Things that Unreasonably Annoy Me About Contemporary Fandom, 2

[x_los]

I feel like the term 'headcanon' creates more confusion than it alleviates. Is a headcanon:

1. a fairly durable reading. For example, I think Wei Wuxian is quite a competent and clever character. A fic that wanted to swim upstream against that to tell a given story would have a hard time selling me on its premise and overcoming my built-up resistance to such a reading. I think this is 'true', to the extent things are true of a fictional work. Meta would need to provide substantial evidence to convince me otherwise. 

2. a flexible, possible or probable reading. For example, Claudius might or might not be Hamlet's biological father. Shen Yuan might or might not have depression. We can support such readings textually, often to such a degree they approach category 1, but not absolutely confirm or deny them. 

3. an idea with limited textual support, that might be true within a given fic project or fun to entertain, but which doesn't amount to a hard or soft reading. 

4. something outright contra-indicated by the text, which you nevertheless choose to entertain as part of your idea thereof. ("I know this character is a jackass, but I find it more rewarding to read him as a woobie, and so I do; I know what I'm doing, and this is the choice I've made.")

And then somewhere in there are reconciliations between episodes of a multi-authorial text like a television show that contradicts itself, or multiple canons for a text, etc.

Headcanon, for me, overly-personalises the public act of reading, and makes it hard to discuss or debate anything. I can't really touch your personal conviction that Peter Wimsey loves bowling--it's not really for me? Obviously it's fine that you hold this belief, but I can't engage with it via shared textual evidence or my own impressions: it's Your Head Canon. Unless I go 'oh, so true', there's no way for me to interact with that. I can't really ask, 'oh, why do you think that?', much less go 'oh, I don't see it.'

This gets weird when people insist, for example, that X character who's quite good at Y skill is in fact rubbish at it (because they find that cute, or it falls in line with a larger pre-existing trope, or what have you). Is that an assertion you can point to evidence regarding, or a personal belief? (In which case, why am I hearing about it, really?) And of course this gets Weirder Still when the tropey bent of these headcanons falls along the lines of comfortable pre-existing gendered or radicalised categories (as happens: that's how those pervasive social forces operate). It's hard to call anything couched as a private belief, accountable to no textual fidelity or external standard, into question. And that interrogation needn't be some big, personally-directed call-out, because it largely doesn't matter that wangxianlvr69 thinks such and such a thing--it matters that 1000 people have arrived at the same lazy, kinda inaccurate reading. 

To me headcanon feels vague, and like a kind of confusing, defensive and solipsistic reframing of the relationship between text, reading and fanon. (Also it's a lightly gash word. 'Headcanon'. Fuckin Max Headroom up in here.) 

Comments

[forestofglory]

Ugh, headcanons are confusing, for all the reasons you say! There's also the thing where someone says "Tell me your soft headcanons about X" and then people write little vignettes about X. It's not even a theory about the text at that point

[x_los]

Yeah, and I can enjoy the little vignettes, sure, but 'headcanon' is so loose, then, because is it just--a quick fic premise that might have been? Just a thought?

[sallymn]

I have Sally's Headcanon and Sally's Fanon, two different things. Headcanon is those things that I love enough to believe - at least believe enough to put into fiction - and that I can reasonably claim are indicated by the real canon. They're the things I extrapolate from something in canon (I use this because my definition of canon is strictly what is on the page/screen and nothing else, no interpretation, no backstory, no 'but that's what it sounded like', no creator's explanations etc.) But they have to come out of SOMETHING in canon.

Then there is Sally's Fanon, for which I don't need actual indications per se in canon - for instance, I have an SF character who is allergic to chocolate, simply because we all liked to see him suffer - but I do require that it fits within and doesn't contradict anything in canon. I admit, I would have preferred we simply stayed with both of them being labelled fanon myself... but oh well. Someone thought headcanon sounded cool, and there we are.

Anything out of these limits -? divergence, OOC, alternates. Which are fine as long as they are labelled that way, I will agree...

[x_los]

Persistence is another thing that really confuses me about the term. Like is 'a headcanon' a one-off, possible idea, or something you believe to the extent you hold no contradictory views, or just like, a thought? People can have personal decisions on that, but it's weird bc person to person, I don't know how they're using the word.

And what about the sort of collective nature of fanon, where everyone as a group decides Avon's gonna have back pain because Cally said something to that effect one time? That absolutely still happens, but we don't talk about it that much rn.

[sallymn]

My fanon, I use it sometimes but don't hold to it at all tightly (and I didn't like the back pain one, so noooo....)

I tend to play with it all, and certainly wouldn't expect anyone else to accept it unless they wanted to, for fun. I think of the "Sentinel-Guide bond is genetic and fated and all" business that came originally and purely from a set of fanfic stories, spread like wildfire and now is used in non-Sentinel stories by people who probably don't even know there is NO canon basis for it whatsoever.

Like interpretation of other fiction, It's okay with me as long as everyone remembers that is is all in the eye of the beholder...

