Now, I'm normally not the type to rant about something online. It's just not my thing, but as of late I've been aching to go off on someone about a deeply personal pet peeve. When people try to talk to me about writing as if "the drapes are just blue because blue is a nice color", it drives me nuts. Like bonkers, ready to chew off a limb to get out of this conversation. I know I'm biased because I am a writer who will one day, hopefully, be a professional author, but it makes me want to thrash people like they're Shake Weights when they try to talk character development and plot and analysis of fiction and movies and say "Well, it's all up to interpretation," to defend their obvious projections. It's annoying, and, to be frank, insulting. I want to be a writer, so trust me when I say that it is not just up to interpretation. Writers don't just come up with stories so they can mean whatever people want them to. There is craft involved; there is intention behind every scene, every image, every character, every word. There is nothing I can't stand more than watching a movie/tv show, trying to analyze it, and having someone discount my analysis because they don't like it. For instance, I've watched movies with friends and tried to discuss the inner workings of the writing and staging and had them completely shut down my arguments because they wanted to see it differently. They had no evidence, nothing from the text (the movie), to disprove my point but even still they decided to interpret the film however they felt like because, apparently, movies and books are like that. Apparently, evidence that supports a position does not matter, despite everything high school literature (and even science classes) put forth.

I always try to understand why people are so uncomfortable when I try to analyze films, television, and books and believe that it is because, by asking for someone's opinion on something, I raise the conversation from a casual level to one where something is at stake. That something, in most instances, is the validity of the opinion that the person puts forth, the rightness of their thoughts. Therefore, when I present my opinions, opinions formed from carefully watching and taking note of what it is I am watching, it is natural to want to discount what I say as having come from the same place as most people: a place of passive observance. Most people don't go into a movie/television show/other art based form of entertainment to deconstruct what they see, so when asked to, it is easy to become defensive, and I get that. I get that people want to believe they are right in their beliefs, even if that belief is just a cursory analysis of something they deem ultimately unimportant, but I still hate it when evidence is ignored, especially when I know what I'm talking about.