Just because you think my field is 'boring' doesn't make it unimportant. Culture shapes our entertainment and entertainment shapes our culture. It's cyclical.

I know all about headcannons and 'the death of the author.' I'm a novelist myself, as well as a literature scholar. I can't control what readers take from my work. But that work does send messages. Being conscious of that it not a bad thing.

Lots of people think Lolita is a love story. Which is the opposite of what Nabokov 'meant' readers to get from the book. Romeo and Juliet also isn't a love story. And yet our culture frequently glorifies and reproduces these stories as romantic. The authors didn't intend them to be romantic, but didactic. Learning how to approach literature analytically is an important skill. It's the same skill that helps readers identify 'fake news' and the like.