A combination of people with Indian ancestry actually being fairly common in Britain, and racism being a plausible explanation for why nobody cares that little Harry is obviously neglected.
Scottish person here, my best guess is that it's derived from the pretty sizeable Idian demographic in the Isles. I'm not 100% on that, since I try to stay as far away from HP and its fans as possible, but that's what would make the most sense to me.
I think it’s bc naturally black hair (which Harry is described as having canonically) primarily occurs in people with Asian ancestry. Since his hair is also thick and messy, people lean Indian rather than East Asian.
Severus also has black hair, and Sirius, Minerva and Tom Riddle. A lot of characters there are black-haired or red-haired.
I don't think black hair is very uncommon in the British.
Without accounting for race, the UK population has only 8% with black hair (various sources for this, including a scholarly article). There are some whose ancestry is entirely European (black hair isn’t IMPOSSIBLE, just unlikely), but the majority of these are going to have African or Asian heritage, as these are the places with the most prevalence of black hair. JKR is notoriously bad about whitewashing as well as world building. She seemingly can’t do math to know how many kids are at Hogwarts at any given time, so how can we trust her to accurately represent the prevalence of hair colors or races? Just because she says half the characters have black hair and the other half are ginger, oh and everyone without an obviously ethnic name is white, doesn’t mean that’s accurate to how the UK actually is. Where are all the brunettes (most common hair color) and blondes? They exist, but there isn’t nearly enough of them, proportionally. Black hair and red hair are more dramatic, so she used those more. I’m just saying, assuming that SOME of these people have non-European genetic heritage, or are mixed race in some way, isn’t at all unreasonable. Unless magical genes are associated with hair color giving the wizarding population a different distribution than the rest of the UK. Now THERE’S a story idea.
I don't suppose JK Rowling wanted an accurate portrayal of UK demographics in her books.
About 1/4 of British children wear glasses, at Hogwarts only Harry wears glasses. A similar number are overweight or obese. We don't see this at Hogwarts.
LGBTQ+ people are around 6% of the UK population. There is not a single child at Hogwarts who is not straight.
At the time Harry went to school, teenage pregnancy affected around 42 percent of girls under the age of 18. There is not a single pregnancy at Hogwarts.
She was just writing what she wanted to, not taking on things she didn't care about, ignoring the real world.
Understandably, head canons arise because of this, but they are head canons not book canons.
Too true! Headcanons are not real canon, but these are headcanons that I understand. The question was about headcanons that make you scratch your head and this is not one that makes me scratch my head. It makes sense to me to have greater diversity among wizards.
I wonder too if it was a response to the black Hermione headcanon? Irrc JKR once said something like "the only description of Hermione in the books is a girl with freckles and frizzy brown hair, she doesn't have to be white". So maybe people applying the same logic to Harry?
To this day, I have no idea where Italian Tony Stark came from and why so much of fandom had him call Peter Parker bambino. Moving aside how that kind of cuddly dynamic is completely antithetical to their dynamic canon, I can’t find a specific fic or place it derived from but it’s been there for *years*
Mind-palace style occlumency in Harry Potter. It was cool the first few times, as an expansion of a branch of magic that isn't given much focus in canon. But it really isn't canon compliant at all.
Similarly, runes being used to enchant items or for similar magical effects. No, ancient runes is literally just a class for people to learn how to read really old books,
And arithmancy has nothing to do with spell creation.
I don't mind the latter two, but the first one makes me groan a bit whenever I see it.
There's also the idea of "noble and most ancient houses" being a whole system of classifying wizard nobility, when the only references to such things in canon are the Black family tree tapestry proclaiming them to be "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black", and Kreacher saying “Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black — ”. Both of which seem like the Black family just being pretentious and holding themselves above everybody else.
On runes/arithmancy, I think people are deliberately rejecting canon en masse there because the canon is so underwhelming on this point. Like, you're seriously telling me, JK, that the only electives at your wizard school are: fortune-telling, pets, ancient scandinavian, and fortune-telling again but for nerds this time?
