The intent isn't always clear, but it is always present. You can't always interpret it, but there's no way to exorcise yourself of purpose when writing something. Whether or not the reader's interpretation is lesser or greater is irrelevant; it's about the intent's effect on the work. Autorial intent is always an underlying cause of why things happen in stories. It's not like stories just spring up, people write them, and people write for reasons.
but what if the reasons don't have anything to do with the reader
Like I really don't see how the latter quote changes anything about whether or not authorial intent matters, or, again, what he's supposed to even mean by it?
The intent isn't always clear, but it is always present. You can't always interpret it, but there's no way to exorcise yourself of purpose when writing something. Whether or not the reader's interpretation is lesser or greater is irrelevant; it's about the intent's effect on the work. Autorial intent is always an underlying cause of why things happen in stories. It's not like stories just spring up, people write them, and people write for reasons.
but what if the reasons don't have anything to do with the reader
Like I really don't see how the latter quote changes anything about whether or not authorial intent matters, or, again, what he's supposed to even mean by it?
i think it's because you think the reader's interpretation is irrelevant
i say without the reader's interpretation there isn't even a text as such, the text becomes just noise, not even signal
i don't think intent is irrelevant mind, intent definitely plays a large role in the creation of the text-object to begin with, it's just not something intrinsic that pervades the text itself, waiting to be teased out by an attentive reader
it's part of the formative process, and it influences the result, but it's not, like, losslessly compressed into it
Like maybe this is unfair to you but I'm getting really really sick of people just assuming various facets of my personality and beliefs if only because it makes it impossible for me to get a read on the kind of person I actually am.
No I don't! I never said that reader interpretation is irrelevant, just that authorial intent matters. I don't even know how you got that idea.
my apologies, then.
i was guessing based on your remark that "Whether or not the reader's interpretation is lesser or greater is irrelevant" when in fact that detail dictates the effect of the intent on the work
i was here assuming that by "lesser or greater interpretation" you're referring to my earlier remark about the reader's interpretation resembling the author's intention to a greater or lesser extent. (Without that qualification i'm not sure i can get behind the notion of "lesser or greater interpretation" at all.)
Like maybe this is unfair to you but I'm getting really really sick of people just assuming various facets of my personality and beliefs if only because it makes it impossible for me to get a read on the kind of person I actually am.
i'm not trying to make big assumptions, i'm trying to interpret your intention from what you're saying and apparently i'm failing.
It changes how the interaction between the reader and the writer works. a text has two parts to it, what the writer puts in and the reader takes back out, and anything that effects how this process happens and what that process means is very important.
like imagine that a text is a box. when you write, you come up with an idea in your head and put things into the box for the reconstruction of that idea, and when someone reads the text they take the things out of the box and make something out of them.
Traditionally writing is evaluated on effectiveness of communication, i.e. if the reader is able to put together your idea in the way you intended, and the content of the communication, i.e. if the reader likes the idea built out of the things you gave them.
BUT
that's not the only way to evaluate it.
Like what if the whole point of the process is just putting the things in the box? What if the writer doesn't put everything in the box and makes you scrounge around in your living room to find the bits you think you need to complete the idea? What if the writer gives you the pieces to make two, mutually exclusive things? What if the directions are deliberately less than helpful, and the puzzling through how the fuck you're supposed to put this together is the point? What if the point is simply the process itself?
it kind of doesn't diminish it, in the sense that authorial intent is not something that's available to the reader, it's something that precedes the reader's receiving of the text, so the two don't actually interact.
So I guess what I'm saying isn't that it changes the importance of authorial intent but it changes what the intent means
i should like some elaboration on this, if you wouldn't mind.
i don't think i agree, unless intent really is taken as being an aspect of the text in the sense that the author is a character that may be interpreted like any other. Then i'd agree, but i feel intent is not the best term for that, it's sort of misleading.
But it could be i'm misunderstanding you, or missing the bigger picture here.
i suppose my (maybe overly literal?) interpretation of the word intent might be the sticking point here and the reason Kex and i have been at cross-purposes at least some of the time here
But the short of it would be that, depending on how one approaches a text one engages with the author in different ways.
Like when I read Harry Potter I'm not engaging with J.K. Rowling in the same way that i'm engaging with Umberto Eco when I'm reading Foucault's Pendulum or the way I engage with Camus when I read The Stranger or the way I engage with the technical writer who wrote the manual that came with my new DVD player, and as such the writer, and by extension their intentions, and I meet in different ways through each of these texts.
