue to me that Hamlet is an allegory for the trade in gemstones at the time but you’re going to have a damn hard time finding it in the text. But if you want to argue to me that Horatio is in love with Hamlet, I’m open to being persuaded. And if you want to argue that it’s a play about anxiety surrounding the succession to the crown once Elizabeth I dies or the theological uncertainty about the existence of purgatory in a country that kept switching from Catholic to Protestant, well, then you’re probably a grad student–what are you doing here in Shakespeare 101?”

“The point is, for me something can be so subtextually obvious as for it to be “canon.” Hamlet is a play about revenge and its relationship to thought and action. Basically, that’s canon for Shakespeareans. But no one said that in the play, it’s just that it’s written in a recognizable genre (revenge tragedy) but does something new with it (stalling the action for speeches about it). Othello is explicitly a play about race–it foregrounds that in the text–but the fact that it’s about the way in which otherness begets self-doubt which begets jealousy is subtext. I mean, now I’m just rambling about my fav plays but you can see the overlap.”

After this it goes into the subject of that particular subtext discussion -- but that right there -- that’s the difference between subtext and interpretation, and not all interpretations are actually in the subtext, even if you think it is until put under pressure to provide a full thematic spread that agrees with the piece (rather than what you WANT the piece to be).

You literally can’t critically understand a piece-in-progress while refusing and refuting any and all subtext because it’s “just subtext.” That literally isn’t how it works. Subtext isn’t just icing or hanging ribbons, it’s a key ingredient to everything that can’t be vocalized in text, especially in a medium where we have visual storytelling in place of active narration.

And again -- this post is about *more than ships*. It’s about why we have so many goddamn bitter stans in this fandom because rather than reading the subtext and intent of an interaction, they dig in their heels about a specific point that isn’t spoken. Because it’s just subtext. And fandom has turned that into “that’s just your interpretation,” and “my bitter one is just as valid even if it’s not actually standing up to the main stream of the story,” or any knowledge that the bitterness *spawns* by digging in heels on this issue and continuing to slide further and further left of what the story is actually telling in the weave of text and subtext. Actual subtext. Not interpretation.

This fandom’s livid unwillingness to accept what certain words like subtext mean (and what they DON’T) is like Ground Zero for most bitterness and BS in this fandom. But conceding to that strips the “but all interpretations are equal” thing, because... who says your interpretation of the subtext is right!!!

I dunno. Does it match with the story, keep me from getting relentlessly bitter or disappointed, have I stayed pretty on point about where the story and relationships are headed with a few surprise twists, cuz storytelling? Yeah. Gotta say I have. Gotta say it isn’t a fluke that this all aligns. 

Subtext is like baking soda, not icing, on a cake. Without it, it falls flat. You may desperately seek a replacement for that baking soda, but you’re probably gonna end up with a weird, flat, bubbly, tilty, or outright bitter cake if you try to apply it to the otherwise exact same mix of ingredients, because not all interpretations fit the existing recipe and are not legitimate subtext. Removing the subtext fucks it up. Trying to replace the subtext fucks it up. And when you sit there chewing on your bitter, crooked cake and blame the cake and the other ingredients because you tried to replace the Subtext Soda, well... look, you’re the only reason you’re eating a Sadcake, okay? And once you start substituting the other ingredients -- the other characterizations and story merits and everything else -- to fit your Subtext Soda replacement -- you have to realize you’re literally not making (or discussing) the same cake, but instead compensating with a whole other product to make your new concoction valid.

And that’s fine -- as long as you realize those interpretations literally aren’t in the canon. As long as you realize you’re using revisionist canon. And even in literature there’s multiple canon-compendium listings, but that’s not going to be the actual creative-canon, just alternate-canon. That canon will never negotiate to the actual central canon, because you are discussing a different product with a different set of ingredients. Continuing to expect creative-canon to comply with alternate-canon and deviations of intentionally maligned misreadings from the core concept is literally intentionally devoting oneself to bitterness.

Have you considered reading an actual story that you like both the content and writing style of, instead of trying to force revisionism on clear purposings of existing texts and yelling because it isn’t what you want? 

C’mon guys.

The intentional cognitive dissonance floating around ideas like “subtext” and “interpretation” in fandom has led to a world where “if I don’t like it, I can argue random points, and no matter what, my viewpoint is valid; and I can use this to construct entire alternate-dimension level perception in which to stagnate in bitterness and intentional misreadings unquestioned”, rather than trying to bridge their reading with what the story is actually trying to tell us, which is the entire point of literary discussion to freaking begin with.