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anghraineI've never been the audience for "humorous headcanons that don't quite make sense as part of the joke", and I know that my sense of humor is even more muted than usual because of RL stresses. But even before that, I've been put off by this increasingly common genre of fandom joke post that's like ... "I don't remember/know the canon and I'm not going to check but wouldn't it be hilarious if [thing contradicted by about seven different elements of the story]" that then becomes some inescapably viral fanon. Sometimes the OPs don't acknowledge being unfamiliar with the story (though often they do!), but it's usually fairly clear regardless, and the OPs tend to be aggressively indifferent to the story they're ostensibly talking about. They're not so much in the fandom for that thing as in social media fandom, and it feels like the snarky, joking aspect of these headcanons is partly there to justify neither knowing or caring about the story they're talking about.
Additionally, it seems likes there's really no way to interact with this approach that isn't "yep, hilarious, this is canon to me now" or pedantic nitpicking. I don't even add the pedantic nitpicking in most of these, but some fandoms are more prone to it, and when the OP of this kind of post acknowledges the responses at all, it'll generally be with some tongue-in-cheek "explanation" of why their headcanon actually does work that makes no more sense in terms of the story, but which is presumably funny, and forceful enough to be convincing if you're not particularly into the fandom. Some of them, in fairness, will admit that they simply forgot or don't know the story that well and just thought it'd be funny, or "I choose to reject X because my headcanon is funnier, but I know it's there." But more often, I see half-mocking "actually I'm right [but you're a humorless asshole if you actually engage in any way other than agreement]" defenses.
Of course, nobody appointed me god empress of fandom or anything. There's nothing wrong per se with people making posts without being obsessively into the original material or enjoying fandom in a way I don't. But that form of defensive humor really does not work for me. And there's something about an approach to fandom that's dominated by snide, viral BNF humor that doesn't need to make any sense in terms of what it's ostensibly about, that doesn't even need its audience or author to know what it's about beyond the vaguest pop culture osmosis/online memes and is better if they don't, that I find both obnoxious and just kind of ... sad, I guess? I didn't come into fandom in the truly early days, but it was early enough that everyone I encountered had intense feelings about some aspect of the thing they personally had read or seen or heard. Even people with incredibly bad takes seemed to generally be an emotionally invested fan or hater of the actual story.
Additionally, it seems likes there's really no way to interact with this approach that isn't "yep, hilarious, this is canon to me now" or pedantic nitpicking. I don't even add the pedantic nitpicking in most of these, but some fandoms are more prone to it, and when the OP of this kind of post acknowledges the responses at all, it'll generally be with some tongue-in-cheek "explanation" of why their headcanon actually does work that makes no more sense in terms of the story, but which is presumably funny, and forceful enough to be convincing if you're not particularly into the fandom. Some of them, in fairness, will admit that they simply forgot or don't know the story that well and just thought it'd be funny, or "I choose to reject X because my headcanon is funnier, but I know it's there." But more often, I see half-mocking "actually I'm right [but you're a humorless asshole if you actually engage in any way other than agreement]" defenses.
Of course, nobody appointed me god empress of fandom or anything. There's nothing wrong per se with people making posts without being obsessively into the original material or enjoying fandom in a way I don't. But that form of defensive humor really does not work for me. And there's something about an approach to fandom that's dominated by snide, viral BNF humor that doesn't need to make any sense in terms of what it's ostensibly about, that doesn't even need its audience or author to know what it's about beyond the vaguest pop culture osmosis/online memes and is better if they don't, that I find both obnoxious and just kind of ... sad, I guess? I didn't come into fandom in the truly early days, but it was early enough that everyone I encountered had intense feelings about some aspect of the thing they personally had read or seen or heard. Even people with incredibly bad takes seemed to generally be an emotionally invested fan or hater of the actual story.