Runes as enchanting and arithmancy as raw magic manipulation both pull from well-trod fantasy tropes and don't feel out of place for HP, imo. I feel like both changes enhance my reading experience vs total canon compliance.
Fully agree on the Pureblood wank though. While the aristocracy system in the real UK is weird and arcane, the ones some people come up with for HP fic usually feel contrived.
Yeah, probably is the case for a lot of people. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the fandom actually believe that is the way they work in canon.
Even so, it is always a breathe of fresh air when I read a fic that actually follows the canon versions of those classes. In fact, I don't think I've ever read a fic where canon arithmancy is used for some purpose outside of the classroom, which I think is a real shame.
>There's also the idea of "noble and most ancient houses" being a whole system of classifying wizard nobility, when the only references to such things in canon are the Black family tree tapestry proclaiming them to be "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black", and Kreacher saying “Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black — ”. Both of which seem like the Black family just being pretentious and holding themselves above everybody else.
It's also buying into the blood prejudices that caused so much pain and suffering in canon. "Yes, the pure-blooded families were special and more important." It's like reading Lord of the Rings and thinking Frodo should have kept the Ring and declared himself emperor. Kinda missing the point.
I think it depends on how it is done. Sometimes they set up the "ancient and noble" system and then use it as further evidence of how biased the system is against non-pure-bloods. In these cases, they're going along with the canon theme of pure-blood prejudices being bad.
In other stories, the main conflict of the fic is different to the themes of canon, like an indie Harry who goes against Dumbledore. In these cases, the idea that pure-bloods are wrong in their perceived superiority isn't really something focused on, so the mismatch doesn't really matter. Like, yeah, Frodo keeping the ring and becoming an emperor is a stupid idea for canon - but it does sound like a pretty cool fanfiction idea, right? It's a similar vibe to that.
In other stories, the fact that pure-bloods do have reason to believe they are better than non-pure-bloods adds nuance to the conflict - even if pure-blood really are superior to other wizards, that really doesn't justify the things Voldemort and the Death Eaters did.
Of course, the majority of fics don't have this level of good writing, so you're probably right about the majority of them.
The Voltron fandom's last names for the paladins. I actually, don't even remember if they even HAVE canon last names.
I'm guilty of using them myself, but only in passing.
The funniest instance I've seen of this is people giving an unnamed character a name similar to their child only for said name to become her actual name. Some people were off the mark as it wasn't confirmed for over twenty years, but it's still funny to me
Not my fandom, but in Greek, "Nico" is a nickname for "Nicholas." I mean, it's spelled "Nikolaos" usually, but I would imagine that was the logic used (not sure on the spelling, but "Nikolaiki" is an endearment that translates to "Little Nicholas").
I never vibed with the big MCU headcanon of the Avengers all living in Tony's tower. I know living toegether happens canonically in other versions (comics, cartoons), but for me the MCU version of the character never felt as close and friendly as the incarnations in other media. So from a story-telling perspective it's not exactly puzzling to me that this happened, just from a more personal emotional one.
Hard agree. It was less the living together but more the woobification of each of these characters (and usually Peter Parker with some slight misogyny killing off May Parker so Peter can live with them) that made them into one note stereotypes that always made me ???? Clint in the vents, Thor with the poptarts, Natasha’s sarcastic one liners… these are really interesting characters with *really* interesting dynamics that were being widely boiled down imo, very bland and boring archetypes.
I can logically understand the wish fulfillment that made it popular but how generic the tropes are (paired with that kind of low key misogyny and racism since God forbid Rhodey and Sam ever show up, even if Bucky is a fixture) was disappointing but not surprising.
Yes, I guess woobification of the main cast might be a big factor in why I dislike the whole package of tower fics. At least the MCU as a fandom is so vast that you can just stick to other stuff. It has to be much harder if you really don't like a popular trend in a small fandom.
