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[jackissocool]

I don't get why people are so hostile to this. It's an interpretation. It's not saying it's the only interpretation. It's taking a set of facts and discussing them in light of another set of facts. There are lots of other interpretations that both can and should be had. Interpretation is the whole point of art. That's why the artist's intent is usually irrelevant - or ar most just one more interpretation.

Cause it's a terrible, uncreative cliche that gets repeated about everything.

 

[The Technomancer]

I don't get why people are so hostile to this. It's an interpretation. It's not saying it's the only interpretation. It's taking a set of facts and discussing them in light of another set of facts. There are lots of other interpretations that both can and should be had. Interpretation is the whole point of art. That's why the artist's intent is usually irrelevant - or ar most just one more interpretation.


You're missing the point. Your teacher is trying to get you to use your mind and think about things.

But there's no meaning to it. Good literary analysis causes us to either achieve a greater understanding of the author's vision or challenge us to rethink about the text in new and unusual ways. This does neither. Its just "Mad Max is the feral kid" bullshit

 

[Dresden]

But is he dead?

 

[jtb]

I don't get why people are so hostile to this. It's an interpretation. It's not saying it's the only interpretation. It's taking a set of facts and discussing them in light of another set of facts. There are lots of other interpretations that both can and should be had. Interpretation is the whole point of art. That's why the artist's intent is usually irrelevant - or ar most just one more interpretation.

It's a bad interpretation with zero evidence to support it.

 

[genjiZERO]

Cause it's a terrible, uncreative cliche that gets repeated about everything.

Then articulate that instead of dismissing it out of hand. I'm not pointing to you personally, but doing so shows a lack of critical thinking skills.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

But is he dead?

Voldemort confirms it

 

[Haly]

I don't get why people are so hostile to this. It's an interpretation.

It is the most blithe kind of "interpretation", wrapped up in half-understood Freudian psychoanalysis. The thing about this kind of methodoloy is that anything can mean just about anything else. Oooh! A maze! Mazes are twisty and confusing, like our thoughts.

Please. It is no more "interpretation" than asking your friend to analyze your dream last night about having sex while flying is "interpretation". There's no quantitativeness to it whatsoever.

 

[Not]

It's getting to the point where every fantastical "chosen one" story can be painted as an analogy for mental illness. Calivin and Hobbes, Pokémon, even the damn Wizard.

We get it, what is existence / different perceptions of reality / the brain is weird / everything can be explained

 

[genjiZERO]

But there's no meaning to it. Good literary analysis causes us to either achieve a greater understanding of the author's vision or challenge us to rethink about the text in new and unusual ways. This does neither. Its just "Mad Max is the feral kid" bullshit

I disagree with the first part fundamentally. Once an artist has created something it has a life of its own. At that point the artist's intent is just one meaning out of many that are possible. Also, most artists don't really have a clear vision of what they are doing to begin with. They just intuitively create. That doesn't mean it doesn't have meaning though.

I agree with the second though - which is my point. Maybe it's not a good interpretation, my problem is that people are dismissing it for no other reason than it is an interpretation.

It's a bad interpretation with zero evidence to support it.

You don't really need evidence though - just a set of facts. The facts are that an orphan lives in an abusive house - as a result he creates a fantasy world as a way of coping with that. It's not much different really than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in that respect.

It is the most blithe kind of "interpretation", wrapped up in half-understood Freudian psychoanalysis. The thing about this kind of methodoloy is that anything can mean just about anything else. Oooh! A maze! Mazes are twisty and confusing, like our thoughts.

Please. It is no more "interpretation" than asking your friend to analyze your dream last night about having sex while flying is "interpretation". There's no quantitativeness to it whatsoever.

You can't quantify art anyway. You can only qualitatively describe it. But anyway, it would be so much smarter to describe what's wrong with the interpretation than be dismissive about it which is what most people in here are doing.

 

[Not]

It's not much different really than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in that respect.

How does McMurphy escape to a fantasy world

 

[The One and Done™]

It all falls short as soon as the novels and movies switch to external characters - people who are around when there is no Harry character, doing things that Harry can have no recollection of.

But yes, any kind of delusional reasoning can be applied to good fantasy.

I do recommend keeping the Nietsche and Freud stuff for Palahniuk's work though.

You underestimate how far "delusional" goes.

 

[shacklesmcgee]

This "theory" actively makes me angry.

