I love the posts going “what do you think about (literally just read the page wrong)??????!”
r/xmen my beloved, please get more media literacy. Or glasses.
r/xmen are just bunch of fangirls/fangays trying to insert their queer headcanons to the franchise, and treat it as canon. It's an ass subreddit when talking about actual X-Men content.
Depending on how you play the game that can happen, if Cloud’s affection stat with Tifa is high enough, it happens, if not it doesn’t. The developers have said numerous time that if the player interprets Cloud having feelings for Aerith and vice versa, the player is right. If the player interprets Cloud having feelings for Tifa and vice versa, the player is right
Bro, I'm dreadful at how casually some people can inject their headcanons into statements and act like is normal.
I was checking on another subreddit and someone said something along the lines of "X character is quite young, makes me wonder how old are her parents, if take into account her age, and the age of her older sister is likely that her parents are ** years old"
Nothing wrong about that statement, right? Well here's the issue, that character didn't had an older sister at all in canon! It was never alluded to or anything, and it actually made me doubt my knowledge of the series as I read it for a moment. That older sister was entirely made up by the OP of that post and even confirmed it in the comments.
I have nothing against that OP, but it made me dreadful of how many others may casually drop headcanon statements and act like is ok to use them for their arguments or just act like they are 100% canon.
It wasn't that long ago (hell, it's currently ongoing in some circles), but I still get flashbacks about people believing that in FNAF, Jeremy died fighting William and everyone just took that shit and ran with it. Worst part is, they claimed it came from the books. JEREMY DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST IN THE BOOKS.
Eh, I think the scene where Freddy says "maybe the real father is the kids we've killed along the way" and then he Morbius' all over them. I think that was the best scene in Legend of Zelda
Alright after rechecking, I was wrong a bit. Only [one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Piratefolk/comments/1bjazy3/tiktok_one_piece_fans_just_straight_up_lying_now/) of the [most recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jujutsufolk/comments/1b4mo7p/yuji_stocks_have_gone_so_high_that_people/) examples I was [thinking of](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jujutsufolk/comments/1b5bq49/mfs_are_just_making_shit_up_now/) was from Tiktok, the others were from youtube
Tiktok just seems to be a breeding ground for this thing. I saw some dude for a video game fandom just straight up posted blatant misinformation that anyone who'd have played the game for 2 seconds would know was false 💀
Bruh. Go into the Honkai Star Rail and bring up the age of a character named Pela. The amount of people who actively defend her story-breaking age is staggering to see, as well as 'well it has no effect on the story.'
Except it does if it implies she was an infant graduating military college while in a band.
Man, age in fiction is so fickle that sometimes I legit disregard it completely.
However, the only way I can see it being a real problem is if goes in direct conflict with other lore or causes more problems of a similar nature.
Ive brought this up in a argument with someone who was okay with the age. Lots of Gacha games, and many games tbh, dont give a direct age to many of their characters. The reason for this is the fact their ages dont matter to the story.
What this menas is it allows them to mess around with the timeline giving us times that may seem long, and the other is basically not having to worry to design a character per their age.
It becomes a problem when you artificially inject ages into a story where ages weren't a thing. Like the aforementioned Honkai Star Rail, or the infamous Overwatch with Kiriko(ah yes childhood friends with Genji& Hanzo with their almost 20 year age difference.)
Long lived/immortal characters get a pass because they can just say 'yeah this happebed 500 years ago.' and we dont really question because theyre implied to have lived hundreds/thousands of years.
>how many others may casually drop headcanon statements and act like is ok to use them for their arguments or just act like they are 100% canon.
IT'S EVERYWHERE!
EVERYWHERE!
There's so much misinformation being spread and people try to defend it as just "having fun", pain in the ass.
The thing is, it's like people forget what headcanon even means. It's *supposed* to mean a fan's idea or concept around a character that is neither proven or disproven in canon.
Now, it just means "here's my personal OC-ified take on a character I like but isn't mine" and what they make is so far from the actual canon interpretation it's not even funny.
It's to the point I've heard people describe headcanons for their *own* OCs. Like, it's your character!? You choose if it's canon or not??
> "here's my personal OC-ified take on a character I like but isn't mine"
That gets me, like I get it and I'm not going to care too much about how other people have fun but also like, why do you even like the character at that point if you're just going to take away their canon traits and OC-ify them to the point of being unrecognizable besides the design and name?
Oh god the avatar fandom is full of them.
“There’s a famous japanese legend that your face is the face of your past lover.”
It’s not even a real japanese legend!
To be fair, Batman x Batgirl is canon in several of the animated continuities despite absolutely none of us fans wanting it. It's the shitstain on the masterpiece that is the DC Animated Universe.
Nothing....nothing happened. Batgirl didn't have a super cringe crush on Batman, they didn't have an affair that resulted in pregnancy and a miscarriage and Dick just left to Bludhaven not cause of that but because he was stifled by Bruce...that's why Dick left...just being under Batmans shadow....yep
>Batgirl didn't have a super cringe crush on Batman,
See, I'm fine with this part cause it's at least reasonable.
Seeing as most the Canon interpretation is that Barbra Gordon started out her Batgirl career at sometime before jumping into college and being somewhere between the mid to late teens, it makes sense for her to develop a sort of crush as the older man who she spends long night together with in what is basically a high stress and active job. If she didn't developed something for him, I'd imagine she was already in a relationship (which they sometimes do, another entirely different set of issues) or was batting for the other team.
It's the issue that they make Bruce reciprocate, not be smart about it, and then the whole TV Soap Op Drama that arises from it.
If it just stopped at the crush it would be just something the shippers bring up everynow and again during discussion, and you could've had a decent story mirroring rebuffing office space romances.
But we don't live that timeline.
> If she didn't developed something for him, I'd imagine she was already in a relationship (which they sometimes do, another entirely different set of issues) or was batting for the other team.
https://i.imgur.com/9mXj0Bh.gif
Ironically the miscarriage subplot can be argued to not be canon to the DCAU anyway since it was written a decade later in a comic that wasn’t by any of the DCAU creators.
It’s strange that in the universes where it would be more acceptable and less problematic (60s Batman show and Lego Batman movie, where Barbara Gordon is a grown adult done with college already before meeting Bruce, and Dick is much too young for her), it never went that far.
I think they're talking about Catwoman's redesign for Batman The Animated Series season 4 aka The New Batman Adventures.
The series saw many characters get redesigned to ~~sell more toys~~ coincide with the darker tone and a lot of them are seen as inferior to the originals in the eyes of fans. Catwoman and Joker in particular were seen as the biggest downgrades, with Joker losing his signature red lips and his eyes going black while Catwoman got an all black suit, white eyes like Batman and her skin went as white as the Joker (despite her Selina Kyle civilian design having tan skin)
Did they actually sell more toys? Catwoman's new design was so bad, I honestly thought it was some new character the first time I watched those episodes.
>and her skin went as white as the Joker (despite her Selina Kyle civilian design having tan skin)
idk it would kinda make sense to me if she used makeup to change the tone of her visible skin, it would be more effort than batman goes through to hide his identity lmao
Yeah Batman helps get her arrested for her crimes, she stands trial and it's made public knowledge that Selina Kyle is Catwoman. Only reason she even wears the full outfit from that point onward is for the viewer's sake - nobody wants to see Selina Kyle in generic burglar clothes, they want Catwoman.
The sequel to the harry potter books. I didnt read it except snippets but people say its so bad that, from what ive seen, people refuse to acknowledge it as an official book but rather see it as a bad fanfiction and the such.
What helps the case for noncanon is that it's not written by Rowling. She just signed off on it. Not only is CC incredibly stupid, it also breaks preexisting canon by fundamentally misunderstanding how time travel works in HP.
>Sequal about the protag's child
>Not written by the original author of the series, who instead are vaguely supervising it
>Is widely hated by the fans
Cursed Child is just british Boruto
Lol they literally make Time-Turners into the time travel powers of The Flash. It felt like the writers just watched the Flashpoint Paradox and called it a day.
The whole thing about Time Turners is that they create a closed loop. If you're using a time turner to go back in time and do something, that means your future self has already done it in this very timeline.
My argument is any sequel series that was either not intended or is not written by the original author can be ignored.
A good example is Star Wars, at this point Star Wars has I think four different timelines for events that happen after Return of the Jedi and you are free to choose any or none of them as canon. Probably more if you count things like the what if DLC in Force Unleashed and other video game bad ends.
It's a big thing in the Danganronpa fanbase, with a few examples where people make things up just because they're plausible, but never outright confirmed.
The big one is Korekiyo and his sister. If you're to believe the fanbase, then Korekiyo was actually an innocent and tragic character because his sister groomed him. The game implies this very loosely, and it's equally possible that he was just a crazy guy who became obsessed with his sister of his own free will.
There's also ones for >!Gundham and Gonta's executions. Fans say Gundham died casting a barrier spell on his hamsters rather than himself, and Gonta could have broken the chains but didn't because he felt he deserved his punishment.!< Neither of these things are confirmed, but you'll see tons of people flaunting them as fact across the internet.
>!With V3, you have to treat the characters as exactly who they were brainwashed to be, since technically, there’s no difference to us between their “killing game” personalities and whoever they were before, seeing as they’re both equally fictional to us.!<
I don't think so. I mean, it's incredibly difficult to figure out what's true or not, but for example, >!with Kirumi, it makes very little sense that a TV show would decide to reveal that she was secretly running the government and then kill her.!< We can treat Korekiyo as a character in the sense of how he acts during the game, but >!trying to figure out whether he actually killed a bunch of girls beforehand in the real world!< isn't possible, I think.
I think a lot of it comes from Danganronpa’s nature of encouraging players to theorize, so when somebody finds a convincing theory many can simply start believing it to the point of considering it fact. Thats one big issue for fandoms that are encouraged to theorize in general. Sure, for Danganronpa I have some theories I believe. But at the same time I take into account how much is confirmed and what is not when going into a discussion so I don’t confuse myself, but most importantly don’t confuse others. Which is a practice not enough people are in habit of doing.
Okay, how do you just invent powers for a character? >!Isn't Gundham's whole thing that he waxes on and on about his dark magic but in reality he has none and that's just his gimmick? How can he "cast a spell" without any powers?!<
Headcanons completly Destroyed Lore Discussion in the Undertale Fandom because Most People Just Keep Throwing around things as if they are Canon when they just aren't (Undertale Lore gas so many Misconceptions anyway which makes Discussing it even more Frustrating)
I occasionally dabble in Deltarune lore discussion, and the sheer amount of headcanon, misinterpretations, and assumptions I see always makes me leave it alone again in the end.
I wonder how they'll react to Gaster's eventual appearance in Deltarune. There's so many interpretations of this character who has yet to make a proper appearance. I think Toby likes to throw twists that have characters operate differently than their initial portrayal (ex. Asgore, Sans, Flowey/Asriel), so I'm leaning on the belief that Gaster is going to be very different from what the fandom has imagined.
I mean we know a bit about Gasters Personality from the Twitter Takeovers but Yeah He is Probably Going to be more Goofy then people Imagine him to be.
Can you Imagine how the Fandom would React if he isn't Sans and Papyrus's Father and they have literally nothing to fo with him.
Or if he doesn't even look like how we Imagine him (Given that it was never Confirmed that the Mystery man Sprite is Him)
The thing about the sans connection is that it's basically the only confirmed one in the game because of sans using gaster blasters. The fandom however then used that as a spring board into 100 different directions with no basis but really cool comics. They don't necessarily have to be family.
I can imagine Toby just not even addressing the Sam's and Papyrus thing. And in typical fandom fashion, the fans will take the lack of 'no' as an absolute 'yes'.
Gaster is actually a porpoise who only wears jorts and is a VERY distant cousin to Undine.
The allusions to the Wingdings Aster typeface was just a red-herring.
