reenka

I don't mean to be insulting... though mostly that may be the problem. Um. I... er... meant that for certain given purposes (of impacting fandom, reaching the 'other side', understanding fandom and/or the reactions of others to a given work), a balanced approach would work better. I suppose it's the same way that sociology is a 'soft science' and has different measurements than biology... or psychology vs psychiatry... but it's just that they have different uses. Well, you know what I mean, right? I wasn't saying a balance was 'objectively' better, in any case, though perhaps my message was confused in my effort to give everyone their slice of pie, or something. ^^; So I agree that a 'best approach' is necessarily subjective; I'm not sure where I said it wasn't, though knowing me I probably inadvertently implied it somewhere without meaning to. ><;;

Like, for your purposes, the objective 'one truth' approach works for the sort of truth you want, and I totally respect that. I think it's like, indulging & understanding are two different things, too. From a pov of someone who's interested in reader response theory in the first place (which is where I was coming from), people's emotional reactions are just... interesting to observe and they allow a necessary window into understanding both fan behavior and the interaction between canon text and fan text. If you're only interested in canon analysis and not in reader response as such, of course it's irrelevant :D