You know, if you look closely at my Now & Forever series there’s some very interesting symbolism in there when you know what to look for^*.

I mean take the girls, Sally & Lauren. They probably represent the world and America^**!

Sally, obviously, is the world. Besides the obvious answers of being able to claim citizenship of three nations while growing up in a fourth, and being a polyglot, she’s the worldly one so experienced in foreign cultures and scenery. She’s also the utterly unconservative one with a sort of humanist approach, to say nothing of the more progressive mindset from being accepting of diverse religions as well as her trans family member, openness to polyamory, etc.

Lauren, on the other hand, represents America. She’s a strange mix of forward thinking and traditional, even conservative … dare we say ‘prudish’?! She’s little travelled, not especially well versed in foreign matters and language, white as rice, and about as Christian as Mary.

So by the twain meeting and having their influences on one another they represent America’s need fo embrace the rest of the world and step forward into a new, more global reality. But at the same time the world shouldn’t forget tradition and morality in its quest for progress.

It really sounds good, this stuff.

Sadly it’s all nonsense.

“But, Jaye! Death of the author! They just might!”

Listen … get lost with that or we’ll try a new concept called Missing and Presumed Dead of the Literary Analyst.

They could symbolise literally anything. They don’t symbolise a single bloody thing. I don’t have any truck with symbolism. Hate it. Drives me mad.

Look, I don’t build my characters. If you want to say I’m doing anything other that tuning into some parallel Otherwhere then my characters are a subconscious composite. They’re people I know, have known, have met, or characters from things I read, watched, or listened to. Some folks do this on purpose. Me? They’re in my imagination, how they came to be there I haven’t the slightest idea nor do I actually care. But if I thought about it I could probably work out where I got aspects of this out that person’s tastes, habits, personality, whatever.

I mean, fine, some work is garba—I mean symbolic. Analyse till you’re brains runnel out through your nostrils. Bet if you posted that to YouTube you’d get a million likes in 30seconds. That says horrible truths about humanity … anyway the point is that people see what they believe is there. They see what they need or want to see. Anything in any work of fiction can be symbolic of literally anything you can convincingly (or given a lot of “symbolism” in Little House you don’t even have to be convincing, just that particular sort of deranged lunatic that pronounces ‘nut case idiot’ as ‘feminist’).

I can make fun all I want but people are going go read my books and try to dig for depth that just isn’t there. I can’t stop it. I can just tell you, they’re full of it and not to let them get to you. It’s all perfectly face value. The people have depth (at least, I rather hope so), but not the … other business. I mean I make points but they’re obvious points that aren’t even points that ought to need making, like that sexuality is not itself sex. That homosexuality is nothing to do with fetish and perversion. That perfectly ordinary people with perfectly ordinary hopes and dreams can be attracted to someone the same gender. 🤷‍♀️ Truly radical and revolutionary stuff here.

Applicability. If you find meaning in anything I ever write, bully for ya. I doubt I put it there but if you can use my words to articulate a point or a thought? Go on with your mad self. It’s sincerely awesome. But that’s you. That’s your imagination, your creativity, your experiences putting it there, not me. I mean if it’s something absolutely beyond brilliant I’ll happily take credit for it (probably not really) but you know maybe just read stuff for fun. Bet ya over half the things they made you analyse in school didn’t actually mean anything beyond what was on the surface either.

^* There’s not.
^** Only, they don’t.

P.S. this new mocking of literature as a study is brought to you by my bored arsed mind suddenly pointing out how some nutter might perceive Sally & Pixie, and cemented by thinking up ‘Missing and Presumed Dead of the Analyst’. Thank you. Good day.