Response A
This is I think a matter of execution combined with a similar misinterpretation as to my thoughts on themes as from the last time this discussion went down. Maybe it means I need to explain myself a bit better, or maybe it just means we conceptualize themes differently.
There are no “wrong” themes, really, though there are certainly interpretations on a text that one might disagree with another on. Part of why I framed the process of synthesis as a process of building an understanding of your script was that it’s a matter of how you, as the writer, conceptualize the story you are writing. You can, if you so wish, choose to write in a theme-agnostic manner and let the chips fall where they please, but themes will still emerge; for me, I find that an understanding of what the script means to you specifically is an important way to begin forming ideas on where you want the script to end up to have it be as satisfying as possible by the end.
It’s sort of like trying to line up all the holes in the various pages of your script so you can fit them into your… ring binder of a story 
the themes are what allow me to locate those places where each of the individual elements of the script overlap, and once they’re all lined up, they all slot in to where they belong and fit together.
Understanding the themes that an author has in mind going into a script can help you as a reader understand what they’re trying to say, but you can just as easily not learn this information or even intentionally discard it if you prefer your own interpretations of that story’s messages; however, as an author, I also have my own interpretation of the script and its meaning, and my own reasons for feeling as though the script is meaningful and powerful.
I think about Lord of the Rings, and the ways people argue constantly about whether or not it’s fair to view the books as being analogous to either of the world wars – Tolkein himself was adamant that the books weren’t a work of allegory, and yet a lot of people find direct parallels in many elements of the novels to those events; are the people wrong because Tolkein didn’t mean for people to draw these parallels? Is Tolkein wrong for expecting readers to disregard the world around them when trying to contextualize his story within their own lives? Or is the actual truth that the messages we draw from a piece of media are only important insofar as they’re important to us as individuals?
I also think about the number of older stories that, while certainly not written as such intentionally, became wildly popular in LGBT circles due to their ability to see their own struggles represented in the abstracted narrative struggles of these protagonists. They are not wrong for seeing themselves reflected in these works just because the authors weren’t keeping them in mind when they first wrote them; they are drawing meaning from the text, connecting it to their own values, beliefs, lived experiences, and present day reality, providing that text with meaning beyond what may have initially been intended. Even just finding meaning in a storyline as it pertains to events that hadn’t occurred at time of writing is, in a way, the same kind of “wrong” theme; I hope this explains why that isn’t a healthy way of viewing writing.
As an aside, though, stuff like this starts to break down if you start looking at things like satire or reads of the text that are grossly selective of what information is included in constructing the thesis. I think other people have given far better explanations of the former than I ever could, and the latter is just arguing and bad faith and shouldn’t be accounted for in discussions like this.
As for your point on heavy-handedness:
I addressed this topic in my discussion with Permafrost, where I attempted to explain that there’s a difference between themes that are a statement of some sort (nationalism bad) versus themes that are an exploration of a topic and its many facets. Permafrost and I disagree on the nature of themes in this discussion, but I still stand by my explanation; these are topics that have weight and meaning to me, topics that make me think and that I want to explore in detail through the medium of fiction, but that I don’t presume to have a definitive conclusion on. Instead, their purpose is to prevent the many conflicting pathways that this exploration leads me down, and then handing the torch off to the reader; what do they make of this exploration? How does it broaden their understanding of the topic, and how does that differ from how it broadened my understanding of the topic through the process of actually writing it?
Response B
This was definitely something I implied but should have made more clear; yeah, the part of that process I described where you write a bunch of things, then figure stuff out? That involves rewriting, possibly even scrapping everything you already wrote to fit the new understanding of the script. I’ve referenced it before, but one of my favourite quotes about writing comes from Noah Caldwell-Gervais; “it’s heartbreaking to be put in a room with two of your favourite paragraphs and a bullet for one of them.” Cutting, rewriting, breaking down, and remaking the work you do, even the work you’re proud of and enjoy the most, is integral to the process of refining your work, sharpening it to a razor edge.
Response C
I have talked about this before, but I do wish to return to it in more detail one day, maybe by tackling a specific element of it rather than, as the initial one was, writing in response to a question another hacker asked.
Essentially, though, I agree with you – the setting is only as important as the people who live within it. If you want to tell me about your world, you need to make me care about it; give me a character who has an impassioned opinion about the world, or a character whose life has been directly impacted by an element of the politics, or a character whose goals are entwined with the mechanics of the setting, but please do not give me a book in a library that tells me a list of dates and royal houses, or a long dry textbox explaining some ancient history or obscure and pointless magic system.
No matter how much you love your world, unless you’re writing a campaign guide for a pen and paper, I’m not going to care unless you give me reasons to care. And, as you might have gleaned from the post above, my opinion on how to best do so is to use characters, plot, and themes to draw me into the narrative, and then hook those three things in to the wider world so that I’m then drawn into caring about that as well.
I would like to note, though, that this is of course only my personal philosophy on writing. Some people adore worldbuilding – just look at the popularity of the Souls brand of storytelling, or the seemingly endless number of Brandon Sanderson fans. If worldbuilding is something you care about, as a reader or as a writer, I encourage you to tap into that passion whenever possible; it will enrich your experience with the artform, and I don’t want anybody to let my very utilitarian “only what matters, when it matters, and nothing else” approach discourage them from focusing on building a world and then building the rest of their plot from there.
the hack is epic.