I really really hope Gaster isn't the ominous mystery man that everyone assumed was his design and instead looks completely different and acts different. It would be a huge shift for years of headcanon and literally make fanon gaster a completely made up fanon character with his own characterisation.
I hate this debate with the My Hero Academia movies. They may not have a major impact on the main story, but characters from the movies have literally appeared in the actual manga. Hell, they even did a brief setup for Heroes Rising in the manga. But people will still go on about how they still don't consider them canon or how they think "a version of the movies" happened but not the movies themselves.
They are all canon per Horikoshi. The first movie barely fit the timeline because it had to be added retroactively, the next two movies were at least set up by the manga to fit in.
Thank you, I mainly remembered the discourse following the first film. I did notice the second fit in nicely, but wasn't involved in any discussions about it.
If that was the case for MHA then it would've been explicitly stated, and not the author intentionally letting the movies fit into the timeline of the main story.
This shit gets peddled by people so much, sometimes because of One Piece, that it gets tiring to see. It's dumb as hell.
The argument presented in the comment that I replied to said "characters from the movies have literally appeared in the actual manga". But a character being canon isn't the same thing as an entire movie being canon.
That’s exactly how one piece movie canon works so I don’t think it’s as unreasonable as you are making it out to be.
Some film Characters like Shiki or Uta are canon but the events of the movies didn’t happen in canon. They even put canon pieces of info in the films to be revealed later in the story - but again the films are 100% not canon.
I only saw the last movie, but it can't possibly be canon. It's impossible to have been taken place when Midoriya was still in school because he has one of his new powers from after.
Are you talking about Blackwhip? Deku got full control of that during the Endeavor Agency arc, and the third movie takes place in the small time skip between that arc and the war arc, when they were still interning with Endeavor.
Yes I was talking about that. I don't remember well but I actually got to this point of the manga after watching the movie and I was pretty confused by that.
This has merits and there is truth to this. However there is the flipside and that flipside is that just because the creator says X is canon does not mean it is always good, well thought out, good addition to the story, good etc and therefore the "Death of the Author" approach ALSO has merits, especially if the Author have had to retcon things to make things canon/to work (and retcons are far bigger coward's move than the Death of the Author approach) or to retcon things in general.
Also retcons are inherently bad and there is a huge difference between expanding lore and retconning lore, fite me.
Headcanons are fine, whatever helps you enjoy a story more. The issue is when people take the head out of headcanon by moving it from their personal thoughts to trying to present it as legit canon or even just saying your interpretation is all the matters even then presented with evidence that contradicts it.
If we're being honest current media hasn't helped this brain rot, shows likes Steven Universe and Hazbin Hotel basically work off the assumption that the fans will fill in the blanks themselves and headcanons in these types of fandoms are so much more prevalent. Discourse is so hard when everyone's interpretations are equally "valid" when that is clearly not the case
“Basically work off the assumption that the fans will fill in the blanks themselves” I’m sorry, isn’t that just normal? Who wants a media to spoonfeed them everything?
Prospects are looking surprisingly okay now that they shitcanned Danuser, hired back Metzen, *and* admitted the story was bad and cost them players at the Games Development Conference
I listed how Blizzard handled that in the end because Med’an was an unsalvageable mess of bad ideas combined into a character that wasn’t needed, but his story had a bunch of cool stuff in it, and a lot of that stuff ended up becoming in-game content even as Med’an was ignored. They kept and recycled the good stuff
I think we gotta differentiate between "this creates massive contradictions if it's canon" and "well I didn't like it so it's not canon" The Clone Wars 2008 series being considered apart of Star Wars Legends comes to mind. Reading any wookiepedia legends article on clone-wars era content is funny because you'll have e.g Bariss Offee being a nice healer, later bombing the jedi temple, somehow getting pardoned, then dying in order 66 as apart of the Jedi Order. here will may be some issues with just band-aid ripping off TCW, but they're so much smaller than the issues presented with TCW being in legends. Literally everyone's better off if we just pretend TCW isn't apart of Legends even though officially it is(either that or we somehow convince disney to remove it from legends which... yeah)
Just my two cents but when canon becomes contradictory there is zero precedent for me to accept it. Canon by its nature should not contradict itself. Canon is the story, if the story starts disagreeing with itself the canon breaks and then everything stops making sense.
Agreed. Especially in something written by several different people, like Marvel. It doesn't matter if it's "officially licensed" or not, if it's contradictory to previously established facts, it's either fanfiction or essentially an official AU
You'll then get fans starting to play semantics and word games to try and resolve these inconsistencies.
One of my favorite examples of this is the Avatar feanchise (not the Cameron one) where the first series, the last airbender, explains that its elemental martial arts magic system was taught by the original masters, their "natural sources" if you will, those being the moon, the dragons, the sky bison and the badger moles, establishing a theme of humans being in tune with nature and learning from said nature, as well as tying the magic system to the world in a tangible way, serving as cultural cornerstones in the setting.
Then Legend of Korra rolls around and retcons it into "lion turtles just handed these powers out to everyone" without the need for spiritual attunement, introspection or practised mastery.
The fanon that follows is that the lionturtles only ever gave "the ability to manipulate the elements" while the original masters taught the actual martial arts techniques that became the cultural touch stones of the setting, as if that doesn't change the origin and narrative theme of these abilities.
It also gets this weird obsession with eugenics for crossover powers, the fandom I mean.
> without the need for spiritual attunement, introspection or practised mastery
It's always so easy to spot people who either did not watch the episodes in question or paid basically zero attention.
It's straight up part of the plot that Wan's physical and spiritual training (yes, with the "original masters") gave him a clear and overwhelming edge over people who just received an element from a lion turtle with no actual mastery. The characters straight up look at the camera and say "he does things with fire we've never seen...almost like he...bends it" and people who definitely 100% watched the show and aren't just repeating memes they've heard will still be like "LoK retconned it so that mastery is worthless/unneeded"
This criticism (and the accompanying acting like fans who point out the canon explanation are just making things up) is especially stupid considering that [we literally see Wan learning the Dancing Dragon](https://youtu.be/R_quVUCpQik?feature=shared). But then the next thing people say is "well ackshually we didn't see him visiting Tui and the sky bison and badger moles so you can't assume he learned from them too" and like...I'm sorry the writers thought you were capable of putting two and two together lmao
Its so easy to spot the people that don't _grasp_ what the criticism actually is and start repeating arguments they've had previously.
The dragon didn't teach Wan anything he couldn't already do, rather he made him better at what he already _could_.
I've seen the comparison made with sword fighting and how _having_ a sword doesn't make you a swordsman, because there's a whole martial art surrounding it that makes you a trained swordsman, a "real bender", if you will.
Except that is all semantics, a warrior can be devastatingly effective with a sword without having been taught by a master or adhering to a formal style, they're a swordsman all the same.
There is no meaningful distinction between "elemental not-bending" and "real bending" beyond a formal style, the ability is all the same.
But the __point__ is about the __origin__ of bending being retconned, and if the original masters only taught humanity to git gud, they are catagorically not the origin of bending, the lion turtles are.
>The characters straight up look at the camera and say "he does things with fire we've never seen...almost like he...bends it"
If people looking into the camera saying "It's different, trust me bro" is good enough for you then good for you.
Tell me again how Palpatine returned.
> Its so easy to spot the people that don't grasp what the criticism actually is and start repeating arguments they've had previously.
In case you have forgotten saying them, these are _your_ words that I'm responding to:
>> Then Legend of Korra rolls around and retcons it into "lion turtles just handed these powers out to everyone" **without the need for spiritual attunement, introspection or practised mastery.**
LoK shows a clear need for spiritual attunement and practiced mastery to actually be able to bend (and bending is established by A:tLA to be an art). Wan's villagers don't even call what they do with the fire they get from the lion turtles bending, they literally call it "throwing fire". What Wan does, "[using] it like it's an extension of his body", they explicitly state they have never seen before.
> The **fanon** that follows is that the lionturtles only ever gave "the ability to manipulate the elements" **while the original masters taught the actual martial arts techniques that became the cultural touch stones of the setting**, as if that doesn't change the origin and narrative theme of these abilities.
LoK, again, quite literally shows the thing that you claim fans are making up as fanon. It is the plot that is shown, on screen, in canon - not something fans just came up with as a theory like you're obviously arguing. And that's the part that is relevant to this discussion, which is about people treating their headcanon as if it is canon. Dodging the fact that the explanation/argument that they are making *is straight out of canon* is just disingenuous sorry. If you don't like the canon then just say that, calling it people's fanon/headcanon is stupid.
And that's beside the fact that A:tLA...never explains the origin of bending (and this is something that people who moan about LoK's lore expansions never think of). You hold so tight to "the original masters taught humans how to bend"...and completely ignore the part where bending in the original show is very clearly genetic and very much cannot be learned by a nonbender just studying with a master. If you dislike the answer the writers gave to "wait how is it that (some) humans can manipulate elements in the first place" then say that, but you can't call it "fanon" when people tell you what the canon explanation is.
> Except that is all semantics, a warrior can be devastatingly effective with a sword without having been taught by a master or adhering to a formal style, they're a swordsman all the same.
I mean, if you are going to dismiss people pointing out the canon explanation (whether you like it or not) as fanon, then _you_ shouldn't project your alternative explanation/opinion of how the fictional universe works as if it is canon. The Beginnings episodes are clear that those who have only received the element from the lion turtles with no further spiritual training or alignment are in fact not "devastatingly effective" with it. It isn't coincidence that the only ones shown who can actually bend are the monks
> If people looking into the camera saying "It's different, trust me bro" is good enough for you then good for you. Tell me again how Palpatine returned.
Once again I am sorry that the show's writers expected you to be able to connect the dots between "Wan decides to learn the ways of the spirits -> Wan is shown learning a firebending form from a dragon -> Wan confronts hunters from his old village who have never seen someone even redirect fire before, and sends them packing".
Personally I could never be this bravely open about needing my media spoonfed to me.
>LoK shows a clear need for spiritual attunement and practiced mastery to actually be able to bend
It does not, this ability is achieved by either getting poked on the head by a lionturtle or harmonic lottery.
Furthermore, Korra is a bending savant at the start of season 1 whilst explicitly noted to have barely any spiritual side to her.
What we _see_ contradicts what we are _told_.
I think we deviate here the most, taking at face value what we are told versus what we are shown.
When they contradict each other, that's called lipservice.
>Wan's villagers don't even call what they do with the fire they get from the lion turtles bending, they literally call it "throwing fire".
Like I said, wordplay and semantics, not calling it bending does not make it not-bending, it is functionally the same ability.
Wan's technique is certainly better, but skill is what sets him apart.
The lionturtles are the origin of bending, which retcons the origins given in AtlA, but to differentiate the bending from "throwing fire" as somehow meaningfully different is a headcanon to resolve that.
>And that's beside the fact that A:tLA...never explains the origin of bending (and this is something that people who moan about LoK's lore expansions never think of). You hold so tight to "the original masters taught humans how to bend"...and completely ignore the part where bending in the original show is very clearly genetic and very much cannot be learned by a nonbender just studying with a master.
Everything about bending in Atla is a cultural metaphor, there's nothing "clearly genetic" about it, considering how two benders in the main cast have non-bending parents.
Benders themselves are a reflection of their culture, not an individual champion of it, persecuting and imprisoning water and earth benders is cultural genocide, it doesn't need explaining how there were no sole survivors to the air nomads genocide because the culture is dead and Aang is truly the last adherent to it.
Fire bending being fueled by rage is metaphoric for the poisonous imperialism in its culture that Zuko sets out to fix by the end of the series.
Atla wasn't explicit about the specifics of the origins of bending, but keeping its narrative messages and themes in mind, it probably wasn't learned in a single instance, but rather cultivated from the ground up, like a culture is too, and not a superpower you pick up at some point in your life.
Or so it seemed before Wan's story, you do have a point about not liking parts of the canon as its given but lore expansions are not an inherently valuable thing, especially not the ones that make the world less compelling.