In fact, this was originally one of the reasons I found fandom more engaging than academia for talking about some kinds of literature—academics are often using a literary text as part of some larger argument about philosophy or ethics or psychology or history or whatever, and it's suspect to be too visibly invested in a specific story as story, which IME leads to a focus on "big picture" arguments in which exhaustive knowledge of the details of a specific work isn't necessarily that important. This was particularly glaring for me wrt Austen criticism, which seemed to often make mistakes or miss details in a way that Austen fans wouldn't (though those circles very much could and did lose sight of larger-picture concerns, had shaky understandings of history or economics, that sort of thing). But it was also really noticeable in Tolkien academia, which also tended towards these more sweeping analyses (whether positive or negative!) that didn't really dig into the finer details the ways that the fannish circles I was familiar with did.
It's not that I didn't have major frustrations with those fandoms, and it's not like there haven't always been BNFs. But I guess my fandom experience was shaped by BNFs who might be wanky as hell and have terrible opinions about [whatever], but at least cared about it mostly unironically, and had come to fandom out of genuine investment in a ship or character or story. I've always been more amused by fandom humor that works better if you know what it's referencing than if you don't. Random headcanons don't need to cite quotes or whatever, this isn't literally academia, but it seems increasingly that for an optimal fandom experience, you shouldn't know the stories fandom is built on too well, and that "joke[but is it?] headcanon" -> "lol genius" is also the more and more dominant form of fandom activity/interaction right now, rather than things like fic, meta, graphics, gifmaking, vidding, etc, that require more effort and thus typically more emotional investment in whatever they're about (emotional detachment from whatever they're about seems almost a requirement of this kind of post, in which sincerity becomes cringe).
I was talking the other day about some peculiar fandom takes I'd seen that make very little sense in terms of the story they're about, but a lot more if you mostly (or entirely) know the story from fandom osmosis and discourse. Like the idea that Luke in the original Star Wars trilogy regards Owen and Beru as his real parents rather than Anakin and Padmé makes absolutely no sense for his character in the films—Leia regards her adoptive father as her father, but Luke invariably perceives Anakin as his father and this is so absolutely fundamental to his entire character arc that removing it would make a confused mess out of the OT's A-plot. It's Luke who refers to Padmé as Leia's "real mother" and adds that he has no memory of his mother, obviously meaning Padmé rather than Beru (the idea that the "real mother" being referenced is actually Breha or Beru makes zero sense in the wider context of the scene this exchange is part of, or the story as a whole, but is sometimes read that way in isolation).
Owen and Beru themselves are intensely conscious of Luke-as-Anakin's-son and talk about him that way among themselves, when Luke isn't there. The whole Luke Lars concept only works by exclusively focusing on much later scraps written by other people, to some degree, but mostly by not engaging with large swaths of Luke's main story line at all. It's less of a bad reading than an indifferent one. This is mostly coming from people who are not particularly fannish about the original trilogy as a story in its own right, and aren't especially familiar with it, but don't need to be for pop culture osmosis multifandom discourse purposes. Luke has to perceive his uncle and aunt as his real parents in this context, not because there's much if any reason to suppose that he does, but because someone (anyone) in his general, nonspecific circumstances should (cue further discourse about imposing one standard model of nuclear family structure onto every possible kinship scenario, etc).
I noticed this to some extent when The Force Awakens came out—not with Luke, but fans bringing a lot of baggage to SW fandom that didn't make a whole lot of sense in terms of SW itself but did make sense in terms of broader fandom tastes and discussions. But the "maybe serious but jokingly phrased headcanons that can only work if you don't know or don't care about major parts of the story" mode of fandom just seems more and more the standard mode of fandom in a way I find disappointing, I guess. I know the reverse approach can be super gatekeeper-y and all. But the inescapability of this sort of aggressively cool, above it all approach to fandom of all things, an environment that I'd grown accustomed to as a space for weird obsessive over-invested and painfully unironic nerds (like me!) feels strange and unpleasant, ngl. Just over the last few days, I've seen so many "this doesn't actually work or make sense with basic elements of the story, but see it's ironic, it's just a joke, but also it's right actually if you squint through a kaleidoscope" posts for entirely different fandoms that I'm like ... is this just what we're doing now?