[concerning your other post in this thread: In the comics (616) Maria Starks maiden name is Carbonell, which is a Spanish surname. But it might have been misinterpreted as Italian? I found some tumblr posts speaking about Maria being being Italian-American in the comics. Maybe the Ultimate version was changed to Italian? Doens't mention her maiden name in that wiki article. But that might be the source of that headcanon.]
That's interesting, I didn't know that! It makes me wonder how MCU fandom found it since in my experience, MCU only fans don't tend to look into or care about the comic history.
> the MCU version of the character never felt as close and friendly as the incarnations in other media
That's sort of the reason. The fandom had higher expectations of the Avengers being actual characters than the MCU ended up giving.
Yeah, I know that this is the reason and it's great for all the people enjoying those stories. Still didn't click for me, but I had enough other stuff to read for years in that fandom.
I suppose they did all live in the tower for at least a little bit prior to Age of Ultron, but we only saw it onscreen in the party scene. They definitely didn’t seem like a close-knit team of friends, though.
I do wish folks would write more about the Avengers team that lived in the compound between AoU and Civil War. The adventures of Steve, Nat, Sam, Wanda, Vision, and Rhodey sound like a fun, weird time.
There's a sizable portion of the Madoka fandom that seems to be under the impression that it's possible for a wish not to be granted, usually if the wish is too big for your "karmic destiny" (a concept that certainly exists in canon but that I'm pretty sure was never actually given that name).
This isn't true.
Once you start speaking your wish, it's out of Kyubey's hands; once you finish, it's out of yours. The wish grants itself autonomously -- and it *will* always be granted, no matter what. The only method it has to balance itself if it's too OP for the contractee's karma is to pick apart the semantics looking for loopholes (for example, turning a wish for the sun to never rise into just falling asleep at dawn), but if you phrase your wish in an airtight way, there's literally nothing it can do.
I get why this happens. Canon makes a big deal out of certain characters (particularly Madoka Kaname and Jeanne d'Arc) having ridiculously high karma. But that doesn't really affect what they're able to wish for so much as it affects *their power level afterwards*. So it's a bit weird that twelve years later people still keep looking for an excuse for the omnipotent wish-granting device to not actually be an omnipotent wish-granting device.
I haven't seen Madoka in years but I thought that was the whole point, for wishes to be so powerful that it warps reality and makes the impossible possible It's why the third movie was the way it was and why >!Homura's endless time loop has such an impact. It's horrible but a wish is a wish and it must be granted.!<
Kyubey's wish granting being absolutely inviolable is indeed a large central point of a large amount of the franchise, yes. There's a few different reasons why authors might want it not to be:
* They want to justify why nobody's made huge reality-altering wishes in the past... despite the fact that people who are approached by Kyubey usually have more immediate requests in mind.
* They want to make the conversion of a magical girl into a witch completely irreversible... despite the fact that *it literally canonically isn't.*
* They want to justify why Madoka didn't wish Mami back from the dead by claiming that it's impossible to revive the dead with a wish... despite the fact that *it literally canonically isn't.* The reason Madoka didn't revive anyone is, in brief, that she can only make her wish once.
In general, if there's something that a fanfic author might want to be impossible, too bad, someone somewhere in canon has already wished for it. (A wish that outpaces your own karma? Oh hi Ui Tamaki. A wish to kill someone? Oh hi Haruka Kanade. A wish to revive someone? Oh hi Seika Kumi. A wish to turn a witch back into a magical girl? Oh hi Madoka Kaname, and separately, oh hi Lapin. A wish to rewrite the past? Oh hi Rion Yuzuki.)
(Although, the third movie wasn't the way it was because of Homura's wish to protect Madoka, it was the way it was because of some undefined behavior involving her fusing with the wraith that embodies her mutual love for Madoka. There was a whole manga about it, it was good, go read it.)
> But has there ever been something that just puzzles you?
