thread: 2006-04-10 : I roleplay like a little sexually-irrelevent nerd
On 2006-04-10, ethan_greer wrote:
This may or may not be news to anyone, and hell, it may be off-topic, but I feel it worth pointing out.
Meaning rests more in the interpretation than it does in authorial intent. Meaning doesn't exist without an interpreter. You can intend your words in a certain way until you're blue in the teeth; it will have little bearing on how people interpret you. In a written medium, the words are everything.
So when you say something, you want to be as cognizant as possible of how that something is going to be interpreted. And then you try to craft the words such that the likely interpretation will match your intent.
So, when you say, Vincent, "I roleplay like a man," you need to be aware (and I'm not suggesting that you're not) that people are most likely going to latch onto the man/woman angle.
Once you've assessed something and determined that a likely interpretation may not match your intent, you have to decide whether or not you want to rephrase a thing. It's rarely an easy call. Sometimes, like in the case of this here post you've made, it just takes a whole slew of extra words to explain yourself.
This makes CCB go ""I role play like an adult""
is how I'd automatically put it if I were trying to say the same sort of thing. It would never occur to me to say "I roleplay like a woman" to convey the same thing. That goes into how I read others. I can't help it.
