Anghraine

I'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.

brambleberrycottage said:

I wanted to share a piece of Leia and Luke art I thought you would like so I tried the "submit a post" feature. I hope that was ok.

I replied:

Oh, it was adorable! Thank you :)

Back in January (of 2024!), I saw sqbr's fantastic post on gender, female characters, genderswap, and original female characters. It's here and it's great. A nuanced, complicated take on this kind of genderbending is basically a bat signal for me personally, and at first I was going to comment directly to them, but my response grew as I thought about it, so I figured I'd put my response here instead of spamming their blog. I've basically been thinking about it off and on for the last two months. If you're reading this, I'd advise you to check out their post.

So, backing up a bit: I've often found the genderswap/genderbending and original female character (OFC) discourses to be—well, in all honesty, incoherent, unfair, and deeply stupid most of the time. I feel like a lot of "the discourse" around these things is contingent on 1) a “why are we not about me” approach to gender and 2) a sort of internalized fandom hierarchy, especially with regard to original female characters vs canon female characters. As I see it, all characters are someone’s OCs. As a consequence, the framework in which female characters produced by a generally male or male-dominated creator/creative group should be considered more authentically female than female characters produced by fans who are very often actual women can seem profoundly unjust and also simply very strange.

For instance, I love a lot of the female characters in Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time and would not argue that they aren't actually women. Moiraine Damodred is one of my favorite female characters in fantasy, partly because she's a woman in a role that goes to men most of the time. But the "fictional women created by a male author" vibe is intense and inescapable in these books. The idea that fans' OFCs reflect a less authentic femaleness than Jordan's powerful women getting sexily spanked over and over feels pretty bizarre.

And this extends to genderswap/genderbending, given that when influential people in Hollywood or the broader entertainment industry change a male character's gender to female (either the character was previously conceptualized as male in the creative process, or the work is an adaptation of a source in which the character was male), the same wing of fandom that condemns fannish genderbending tends to be completely supportive and to see the new version as a legitimate female character. We can see this with Ripley, Azula, Joan Watson, etc. And even going the other way, nobody seems to think Luke Skywalker is somehow not a real male character even though George Lucas kept changing his gender, or that there was anything wrong with Lucas doing that. The condemnations of genderbending cis male characters to female ones are pretty specifically about fans doing this, especially female fans.

That's a longer rant than I meant it to be, but the reason I bring it up is because this has always struck me as a baffling argument as well as an unfair one. But I think sqbr's post highlights an important distinction between arguments about characters' femaleness and arguments about characters' female characterness, if that makes sense. The ways in which female characters tend to be framed by the narratives they appear in shape our sense of what female characters are and what is desirable for them to be.

For me, M->F genderbending is partly about my own wobbly, weak sense of gender, but also partly an expression of affection. It's satisfying to give the kind of centrality and/or Very Special Boy treatment that my male faves typically get to a girl or woman, and to explore the ways in which the kind of frameworks typically given to male characters collide with generally patriarchal settings, all without sacrificing my fave. So, say, my female Luke Skywalker has to deal with The Space Patriarchy and with being Special and Important and centered in a way typically reserved for male characters.

And that's often a major part of the appeal of M->F genderbending for me—a female character getting the structural narrative benefits typically reserved for various kinds of male characters, but without fundamentally disrupting the structure of the cast as given in canon. So turning Luke into Lucy feels fundamentally different to me, and much more satisfying, than inventing, say, a female triplet to take his narrative place.

And this is basically the exact opposite motivation as the one described in sqbr's post, of relating to female characters because of the narrative framework typically given them. I don't think either of us are wrong, factually or morally, we just sometimes have different tastes in terms of how we do fandom and gender.

I do think they're very correct about how a lot of female characters who are kind of presented as badass or whatever by way of receiving traits often assigned to male characters don't hit the same note as female characters who are given the kind of narrative framing often assigned to male characters. And I also think sqbr is right that what we all get out of female characters, what we find appealing in them, or gratifying, or admirable (or cringey, reminiscent of painful RL experiences, an annoying trope given female form Yet Again, etc), is hugely variable between people in ways that can actually be entirely legitimate for those different people. I've known female SW fans, for instance, who couldn't latch onto Leia the way I did because of the ways she's sidelined by the narrative structure of the OT (particularly ROTJ). I think that's perfectly fine, actually, even though I don't feel the same.

In addition, I had some amorphous thoughts about how when canon female characters click for me, they tend to really click, which sqbr also discusses in their post. An easy example for me is Attolia Irene in The Queen of Attolia, whose experiences and choices are profoundly shaped by patriarchy and who is given the kind of messy sympathy and resourceful triumph that is often reserved for characters like Gen and who is beautiful in a way I personally find hot as a lesbian. I briefly thought about what f!Eugenides/Irene would be like—cool to be sure, but tbh I'm not that interested because I'm so invested in Irene specifically.

Sort of relatedly, I do find it annoying when there's a discussion going on about favorite female characters in a canon, especially a male-dominated canon, and people respond with canonically male characters "because he's a lesbian to me" or whatever. I’ll defend a lot when it comes to genderbending, but that’s not cool.

A fic meme, grabbed fromshadaras!

Name:

Anghraine / Elizabeth

Fandoms:

Tolkien, mainly LOTR; Austen, mainly Darcy/Elizabeth; Star Wars, mainly Skywalkers and Jyn/Cassian

Where you post:

Wherever I happen to be active, but also at AO3 under anghraine.