So stupid

 

[genjiZERO]

How does McMurphy escape to a fantasy world

The premise that he was faking his insanity to get out of going to jail. His supposed sanity is his delusion.

 

[starchild excalibur]

Fan theories like these always go into "all the characters are actually crazy" territory so much that it just gets boring. I remember seeing the same thing with Rugrats a while ago. I'd like to see an interpretation that goes in a different, more creative direction.

 

[jtb]

You don't really need evidence though - just a set of facts. The facts are that an orphan lives in an abusive house - as a result he creates a fantasy world as a way of coping with that. It's not much different really than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in that respect.

You need evidence considering you're directly contradicting 99% of the text of the story (every non Dursley part) that says it's not a delusion. Without evidence, it's not an interpretation. It's a trivial little "what if" that is totally disconnected from the story in question.

 

[Not]

The premise that he was faking his insanity to get out of going to jail. His supposed sanity is his delusion.

Right, but how is that like Harry Potter never once doubting he's completely, 100% sane

 

[A_Gorilla]

When did it become popular to never take a story at face value and always assume that there is some BS hidden meaning behind it?

Not every author is Herman Melville, people.

Spoiler

Not the best example, I know, but I'm tired.

 

[genjiZERO]

You need evidence considering you're directly contradicting 99% of the text of the story (every non Dursley part) that says it's not a delusion. Without evidence, it's not an interpretation. It's a trivial little "what if" that is totally disconnected from the story in question.

I'm confused what you mean though. Doesn't Harry feel mistreated? Doesn't he go to a special school? That's evidence right there. If you look at it in light of the real world magic both doesn't (and cannot) exist.

Right, but how is that like Harry Potter never once doubting he's completely, 100% sane

You're overthinking it. McMurphy believes he's beating the system by pretending to be insane, and Harry is attending a wizarding school oblivious to the fact. In both circumstances they are still existing through the fantasy worlds they have created for themselves.

When did it become popular to never take a story at face value and always assume that there is some BS hidden meaning behind it?

Not every author is Herman Melville, people.

Spoiler

Not the best example, I know, but I'm tired.

No one (even the writers of this interpretation) are sating you shouldn't in this case take the book at face value. The idea is to reframe the premises in light of other conditions. It's a different way of thinking about things.

 

[Skeyser]

Cool and all, but I highly doubt that was what JK Rowling was going for lol

 

[Cyan]

"It was a dream all along."

"They were dead the whole time."

"Secretly the main character is just delusional in an asylum."

AMAZING THEORIES

 

[Tesseract]

this is the 'you're dead, therefore' joke i always plant in absurd threads

you can't not be in this universe

 

[Panzon]

Mental illness theories are lame because they can pretty much apply to any fantasy. My favorite fan theory is the D.B Cooper one and I hoped so much Mad Men ended like that. Just fascinating stuff

 

[way more]

I don't get why people are so hostile to this. It's an interpretation. It's not saying it's the only interpretation. It's taking a set of facts and discussing them in light of another set of facts. There are lots of other interpretations that both can and should be had. Interpretation is the whole point of art. That's why the artist's intent is usually irrelevant - or ar most just one more interpretation..

This isn't interpretation. It's regurgitation. And now people are spreading it around.

You don't really need evidence though - just a set of facts. The facts are that an orphan lives in an abusive house - as a result he creates a fantasy world as a way of coping with that. It's not much different really than One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in that respect

There is more to understanding a work than a set of facts. That's like saying the painting The Starry Night is just the coordinates of the stars in the sky.

 

[Admiral Woofington]

Game of Thrones is the dream of Bran

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

with Harry Potter you actually could make the case in a convincing manner though.

I mean: when a girl did the exact same thing an entire century was dedicated to making her seem mad. She was Alice in Wonderland, but now she's just insane, because she's a feminist. Never mind the fact that the Mad Hatter explicitly says what the point of the whole thing is: "We're all mad here", but hey, nobody fucking reads shit anyway. Why should Harry Potter escape that just because he's a guy?

I'm not even kidding btw, for those who read this as sarcasm or parody. It's not like I'm a 'gamergater' or whatever, but the 'only men can use [insert thing like magic] in a rational and / or effective manner' is an old trope, so you can actually do this without any restraints.

also, if a writer has chose a depressed characters and that character seen blue curtains, that is a fucking image system, even if the author didn't actually mean it that way.

