Monday DE: Canon, shmanon

[splash_of_blue]

Goooooooood Monday, Vietnam!

Today's DE has once again been inspired by a post on Tumblr, because if you think my Good Omens obsession is dying down any time soon, you clearly are not paying enough attention. ;)

The post (by prokopetz) lays out some variants on headcanon, along with definitions:

- Headcanon: I can muster a cogent argument for why it would make more sense or make for a better story if this were the case, or a logical suggestion for something that happened 'offscreen'/isn't explained in canon.
- Heartcanon: I don't have a particular rationale for why this ought to be the case, I just like to imagine it's true because it gives me the warm fuzzies.
- Gutcanon: It's not that I actively want this to be the case - it just unaccountably feels like it should be.
- Junkcanon: I like to imagine it's true because it gives me the other kind of warm fuzzies.
- Spleencanon: I insist that this is the case specifically to spite the author, because, like, f*ck you, sir or madam.

So, please tell me your head-, heart-, gut-, junk- and/or spleencanons for your characters/canons!

Comments

[bjornwilde]

Tybalt: Heartcanon, his insistence to watch kittens learn to hunt. There's maybe been one scene of him doing this, and I think it was just from a Patreon short story, but it just fits him so well.

Jessica: Headcanon, alcohol doesn't affect her. Her body can become immune to toxins after a first exposure, so it just makes sense. Same for a lot of drugs, illicit and medicinal.

Sabine: Spleencanon, she and Ezra are deep friends, akin to brother and sister, and not romantic. This is aimed more at fans, than canon.

Viv: Gut canon, while she says over and over she's turned off her emotional sub-processors, she's getting emotional bleed she is not quite aware of.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Headcanon for Yamato: His harmonica is a gift from Michel Takaishi, his maternal grandfather. In keeping with Digimon's crazy attention to detail, we actually know exactly what kind of harmonica it is: It's a D-key Blues Harp with ten holes. Those aren't actually sold in Japan -- the Japanese equivalent has a different brand name and a different design -- but rather only in Europe and the US.

It'd be pretty difficult for Yamato to pick one up, but probably the exact kind of thing that, like, your French grandparent might bring as a gift when he visits. It'd also tie in nicely to how protective Yamato is over it: The kid's more protective of his harmonica than he is of his digivice, after all.

[chanter1944]

Talking about both the character I play in bar and the universes I tend to work in when writing fic, just because. :)

Headcanon: Sariel Rager is from Saint Lucia, is bilingual as a result, is both queer and a believer, and has loving parents back home in Castries. ... Yeah, nearly all my backstory for her is headcanon. Gal deserves a story period. Greater detail about a character seldom makes a narrative *less* interesting, unless the details are thoroughly dull, pointless, or inserted to make a preachy point, which these aren't.

Headcanon, heartcanon, or probably both: Both Sariel Rager and Gene Roe can sing. Neither one does so often, at least in public, but catch them at it and they'll both prove talented.

Heartcanon: Floyd Talbert picked up a fair amount of Dutch while in Holland, not all of it pertaining to bombs, dames, or combinations there of. His accent is, according to the man in the company most likely to know (Nixon), really quite good.

Headcanon: Shifty Powers speaks at least some Cherokee, and comes by it honestly. The few of his fellows who questioned with malice or sneered at him over it quickly got theirs. Not by Shifty. Guarnere was threatened with a demotion for the second (recorded) instance of fist city, but on learning the reason for the altercations, Winters couldn't bring himself to follow through. Shifty still insists Guarnere did not have to do that. Bill's fairly sure that argument's going to be running until they're both old and grey. He don't mind.

Headcanon mixing with heartcanon: James Kinchlow (Major Kinchlow, by the mid '60's, thanks in part to his being seconded to the SOE during the last days of the war, to some dismal later time spent working coded comms in Korea, and just as much to the years he put in as firm but fair instructor to a generation of radio ops) was at more than a few Civil Rights marches in his day. You'd better believe he was at Washington itself. He wasn't going to miss that one for the world.

Heartcanon: émilie Agreste is demisexual.

Headcanon mixed with heartcanon: Duusu does usually use female pronouns, but this does not mean always. Any given kwami might vary their pronouns, depending on circumstance or wielder, or both. Some seldom use more than one set (Tikki, Pollen, Wayzz), and some are far more fluid. Duusu will, occasionally, use he or singular they.

Spleencanon: Girls on Pern can and do Impress blue and brown dragons, blue less often than green, brown infrequently. It does happen. Also, queerfolks can and do Impress metallics, darn it, McCaffreys.

Spleencanon: Talia Winters can be rescued from the Corps and Control post Divided Loyalties, and so she eventually is.

Heartcanon, I think?: Jeffrey Sinclair does not snore.

Headcanon: Aspects of the novel Enterprise: The First Adventure are true, specifically regarding Janice Rand having younger brothers, firsthand knowledge of what both refugee status and guardianship entail, and a certain amount of approval attached to her name around the Federation's rights commission.

Spleencanon: To heck with a certain tie-in novel, Demora is Sulu and Rand's daughter. Precedents have to be set somewhen, after all.

[splash_of_blue]

Finally getting round to answering my own DE:

Of all my Milliways pups, my personal backstory for McGonagall is by far the most detailed - I've even written fics of it. I've cherrypicked the bits I liked from both the movies and the extra info from Pottermore, but my McGonagall (and her Wizarding World) is almost exclusively book-based - if it isn't in Books 1 to 7, then I am very unlikely to use it. This was initially a mixture of head- and heart-canon, but my insistence on clinging onto it (and rejecting world-building from, say, Fantastic Beasts) has become more and more a spleen-canon as JKR's inability to leave well enough alone increasingly irks me. Also, screw any canon that in any way involves Johnny Depp.

(This is also why my McGonagall is mostly ace - screw you, JKR, being older and single isn't a bloody tragedy! And insofar as she is interested in people romantically, she likes women, because compulsory heterosexuality is b o r i n g. Also, queerness is not just for the youf!)


Coulson's backstory - at least in terms of his sexuality and his cellist boyfriend - was initially headcanon, because it sounded to me as if he used a male pronoun to refer to the cellist in Avengers Assemble and why the hell not? Having subsequently been thoroughly Jossed, though, those parts of his backstory (including that he got kicked out of the Forces under Don't Ask Don't Tell, only for Fury to bring him into SHIELD) are now a combination of heartcanon and spleencanon. Heartcanon because damnit, I like gay Coulson and I'm keeping gay Coulson, and spleencanon because a) screw you, Marvel, let's have some openly queer protagonists, and b) screw you, fandom, stop only making the pretty ones gay.

Also...

[splash_of_blue]

Not Milliways pups, but I will argue to my dying breath that Aziraphael knew damn well what/who Crowley meant when he said "I lost my best friend", he was just Too English (and way too stressed) to deal with emotions right then.

[configuration_birdwatcher]

That b) is a big mood.

[splash_of_blue]

*fistbump*

[take_that]

Gaster is based almost entirely on headcanons, as is Urania, so I'll go with Phoenix.

Heartcanon: When he adopts Trucy, he occasionally calls her 'baby bird', because he's a Phoenix and she's his daughter.

Gutcanon: Phoenix was raised Jewish, but it doesn't come up much. (Obviously this only applies to the localized games, not to Naruhodou Ryuichi.)