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

[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.