Headcanon Meaning Words We’re Watching

So before we talk about how you can utilize canon to make your headcanon for roleplay, it’s important we talk about the three arbitrary types of canon that I made up for the purposes of this write-up. A notion behind canon is that conversations about literature rely on shared reading experiences—so long as everyone reads the same books, readers will know they are talking about the same ideas. Naturally, this use of canon extended to fan circles, referring not just to the books and movies that concern the same group of characters, but to the narrative universe that exists inside those works. While character generator headcanon generators are undoubtedly valuable tools, they also come with challenges.

You can completely fill out a character’s backstory, and social life, without ever harming canon in the least. No one can call you on them, and they’re still technically canon. Extended from canon if you will.Even if you break canon you can just declare your character more and more from an alternate timeline or alternate universe entirely. I said something about canon outranking people last paragraph. But even if canon dictates that something else is true, you can still play a character however you please. You simply have to make sure people know this is your version, and that they are from an AU and are not intended to be completely canon.

Generates random short stories with imaginative plots. The example that made me think of this specifically was a debate a while back on social media over whether Captain Atom would have sided with the government during Civil War. Captain Atom’s ongoing series, written by Cary Bates and Greg Weisman, was an excellent comic book filled with nuance. In that comic book, Captain Atom was quite willing to go against the United States government when he felt it was necessary.

Now a bit of background on myself and how I got involved with all of this. Like many I was left distraught and hopeless at the April 2014 announcement of the decanonization of the EU, and could find no place on the internet with anyone who loved and respected what we had lost. Seemingly everywhere were people spouting ridiculous claims about the EU that I knew were not true but had trouble arguing against since at the time I simply did not know what I know now. In the spectrum of superheroes  that ranges between “cosplayers that like to punch things” to “cosmic entity that barely acknowledges humanity exists”  my preferences are far closer to cosplayers, so I do know where you’re coming from.

Unfortunately, because many of the issues that come with trying to interpret a game world rely on what the game developers show us, we don’t get to see what the Zig is like on a good day because that might not be fun gameplay material. But I didn’t go into that because while that’s my headcanon and something I feel has a lot of support, it’s still just my own headcanon generator. We can agree that Manticore is an edgy edge boi who makes edgy choices, but kicking someone’s dog for no reason is a big claim that has no real basis in the canon. Our goal isn’t to just read lore, our goal is to be part of lore! In fact, literally nothing a roleplayer produces as a result of their hobby is canon (unless you seriously impress the owner, I guess). But, as that might imply, that does mean that canon is not set in stone after publication.