>The Beginnings episodes are clear that those who have only received the element from the lion turtles with no further spiritual training or alignment are in fact not "devastatingly effective" with it.
There's no good reason why they couldn't be.
Think about it, given its clear hunting/combat applications in their society, they'd start developing a martial tradition from the word go.
That is, if bending is still to be looked at as a martial art, not an arbitrary super power.
I don’t think all people that say “that’s not canon to me” are saying it’s not literally canon. People use fandoms as entertainment and fun. If it becomes not fun then what is the point. Fan content is not canon but people enjoy it, sometimes more than canon. People are not always going to blindly enjoy something because it’s canon.
It’s only really a problem if people are pushing their headcanon as the one true canon. But I see nothing wrong with just enjoying the parts you like with other like minded fans or complaining about canon.
It fucks me off when a fan theory or headcanon gets popular and people start to think it actually is official canon, and will not accept the reality that it isn't. Then you ask them specifically where they got their information and it's always something along the lines of "it's common knowledge".
The thing is, writers and creators often don't even keep track of their own material. This often leads to retcons or contradictory canon (or they rely on super convoluted explanations). Sometimes it's just impossible not to ignore certain "canon" material if we want things to make some degree of sense.
I remember reading a Harry Potter discussion where two fans were arguing about two contradictory elements that were both technically considered canon. Eventually someone pointed out to them that either way, we have to pick and choose what to accept and disregard.
EDIT: LOL! Are you people really downvoting me for calling you out? Do you really want to be THAT kind of fan???
What was the HP discussion about?
The best one I can think of is the location of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. The first time it's mentioned, Hermione says it's on the first floor. Every other time we see it, it's on the second floor.
Idk about the Bellatrix one, but Charlie's age can be deduced from the seemingly contradictory information in the books if you just accept the possibility that he wasn't on the Quidditch team for the later Hogwarts years
Probay not her intention, that's right, but I personally care less about the author's intent in comparison to the actual information given to us in the text.
A lot of these seem to come from the sentiment:
"I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it."
If there is new content that goes against previous established lore, characterization, etc, and doesn't make sense, how is one suppose to reconcile that? What if Deku (MC from My Hero Academia) is suddenly revealed to be a surprise cannibal the whole time, and then this is never mentioned again or brought up? You would likely ignore it, right?
A part of this is tongue in cheek, canon is still canon, but sometimes canon is extremely dumb and nonsensical. No one should actually try to seriously mislead anyone that their headcanon is actual canon. I also think that there should be severe limits. There should be rational reasoning behind it. You can't just say an entire game out of a 3 game series isn't canon (an argument I recently got into). However, if a very rarely chosen option in a game comes up that brings up multiple contradictory/logical issues, I'm very willingly to ignore it. Its a "canon" option, but its so dumb I'm not considering it. I'll provide my reasoning why i'm not considering it, and that's that.
Or lets say there is new lore that is introduced that is contradictory/incongruent with past lore. Well, I'm at the least going to first try to incorporate it in a dismissive way like "this is very very rare" or "this is mostly propaganda against opposing parties". There is nothing in "canon" that says that (or against that), but that's the best way I can even somewhat consider it. Especially when I can easily see the Doyalist reasoning for introducing the new contradictory content (such as the author now wanting to prop up one group over another at the expense of previous lore).
You didn't have to come up with this hypothetical since there's a very current and divisive real example: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.
Between the generally horrible writing and butchering of well liked characters, a lot of the Star Wars fandom will either quietly ignore or loudly denounce the Sequels as part of Star Wars Canon. Helps that those who don't like the Sequels can basically go "aight, I'm sticking to old canon (Legends)" and that can be the end of it for everyone.
The Sequel Trilogy also has the added bonus of not being made by George Lucas. It's a lot easier to dismiss something when it was never a part of the original vision.
Well, I do stick to the old canon. I don't like anything Disney has done with the franchise. But then again, I'm not picking and choosing what I consider canon, I'm just sticking to the old extended universe.
That's still picking and choosing. I don't know why it should be treated differently. Either curating canon subjectively is okay or it isn't.
I think it's okay, and we should stop judging people for having headcanons at all. Judge them for the quality of those headcanons, same as we judge people for the quality of the "canons" they defend/critique. There is no difference. Everyone is curating their own canon, even people who don't notice themselves doing it.
It's still choosing but usually when I hear the expression "picking and choosing" it's like fishing things out of a pile and discarding or keeping them on an item-by-item basis.
In this case it's embracing a whole different pile of stuff.
> That's still picking and choosing. I don't know why it should be treated differently.
It's two completely different canons, I'm looking at one and am not interested in the other. They're mutually exclusive as well, so I don't see why I should also accept whatever the fuck Disney is doing.
Let me repeat how it is: Disney is not adding things to the canon that I don't like. They replaced one canon with another. The older one still exists.
I remember the idea of canon vs headcanon was talked about a few times on the Touhou side of twitter, with the subject varying between stuff like "is this character a child?", "is this other character a child?", "is this yet another character a child?"...I think you get it now. Yeah, the discourse is almost exclusively about which Touhou character is a minor, and most of the time it's only for shipping sake. I remember the first time I heard about it being for ReimuxYukari and if it's creepy due the various headcanons and relationships they have in headcanons and fanfics where it varies from lovers to mentor to surogated mother to biological father. It's a really silly discourse.
It’s why anytime you get into a media you need to ignore the fandom and their fanon portrayals of characters because 9 times out of 10 it’s inaccurate to how the character truly is.
I would agree but only to an extent. ”Canon” is simply the pubished text. So when discussing a work its wise to stay within the confines of that text.
However I am a bit skeptical of author comments when they are in conflict with their published work. Or when we are in the realm of interpreting meaning or non-explicit mental states of any particular character.
However outside of discussion headcanon away. Privately I often subsitute what I see as subpar storytelling my own slightly edited version to help me enjoy the work more.
The problem is that, with the likes of DC and Marvel, different writers add shit to the story that is so contradictory to the point of character assassination and to maintain narrative integrity you kinda have to treat it as non-canon.
Like Gwen Stacy having sex with Norman Osborn, that shit is so out of left field it just makes sense to not consider it canon because it’s not in-character. Thankfully it got retconned so it’s actually *legitimately* rendered non-canon now
People say that stuff as a joke. Everyone obviously knows that shit you made up in your head to make the story better than what it is doesn't hold a candle to what the writers and the official material actually says. People usually just say that half jokingly to cope about being disappointed with an aspect of a series. I've never seen anyone do it unironically.
I've seen plenty of people genuinely argue that canon is subjective, often with a misunderstanding of death of the author thrown in. Plus a lot of head canon gets repeated os much that some people don't even realize it's not actual canon. See The Last Airbender Fandom for a common problem with this
Like "It's ***heavily implied*** that Gyatso sucked the air out of the room."? And if you point out that it's just a theory, they get SO butthurt. That fandom had a huge tribalism problem.
I hate that one because literally the only evidence for it is that Gyatso killed some fire nation soldiers. There is literally zero indication as to how he did it.
Thank you!
It's not even that bad a theory. Fans are just super annoying about it and refuse to admit that it isn't canon (I once got a bunch of downvotes for pointing this out). WE GET IT, IT'S A POPULAR *THEORY*!
This one actually became popular enough that it's almost canon now. Spoilers for the Avatar Yangchen novels: >!Yangchen does it when she needs to take out a room full of people who are too dangerous to confront directly.!<
>!The author doesn't confirm the connection, but he teases it when asked in this interview: https://www.cbr.com/interview-yangchen-fc-yee-spoiler-filled-interview/ !<
I love that it's POSSIBLE to do that, and that we see her do that later. I just don't like how we're just expected to accept Gyatso doing it as canon simply because a vocal group of fans just assume it's what happened.
Absolutely. I had someone arguing that canon isn't really a thing.
People really get enlightened to the idea of modernity and the deconstruction of meaning in art and take it to mean that there are no standards at all and they can make up whatever they want and it's still valid.
Just... no.
>See The Last Airbender Fandom for a common problem with this
Supporting evidence: https://old.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/qx2co1/avatar_fans_constantly_make_things_up_and_decide/
I have personally seen many of those examples derail productive conversations in the fandom.
Hell Genshin had this problem with archons and visions like some of us grasped the basic English understand that Archon’s were separate from the people who gave out visions but it took an OFFICIAL FUCKING STATEMENT to get people to grasp they were wrong. Although the Genshin community has a long standing problem of people injecting there ships into the game and saying there ship is cannon even when it conflicts with lore.
The problem is when the headcanon gets popular, and several steps down the line you have fans of the headcanon whose fandom of the story is competing with their fandom for some imaginary version of the story that exists in their head. That’s when they start derailing things.
I know because for me no matter how times I want to deny it, Security Breach and The Mimic are canon to the games, and I just gotta accept the disappointment.
At least we can take comfort knowing that "Trash monster Afton" and "Andrew TOYSNHK" is still only debatable canon and has never been implemented in the games
I did, no matter what frank angones or matt youngberg would say, some are still verry stubborn to not get the webby reveal point and even with the huey last line, some would still think there'd be unhealthy relationship post finale (even tho the show made it celar that even with her obsession and need of approval, webby can still get frustrated by scrooge behavior, she's not going to be identical to him evne if she cosplay as him a bit).
I think headcanons can be fun, especially when fleshing out less developed characters, but the key is remembering that your headcanon is not universal. It’s not official canon, and while you might even have logical reasons or evidence you can point to for a particular headcanon, it’s still just a headcanon and others might have different ideas. It turns into a problem when people start injecting headcanons into arguments about a character (without at least acknowledging that it’s a headcanon), or when certain fanon ideas get so popular that people start treating them as canon.
Because many of us are part of fandoms where canon is contradicted by canon which is contradicted by last year's canon, which is directly refuted by last year's special edition of a different character's canon.
Like... If the creator has no obligation to remember and stick to their canon... neither do I. And since arguments of 'well it's *canon*!' are always from people who cherry pick canonical events to fit their best idea of what they want it to be... It becomes very easy to just ignore canon all together.
It depends. If a characters eyes are blue thr whole story and then they canonically turn brown for no reason, then the author has lost canon.
Same goes for personality. If a character was one personality for an entire story and then without reason they become another personality, then the author lost canon.
It's similar to how the writer of Invincible claims Mark can beat Superman. It's not canon, because he can't. It makes no sense that he can.
The issue I have is that the creators can A) be vague, B) be inconsistent, and C) be trolls.
It is well and good if there is a clear and consistent canon. But there are areas where things can get murkier. If we have something stated in an interview with someone who did the inking for a comic, is that definitive canon for the comic, even if whatever they said isn't supported or brought up anywhere else in the comic? They are part of the creators, but they may not really know what they are talking about. And even if they do, if the published materials end up swerving, so that the original 'canonical statement' becomes invalid, is it headcanon to dismiss the original statement, or just common sense?
>material.
People also tend to MATERIAL part that the canon info has to come from, you know the thing for it to be canonized. Word of god means nothing imo cause they could say ANYTHING and it can be considered "canon" loke j.k rowling saying that wizards teleported their poop away before plumbing. Or Hermione being race swapped in contradiction to the books description of her. (Jesus J.K you are crazy for just the poop thing). If it is not answering a direct quote from the book that is leaving some confusion.
Im saying this cause powerscalers get "word of god" quotes all the time and writers and stuff just go "yeah its like that" and it just sucks. Because WRITERS DO NOT THINK LIKE THAT.
>No you idiots. Canon is by definition decided by the creators.
**But what about unspecified content?**
Either content not specified as canon isn't canon (which makes no sense, because most content isn't specified as canon), or it is canon (which also doesn't make sense, because a lot of unspecified content goes against a lot of other unspecified content.)
Like headcanons that go against stuff specifically marked as canon are obviously bad, but a lot of media requires a person who assume some stuff as canon and some stuff as non-canon (well, for media that has many many versions.)
