Insofar as Joss is the creator of the Buffyverse, he gets to tell us what happened and what the rules are. But he doesn't get to tell us what it means.
I don't know - I think there's a halfway house between those two options. Events happen, yes, and it doesn't matter what the writer was thinking when they wrote them, but they are always framed in certain ways and that context gives them meaning and makes certain readings more natural than others. We can turn around and actively resist that reading, but I don't think that's the default way that we interact with texts.
AYW comes at a pointed moment in S6 and Riley returning then does mean something different than him returning maybe after OMWF or Smashed or any other episode. OaFA has Buffy actually relatively happy in her house, but then Riley's perspective allows the show to highlight again Buffy's situation - her bad-paying, mindless job; the idea that, for better or worse, she doesn't know everything about Spike. He's given to us as a fantasy that's flawed (because, whoops, he has a wife), but he's a fantasy that casts a certain light on things (even if we take Spike and the eggs most simply as just something Buffy didn't know about).
Whereas I think Riley is so utterly, utterly wrong that he has no place in S6 whatsoever, not to mention in that role. That's a reaction I can have, of course it is, but it's a reaction, not an interaction (I can't really go anywhere with that, because it happened), and to me that's actually a sign of the show being flawed in that particular instance. That sort of blanket rejection of the episode is not what Joss or I wanted when I sat down to watch it.
(And I think I went off into my own little world there, hopefully it makes sense.)
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I don't know - I think there's a halfway house between those two options. Events happen, yes, and it doesn't matter what the writer was thinking when they wrote them, but they are always framed in certain ways and that context gives them meaning and makes certain readings more natural than others. We can turn around and actively resist that reading, but I don't think that's the default way that we interact with texts.
AYW comes at a pointed moment in S6 and Riley returning then does mean something different than him returning maybe after OMWF or Smashed or any other episode. OaFA has Buffy actually relatively happy in her house, but then Riley's perspective allows the show to highlight again Buffy's situation - her bad-paying, mindless job; the idea that, for better or worse, she doesn't know everything about Spike. He's given to us as a fantasy that's flawed (because, whoops, he has a wife), but he's a fantasy that casts a certain light on things (even if we take Spike and the eggs most simply as just something Buffy didn't know about).
Whereas I think Riley is so utterly, utterly wrong that he has no place in S6 whatsoever, not to mention in that role. That's a reaction I can have, of course it is, but it's a reaction, not an interaction (I can't really go anywhere with that, because it happened), and to me that's actually a sign of the show being flawed in that particular instance. That sort of blanket rejection of the episode is not what Joss or I wanted when I sat down to watch it.
(And I think I went off into my own little world there, hopefully it makes sense.)