Most popular multi-chapter fic:

Season of Courtship, the Darcy/Elizabeth engagement fic I wrote 15 years ago (but revised … maybe 7-8 years ago?). It was surpassed for a long time by some other fics, but picked up a ton of kudos/bookmarks this year for some reason, so now it’s well ahead of the rest in both bookmarks and kudos. [ETA 3/17/2024: the gap has only widened since then, idk why.]

Favorite story you’ve written so far:

That’s hard to say … I’ve written a lot. In some ways, my short P&P sequel The Letters of Elizabeth Darcy, 1796-1798 will always be a fave because it came out so closely to what I wanted it to be. But the dearest to my heart are probably always going to be my Lucy Skywalker series starring f!Luke, and my f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth fic, First Impressions.

Fic you were nervous to post:

Hmm. Perhaps Better Choice, my very flawed Faramir-goes-to-Rivendell fic, which is the first fic I posted anywhere. I thought of we get dark, only to shine because of its many taboos, but Borgias fandom was so nice that I don’t think I much worried about it, beyond hoping people would read it. IDK … I’m a very nervous person, and I definitely am on the edge of my seat after I post a fic, but I don’t think I’m usually nervous about posting fics in this sense.

How you choose your titles

They’re usually general statements of what the fic is about (“Redemption,” “Anomaly,” The Jedi and the Sith Lord), references to a quote from the canon (Season of Courtship, tolerably well acquainted), or excerpts from songs (“But Thou Didst Not Leave His Soul In Hell,” “like a storm in the desert”).

Do you outline?

Sometimes—I have some things that just start with an idea, others where it’s pretty clear in my head, but I ultimately work best when I have the structure and some details all sketched out.

Complete fics:

169, says AO3. Mostly one-shots, of course.

In progress:

Posted WIPs that I have active plans to continue at this time: once I’m writing fic again—Lucy Skywalker, tolerably well acquainted, and Fíriel (f!Faramir) are at the top of my list!

Posted WIPs that I have given up on: I’m terrible at really giving up on things, tbh. I always have scraps that I poke at and things like that. Such Terms of Cordiality is vanishingly unlikely, though.

Exchange fics due soon/unrevealed: none. I had the sense (speaking for myself) not to do exchanges this year.

WIPs that live in my fanfic folder and are incomplete and who knows when they’ll be finished: not a whole lot, actually, in the sense of things that haven’t been posted. I mostly do post my WIPs. I’ve got the companion fic to my Darcy-Fitzwilliam headcanons in the folder—we’ll see how that goes.

Coming soon/not yet started: hahahaha, nothing. I’ve got quite enough to be going with.

Do you accept prompts: not exactly, these days. I don’t mind them, and if they inspire me, I’m glad to write when I can spare the time, but at this point they don’t usually kickstart me and I just feel vaguely guilty when they do but I don’t have the time/energy, so I don’t actively invite them.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write:

It’s not a story, but there’s a scene in the Fíriel-Éowyn-Merry fic that I’m reallyyyyy looking forward to (though it only has Fíriel and Éowyn in it).

Tagging, if you want to do it: elperian, incognitajones, irresistible-revolution, kaz, ncfan

I reblogged a post (originally from birdimages on Tumblr) saying that your Tumblr avatar is your external self, while your Discord avatar is your real self, and added:

#leia on the outside; my aasimar warlock within #i'll take it lol

I reblogged a gifset that paired Leia and Luke's sequence of judging Han, yelling at him, then believing in him (their lines following these really are strikingly similar IMO). I added:

#i'd forgotten this gifset existed but luke-leia parallels are everything!! #i love how their voices ring out together in the garbage chute haha

In response to a character meme on Tumblr, smallblueandloud said:

leia organa?

I replied:

The aasimar!Skywalkers AU is seizing my brain. >_<

#in the canonverse though i'm sort of imagining #well for one that anakin doesn't have the golden eyes of evil dark sideness; they're just like that all the time #(luke's too) #(bail and breha breathe sighs of relief when leia's eyes turn brown) #but they glow with real golden light when he uses radiant consumption #and #that like... anakin never had full control of his powers as an aasimar and they just haven't manifested since he got burnt #he and palpatine both assume that the amount of damage he sustained destroyed his aasimar abilities #and palpatine genuinely hasn't thought about it in years #until he's muahahaing on the second death star and luke is screaming and palpatine is COMPLETELY sure all is going according to plan #and then vader's lenses light up gold and it's like ... oh shit #ad;kjfaf it's so vivid in my head #luke taking off the mask and anakin lying there with light flickering around him and in his eyes and then it goes out #and for a moment he's just anakin #(and then he's dead) #it's probably going to end up as original fic but i felt the need to share

ronear on Tumblr sent an ask:

Do you you still take Star war prompt? Anakin is the son of the Force. Which can be considered some sort of powerful eldritch entity. So the Skywalkers are one too. Including all those disturbing and horrifying things that come with them.

I replied:

I’m always happy to talk about SW!

I would say that there are a lot of ways to interpret Anakin’s exact relationship to the Force/conception, and it’s possible to fairly interpret it differently. I mean, I think things like “Shmi was lying” are taking the cheap way out, but other than that.

Personally, I do headcanon that Anakin is effectively the son of the Force and that it creates a slightly … off strain in him and his descendants. (I recently-ish wrote this into a fic!) I also headcanon that this was part of why Padmé was so drained by her pregnancy.

That said, I don’t see the Force as a negative power in the universe overall, so I don’t think it makes them act in disturbing and horrifying ways (Exhibit A: Leia), though it’s one of the many factors at play in their heads (it’s not like Leia is wholly normal).