A Bit about Head Canon

Head canon is a term that is extremely familiar to fans of various genres except soap operas. For some reason, it hasn't really made its way to our fandom, so I wanted to explore it.

For those who don't know, head canon is defined as what someone believes is true on a certain program. They are typically things that are implied more than shown. At times, they are based on something legitimate, but they can also be based on assumption leaps. One of the most basic examples, is so and so isn't dead, because no body was shown on camera. Regardless of whether the character returns to canvas ever again, if I like the character: they are alive. Of course, I have two major exceptions to this rule: the actor who played the role has passed away or the actor is so famous they will never return. Occasionally though the second can happen like how Josh Duhamel came back to All My Children as Leo, though sadly the character remained dead. Since AMC is no longer in production, my head canon is that Leo and Greenlee happily reunited off screen as did Ryan and his late wife Gillian. That's my canon, no one can tell me otherwise even if it is illogical.

Sometimes head canon also applies to things that are incredibly minor like a throwaway line about a character, which mutates into a larger opinion. Sometimes there is no story about it, but it is just a part of the character like how Thorsten Kaye is a fan of the Detroit Redwings, so his All My Children character Zach was a fan of the team. He would wear jerseys, and due to that even if Kendall and Zach weren't together, that their boys would be devoted fans even in adulthood, though we won't see that happen. Real life things can become character things very easily, and that meta can be fun to look for especially if it isn't obvious.

Another is coming up with an idea of character based likes from something we already know about them. Kevin and Chloe on Y&R like Pretty in Pink and the movie is part of their relationship as they even dress up as the characters at Halloween. Sadly, they went to see it on the night Delia died, which perhaps has poisoned their love of the movie. One may make the assumption that the characters also like other John Hughes movies like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. And that before Delia died, she and her mom used to watch Home Alone every Christmas just because it was the family friendly John Hughes flick.

Another example of my personal head canon is about the many soap opera characters who have gone to boarding school, typically in Switzerland to deal with their case of SORAS. Any character who has lived that experience and returns as an older teen or adult, IMO at least has a passing understanding of French, German or both depending on where one lived. One of my Guiding Light head canons is that Holly who left Springfield in the early 80s with her daughter Christina (who grew up to be Blake), have such skills though Holly as the mom has a better talent as she worked in television in Europe. Of course, the humor in that is Maureen Garrett who played Holly actually is fluent in French and German, so my head canon for Holly could actually work in more than just my imagination. Usually, that doesn't happen, but sometimes you get lucky.

So that's my short post about head canon another one of the television fandom tropes. As soap operas stories are so variable and a lot less fan fiction is available, it just seems a lot less prevalent. I think many soap fans do engage in head canon, but don't have a name for it. When someone enjoys a show, it is only natural to come up with imagined opinions about the various characters that populate the fictional town.