December daily: Favorite headcanon

[resonant]

majoline earns my eternal gratitude by prompting: favorite headcanon?

Six days left for claiming, or else I'll start making up my own questions!

Fantastic prompt! I hope majoline prompted others with this same question, because I love this kind of stuff.

I've talked a bit about this one elsewhere, but it's in the background of the story I'm working on now: Sherlock's view of sexuality is totally warped by a disastrous relationship at a shockingly early age.

I see him having been fully consenting and enthusiastic, but not very far into his teens, when he got involved with a boy only a year or two older. From him, Sherlock absorbed all sorts of childish attitudes towards sex: "Don't try to touch my prick; that's dirty." "What, you want to look? What a perv! (or whatever the equivalent slang would be in England)." "You take too long to get off. It's not normal, the way you are."

A lot of this stuff moved into an unexamined part of his brain, the way things you're told as a kid sometimes do, but if he examines them, he's likely to come to the conclusion that they're correct: "Well, I'm not normal, John. Surely you can't argue with that."

I imagine the two of them meeting up with this guy now -- he's an upstanding citizen with a wife and kids who remembers it all as a bit of childhood experimentation and says cheerfully, "Well, I was a filthy little beast at that age. All boys are."



Another bit of headcanon, not so specific, is that there must be a reason why friendly, warm, easygoing John Watson didn't have a single friend or lover to come home to after he was invalided out. I have varying theories about why that was, some of them cuddlier than others.

Moving to other fandoms, I believe that Eames is not English. Eames has that accent because he learned to speak English someplace like Africa or India. His parents were missionaries from someplace like Oklahoma, and he grew up traveling to all the places where American missionaries go to try to 'save' people. He was a prodigy as a child, a great actor, good at languages, and from the time he was about five, his parents used him in miracle scams -- having him pretend to have leukemia or have been born blind or something and be miraculously healed. This only ended when he began (1) pushing back and (2) having an actual libido, at which time they tried exorcism and when that didn't work abandoned him on the streets of Mombasa at about fourteen.

I believe that one of the ways Hawkeye and Black Widow bond is that they have much the same taste in women.

And I'm sure I'm not alone in believing that the romance between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts is adorable and significant but not remotely monogamous.

Comments

[kass]

Your Sherlock headcanon seems entirely reasonable to me, as does your Stark/Potts canon.

[resonant]

Stark/Potts in particular is one that TPTB are going to have difficulty not making canon-canon. Tony's such a needy black hole of love, it seems almost cruel not to let him get it from anybody who's willing to give it.

Pepper probably keeps his personal schedule for him.

[laurenthemself]

I can't speak to the Sherlock canon, but the Avengers stuff made me go YES GOOD.

[resonant]

I particularly liked the friendship between Natasha and Clint; it rang very true to me, in a way that movie friendships often fail to do. '

I can see someone asking them, "Are the two of you lovers?" and being told, "Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It's kind of beside the point."

[jesse_the_k]

Zomg yr Sherlock head canon makes my mouth water! Rest assured that no matter what happens in s3, I'll eagerly await your fic!

Also, great point about John--it opens up an entire Eye-ful of possibility.

[resonant]

I'm a little worried about getting the story done before s3 -- it's actually kind of an s1 story, but I'm so slow these days ...

[majoline]

Yes, actually! I've been asking everyone about their headcanons; it's fascinating!

I can see all of these, especially the Eames and Tony/Pepper one.

[resonant]

I've seen a few others replying to the same question, and it's always fascinating.

[taliahale]

Hmmm, interesting all, but wow, yes, I'm incredibly on-board with the Avengers headcanons.

[resonant]

It's funny -- it's a comics fandom, and so all the real libido has to be sort of squeezed out into subtext, but I see all sorts of complex and interesting sexual possibilities among the Avengers, and all, by fanfic standards, very wholesome since they clearly love one another!

[armadillo1976]

Just to let you know that if you wanted to elaborate on the John Watson bit, I'm all ears!

[resonant]

Well, there's one possibility in the backstory of Amenable, where John was engaged before he joined up and she broke it off when he was injured -- in that sort of scenario, the couple would split the friends, and if she ended up with most of them, what could he do?

I can also see him joining up as a way to separate himself from a group of friends that he was no longer feeling close to, or as a way of escaping from some horrible situation of his own making. (I wonder whether the armed forces serve the same social function in England that they do, or used to, in the U.S., where a youth in trouble can be given the tacit choice of becoming a soldier or getting arrested and going to jail?)

Or it's possible that he simply doesn't get close to anyone at all, ever, but just floats through life being pleasant and kind and not fully known by anybody.

[armadillo1976]

Yeah, I think the way he is portrayed in the actual show is closest to this last interpretation. Sad, though, isn't it? Makes me love all the fics which take this approach and append it with "...until Sherlock" all the more!

About the armed forces - I think not so much? As far as I am aware, a military career is also much less of an escape from proverty in any UE country. Also, in Europe in general, in my experience, there's nowhere near the level of public respect for soldiers (pride in them?), compared to the US. It's like we know we have them, as a society, and that they are useful, but we push them out of our collective consciousness. The kind of bumper stickers like "My sone is a Marine" or equivalent? Never seen them here, but it would be met with confusion.

[resonant]

I think all that pro-troops stuff in the United States is two things:

1. Spitting on them and calling them baby-killers: Done during Vietnam. Didn't end the war. Now understood to have been kind of a shitty thing to do to actual human beings.

2. A cunning plot by political marketers so that anyone who dares to question any American military action ever gets this, "What's the matter, don't you support our troops? Want to spit on them and call them baby-killers?" ... um, no, I just kind of wondered whether maybe there was a way to solve this problem without quite so many people ending up dead, but never mind, I see I am evil and must not ask questions.

[minxy]

Oh wow, I love all these!

[resonant]

I'm glad! It was fun to think about. If I were more fannishly engaged at the moment, I'm sure I'd have more.

[out_there]

Another bit of headcanon, not so specific, is that there must be a reason why friendly, warm, easygoing John Watson didn't have a single friend or lover to come home to after he was invalided out. I have varying theories about why that was, some of them cuddlier than others.

Hee. I always put it down to the fact that John Watson is actually quite angry and prickly when we first meet him. Oh, he's a good guy, no doubt, and absolutely more capable than Sherlock of appearing friendly and courteous, but my headcanon says he came home angry and sharp. That seeing him in the pilot with Mike Stamford is John at his absolute best behaviour.

Moving to other fandoms, I believe that Eames is not English. Eames has that accent because he learned to speak English someplace like Africa or India. His parents were missionaries from someplace like Oklahoma, and he grew up traveling to all the places where American missionaries go to try to 'save' people. He was a prodigy as a child, a great actor, good at languages, and from the time he was about five, his parents used him in miracle scams -- having him pretend to have leukemia or have been born blind or something and be miraculously healed. This only ended when he began (1) pushing back and (2) having an actual libido, at which time they tried exorcism and when that didn't work abandoned him on the streets of Mombasa at about fourteen.

Oh, that's interesting.

[resonant]

John Watson is actually quite angry and prickly when we first meet him.

I like that.

Huh, you know what? The more I think about it, the more than angry and prickly thing is of a piece with what makes John's ego able to stand up to extended contact with Sherlock: He's over giving a damn about what anybody thinks. Mike makes a weak joke about John being over there getting shot at, and John gives him a level look and says, "I got shot." Sherlock says, "Use your imagination" and John says, "I don't have to."