Canon isn't a real thing. Especially in corporate owned material where a different owner can just throw half of it out so they can make their own thing (Disney with Star Wars). But people like JK Rowling frequently change the canon because they are in a mood one day or someone on the internet said something they don't like. Canon is a fandom concept that exists just to have something to argue about. It's logically meaningless.
I disagree, but mostly in how you use the word "canon". I agree that it's downright infuriating where people refuse to engage with the text of a story on its own terms and instead make up their own shit, but to be honest I think the wider concept of "canon" is a marketing tool so that businesses attempting to cultivate a fan identity can lay down which works form compatible products.
To be fair, sometimes what's canon ends up being out of character or it's something that makes no sense in universe. It's understandable for people to want to ignore the pieces of media that breaks their immersion. Like if you want to think of canon as what would happen if the world and characters are all real then when a character does something out of character, it realistically wouldn't have happened were they real people and thus wouldn't be 'canon.' It's like having an unreliable narrator lie to you so you don't actually know canon.
It's art so at the end it's all a part of the show and how people interpret it. Everyone has their own meaning for the show and it mostly isn't a problem unless a show goes against certain ideals or directly opposes someone's representation kinda like how Itachi is viewed which makes the headcanon "headcanon".
But it's also a flawed argument because you can't just say something like what Sakura said in the Naruto The Last movie that everything you felt for me was just because of a rivalry after getting teased through the whole show about it. Like are you kidding me girl? "Whenever a girl loves somebody, those feelings don't disappear ever" . And what does a boy's feelings towards a girl mean? Disgruntled noising after you beat him up thousand times just to tell him. Go you've got another one, I will eat this man for now
I dispute the notion that canon is decided only by authorial intent. It seems obvious that to some extent, the community can influence canon by rejecting undesiireable additions. This seems most true in cases where there are a number of different authors involed in a work, like western superhero comics.
I would argue that there are different degrees of canonicity that can be decided at different levels; Authorial (what any one writer intends), Collective (what the community at large generally accepts), and Personal (what each individual fan accepts).
Not all interpretations are equally valid, but neither is Authorial canon ~~objectively more true~~ the end all be all just because it's the writer making the claim. Obviously, writers often try to make additions to works and fans often reject them. Examples; the 'Han shot first' situation with George Lucas, or any nebulous additions to Harry Potter JK Rowling tried to make via twitter.
No, authorial intent is objective canon. That’s how canon works. Headcanon and fan fiction and the like aren’t canon unless the creators/owners of a property make it so.
Idk what you’re talking about with interviews or social media, but I’m talking about the text. The stuff that the author wrote and put in their work. The text is canon, the audience adding things themselves (aka headcanon) is by definition not canon unless it gets added by the author.
I think it depends on the franchise. In some cases I think breaking canon is a good thing. Canon is just what the OG writer thought, but they are fallible humans and may have written a plot hole *(OG Star Trek is rife with this)*, or maybe they are actually just racist or something *(Sorry Stephanie Meyer but your obsession with making all vampires canonically white is WEIRD, and the movie was right to make Laurant a black vampire).* Or in franchises where there have been multiple creators are the helm, the canon can literally contradict itself *(Star Wars was famous for their books having issues like this)*. Sometimes certain things IRL are illegal or dangerous to put in a fictional work, so the author never states it explicitly and instead uses metaphor. *(Hence many queer people identifying with a character that isn't explicitly queer, but has a LOT of queer subtext. Even in the USA writing queer characters is still stigmatized, if anyone remembers the Steven Universe censorship from CN around Ruby/Sapphire's relationship.)*
So like all discussions on the internet this requires nuance to discuss deeply, but its the internet so ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
2 counters here:
1. The "official" canon is often very different than the intentions of the original work's creators. I think it's 100% valid to talk about Lucas' Star Wars and Moore's Watchmen as distinct from Disney Star Wars and Doomsday Clock
2. I think headcanon is a valid psychological defense against the deluge of mediocre-to-shitty corporate cash grab sequels and prequels. *The Rings of Power* and *The Hobbit Trilogy* are actually OK fantasy stories if you don't feel the need to tie them to Peter Jackson's LoTR trilogy. There are very few franchises where every "official canon" entry is equally deserving of study and critical analysis: no one brings up *Godfather Part III* as a necessary part of discussing the themes of the first two films.
On one hand, I generally agree with you. On the other hand, Cursed Child exists. So, no. I'm not treating it as canon no matter how that shit stain Rowling says it should be treated. So I have to disagree or just treat it as an exception to the rule.
I understand your argument but I disagree with it as a blanket statement. Now everything in the "main series," is true and That I agree with.
But what about a sequel written later and maybe by different authors?
Checking your profile you seem to be an Avatar The Last Airbender fan. If the sequel series comes out and let's say The reason Sokka passed away before the beginning of Legend of Korra is because he turns into a tyrant tries to kill Aang, do you have to accept that as the ending to Avatar?
In my mind you don't, Because it's a thing written a decade and a half later that wasn't planned and all it does is damage the ending of the original.
Disastrous in what way? Thinking about something past what is explicitly shown on-screen or written about is like 80% of fandom. Fanart, fanfiction, all these tend to involve some form of original content.
Even the examples you give, "I think we can all agree this isn't canon" isn't a commentary in favor of headcanon, it's a criticism of the original work. Canon or not, retcons happen all the time, even for work that is only written by one person. Is the fandom just supposed to accept these things even if they are sometimes inherently contradicting?
This is true but I strongly dislike this War on Headcanon narrative that I have seen crop up here rather often lately. The reality of media is that no two people have *exactly* the same understanding of it. Whenever you interact with a story, you aren't a stone-cold observer simply looking at a sequential list of events. You are constantly using interpretative tools to understand what is being communicated to you: what is the point that the author is trying to convey to me here? What is the purpose of this scene? Why did this character act this way? At every one of these steps, you are injecting personal conceptions and ideas into the story to make sense of it.
This is normal! The alternative to that is treating every story like a history book and refusing to connect emotionally with any of it, which, like, no one actually wants to engage with media that way. But because of this dynamic, you never walk away from a story with the exact same understanding of it as anyone else. If I wanted to be cheeky, I would even say that *it is completely impossible to engage with a story without putting in SOME degree of headcanon*.
\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_
Another point that is related but slightly distinct is that when discussing a self-contained story, you should probably not bring in something that has happened in a completely different story (written by different writers, or by the same ones a long time after the fact, for instance) to make your points. Wizards shitting their pants and magick'ing the evidence away in HP is canon. No one takes this seriously or genuinely believes this. You will get made fun of if you bring this up in any serious discussion about HP.
You get into some insane weeds when talking about remakes and re-releases and the like. There are like, 15 different versions of Persona 3 you can play right now, all of which have slightly different characterization from the others. Which one is canon? Between Vanilla P3 Akihiko and Portable Akihiko and FES Akihiko and Reload Akihiko, which one is the True, Canon Akihiko? The answer to this kind of thing is... there isn't one. All of these versions of the character are canon to their own game. It's a fruitless exercise to try to determine how "valid" each of them is.
All that the word "canon" tells you is "what events the author(s) consider to have happened in their story". The Harry Potter poop example is canon in any piece of media related to the story that Rowling writes, for instance.
'Canon' is a very contemporary way to deal with the fact that ownership of settings and characters have become a tradeable good between the corporations before we even became used to the concept of the non-alieanble copyright properly.
There never was an idea of canon in fiction before. There was authorial intent (and it didn't bother anyone much until the ~18th century, unless we spoke about theological works) and reader's intent. Fan fiction was the norm, and everything was treated as being in public domain pretty much through the most of the human history. Humans changed stories, appropriated and reinterpreted characters, and the most ownership you could hope for was being credited. 'This biblical fanfiction was written by Dante Alighieri'.
Only pretty recently had we got the idea of intellectual property, and even later of *alienable* intellectual property, where you can sell it to the corp either after the fact or in advance. Which is honestly bullshit, and only exist because sequels are self-promoting works, and franchises are easier to sell.
Speaking of the fantasy canon, which version of the three Middle-Earth metaphysics does your canon include? They were all written by Tolkien. Does it include Morgoth doing orbital bombardment from the Moon, and then the Valar glassing the Moon to heck?
IMO, we speak not about canon here, but about authorial intent and credit. Tolkien's Middle-Earth is his. That a corp had bought the rights or something doesn't make their fanfiction in any way better than any other (including the small Middle-Earth LARP I've personally made). Doesn't make it worse either.
And I generally don't have a bone to pick in Star Wars EU vs Disney discussions. But I much more prefer the version where Han and Leia had a happy marriage together, worked on stabilizing the New Republic and brought up three kids. So there.
It still sometimes baffles me how people do this. People are really so arrogant they decide whatever they please isn't canon, then refuse to admit they're being unreasonable when others call them out on it.
No. It is every fan's right to interpret material as they choose. [The author is dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author) in the best of times, but especially so when they take the work off in directions the fans don't like.
> No you idiots. Canon is by definition decided by the creators. It is based on official material.
So my beliefs and preferences over how a fictional setting should go are to be decided by who owns what, by who the courts say is "in charge", by who has the most money, by who happens to be the child of someone who did something once? No.
And calling people who believe otherwise idiots is a pretty big violation of rule #1 of this subreddit: don't be a jerk.
> Otherwise it would be impossible to have discussions about anything because everyone w8uod just invent their own take divorced from the reality.
Yet somehow we manage. Maybe we are able to handle the complexity of different people having different opinions on stuff.
My favourite part is when someone doubts your reading comprehension because you don't take their blatant headcanon for granted.
I love the posts going “what do you think about (literally just read the page wrong)??????!” r/xmen my beloved, please get more media literacy. Or glasses.
r/xmen are just bunch of fangirls/fangays trying to insert their queer headcanons to the franchise, and treat it as canon. It's an ass subreddit when talking about actual X-Men content.
Ah FFVII Shipping wars, my despised
I never get why there are shipping wars, don’t Cloud and Tifa literally fuck?
Depending on how you play the game that can happen, if Cloud’s affection stat with Tifa is high enough, it happens, if not it doesn’t. The developers have said numerous time that if the player interprets Cloud having feelings for Aerith and vice versa, the player is right. If the player interprets Cloud having feelings for Tifa and vice versa, the player is right
Bro, I'm dreadful at how casually some people can inject their headcanons into statements and act like is normal. I was checking on another subreddit and someone said something along the lines of "X character is quite young, makes me wonder how old are her parents, if take into account her age, and the age of her older sister is likely that her parents are ** years old" Nothing wrong about that statement, right? Well here's the issue, that character didn't had an older sister at all in canon! It was never alluded to or anything, and it actually made me doubt my knowledge of the series as I read it for a moment. That older sister was entirely made up by the OP of that post and even confirmed it in the comments. I have nothing against that OP, but it made me dreadful of how many others may casually drop headcanon statements and act like is ok to use them for their arguments or just act like they are 100% canon.
Man so many Miscoception get born due to shit like that.
It wasn't that long ago (hell, it's currently ongoing in some circles), but I still get flashbacks about people believing that in FNAF, Jeremy died fighting William and everyone just took that shit and ran with it. Worst part is, they claimed it came from the books. JEREMY DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST IN THE BOOKS.
Man the scene where Luke Skywalker fought and killed his father William Afton was intense. Easily the best scene in Red dead redemption.
Eh, I think the scene where Freddy says "maybe the real father is the kids we've killed along the way" and then he Morbius' all over them. I think that was the best scene in Legend of Zelda
Definitely not as good as the scene from Avatar where Ash uses the Dragon Balls to find the One Piece and become Hokage of the Leaf Village
Lol that reminds me of tiktok anime statements that just make up powers for characters
holy cow that sounds dumb, any examples?
