#fandom problem 8856

Fandom Problem #8856:

It feels like fandom doesn't see characters as fiction or vehicles for stories anymore. All they see are gender flags, social issue soapboxes, and personal mirrors.

Death of the author has given me so much pause lately, because it feels like some people throw it around willy-nilly to validate how they read a very, very, say... Non-trans coded male character as trans, femme, and all sorts of other traits that are antithetical to how they actually appeared on screen, without any room for interpretation in that regard, and those people denounce anyone who didn't "read them that same way" (code for "project random-ass traits that had nothing to do with the character, onto that character").

"I interpreted it this way" is all fine and dandy, but there's a point where even personal interpretations aren't reasonably, or even at all, supported by even a modicum of what actually shows up on screen, in canon.

And it ticks me right off, lol.

This is literally what the Death of the Author is FOR but it's as if nobody understands it. There is a MASSIVE difference between "I read this character as queer-coded" and "it absolutely has to be the author's intention to queer-code this character or otherwise the queer-coding itself is meaningless".

Hell, the way OP wrote it, it's not clear to me if the OP understands it. (Good for you if you do, bad on you if you don't)