Reminder: People Interpreting Art Differently is Normal

Every single day on every single social media platform I see people arguing with each other, getting very vicious, because they interpret the text differently. I am constantly seeing being dissecting the text down to the word to prove that their interpretation of the text is not only the right interpretation, but the morally correct one. The special thing about art is that everyone takes something different from it. People reading the text and coming to different conclusions about it is not only normal, but also a GOOD thing.

I made a thread earlier this week about how Harris is not explicitly plus size in the text, but you could interpret the text that way and it’s not technically “wrong” either way. In that thread people were debating about whether the word “stocky” means that someone must be fat. To many people, the answer is yes and to others not. We all have different interpretations of what the word stocky means and that is normal, especially for descriptive words like that. I have seen people are argue about whether Connor has dark blond or light brown hair. People look at the same person and see different things based on their own idea of what the word means. There is no universal scale of blondeness to measure here.

I also see fans do this all the time when dissecting the conflicts between Shane and Ilya. You could come to the conclusion that Shane was selfish to Ilya in the Long Game. You could also come to the conclusion that his autism made it hard for him to pick up on Ilya’s feelings. You can even think both things could be true. There is no “right” or “moral” way to interpret the text.

I think people in this fandom need to get more comfortable with people disagreeing with them because it’s genuinely not that serious. People can interpret things in the text differently and that’s totally valid. Part of the reason this fandom is so crazy is because people spend so much time arguing over semantics instead of acknowledging that there is no universal truth.

Assuming someone is a bad person because they reach a reasonable conclusion about the media that’s different than your own interpretation is crazy. Obviously, things like racism, homophobia etc. should not be tolerated. But not everyone who thinks that Ilya bears some responsibility for his conflicts with Shane is “xenophobic and insensitive to the plight of immigrants.” Again, it could true that he bears responsibility AND that his experience as an immigrant shapes his decision. Both are completely valid ways to read the text. Instead of automatically jumping down each others’ throats we could so easily be like “interesting, have you considered how x plays a factor in this?” and that would open the door to a more productive conversation.

It is genuinely more fun for people to have differing opinions because it invites conversation instead of being an echo chamber. We should be celebrating this, not spending so many days arguing with people for simply disagreeing with us (something even I myself am guilty of too sometimes.) If their take is a reasonable conclusion to make from the book, and they aren’t being bigoted, we should be celebrating those differences. I think taking a second to remember this would make conversations in this fandom more nuanced and more interesting.