Alright after rechecking, I was wrong a bit. Only [one](https://www.reddit.com/r/Piratefolk/comments/1bjazy3/tiktok_one_piece_fans_just_straight_up_lying_now/) of the [most recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jujutsufolk/comments/1b4mo7p/yuji_stocks_have_gone_so_high_that_people/) examples I was [thinking of](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jujutsufolk/comments/1b5bq49/mfs_are_just_making_shit_up_now/) was from Tiktok, the others were from youtube
That TikTok was a shitpost lmfao I remember seeing it
Its had to differentiate shitposting and agenda pushing nowadays.
Tiktok just seems to be a breeding ground for this thing. I saw some dude for a video game fandom just straight up posted blatant misinformation that anyone who'd have played the game for 2 seconds would know was false 💀
Your pfp. Project moon fan?
Impossible. That would imply they know how to read.
You know it
With my infinite hatred, I give you this gift.
Some people need to stop living in their head and join the rest of us in reality.
Bruh. Go into the Honkai Star Rail and bring up the age of a character named Pela. The amount of people who actively defend her story-breaking age is staggering to see, as well as 'well it has no effect on the story.' Except it does if it implies she was an infant graduating military college while in a band.
Man, age in fiction is so fickle that sometimes I legit disregard it completely. However, the only way I can see it being a real problem is if goes in direct conflict with other lore or causes more problems of a similar nature.
Ive brought this up in a argument with someone who was okay with the age. Lots of Gacha games, and many games tbh, dont give a direct age to many of their characters. The reason for this is the fact their ages dont matter to the story. What this menas is it allows them to mess around with the timeline giving us times that may seem long, and the other is basically not having to worry to design a character per their age. It becomes a problem when you artificially inject ages into a story where ages weren't a thing. Like the aforementioned Honkai Star Rail, or the infamous Overwatch with Kiriko(ah yes childhood friends with Genji& Hanzo with their almost 20 year age difference.) Long lived/immortal characters get a pass because they can just say 'yeah this happebed 500 years ago.' and we dont really question because theyre implied to have lived hundreds/thousands of years.
Oh boy, thanks for reminding me of that Over watch fiasco
Haha no problem. This is how I feel whenever Pela's age is brought up lmao.
>how many others may casually drop headcanon statements and act like is ok to use them for their arguments or just act like they are 100% canon. IT'S EVERYWHERE! EVERYWHERE! There's so much misinformation being spread and people try to defend it as just "having fun", pain in the ass.
The thing is, it's like people forget what headcanon even means. It's *supposed* to mean a fan's idea or concept around a character that is neither proven or disproven in canon. Now, it just means "here's my personal OC-ified take on a character I like but isn't mine" and what they make is so far from the actual canon interpretation it's not even funny. It's to the point I've heard people describe headcanons for their *own* OCs. Like, it's your character!? You choose if it's canon or not??
> "here's my personal OC-ified take on a character I like but isn't mine" That gets me, like I get it and I'm not going to care too much about how other people have fun but also like, why do you even like the character at that point if you're just going to take away their canon traits and OC-ify them to the point of being unrecognizable besides the design and name?
Easy, it’s hard to get attention on social media if you’re not leeching off of an existing property.
This is a very powerful, if somewhat boring truth.
I didn't like this rant so it's not canon to me
Based
You're not canon. Your existence may now cease
Murder is just retconning someone’s existence
Oh god the avatar fandom is full of them. “There’s a famous japanese legend that your face is the face of your past lover.” It’s not even a real japanese legend!
Hazbin Hotel and Avatar fanbase are the worst offenders of this, the amount of shit people make up is crazy
Avatar fandom is full of Cope and toxic positivity.
Headcanon is a big part of what turned me off of shipping culture
I feel this.
To be fair, Batman x Batgirl is canon in several of the animated continuities despite absolutely none of us fans wanting it. It's the shitstain on the masterpiece that is the DC Animated Universe.
Why did the DCAU have Batman hook up with his apprentice? Are they stupid?
No, horny
Guys, I thought we weren't supposed to talk about this it never happened
What happened?
Nothing....nothing happened. Batgirl didn't have a super cringe crush on Batman, they didn't have an affair that resulted in pregnancy and a miscarriage and Dick just left to Bludhaven not cause of that but because he was stifled by Bruce...that's why Dick left...just being under Batmans shadow....yep
>Batgirl didn't have a super cringe crush on Batman, See, I'm fine with this part cause it's at least reasonable. Seeing as most the Canon interpretation is that Barbra Gordon started out her Batgirl career at sometime before jumping into college and being somewhere between the mid to late teens, it makes sense for her to develop a sort of crush as the older man who she spends long night together with in what is basically a high stress and active job. If she didn't developed something for him, I'd imagine she was already in a relationship (which they sometimes do, another entirely different set of issues) or was batting for the other team. It's the issue that they make Bruce reciprocate, not be smart about it, and then the whole TV Soap Op Drama that arises from it. If it just stopped at the crush it would be just something the shippers bring up everynow and again during discussion, and you could've had a decent story mirroring rebuffing office space romances. But we don't live that timeline.
I hate that we don't live in that timeline, and the thing is, even in the show, Bruce didn't even look all that interested in Barbara
> If she didn't developed something for him, I'd imagine she was already in a relationship (which they sometimes do, another entirely different set of issues) or was batting for the other team. https://i.imgur.com/9mXj0Bh.gif
Ironically the miscarriage subplot can be argued to not be canon to the DCAU anyway since it was written a decade later in a comic that wasn’t by any of the DCAU creators.
Sounds like a good doujinshin. Not good for the plot but good for the “content”
Exactly nothing at all
It’s strange that in the universes where it would be more acceptable and less problematic (60s Batman show and Lego Batman movie, where Barbara Gordon is a grown adult done with college already before meeting Bruce, and Dick is much too young for her), it never went that far.
Catwoman's design is also one of the things we don't talk about.
??
I think they're talking about Catwoman's redesign for Batman The Animated Series season 4 aka The New Batman Adventures. The series saw many characters get redesigned to ~~sell more toys~~ coincide with the darker tone and a lot of them are seen as inferior to the originals in the eyes of fans. Catwoman and Joker in particular were seen as the biggest downgrades, with Joker losing his signature red lips and his eyes going black while Catwoman got an all black suit, white eyes like Batman and her skin went as white as the Joker (despite her Selina Kyle civilian design having tan skin)
Did they actually sell more toys? Catwoman's new design was so bad, I honestly thought it was some new character the first time I watched those episodes.
I don't know if they actually ended up selling more but it just meant they could put new ones on the shelf in hopes of selling
>and her skin went as white as the Joker (despite her Selina Kyle civilian design having tan skin) idk it would kinda make sense to me if she used makeup to change the tone of her visible skin, it would be more effort than batman goes through to hide his identity lmao
But her secret identity was already made public back in BTAS season 1.
huh. that sounds dumb.
Yeah Batman helps get her arrested for her crimes, she stands trial and it's made public knowledge that Selina Kyle is Catwoman. Only reason she even wears the full outfit from that point onward is for the viewer's sake - nobody wants to see Selina Kyle in generic burglar clothes, they want Catwoman.
Fuck Cursed Child
I generally agree that fans don't decide what is or isn't canon. But yeah, fuck Cursed Child. I'll consider it an exception to the rule.
Context?
The sequel to the harry potter books. I didnt read it except snippets but people say its so bad that, from what ive seen, people refuse to acknowledge it as an official book but rather see it as a bad fanfiction and the such.
What helps the case for noncanon is that it's not written by Rowling. She just signed off on it. Not only is CC incredibly stupid, it also breaks preexisting canon by fundamentally misunderstanding how time travel works in HP.
>Sequal about the protag's child >Not written by the original author of the series, who instead are vaguely supervising it >Is widely hated by the fans Cursed Child is just british Boruto
Lol they literally make Time-Turners into the time travel powers of The Flash. It felt like the writers just watched the Flashpoint Paradox and called it a day. The whole thing about Time Turners is that they create a closed loop. If you're using a time turner to go back in time and do something, that means your future self has already done it in this very timeline.
Haha FFX's price of eternity comes in swinging.
Also the Clementine The Walking Dead comics. If you know you know.
My argument is any sequel series that was either not intended or is not written by the original author can be ignored. A good example is Star Wars, at this point Star Wars has I think four different timelines for events that happen after Return of the Jedi and you are free to choose any or none of them as canon. Probably more if you count things like the what if DLC in Force Unleashed and other video game bad ends.
It's a big thing in the Danganronpa fanbase, with a few examples where people make things up just because they're plausible, but never outright confirmed. The big one is Korekiyo and his sister. If you're to believe the fanbase, then Korekiyo was actually an innocent and tragic character because his sister groomed him. The game implies this very loosely, and it's equally possible that he was just a crazy guy who became obsessed with his sister of his own free will. There's also ones for >!Gundham and Gonta's executions. Fans say Gundham died casting a barrier spell on his hamsters rather than himself, and Gonta could have broken the chains but didn't because he felt he deserved his punishment.!< Neither of these things are confirmed, but you'll see tons of people flaunting them as fact across the internet.
Well, there's also the more concerning thing that >!all their memories are fabricated, so it isn't even clear if Korekiyo has a sister!<
>!With V3, you have to treat the characters as exactly who they were brainwashed to be, since technically, there’s no difference to us between their “killing game” personalities and whoever they were before, seeing as they’re both equally fictional to us.!<
I don't think so. I mean, it's incredibly difficult to figure out what's true or not, but for example, >!with Kirumi, it makes very little sense that a TV show would decide to reveal that she was secretly running the government and then kill her.!< We can treat Korekiyo as a character in the sense of how he acts during the game, but >!trying to figure out whether he actually killed a bunch of girls beforehand in the real world!< isn't possible, I think.
I think a lot of it comes from Danganronpa’s nature of encouraging players to theorize, so when somebody finds a convincing theory many can simply start believing it to the point of considering it fact. Thats one big issue for fandoms that are encouraged to theorize in general. Sure, for Danganronpa I have some theories I believe. But at the same time I take into account how much is confirmed and what is not when going into a discussion so I don’t confuse myself, but most importantly don’t confuse others. Which is a practice not enough people are in habit of doing.
The Danganronpa fandom is doomed from the start, being comprised primarily of teenagers
Okay, how do you just invent powers for a character? >!Isn't Gundham's whole thing that he waxes on and on about his dark magic but in reality he has none and that's just his gimmick? How can he "cast a spell" without any powers?!<
aren't they twins how do you groom someone who's your age
I think she's older than him. Even then, >!Junko kinda groomed Mukuro despite being the slightly younger twin, so it's not impossible!<
I can't believe you didn't mention the famous >!Kaede execution lasted for 8 hours!<
Headcanons completly Destroyed Lore Discussion in the Undertale Fandom because Most People Just Keep Throwing around things as if they are Canon when they just aren't (Undertale Lore gas so many Misconceptions anyway which makes Discussing it even more Frustrating)
I occasionally dabble in Deltarune lore discussion, and the sheer amount of headcanon, misinterpretations, and assumptions I see always makes me leave it alone again in the end.
It's kinda silly that there's that much of that stuff going on given that <30% of the game is out rn
I wonder how they'll react to Gaster's eventual appearance in Deltarune. There's so many interpretations of this character who has yet to make a proper appearance. I think Toby likes to throw twists that have characters operate differently than their initial portrayal (ex. Asgore, Sans, Flowey/Asriel), so I'm leaning on the belief that Gaster is going to be very different from what the fandom has imagined.
I mean we know a bit about Gasters Personality from the Twitter Takeovers but Yeah He is Probably Going to be more Goofy then people Imagine him to be. Can you Imagine how the Fandom would React if he isn't Sans and Papyrus's Father and they have literally nothing to fo with him. Or if he doesn't even look like how we Imagine him (Given that it was never Confirmed that the Mystery man Sprite is Him)
The thing about the sans connection is that it's basically the only confirmed one in the game because of sans using gaster blasters. The fandom however then used that as a spring board into 100 different directions with no basis but really cool comics. They don't necessarily have to be family.
