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x_losI 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.)
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.)
no subject
Date: 2021-10-10 06:30 pm (UTC)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.