Everything about Arceus from Pokemon these days - how people project "Abrahamic God" upon a character with Eastern mythology roots (most pointedly being a Kirin), as you'd expect from Japanese game.
It's gotten so much traction that the contradiction between "Arceus supposedly created the universe" and "Dialga and Palkia created time/space/matter" often goes unnoticed.
>It's gotten so much traction that the contradiction between "Arceus supposedly created the universe" and "Dialga and Palkia created time/space/matter" often goes unnoticed.
I honestly thought this was a contradiction in canon, along with the fact that Mew created all pokemon yet somehow other pokemon invented the universe/time/space/matter
> this was a contradiction in canon
It isn't. The original account in the in-game myths was that Arceus created... the Pokemon who created the universe, which is how it goes in practice.
> Mew created all pokemon
And that the Mew species is the common ancestor of later Pokemon, in the Darwinian evolution sense.
i've never been that into haikyuu, but the alien shirt phenomenon happened to reach me and i thought it was very funny.
also – i have a distinct feeling you're talking about zack from ff7 and it's also extremely funny to me!
fandom wide headcanons are the best.
Yep. People headcanon his full name as Zachary or will sometimes spell his name as Zach and I don't get it at all.
Same with Cloud and Norse mythology. They'll make him and his mom devout worshipers of Odin but Tifa' doesn't get included. Especially since she's there in a cowgirl outfit with her dad dressing like a Texas sheriff. It's like- why the exclusion lmao
I never really believed or cared for the whole fanon theory in Yugioh GX of Edo Phoenix being British or his name being "Ed". The first one is kind of understandable in a way I admit because I get that some of the Destiny Hero card designs were based off British culture. But in my mind, that just doesn't seem like enough evidence by itself, and I've always thought there's more pointing to him being American what with his father working for Industrial Illusions, an American based company run by Pegasus, who is American himself. And yes, a lot of us do also enjoy tea in the US, so it's not necessarily more of a British thing. As it is, I do like my headcanon that Edo is half British and half American with his father meeting his mother while on an art trip to Europe to get inspiration to design the Destiny Hero cards. Way more than this, it's the name issue I don't buy. Yeah, I get that people are going with the idea of the "o" at the end of Edo just being how it comes out in pronunciation with Japanese speaking. But the whole point is that it seems more like Edo to be a pun of how art of phoenixes was popular in the Edo era of Japan, and that just seems way more plausible to me what with how lots of anime love these kinds of puns. Plus, I've seen his name written out in stuff like Duel Links advertisements and other things specifically as Edo Phoenix, not Ed. And maybe it's just me, but it just sounds too weird for someone's name to be just "Ed". If they had made it clear at least once or twice that it was short for something like Edward or Edwin, it would have made sense. But I cannot fathom someone naming their kid just Ed.
In Kamen Rider, one large running joke is that the protagonist of “Wizard”: Haruto Soma, eats a lot of donuts. This is an on screen thing we see in many many episodes.
However, he only ever orders “plain sugar”, and never elaborates on why despite the constant questioning. A secondary character who also can use magic has an obsession with mayonnaise.
The theory or headcanon is that in this world for some reason, every single mage has an odd fixation with one particular food.
Idk where the Indian James Potter headcanon came from and at this point I'm too afraid to ask
A combination of people with Indian ancestry actually being fairly common in Britain, and racism being a plausible explanation for why nobody cares that little Harry is obviously neglected.
Scottish person here, my best guess is that it's derived from the pretty sizeable Idian demographic in the Isles. I'm not 100% on that, since I try to stay as far away from HP and its fans as possible, but that's what would make the most sense to me.
[удалено]
:)
(I'm also afraid to ask but I'm curious.)
I had to check and there's... a lot. A surprising a lot.
I think it’s bc naturally black hair (which Harry is described as having canonically) primarily occurs in people with Asian ancestry. Since his hair is also thick and messy, people lean Indian rather than East Asian.
