#authorial intent

I wanna hear everything you keep and cut from cannon and where the specific lines are so pls comment or reblog :)

I truly hate the entire concept of “Death of the Author” as it exists in modern fandom culture. Not as a literary theory in its original academic sense, but as this flattened, weaponized slogan that people use to shut down creators and insulate their own head canons from criticism. What started as a critical framework has turned into a moral ideology, and that’s where it becomes nonsense.

Roland Barthes wasn’t writing about fandom spaces, social media discourse, or franchise storytelling. He wasn’t talking about shared universes, canon hierarchies, or collaborative media ecosystems. He was talking about literary interpretation in an academic context. But fandom took that idea and turned it into a blunt instrument: creators don’t matter, intent doesn’t matter, and the only thing that matters is how I feel about the text. That’s not interpretation... that’s entitlement.

The companion idea that “creators shouldn’t interact with fandoms” is even more artificial. This isn’t some historical norm we’ve broken. Creators have always interacted with audiences. Shakespeare did. Dickens did. Comic creators did. Science Fiction writers did. Letters pages, conventions, interviews, fan clubs, serialized fiction, public readings — none of this is new. What’s new is the idea that creator presence is somehow intrusive, as if the people who made the work are trespassing on a space they supposedly don’t belong in.

Creators do have authority over their creations. Not total authority over interpretation or emotional response, but authority over canon, intent, structure, and design. Those aren’t imaginary concepts. They’re part of how art is built. If a creator explains what a character was meant to represent, how a story was constructed, or what a theme was designed to explore, that’s not “invalidating interpretation.” That’s explaining authorship.

You can still feel something different about the work. You can still have personal meaning. You can still connect to it in your own way. But that doesn’t erase the framework it was created within. If Greg Weisman says Demona was written as X and not Y, that isn’t him “policing interpretation.” That’s him explaining authorial construction. You’re free to respond to Demona however you want emotionally, but the architecture of the character didn’t come from fandom. It came from the writers’ room.

And sometimes, yeah, people’s headcanons are lame. Sometimes they’re shallow. Sometimes they’re pure projection. Sometimes they flatten complex characters into comfort characters, self-inserts, or aesthetic avatars. Fandom culture increasingly treats personal interpretation as sacred identity instead of subjective engagement with a text.

What’s especially funny is how selective “Death of the Author” actually is. The author is only dead when they disagree with you. When a creator supports someone’s interpretation, suddenly their word matters again. Suddenly intent matters again. Suddenly authority is real again.

Tolkien is a perfect counterexample to all of this. Not only did he believe in authorial intent, he actively engaged with his audience through letters, essays, and detailed explanations of Middle-earth, its languages, its metaphysics, and its moral structure. The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien are literally an archive of creator interaction with fandom and readers. He clarified meanings. He corrected interpretations. He explained symbolism. He rejected readings he felt were wrong. And somehow Middle-earth still survived. The books weren’t destroyed. The fandom didn’t collapse. The art didn’t lose its power. If anything, it deepened the mythology and the understanding of it.

No one accuses Tolkien of “violating Death of the Author.” No one says he should’ve stayed silent and let people misunderstand his work forever. Because we instinctively understand that creators explaining their creations is not an attack on art. It’s part of the artistic process.

The real issue isn’t interpretation versus authorship. It’s sovereignty. A lot of people don’t want interpretation. They want ownership without authorship. They want their reading to be unchallengeable, their version to be untouchable, and their headcanon to exist in a vacuum where no creator, no text, and no structure can contradict it.

Art doesn’t work that way.

Interpretation matters. Personal meaning matters. Emotional connection matters. But they exist alongside authorship, not above it. Meaning doesn’t come from nowhere. Stories are built by people, shaped by intent, structure, craft, and design. Pretending creators are irrelevant to that process isn’t progressive or enlightened.

“Death of the Author” as a critical lens can be useful. As fandom doctrine, it’s incoherent. It turns art into pure projection and creators into inconveniences. And honestly, it says more about fandom insecurity than it does about the art that inspired it.

While any one story is meant to have elements up for interpretation—a story that makes you think, that doesn’t explicitly spell out every character’s thought process and justifications for why they do what they do and who they are, or why the world is the way it is—authorial intent is a thing and waving it away so you have no conflicting evidence to tarnish the theory that best suits your interests is not a healthy way to engage with fiction.

Specifically, character sexualities.

Reimagining a straight character as gay by all the unintentional (or even queerbaity) subtext in your fanfic is not the problem here. Most of the time, a straight character’s straightness is not integral to their story. Straightness is the “default” after all, it goes without saying. An author does not have to give “straight subtext” for the audience to understand that they’re heterosexual.

Therefore, queer characters who are unable to be explicitly labeled with a giant neon sticker, but who are definitely, absolutely queer, don’t get to be straight-washed by your “interpretation”.

This may be because the author writes fantasy or scifi or historical fiction and using our familiar terms wouldn’t fit, or you’re writing something for a producer or platform that won’t let you be explicit, or your character isn’t so sure of themselves but you the author, do everything in your power to show who they are, even if they don’t yet know it.

“Well I just think he’s straight” I mean you sure can think that, but when the plot goes screwy and confuses you because he makes romantic decisions on the basis of his sexuality, your straight blinders are all you have to blame.

But I’m really talking about ace erasure.

It is very hard to depict the absence of something that everyone else takes for granted in a character as the existence of something legitimate, not just a vacuum, and have aphobic and ace-unaware people believe it. If I want to depict a lesbian, I can have my female character sexualize other women, not men.

If I have an ace character, the absence of their sexualizing of anyone can be interpreted as an immediate lack of interest, but that will surely be coming later, or that this character is simply mature, or polite, or noble, and above what we conventionally think of as narrative cues of attraction.

