Personal Canon Meme!

[remember5th.livejournal.com]

AKA, the "Please don't Joss me on this, PTB" meme.

Over the course of familiarizing yourself with a character, it's inevitable that you invent facts about them -- childhood stories, idiosyncrasies, favorite foods, etc. What are some of the things you've invented about your characters, or extrapolated?

For instance, I decided Evey has a fondness for gingerbread, and that Aravis once ran away and hid in an abandoned rabbit warren for an afternoon before slinking back to her palace. It can be anything you feel like sharing. (Feel free to explain how you came to the conclusion, if you want, since I know I personally have a few extrapolations where I looove my OCD justification.)

Comments

[ecirpnellehada.livejournal.com]

I gave both Adah and Cal blue eyes, despite Adah's canon mentioning otherwise (only once, though! ONCE, in 500+ pages!) and Cal having blue eyes being...highly unlikely.

SOMETIMES YOU JUST CAN'T SAY NO TO A GOOD PB.

[yourwhiteknight.livejournal.com]

Mmm Cillian.

YES FROM THIS ACCOUNT.

[likes-chicken.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha. I am actually so worried about making any personal canon for Hurley due to Lost's tendency to give a whole bunch of little details.

But on the upside, that tendency does give me a lot of little things to play with.

...you know, they just haven't given Hurley an exact birthday yet.

[canadianpopstar.livejournal.com]

Omg I so feel you, since HIMYM is the same way. But last year I randomly decided she was 27 -- which is two years younger than Lily, Ted and Marshall, so I have NO IDEA what I was thinking -- and it actually got confirmed in one of the episodes.

Yes, I was totes bragging about that for like the last year a week.

[withoutverona]

IT IS SO WEIRD YOU POSTED THIS because I've been thinking about this stuff.

Romeo got a middle name, William, because someone asked him once and I figured he had to have one. The Montagues become more explicitly Mafia when he talks about them because it's subtext in the movie. His physical relationship with Mercutio, same deal -- subtext moving to text. And I suppose my whole thing where he's kinda, um, easy, comes mostly from the way DiCaprio played the part. There's a way to do it where Romeo's more innocent, but to me his body language looks like a guy who knows he likes sex, so I went with that.

Altar boy I made up from the way he helps Friar Laurence into his robes at one point -- he has to have learned to do that somehow, and altar boy makes the most sense.

Him calling Benvolio Ben is just because Benvolio is really long to type, and it seems like a name that would get shortened by a cousin.

I'm trying to think if there's other stuff. I guarantee I'll edit this comment to add later.

[spring-lost.livejournal.com]

Not so much 'personal canon' as much as it is just extending on actual canon, but Cable reads a crapload of newspapers. It's intuited in canon that he's a complete and utter newsjunkie.

Other stuff I figure make utter sense for him is, um, the fact he can probably shoot and cook something in the wild. Not that that's come up, but yes. (And before anyone asks, yes, his love of 'The View' is canon. Actually, even him having movie night with one of his few friends is canon)

Really, I think the only truly solid personal canon thing I've introduced for him (that I can currently think of, there's probably a million of them that I forget) is that he actually bothered to name the baby.

I mean, c'mon, canon. What the hell.

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

... he didn't name the baby in canon?

How did he refer to it?

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

The very best thing about playing closed canons is that I don't have to worry about being Jossed :D

I did have to make up Joan's birthday, based on canon clues.

[senor-chado.livejournal.com]

Don't even get me started on what I've had to make up for Chad and Minsc based on what little personal canon has been given. Thankfully, Chad's is fairly easy to work with (because I don't even think Kubo knows what's going on half the time, either) and Minsc's canon is old, old, old (as far as typical fandoms go) and the chances of him being Jossed are slim.

Unless, that is, I ever find those Baldur's Gate books they apparently made, but, even then, I doubt there'd be much, since none of the information on him mentions anything notable.

I do worry about Jossing the Forgotten Realms, though, since I'm not well versed in that MEGA universe, but I am going to start reading some of the books!

