Inspiration for AUs and Headcanons

[fleurviolette]

 Where do you find inspiration for an AU or a headcanon?

Maybe it could be from an elaborate plot of a book, movie, or even tv? Or maybe the inspiration comes from a youtube video of someone eating an entire menu in a moving truck?

I'm just curious to find out, because sometimes inspiration can be found somewhere unexpected. 

Comments

[senmut]

Random minor scenes that could have been expanded and taken characters in different directions. Those have a tendency to make me "What If" and develop them... to the point of making new headcanons as the characters interact.

[fleurviolette]

Yes, I agree. Sometimes I think about 'what if' scenarios and it evolves into a new au, or a new headcanon that expands on the character.

[kalloway]

taichara, mostly.

Other than that-- occasional shower thoughts, fridge moments, and tearing canon to shreds with my bare hands.

[fleurviolette]

Sometimes in fanon, you break it down into pieces and create something new out of it. Nice!

[kalloway]

Pretty much. One of my main fandoms is a hot mess of sci-fi with an endless amount of plotholes. Sometimes just trying to make simple things make sense involve rebuilding chunks of canon.

[fleurviolette]

Oh wow! That fandom sounds like chaotic fun! I was also in a few sci-fi film and tv fandoms, although vast, but somewhat organized. The plotholes weren't too messy or drastic, thankfully.

[megpie71]

For something I'm working on at present: I wanted a reason for a character to be isolated from their family for a year, yet still have a reasonably good relationship with their parents. So I decided on making this character the youngest of four... with an eighteen-year gap between himself and his next-eldest sibling (the story is: he was conceived during their parents celebration of his sib's high school graduation). This had some interesting knock-on effects, given I wound up turning another character into that next-eldest sibling simply because of the canonical relationship between the two characters (which works well as a "loving-siblings-with-a-large-gap" dynamic, less well as a "complete strangers" dynamic).

The other thing I'm doing with this particular piece of work is writing it as a platonic soul-bond AU between two of the characters (the protagonist and the first-introduced female supporting character) of the "telepathic bond" type, mainly because firstly I wanted to see what happens if you throw that in there, and secondly, I wanted to see a bit more writing about male and female people in friendly, platonic relationships with each other, rather than romantic ones.

A lot of head-canon is very much extrapolating from what's given - there are very few head-canons I have which outright contradict the canon stuff. As another example, from the same source as both of the above, I'm choosing to interpret one of the characters (a girl who is a shut-in, gets extremely anxious in crowds, wears large earmuff-style headphones constantly, and who has a lot of quirky and occasionally socially inappropriate behaviours) as being autistic. Actually, autistic head-canons are pretty common for me (I'm autistic myself, I want representation, damn it!) - two of the more notable ones are Squall Leonhart from Final Fantasy VIII, and Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII (this one because Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core proved pretty comprehensively that high levels of Jenova cells in one's system does NOT mean one becomes socially incompetent - which means there has to be another reason behind Sephiroth's weirdness).

(Oh, and I constantly head-canon the Warrior of Light in the Dissidia stories to be the same one who shows up in Mobius Final Fantasy, because the MFF Warrior of Light is a cranky, cross-grained bastard, and I like the idea of having him grumping his way around with all the other Final Fantasy heroes.)

[fleurviolette]

Wow! You have interesting and detailed aus and headcanons for your writings. Plus, representation matters. At least in fanon, you can add in the nuanced representation when it's lacking in canon. For example, I think of headcanons for Jenny Chey from GLOW, since I can relate with some of her experiences growing up as Asian American. There's so much potential to tap into, like her ambition to make it in Hollywood vs. her familial and cultural upbringing. She has two sides, yet she keeps showing her American side to fit in.

[fred_mouse]

Attempting to work out the logic for in canon weirdnesses, mostly.

[fleurviolette]

That makes sense, trying to make sense of nonsense canon.

For your headcanons and aus, are they leaning towards serious or fun?

[fred_mouse]

Keeping in mind that I haven't finished writing a piece of fiction in over a decade, and I've never finished writing down a fic (ie. I write them in my head when I can't sleep, with the agreement with myself that I'll write them if I remember them in the morning) I lean towards frivolous. Cracktastic tropes are definitely where I go when I'm thinking AU.

[pensnest]

I've written quite a few AUs, and they come from various inspirations.

Personal experience: I worked in an advertising-adjacent industry many years ago, and it was enough (I think!) to allow me to fit my boys into an ad agency AU. Also wrote a very late pinch-hit drawing extensively from my own experience at geek conventions.

Canon-adjacent-icity(?): Translating the actual-world existences into something similar, possibly parallel. I was very pleased with my AU in which NSYNC became the cast of 'Synchronicity', a teens TV show, and Adam Lambert became an aspirant actor who could sing, rather than an aspirant singer with acting experience

Dragons! I've done quite a few stories involving dragons. Dragons are never wrong. I ran a dragon challenge for several years. When you start with a dragon, the rest of the world will come along.

