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I'm sitting on the conflict that I've seen come up a few times with friends who create, of the character in their head, the character on the page, and the character in all moments that occurred in between the 2, and why so often creators and readers clash.

Because a character becomes who they are by the words that are written and available, or what the audience at large sees, and that's usually a radically different thing to what the creator imagines them to be. Because we see only a pinhole of the entire process and experience of them

When all the notes are laid down, when all the words are written, people who haven't been part of the process will interpret it solely based on what they have, and a stumbling block I've seen happen is creators getting mad, because people take away radically divergent interpretations.

This is, to be clear, an instance where neither party is wrong. The creator cannot see what the creation has become because they can never look on it with fresh eyes and see the thing as it is now. They know too much and hold on to all the interpretations/secrets unseen. They are parents to children

The thing that has resulted can and does get away from them, and that's a facet of creation and interpretation that fascinates me, the unintentionally of it, the way we put our blood into things and the things become of us, but we don't know ourselves, and thus we don't know our children.