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Nick Fury delights at the sound of rustled jimmies
"A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations."
— Umberto Eco, postscript to The Name of the Rose
This was going to be a response to my very awesome and passionate debate with D9 in the Barlowe thread, but I judged that topic has been derailed enough already and so I shall move the debate (which has also shifted in focus significantly) here to a new home and invite people of all literary persuasions to weigh in.
But, before we get started here, let's get a disclaimer out of the way.
THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION OF WHAT IS CANON OR WHAT IS NOT, THIS IS A DISCUSSION ON NARRATIVE THEORY, ART, AND ART APPRECIATION
Given the argument I'm about to make, I fully expect jokes to be aimed at me once people have read this. Go ahead, I've pretty clearly got it coming but I felt this was important enough to risk some barbed humor.
I'm a big believer in Death of the Author.
Here's the deal: Iga, while knowledgeable and passionate about the subject matter of Castlevania, is not god. He can offer very enlightening details on his intent, and fascinating tidbits and interpretations, but in the end, a story is owned by the reader, not its author.
Iga just happened to collect royalties on the damn thing.
So he can "clarify" as much as he wants, but his views are no more authoritative than mine. A canon only holds for those who agree to it, and I, for one, have not agreed to the entirety of what Castlevania's canon brings to the table. This doesn't break the franchise for me. I disagree with a lot of stories. That's okay though. That's good. It keeps debates interesting. The spirit of Iga's canon is in the right place, surely, but in light of finding better explanations, I will lean on the side of what I have found explains things best. Sometimes that's whatever the current "official" explanation is, other times it's what I have come to see as true.
Alternative facts are not a nice thing to have in one's White House, Kremlin, or Downing Street, but in fandom, they're the lifeblood of a debate. It's part of why Castlevania persists.
Once the story hits public eyes, an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no weight in regards to an interpretation of their writing. In other words, a writer's interpretation of his own work is no more or less valid than the interpretations of any given reader.
I'm gonna quote TVTropes here because, as usual, it's phrased brilliantly there.
"Although popular amongst postmodern critics, this has some concrete modernist thinking behind it as well, on the basis that the work is all that outlives the author (hence the concept's name) and we can only judge the work by the work itself. The author's later opinions about their work are themselves a form of criticism and analysis, and therefore are not necessarily consistent with what's written unless the author or publisher actively goes back and changes it—and it can still be argued that, since the original work still exists, the author has merely created a different version of it."
So, Iga's notes and interviews are fascinating. They lend a lot of helpful information about his intent and the development process. But they are by no means authoritative just because Iga said them/wrote them. That being said, if Iga is the creator of the particular game in question, I do tend to weigh his input more heavily than I would if he were talking about, say, Simon's Quest for example. I generally like to believe an author at least has a more concise view of works they personally handled, but this is no guarantee that one should accept it just because the author said it.
We also have our own fanons regarding Castlevania, and sometimes it keeps with official continuity, other times we lambast or outright ignore elements we don't like.
(http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fanon-discontinuity_xkcd4_9883.png)
I tend to do this to people who insist Torchwood: Miracle Day was in any way good.
Comic Book Guy: That was an imaginary story dreamed up by Jimmy Olsen after Supergirl's horse Comet kicked him in the head. It never really happened.
Bart Simpson: Hey, none of this stuff ever really happened.
Comic Book Guy: ...Get out of my store.
— The Simpsons, "Husbands and Knives"
Now, fanon discontinuity can make debate very difficult (again, guilty as freaking charged here), but it still ties into the above principle: that the author, and said author's intent, is not the only valid viewpoint or interpretation. Or, in simpler language, "the beholder has rights too."
Foooor instance... I personally don't even really acknowledge Dawn as canon at all. In my opinion it's a badly and sloppily written installment that raises more questions than it answers. Fun game though. So I regard Dawn like Iga regards Legends: fun game, but it just doesn't properly fit.
This is obviously a minority view, and I'm okay with that. But I have found that when one removes Dawn from a list of "things which have happened in the Castlevania universe", a host of things make much more sense. Ignoring it isn't something I did lightly though, as I used to be quite a canon purist. After playing through it a dozen times and trying six dozen different ways of understanding it and how it changes things simply because the developers needed some sort of plot justification for why things happened, I finally realized that it was just never going to make logical or narrative sense to me. In my eyes, it's the problem child of Castlevania's plot. Fortunately, it's at the extreme end of the timeline, doesn't really deal with any major events (mostly just serving as a rehash of the previous game), and is relatively easily and harmlessly chopped off without affecting anything else in the series. Sort of barely like a tumor, but I don't go back and revisit those because they were a fun romp through Dracula's Castle That Isn't Actually Dracula's Castle.
Okay the tumor comparison was mean. Dawn isn't quite that bad. Like I said, it is a fun game. I just skip the cutscenes.
Because, as Sterling Archer once said (on a show that is a work of fiction) "the mind, can, in fact, vomit."
Canonically, it does happen. It explains things. Or at least it tries to. And there are definitely guys in the fandom who swear by the Dawn of Sorrow New Testament. Doubtless, I'm sure that Iga meant for these events to be canon (or Konami just forced him to rush a story so they could get another game out, which would explain a lot). That's cool. I try to be chill about these sorts of disagreements when they come up because I'm clearly one guy who has personalized my headcanon and most people would rather go with the official explanation. You keep doing that, guys.
But I'm in danger of rambling forever on this topic, so I will finish this as concisely as possible.