[tyler_gone]

Tyler gets a lot of made-up personal canon. To start, his birth name, Jack Moore, is what the props crew on the movie used, though I don't like it and only use it when I have to. His mother died of cancer because she is nowhere in canon and he had to have *something* to say about her, and it adds a whole sick resonance to his support groups habit.

The ways he spent the time between leaving Fandom and returning are just me extrapolating from canon and where he was when he left, and the Tyler/Marla stuff is because I love them together.

He developed the goatee fetish on his own.

[canadianpopstar.livejournal.com]

My biggie is that Robin's parents are divorced. There's a fair amount of canon basis for this, though, so if I get Jossed I'm going to be VERY "WTF, CRAIG AND CARTER, WTF?"

Mainly because Robin's issues with commitment have to come from SOMEWHERE, dude, and there's an offhand mention that Barney watched her dogs when she went to visit her dad in Vancouver. Not her parents, her dad specifically, which implies -- to me -- that Daddy's not living with Mommy. This also comes up with her sister Katie, who continually mentions their mom and not their father.

Um, other things...*thinks* Robin's love of snack food and inability to grocery shop isn't direct canon -- it comes from the late season 2 ep where Lily's trying to gain weight for her wedding dress, and all Robin has to eat in her apartment is like Ho-Hos and Tostitos.

The alcoholism is totally canon, though not exactly to the degree I play it up. They drink a LOT on that show, though. Everyone compares HIMYM to Friends, so...imagine if every Friends scene in Central Perk was spent in a bar. And instead of lattes and scones, they drank beer and ate bar food.

I'm sure there's more. *tries to think*

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

Wow, you know, despite the amount of drinking they do on that show, it never once crossed my mind that any of them were alcoholics.

[stocksgrrl.livejournal.com]

Now, Turtle...has a fairly good, closed canon to work with, but sometimes it does lack a detail or two that really fleshes out the character to that really strong "REAL" phase.

So, when Turtle reminisces about family trips, or holidays, or things like that, I'm practically just talking from my own experience. We share a good, strong, typical Mid-Western upbringing, so it's easy to supplant some of my experiences realistically into hers.

Of course, I never had someone die and have me win 200 million dollars for figuring out who killed him, but I always pretended that it would happen. ;)

[endsthegame]

Ender mostly has a lot of extrapolated canon. It's mentioned that he's pretty decent at cracking and setting up security systems very, very early in the book, but never gets mentioned again-- I figure he didn't just magically lose or stopped using the knowledge, so it's still in there.

Then there's the whole sexuality issue which srsly, Card, 37? So. Yeah. That'll be interesting when he gets older.

I also figure he'd know chess and the suchlike, but probably doesn't enjoy playing them as much as he used to.

Oh, and he never gets a physical description. ... So basically, every inch of how he looks is utterly my personal canon. Woo.

[light-a-spark.livejournal.com]

The huge thing I made up for Roy was to make him an orphan, because it just felt right for him. Then last month, the manga confirmed that he has a foster-mother. It leaves some of the stuff I said a little wonky, but I plead anime-manga differences there.

[likethegun]

We've made up a lot of backstory to when Sam and Dean have done certain things because Supernatural is so very slow at giving us details, and it's just been a miracle that we haven't gotten painfully Jossed yet.

I gave Sam a middle name because it bothers me that he doesn't have one. Yes, I'm one of those fans. :) I also made him not so great at math because come on, the boy's got to have one academic flaw.

Oh, and there's that whole bisexual thing, but come on, that's just pretty. :D

[imac-kenzie.livejournal.com]

Should start by passing off half the blame on the Veronica Mars writers, because they kind of Jossed me and themselves in Mac's case.

When I apped Mac from somewhere in season one she was 'freakball vegan' who spat out corn dogs as a kid, and by season three she'd magically become 'meat and potatoes' girl with a 'first pacifier made of jerky'. Yeah.

Um, on my side of things? I decided she had a thing for coffee. Season three VM they decided to tell us she preferred her caffeine in energy drinks. I ignore this, yes.

... Somehow it's all about food.

[joan-notjane.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, the obvious solution to this is to pretend that S3 never existed.

