I've seen a lot of posts in the forum about deeper meaning for your work and how to go about it or if it is needed.
Posts about what you want things to mean, careful crafting to get your message across. I see a lot of agonizing to make certain to convey your message, what to add, what to subtract, where to be heavy handed etc.
Forgive me for being a "Debbie Downer" but if there's one thing I've learned in all the years I've been writing professionally it's the fact that...
The reader will see what they want to see in your story and they will put their own agenda on it.
No matter how clear you are, no matter how circumspect you are, no matter how solid you build your case... they will see what they want to see and will not be budged from that idea. (kinda like anyone who locks onto certain passages in any and all "holy" texts)
For decades there has been the argument that two of the lead characters in the movie "Casablanca" have a BL relationship. The author has stated no mutliple times. He's said all he wanted to do was write a good story and people came back and said, yes you wrote a BL story, you just don't realize you wrote it. And they will not be moved from that decision. They will find every lift of the eyebrow, every breath they can to support their conclusion.
I've had people tell me what I've written and then tell me I don't understand my own work when I've told them they're wrong and no... you're wrong. Yup, they tell me, to my face, I don't know what I've written.
I suffer no angst nor do I try to impart anything into my writing. Like the author of Casablanca, all I want to do is tell a good story and if someone wants to use it as the outline for a paint by numbers (in this case meanings not numbers) well... have at it. I'm not going to argue, I'm not going to discuss, I'm not even going to care. I know what I wrote and that's good enough for me. Frankly, no matter what I might try to write, someone will tell me I didn't write that I wrote "this" instead.