It is genuinely one of the coolest things ever when someone reads a story of mine and makes a completely different assumption about a character than I did. It’s wilder still when they assume this interpretation is obvious or objective or what I intended or something.

At one point, a commenter wrote a comment under And Ophelia Blinked, with something to the effect of, “Finally, the nice guy gets revenge! Thank you for writing this hero that people can relate to!” I hope that commenter never reads this blog for reasons that’ll become obvious in the next sentence. In my mind, I portrayed Randy as a scumbag jerk who fancies himself a nice guy, and has been corrupted by his own power while being deluded into thinking he’s someone uncorruptable by such power.

When I first released And Ophelia Blinked, I was worried about its subtlety, or rather, its lack thereof. Comments like that reassure me, since if there is at least more than one way to take a character, there’s room for interpretation, and thus, I might be overestimating just how hamfistedly I wrote the entirety of And Ophelia Blinked, particularly the ending.

As well, the speculation on the character of Cameron is interesting. Some people note that it’s “obvious” that Cameron also has mind control powers too, while others note the “interesting duality between a common manipulator and a seemingly kinder person willing to do much worse.” Is either interpretation wrong? Hell no! Did I write it with one of these two in mind? Yes. Will I tell you? Well… I’d like to say, “you will never know,” but knowing me, I can’t help but gush about what I was thinking while writing a story, as if that’s at all important to the story itself. Your interpretation is much more important than my intended message. Intentions can go out the window. If you need to know an artist’s intention to truly enjoy the work, perhaps a behind-the-scenes featurette would do you better than a story.

(Plus, I have a terrible memory, maybe I already revealed that in an earlier blog. Who knows? I clearly don’t.)

I love when people give their speculations, interpretations, and theories on my stories. Like I talked about before, patrons have even tried to piece together my stories in a more all-encompassing way, and it’s been very interesting to see it play out, as well as flattering for people to care about these characters so much. Here’s hoping they still will care as these characters evolve. And even if they don’t care for the characters, hopefully it’s because I made the characters jerks instead of starting to write them poorly in my old age (“old age” being, in this case, 25, the new middle age). I’ll talk to you all next week.