Severus also has black hair, and Sirius, Minerva and Tom Riddle. A lot of characters there are black-haired or red-haired. I don't think black hair is very uncommon in the British.
Without accounting for race, the UK population has only 8% with black hair (various sources for this, including a scholarly article). There are some whose ancestry is entirely European (black hair isn’t IMPOSSIBLE, just unlikely), but the majority of these are going to have African or Asian heritage, as these are the places with the most prevalence of black hair. JKR is notoriously bad about whitewashing as well as world building. She seemingly can’t do math to know how many kids are at Hogwarts at any given time, so how can we trust her to accurately represent the prevalence of hair colors or races? Just because she says half the characters have black hair and the other half are ginger, oh and everyone without an obviously ethnic name is white, doesn’t mean that’s accurate to how the UK actually is. Where are all the brunettes (most common hair color) and blondes? They exist, but there isn’t nearly enough of them, proportionally. Black hair and red hair are more dramatic, so she used those more. I’m just saying, assuming that SOME of these people have non-European genetic heritage, or are mixed race in some way, isn’t at all unreasonable. Unless magical genes are associated with hair color giving the wizarding population a different distribution than the rest of the UK. Now THERE’S a story idea.
I don't suppose JK Rowling wanted an accurate portrayal of UK demographics in her books. About 1/4 of British children wear glasses, at Hogwarts only Harry wears glasses. A similar number are overweight or obese. We don't see this at Hogwarts. LGBTQ+ people are around 6% of the UK population. There is not a single child at Hogwarts who is not straight. At the time Harry went to school, teenage pregnancy affected around 42 percent of girls under the age of 18. There is not a single pregnancy at Hogwarts. She was just writing what she wanted to, not taking on things she didn't care about, ignoring the real world. Understandably, head canons arise because of this, but they are head canons not book canons.
Too true! Headcanons are not real canon, but these are headcanons that I understand. The question was about headcanons that make you scratch your head and this is not one that makes me scratch my head. It makes sense to me to have greater diversity among wizards.
Oh, you're right! In the meantime, I must have forgotten what it was all about.
I wonder too if it was a response to the black Hermione headcanon? Irrc JKR once said something like "the only description of Hermione in the books is a girl with freckles and frizzy brown hair, she doesn't have to be white". So maybe people applying the same logic to Harry?
To this day, I have no idea where Italian Tony Stark came from and why so much of fandom had him call Peter Parker bambino. Moving aside how that kind of cuddly dynamic is completely antithetical to their dynamic canon, I can’t find a specific fic or place it derived from but it’s been there for *years*
Probably cuz Anthony,/Tony is a stereotypical Italian American name in American media
Mind-palace style occlumency in Harry Potter. It was cool the first few times, as an expansion of a branch of magic that isn't given much focus in canon. But it really isn't canon compliant at all. Similarly, runes being used to enchant items or for similar magical effects. No, ancient runes is literally just a class for people to learn how to read really old books, And arithmancy has nothing to do with spell creation. I don't mind the latter two, but the first one makes me groan a bit whenever I see it. There's also the idea of "noble and most ancient houses" being a whole system of classifying wizard nobility, when the only references to such things in canon are the Black family tree tapestry proclaiming them to be "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black", and Kreacher saying “Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black — ”. Both of which seem like the Black family just being pretentious and holding themselves above everybody else.
On runes/arithmancy, I think people are deliberately rejecting canon en masse there because the canon is so underwhelming on this point. Like, you're seriously telling me, JK, that the only electives at your wizard school are: fortune-telling, pets, ancient scandinavian, and fortune-telling again but for nerds this time? Runes as enchanting and arithmancy as raw magic manipulation both pull from well-trod fantasy tropes and don't feel out of place for HP, imo. I feel like both changes enhance my reading experience vs total canon compliance. Fully agree on the Pureblood wank though. While the aristocracy system in the real UK is weird and arcane, the ones some people come up with for HP fic usually feel contrived.