Stole a plot:

- The Full Monty - though in this case it was more the stage musical than the film.

- Shakespeare: I've always loved Much Ado About Nothing the most, and it was in essence the plot of one of my more recent stories. I also threw in a location that I'd seen in a different context. And chefs, possibly because watching so much of The Great British Bake-Off made me think Food.

- fairy stories (Cinderella has a great basic plot)

Also, canon. A Backstreet Boys video, in which the Boys are a 1980s hair metal band *and* fans of same, was just begging to have an AU written about it.

[fleurviolette]

The ad agency idea kinda reminds me of Mad Men. That's so neat that you used to work there.

I've revisited my modern au where the main characters have YouTube channels, which is obviously bizarre because the canon consists of suave spies in the 60s.

[silveradept]

Often times, there's a bit where I go "Oh, WTF?" in canon. Or, I realize that I'm going to have to answer that question without ever actually getting the official one. And, occasionally, because I have ideas that crash together and refuse to go away.

More often than not, though, you'll see the headcanons and AUs start appearing because the secondary characters are off-screen enough that you can start speculating about what they're doing and what they're interested in. And that causes all sorts of fun.

[fleurviolette]

Sometimes headcanons can clash with canon, but then there's always the canon divergent au route.

Yes, at least that part gets the creative juices flowing, just to see where it goes.

[cadenzamuse]

Trying to make the plot holes make sense. Real life experiences/jobs/events I've had. Smashing things together (current personal AU I try on basically every fandom I'm in involved "what if we combined GATTACA with Star Trek Reboot with soul bonds with disability activism?")

[fleurviolette]

Whoa! That would be an interesting crossover au. I can imagine the science of GATTACA fitting in the Star Trek Reboot universe, like scientific progress to the extreme.

[doranwen]

My AU fics are all either canon divergence or apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic - sometimes even both (as in the case of one series I started for Alphas). Mostly I notice specific places where they had things turn out really well by coincidence, and it feels too perfect or neatly tied up, or I think someone made a stupid decision and I want to see what would've happened had they done the logical thing, or I'm just simply curious about the path not taken. In one case (a Rookie Blue WIP that's on hold), I think the scenes as depicted would involve the character in question dying from their wounds, but they have them being still alive when found, surviving surgery, etc., and I just don't think that's plausible - so my WIP is fixing the implausibility.

[fleurviolette]

Post apocalyptic aus are interesting. Is yours more the conventional post apocalypse or like 'Into the Badlands' kind of deal?

[doranwen]

Lol, it really depends on the fic, what kind of post-apocalypse it is. I wrote a post-apocalyptic Boxcar Children fic for Yuletide but it was really just a modern reinterpretation of the whole story with "the kids are on their own because virtually all the adults died of a plague" (and it was what the recip had requested - when I saw that prompt, I had to write it, even though it took ages because it ended up 17k, lol).

For Alphas I combined canon divergence with AU - because the final episode of the show (total cliffhanger, btw) had them trying to stop "the end of the world" (had to do with killing off much of the population of the US, I won't spoil the show by saying how). And if one or two things had happened otherwise, it *would* have happened, too, so it was easy to just diverge along that path and end up with them trying to survive. I only got about seven short stories into the series, though (only about a week after the apocalypse), so I hadn't gotten to them seeing other survivors yet.

I honestly have no idea what you mean by "Into the Badlands" - never heard of that.

[fleurviolette]

Those are neat apocalypse aus. I'm surprised there is fanfic for Boxcar Children. I remember reading those books when I was a kid.

Into the Badlands is an AMC show that has a post apocalyptic setting, but the aesthetic consists of Western feudal and Eastern mystic styles.

[doranwen]

I never thought to look for it (it's not a fandom I'm really fannish about) but when I was looking for fandoms to offer I thought "hey, I could write that" (whether I love the fandom or not is generally not my consideration when it comes to offers - as long as I can write it without going nuts, I offer it, because I have so few fandoms I really know well enough to write). Didn't think my fic would end up so long but it was worth it - my recip LOVED it (commented on each of the six chapters) and it was well-received by others so I'm very pleased with the result.

Huh, interesting. I'd say my fics are more traditional, I guess? I'm not into Eastern media at all so I'm not sure what "Eastern mystic styles" are. Mostly I just try to be realistic about all the details and just go with what the chars would do or not do in a given situation and see how it turns out.

[fleurviolette]

That's awesome! Good stories can come from unexpected things.

I meant mystical as in mystical powers? The show blends the post apocalyptic world with fantasy and action. It's based on a Chinese novel. Anyway, so it's post apocalypse but the aesthetic is like run down modern era instead of reverting the past afterwards. I hope that makes sense.

