Weirdest interpretations of your work?

[ThisAdamGuy]

You know you've made it as an author when someone tries to assign depth and meaning to your story that you never intended it to have. I think it's called the "The Curtains are Blue!" phenomenon. What's the weirdest thing someone has gotten out of your work that you didn't intend?

For me, I used to have a friend who loved to play the armchair psychologist. You couldn't say two words to the guy without him trying to analyze you somehow. I let him read one of my books a few years ago (I forget which one) and he came out of it claiming it was a huge metaphor for my life growing up. He did some crazy mental gymnastics to justify it, but what it all boiled down to was "You're the hero, the villains are your parents, and you hate your parents."

 

[Seaspecter]

Let's see I think the strangest one was people thought that the MC was her father for a while.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Haven't really seen any - but I was not present in the class that discussed one of my very short stories (literally written in about fifteen minutes, and took half a page) that appeared in our college's literary magazine for half of a class period. I'm sure there were some bizarre comments and theories there, but I was too amused by the fact that they basically spent three times as much time discussing it as I had spent writing it to pry.

 

[Deleted member 84247]

I have a silly witch story that wasn't intended for me to think too hard about, but now commenters are making theories that are ridiculous as though I planned 50 steps ahead from the very beginning. Somebody was talking about my main character's archive being a way for her to carve out her own memories from the very beginning so she didn't have to deal with the loneliness of eternity.

 

[Valmond]

Let's see I think the strangest one was people thought that the MC was her father for a while.

Hey, don’t doubt, “I Transformed into My Father, Now the Demon Lord is After me”. Shame on you!

Jokes aside, that’s a weird one lol

As for myself, trying to think. I suppose peeps thinking the MC is heroic. Despite all the opposing points to that logic.

They ain’t a villain, but definitely not a hero. Hence the Anti-Hero.

Sometimes, you are better off letting peeps believe what they wanna believe.

 

[Seaspecter]

Hey, don’t doubt, “I Transformed into My Father, Now the Demon Lord is After me”. Shame on you!

Jokes aside, that’s a weird one lol

The demon lord would piss himself and run away if Anna actually was her father.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

You know you've made it as an author when someone tries to assign depth and meaning to your story that you never intended it to have. I think it's called the "The Curtains are Blue!" phenomenon. What's the weirdest thing someone has gotten out of your work that you didn't intend?

For me, I used to have a friend who loved to play the armchair psychologist. You couldn't say two words to the guy without him trying to analyze you somehow. I let him read one of my books a few years ago (I forget which one) and he came out of it claiming it was a huge metaphor for my life growing up. He did some crazy mental gymnastics to justify it, but what it all boiled down to was "You're the hero, the villains are your parents, and you hate your parents."

Worst interpretation of my story is that it is a typical smutty harem isekai.

Never they have been so wrong once they get to the end of my first volume. And even so whenever readers get to the 20th and 21st volumes.

 

[John_Owl]

A former work had a character getting savagely beaten. A reader guessed that it was representative of my childhood, even going so far as to suggest therapists to deal with healing abuse trauma.

My childhood was parentification, not physical abuse. It just made sense for the character to be beaten - they needed a severe trauma to trigger the story.

This story is no longer up anywhere and will not be posted again, largely due to this review. The artist's experience can shape the art, but the artist is NOT their art.

 

[RepresentingThree]

Someone once called a poem I wrote the work of a divorced blues musician.

Which was, something, to say the least.

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Something about misogyny. I just thought it would be hilarious if I took the phrase, "rape the rapist" and made it literal but against the female antagonist.