And meanwhile people are actively trolling and scraping AO3, so ... idk.
It's not that I didn't have major frustrations with those fandoms, and it's not like there haven't always been BNFs. But I guess my fandom experience was shaped by BNFs who might be wanky as hell and have terrible opinions about [whatever], but at least cared about it mostly unironically, and had come to fandom out of genuine investment in a ship or character or story. I've always been more amused by fandom humor that works better if you know what it's referencing than if you don't. Random headcanons don't need to cite quotes or whatever, this isn't literally academia, but it seems increasingly that for an optimal fandom experience, you shouldn't know the stories fandom is built on too well, and that "joke[but is it?] headcanon" -> "lol genius" is also the more and more dominant form of fandom activity/interaction right now, rather than things like fic, meta, graphics, gifmaking, vidding, etc, that require more effort and thus typically more emotional investment in whatever they're about (emotional detachment from whatever they're about seems almost a requirement of this kind of post, in which sincerity becomes cringe).
I was talking the other day about some peculiar fandom takes I'd seen that make very little sense in terms of the story they're about, but a lot more if you mostly (or entirely) know the story from fandom osmosis and discourse. Like the idea that Luke in the original Star Wars trilogy regards Owen and Beru as his real parents rather than Anakin and Padmé makes absolutely no sense for his character in the films—Leia regards her adoptive father as her father, but Luke invariably perceives Anakin as his father and this is so absolutely fundamental to his entire character arc that removing it would make a confused mess out of the OT's A-plot. It's Luke who refers to Padmé as Leia's "real mother" and adds that he has no memory of his mother, obviously meaning Padmé rather than Beru (the idea that the "real mother" being referenced is actually Breha or Beru makes zero sense in the wider context of the scene this exchange is part of, or the story as a whole, but is sometimes read that way in isolation).
Owen and Beru themselves are intensely conscious of Luke-as-Anakin's-son and talk about him that way among themselves, when Luke isn't there. The whole Luke Lars concept only works by exclusively focusing on much later scraps written by other people, to some degree, but mostly by not engaging with large swaths of Luke's main story line at all. It's less of a bad reading than an indifferent one. This is mostly coming from people who are not particularly fannish about the original trilogy as a story in its own right, and aren't especially familiar with it, but don't need to be for pop culture osmosis multifandom discourse purposes. Luke has to perceive his uncle and aunt as his real parents in this context, not because there's much if any reason to suppose that he does, but because someone (anyone) in his general, nonspecific circumstances should (cue further discourse about imposing one standard model of nuclear family structure onto every possible kinship scenario, etc).
I noticed this to some extent when The Force Awakens came out—not with Luke, but fans bringing a lot of baggage to SW fandom that didn't make a whole lot of sense in terms of SW itself but did make sense in terms of broader fandom tastes and discussions. But the "maybe serious but jokingly phrased headcanons that can only work if you don't know or don't care about major parts of the story" mode of fandom just seems more and more the standard mode of fandom in a way I find disappointing, I guess. I know the reverse approach can be super gatekeeper-y and all. But the inescapability of this sort of aggressively cool, above it all approach to fandom of all things, an environment that I'd grown accustomed to as a space for weird obsessive over-invested and painfully unironic nerds (like me!) feels strange and unpleasant, ngl. Just over the last few days, I've seen so many "this doesn't actually work or make sense with basic elements of the story, but see it's ironic, it's just a joke, but also it's right actually if you squint through a kaleidoscope" posts for entirely different fandoms that I'm like ... is this just what we're doing now?
And meanwhile people are actively trolling and scraping AO3, so ... idk.