 

[Haly]

I mean why don't I take a shot at poking this thing? I was always better at finding holes than arguing theses I don't actually believe in.

I'll pretend I'm arguing against him directly because it makes the language easier.

the reader and author understand and implicitly agree that the subject matter of the book or movie is not real, but on another level, the events in these stories are also constructed as a fantasy or delusion of the protagonist himself.

I'm going to clarify something for you. If a work of fiction seems like it's constructed as a fantasy or delusion, it most likely is. This is called, in technical terms, "escapism", and is the foundation of fiction: The creating and proliferation of shared delusions. And if it seems like the delusions are oddly centered around the protagonist, it's because most modern protags are vehicles for the audience's self. The point is to let them experience the delusion vicariously. This is not exactly a groundbreaking theory of fiction.

Typically, the opening act of this kind of story takes place in the real world. Then, something happens that sends the hero into a new world, where the usual rules of the hero's former life do not apply. In supernatural-based storylines, this is where the first non-empirical, magical event occurs.

At least you didn't namedrop Campbell for maximum cred.

Then, some outside agency comes along and empowers the hero to respond to these traumas. The resulting heroism is always the exact opposite of the earlier powerlessness, rejection or humiliation. Freud called this type of story a "family romance," in which a young hero imagines his primary care-takers to be mere substitutes for his real parents, who are dead or otherwise out of the picture, but are of a higher social class than his foster parents.

In the Harry Potter series, his parents are famous wizards, who were famous in all the world for their unparalleled love for the boy Harry, which set the whole series in motion, killing them and leaving the boy a scarred orphan. (This is a fantasy, crafted as the direct opposite of the way in which children usually end up scarred -- through abuse and neglect.)

I would like to point out that noble birth into mundane circumstances is a well worn literary tradition. There's nothing deceptive going on here. The idea far predates Freud, and the earliest take on this formula that I know of is, likely, the story of Moses. It also plays a large part in the Arthurian tradition which, while French in origin, is highly influential to English literature.

By making this point, you open up every permutation of the Moses story to the very same lens as well. That is a very bold claim to make. It is a far more reasonable explanation that Rowling, like most authors, drew from western literary tradition to create the foundation of her story.

Does this by itself mean Harry couldn't be crazy? No, of course not, but you once against waste words saying things that don't need to be stated in the first place only because it makes you look more credible to sound well-read. This is an appeal to ethos, not logos.

In the real-world portion of these stories, the protagonist typically experiences some form of psycholoigcal trauma, notably in the form of humiliation, rejection or social isolation. The hero finds himself to be anonymous, abandoned, dumped, or socially subordinated in some extreme way. Luke Skywalker is told he can't leave the farm. Dorothy is told to stay out of the way of the grown-ups, while her dog is about to be killed. Nick Carraway of the Great Gatsby finds that he is incapable of intimacy, and feels like a fraud among the New York elite. The narrator in Fight Club is literally anonymous, and lives in corporate hell. Peter Parker and Clark Kent are bullied relentlessly.

I like this passage a lot. Take note of the names you list:
Luke Skywalker
Dorothy
Peter Parker
Clark Kent
Tyler Durden
Nick Carraway

What do all these heroes have in common? They're iconic American heroes, and they all gained mass recognition through film... Except for Nick. His story has little to do with the thesis and, while he is the narrator, the true focus of The Great Gatsby is the titular Gatsby himself, an allegory for Fitzgerald's own disillusionment with the post-war decadence of America, or the American dream, or the dissolution of class borders. Whatever you want. There's nothing there about insanity and "family romance".

Why was he mentioned? Because The Great Gatsby is a very literary kind of book and something most high schoolers have read so it makes you look good to drop the name.

As for the others, I'll just mention that Tyler Durden is literally a story about insanity and delusions of grandeur. I also don't know why this was lumped in with the others right after you mention Freud's "family romances". Probably because Fight Club is a very psychological film? Spoiler alert: It is about the escalation of masculinity as a defensive measure in an increasing gender egalitarian western society. Not about... this:

For a small child his parents are at first the only authority and the source of all belief. The child’s most intense and most momentous wish during these early years is to be like his parents (that is, the parent of his own sex) and to be big like his father and mother. But as intellectual growth increases, the child cannot help discovering by degrees the category to which his parents belong. He gets to know other parents and compares them with his own, and so comes to doubt the incomparable and unique quality which has he attributed to them. . . .

