@OneOverTwo  
To an extent, anyone would say “yeah, that’s fine. You can get that out of it if you want.”, especially if it’s a message they endorse. It’s not “death of the author”, if you agree with the interpretation, even if it wasn’t your original intention.

@The Smiling Pony  
“If you mess one thing up, I’ll be a goner”  

@Pinkamena  
And yeah, I can’t comprehend how anyone could work on / watch that scene and not take it as suicide; she knows she can’t do the trick, she knows that means she’ll die, she calls herself an idiot loser in front of the audience, gets in the canon pretty much praying that Starlight will save her, but suspecting she won’t (she ran off, after all), and fires away.

@FancyCat2008  
So it’s only partial endorsement of death of the author then.

@Amber  
But those were played for laughs, and that was before we understood mental illness as well as we do now. These days, playing suicide for laughs is usually a no-no. Just look at the infamous One Coarse Meal episode of SpongeBob.

@Amber  

In case you didn’t know, Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry were made for adults to watch in cinemas. It wasn’t until after colour TVs became common household goods that those sort of cartoons began being targeted towards kids, and even then towards an older audience than FiM.

@OneOverTwo  
I wasn’t saying anyone was saying anything negative, I was implying that if people were accusing the message of being something like “suicide is okay”, Jim would probably be more defensive, but since the person on twitter said “suicidal people should ask for help”, he was okay with it. He would have been a lot less accommodating if it was a message he disagreed with, is what I’m saying.

It’s really hard to miss the implications of the scene in my opinion, in many of people’s cases it was the first thing people thought of, It’s hard to believe not even a single thought went through the heads of the ones who wrote the scene about its implications.
 
That is like saying BonBon and Lyra are absolutely 100% friends, something they will also insist on.
 
Of course he can’t go ahead and publicly admit taht suicide was intended. I am not saying it 100% was the intention but it’s also hard to believe it never crossed their minds.

@FancyCat2008  
Isn’t death of the author almost the opposite of defending artistic vision though?  
That aside, I personally don’t think that “death of the author” is supposed to be “whatever you want” but rather “what you see is what you get”.
 
Your intention being different from what people see is basically “death of the author” or at least close to it anyways.
 
& who said people were taking something negative out of the episode’s message here?

It’s like this Josh.T never watched cartoons before.
 
Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry have pulled suicidal scenes before.
 
I agree with @FancyCat2008 interpretation. That seems what Jim is actually trying to say.
 
However, in my opinion, in these cases, Jim should stop people with these kind of questions on the track and say simply “No.

“Yeah! We totally aimed at suicide!”  
He’d lose his job sooner than I can whine about Celestia being useless.

@EyeGuy  
@OneOverTwo
 
He clearly said that wasn’t their intention, but was okay with people interpreting it that way. That’s very different from saying “It means whatever you want it to mean.” It’s not as if he’s defending some grand artistic vision here, or people are taking something negative out of the episode’s message.

I’m amused that Jim and Nick are playing around with the suicide speculation.

@Hollow_Shades_resident  

 
I’m not quoting him. I’m interpreting his message :^) and then paraphrasing.  
And also, we’re discussing Death of the Author.
 
It wasn’t their intention to have the suicide scenario, but that’s what people are taking away from that scene- and he’s totally fine with it.

@Hollow_Shades_resident  
What drama?  
I think they were trying to explain what “death of the author” is, though I would’ve explained it as: The author’s interpretation of their work is only as valid the interpretations of everyone else.

So a classic case of Death of the Author.

@Background Pony #5D6A  
That’s not what Jim said at all, but keep creating fake drama.

@OneOverTwo  
Pretty much.  
“Whatever you want to see in the episode is exactly what the episode intends, no matter how wildly different the interpretation is from person to person.”

So I guess this is an endorsement of the death of the author mentality?