Here’s what’s baffling to me about people who get up in arms about “canon” and use the “it’s not canon” argument to invalidate people’s interpretations of media: canon doesn’t exist.
I mean, in so many words. Mostly, what people mean when they say canon is the notion that there’s ONE be-all-end-all ultimate true platonic-form meaning that usurps all other meanings and they have it because they watched the show harder than anyone, and that’s a fucking farce. Yes, there is a source material, and to an extent, that source material limits personal interpretation because it provides a basic framework for analysis.
But what actually ultimately gives source material value is the way that we as consumers choose to interpret it. And the way we interpret media and take value from it completely depends on our own life experiences, our own circumstances, our own perspectives and personal belief systems. No piece of media will ever be the same to two people. Ever. Ever. Ever. I might disagree with your canon, but I’m never going to invalidate it.
Okay so what I’m trying to say is: if I fucking think Dean is bi and you don’t, who gives a single shit? If we can both argue it, we’re both fucking right. Dean is Schroedinger’s Queer. Deal with it.
Word.
This post also makes me want to bring up something I’ve been wanting to talk about for a while but have been too lazy/ busy to write a post about: as far as media interpretation goes, especially with a TV show that has been on air for eleven years and has gone through several show runners, the so-called creators are no more than fellow consumers, and are therefore included in the Schrödinger’s Paradox of media interpretation.
Think about it for a moment: Jeremy Carver did not think up Dean. Robert Singer did not come up with the character of Sam. Not even Kripke did, not by himself. Dean, Sam and Cas (and everyone else on Supernatural) are characters created in a combined effort of the original show creator, all the writers that have written them over the years, the directors who’ve worked on the episodes, the range of actors that have portrayed them, and a handful of network executives who have recommended or restricted developments in those characters in order to boost ratings.
We all know the author is dead, but when it comes to SPN, the author never existed. Ever since the show aired, there has never been a single one answer to the question “so what’s Dean like”. Which means that a fic that takes the archetype of Dean (the “basic framework” @schmerzerling is talking about) and expresses that character in a way that positively engages the fan audience is just as valid as any episode that airs on the CW. Because seriously, how is Robert Berens joining the writing team in season 9 any different than a fic writer telling their own stories about these characters? They’re both working off the same source material, after all.
Tl;dr canon is a myth, and fandom being transformative is the whole point, so stop looking for “creator” validation and do whatever you want.
Look at these smart people.
Reblogging for “Schrodinger’s queer.” Also, true, but more importantly, “Schrodinger’s queer.”
I don’t watch SPN, but this a) is applicable across fandoms and b) reminds me of a post a friend of mine made a while back about a pedagogy problem she’s been working on: how to distinguish between what she calls “necessary interpretations” and “plausible interpretations.” Here’s the key section (all bolding is mine):
First of all, there is the necessary interpretation – something
that you absolutely need to get in order to make sense of the work at
all, but you still need some level of interpretative sophistication to
get there. For example, in My Last Duchess,
“the speaker is an irrationally jealous control freak who certainly
made his wife’s life miserable, regardless of whether he literally
murdered her or not” is a necessary interpretation; if you don’t get
that out of the text, you aren’t getting the poem. But many students,
particularly in gen ed classes, do not get that out of the text without
prompting, since the Duke isn’t about to TELL you he’s a control freak.
(Some students do not even get “the speaker’s wife is dead and he’s
showing somebody a picture of her” out of the text; I’m never sure what
to do about those.) So most of us, in gen ed classes, spend a fair
amount of time explaining HOW the poem shows that this is the case. In
that sort of situation, you really do need to teach a specific
interpretation, and try to make sure the class is on the same page about
it.
But there’s also the plausible interpretation, one that is clearly grounded in the text, but does not absolutely have
to be the case. Mutually-contradictory plausible interpretations can
co-exist. For example, I could argue that the Duke is so convinced of
his own rightness that he has no idea how much he’s just revealed about
his character, and then suddenly at the end of the poem he does realize
it, and his “Nay, we’ll go / Together down, sir” is a desperate attempt
to keep his listener from ducking out and telling the-Count-his-Master
to break off the marriage negotiations right now. You, on the other
hand, could argue that he knows exactly how much he’s revealing,
and wants the man to repeat it all to the Count’s fair daughter so she
will know what sort of behavior he expects of his next wife, and what
will happen to her if she doesn’t obey. We’re both right; or at least
we are if we can find sufficient textual justification for our
respective interpretations.
