absynthe–minded:

mainecoon76:

edgeoflight:

actualelffucker:

jane-ways:

dawnfelagund:

celebrimbooooor:

Something I really wish the Silm fandom, and probably fandom in general, understood is that headcanons can be (and often are) completely separate from analysis of the text, and often they’re completely separate from the text itself.

That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does mean that you probably shouldn’t get offended when someone’s literary analysis post doesn’t reflect your personal headcanons for Melkor, for example.

This has been a Thing for as long as I’ve been in Tolkien fandom. (*gulp* More than thirteen years now?!) And my fandom history research leads me to believe it was probably a Thing long before I’d even read Tolkien. Ironically, given your example, it used to be a hallmark tactic of the conservative, religious-fundie wing of the fandom, who tried to impose their canatic readings on authors, often through harassment.

My favorites were the readers, almost universally on Fanfiction.net, who would open a comment with “Great story! Now because I should give you some concrit then …” and would unleash all the ways my story had failed to meet their personal vision of scene, character, whatever.

I invited more than one of them to write their own g-d story and leave mine alone.

This! So much this. It frustrates me to no end that people don’t understand the difference between a headcanon (which I would characterize as creative, personal, and evolving/fluctuating) and an academic/critical analysis (which is more objective, requires significant research and textual evidence, and often incorporates archival and theoretical research). It’s particularly annoying when people attempt to position their headcanon as a serious analysis (especially so because they often get aggressive when people offer different readings).

TL;DR: Headcanons I publish on Tumblr; critical analyses – which often appear on fansites like SWG as well! – I could try to get published in Modern Fiction Studies. I can’t publish my headcanons in academic journals.

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Let me try to articulate my perspective on headcanons, because I think the same term is used for a couple different types of meta or delivering thoughts, ideas and opinions about canon. I would say many people use headcanons for creative spitballing, throwing out thoughts, ideas, and takes on canon, and they are by and large great to see, sometimes inspiring, and sometimes truly novel and arresting ideas that change my perspective of canon. And that’s great – I love those kinds of headcanons. 

But then there’s the other kind, where it’s called a headcanon, but it flat out contradicts an important aspect of the spirit of canon, mocks it, belittles it, wilfully misinterprets it, or the conclusions it comes to are patently offensive. Something where the thought isn’t so much creative spitballing as wanting to bludgeon the reader over the head with some obnoxious “I don’t make the rules” opinion based on character or ship hate. 

Take for instance, the so-called headcanon that Fëanor beat his kids, which I have seen many times over the years (the latest instance was in a Facebook group, and I must confess I blocked the person who posted it so fast my mouse was hitting warp speeds). I’m not going to rehash why that whole idea is wrong in every way, many people have already done that, @dawnfelagund not least among them. But the point is that that’s not what someone got out of canon, that’s what they read into canon. They brought their prejudices and their hate and they put it like a lens over canon, and tried to see the universe in that light, like looking through a pair of shit-coloured glasses. 

When headcanons are born not out of the joy of reading deeper into the text or of playing with the universe in ways Tolkien would never have thought of, but out of a mean-spirited or cruel impulse, or a desire to veil hate with a veneer of creativity (and sometimes not even a veneer), the effect is to kill inspiration rather than encourage it. 

A headcanon is a good playmate but a bad master. They should fluctuate and change. They should develop over time. They should, above all, be NEW. They should be the thoughts that you and only you can have about the Legendarium, and they should be shared out of love for the canon and joy in what you’ve found there. 

“But the point is that that’s not what someone got out of canon, that’s what they read into canon.”

*standing ovations*

Astute analysis. I’ve been trying to pinpoint what exactly it is that so often bugs me about Silm discourse (or discourse in general), and this is one of the major points. 

And you don’t find this only in headcanons, but also in “serious” meta. Character bashing or ship hate in headcanons is bad enough, but they also find their way into meta and literary analysis (by selective choice/bias of text, which makes it less objective than it should be), which is then used by the author as a justification for why their interpretation is right and others are wrong. To stay with your example, “Feanor beat his kids” is an annoying headcanon, but “here’s a two-page essay that explains why this is obviously implied in the text and if you don’t think so you belittle child abuse” is another level entirely.

(This was also a major problem on both sides on the Debate That Must Not Be Named, and imho the main reason why this could not be discussed in a civil manner.)

This is why I don’t miss the Meta/Headcanon Wars of 2012-2013. Especially because it turned into a popularity contest very quickly, with little focus on the actual content of the canonical text. I found myself engaging with people who seemed to have read an entirely different story called the Silmarillion, one with spiteful, vindictive gods and neoliberal atheist heroes; nothing I could argue in the spirit of good-faith fandom discourse was good enough because it wasn’t counter-textual enough. Arguing with certain people at all was an invitation to start drama, and there were a lot of passive-aggressive meta writers who turned a blind eye to the harassment their fans and supporters would start. I found myself both thrilled to engage in an active fandom and feeling like my love for the text was wrong because it didn’t go along with the popular crowd’s interpretation. It was frustrating.

I see less of it now, but I think that’s because a lot of the active bloggers I used to follow have left Tumblr and the new crowd of meta writers is far less inclined to high school dramatics. Let’s keep that trend going, shall we?

(There were several Debates That Must Not Be Named, for the uninitiated on my dash; I’m happy to be free of them. I’ll also happily discuss them in good faith with any interested parties.)

I found myself engaging with people who seemed to have read an entirely different story called the Silmarillion, one with spiteful, vindictive gods and neoliberal atheist heroes; nothing I could argue in the spirit of good-faith fandom discourse was good enough because it wasn’t counter-textual enough. … 

 
I found myself both thrilled to engage in an active fandom and feeling like my love for the text was wrong because it didn’t go along with the popular crowd’s interpretation. It was frustrating.

Gods, thank you for the best articulate summary of my experience entering into active participation in the Silmarillion fandom, and why I still have the mental burnout years later. And why I I have trepidation if I start to read someone’s headcanon post because I don’t know if it will try to mask itself as this discourse debate.