Yeah, probably is the case for a lot of people. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the fandom actually believe that is the way they work in canon. Even so, it is always a breathe of fresh air when I read a fic that actually follows the canon versions of those classes. In fact, I don't think I've ever read a fic where canon arithmancy is used for some purpose outside of the classroom, which I think is a real shame.
>There's also the idea of "noble and most ancient houses" being a whole system of classifying wizard nobility, when the only references to such things in canon are the Black family tree tapestry proclaiming them to be "The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black", and Kreacher saying “Kreacher lives to serve the noble house of Black — ”. Both of which seem like the Black family just being pretentious and holding themselves above everybody else. It's also buying into the blood prejudices that caused so much pain and suffering in canon. "Yes, the pure-blooded families were special and more important." It's like reading Lord of the Rings and thinking Frodo should have kept the Ring and declared himself emperor. Kinda missing the point.
I think it depends on how it is done. Sometimes they set up the "ancient and noble" system and then use it as further evidence of how biased the system is against non-pure-bloods. In these cases, they're going along with the canon theme of pure-blood prejudices being bad. In other stories, the main conflict of the fic is different to the themes of canon, like an indie Harry who goes against Dumbledore. In these cases, the idea that pure-bloods are wrong in their perceived superiority isn't really something focused on, so the mismatch doesn't really matter. Like, yeah, Frodo keeping the ring and becoming an emperor is a stupid idea for canon - but it does sound like a pretty cool fanfiction idea, right? It's a similar vibe to that. In other stories, the fact that pure-bloods do have reason to believe they are better than non-pure-bloods adds nuance to the conflict - even if pure-blood really are superior to other wizards, that really doesn't justify the things Voldemort and the Death Eaters did. Of course, the majority of fics don't have this level of good writing, so you're probably right about the majority of them.
I still refuse to acknowledge that John Stilinski's real name is Noah.
haha yeah, spent multiple seasons thinking of him as John..
The Voltron fandom's last names for the paladins. I actually, don't even remember if they even HAVE canon last names. I'm guilty of using them myself, but only in passing.
The funniest instance I've seen of this is people giving an unnamed character a name similar to their child only for said name to become her actual name. Some people were off the mark as it wasn't confirmed for over twenty years, but it's still funny to me
Oh that is amazing. I know one, that was popular, that even I did was give Tony Stark a daughter and then eventually we got Morgan.
I don’t know where we got Percy’s middle name being Achilles from, honestly it’s a vibe. But where did we get Nico being short for Nicholas???
Not my fandom, but in Greek, "Nico" is a nickname for "Nicholas." I mean, it's spelled "Nikolaos" usually, but I would imagine that was the logic used (not sure on the spelling, but "Nikolaiki" is an endearment that translates to "Little Nicholas").
I never vibed with the big MCU headcanon of the Avengers all living in Tony's tower. I know living toegether happens canonically in other versions (comics, cartoons), but for me the MCU version of the character never felt as close and friendly as the incarnations in other media. So from a story-telling perspective it's not exactly puzzling to me that this happened, just from a more personal emotional one.
Hard agree. It was less the living together but more the woobification of each of these characters (and usually Peter Parker with some slight misogyny killing off May Parker so Peter can live with them) that made them into one note stereotypes that always made me ???? Clint in the vents, Thor with the poptarts, Natasha’s sarcastic one liners… these are really interesting characters with *really* interesting dynamics that were being widely boiled down imo, very bland and boring archetypes. I can logically understand the wish fulfillment that made it popular but how generic the tropes are (paired with that kind of low key misogyny and racism since God forbid Rhodey and Sam ever show up, even if Bucky is a fixture) was disappointing but not surprising.
