#yeah that'll do

[barbie-verse]

in love with the whole lily twt thing

more please and thank you

at this point I need to create a lily tag or something

[verdemoun]

cracks my knuckles okay kids walk with me. kieran lives but loses his eyes au. red angry irritated skin pulled too tight and raised scars and one eye just gone and the other scarred and grey and unmoving. but in camp

and jack is absolutely terrified because he is a kid. sure he saw his pa attacked by wolves and covered in bloody bandages but then john healed and had scars but still looks like his pa. kieran. does not look like kieran anymore.

hiding behind corners staring at kieran because he's a terrified kid trying to figure it out

and kieran, too gentle for his own good, offers a smile. kneels down. asks if jack wants to touch his face.

jack, horrified, because his ma would be furious if she knew he was staring. too curious for his own good. carefully touching kieran's face. a tiny gasp. it's rough. kieran chuckles. yeah. just rough skin.

jack staring at that strange, milky grey eye, and asks if kieran can see. kieran asks jack to hold up a few fingers. jack does. kieran looks, tries to focus, and shakes his head. he can't tell how many fingers he has. gently lifts up jack's arms. but he can see that jack has two arms. and a nose somewhere in the middle of his face. and jack giggles.

kieran asks if jack can help him find something - a brush that's been misplaced. jack lights up immediately. and that's how kieran got his best little helper ever

[evyyy77]

(hit comment limit)

(it's 11 in the morning)

*Scared*

(shucks)

(it's 11 at night)

BUT WHY THEY'RE SO SILLY :[

[areafae]

Teenage reader here, I live in a non anglophone country and have only just started 8th grade level English classes. (My previous classes were um, "Have you seen my dog?" at the tender age of 15...) I'd absolutely love to hear about Death of the Author! I know it means something like 'After a work is published the readers are free to interpret as they please.' Please tell us!

Ok so, all of this is with the caveat that it's been nearly ten years since I last studied this stuff officially. I've done a brief Wikipedia re-read this morning to make sure I remembered all the key details. This isn't going to be the most in-depth breakdown, but more a quick intro to the concept and a run down of how I apply it.

This got... long, so I've tried to break it up into reasonable chunks.

Some quick keywords:

Text - the piece of media being discussed (doesn't have to be written, Text is used to describe anything that literary theory is being applied to. I once wrote an essay treating a pedestrian crossing as a Text by applying psychoanalytical theory to it. Anything can be a Text).

Author - The creator of the Text. Can be applied collectively.

Reader - person consuming and engaging with the Text.

.

A little history; The name 'Death of the Author' comes from an essay by a french Literary critic and theorist (Roland Barthes), written back in 1967. The going literary theory at the time was very Authorial Intent focused, and the essay speaks out against that.

.

So, your summary of 'after a work is published the readers are free to interpret as they please' is the modern, general understanding of the theory. Barthes' original theory takes that a bit further. It's not that Readers are free to interpret as they please, it's Readers are creating a version of the Text as they read it and therefore have just as much authority to interpret as the Author.

Basically, just as an Author will bring their own biases and experiences and understandings to a Text when they are creating it, a Reader does all of that too as they read it. The Text exists outside of both of those interpretations, but it is informed equally by them.

The Text is it's own thing, it exists purely in the moment it is consumed.

(Note that I don't think this is a *perfect* theory. I think all the best literary analysis comes from taking elements of different theories and applying the parts that work and disregarding the parts that don't).

.

My best understanding of the idea that the Author is Dead, not just being ignored, is to think of it this way:

If we are defined by the collective results of our experiences/memories, we are constantly becoming a new person with every experience that we collect. The Author is Dead because the person that created that Text no longer exists, they have grown and changed and collected new experiences. An Author may have had specific intentions when creating a Text, but the Author *becomes* a Reader of their own Text the moment it is complete, because the act of creation is an experience and it changes you to do it.

.

So how do I apply this to fandom (and my own writing)?

People have spoken a lot about creator/character separation recently, and it's basically that. The creators are the Authors, they have created a Text (the character) and now as Readers we get to do whatever the hell we want with the characters.

I also use it when faced with what is usually called Word of God content - the extra bits of information given outside of the main content. (ie streams, tweets, etc). To me, this is just bonus stuff that, if you want to use it to inform your understanding of canon then that's great, but it has no more weight of authority than an interpretation that is not informed by that extra content.

(And don't get me wrong, I LOVE extra content. I'd be a hypocrite not to, given I have made big lore dump tumblr posts for my own fics. But if people read my works and not the lore dumps and come up with their own interpretation, then that is just as valid).

In terms of my own writing, I also find the theory kind of liberating.

The Author is Dead. The me that I was when I wrote what I wrote is gone, and I have grown and changed since then. I get to look back at my own work not as an Author, but as a Reader. it just feels like less pressure, sometimes, to know that once the thing you are creating has been created, you get to see it through different eyes.

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I am going to finish this long ramble by linking this video essay by Lindsay Ellis (with the note that I haven't rewatched it recently, but I remember it being a very good and clear explanation of the topic, with Lindsay's fantastic deadpan humour).

Hope this was at least somewhat interesting and informative for people, it's something I'm very passionate about <3

[mikeymcmillin]

he's fun to draw

[skybluekagikun]

Guys he fucking did it

He became Hirano's pet 🫢

Everyone cheer and applaud now 👏👏👏

[somerandomdudelmao]

Basically the last panel

WHEEEEEEZE

[infectiouspiss]

only took 953 resets seeing 4 mimikyu each reset with 1 in 1,024 chance of a shiny but at least it's here