[solo]

I find that 'headcanon' would have to be a (maybe non-mainstream) reading of a character for which there is nonetheless some evidence --- no wait, make that there is at least no contradicting evidence --- in canon. So if someone wants to headcanon that Lord Peter loves bowling (never! those silly shoes!) then there's no contradictory evidence I know of in canon and I can say 'bless you, my child' though I don't believe a word of it.

So I could (enthusiastically) go for versions of your #1 and #2, be kind to version #3, but touch me with #4 and I'll be all 'this is not headcanon, this is your id doing creepy things to logic'.

And yeah, the multiple canons...I have no problem confessing that my 'headcanon' (or really, just call it 'preferred canon' here) for The Untamed is a kind of Frankencanon in which it's 13 years, people get hit with whips not fenceposts, WWX gets his own body back but still potentially gets a new chance to develop a golden core, and WangXian elope after the temple thing. But at least I know that this is personal cherrypicking from stuff that works for me.

[x_los]

Yeah the shoes are a hard no for Peter, I expect.

Right and I have a LOT more patience for 4 if it's clearly labelled? It probably won't ever be My Bag, but at least I'm not confused as to whether people think it's Textual.

[cats_eyes]

I always thought 'headcanon' was a mix of options 1 and 2, but I have noticed that the meaning seems to have expanded over time to the point where it's kind of meaningless. Although this seems to happen to a *lot* of fandom terms (if I never see 'himbo' again it will be Too Soon).

[x_los]

Agreed, and god yeah does that one need a rest.

[allycat796]

This post made me realize that even my own personal definition of 'headcanon' isn't all that precise, but after some thought I think the two main things I'd use to characterize them are: 1) It's neither explicitly supported nor contradicted in any way by the text, and 2) it's highly personalized; not really something I would try to convince other people is true or debate about. So I guess, mostly 3, maybe a little bit 2, but not really 1 (canon) or 4 (fanon).

I guess also, to me headcanons are pretty firmly not something I'd try to engage in debate about? Like you say, it's really difficult because of the lack of evidence for or against, but I would also say I consider it a completely different mode of engagement with media. I compartmentalize a little: there's Serious Analyisis time (where all the debate would go) and Id time (squeeing, h/c, wouldn't it be funny if...etc.), and I've always just assumed that when people are talking headcanons they're having Id time. Though, I have seen occasions where those lines get super blurred, most notably when a large group of fans gets ahold of a popular headcanon and starts trying to argue that it's Objectively true, or it gets so pervasive that people who don't vibe with it just can't escape it and people just dipping their toes in assume it's canon. I guess then I'd also call it fanon? Though that's another term where I think the definition is pretty vague, and I sort of feel like can get used as a substitute for "anything I don't like."

(Just as a side note, I wonder if Twitter might make it easier to do Id Time stuff than engage in serious discussion and that's why it sometimes feels like that's all I can find? I just feel like the formatting makes it way easier to post "Omg Wei Wuxian totally uses 7-in-one shampoo!" with no reasoning at all than to pull up passages from the novel that indicate how Wei Wuixian relates to his appearance and discuss how that impacts his characterization, or whatever.)

[x_los]

Oh, that 4 definition is interesting because I think of fanon as a collective belief? Something with a bit of tenacity to it as well, like 'sickly Shen Yuan' in SVSSS, which persisted even after people pointed out that was a wacky translation and there was no evidence for it. But also there's benign fanon--everyone liked Kirk and Spock sharing an en suite due to one para-canonical architectural blueprint, so it shows up in a ton of fic. But yeah, I do also see 'fanon' wielded as 'stuff I'm not into'.

It feels like maybe a twitter mode that migrates into other discursive norms and exacerbates the slide between id time and reading? Bc now in discords I see a lot of 'WWX is of COURSE bi and demi' and I'm like ? why are we deciding and announcing that, with no rationale? It's not necessarily the case, and you haven't really bothered to MAKE that argument, or illustrated why that'd be a valuable thing to fixedly Decide. And so often this is like--about totally not textual shit, like 'well I'm demi, so there', or 'I just like Clueless Straight Guy WWX', and then I'm like wait what are we talking about, WWX or things you like? If it's just id talk, ok, but it gets circulated like a strong Reading and develops a kind of persistence that can weird me out.

[allycat796]

Funny that you bring up sexuality headcanons, because I've actually seen those in particular devolve into claims that if you don't think that, for example, Wei Wuxian is bi, you're engaging in bi erasure/biphobia. Still without textual evidence or an evidence-based argument of any sort! Just, now we're calling people bigots over it. I guess it's because fandom spaces are often also social justice spaces, and some wires get crossed? People confusing stuff that they don't like with oppression? Idk, I guess that's a whole different can of worms. But I think it definitely comes from that same place of "well I like it, so". It's almost like sometimes people think that headcanons have to be collective or they're invalidated somehow, so maybe that's where that desire to push really personal iddy stuff onto everyone else comes from. Especially when it's a big part of their identity that they think is being invalidated.