[crazypilotman.livejournal.com]

80s TV, gotta love it for its non-consitency and general randomness. There's a whole schlew of little things missing for the A-Team.

Does Murdock have a dad? I dunno. It was given that he was raised by his grandparents and his mother died when he was five. So I guess Dad was never around, therefore I made it so that he doesn't know anything about his father.

He *can* swim, thank you very much silly writers who decided to contradict this fact once. *eyeroll*

Never given in five seasons worth of show what the hell HM stands for, if anything. So poor pup doesn't remember what it is, thanks to that 'intermittent memory loss' of his.

Murdock likes to develop fixations about some really wacky things. So here in Fandom, he thinks that Gunther (poor, innocent Gunther who really has no clue) is some sort of uber-secret, government triple spy and he's just waiting to trip him up someday. Poor Gunther.

His teammates think Fandom is just another one of Murdock's crazy inventions. Because honestly, who'd believe that a traveling island is home to a school full of students with zany powers?

And there might be one or two other things as well that my brain just isn't producing at the moment.

*** Knew I'd remember something....

Alcohol doesn't mix well with his meds, so he doesn't drink the stuff very much. (not that any of them drank hardly at all in the show) Canon-wise it was mentioned in one episode where he is on medications, and since realistically most pschyoactive-type drugs don't mix with alcohol...yah. Therefore, it's a concern with him.

[lordofthecats.livejournal.com]

Obviously, there's lots of holes in Lion-o's canon because it's a kids show, so I did borrow a little bit from someone's epic fanfic series where she invented this whole backstory to their life on Thundera.

One of the parts I borrowed was a mutant attack on the Cat's Lair when Lion-o was really young. In the story, they got into the royal nursery and killed the queen and all the children except for Lion-o, who had been with his father that day.

[bridge-carson.livejournal.com]

I made up Bridge's birthday, based on the airdate of the episode where he claimed to have been born last week. *Completely* forgetting the earlier reference to him having been born on the cusp of an astrological sign, oops (he didn't know which sign he fell under, since he was actually born the day before his mother went into labour).

His parents, and their careers as musicians- I wanted something the complete opposite of the scientists they used to be, and also something that meant they'd be away for long periods of time and thus I could get away with just dealing with canon characters when the game first started.

The story behind how he found out about his powers. All that was mentioned in canon is that it was "tough growing up different", and his powers are the kind that I can see causing a lot of confusion/trouble when he was little and didn't know he *was* different. So I came up with the idea that he probably got sent to a lot of doctors to be poked and prodded at.

The story of how he *got* his powers was less made-up, more adapted and tweaked from official canon by myself and multiplez.

There's probably other stuff too, but I need to run away to work now :(

[weefeetbigboots.livejournal.com]

Oh, Firefly. How I loved your closed-canon, single-seasoned self.

So, I had to pick a planet that little Kayleekins is from, since we're never given one. From her speech patterns, it's pretty easy to extrapolate that she's from the rim (unlike, say, Inara, who's from Sihnon and doesn't talk like her brothers are going to think you got a pretty mouth and start playing banjos) so it was just a matter of picking a terraformed planet out that a-ways. I went with Beylix, because we know next to nothing about it and it's only mentioned in passing in the series.

[sith_happened]

Try not to look shocked here, but there's no such thing as a banthabell in actual Star Wars canon. I just needed something to lighten up Mr. Doesn't Smile McNofun here a little.

And I thought my canon was relatively closed but now we find out that Anakin had an apprentice, and so did Vader. They'll be making narrative appearances at some point.

And as far as we know, there weren't clones of pre-Vader Anakin lying around. I extrapolated from the clones of the Emperor that pop up all over the damn place.

They never mention Anakin's coffee preferences, either, but I can't really see him as a sugar and cream guy, can you?

[crazypilotman.livejournal.com]

Yaaaaah, I can't really imagine him dumping a wad of sugar and cream into his morning java.

[missed-the-gate.livejournal.com]

As far as the little things go, SGA canon is very providing with references to movies and TV shows and even snack foods. It's the big stuff I end up having to mess with. Especially when there's major jossing.