If we interpret the story as Harry's fantasy, then the Dursleys are Harry's real parents, and the Potters are imaginary. The Durselys either can't cope with the increasingly-delusional boy living with them, or perhaps they are merely abusive, and it's the abuse that's making him delusional. In any event, the parent-figures constantly mistreat him, favor the brother, and inflict endless cruelty and humiliation on him. One day, Harry snaps, and Dudley (who is really Harry's brother) is severely injured, in a way requiring repeated hospital treatments. (In the delusion, Harry imagines that a pig's tail is magically grown from Dudley's buttocks.) As a result of this incident, Harry is taken away to a "special school."

My theory is that this story line is a coded explication of a delusional boy that is starting to engage in violent outbursts, and is sent to a mental institution as a result. Everything that happens after that becomes increasingly detached from reality, and what we see, as the audience, is his delusion, which is a re-casting of his institutionalization experience into a kind of adventure.

You should've just started with this. It's a trite setup but there was no need to waste my time trying to look smart when you could just dive into the meat of the thesis. This is the hallmark of a student's amateurish literary interpretation that they need to spend time setting up smoke and mirrors in order to draw my eyes away from the real content of their words because those words probably don't amount to much.

I believe there is a great deal of evidence in the text for this hypothesis. Mental illness is featured just about everywhere in the series, and the theme of insanity is very prominent. Classic features of mental illness, such as delusions, paranoia and multiple-personality disorders become increasingly more important to the story line. Here are a few examples:

I'm going to lose it if you conclude that Rowling's ending of "love conquers all" is about how we should love the mentally ill. That's the only course I can see you going down, let's see if you stick to your guns?

Okay the next part is a bit of a doozy. Instead of, I dunno, writing an essay, you list a bunch of events of the story and then give a one-off interpretation of them. This is not theory and argument, but the scratch notes for an outline of an essay. Maybe. My scratch notes were more coherent than this, though.

The first book features Harry at his new "school," becoming obsessed with a mirror, where he spends endless days imagining his perfect parents (of course, they are dead, which is a metaphor for saying they are wholly imaginary). Dumbledore, the paragon of surrogate love, warns Harry that the mirror has driven people insane, because spending all your time in fantasy causes you to become unmoored to the real world. (This is exactly what happens to Harry for the rest of the series.)

Is that it? Did you boil the entire first book to this one paragraph? What about Ron and Hermione? Where do they fit into this? Is Dumbledore the hospital warden, his personal caretaker, or the head of the asylum Harry's in? Is this a care hospice, a hospital, or a madhouse? Where is his fantasy of being "the chosen one". What about Voldemort, Harry's great nemesis, being in the back of Quirrel's head? What about the vivid, nightmarish dreams of Voldemort? There's a mountain of material for your thesis in the very first book, the metaphor of the Philosopher's stone and Resurrection. The tests provided by the professors each being a different kind of therapy being tried out on the now insane Harry.

The school is locked. It is also filled with random, insane dangers that everyone accepts as perfectly normal -- moving stairs, talking paintings, deadly monsters roaming around outside. Mental prisons are dangerous places where crazy situations are, in fact, ordinary.

I think you got your idea of "mental prisons" from Amadeus, but then again, I doubt you ever watched a movie as worthwhile as Amadeus.

Sirius Black is Harry's godfather, and is overtly insane.

I'm not sure if Harry is delusional now, and the books a delusion, or if the books are half delusion, and real except precisely when it lends to your "thesis".

And no, Sirius Black wasn't insane. At least, he wasn't insane to start. He was consumed by the desire for revenge because of the betrayal of his friend, and his mental state was worsened by Azkaban, perhaps an allegory for the prison system's focus on being punitive rather than recuperative? Maybe? Help me out here. I'm not the only one who sees it, right? I think Rowling even mentioned as much.

In the 4th book, Black is closely affiliated with (and introduced by and treated as a kind of surrogate for) a werewolf, who is obessesed with the moon. The moon is a symbol for insanity (i.e., lunacy).

*3rd book. I know it's difficult counting up to 7 but you really have to try.

The Goblet of Fire contest pits students against each other in contests that are openly life-threatening, which is what students at a school for violent, mentally-disturbed children experience on a regular basis.