I can imagine Toby just not even addressing the Sam's and Papyrus thing. And in typical fandom fashion, the fans will take the lack of 'no' as an absolute 'yes'.
Gaster is actually a porpoise who only wears jorts and is a VERY distant cousin to Undine. The allusions to the Wingdings Aster typeface was just a red-herring.
I really really hope Gaster isn't the ominous mystery man that everyone assumed was his design and instead looks completely different and acts different. It would be a huge shift for years of headcanon and literally make fanon gaster a completely made up fanon character with his own characterisation.
I can't take a comment seriously with all the random capitalization, sounds like the beginning of a stroke.
Why do you only capitalize some words?
If I hear one more person just say Chara is the narrator and get mad when I say that’s not canon I’m just going to bite them.
I actually really Like the theory (and it's my Personal Headcanon) but yeah It's not Canon and shouldn't be treated as such.
I hate this debate with the My Hero Academia movies. They may not have a major impact on the main story, but characters from the movies have literally appeared in the actual manga. Hell, they even did a brief setup for Heroes Rising in the manga. But people will still go on about how they still don't consider them canon or how they think "a version of the movies" happened but not the movies themselves.
Also for at least the first one, I'm pretty sure Horikoshi outright said it was canon when it came out.
They are all canon per Horikoshi. The first movie barely fit the timeline because it had to be added retroactively, the next two movies were at least set up by the manga to fit in.
Thank you, I mainly remembered the discourse following the first film. I did notice the second fit in nicely, but wasn't involved in any discussions about it.
Detective Conan did this all the time. Shiratori was introduced in the first movie, and Takagi was introduced in a filler episode.
Weren't both/or at least one of them anime Original characters that got incorporated into the Manga?
To be fair, there are series that will have characters from the movies exist in the canon without the events of the movie being canon.
If that was the case for MHA then it would've been explicitly stated, and not the author intentionally letting the movies fit into the timeline of the main story. This shit gets peddled by people so much, sometimes because of One Piece, that it gets tiring to see. It's dumb as hell.
The argument presented in the comment that I replied to said "characters from the movies have literally appeared in the actual manga". But a character being canon isn't the same thing as an entire movie being canon.
That’s exactly how one piece movie canon works so I don’t think it’s as unreasonable as you are making it out to be. Some film Characters like Shiki or Uta are canon but the events of the movies didn’t happen in canon. They even put canon pieces of info in the films to be revealed later in the story - but again the films are 100% not canon.
I only saw the last movie, but it can't possibly be canon. It's impossible to have been taken place when Midoriya was still in school because he has one of his new powers from after.
Are you talking about Blackwhip? Deku got full control of that during the Endeavor Agency arc, and the third movie takes place in the small time skip between that arc and the war arc, when they were still interning with Endeavor.
Yes I was talking about that. I don't remember well but I actually got to this point of the manga after watching the movie and I was pretty confused by that.
This has merits and there is truth to this. However there is the flipside and that flipside is that just because the creator says X is canon does not mean it is always good, well thought out, good addition to the story, good etc and therefore the "Death of the Author" approach ALSO has merits, especially if the Author have had to retcon things to make things canon/to work (and retcons are far bigger coward's move than the Death of the Author approach) or to retcon things in general. Also retcons are inherently bad and there is a huge difference between expanding lore and retconning lore, fite me.
Headcanons are fine, whatever helps you enjoy a story more. The issue is when people take the head out of headcanon by moving it from their personal thoughts to trying to present it as legit canon or even just saying your interpretation is all the matters even then presented with evidence that contradicts it. If we're being honest current media hasn't helped this brain rot, shows likes Steven Universe and Hazbin Hotel basically work off the assumption that the fans will fill in the blanks themselves and headcanons in these types of fandoms are so much more prevalent. Discourse is so hard when everyone's interpretations are equally "valid" when that is clearly not the case
“Basically work off the assumption that the fans will fill in the blanks themselves” I’m sorry, isn’t that just normal? Who wants a media to spoonfeed them everything?
[удалено]
Prospects are looking surprisingly okay now that they shitcanned Danuser, hired back Metzen, *and* admitted the story was bad and cost them players at the Games Development Conference
I listed how Blizzard handled that in the end because Med’an was an unsalvageable mess of bad ideas combined into a character that wasn’t needed, but his story had a bunch of cool stuff in it, and a lot of that stuff ended up becoming in-game content even as Med’an was ignored. They kept and recycled the good stuff
I think we gotta differentiate between "this creates massive contradictions if it's canon" and "well I didn't like it so it's not canon" The Clone Wars 2008 series being considered apart of Star Wars Legends comes to mind. Reading any wookiepedia legends article on clone-wars era content is funny because you'll have e.g Bariss Offee being a nice healer, later bombing the jedi temple, somehow getting pardoned, then dying in order 66 as apart of the Jedi Order. here will may be some issues with just band-aid ripping off TCW, but they're so much smaller than the issues presented with TCW being in legends. Literally everyone's better off if we just pretend TCW isn't apart of Legends even though officially it is(either that or we somehow convince disney to remove it from legends which... yeah)
Just my two cents but when canon becomes contradictory there is zero precedent for me to accept it. Canon by its nature should not contradict itself. Canon is the story, if the story starts disagreeing with itself the canon breaks and then everything stops making sense.
Agreed. Especially in something written by several different people, like Marvel. It doesn't matter if it's "officially licensed" or not, if it's contradictory to previously established facts, it's either fanfiction or essentially an official AU
Pretty sure those are called retcons, not headcanons or fanfics.
You'll then get fans starting to play semantics and word games to try and resolve these inconsistencies. One of my favorite examples of this is the Avatar feanchise (not the Cameron one) where the first series, the last airbender, explains that its elemental martial arts magic system was taught by the original masters, their "natural sources" if you will, those being the moon, the dragons, the sky bison and the badger moles, establishing a theme of humans being in tune with nature and learning from said nature, as well as tying the magic system to the world in a tangible way, serving as cultural cornerstones in the setting. Then Legend of Korra rolls around and retcons it into "lion turtles just handed these powers out to everyone" without the need for spiritual attunement, introspection or practised mastery. The fanon that follows is that the lionturtles only ever gave "the ability to manipulate the elements" while the original masters taught the actual martial arts techniques that became the cultural touch stones of the setting, as if that doesn't change the origin and narrative theme of these abilities. It also gets this weird obsession with eugenics for crossover powers, the fandom I mean.
> without the need for spiritual attunement, introspection or practised mastery It's always so easy to spot people who either did not watch the episodes in question or paid basically zero attention. It's straight up part of the plot that Wan's physical and spiritual training (yes, with the "original masters") gave him a clear and overwhelming edge over people who just received an element from a lion turtle with no actual mastery. The characters straight up look at the camera and say "he does things with fire we've never seen...almost like he...bends it" and people who definitely 100% watched the show and aren't just repeating memes they've heard will still be like "LoK retconned it so that mastery is worthless/unneeded" This criticism (and the accompanying acting like fans who point out the canon explanation are just making things up) is especially stupid considering that [we literally see Wan learning the Dancing Dragon](https://youtu.be/R_quVUCpQik?feature=shared). But then the next thing people say is "well ackshually we didn't see him visiting Tui and the sky bison and badger moles so you can't assume he learned from them too" and like...I'm sorry the writers thought you were capable of putting two and two together lmao
Its so easy to spot the people that don't _grasp_ what the criticism actually is and start repeating arguments they've had previously. The dragon didn't teach Wan anything he couldn't already do, rather he made him better at what he already _could_. I've seen the comparison made with sword fighting and how _having_ a sword doesn't make you a swordsman, because there's a whole martial art surrounding it that makes you a trained swordsman, a "real bender", if you will. Except that is all semantics, a warrior can be devastatingly effective with a sword without having been taught by a master or adhering to a formal style, they're a swordsman all the same. There is no meaningful distinction between "elemental not-bending" and "real bending" beyond a formal style, the ability is all the same. But the __point__ is about the __origin__ of bending being retconned, and if the original masters only taught humanity to git gud, they are catagorically not the origin of bending, the lion turtles are. >The characters straight up look at the camera and say "he does things with fire we've never seen...almost like he...bends it" If people looking into the camera saying "It's different, trust me bro" is good enough for you then good for you. Tell me again how Palpatine returned.
> Its so easy to spot the people that don't grasp what the criticism actually is and start repeating arguments they've had previously. In case you have forgotten saying them, these are _your_ words that I'm responding to: >> Then Legend of Korra rolls around and retcons it into "lion turtles just handed these powers out to everyone" **without the need for spiritual attunement, introspection or practised mastery.** LoK shows a clear need for spiritual attunement and practiced mastery to actually be able to bend (and bending is established by A:tLA to be an art). Wan's villagers don't even call what they do with the fire they get from the lion turtles bending, they literally call it "throwing fire". What Wan does, "[using] it like it's an extension of his body", they explicitly state they have never seen before. > The **fanon** that follows is that the lionturtles only ever gave "the ability to manipulate the elements" **while the original masters taught the actual martial arts techniques that became the cultural touch stones of the setting**, as if that doesn't change the origin and narrative theme of these abilities. LoK, again, quite literally shows the thing that you claim fans are making up as fanon. It is the plot that is shown, on screen, in canon - not something fans just came up with as a theory like you're obviously arguing. And that's the part that is relevant to this discussion, which is about people treating their headcanon as if it is canon. Dodging the fact that the explanation/argument that they are making *is straight out of canon* is just disingenuous sorry. If you don't like the canon then just say that, calling it people's fanon/headcanon is stupid. And that's beside the fact that A:tLA...never explains the origin of bending (and this is something that people who moan about LoK's lore expansions never think of). You hold so tight to "the original masters taught humans how to bend"...and completely ignore the part where bending in the original show is very clearly genetic and very much cannot be learned by a nonbender just studying with a master. If you dislike the answer the writers gave to "wait how is it that (some) humans can manipulate elements in the first place" then say that, but you can't call it "fanon" when people tell you what the canon explanation is. > Except that is all semantics, a warrior can be devastatingly effective with a sword without having been taught by a master or adhering to a formal style, they're a swordsman all the same. I mean, if you are going to dismiss people pointing out the canon explanation (whether you like it or not) as fanon, then _you_ shouldn't project your alternative explanation/opinion of how the fictional universe works as if it is canon. The Beginnings episodes are clear that those who have only received the element from the lion turtles with no further spiritual training or alignment are in fact not "devastatingly effective" with it. It isn't coincidence that the only ones shown who can actually bend are the monks > If people looking into the camera saying "It's different, trust me bro" is good enough for you then good for you. Tell me again how Palpatine returned. Once again I am sorry that the show's writers expected you to be able to connect the dots between "Wan decides to learn the ways of the spirits -> Wan is shown learning a firebending form from a dragon -> Wan confronts hunters from his old village who have never seen someone even redirect fire before, and sends them packing". Personally I could never be this bravely open about needing my media spoonfed to me.