The post as a whole focuses on the difficulties this distinction can pose when you’re trying to teach texts in a way that simultaneously encourages students to debate plausible interpretations without giving the impression to the class that they are necessary interpretations, but the part about plausible interpretations is pretty much what OP describes. Dean being bi, for instance, isn’t a necessary interpretation in the sense that it isn’t what the story is about, so that the show makes sense whether he is or isn’t, but it is a plausible interpretation that can be supported with evidence from the show.
controversial: dumbledore would’ve made the right decision taking the 1991-1992 house cup away from slytherin even if harry and co. hadn’t saved the school and stopped voldemort from returning to power
Can I ask why? Genuinely curious here
Slytherin students didn’t have better academic performance and they certainly didn’t have better behavior than the other houses. What they did have was a head of house who would award his own students points for almost no reason while handing out penalties to other houses like candy. If Draco Malfoy answered a question correctly in potions, he’d be awarded ten points, while Hermione giving the same answer would lose ten points for being a know-it-all.
That’s the thing, the game was rigged in Slytherin’s favor. Snape set his own house up to win, through absolutely no merit of their own, seven years in a row with no penalty. Meanwhile Dumbledore is made out to be the one who “just hands victory to his own house” after four members of his house put their lives on the line to save the school from a genocidal mass-murderer.
Gryffindor deserved the house cup because their students saved the school, but even if they didn’t, Slytherin should have had it taken away from them because they didn’t earn it.
I can’t even condemn Dumbledore for letting Slytherin believe they’d won, sit in a green-and-silver dining hall, and then changing it when he announced they’d actually lost, because after seven years of cheating, it’s not enough for them to just lose. If they’d just lost, they’d think they were cheated out of something that’s rightfully theirs. Allowing them to believe they’d just once again been handed an award they didn’t deserve, and then giving it directly to the house that actually did something to deserve it, teaches a valuable lesson.
Anyway, if we’re going to criticize Dumbledore’s abilities as a school administrator for anything, it’s how unchecked he left Snape’s treatment of his students. Even putting aside the emotional and physical abuse he inflicted on his students, there should have been some provision in place to prevent his abuse of the points system before he had a chance to hand it to his own students for ONE year, let alone seven.
There should have been a provision that the current holder of the house cup is ineligible for participation in the next year’s competition. There should be an upper limit on how many points you can take away from another house’s students, and how many points you can give to your own students. Students should be able to appeal unfair penalties to the headmaster.
Point is, Slytherin shouldn’t get an award just because their head-of-house refuses to play fair
Are you forgetting that these are children you’re talking about here? I don’t believe that there is enough proof in the books that Snape could have skewed the points system enough to win every year, especially considering the bias that other houses have against slytherin, but that honestly shouldn’t even matter. The slytherin kids did work hard, just as hard as gryffindor did. You are trying to invalidate their accomplishments when the only person who would have actually done anything wrong was Snape. Allowing those young children to think that their hard work was being celebrated and then snatching it from under their noses with no explanation whatsoever does NOT teach a lesson that they can’t cheat. It teaches a lesson that their hard work will not be rewarded, especially since none of them were even cheating. It teaches slytherin kids who are young and impressionable that their accomplishments don’t matter.
You can’t ignore that they are very young children. It doesn’t matter what prejudices you hold against the slytherin house, because they were still young and they worked hard. You can argue that they maybe didn’t objectively work as hard but we will never know if that is true, and it doesn’t matter either way. Teaching young slytherins that their hard work and accomplishment are actually worthless only further leads to house rivalry, because those kids do not understand why they were treated so harshly.
Ok let’s assume that Snape’s well known favoritism toward his own House did not play any role in their winning the Cup seven years in a row and that said victories were the result of hard work alone: That does not in anyway invalidate the points that the four Gryffindors EARNED for their role in preventing the rise of Voldemort.
The main argument against the points seems to be that Dumbledore waited until the last minute to award. Ok let’s imagine what would’ve happened if Dumbledore had just quietly awarded the points to Harry in the hospital wing: as @lupinatic states in a comment on this post, Slytherin would definitely think they were “cheated”. As it is, Dumbledore put all the cards in the table and told everyone exactly why Gryffindor earned those points (points that they would have already had if Harry and co hadn’t previously lost 150 points a few weeks before; if nothing else all Dumbledore did was award a net 10 extra points to Gryffindor).
Furthermore you speak of a “prejudice against Slytherin house” that doesn’t exist, at least not to the extent some think it does. The reason that ¾ of the school resent Slytherin house is not only because the House at large seems to be genuinely nasty to most other students, but because it has a long history of prejudice and “blood superiority” (their password was literally “pureblood” while muggleborns were being attacked), not to mention many of them are the children of “former” Death Eaters, who almost certainly must have attacked or even killed the relatives of the other students.