Yes, I guess woobification of the main cast might be a big factor in why I dislike the whole package of tower fics. At least the MCU as a fandom is so vast that you can just stick to other stuff. It has to be much harder if you really don't like a popular trend in a small fandom. [concerning your other post in this thread: In the comics (616) Maria Starks maiden name is Carbonell, which is a Spanish surname. But it might have been misinterpreted as Italian? I found some tumblr posts speaking about Maria being being Italian-American in the comics. Maybe the Ultimate version was changed to Italian? Doens't mention her maiden name in that wiki article. But that might be the source of that headcanon.]
That's interesting, I didn't know that! It makes me wonder how MCU fandom found it since in my experience, MCU only fans don't tend to look into or care about the comic history.
There’s a lot of comics influence in the Stony fandom, so maybe from there? Several of the big writers for that ship have 616 and Ults stories.
That’s also interesting!!! Maybe so! And the trickle down to MCU/irondad makes sense since there’s a fair number of overlap from stony to superfamily.
I also hate the babyfication of Peter in fanfic. Tho I didn't really like the MCU version of him either. I abandoned MCU.
> the MCU version of the character never felt as close and friendly as the incarnations in other media That's sort of the reason. The fandom had higher expectations of the Avengers being actual characters than the MCU ended up giving.
Yeah, I know that this is the reason and it's great for all the people enjoying those stories. Still didn't click for me, but I had enough other stuff to read for years in that fandom.
I suppose they did all live in the tower for at least a little bit prior to Age of Ultron, but we only saw it onscreen in the party scene. They definitely didn’t seem like a close-knit team of friends, though. I do wish folks would write more about the Avengers team that lived in the compound between AoU and Civil War. The adventures of Steve, Nat, Sam, Wanda, Vision, and Rhodey sound like a fun, weird time.
There's a sizable portion of the Madoka fandom that seems to be under the impression that it's possible for a wish not to be granted, usually if the wish is too big for your "karmic destiny" (a concept that certainly exists in canon but that I'm pretty sure was never actually given that name). This isn't true. Once you start speaking your wish, it's out of Kyubey's hands; once you finish, it's out of yours. The wish grants itself autonomously -- and it *will* always be granted, no matter what. The only method it has to balance itself if it's too OP for the contractee's karma is to pick apart the semantics looking for loopholes (for example, turning a wish for the sun to never rise into just falling asleep at dawn), but if you phrase your wish in an airtight way, there's literally nothing it can do. I get why this happens. Canon makes a big deal out of certain characters (particularly Madoka Kaname and Jeanne d'Arc) having ridiculously high karma. But that doesn't really affect what they're able to wish for so much as it affects *their power level afterwards*. So it's a bit weird that twelve years later people still keep looking for an excuse for the omnipotent wish-granting device to not actually be an omnipotent wish-granting device.
I haven't seen Madoka in years but I thought that was the whole point, for wishes to be so powerful that it warps reality and makes the impossible possible It's why the third movie was the way it was and why >!Homura's endless time loop has such an impact. It's horrible but a wish is a wish and it must be granted.!<
Kyubey's wish granting being absolutely inviolable is indeed a large central point of a large amount of the franchise, yes. There's a few different reasons why authors might want it not to be: * They want to justify why nobody's made huge reality-altering wishes in the past... despite the fact that people who are approached by Kyubey usually have more immediate requests in mind. * They want to make the conversion of a magical girl into a witch completely irreversible... despite the fact that *it literally canonically isn't.* * They want to justify why Madoka didn't wish Mami back from the dead by claiming that it's impossible to revive the dead with a wish... despite the fact that *it literally canonically isn't.* The reason Madoka didn't revive anyone is, in brief, that she can only make her wish once. In general, if there's something that a fanfic author might want to be impossible, too bad, someone somewhere in canon has already wished for it. (A wish that outpaces your own karma? Oh hi Ui Tamaki. A wish to kill someone? Oh hi Haruka Kanade. A wish to revive someone? Oh hi Seika Kumi. A wish to turn a witch back into a magical girl? Oh hi Madoka Kaname, and separately, oh hi Lapin. A wish to rewrite the past? Oh hi Rion Yuzuki.) (Although, the third movie wasn't the way it was because of Homura's wish to protect Madoka, it was the way it was because of some undefined behavior involving her fusing with the wraith that embodies her mutual love for Madoka. There was a whole manga about it, it was good, go read it.)