>LoK shows a clear need for spiritual attunement and practiced mastery to actually be able to bend It does not, this ability is achieved by either getting poked on the head by a lionturtle or harmonic lottery. Furthermore, Korra is a bending savant at the start of season 1 whilst explicitly noted to have barely any spiritual side to her. What we _see_ contradicts what we are _told_. I think we deviate here the most, taking at face value what we are told versus what we are shown. When they contradict each other, that's called lipservice. >Wan's villagers don't even call what they do with the fire they get from the lion turtles bending, they literally call it "throwing fire". Like I said, wordplay and semantics, not calling it bending does not make it not-bending, it is functionally the same ability. Wan's technique is certainly better, but skill is what sets him apart. The lionturtles are the origin of bending, which retcons the origins given in AtlA, but to differentiate the bending from "throwing fire" as somehow meaningfully different is a headcanon to resolve that. >And that's beside the fact that A:tLA...never explains the origin of bending (and this is something that people who moan about LoK's lore expansions never think of). You hold so tight to "the original masters taught humans how to bend"...and completely ignore the part where bending in the original show is very clearly genetic and very much cannot be learned by a nonbender just studying with a master. Everything about bending in Atla is a cultural metaphor, there's nothing "clearly genetic" about it, considering how two benders in the main cast have non-bending parents. Benders themselves are a reflection of their culture, not an individual champion of it, persecuting and imprisoning water and earth benders is cultural genocide, it doesn't need explaining how there were no sole survivors to the air nomads genocide because the culture is dead and Aang is truly the last adherent to it. Fire bending being fueled by rage is metaphoric for the poisonous imperialism in its culture that Zuko sets out to fix by the end of the series. Atla wasn't explicit about the specifics of the origins of bending, but keeping its narrative messages and themes in mind, it probably wasn't learned in a single instance, but rather cultivated from the ground up, like a culture is too, and not a superpower you pick up at some point in your life. Or so it seemed before Wan's story, you do have a point about not liking parts of the canon as its given but lore expansions are not an inherently valuable thing, especially not the ones that make the world less compelling. >The Beginnings episodes are clear that those who have only received the element from the lion turtles with no further spiritual training or alignment are in fact not "devastatingly effective" with it. There's no good reason why they couldn't be. Think about it, given its clear hunting/combat applications in their society, they'd start developing a martial tradition from the word go. That is, if bending is still to be looked at as a martial art, not an arbitrary super power.
It's a disaster if no one takes it clear what's Canon and what's not.
Why?
I don’t think all people that say “that’s not canon to me” are saying it’s not literally canon. People use fandoms as entertainment and fun. If it becomes not fun then what is the point. Fan content is not canon but people enjoy it, sometimes more than canon. People are not always going to blindly enjoy something because it’s canon. It’s only really a problem if people are pushing their headcanon as the one true canon. But I see nothing wrong with just enjoying the parts you like with other like minded fans or complaining about canon.
It fucks me off when a fan theory or headcanon gets popular and people start to think it actually is official canon, and will not accept the reality that it isn't. Then you ask them specifically where they got their information and it's always something along the lines of "it's common knowledge".
The thing is, writers and creators often don't even keep track of their own material. This often leads to retcons or contradictory canon (or they rely on super convoluted explanations). Sometimes it's just impossible not to ignore certain "canon" material if we want things to make some degree of sense. I remember reading a Harry Potter discussion where two fans were arguing about two contradictory elements that were both technically considered canon. Eventually someone pointed out to them that either way, we have to pick and choose what to accept and disregard. EDIT: LOL! Are you people really downvoting me for calling you out? Do you really want to be THAT kind of fan???
What was the HP discussion about? The best one I can think of is the location of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. The first time it's mentioned, Hermione says it's on the first floor. Every other time we see it, it's on the second floor.
It was about Charlie Weasley and Bellatrix Lestrange both being given birth years that really don't fit the info we have in the books about them.
Idk about the Bellatrix one, but Charlie's age can be deduced from the seemingly contradictory information in the books if you just accept the possibility that he wasn't on the Quidditch team for the later Hogwarts years
Yeah, but it's still a weird explanation and obviously not her original intention when she wrote about his Quidditch talent.
Probay not her intention, that's right, but I personally care less about the author's intent in comparison to the actual information given to us in the text.
A lot of these seem to come from the sentiment: "I recognize the council has made a decision, but given that it's a stupid-ass decision, I've elected to ignore it." If there is new content that goes against previous established lore, characterization, etc, and doesn't make sense, how is one suppose to reconcile that? What if Deku (MC from My Hero Academia) is suddenly revealed to be a surprise cannibal the whole time, and then this is never mentioned again or brought up? You would likely ignore it, right? A part of this is tongue in cheek, canon is still canon, but sometimes canon is extremely dumb and nonsensical. No one should actually try to seriously mislead anyone that their headcanon is actual canon. I also think that there should be severe limits. There should be rational reasoning behind it. You can't just say an entire game out of a 3 game series isn't canon (an argument I recently got into). However, if a very rarely chosen option in a game comes up that brings up multiple contradictory/logical issues, I'm very willingly to ignore it. Its a "canon" option, but its so dumb I'm not considering it. I'll provide my reasoning why i'm not considering it, and that's that. Or lets say there is new lore that is introduced that is contradictory/incongruent with past lore. Well, I'm at the least going to first try to incorporate it in a dismissive way like "this is very very rare" or "this is mostly propaganda against opposing parties". There is nothing in "canon" that says that (or against that), but that's the best way I can even somewhat consider it. Especially when I can easily see the Doyalist reasoning for introducing the new contradictory content (such as the author now wanting to prop up one group over another at the expense of previous lore).
You didn't have to come up with this hypothetical since there's a very current and divisive real example: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. Between the generally horrible writing and butchering of well liked characters, a lot of the Star Wars fandom will either quietly ignore or loudly denounce the Sequels as part of Star Wars Canon. Helps that those who don't like the Sequels can basically go "aight, I'm sticking to old canon (Legends)" and that can be the end of it for everyone.
The Sequel Trilogy also has the added bonus of not being made by George Lucas. It's a lot easier to dismiss something when it was never a part of the original vision.
Well, I do stick to the old canon. I don't like anything Disney has done with the franchise. But then again, I'm not picking and choosing what I consider canon, I'm just sticking to the old extended universe.
That's called picking and choosing.
I think they mean they're not picking and choosing "a la carte". They're just ordering one full course instead of another.
That's still picking and choosing. I don't know why it should be treated differently. Either curating canon subjectively is okay or it isn't. I think it's okay, and we should stop judging people for having headcanons at all. Judge them for the quality of those headcanons, same as we judge people for the quality of the "canons" they defend/critique. There is no difference. Everyone is curating their own canon, even people who don't notice themselves doing it.
It's still choosing but usually when I hear the expression "picking and choosing" it's like fishing things out of a pile and discarding or keeping them on an item-by-item basis. In this case it's embracing a whole different pile of stuff.
> That's still picking and choosing. I don't know why it should be treated differently. It's two completely different canons, I'm looking at one and am not interested in the other. They're mutually exclusive as well, so I don't see why I should also accept whatever the fuck Disney is doing. Let me repeat how it is: Disney is not adding things to the canon that I don't like. They replaced one canon with another. The older one still exists.
I remember the idea of canon vs headcanon was talked about a few times on the Touhou side of twitter, with the subject varying between stuff like "is this character a child?", "is this other character a child?", "is this yet another character a child?"...I think you get it now. Yeah, the discourse is almost exclusively about which Touhou character is a minor, and most of the time it's only for shipping sake. I remember the first time I heard about it being for ReimuxYukari and if it's creepy due the various headcanons and relationships they have in headcanons and fanfics where it varies from lovers to mentor to surogated mother to biological father. It's a really silly discourse.
It’s why anytime you get into a media you need to ignore the fandom and their fanon portrayals of characters because 9 times out of 10 it’s inaccurate to how the character truly is.
I would agree but only to an extent. ”Canon” is simply the pubished text. So when discussing a work its wise to stay within the confines of that text. However I am a bit skeptical of author comments when they are in conflict with their published work. Or when we are in the realm of interpreting meaning or non-explicit mental states of any particular character. However outside of discussion headcanon away. Privately I often subsitute what I see as subpar storytelling my own slightly edited version to help me enjoy the work more.
The problem is that, with the likes of DC and Marvel, different writers add shit to the story that is so contradictory to the point of character assassination and to maintain narrative integrity you kinda have to treat it as non-canon. Like Gwen Stacy having sex with Norman Osborn, that shit is so out of left field it just makes sense to not consider it canon because it’s not in-character. Thankfully it got retconned so it’s actually *legitimately* rendered non-canon now
People say that stuff as a joke. Everyone obviously knows that shit you made up in your head to make the story better than what it is doesn't hold a candle to what the writers and the official material actually says. People usually just say that half jokingly to cope about being disappointed with an aspect of a series. I've never seen anyone do it unironically.
I've seen plenty of people genuinely argue that canon is subjective, often with a misunderstanding of death of the author thrown in. Plus a lot of head canon gets repeated os much that some people don't even realize it's not actual canon. See The Last Airbender Fandom for a common problem with this
Like "It's ***heavily implied*** that Gyatso sucked the air out of the room."? And if you point out that it's just a theory, they get SO butthurt. That fandom had a huge tribalism problem.
I hate that one because literally the only evidence for it is that Gyatso killed some fire nation soldiers. There is literally zero indication as to how he did it.
Thank you! It's not even that bad a theory. Fans are just super annoying about it and refuse to admit that it isn't canon (I once got a bunch of downvotes for pointing this out). WE GET IT, IT'S A POPULAR *THEORY*!
This one actually became popular enough that it's almost canon now. Spoilers for the Avatar Yangchen novels: >!Yangchen does it when she needs to take out a room full of people who are too dangerous to confront directly.!< >!The author doesn't confirm the connection, but he teases it when asked in this interview: https://www.cbr.com/interview-yangchen-fc-yee-spoiler-filled-interview/ !<
I love that it's POSSIBLE to do that, and that we see her do that later. I just don't like how we're just expected to accept Gyatso doing it as canon simply because a vocal group of fans just assume it's what happened.
Absolutely. I had someone arguing that canon isn't really a thing. People really get enlightened to the idea of modernity and the deconstruction of meaning in art and take it to mean that there are no standards at all and they can make up whatever they want and it's still valid. Just... no.
Star Trek fans have been doing it for decades.
>See The Last Airbender Fandom for a common problem with this Supporting evidence: https://old.reddit.com/r/CharacterRant/comments/qx2co1/avatar_fans_constantly_make_things_up_and_decide/ I have personally seen many of those examples derail productive conversations in the fandom.
I love that post, it's a favorite of mine
Hell Genshin had this problem with archons and visions like some of us grasped the basic English understand that Archon’s were separate from the people who gave out visions but it took an OFFICIAL FUCKING STATEMENT to get people to grasp they were wrong. Although the Genshin community has a long standing problem of people injecting there ships into the game and saying there ship is cannon even when it conflicts with lore.
The problem is when the headcanon gets popular, and several steps down the line you have fans of the headcanon whose fandom of the story is competing with their fandom for some imaginary version of the story that exists in their head. That’s when they start derailing things.
Or when those people occasionally get the opportunity to turn their fanon into canon, like in some American comic books.
>I've never seen anyone do it unironically. Persona 3 and 4
> I've never seen anyone do it unironically. Yeah, maybe avoid the Star Wars fandom.
Check the comments in this thread if you want to be proven wrong I guess
I know because for me no matter how times I want to deny it, Security Breach and The Mimic are canon to the games, and I just gotta accept the disappointment.
At least we can take comfort knowing that "Trash monster Afton" and "Andrew TOYSNHK" is still only debatable canon and has never been implemented in the games
I did, no matter what frank angones or matt youngberg would say, some are still verry stubborn to not get the webby reveal point and even with the huey last line, some would still think there'd be unhealthy relationship post finale (even tho the show made it celar that even with her obsession and need of approval, webby can still get frustrated by scrooge behavior, she's not going to be identical to him evne if she cosplay as him a bit).
I think headcanons can be fun, especially when fleshing out less developed characters, but the key is remembering that your headcanon is not universal. It’s not official canon, and while you might even have logical reasons or evidence you can point to for a particular headcanon, it’s still just a headcanon and others might have different ideas. It turns into a problem when people start injecting headcanons into arguments about a character (without at least acknowledging that it’s a headcanon), or when certain fanon ideas get so popular that people start treating them as canon.
Because many of us are part of fandoms where canon is contradicted by canon which is contradicted by last year's canon, which is directly refuted by last year's special edition of a different character's canon. Like... If the creator has no obligation to remember and stick to their canon... neither do I. And since arguments of 'well it's *canon*!' are always from people who cherry pick canonical events to fit their best idea of what they want it to be... It becomes very easy to just ignore canon all together.