So, when SGA decided to joss all of fandom last year by turning John into a freaking utility mogul's son who has horses and gave him a random brother who may or may not be older, I took it all in and accepted my new canon. And then I killed John's mom. Why? Because the episode was set at John's dad's wake and lo, his mother was not there. I decided she died early in his life to give him just a little extra motivation to be the bad son. I also decided (mostly against sga-dom omg) that John was the younger brother. I felt it fit better with the teeny bit of relationship displayed in that ep and that JFlan totes looked younger than Doug Witter.

[likethegun]

...wait, there are people who think John is the older brother?

[tatooine-doofus.livejournal.com]

I mostly gloss over the canon incest with Luke here because ew. He's also absolutely fascinated by rain, baths, and showers--I figured a desert boy wouldn't be allowed to soak in lots of water.

He's ridiculous about cold, too, and I've given him childhood stories about inadvertently using the Force to pick up tables and such in toddler tantrums. Poor Owen and Beru.

[momslilassassin]

In the books it hasn't been mentioned if Ben is good with mechanics, but I figured if he's related to Anakin and Luke, both giant Stus on that front, he'd have to be as well.

Sadly, his random British accent is canon.

[death-and-pies.livejournal.com]

Hahahaha, random British accent, really?

[likeguidelines.livejournal.com]

In the movies, Barbossa made no comment about radios, squirrels, or dating ninjas.

Similarly, he didn't have anything about a childhood or remotely relating to his background. I decided he was an orphan, since people from good families tended not to turn pirate (Elizabeth Swann, you minx, you) and have borrowed heavily from pirate stereotypes to give him a personality.

[saltandammo.livejournal.com]

Supernatural has actually given a lot of little details if you know where to look that have helped with the backstory and like psychic_wonder said above, we've been insanely lucky when we have made things up to have it either confirmed or at least not contradicted when they do mention it in canon.

One thing that would easily get jossed if they ever get around to mentioning it in canon (tho at this point I'm kinda thinking they won't since it wasn't even on his gravestone) is John's birthday. The boys both had canon birthdays but John's birthday was never mentioned so I just randomly picked one.

Lesee, what else? I extrapolated that Dean actually isn't a bad basics cook since he had to cook for himself and Sammy so much when they were young.

I'm not sure if the whole thing with Vkandis counts as extrapolating or actual plot development, maybe some of both. But I figured Dean's willingness to believe in something would go up if he had proof. *eyes current season* I'll get back to you on Dean and religion in canon at the end of the season.

(And I'm saying extrapolating instead of made up because I can point to stuff in canon as it stands to back up my decisions. So it's less whole cloth and more... just taking things further.)

There's the whole bisexual thing, but like pyschic_wonder said, that's just pretty.

As for Seregil, I don't think I've made anything up whole cloth for him yet, but I have relied heavily on a few specifics that have been mentioned. We'll see what happens in the future.

[on-her-korhal.livejournal.com]

Kerrigan... did not get a lot of detail in game canon before she went evil. Add to that the scraps from the pre-evilification book (Liberty's Crusade) and I've done a lot of patchworking to get her into a fully rounded character.

Her ambivalent feelings towards cats are based on a short story detailing how they tested her abilities by making her use them on kittens, the love of coffee comes from the fact that Jimmy Raynor used to take her out for coffee when things had gone bad, and the temper comes from the sheer amount of 'What NOW?!' type soundbites you get if you click her in the game.

The attitude and the snark, though, is totes canon.

[death-and-pies.livejournal.com]

With Pushing Daisies being an ongoing canon, I've been VERY careful about what I make up for Ned. As of right now, I still haven't given him a last name because I'm terrified as soon as I do, Bryan Fuller will give him one in canon and then I'll have to retcon.

I did pick a random date for his birthday and I've been building up his past at Longburrow as being one of isolation and loneliness (just from flashbacks) thus, the virginity thing. I'm sure he's kissed a girl and gotten to heavy petting but he's way too tetchy with touch STILL canonically to have gone all the way when he was just a wee boy without a Chuck to balance him out.

Everything else has had some basis in canon (thank you, Bryan Fuller) or I haven't gotten to the point where I need to make something up.