this place isn’t haunted it is the ghost

"Stuff like this is made to brainwash young girls into thinking that they can 'fix' dangerous men. Such girls usually end up in abusive relationships and their parents are right to worry."

It is rather strange to come across such a gross generalization, operating on an assumption that girls are blank slates whom anyone can manipulate and who can't distinguish between real and make believe on top of it.

In my entire "career"(if you can call it that) of engaging with fiction , the girls and women that I have run into in fandoms happened to be some of the most intelligent, talented, cool, witty and insightful people I have ever met. I've devoured the fics they have written. I have delighted in the arts and edits they've made. Their perspectives and interpretations about the characters and their relationships are genuinely fascinating to read about regardless of whether I agree with it or not. They are the ones who are most often at the receiving end of the antis' ire for no valid reason but they just keep deriving joy and inspiration from their favourite characters and ships and keep sharing it with others through stories, art and thoughts. They are not just smart but incredibly resilient, sensitive and aware not just about the media they consume but about the world around them and its issues.

I’ll bite. What’s the difference between those two?

“Fuck canon I do what I want” is just an approach to fandom that can mean any of the following:

I am not particularly concerned with being canon-compliant in my fanworks and headcanons.

I am not personally motivated to have an extensive knowledge of the canon I’m fannish about.

I will freely rewrite, overwrite, or just plain ignore part of canon that I don’t like.

All of which are, again, fine. Fandom is transformative. Rewriting and reimagining the text is part of what we do.

Death of the Author is a critical framework based on the 1967 essay “La mort de l'auteur” by French literary theorist Roland Barthes, and posits that a text should be interpreted without regard for the author’s intent. (It’s worth noting here that like all critical frameworks, Death of the Author has its limitations, and I’m not going to get into arguing for or against it here–only that it’s a theory that exists.)

Obviously, there’s some potential overlap between these two ideas. But the critical difference, as I see it, is that Death of the Author is not about discarding or rewriting the text; it simply suggests that once the text is out there, it exists unto itself separate from the author, and the author’s intended meaning is no more authoritative than the interpretation of a reader/viewer/audience member.