#ok I know the creator didn't INTEND for her to be a complicated & interesting character. but he accidentally created one anyway so too bad!

[musical-chick-13]

Once again, I am fighting for my life against people who Do Not Understand my girl Misa.

[rahleeyah]

I thought I'd taken CM saying E's just figuring out how he feels for Liv ok. But somehow, this has been eating at me all week. Because IF I'm supposed to assume E didn't have romantic feelings for Liv all along, how tf can we excuse his behavior all this time? All the ghosting and avoiding and choosing other ppl only makes any sense if it was too complicated to face. Otherwise he just... doesn't deserve her. Makes me wanna hate him, but I still think he's her happy ending so it's not goin well..

i'm really glad you asked me about this bc it gives me the chance to say something that's been on my mind a lot lately:

it literally doesn't matter what chris says.

it literally doesn't matter. they do these interviews and the actors and producers give what are essentially their headcanons in answer to questions that have not been answered in the text but until those answers become text? they aren't real.

the only things that are real are 1) the actual, textual scenes and 2) your interpretation of them. you know that whole thing about how ten people can see the same thing and describe it ten different ways? that is so true and it applies here. your perspective on the scene is not less valid than someone else's. not even chris's.

chris said, off the cuff, in response to a question he presumably did not prepare remarks to answer, that he thinks elliot is figuring it out right now. does that mean that the actual canon character of elliot literally never thought he might be in love with olivia before now? does it mean that he's never been allowed to be in love with her before and he's figuring out what that means now? does that mean that he's figuring out how to be in love with her?

it's open to interpretation bestie!

what chris and mariska and the writers and producers think the characters are feeling, what they think their motivations are, inform what canon becomes. but again, until those thoughts become text, they are only one interpretation.

i throw a couple of phrases around here all loosey-goosey and i wanna talk about two of them you may have heard me use before. the first is "word of god". word of god refers to statements made by people with power in connection to the show. some fans treat those statements as "word of god", that is, as immutable truth that cannot be questioned and must be taken into account when viewing/analyzing a piece of media. some fans need word of god, want that affirmation that their perspective is the Correct(tm) one. and i understand it! we want to believe the creators are on our side, that our vision of what we think the show is and what it's trying to do is what's gonna happen.

i am not one of those people. i am interested in what they have to say but if i disagree with them i do not think that i have lost something, or that i am wrong bc the creators don't agree. i think we all have our headcanons and mine are as valid as anyone else's.

the second thing you'll hear me say a lot is "the author is dead". this is an actual theory of literary criticism that argues we should separate the work from the context of the author's identity and intentions. whatever an author intends, their work can have multiple meanings, perhaps even some meanings they didn't intend at all.

when i engage with a piece of media, i am engaging with what has been done on screen, and what i interpret from it. it doesn't matter if the producers and writers don't think elliot was in love with olivia, or think he didn't know he was; i've seen fault. whether it was intentional or not elliot's behavior in that episode can be interpreted as him being all too keenly aware of that love, and being afraid of it. that's how i interpret it. no one else, not even chris, saying otherwise will deter me from believing it.

so does elliot love olivia? how long has he known he does? does he deserve her?

you tell me, friend.