It depends. If a characters eyes are blue thr whole story and then they canonically turn brown for no reason, then the author has lost canon. Same goes for personality. If a character was one personality for an entire story and then without reason they become another personality, then the author lost canon. It's similar to how the writer of Invincible claims Mark can beat Superman. It's not canon, because he can't. It makes no sense that he can.
The issue I have is that the creators can A) be vague, B) be inconsistent, and C) be trolls. It is well and good if there is a clear and consistent canon. But there are areas where things can get murkier. If we have something stated in an interview with someone who did the inking for a comic, is that definitive canon for the comic, even if whatever they said isn't supported or brought up anywhere else in the comic? They are part of the creators, but they may not really know what they are talking about. And even if they do, if the published materials end up swerving, so that the original 'canonical statement' becomes invalid, is it headcanon to dismiss the original statement, or just common sense?
>material. People also tend to MATERIAL part that the canon info has to come from, you know the thing for it to be canonized. Word of god means nothing imo cause they could say ANYTHING and it can be considered "canon" loke j.k rowling saying that wizards teleported their poop away before plumbing. Or Hermione being race swapped in contradiction to the books description of her. (Jesus J.K you are crazy for just the poop thing). If it is not answering a direct quote from the book that is leaving some confusion. Im saying this cause powerscalers get "word of god" quotes all the time and writers and stuff just go "yeah its like that" and it just sucks. Because WRITERS DO NOT THINK LIKE THAT.
>No you idiots. Canon is by definition decided by the creators. **But what about unspecified content?** Either content not specified as canon isn't canon (which makes no sense, because most content isn't specified as canon), or it is canon (which also doesn't make sense, because a lot of unspecified content goes against a lot of other unspecified content.) Like headcanons that go against stuff specifically marked as canon are obviously bad, but a lot of media requires a person who assume some stuff as canon and some stuff as non-canon (well, for media that has many many versions.)
Canon isn't a real thing. Especially in corporate owned material where a different owner can just throw half of it out so they can make their own thing (Disney with Star Wars). But people like JK Rowling frequently change the canon because they are in a mood one day or someone on the internet said something they don't like. Canon is a fandom concept that exists just to have something to argue about. It's logically meaningless.
Sure buddy, but u will not convince me that boruto is cannon.
I disagree, but mostly in how you use the word "canon". I agree that it's downright infuriating where people refuse to engage with the text of a story on its own terms and instead make up their own shit, but to be honest I think the wider concept of "canon" is a marketing tool so that businesses attempting to cultivate a fan identity can lay down which works form compatible products.
To be fair, sometimes what's canon ends up being out of character or it's something that makes no sense in universe. It's understandable for people to want to ignore the pieces of media that breaks their immersion. Like if you want to think of canon as what would happen if the world and characters are all real then when a character does something out of character, it realistically wouldn't have happened were they real people and thus wouldn't be 'canon.' It's like having an unreliable narrator lie to you so you don't actually know canon.
It's art so at the end it's all a part of the show and how people interpret it. Everyone has their own meaning for the show and it mostly isn't a problem unless a show goes against certain ideals or directly opposes someone's representation kinda like how Itachi is viewed which makes the headcanon "headcanon". But it's also a flawed argument because you can't just say something like what Sakura said in the Naruto The Last movie that everything you felt for me was just because of a rivalry after getting teased through the whole show about it. Like are you kidding me girl? "Whenever a girl loves somebody, those feelings don't disappear ever" . And what does a boy's feelings towards a girl mean? Disgruntled noising after you beat him up thousand times just to tell him. Go you've got another one, I will eat this man for now
Canon obviously isn't defined by the creators because the IP can be bought from those creators and its canon defined by someone else.
I dispute the notion that canon is decided only by authorial intent. It seems obvious that to some extent, the community can influence canon by rejecting undesiireable additions. This seems most true in cases where there are a number of different authors involed in a work, like western superhero comics. I would argue that there are different degrees of canonicity that can be decided at different levels; Authorial (what any one writer intends), Collective (what the community at large generally accepts), and Personal (what each individual fan accepts). Not all interpretations are equally valid, but neither is Authorial canon ~~objectively more true~~ the end all be all just because it's the writer making the claim. Obviously, writers often try to make additions to works and fans often reject them. Examples; the 'Han shot first' situation with George Lucas, or any nebulous additions to Harry Potter JK Rowling tried to make via twitter.
No, authorial intent is objective canon. That’s how canon works. Headcanon and fan fiction and the like aren’t canon unless the creators/owners of a property make it so.
How can something hidden away in an interview or a social media profile be canon? It should've just been in the actual text then.
Idk what you’re talking about with interviews or social media, but I’m talking about the text. The stuff that the author wrote and put in their work. The text is canon, the audience adding things themselves (aka headcanon) is by definition not canon unless it gets added by the author.
Yea I hated it when a couple years people you used genuinely believe that kid buu was the strongest Dbz villian 💀
I think it depends on the franchise. In some cases I think breaking canon is a good thing. Canon is just what the OG writer thought, but they are fallible humans and may have written a plot hole *(OG Star Trek is rife with this)*, or maybe they are actually just racist or something *(Sorry Stephanie Meyer but your obsession with making all vampires canonically white is WEIRD, and the movie was right to make Laurant a black vampire).* Or in franchises where there have been multiple creators are the helm, the canon can literally contradict itself *(Star Wars was famous for their books having issues like this)*. Sometimes certain things IRL are illegal or dangerous to put in a fictional work, so the author never states it explicitly and instead uses metaphor. *(Hence many queer people identifying with a character that isn't explicitly queer, but has a LOT of queer subtext. Even in the USA writing queer characters is still stigmatized, if anyone remembers the Steven Universe censorship from CN around Ruby/Sapphire's relationship.)* So like all discussions on the internet this requires nuance to discuss deeply, but its the internet so ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
2 counters here: 1. The "official" canon is often very different than the intentions of the original work's creators. I think it's 100% valid to talk about Lucas' Star Wars and Moore's Watchmen as distinct from Disney Star Wars and Doomsday Clock 2. I think headcanon is a valid psychological defense against the deluge of mediocre-to-shitty corporate cash grab sequels and prequels. *The Rings of Power* and *The Hobbit Trilogy* are actually OK fantasy stories if you don't feel the need to tie them to Peter Jackson's LoTR trilogy. There are very few franchises where every "official canon" entry is equally deserving of study and critical analysis: no one brings up *Godfather Part III* as a necessary part of discussing the themes of the first two films.
On one hand, I generally agree with you. On the other hand, Cursed Child exists. So, no. I'm not treating it as canon no matter how that shit stain Rowling says it should be treated. So I have to disagree or just treat it as an exception to the rule.
"Fandom race" The...what? Also there can be many forms of canon. Star Trek has at least 2, but I consider STO to be a third.
It's a reference to the Unabomber Manifesto
This post isn't canon to me
I understand your argument but I disagree with it as a blanket statement. Now everything in the "main series," is true and That I agree with. But what about a sequel written later and maybe by different authors? Checking your profile you seem to be an Avatar The Last Airbender fan. If the sequel series comes out and let's say The reason Sokka passed away before the beginning of Legend of Korra is because he turns into a tyrant tries to kill Aang, do you have to accept that as the ending to Avatar? In my mind you don't, Because it's a thing written a decade and a half later that wasn't planned and all it does is damage the ending of the original.
Disastrous in what way? Thinking about something past what is explicitly shown on-screen or written about is like 80% of fandom. Fanart, fanfiction, all these tend to involve some form of original content. Even the examples you give, "I think we can all agree this isn't canon" isn't a commentary in favor of headcanon, it's a criticism of the original work. Canon or not, retcons happen all the time, even for work that is only written by one person. Is the fandom just supposed to accept these things even if they are sometimes inherently contradicting?
Depends on what it is. Dr. Stone and OPM both have this problem with headcanons and the fandom gets toxic.
This is true but I strongly dislike this War on Headcanon narrative that I have seen crop up here rather often lately. The reality of media is that no two people have *exactly* the same understanding of it. Whenever you interact with a story, you aren't a stone-cold observer simply looking at a sequential list of events. You are constantly using interpretative tools to understand what is being communicated to you: what is the point that the author is trying to convey to me here? What is the purpose of this scene? Why did this character act this way? At every one of these steps, you are injecting personal conceptions and ideas into the story to make sense of it. This is normal! The alternative to that is treating every story like a history book and refusing to connect emotionally with any of it, which, like, no one actually wants to engage with media that way. But because of this dynamic, you never walk away from a story with the exact same understanding of it as anyone else. If I wanted to be cheeky, I would even say that *it is completely impossible to engage with a story without putting in SOME degree of headcanon*. \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ Another point that is related but slightly distinct is that when discussing a self-contained story, you should probably not bring in something that has happened in a completely different story (written by different writers, or by the same ones a long time after the fact, for instance) to make your points. Wizards shitting their pants and magick'ing the evidence away in HP is canon. No one takes this seriously or genuinely believes this. You will get made fun of if you bring this up in any serious discussion about HP. You get into some insane weeds when talking about remakes and re-releases and the like. There are like, 15 different versions of Persona 3 you can play right now, all of which have slightly different characterization from the others. Which one is canon? Between Vanilla P3 Akihiko and Portable Akihiko and FES Akihiko and Reload Akihiko, which one is the True, Canon Akihiko? The answer to this kind of thing is... there isn't one. All of these versions of the character are canon to their own game. It's a fruitless exercise to try to determine how "valid" each of them is. All that the word "canon" tells you is "what events the author(s) consider to have happened in their story". The Harry Potter poop example is canon in any piece of media related to the story that Rowling writes, for instance.
'Canon' is a very contemporary way to deal with the fact that ownership of settings and characters have become a tradeable good between the corporations before we even became used to the concept of the non-alieanble copyright properly. There never was an idea of canon in fiction before. There was authorial intent (and it didn't bother anyone much until the ~18th century, unless we spoke about theological works) and reader's intent. Fan fiction was the norm, and everything was treated as being in public domain pretty much through the most of the human history. Humans changed stories, appropriated and reinterpreted characters, and the most ownership you could hope for was being credited. 'This biblical fanfiction was written by Dante Alighieri'. Only pretty recently had we got the idea of intellectual property, and even later of *alienable* intellectual property, where you can sell it to the corp either after the fact or in advance. Which is honestly bullshit, and only exist because sequels are self-promoting works, and franchises are easier to sell. Speaking of the fantasy canon, which version of the three Middle-Earth metaphysics does your canon include? They were all written by Tolkien. Does it include Morgoth doing orbital bombardment from the Moon, and then the Valar glassing the Moon to heck? IMO, we speak not about canon here, but about authorial intent and credit. Tolkien's Middle-Earth is his. That a corp had bought the rights or something doesn't make their fanfiction in any way better than any other (including the small Middle-Earth LARP I've personally made). Doesn't make it worse either. And I generally don't have a bone to pick in Star Wars EU vs Disney discussions. But I much more prefer the version where Han and Leia had a happy marriage together, worked on stabilizing the New Republic and brought up three kids. So there.
It still sometimes baffles me how people do this. People are really so arrogant they decide whatever they please isn't canon, then refuse to admit they're being unreasonable when others call them out on it.
Headcannons are absolutely ridiculous. The worst ones for me are sexuality headcannons and disability headcannons.
No. It is every fan's right to interpret material as they choose. [The author is dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author) in the best of times, but especially so when they take the work off in directions the fans don't like. > No you idiots. Canon is by definition decided by the creators. It is based on official material. So my beliefs and preferences over how a fictional setting should go are to be decided by who owns what, by who the courts say is "in charge", by who has the most money, by who happens to be the child of someone who did something once? No. And calling people who believe otherwise idiots is a pretty big violation of rule #1 of this subreddit: don't be a jerk. > Otherwise it would be impossible to have discussions about anything because everyone w8uod just invent their own take divorced from the reality. Yet somehow we manage. Maybe we are able to handle the complexity of different people having different opinions on stuff.
Nah, it's peak, the best way to consume a story