The Double Edged Sword of Being Invested in Headcanons

[once_dude]

I consider myself somewhere between a casual viewer and an obsessive head caonist. I could name you any episode and storyline from it, and how that fits into the storyline as a whole, therefore much mroe than a casual viewer.

did i have theories of the author of henrys book or the adoption, or who august and neal were or who Greg was? some that i shared, most that i did not take seriously, I just like hearing everyone else’s theories.

when i heard about Peter Pan the first time and that he may have a connection to rumple, I immediately thought 2 theories that were both wrong but whatever.

the one thing that i will end with is that Zeleena is the queen of the retcon. retroactive continuity my friends, yes Cora had a long lost daughter did you not all know that, oh wait she also knew Leopold, who was seen in season 1 and then disappeared in all of season 2? ya sure why not? i mean, part of me does not expect them to have every second plotted out from episode 1, but the other part wants to think that the enchanted forest is a real world with real history that did not contradict itself, and then to find out that just like any show they can do retcon. they can add new characters without being related. off topic rant.

[darkones1fan]

I’ve never been one to devote myself to any headcannon. Even my beloved Chernabog theory is one that I just consider more of a running joke then anything serious. Even if I would love to see it happen. One thing I like to say to myself is  “I AM NOT BETTER THEN THE WRITERS” (Sorry if I sound like I’m yelling I just want to emphasize a point which I fear can get missed by people)” We as fans will never know what it is like to work for a big creative enterprise which is obviously   a collaborative effort between the writers, actors, directors and of course (and sometimes infamously) corporate. Although I know no one here thinks their better then the writers on the show this is more of a general thing for fans of any fandom that think that way. I am we are not trained professionals, even if we do write up cool stuff and create interesting ideas.

 

Now for a positive on headcannons, I saw headcannons are actually a good thing for they are a sign that the show is interesting and engaging, Why go into headcannons even now if we still didn’t love the show and the lore and mystic it still gives us even today. Granted being too invested in a headcannon is probably not the best for then your actual view of the show becomes disjoined and biased towards your own biases. But in the end as long a show is causing us to make headcannons it doing it’s job as the show is generating conversation.

 

So just case in point headcannons are fun and mean a show is engaging just don’t invest yourself in one for more then likely your just going to get upset.

[Phee]

I’ve had many headcanons. If I’m proved wrong, I’ll get over it and accept their story without any qualms, as long as their story makes sense.

I was convinced that Rumple and Pan were brothers, but the way they wrote them as father and son, it made sense, it worked, and I’m fine with having been wrong, because the story we got was still pretty great and imaginative and believably emotional.

I was convinced that someone, like the Darling Bros, had to have interfered to orchestrate Henry being adopted by Regina, because I may not know much about the adoption process, but I’m pretty sure that a baby born in a jail in Phoenix doesn’t just end up being adopted clear on the other side of the country, (by a prospective parent who never had a home visit done by the agency), like it’s nothing unusual. So the way they wrote that story fell WAY short of the mark for me, I found it lacklustre and unbelievable, so will forever say that fandom headcanons were better than what we got.

Keep characters in character, make the events believable, and I’ll accept the canon story, even if it contradicts with my preconceived headcanon. But if the canon story doesn’t make sense, if characters act in ways that contradict how they’ve been previously established, if I can’t even fanwank a way to rationalise it in my head, then it will become a pet peeve, because it takes me out of the believability of the story.

[Killian Jones]

You know what really gets confusing is when people get so invested in head canons that they confuse it with something that’s actually happened on the show? Yes I’ve talked to people and this has happened lol

[obisgirl]

Wow.

[MatthewPaul]

This is a point that might be a bit touchy for a few people, but just had to address it. In my observance, headcanon investment can backfire big time if your making headcanons specifically based upon not wanting “so and so” plot point to happen, despite signs pointing in that direction. This was especially evident when the death spoiler of doom got out. So many things pointed towards the death being Neal, but people were making numerous headcanons that pointed the death to someone else or anything to make them feel like he was safe up until the night “Quiet Minds” aired. Even the promo was dismissed as “misdirection”, “you don’t give a death away in a promo”, etc. While I’m sure some Neal fans were prepared for the possibility, I got the impression that many were not just because they convinced themselves so well that he was safe. So there is that sensitive line between making theories/headcanons purely based on what we see from spoilers, and making theories/headcanons to suit our own fan wishes. Keep in mind I mean no ill will towards any Neal fans, nor was it my intention to come across as insulting. I’m sure had any of the other characters been a top suspect, their fans would have done the same. The death of a series regular is just that big of a deal. It’s only natural to want our favorites to be safe from harms way. Just using the most extreme example thus far to illustrate my point.