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
(i would add the qualifier that it's not strictly true to say you and the author ever meet, and if what you receive resembles their intent, it's because there's an isomorphism between their intention and your interpretation, which presumably arose because of shared understandings of certain formally encoded signs... though i think at this point i'm nitpicking the English language, rather than the point you're making.)
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
this has become a displacement activity for me, i think
finding ever more precise ways to nitpick my interpretations of other people's posts in order to clarify a point which i intended to convey but which i interpret other people as having not derived from their interpretations of my attempts to convey my intention
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
I continue to disgust myself every time I post. Like now. I've been playing through the early Ultima games and this is more hilarious than painful but it's just making Pyridrym cringe a lot. I think Ultima is awesome because I'm a dork. Pyridrym plays a ton of roguelikes. I obsess over danmaku shit like the autist I am. I accomplish little in life but I try. I like when Pyridrym drags me to do things. The end.
@calica came to the doorway, said think fast, threw a pack of depends at me and I DID NOT REACT FAST ENOUGH. fortunately i had a pillow over my hips/legs so when it crashed into my bladder impact was lessened but still enough to be hilarious to me.
I'm just wondering how deserving it is of its branding as Quality Television™
A lot of Quality Television™ shows don't really appeal to me, because they mostly seem to be about amoral douches and no that's not really my thing (I'm pretty sure of my favored characters, Ren Höek and Cadpig come closest to being such but they still have hearts)
More people have said that and been killed than there are thorium decay products.
TV dramas are often about shitty people doing shitty things to each other, in my experience, and really this extends outside of TV as well and isn't *necessarily* bad but it does make humanity look quite bleak and I like to see a glimmer of light.
Comments
certainly i can get behind most of what naney said on the previous page
except i don't know what airheads are
i mean what i said, if you didn't mean what i thought you meant then surely you know exactly what i'm talking about?
i think it's because you think the reader's interpretation is irrelevant
i say without the reader's interpretation there isn't even a text as such, the text becomes just noise, not even signal
ah
i've never had them.
it's part of the formative process, and it influences the result, but it's not, like, losslessly compressed into it
i was guessing based on your remark that "Whether or not the reader's interpretation is lesser or greater is irrelevant" when in fact that detail dictates the effect of the intent on the work
i was here assuming that by "lesser or greater interpretation" you're referring to my earlier remark about the reader's interpretation resembling the author's intention to a greater or lesser extent. (Without that qualification i'm not sure i can get behind the notion of "lesser or greater interpretation" at all.)
i'm not trying to make big assumptions, i'm trying to interpret your intention from what you're saying and apparently i'm failing.
Yes.
like imagine that a text is a box. when you write, you come up with an idea in your head and put things into the box for the reconstruction of that idea, and when someone reads the text they take the things out of the box and make something out of them.
Traditionally writing is evaluated on effectiveness of communication, i.e. if the reader is able to put together your idea in the way you intended, and the content of the communication, i.e. if the reader likes the idea built out of the things you gave them.
BUT
that's not the only way to evaluate it.
Like what if the whole point of the process is just putting the things in the box?
What if the writer doesn't put everything in the box and makes you scrounge around in your living room to find the bits you think you need to complete the idea?
What if the writer gives you the pieces to make two, mutually exclusive things?
What if the directions are deliberately less than helpful, and the puzzling through how the fuck you're supposed to put this together is the point?
What if the point is simply the process itself?
in other news this is cool
i don't think i agree, unless intent really is taken as being an aspect of the text in the sense that the author is a character that may be interpreted like any other. Then i'd agree, but i feel intent is not the best term for that, it's sort of misleading.
But it could be i'm misunderstanding you, or missing the bigger picture here.
Good luck.
Like when I read Harry Potter I'm not engaging with J.K. Rowling in the same way that i'm engaging with Umberto Eco when I'm reading Foucault's Pendulum or the way I engage with Camus when I read The Stranger or the way I engage with the technical writer who wrote the manual that came with my new DVD player, and as such the writer, and by extension their intentions, and I meet in different ways through each of these texts.
(i would add the qualifier that it's not strictly true to say you and the author ever meet, and if what you receive resembles their intent, it's because there's an isomorphism between their intention and your interpretation, which presumably arose because of shared understandings of certain formally encoded signs... though i think at this point i'm nitpicking the English language, rather than the point you're making.)
finding ever more precise ways to nitpick my interpretations of other people's posts in order to clarify a point which i intended to convey but which i interpret other people as having not derived from their interpretations of my attempts to convey my intention
good night
It seems to mostly be about terrible people and terrible things they do and experience