- Iga is not the be-all-end-all word of Castlevania
- If you find some alternate explanation that makes better sense to you, go with it as long as it doesn't entirely contradict what's been told in the work itself
- This isn't history class and there is no test at the end. None of this stuff ever actually happened, so feel free to ignore stuff you dislike
- If you ignore stuff as mentioned above, be prepared to defend your reasoning (it doesn't have to be a thesis statement though)
- "I just plain (don't) like it" is a perfectly valid rationale for invoking number 3.
- Video games are meant to be enjoyed. Enforce your own fanon with yourself in whatever way heightens your enjoyment of the game, because if you're not enjoying the game, you're doing it wrong.
- A canon is not a contractual obligation to you as a fan. It's a stern suggestion and set of guidelines, but a suggestion and set of guidelines it remains. You don't have to agree with it
- Even if you don't agree with canon, you still have to live with everybody who does, so always be excellent to your fellow fans no matter how heated the arguments.
- Nothing in fiction is ever fully permanent (except maybe Uncle Ben's death) and so things are ALWAYS open to debate.
And that's really all I have to say for now on this topic.
Have fun debating, my little nerdlings!
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Here is the thing: You're valuing your opinion equal (if not higher) than a person who was paid to do research and to produce the plot of the game product that you consume -- not develop. This person has not only done extensive research, but has had contact with the previous people involved with the same product to know what their intentions were and where their stories were heading. This person lost nights of sleep and the company of his family just so you could come here and say "Nah, my headcanon is better. Fuck the canon, I'll play by my own rules."
You don't get to say "it's just fiction, chill" because it's not "just fiction". It's years of hard work, sweat, blood and tears. Castlevania has an impact on the world and on the people involved with developing it.
While you can play by your own rules, you'll be ostracized for it. Because the majority of us respect the writer enough to not think we are above the rules he set for the story he has created. This will lead to you discussing apples while all of us are discussing oranges, and all in the name of a sincerely bullshit statement that is as subjective as you claim IGA's "opinion on his work" to be:
"but in the end, a story is owned by the reader, not its author."
What use, then, do we have for authors? If we can just up and shit something we think is superior, then no use in even buying books at all, right? But that's not the reason we buy stories. We buy them to be surprised with every next chapter, not to "compete with the author".
Look, if I write that John could fly because his head could inflate when he blew his own thumb, you better believe that's exactly what I meant. Doesn't matter what you think, doesn't matter if you like it. It's a "like it or leave it" kinda deal -- either you suck it up that John could fly due to his inflatable head, or you'll have to write your own story with your own John that flew by some other means. It's not a competition. The moment you buy my story, you ARE signing a contract to let ME tell it to you -- you don't get to rewrite what I did and act as if it has as much intellectual value.
This thread reminds me of that episode from My Wife and Kids where Jay is so up her own ass that she believes to know better what the author thinks without doing any research- better yet, after doing "her own" research. When Michael contacts the author to know their intent and brings this info back to Jay's book club, she refuses to even acknowledge the correct spelling of the author's name, all because she values her own opinion WAY too high.
Episode, for reference:
[ Invalid YouTube link ]
This is called "respect". You respect the writer and his work enough to not try and pretend you're better than them at their own creation based on their own thoughts. On their own creation, yes, they are god. The entire plot of a story revolves around WHAT THE AUTHOR THINKS AND WANTS TO TRANSMIT. This is the whole reason why you can't bend it to your whim -- the story breaks.
Sure, you have works that are meant to be interpreted and open ended. Castlevania is not such a work, and I don't think I should quote manuals to tell you that. Castlevania is not a philosophical essay nor commentary in subjectivity. You may argue here that it is commentary on subjectivity because Dracula thinks the powerful define justice, but you'd be missing the story is telling you that this is WRONG and Dracula is incorrect on his assumption.
I wonder what would happen if IGA sat down one day and thought exactly like you do -- screw the previous work, now Belmonts will be ducks disguised as humans. And Dracula's "kill all humans" schtick will just be slang for "I really love tomato juice". Not only that, but decided that this should be canon ALONG WITH the previously established work.
Ask yourself what would happen if he thought that his opinion was just as high -- if not higher -- than the statements of the previous developers on Castlevania, instead of respecting and BUILDING UPON their work, and subsequently earning the right to have his opinion be as high than the other authors'.
LoS may have been mostly shit. But I have infinite respect for Alvarez in that he chose to do his own story -- going as far as to claim it doesn't belong on any canon but his -- instead of crapping up something on the canon just because "he didn't like it" or because "it didn't make sense to him".
TL;DR: I think your "the story is owned by the reader" act misinterprets the meaning of the line and is incredibly disrespectful to the writer. I am a writer myself, and if some fan of mine one day comes spouting this kinda nonsense to me after reading something I DID NOT meant to be "open ended", spent sleepless nights crafting it, years pondering specific plot points and innumerable hours away from my loved ones to build it, I'll sucker punch their neck so hard that their esophagus will turn into a snorkel.
You tried this stunt before. It didn't work. Now you have framed it with long words, funny references and quote mining, and it still doesn't work. It doesn't work because it wants to divide a fractured fanbase even more.
Also, some things I should mention:
"Despite the theory's title, Barthes never says that the author's own interpretation is completely unimportant—just that it is only one of many possible interpretations. This also does not necessarily mean that every interpretation is equally valid; an interpretation that is based on a flawed, incomplete, and confused reading of the text will always be flawed, incomplete, and confused regardless of how much Barthes' essay is raised in protest."
"How, for example, could a general criticize an underling for getting something absurd out of a set of instructions he or she may have given them? "Sir/ma'am, what makes you think you know what the orders meant just because you wrote them?"
The vibe I get from your post is "I did no research but I also want to be right, here is some essay proving it!!!!!"