On the flipside, though, there have been times where this type of headcanon wins out in the end. In this case, a lot of us were worried that Leopold or Rumple was Zelena’s father based on spoilers, so we tried convincing ourselves otherwise.  Thankfully he wasn’t, and it turned out to be a gardener pretending to be a prince. I felt pretty dang good after the fact. Still, you’re taking a big gamble believing in something one way or another, so it is advisable to be prepared for any outcome.

[RumplesGirl]

This was especially evident when the death spoiler of doom got out. So many things pointed towards the death being Neal, but people were making numerous headcanons that pointed the death to someone else or anything to make them feel like he was safe up until the night “Quiet Minds” aired. Even the promo was dismissed as “misdirection”, “you don’t give a death away in a promo”, etc

*cough* looks directly at RG *cough*

<3

No, I see what you're saying. And yes looking back the promo was a sign as was the lack of stills of Neal himself for a Neal centric. But to be fair to others, people do not drop dead randomly in an episode after barely being in the previous 3. And if you're not a spoiler-a-holic, then you can't say with certainty "so many things were pointing to it" if 1) you didn't know about the death spoiler to begin with and 2) weren't following filming shots. You're coming at it from a spoiler-a-holic POV. I can bring over @dontstopbelieving and @textbookone both of whom joined the forum very close to the 315 because they had only just learned about the death spoiler and couldn't figure out why everyone was saying it was Neal, for example.

I won't speak for the rest of the Neal fans but I was 99.5% sure that Neal would die because I DO follow/post every single spoiler. What I didn't expect is that he would die in his very first centric after no build up and *at this point RG becomes incoherent as she begins to list all the ways Neal's death was poorly handled but won't go into it here cause people tend to just sigh and shake their heads at me now*

[quote=263174]On the flipside, though, there have been times where this type of headcanon wins out in the end. In this case, a lot of us were worried that Leopold or Rumple was Zelena’s father based on spoilers, so we tried convincing ourselves otherwise. Thankfully he wasn’t, and it turned out to be a gardener pretending to be a prince. I felt pretty dang good after the fact. Still, you’re taking a big gamble believing in something one way or another, so it is advisable to be prepared for any outcome.[/quote]

Also true. For example, I had been saying since the Summer that Peter Pan couldn't take Henry's heart but would need Henry to trust Peter enough so that Henry would take it himself in sacrifice. Turns out, I got that one. *pats self on back*

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[killianhookfan]

I guess I don’t have enough faith in my own theories to turn them into head canon!!  I keep them safely at the theory level so when they are always wrong I am not disappointed.

I have fun trying to figure it all out because I look at it as a mystery to be solved and I love mysteries – my friends and family all tell me I should have been a detective, but given my success at predicting the correct outcome on OUaT I would suck at being one.

I just have fun analyzing and over-analyzing and looking for hidden clues, etc.  But then I guess I kind of just “reset” after the episode airs and start theorizing all over again.  I really don’t care if my theories are wrong and even though I might sometimes question something at first I don’t let holes or inconsistencies bother me.  It’s a TV show, it’s not real life so stuff like that is going to happen.  And I think we all probably notice a whole lot more of those kinds of things than the average viewer since we analyze every aspect of the show over and over again.  If we didn’t do that and rewatch the episodes multiple times we probably wouldn’t even notice the inconsistencies.

I do sometimes sit back and laugh at ALL of us, myself included, when we are talking about a character and we say something like “And you know when she was doing that she was thinking about all the times she has been hurt before and how she is finally ready to open up to someone, blah, blah, blah.”  Because these are all freakin’ fictional characters so THEY don’t HAVE any thoughts, THEY don’t exist.  Only the actors who portray them exist and they are reading a script.  Sure they have some kind of motivation for where their character is coming from when they are portraying that character, but we still go WAY overboard on giving these fictional characters thoughts and feelings.    So I do think it is strange in a creepy way when people will tweet questions to the actors about why “their” character did something and they will respond with what “their” character was thinking or feeling and then people will bash the actors for their response because they don’t like it.  Ummm, that actor IS the person who portrays that character so if he or she says they were feeling that way, that’s how they were feeling – analyzing the crap out of it won’t change that.

 

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