Surely, you can make the argument that “not all Slytherins are bigoted children of death eaters,” but that’s the same as saying “not all white people are racist”: Maybe not but you can’t ignore the history of prejudice and abuse of privilege that is firmly entwined in the House’s legacy.
tl;dr yes they are children, and as evidenced from the behavior of many of them, they are children who are accustomed to having their own way because the system is often altered in their favor
Thank you! Also, @aroacestars, who says the Slytherin kids don’t know why they were ‘treated so harshly’ (for a value of ‘harsh treatment’ that means ‘expected to understand that another House’s students had done something worth rewarding’)? Maybe some of the younger ones didn’t, but I bet the older ones understood the subtext @raptorific laid out (’you don’t get a reward just for showing up, someone else well and truly earned it this year’) just fine.
As I mentioned in another comment on this post, this method of defending Slytherin House as wronged was super predictable – “they were children, just little tiny babies, and shouldn’t have had to experience this sort of disappointment just because Snape was a turd!”. First of all, not everyone wins all the time, not even when someone stacks the deck for you (which, again, they won’t always be doing). You have to learn to deal with loss gracefully, and the younger the better. Second, sometimes you think you’re winning and someone comes up from nowhere and overtakes you too late for you to secure a victory. Again, it happens, best learn it early. Thirdly, sometimes kids get screwed over as a result of adults’ actions. The kids shouldn’t get a reward they hadn’t earned just because an adult cheated for them. Children not getting a reward because someone else earned it isn’t cheating them out of anything, since they weren’t entitled to it to start with.
Finally, ALL of the students were between the ages of 11 and 18. They were ALL children, not just the Slytherins. Snape taught Gyffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw children that hard work and effort meant nothing, for seven years running, but according to a large segment of fandom that’s fine and dandy and those other three Houses should just accept it because it’s not the Slytherins’ fault. But if the reader dares to think that losing once, that not letting Slytherin endlessly dominate the Cup, won’t do Slytherin kids any harm and might do all four Houses a world of good? That’s just the result of ‘whatever prejudices we have against Slytherin House’. I’m so tired of Slytherin House not being given literally everything being interpreted as some sort of bigotry.
If Slytherin kids learned that hard work and effort can still be taken over if your opponent goes above and beyond the call of duty in a manner that deserves public celebration, that’s not a bad lesson, it’s not a result of prejudice, it’s not bullying, it’s not making inter-house rivalry worse. IT’S LIFE. Snape did them zero favours coddling them, and Dumbledore did them no favours by letting him. If ‘yeah, someone who risked their life to do the right thing is getting a reward instead of us’ is actually so shocking to the Slytherins, there was a problem that went WAY beyond ‘but but but they did all their homework though, they should be rewarded for that!’. When you’ve spoiled a child, you don’t just quietly keep doing it in hopes the kid will work things out themselves. Nor do you just change things hoping the kid figures out why. YOU TELL THEM. “This is the reason you’re not getting the thing you felt entitled to. Also, you weren’t entitled to it.”
“If ‘yeah, someone who risked their life to do the right thing is getting a reward instead of us’ is actually so shocking to the Slytherins, there was a problem that went WAY beyond ‘but but but they did all their homework though, they should be rewarded for that!’.” -lupinatic
Say it again for those in the back.
Also, lmao at the idea that Slytherins experience prejudice for being Slytherin.
Like, seriously, if the slytherins heard the “Harry and his friends literally saved everyone’s life and faced down the most dangerous evil wizard of all time so their house got the cup” and thought “I can’t believe he took it away from us ): we deserved it more ): I’m gonna cry myself to sleep” then they NEED some disappointment in their lives right quick because at that point giving them any kind of reward (or even attempting to soften the blow of the loss) is BAD FOR THEM.
And honestly? Yeah those kids should be punished for the fact that Snape rigged the game in their favor. And they should be made fully aware that it’s because of Snape that they’re not allowed to win. Snape is popular with his students because he lets them figuratively get away with murder.
They should be mad at Snape for taking their victory away from them, because by cheating for them, he not only said he didn’t believe in their ability to win it on their own merits, but he made it so any efforts they actually made to win were meaningless.
And making those children feel the negative consequences of being spoiled by an overly permissive teacher will teach them a valuable lesson, that being handed everything on a silver plate is what’s easiest for you but it’s not what best.
I read this theory, which postulates that Rey is the reincarnation of Anakin Skywalker, and thought it was interesting but unlikely.
On second/third/seventeenth thought though, I think this could be incredible. It’s definitely possible that this is true in a thematic sense (I don’t think they would actually reveal a reincarnation).
Now I’m not saying that all of this is definitely evidence for the theory, but it’s interesting to think of some aspects of the story and characters with this in mind.
