An excursion into Manehatten with his sisters finds Big Macintosh face to face with his favorite author, Silver Tongue. It just so happens that Big Mac is just the sort of pony that Silver Tongue has been looking for - someone he can tell a very special story.
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Ooh....now that was an excellently-told story. Kudos, very well-done!
I love every thing you write. I really like Silver Tongue, he seems like he has a wonderful personality. I also loved Applebloom's excitement, it was infectious. And you taught me some cool words today, thank you!
Beautiful and poignant. Apple Bloom's excited reactions were a great counterpoint to Big Macintosh's calm and Silver Tongue's reserve.
I have to ask, is Big Mac the foal that he gave up for adoption?
169037
(sorry for taking so long to respond, I'm graduating college soon. It's been... intense).
Have you ever heard of a concept called "death of the author"? It's a literary theory that basically states an author should never comment on his own work or the meanings held therein - or rather, that he should never insist on a single meaning. The idea is that while an author may have INTENDED something, what a person takes from a work is ultimately their own. In other words, what an author claims about the intent of a work is no more or less valid than what a reader may assume about it.
What I'm getting at is that, while I may have written it with a specific notion in mind, whether or not it's the case is up to the reader. That's why it was kept vague - to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions on the matter. Either way the tragedy is still palpable; a father and son missing each other by inches, or a lonely old man confiding in a pony he knows he'll never see again just so he can have some connection. It doesn't really matter Big Mac is really Little Apple or not, so you can decide that for yourself.
...God, that probably sounded so pretentious, didn't it?
272995 First and foremost, congratulations on graduating college! There is no need to apologize for focusing on your education. That is much more important than responding to my simple question. I had an idea that it was supposed to be something left up to the mind of the reader, I still could not help myself from asking. That being said, I really enjoyed this story. I thought it was wonderfully touching.
272995
I became acquainted with that concept in a class that was... barely conencted to its stated purpose. I got one of THOSE professors. One with their own pet theory and a REALLY narrow focus. And frankly... it shocked and horrified me.
It sounded like... if an author said, "No, no, you misunderstood" then THEY were wrong. That an author could be wrong about their own work because some blithering dolt wanted to read in something that isn't there. Bollocks to that! They wrote the bloody thing. They can say what it means all they like. At the very least, that's their right as the one that took the time out of a life, spent moments that can never come back, and crafted something. They can damn well tell folks what it means.
Sorry. I have a standing war with some of the "fluffier" parts of my chosen major. Oh English, why are you such a harsh mistress?
1122635
I don't think that's quite the right way to look at it, myself. At the very least, It's not the way I view it from my perspective as an author.
The way I think of it is this: I can write it with an intended meaning, but symbols are just that: symbols. and symbols mean different things to different people. For example from this story, the champagne could easily be interpreted as a symbol for this or that thing - a delusion of grandeur, perhaps; a facade taken on to forget about what one was and had left behind. and while I would consider that to be an entirely valid interpretation of it, in the act of writing I meant it as nothing more than a literal hint to the fact that Silver tongue had taken to Alcoholism in his loneliness - self imposed or otherwise.
Basically, an author can have his own opinion on what a story 'means', and it is no less valid than anyone else's - but at the same time it is no MORE valid than anyone else's. there is no 'wrong' or 'right' when interpreting a work, there is only what you, as the reader, feels.
1122698
Maybe I've done too much study into scientific matters, where papers are meant to remove all ambiguity and there are really right answers.
But as well, I see it as an insult. If I told someone to his face that he was a liar when he said that something he wrote meant something specific, in opposition to what I thought, I would be a stone cold assface if I got even the slightest bit upset if he was to punch me repeatedly in the face and genitals. Symbols are symbols and can mean different things, but they meant a specific thing to the one writing the work. Which is why new "takes" on old literature grind my gears. They're just making things up. It's like watching a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode except instead of deflecting the mkain warp coil off the deflector array, with tachyons, the waving grass represents gay sex. Occam's razor would demand that the fewest assumptions be used. and hearing from the author involves exactly zero assumptions.
But this may just be me. In my own stories there ARE right answers. Yours too I would imagine, but you have to give in to post-modernist interpretation because, well, academia demands I guess. The only way to avoid that is to be very old and teach Elizabethan drama. No one will EVER tell professor Stewart he has to speak for the authors and read in what isn't there.
So, you obviously have some notion. What is the right answer? You made it. That makes your interpretation the right one. That's what a canon is.
Oh, so the Big Mac is son of Silver Tongue and her wife, excellent.
1619521
I think your right, butt I was a little disturbed by that we never got a strait answere.... Big Mac should come home to Sweet Apple Acres, look him self in the mirror, think of the tale he heard and then deside to ask Granny Smith a question, and that question shooud be if he is adopted!
Eh. It was pretty good what it was, but I found what it was to be pretty take-it-or-leave-it. It'd probably hit me differently if I read it at a different time.
