see anything bad the team i like does is bc the writers were biased against them and making them act out of character and anything good the team i like does is bc they’re unimpeachably good and the only sensible option to like. likewise anything bad the team i dislike does is bc they’re ontologically evil and all their fans are either stupid or bad people irl and anything good the team i dislike does is bc the writers are biased towards them and trying to make them look like victims. its all very elegant

mods are asleep, post silver fox Varric

why yes I AM making boop gifs from screen recording

𝐒𝐢𝐡𝐚𝐲𝐚

When I took my literary criticism theory class in undergrad the professor told us that in modern literary criticism “The author isn’t dead but they are a ghost breathing down your neck”

Basically, the old way of thinking was that the point of literary criticism was to find the true original intentions of the author. Then death of the author was introduced and literary criticism swung hard the other way, saying that what the author thinks and the context they were in doesn’t matter.

Nowadays, it’s somewhere in between. Yes the author had intentions and yes the work had context. But the work also has context right now and a history of people reading it and interpreting it and sometimes an author puts meaning in something that they didn’t realize they were.

I can’t sit down and interview Jane Austin about every little decision she made in Pride and Prejudice but I can look at what we know about her life and the era and place she lived in. I can also ignore all that and look at what the book means right now to modern people. I can compare Austin to writers in her own time as well as writers now. I can speculate on what I think was on purpose and what wasn’t.

A lot of people go on about death of the author like that’s the only correct way to interpret fiction when modern lit crit moved past it years ago. Reading critically is a conversation between the author, the reader, and the various contexts surrounding both of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum but at the same time nobody can anticipate every interpretation their work might present with.

The question of analysis and separating art from artist isn’t a simple cut and dry issue. It never has been and it never will be.

Tumblr feels so different without the boops

@ every blog on april 1st GET BOOPED

Jane Austen really said ‘I respect the “I can fix him” movement but that’s just not me. He’ll fix himself if knows what’s good for him’ and that’s why her works are still calling the shots today.