not to scare you away anon, but i think i love you and i am not one to talk about tl;dr, just look at the state of my review. tl;dr is wonderful! anyway i actually haven't seen this meme, and i just tried a quick google search but it turned up nothing so if you'd care to enlighten me i would be grateful!

i totally agree with you where one can never know for sure, and i think that is the beauty both of writing and readership, and all that comes in between. i know exactly what you mean by that instantaneous reaction when you read something, and i'm really not very knowledgeable on this (so excuse me if i sound totally inept!) but i feel like different readers will experience this formulating perhaps totally different connections based on their lived experiences and histories consciously or not. also i feel this is the same on the author's side, and it's the way that all these viewpoints cross and dissect each other that generates so much discussion.

i do also feel, in a way similar to how you mentioned, that when authors write and generate ideas and contribute to discourses that they build upon those layers of history that have preceded them, and which they've also learnt and internalised and taken into themselves. actually that sort of reminds me of jung's idea of the "collective unconscious" though it's not quite the same and i have no idea why it popped into my head.

oh no now look at me tl;dr too ;___; i'm sorry if i just sort of sounded dumb during this comment, it was all just one big long ramble!