What the **** is an authors fallacy?

[BarryBBenson2]

I’m very confused on what an authors fallacy is
I found multiple different definitions not to mention that tons of them seem to conflict with most definitions of an OC fallacy
Someone please help me

 

[FinePoint]

Wikipedia has a pretty in-depth article on the subject.

Essentially, it's the idea that the intention of an author isn't relevant to the meaning of their work, but rather only the text itself holds meaning.

 

[Fixxed]

Essentially, it's the idea that the intention of an author isn't relevant to the meaning of their work, but rather only the text itself holds meaning.

Isnt that stupid, in context of fictional work

 

[FinePoint]

Isnt that stupid, in context of fictional work

That's a heavily debated topic.

Personally, I think so.

 

[DavidTPPM]

Imagine the author makes a character one punch through a planet on screen with no difficulty, then the author claims the punch is not even building level.
What do you take as more important? The thing that actually canonically happened or the thing author claimed later on outside of the work?

For more practical example take HP and JK Rowling. The books state and show Hermione has pale skin but Rowling tried to retcon her to be black. Now what's more canon, the stuff actually written and drawn on the book or the stuff JKR tried claiming as a PR stunt?

Personally I don't think author intent is useless but the moment author intent clashes with what's actually in the work I personally take what's in the work as more important

 

[Metalballrun]

It's more formally known as intentionality fallacy. You can say that the opposite of this fallacy, particularly in literature, is called Death of the Author. It's based on an essay by a literary critic that you can easily find online.

The gist of it, especially when used in forums like this one, is that authorial intent, or Word of God as a term often used in battleboards, is not the end-all-be-all absolute objective interpretation, explanation, or fact about a fictional work.
That's not to say that authorial intent/WoG is ignored or disregarded, but that the fictional work itself takes priority over the words of the author, though there can be exceptions.

To explain this concept outside the confines of dumbass powerscaling, take a look at the Cthulhu Mythos, which is quite popular in this website. Its author, H.P. Lovecraft, was more or less a raging bigoted racist for the majority of his literary career, which definitely influenced his writing as one of the biggest innovators and most influential horror writers of all time.
Does that mean we can only view Lovecraft's works as reflections of his racism? No. But it doesn't mean that the racism in his books have to be ignored either.
Just that you can look at the Cthulhu Mythos without worrying over whether Lovecraft was having some thinly veiled racism in it or not.

addendum: Lovecraft's bigotry is also at times exaggerated, so sometimes certain readers actually circle back into interpreting his works as more racist than it actually is (see, Shadow Over Innsmouth). So you can see how complex literary analysis can be.

 

[SlendVeny]

The books state and show Hermione has pale skin but Rowling tried to retcon her to be black.

This mf ain't know about albino people

 

[DavidTPPM]

This mf ain't know about albino people

Albino people are a made up hoax by JKR fanboys to suppress the truth

 

[SlendVeny]

Albino people are a made up hoax by JKR fanboys to suppress the truth

If JKR is so white, why do her walls have black mold in them instead of white mold? Curious

 

[Arkenis]

It's more formally known as intentionality fallacy. You can say that the opposite of this fallacy, particularly in literature, is called Death of the Author. It's based on an essay by a literary critic that you can easily find online.

The gist of it, especially when used in forums like this one, is that authorial intent, or Word of God as a term often used in battleboards, is not the end-all-be-all absolute objective interpretation, explanation, or fact about a fictional work.
That's not to say that authorial intent/WoG is ignored or disregarded, but that the fictional work itself takes priority over the words of the author, though there can be exceptions.

To explain this concept outside the confines of dumbass powerscaling, take a look at the Cthulhu Mythos, which is quite popular in this website. Its author, H.P. Lovecraft, was more or less a raging bigoted racist for the majority of his literary career, which definitely influenced his writing as one of the biggest innovators and most influential horror writers of all time.
Does that mean we can only view Lovecraft's works as reflections of his racism? No. But it doesn't mean that the racism in his books have to be ignored either.
Just that you can look at the Cthulhu Mythos without worrying over whether Lovecraft was having some thinly veiled racism in it or not.

addendum: Lovecraft's bigotry is also at times exaggerated, so sometimes certain readers actually circle back into interpreting his works as more racist than it actually is (see, Shadow Over Innsmouth). So you can see how complex literary analysis can be.

What was the cat’s name again?

 

[Metalballrun]

What was the cat’s name again?

FWIW it was already named something sounding like "Shub Niggurath" when he got it. He didn't name it himself.

 

[FinePoint]

addendum: Lovecraft's bigotry is also at times exaggerated, so sometimes certain readers actually circle back into interpreting his works as more racist than it actually is (see, Shadow Over Innsmouth). So you can see how complex literary analysis can be.

Well if you assume Death of the Author then we only interpret that the narrator is racist, but given author context and intent we know instead that the writer was racist and projecting these ideas into the story, which changes fundamentally how we interpret and analyze it meta-textually or how we find meaning in it.

That said, I think it's technically counterproductive to take this discussion away from power-scaling given that's the focus of this entire forum.

In terms of power-scaling, it's common for an author to claim that they wanted a character to be a certain power level or have certain abilities, but then when actually writing them they don't add any feats which appropriately scale, or may even add anti-feats.

There's also times where a feat itself is vague and impossible to understand objectively based just on the text, and we can use a statement from the author to clarify what they meant.

In general, the wiki's stance on what to do about this is that author intent is fine to consider so long as it's not blatantly contradicted, in which case we assume the source material takes precedent.

 

[Metalballrun]

Well if you assume Death of the Author then we only interpret that the narrator is racist, but given author context and intent we know instead that the writer was racist and projecting these ideas into the story, which changes fundamentally how we interpret and analyze it meta-textually or how we find meaning in it.

The thing is that there are numerous methods of literary criticism/analysis. You can choose which one depending on what framework or purpose.

In terms of powerscaling, yes, the source material always takes precedent in contradictions.
Not that that stops powerwanking anyways, but it is what it is.

 

[Johner2133451]

Probably a good example for this fallacy to be used, is on Robert kirkman when he said Invincible is stronger than Superman. But in the comics, needed help to destroy a planet

 

[FinePoint]

The thing is that there are numerous methods of literary criticism/analysis. You can choose which one depending on what framework or purpose.

In terms of powerscaling, yes, the source material always takes precedent in contradictions.
Not that that stops powerwanking anyways, but it is what it is.

Indeed, but part of the debate of this larger fallacious concept is that the author intent should be ignored, which we don't do here.

We take sort of a middle-ground approach where it depends on whether or not there's a contradiction.

 

[FinePoint]

Probably a good example for this fallacy to be used, is on Robert kirkman when he said Invincible is stronger than Superman. But in the comics, needed help to destroy a planet

That is a great example, yes.

In contrast, if he had said something like "Invincible could've destroyed the planet himself but he didn't believe in himself enough at the time" we might've been able to scale him to planetary level despite the comic not technically supporting that.

 

[Metalballrun]

To be clear, the intentionality fallacy doesn't propose disregarding author intent. But Death of the Author does. They're related but different.

 

[FinePoint]

To be clear, the intentionality fallacy doesn't propose disregarding author intent. But Death of the Author does. They're related but different.

Indeed, but they are both significant parts of the authorial intent debate in general, so I thought it important to mention.