I'm going to have to get a source on this. If it was true that our mental institutions were pitting kids against each other in fatal contests, we might have a bigger problem on our hands than your writing.

The clean-cut Derek Diggery (a fantasy image of the popular, successful boy Harry could have been were it not for his mental problems) is murdered by "Voldemort," who is Harry's alter ego and the projection of his rage and fury. Harry is the only one who sees this event, and no one believes it was "Voldemort." This event is a metaphor for Harry murdering a boy who is too perfect, despised for having the life of love and ease that Harry wanted, but never got. So, he imagines that "Voldemort" did it. When no one believes him, it's an unspoken metaphor for the fact that everyone knows Harry is the murderer.

Cedric.

First of all, Cedric is a Hufflepuff, and we have already a 17 page thread dedicated to picking apart the house system. If Cedric was truly the boy Harry wanted to be, he'd be in Gryffindor. I'm still unsure whether you're treating Hogwarts literally or figuratively, because you talk about people "believing" him, and that there was a boy who was murdered.

Also why is such a perfect boy in the mental institution with Harry?

If the murder of Derk Diggery is not meant to be a real event, but entirely imaginary in Harry's mind, then the murder of the normal boy is a metaphor for Harry losing his final chance at a normal life.

"Derk Diggery" can't be the perfect, idealized school boy as well as a "normal boy" with a "normal life" simultaneously.

This "murder" takes place in a maze where the main danger is being
psychologically possessed and going insane.

The "murder" takes "place" in a "graveyard" after "Harry" and "Derk Diggery" touch the "portkey".

Harry is helped in this unwanted fight to the death by "Mad Eye" Moody, who is also openly insane. To compound the insanity of this parent-surrogate, Moody is not actually the real Moody, but an imposter, who is even more openly insane.

I don't know, you made a good case that Harry wanted to be in this fight to the death because he wants "Derk Diggery's" perfectnormal life. The tournament gives him a chance to be "Derk's" equal. But now you say it's unwanted? No.

Book Five opens with Harry again attacking his brother/cousin Dudley, leaving him traumatized. Periodically, Harry returns to civilian life, but finds that he can't go
five minutes without a seriously violent, delusional episode.

This is not standard mental institution procedure. It would be more convincing if you said that Harry attacked Dudley during one of the Dursleys' visits to the hospital Harry is staying. Why am I doing your job for you? Because you're doing such a horrendous job of it yourself.

This incident was interpreted by Harry as an attack by "Dementors" who cannot be seen by normal people. This incident causes Harry to appear before a board of inquiry to determine if he is too violent for Hogwarts, the alternative being Azkaban (i.e., a more harsh mental prison).

Hey I'll give you some credit for this one. You realized the Azkaban metaphor!

Azkaban is heavily associated with insanity. In the story, it is said that inmates go crazy within days of arriving, which is a metaphor for saying that it is a high-security prison for violent mental patients. It is where Black and Lestrange (and others) went off the rails.

Wow! You're interpreting an allegory for the corrupted prison system as a corrupted mental institution! Such piercing insight the likes of which I have never seen before.

It is also in the fifth book and movie that we meet Black's cousin Beatrix LeStrange, who is also openly insane. She murders the insane Sirius Black just as he is becoming more stable and normal. This is a metaphor for the violently delusional side of Harry's mind defeating and suppressing the side that might have healed.

Oh, really. So where does Dumbledore, the head warden of Hogwarts Institute for the Mentally Ill, and his Order of the Phoenix fall into this? Because this was the real conflict you know. Not Black vs Beatrix.

Harry's newest friend at school is Luna Lovegood, whose name is another reference to lunacy, and is openly known to be crazy, and is the only other student who can see Harry's delusions, even within the context of an otherwise crazy place like Hogwarts.

Crazy character is reinterpreted as... a crazy character. Will the wonders never cease?

Another "class" mate, Neville Longbottom, the forelorn loser, is revealed to have a family history of mental illness -- parents who are mental patients, having been driven insane by Beatrix.

You can't have a family history of mental illness if that mental illness is induced by external factors. This is like saying the descendants of veterans have a family history of dismemberment and PTSD.

Repeated references are made to "Voldemort" being so evil that he drives his victims crazy with torture, rather than merely killing them.