You can’t deny the similarities between their early life experiences. A scavenger on a desert planet vs. a slave on a desert planet? Yes, Rey’s time on Jakku also brings to mind Luke’s early scenes on Tatooine, but ultimately Luke was only there because it was Anakin’s childhood home. Surely the writers were capable of coming up with a more interesting setting for Rey’s childhood but they specifically chose a barren desert planet. Why?
The scene at Maz Kanata’s. She says: “if you live long enough, you start to see the same eyes in different people.” She then focuses on Finn and his desire to run. By the time she turns her attention back to Rey, the scene moves on and we never get to hear her musings. But what if her conversation with Finn is a red herring, and that line was really meant to make us question whose eyes she can see when she looks at Rey?
The lightsaber. This is the biggest piece of evidence for me. Yes, it also ‘called’ to Luke, but his experience is wildly different from Rey’s. Rey is thrown into a series of insane flashbacks and has a violently negative reaction to Anakin’s former weapon. She also hears Obi Wan’s voice – which in my fave theory points to her having Kenobi blood – but he was also Anakin’s mentor and brother.
Maz, again: “they’re not coming back, but there’s someone who still could”. Rey thinks she means Luke physically coming back. A lot of the fandom thinks she means Ben coming back to the light. But what if she means Anakin?
It would give us the ultimate rivalry – Rey vs. Kylo Ren as an analogue of Anakin vs. Darth Vader.
(Side point: How exactly did Ren come across Darth Vader’s helmet? Is it possible he also came across his lightsaber? I’ve written before about how Ren’s lightsaber looks shoddy and makeshift; it doesn’t completely correlate with what we know about how powerful he is. Surely he’s capable of making a perfect saber? But what if he is clinging to this dodgy one because it contains a piece of Darth Vader’s weapon?)
Ren (in the novelisation): “It is you”, after Rey calls the saber to her. Yeah, she could be his sister/cousin/long-lost padawan (not a fan of any of these theories personally), but I think what we’re meant to draw from this in the fact that even though Ben undeniably has Skywalker blood, the saber has chosen Rey over him as Anakin’s heir. Why?
HOW FREAKING COOL would it be if, during their battle(s), Rey is using Anakin’s weapon while Ren is using (a piece of) Vader’s?? Amazing.
Basically, this trilogy could be the story of the ultimate redemption of Anakin as he saves himself from the Dark Side, ends the First Order, and finally brings the galaxy full-circle: restoring balance to the Force and finally fulfilling the prophecy.
Again I don’t think a reincarnation would ever become part of the official canon, but I think the themes are definitely shining through. Of course Rey is already the spiritual successor of both Anakin and Luke in a narrative sense, but what if they decided to take it a step further?
Okay okay but what if in episode 8 Rey says to Luke: “are you my father?”
And Luke looks at her and says: “no, *you* are my father.”
“We knew, that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, to build a better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down.”
HYDRA doesn’t need you to be a Nazi. That’s a distraction; HYDRA merely asks that you mistrust and hate other people. That’s their way in, and it’s an easy one: just turn on the news. People are terrible, dead set on destroying the environment, history, ideals, and – most of all – each other… Not you, of course. You know better. So isn’t it then your duty to save people from themselves, even if they can’t see it’s for their own good?
Once HYDRA knows your cause, it’s just a matter of looking up the correct script in their asset-handling files and telling you what you want to hear. Everybody has a file.
“I know I’m asking a lot, but the price of freedom is high; it always has been.
It’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”
This is why Steve is HYDRA’s antithesis. It’s more than fighting bullies – his worldview is entirely incompatible with their vision because each is based on opposite conclusions about humanity. Steve is willing to bet on us.
It’s telling that HYDRA’s answer to Captain America is an ‘ideal’ soldier who has been utterly stripped of identity and agency, while Steve represents both the desire to be better and the freedom to make that choice. For himself; for everyone. This is not naivete. Anyone who survives to adulthood will have long-since learned that justice may exist, but is far from guaranteed, and Steve’s decision to both love and trust others is a dangerous one. As others have said: choosing to be a moral person in an amoral world is one of the hardest things there is.
“Grandad loved people. But he didn’t trust them much.”
Fury is interesting.
He doesn’t share HYDRA’s contempt for humanity, but it’s no coincidence that he delivers his anecdote about lacking trust even while Project Insight, the poisonous fruit of this mindset, looms in the background. He represents the gulf between HYDRA’s misanthropy and Steve’s defiant faith in others, the complicated middle-ground between two complicated extremes.
Nick’s paranoia is hard-earned – it’s a survival mechanism – yet the behaviors that made him successful were instrumental in HYDRA’s infiltration of SHIELD. His rational reaction to evil also allowed that evil to perpetuate itself. But what do you do if that’s the only way you know how to live?
