![gay anime couple avatar gay anime couple avatar](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/00/35/8b/00358bcd4b194ae570cc563b555328c7.jpg)
So most of the time people's thoughts about a work are a messy chimera of intentional subjectivity and attempted objectivity. (Of course one can look at the characters interaction and NOT assign them a meaning of "sexual and/or romantic" attraction, or even look at the interactions between male/female pairs and assign THEM a meaning of "sexual and/or romantic" attraction.)Īnyway it's more complicated than that but this is the important stuff about whether Free! is a "gay" anime.Īnyway most people usually look at texts from lots of different angles so they also take stuff like "authorial intent" (I.e creator interviews and marketing) or "greater context" (I.e comparisons with other works and the greater market) into account.
![gay anime couple avatar gay anime couple avatar](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/78/cc/89/78cc89daa075dbb0e5e09b8381b680d1.jpg)
Under these forms of reader-response criticism such a reading can be considered "valid". In the case of Free! a "reader" can look at the "interactions" of the teammates and assign them the meaning of "sexual" and/or "romantic" "attraction". As opposed to a text having an inherent meaning independent of outside forces.
![gay anime couple avatar gay anime couple avatar](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/a7/57/a3a757882974aa0a132f4ad5c50038b0.jpg)
In some forms of reader-response criticism a "reader" "interprets" a "text" and adds "meaning" to it. The "gay" controversy surrounding this is a result of fujoshi hype and wailing combined with people mistaking man-service for yaoi.Įven though this topic looks like it's just a means to accuse people of being homophobic, under SOME schools of literary criticism this is actually correct.