This doesn't say anything. Here, let me help you. Once, you made the connection of Voldemort being Harry's destructive side. So, the next step is to say that it is the destructive impulse that drives people insane, that tortures them from the inside, whereas a physical disease just kills.

See how easy that was?

It is repeatedly indicated that the boy "Tom Riddle" (the young "Voldemort") is actually Harry Potter, with constant parallels and similarities being heavily stressed. Same books, same wand, both orphaned, etc. Harry has increasing visions of Voldemort, and they even share thoughts, which is an obvious symbol for saying that "Voldemort" is just a component of Harry's diseased mind, at first only a whisper, and becoming increasingly dominant and thus real to him.

I could get into a whole thing about the parallelism of Tom and Harry being hamfisted and Rowling just shoving a "Fear leads to anger, etc etc, DARK SIDE" theme where it didn't belong, but I won't.

In the 6th (or 7th?) book, I believe Rowling tried to tell us what she was really writng about -- there is a flashback scene where Dumbledore first meets "Voldemort," as a boy. Dumbledore comes to rescue the boy (who is really Riddle/Harry) from abuse and poverty. When Dumbledore says he has come to take him to a special school for kids with his kind of needs, Riddle's first response is that he knows Hogwarts is an insane anylum, and he doesn't want to go.

This is the only clever bit of literary analysis in this entire worthless piece of shit.

After I watched the movie, I suspected that the author, J.K. Rowling might have had some family or personal experience with childhood mental issues or institutionalization, and that her Harry Potter series was a way for her to talk about them in a safe way.

Oh, well, now all the film comparisons make sense. You're a "I'll just wait for the movie adaptation" kind of guy. You probably watched The Great Gatsby starring DiCaprio as well.

---------

Anyway I'm done. Frankly, if you defended this bogus refuse in the slightest, you have irrevocably forfeited any credibility on all matters pertaining to literary analysis from now until the end of time. If you ever dare bring up your opinion on this again, I will link this post to show everyone that you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.

This is even worse than what I imagined in my off-hand dismissal. At least some of the more out there interpretations of Majora's Mask and Pokemon Red/Blue were consistent with the events of the source material. This guy can't even get simple names and chronologies right.

 

[PSqueak]

Fan theories like these always go into "all the characters are actually crazy" territory so much that it just gets boring. I remember seeing the same thing with Rugrats a while ago. I'd like to see an interpretation that goes in a different, more creative direction.

I knew i had forgotten one in my list! Doug also, doug is totes a delusional autistic kid with multiple personalities, guys!

I don't get why people are so hostile to this. It's an interpretation. It's not saying it's the only interpretation. It's taking a set of facts and discussing them in light of another set of facts. There are lots of other interpretations that both can and should be had. Interpretation is the whole point of art. That's why the artist's intent is usually irrelevant - or ar most just one more interpretation.

Because it's tired edgy bullshit that is thrown at absolutely everything under the sun, more frequently in current times and in the internet, it's done for shock value, but the dead horse has been beaten to pulp already, there is no shock anymore, it feels like just another edgelord try hard looking for a series that hasn't being given the threatment and proceeding, it's easy because they don't need to back up anything with facts because "Lol, delusion". People in fandom circles are rightfully sick of this bullshit, it's "baby's first alternative theory" and people should have grown out of this phase long ago.

Sorry if this was your first time exposed to something like this and you don't see how it has been oversaturated, but that's how we [the ones criticising it] feel.

 

[blitzcloud]

You're missing the point. Your teacher is trying to get you to use your mind and think about things.

Usually not true in my experience. The teacher wants you to think his interpretation is THE interpretation. Will not give you a good mark if you overthink yourself and think that based on the author's childhood on the beach he might mean that those curtains had a bond to the infancy of the character.

No, it's clearly depression.

 

[Messofanego]

Game of Thrones is the dream of Bran

Lost and the dog

 

[EatinOlives]

I've seen a number of "fan interpretations" of various popular series that reduce the whole thing to delusion/mental illness in the most depressing way.

This.

But I'm sure there's a ton of people who write these "interpretations" truly think they're being clever.

 

[NewGame]

...and then Harry woke up under an all too familiar staircase; it was all a dream! THE END.

 

[JC Lately]

I’d love to read/watch/play a story where the reader/viewer/player is made to believe that main character actually is delusional and making everything in the story up, and the twist is that it was all real the whole time.

What would the crazy fan interpretations be then?