[doranwen]

Ah! Well, Alphas is sci-fi so it's got something *like* magic but it's all brain-based skills (like stuff you see on Youtube but x1000) - and the show has some action, my fics probably would get there if I continued the series. And in that one, it only affects US and Canada, pretty much - the rest of the world's OK, so that creates some interestingness as far as politics and war goes. But I'm probably misinterpreting the meaning of the word "aesthetic" so who knows, lol. Can you tell I'm not used to describing stuff like that? :)

[doranwen]

Ha, I forgot to answer the headcanon bit - now that's a bit different.

I have a few ace headcanons because I'm ace myself and I don't find it nearly so easy to see UST as everyone else claims (I think a lot of it is in what one experiences - the stuff on the screen can go either way depending on who's actually experiencing it).

I also have one character that I headcanon as Asperger's - canon has her not understanding idioms, being a bit socially awkward, like she can handle high society stuff with all its rules but finds more relaxed down-to-earth stuff very difficult. They started out with showing it pretty strong but then it got watered down by the last season (I suspect they figured she'd picked up stuff from her best friend who was always teaching her what was really going on with phrases and situations), and they never actually said that she was on the spectrum or anything like that, but it feels like she is to me, so.

I don't know that I have a lot of other headcanons… *thinks* Mostly just emotional behind-the-scenes stuff, like what's going on in someone's head and why, for very specific characters and canons (Nina Theroux in Alphas, for one). Unless I write a ton of fics in a single canon (the most I've done is about 10 in a single fandom - I do more exchange writing than writing for myself), I don't develop much headcanon, particularly not anything that carries over into more than one fic or series. I'll write something for that specific fic, but it exists all in its own universe and often times the raison d'être for the detail is because of the fic's plot or something like that.

[fleurviolette]

Ace headcanons are good! Yes! Sometimes we add headcanons based from our experiences as well as adding more depth to the characters.

[doranwen]

Lol, well, ace headcanons are great except when it's about a character most people regard as gay or lesbian, I've been told by other aces (I only have two, but one's Prof X from X-Men original movieverse—I've only seen the first three films—and the other's Jane Rizzoli from Rizzoli & Isles…). I don't really have a lot of fandom involvement with those fandoms because the overwhelming majority of fans (particularly with R&I, I'm not as sure about X-Men as it's hard to find fic that doesn't assume one has seen all the rest of the films) seem to be very set in their beliefs about those chars and I suspect at least a few would be angry enough at anyone thinking otherwise so as to attack them. I'm sure it's a tiny minority that would actually attack but I'm wary nonetheless.

Hmm, Gary from Alphas is probably another, now that I think about it- but he's a canonical autistic character and shows absolutely no interest in romantic or sexual relationships of his own. The closest he gets is being friends with a girl who ends up getting killed (and it makes him angry, but I think that's more because he feels like he really connects with her as a friend - there's no signs of it being more than friendship). So I've assumed he's probably aro-ace.

[fleurviolette]

Ah yeah, I understand that completely. Certain headcanons get personal depending on the person, so it's best to be careful.

Personally I headcanon Ned from Pushing Daisies as ace, or he's somewhere within the ace spectrum? Like he'd be demi? Yes, he does have a canonical love interest, but throughout the show, he mostly shows romantic feelings for her, so it can be interpreted as such.

[mythicmistress]

Most of my AU ideas come from wishing the characters had done something differently in a situation (especially if I think their canon actions were really stupid). Some of my headcanons come from expanding on little things I notice in the source material.

[fabrisse]

Preach it! I hate when a situation could have been resolved if the characters had just TALKED FFS.

[doranwen]

YES, so much YES. Those are the best AUs. "This is how it should have gone."

[fleurviolette]

Nice! I wonder what if this character did something differently, or met someone differently. It really depends.

[fabrisse]

Prompts, mostly.

My "Rebuilding the Table" stories in the Kingsman fandom were based on the end of the first movie and extrapolating, so while I consider them an AU, it's at least partially due to the second movie jossing my very logical assumptions. ;-)

"The Great War" on the other hand was an AU in the same fandom from the beginning. There was a prompt at Dressing Room Three and it sparked a little "Hmmm" and everything went from there. I love getting random prompts and occasionally hang around the fringes of prompt communities to pick up ideas (which I credit). It's one of the reasons I adore writing for Yuletide. Prompts let me latch onto something and then swing free in my imagination.

[fleurviolette]

Prompts are a great source of inspiration for aus, no matter how small or big they are.

So, what about headcanons? Do you stay within or deviate from the source material?

[fabrisse]

Most of my headcanons are character driven. Although I've written a couple of "Reid is a virgin" fics in Criminal Minds fandom, that's not how I see him. Merlin in Kingsman was brought up Church of Scotland and, based on his age, has some hang-ups regarding his homosexuality due to both upbringing and social expectations when he was in his teens and twenties. Kurt from Glee is mentally -- and in later seasons physically -- one of the strongest people in the cast. Daniel Jackson can defend himself, against Jack if necessary, and doesn't need someone else to fight his battles.

Still, one of the best comments I've gotten was "headcanon accepted!" It's nice to know that others can see my point.