I think a lot about how subtext is a double-edged sword.
It asks the reader to invest more fully in the story and when the reader is able to do so, it creates an incredibly rich experience. A relationship between reader and story forms. It's more alive and more immersive.
But subtext is also exclusionary to any reader who doesn't have the particular cultural experience that the subtext relies on.
And this is really important:
It also means that writers of privilege can get away with using more subtext (and fewer explicit explanations) because there's a cultural expectation that readers with less privilege will do (or have already done) extra work to understand that privileged writer's culture.
@allisonwyss i don’t think the supposed normative reader’s interest in dominant culture 🆚 counter/oppressed culture can be equivalated here, which is to say i think the truth is somewhat worse. when engaging with dominant culture, the normative reader is looking for possibility, for which subtext is well-suited. but with counter/oppressed cultures, they are looking for clarity, delineation, and containment. they have no interest in the possibilities afforded to people they aren't and cultures to which they don't belong.
Thank you. I hadn't thought about it from quite this angle, but it makes sense.
@allisonwyss (i am A Gay and as A Gay i have been nurtured by subtext and really disheartened by the recent trend in gay storytelling towards making everything explicit, knowable, and conformant to recognized understandings of human life/relationships/sexuality. those adjectives are not what Queer Culture means to me, and i mourn the loss of a time when we were writing mostly for ourselves without concern for transparency)
And some people never have to make that choice because it's just expected that readers will either get it automatically or do the work to catch up. It's not fair.
@Lady
Yeah. There's all this pressure to explain things to a privileged audience. (For sales, they say, but it's because we coddle the privileged!) But it's truly wonderful to write for a specific audience who will get it, even if no one else does.
Of course there are ways to make that work on a different level for the folks it excludes, but you shouldn't HAVE to.