Get up on your soapbox, let loose, and enjoy! We take a loose view of fandom. If you think it's fandom, it goes.
Why I hate headcanons
Headcanons. They're not meta, because they're just someone's opinion, and yet, if they're flat out factually wrong, it's offensive to call someone on it because "it's my headcanon, how dare."
I despise the things. They're an excuse for the poorly-informed and the wanky to label their opinions as off-limits to critique. They decrease creativity in a fandom and actually suppress the creation of new fic, because if you can vomit out a paragraph of nonsense and get just as many tumblr notes, why would you bother writing a few thousand words of fic or properly-researched meta to justify or clarify your line of thinking?
Genuinely, no joke, I recently saw someone complaining that their headcanons were their own property and how dare anyone use them in a fic without giving them credit! This for a (mistaken) conclusion that a five-year-old might have been able to reach unaided about the canon in question.
People can write better or poorer quality fic and meta, it's true, but at least that takes some amount of effort, some thought as to presentation (I really hope), some consideration of any audience beyond adoring fans who will [heart] any ridiculous thing posted.
Next time you have a headcanon? Do us all a favor and either put it in a fic where it belongs, or keep it to yourself where it can't be criticized. But don't pretend that your ill-considered opinions are something special just because you call them headcanons: they may be canon in your head, but to mine, they're just wank.




I firmly believe theories about canon are no one's personal property. If it's truly whacky and off-the-wall and no one else in the world would think of it: 1) sure, claim it, but 2) realize that's not a headcanon since it includes the canon creator.
I love headcanons in fic, as you describe. But when it crosses over to fanon it gets a little...stifling. For example, there's a popular ship in my main fandom that LITERALLY doesn't exist in canon. As in, the two characters aren't ever even on screen at the same time! But if you ship one of those characters with ANYONE ELSE than the fanon other...you are torn up!!
The real place I see this headcanon getting troublesome is RP. A logical derivation from canon to personality is always shifty ground, but I've seen it go so very, very wrong.
I liked the old definition of headcanon, little bits of backstory or character notes that filled in the gaps of canon, without ever contradicting canon. Occasionally a theory would get popular enough to become fanon, (things like Giles and Ethan from Buffy being ex-lovers) but nobody ever expected other people to follow their headcanons, or argue that they were true.
The new way people use it now, like some sort of trump card in ship wars or canon arguments is really bloody annoying. You can write any fic you like, but headcanons aren't something you can impose on other people in your fandom.
I agree with all of this. Worse, any attempt to use the older/original definition immediately labels you as one of the Tumblr wankers because that's all people recognize these days.
Aggravating.
Preface: I completely hate them too for most of the same reasons.
But I often get stuck in the loop of WHY. Obviously, it's trendy, and less effort than finishing something - the same as when people used to post 'fic bunnies' and 'chat fic', more or less, I think. It's about sharing the idea without the extra steps involved producing a fanwork, or spellchecking, or whatever, and similarly without the performance anxiety - because it's off the cuff, they don't have to feel too bad if it's not that good.
I'm not generally interested in any of those things, or any other half-baked ideas, if they're not part of a discussion about finishing the idea somehow. But in principle they wouldn't be so annoying if they didn't get so trendy, because they (and their above-mentioned predecessors) then become (became) a bandwagon and proliferate all over the place, usually without proper headers and frequently without proper punctuation or cut tags.
I'm irrationally bothered by trans/* headcanons. No, I will not refer to a female character with gender neutral pronouns because they're not canon GDI!
i can see both sides of this. representation is important, and so stupidly rare for trans folks. it's completely valid for someone to say "x is trans" and explore that concept in fic or rp. however, i agree with the op that imposing that view on all of fandom is wrong... and super annoying.
on the other hand though, i actually agree with you to an extent here. my specific irritation is when people transparently genderswitch characters or make them trans in a low blow attempt to hetero-normify a slash ship. again, ties into the whole idea of it not being canon and not something anyone can impose on anyone else, but if you ship for eg. steve/tony, stop making it steve/toni and just ship the queer joyfully. i've seen it happen too often that it's thinly veiled homophobia. (actually, that happens in canon sometimes too. after all, toni had to be iron woman in an alternate universe for their marriage to end the civil war. hrmmmm.)
I really like headcanons overall, and I only was introduced to them relatively recently, like within the past few years. To me they kind of go hand in hand with meta. Headcanons form the basis for some really amazing meta, or can stand alone and make a different fan think, possibly even inspire a different fan to write meta or fic based on it.
It's exceedingly rare that a headcanon I stumble across would be clearly "Flat-out factually wrong", so I wonder if there's a specific example you're thinking of.
It is indeed rude to tell someone who is having fun and not hurting anyone with an innocent headcanon on tumblr that "They're wrong" if all their headcanon is is a simple thing that actually isn't "right" or "wrong", but rather "one possible interpretation and nothing in canon actually contradicts it".
Most people I see using the term "headcanon" use it in a way where they don't expect everyone else to share their headcanon. They just want to share that their headcanon is pretty important to them.
It's like black readers of the Harry Potter series interpreting Hermione as black because certain things - her hair, slurs being thrown at her, etc - fit the idea, and nothing directly contradicted it, and it being special and important to them to consider that one of the many main characters of that book might look like them, and have some shared life experiences. It made them actually more invested in the entire series when they were reading them. Telling them their headcanon is wrong feels like it usually comes from the side of fandom who is just racist and really strongly against non-white interpretations for Hermione for no reason other than "I never thought of her as non-white and I don't want the thought to have to cross my mind". I mean it's not like anyone was telling Hermione fans they had to stop writing fanfiction or creating fanart with a white Hermione. They were just saying they personally preferred to headcanon her as black.