Welcome to Loose Headcanon
Welcome to all of you that found my website and are listening to the first podcast episode of Loose Headcanon.
Loose Headcanon is my platform to discuss and analyze the great stories of our time. Movies, TV, books, and anywhere else you find great stories of any genre. Although science fiction and historical fiction hold a special place in my heart, anything from fantasy to westerns are fair game.
Loose Headcanon will focus on the story itself, the work, and dig deep to find what makes it special and what it attempts to accomplish in human consciousness. Sometimes, not a lot of digging will be needed, like any JJ Abrams movie. Others are more complex.
The name, Loose Headcanon is more than just a clever pun. It also describes my approach for the podcast and the blog. Headcanon are ideas or details that readers or viewers create in their mind that don’t happen in the story. Typically they’re consistent with what is actually in the story itself, but sort of fills a gap. An example would be what many Star Wars fans imagined Obi-Wan Kenobi was doing on Tatooine all those years. Did he really live the life of a hermit all that time? He never went on adventures or sought to help others? Some fans have elaborate ideas on what he did during that time.
Of course, we will soon have canonical version of Obi-Wan’s years on Tatooine on Disney+ but for now, fans still create their own headcanon. It is headcanon because it is in your head, it’s yours. It yours and yours alone.
The term loose is added to drive home the point that it isn’t set in stone, it isn’t static or reliable, and therefore doesn’t need to be taken seriously, whether by the person or whoever listens. We are talking about fiction, about people and places that never existed and events that never happened. If something in a story resonates with you, that’s great, let’s talk about it, but no one else on the plant needs to feel the same thing or see the same thing in a story you do. No one needs to abide by what’s in your head and you do not need to accept what others feel or take from a story. These days it is revolutionary say, “it’s okay to have different opinions” but it is true.
So why talk about fiction? Storytelling is humanity’s first and most effective means of sharing information, increasing social cohesion through mythology and cultural rites, to instill moral values, or just a means of entertainment. We have writing and film now, but the purpose of storytelling remains the same. To connect. That' is what we are here to do.
What is interesting is that stories have always evolved because they’ve been mostly oral tradition or had to be written down and copied numerous times. Even if a society had writing, there may not have been an original or master copy of a work. Today, that is different. Scholars preserve original texts, movies are committed to a medium and kept for posterity. Our fiction is becoming less and less prone to modification.
Yet creators still try to either revise or replace canon. We don’t do subtle changes, we now put up works as being superior and want to argue over whether it should replace the original as canon, or be held in higher regard. My favorite example is Batman. The Batman story has subtle variations from the various comic book runs and, of course the movies and TV shows. Most are not connected in a single continuity or universe. There is the first comic books to feature the character but so many other interpretations. For some, the true Batman is from the comics. For others it is from the 90s animated series or the Tim Burton movie. For me, it is Christopher Nolan’s Batman. I love Michael Keaton and that first Burton movie, but Nolan’s will always feel more real to me. We will soon have Matt Reeve’s take to go along with Ben Affleck’s Batman.
In reality, none hold real sway. If you are discussing the DC cinematic universe, then Ben Affleck’s batman is canonical. If it is the 90s movies, it is Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney. Is there a superior, more authoritative one? Some like to think so but again, it is only true in their own head. It is their own headcanon.
I have my own thoughts on these questions and characters like Batman and would love to talk to others about there’s. That is what I hope to create with Loose Headcanon. As time goes on, I hope to build and upgrade, whether it is upgrading the audio, maybe adding video or creating a YouTube channel, having guests, co-hosts, and others on, and who knows what else.
Thanks for listening to this little intro and I hope you enjoy.