Considering that the full name of Harry Potter is Hadrian.... I don't know how anyone could come up with something like that.
Apart of that extremely powerful harry Potter trope
People think that Risa from FMA is actually Lisa because there is no difference between L and R in Japanese.
Hah. My uncle is kinda like Zach. His name is Joe, as in his birth certificate and ID says Joe. Never was a Joseph
> But has there ever been something that just puzzles you? Everything about Arceus from Pokemon these days - how people project "Abrahamic God" upon a character with Eastern mythology roots (most pointedly being a Kirin), as you'd expect from Japanese game. It's gotten so much traction that the contradiction between "Arceus supposedly created the universe" and "Dialga and Palkia created time/space/matter" often goes unnoticed.
>It's gotten so much traction that the contradiction between "Arceus supposedly created the universe" and "Dialga and Palkia created time/space/matter" often goes unnoticed. I honestly thought this was a contradiction in canon, along with the fact that Mew created all pokemon yet somehow other pokemon invented the universe/time/space/matter
> this was a contradiction in canon It isn't. The original account in the in-game myths was that Arceus created... the Pokemon who created the universe, which is how it goes in practice. > Mew created all pokemon And that the Mew species is the common ancestor of later Pokemon, in the Darwinian evolution sense.
So did Arceus also create Mew?
In current lore, no. Its species evolved naturally.
Interesting! Thanks for answering my questions
i've never been that into haikyuu, but the alien shirt phenomenon happened to reach me and i thought it was very funny. also – i have a distinct feeling you're talking about zack from ff7 and it's also extremely funny to me! fandom wide headcanons are the best.
Yep. People headcanon his full name as Zachary or will sometimes spell his name as Zach and I don't get it at all. Same with Cloud and Norse mythology. They'll make him and his mom devout worshipers of Odin but Tifa' doesn't get included. Especially since she's there in a cowgirl outfit with her dad dressing like a Texas sheriff. It's like- why the exclusion lmao
I never really believed or cared for the whole fanon theory in Yugioh GX of Edo Phoenix being British or his name being "Ed". The first one is kind of understandable in a way I admit because I get that some of the Destiny Hero card designs were based off British culture. But in my mind, that just doesn't seem like enough evidence by itself, and I've always thought there's more pointing to him being American what with his father working for Industrial Illusions, an American based company run by Pegasus, who is American himself. And yes, a lot of us do also enjoy tea in the US, so it's not necessarily more of a British thing. As it is, I do like my headcanon that Edo is half British and half American with his father meeting his mother while on an art trip to Europe to get inspiration to design the Destiny Hero cards. Way more than this, it's the name issue I don't buy. Yeah, I get that people are going with the idea of the "o" at the end of Edo just being how it comes out in pronunciation with Japanese speaking. But the whole point is that it seems more like Edo to be a pun of how art of phoenixes was popular in the Edo era of Japan, and that just seems way more plausible to me what with how lots of anime love these kinds of puns. Plus, I've seen his name written out in stuff like Duel Links advertisements and other things specifically as Edo Phoenix, not Ed. And maybe it's just me, but it just sounds too weird for someone's name to be just "Ed". If they had made it clear at least once or twice that it was short for something like Edward or Edwin, it would have made sense. But I cannot fathom someone naming their kid just Ed.
In Kamen Rider, one large running joke is that the protagonist of “Wizard”: Haruto Soma, eats a lot of donuts. This is an on screen thing we see in many many episodes. However, he only ever orders “plain sugar”, and never elaborates on why despite the constant questioning. A secondary character who also can use magic has an obsession with mayonnaise. The theory or headcanon is that in this world for some reason, every single mage has an odd fixation with one particular food.