Especially when that interest is absent, audiences are quick to dig for the subtext that surely must be there, misinterpreting causality where there is none in the smallest interactions with other characters, as if they’re all clues the author is leaving deliberately to make you dig.

There is a difference between my conveying of my ace (and aroace) characters not being loud enough that it’s legitimately hard to pick up on, and them being perfectly fine while my readers choose to ignore them.

I have no problem with taking a canonical ace and exploring their sexuality and the bounds of their attraction to other people, because oftentimes, the fic writer is still respecting their aceness and thinking “They’re ace, but I want them in this Situation, so what do I have to do to get them believably from A to B?”

vs “This character isn’t ace and I’m going to write a fic that strips them of the sexuality that I’m choosing to ignore because it’s less interesting if I can’t write smut with them.”

Or "This character is ace, sure, but not when I write them the sexy romance the author should have given them."

I got to thinking of a poem I'd written early in college. I'd been thinking about perception and being perceived, and wanted to try writing a poem in which I was the subject of observation. And the thing I fixed on was, I can peel an orange in one piece-- I started trying in childhood and ate enough citrus to get really good at it. Anyway: the general idea is, watching someone strip an orange of peel and pith, and imagining being uncovered, and yearning for intimacy.

Three years and one buzz cut later, I was about to go onstage at a performance venue to recite this poem in my riot grrrl dress and my big stompy boots and realized, They've never seen me peel an orange. This whole crowd is going to hear this poem as a queer love poem. I didn't think of it that way when I was writing it. But how could I fault anyone for listening to me and looking at me and assuming something gay is going on? I have to be okay with what is a reasonable assumption. (And also: What if they're right? Honestly a little chagrined that the first moment I seriously considered that I wasn't straight had to do with suddenly seeing myself through an audience's eyes, but whatever it takes, ig.)

So let’s look at the evidence TG has for Aegon and Aemond having a close loving loyal brotherly bond:

1. Aemond fighting and killing Aegon’s enemies — which are also his enemies. If Nyra takes the throne Aemond’s head is the first on the chopping block, so he has a vested interest in fighting for Aegon to keep the throne and maintain a united front against Team Black.

2. Aemond not styling himself as King and only as Prince Regent when Aegon is incapacitated— he literally cannot be the king while the king still lives. By law he can only be Prince regent.

3. Aemond not murdering his brother and usurping the throne— the bar is in Hell. Maybe he didn’t do that bc Aegon was guarded, and he could’nt kill him undetected. Maybe he came very close to, but decided not to at the last minute. You know who also never murdered their brother? Aegon IV and Aemon. Who canonically despised each other.

4. Aegon building a statue of Aemond— which is something that could be argued towards Aegon loving his brother, but not the other way around. And even then, the statues could also be interpreted as Aegon emphasizing his victory and rightful kingship by celebrating those who died for TG as war heroes.

None of these are explicit evidence of love. You can certainly headcanon that dynamic between them, but it’s just that— a headcanon. If GRRM wanted to write them as close and loving, he could have and would have. Don’t believe me? Look at how he writes Aegon III and Viserys II:

[Upon Viserys’ return to Kings Landing] “King Aegon III began to weep, throwing himself upon the boy in a fierce embrace”

“The return of his brother from the dead worked a wondrous change in Aegon III. His Grace had never truly forgiven himself for leaving Viserys to his fate… deep down, the Broken King felt himself unworthy to sit the Iron Throne. He had not been able to save his little brother…”

“As a boy, Aegon had worshipped his three elder half brothers, but it was Viserys who shared his bedchamber, his lessons, and his games. ‘Some part of the King had died with his brother in the Gullet… it is plain to see that Aegon’s affection for Gaemon Palehair was born of his desire to replace the little brother he had lost, but only when Viserys was restored to him did Aegon seem once more alive and whole.’”

“Prince Viserys once again became King Aegon’s constant companion… whilst Gaemon Palehair was cast aside and forgotten, and even Queen Daenaera was ignored.”

“Viserys [after Gaemon’s death] broke his stubborn silence to comfort His Grace in his grief, and sat with him by the Queens bedside.”

“For the rest of his days, [Viserys] was the only person Aegon ever fully trusted.”

George paints an explicit and undeniable dynamic between Aegon and Viserys— one of love, trust, and joy. George could have written such a dynamic between Aegon and Aemond. There was ample opportunity. He could have spoke of a close shared childhood, had Aegon comfort Aemond when he lost an eye, had Aemond display distress/guilt/grief when he nearly killed Aegon. But George doesn’t. Instead, what is Aemond’s only recorded response to nearly killing his own brother? “[The Crown] looks better on me than it ever did him.” Could you imagine either Aegon III or Viserys II ever responding that way to the other nearly dying. Nope.

You can certainly headcanon Aegon and Aemond as having a deep and loving brotherly bond, but George does not explicitly write them as having that dynamic. Their book dynamic is under explored and ambiguous. Comparing them to Aegon III and Viserys II, a brotherly bond that IS explicitly written to be loving, makes that apparent. GRRM had ample opportunity to add moments/quotes like the ones I showed for Aegon and Viserys, but he chose not to. The show interpreting Aemond as hateful towards his brother is not a wild deviation from his book counterpart, and is clearly based upon his recorded response to Aegon’s near death.

And none of these influencers saying this are doing step 2: reading about the creator's intent behind these pieces of media, and learning that the Empire was based on the US during the Vietnam War, and the Capitol was based on the US invasion of Iraq.

Step 2 is understanding that we were always the villains in these pieces of media, and making sure to spread that. Instead, everyone is only at step 1, and refusing to go further, because the way we treat the rest of the world is being applied to us now.