1123337
No, a canon is a body of (written) work. If it isn't written as part of the body of work, then it's not canon, maybe Word of God but not canon. (Something in the story is canon, something the author says about the story is Word of God.)
I feel like there's a confusion over what the author INTENDED versus what something MEANS. The champagne Kegisak mentions could mean any number of things, regardless of what he intended, as he points out. To me? I 'unno. He was drinking something during the story, I didn't pay any more head to it. (Does that make me a bad reader? I hope not.) In a similar way, Keg has a way he thought the story went as he was writing it, but he deliberately left it out (wrote it out?). He could have amplified it instead, bypassing the "death of the author" problem by putting the 'meaning' into the story. (In this case, that would have been a not-good thing.)
Then there's the matter of "what the author meant, what the author thought he meant, and what the author meant but didn't know he meant". (It doesn't help that I tried to draw a distinction, and now I'm blurring it, does it?) I've even run across a minor case of the last in my own writing, I was lucky enough to recognize it and so can exploit it.
Now, if the author intends something specific, and fails to get that across for reasons that aren't cultural, then there's problems.
But even though it seems your prof was mostly wrong I think "That's not what I intended" is better than "No, you misunderstand".
4139543
So if my readers concoct some ludicrous bullhonkus that I neither intended nor implied nor put in a supplemental blog post then I'm wrong about my own story? I took the time to write it! If the reader wants a universe with that stuff, they can write it. I'm an intelligent, sapient creature. I have telos. What I intend is what I intended. When I take the time to craft stuff it's an insult to find my efforts reduced to "Now let me tell you what you mean, worthless mister author man."
But I may be sensitized because I agonize over my extended headcanon and supplements.
4139817
Now wait a minute, are you talking about stuff like "the main character of this shipping fic is secretly gay", or trees having epileptic fits? Because there's death of the author, there's some degree of outright crazy, and then there's just plain stupid.
It seems to me that "death of the author" serves two purposes: The first is to acknowledge that the author will be literally dead sooner or later, if they aren't already, and so we might as well focus on what we'll have past that; and the second is to point out to new writers "if it's not in the story, it doesn't count, so make darn certain that what you mean gets in the story itself". (This second aspect likely having arisen in defense against crappy, half-told stories. If the author has to narrate over the reader's shoulder, then the story is wrong.)
I'm willing to generalize that anyone saying to you "now let me tell you what you mean" is dead wrong, unless you actually don't know what you mean and asked them for help. (I've found that "this is what I thought you meant" can be helpful, as it tells me whether what I intended came through right.)
I'd file "agonizing over extended headcanon" as "normal".
4139904
I'll admit, you have an excellent point regarding ensuring it's all there. BUT I am also a big believer in "All there in the manual." Word of God via supplements, extended side-stories and official releases should be regarded as canon if it's about minutiae that either can't be integrated or would be awkward to work in, like the name of a side-character's cat or that someone used to like mint tea until they spilled a cup in their lap. Look at all the reams of additional work Tolkien and Lovecraft wrote.
More things should be left alone once Jossing happens.
I'm also a bit worried about "Everyone is Jesus in Purgatory" when Jesus in Purgatory is not the Government's preference (or when a powerful reader doesn't want it.) If an author must protect themselves from a misinterpretation by an official body or a sufficiently wealthy or powerful critic then they may turn against the idea that "all interpretations are valid."
4139965
Minutia and supplements like that, sure. (As an aside, do video game 'manuals' count as part of the game's canon?) But I'd hardly consider the meaning of a story "supplemental". (Well, maybe unless it was about Death of the Author or something like that, in which case we get into some weird contortions.)
The "powerful reader/everyone is Jesus in Purgatory" problem is a valid concern, but the way you present it sounds to me like they're going to read it in whether it's there or not, which I think shades into a different problem than death of the author.
I'm afraid I don't understand your Jossing connection, but then I don't know much about Jossing. (The sum total of my experience is avoiding S4 because I know it will.)
(Does this shade into excessive digression by now?)
4144500
It might. But it's a great discussion.
Jossing, as far as I know, is when the creator or an authorized party/organization confirms or denies a fan theory. In essence, word of God specifically affecting fan theories.
I guess I just get curmudgeonly about my works because it's my work, and I know better than anyone else what it means. I'm the one that slavednover making it.
4145339
I thought Jossing was the destruction of a fan theory without referencing the fan theory, and specifically doing so in canon. But looking at TVTropes it seems I remembered wrong. Still don't understand the connection you made, though.
4153343
Mostly it was me saying "Once Jossing happens, fanon that has been Jossed ought to wither and die, not be stubbornly perpetuated." It's disrespectful to the creators who took the time to create.
4156793
You're right, and furthermore I find I agree with you. ...I'll just slink off now.
Huh.
4162253
This was a wonderful conversation. I'm almost sad it's over.