I’m not sure what you’re saying here... If you don’t feel the need for representation then? good for you? because there sure isn’t any. But not everyone is happy with the way things are. There are so many different identities because human existence is more varied than the mainstream world makes it appear to be. and when this diversity is erased from television, people really think that straight/cis is default, it leaves young people feeling like they are wrong or strange, that LGBT people are wrong or strange. For people who are unhappy with that this blog is meant to be comforting. 

And you’re right, SU is a very good cartoon with a lot of representation for LGBT folk. I know I recommend it heartily.

-mod dipper

People make headcanons because they see themselves in characters, or because they want to. Obviously many/most of these orientations and genders are extremely lacking in representation in mainstream media. Projecting on them like this is not only fun but comforting for many people! Often characters are coded LGBT, intentionally or not, and often when that happens actual LGBT people will pick up on it and be like, hey, this character is like me! But then it never gets confirmed in the actual media, so non-LGBT folk can still erase our voices by saying that we’re making things up and forcing our sexualities on characters. This is called queerbaiting. Especially in something like Disney, where people insist that anything other than straight and cis is “not kid friendly,” we have to resort to calling it “headcanon” to have any sort of representation in our favourite media to help people, young and old, not feel alone or wrong for their sexuality. 

That got a bit ramble-y but I hope it helped!

-mod dipper

Mx is the gender neutral form of Mr/Ms/Mrs!-Mod Rapunzel

That might be a good idea! We’ll put it on our to-do pile :)

-mod dipper

First of all I’d like to note that the headcanons we post are submitted to us by other tumblr users. We get a lot of submissions from a lot of people, and there are a lot of other blogs that do exactly the same thing as us. It’s not unique to us (in fact the blog currently has 4 or 5 mods) and it’s really not as unusual as your ask frames it as.

Second of all, people make headcanons for a variety of reasons! The concept of a headcanon has been around in fandom since… I mean, I can’t say for certain, but I’ve definitely seen the term thrown around for years now, especially on tumblr. But I’ll cover the why a bit more with your Part 5.

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you said you don’t mean to be as antagonistic as you may seem, but! wow!! Say it with me folks: LGBTQ+ is not inherently sexual! It’s damaging to act as if it is! It creates stigma that leads to an environment where children don’t know that being cis/straight is not the default and that they can be different. 

But anyway the long and the short of it is being trans or gay or any other LGBTQ+ identity is in no way more sexual that being cis or straight. We are not sexualizing anybody with these headcanons, least of all minors. We’re minors! In fact half the point of this blog is to prove that LGBTQ+ isn’t inherently sexual. We get headcanons about fish. Are we sexualizing fish now??

Again these headcanons are sent in by different people. Many characters have multiple different headcanons posted for them. No one is claiming they’re all true at the same time. Also, just because two people might have the same LGBTQ+ identity doesn’t mean they’re going through the same “inner conflict”. Saying so is just painting LGBTQ+ people into broad stereotypes and invalidating the diversity of human experience.

What tires me is questions like this that act as if it’s ‘twisted’ to make our own representation when we find none :) 

Okay, time to get back into why people make headcanons. As I mentioned, headcanon is a term that enjoys some popularity within fandom, and doesn’t necessarily always mean your beliefs on a character’s gender or sexuality. Headcanons can be things like ‘Tony Stark has a lion stuffy named Maximilian’ or ‘Percy Jackson takes star wars gummy vitamins every day’ or so on. the term something that someone personally believes about a character, without implying that it’s canon or that anyone else has to believe it as well.

People make headcanons when they see themselves in a character — for example, we get a lot of trans headcanons about Mulan, a lot of ace/aro headcanons about Merida, a lot of bisexual headcanons about Steve Rogers (because MCU is distributed by disney), all of which are firmly based in their respective canons — or, conversely, when they don’t see themselves to such an extent that it becomes frustrating.

Sometimes headcanons can contradict canon - like, someone could come up to me about my Percy Jackson headcanon there and say ‘but Percy can’t have taken vitamins every day! He’d have no access to them when he’s off on quests!’ and I’d be like, ok, fair point. I enjoy the thought of it, though, I think it suits his character/it helps me relate to him, and I’m not forcing anyone else to think the same thing unless they want to.

But a lot of the time they’re just things that can’t be either contradicted or supported by canon? Like, why would Tony Stark have a lion stuffy?? Why not??? Has he ever said he doesn’t have a lion stuffy, specifically? Prove me wrong here. It seems like something he would have.

The mods of this blog are teenagers under the age of eighteen. Again, there are four or five of us at the moment, we all have different situations. Some of us are closeted, some of us are out. Some of us are in situations where we have to be closeted, some of us already have a “backlash-free environment,” as you so put it. Personally I think I get more backlash (in the form of anon hate) on this blog than I do in my real life. This is really just a place for LGBTQ+ disney fans to express themselves and share the ways they relate to characters.

-mod dipper

Aa yea i should have guessed... for some reason i was like “did we do something problematic??” anyway... if we are a joke then we’re a funny joke. a good joke. we’re the blog equivalent of playing what’s new pussycat 19 times with one it’s not unusual. a harmless funny joke.

also, at least we’re not petty enough to send people vague hate on anon

-mod rapunzel

I’m sorry, I don’t think I quite understand? What did we do?

-Mod Rapunzel

Edit: Okay i get it you think we’re pathetic. You’re probably here from reddit or 4chan to “defeat the evil ess jay woos” but guess what! At least we’re not pathetic enough to send vague ass hate to a group of marginalised teenagers having fun! K bye now.

Perhaps! I just messaged the other mods, not sure how many are staying, so if maybe less than 3 of them stay (so it’s me and 2 other mods, or less) then we might get some new mods! no promises, though!

-Mod Hercules

it’s okay to be confused, and no, these are not assumptions or facts! they’re headcanons, which means they’re facts only to the person sending it in. like, let’s say my personal headcanon is that hercules is a trans boy. that’s what i believe to be real, but it’s only real in my own head. now let’s say friend a agrees with me. now it’s real in both of our heads, because that’s how we interpreted the character and that’s what we see when we watch the movie. now let’s say friend b disagrees, and thinks he’s cis and pan. well, that’s their own  headcanon, and is true in their head but not in mine, and vice verse with my headcanon! does that make sense?

-Mod Hercules

Hi! thanks for the consideration, but we don’t have a “new” layout. Tumblr has been messing up people’s themes left and right as of late. This has apparently happened before, so the precedent is that we should just wait it out. I’ve heard that last time, when people tried to correct their problems, they wound up losing the entire code for their blog. Again, thank you, but it seems like there’s nothing we can do for a while yet. Sorry for anyone inconvenienced!

-mod dipper