Head Canon and Para-social Multiverses

My recently new favorite word is ‘Head Canon’ relating to fan fiction in which people generate entire exclusive stories in their heads and call it accurate.

Arguably, that’s what we’re all doing as we’re navigating truth in reality, we pick and choose what we believe in and operate based on what we believe in combined with what we find to be true when tested to our reality. I mean, would you took a step if you didn’t believe the floor would hold you? Have you ever stared at a rickety bridge and think “Maybe I’ll find another way”?

The word Canon relates to Canonical, or a part of the main story, as if the truth was more of an arrow and a full blown cannon ball that shot out in a straighter and forceful line. The etymology for the word “canon” originates from the Ancient Greek word “kanon,” meaning “measuring rod” or “standard”.

So the main story line that is widely accepted to be true and official is the official ‘canon’. This is something that is used when telling mythos or stories or even biblical stories and comic book heroes and more. When some people debate Star-wars and comic book heroes, they tend to use the word ‘canon’ to say that it’s a true and official piece of the main story.

As if things have a main story line or there is an over-arching metanarrative called the causal flow relating to that of the ‘Dao’. I digress.

In the last twenty or so years, the multiverse theory has gotten a lot of popularity and is a way to retcon and reconcile variations of different stories into the same ‘multiverse’ umbrella to ensure that contradictory story points can coexist in a canonical tale. You can think of this like Dr. Strange or Enter the Spider-verse type jazz, where different facets of the sub-reality in fiction plays out while maintaining a true coherence to the canonical multiverse.

Point is, everyone’s head-canon stories and realities are their personal fabrications of the story and world. Some are public, while some aren’t. It’s a charming word and people use the term ‘head canon’ to simply mean ‘you made that up in your head and that’s solo fan fiction’.

But if you think about para social relationships

Para-social relationships are relationships that are one sided. Like a huge fan of a celebrity where the fans are literal fanatics and know all sorts of details and information on the celebrities more-so than the celebrities might even know of themselves.

Another instance of para-social relationships are major streamers of influencers that have a thousand or more followers and fans in their chats and following their content or videos. The Fans engage with the videos and feel as if they have a personal relationship with the person, even if the person in question doesn’t know the existence of the fan itself. These relationships and fanbase create a sort of cult culture with inside jokes and expressions that other fans get.

It’s like the idea of the influencer or a celebrity or person itself is a living mythos and people fantasize all sorts of para-social relationships in their ‘head canon’.

In reality

We all construct a hyperstitious reality of what’s going on based on our beliefs and our own personal reality, our pet realities. Our reality is a head canon of the multiverse itself. It’s true to some sense, but it’s not always congruent with other people’s realities.

As such, consider the fact that everyone we know or engage with is (to a degree) really a para-social relationship. We might be talking and making friends with real people, however we’re engaging with this meta-idea of the person.

We create our friends in our image, based on our image-ination.

Consider the idea that you create a face or persona or image for your friends that are different. Different friend groups, different jokes and dialog. Generally speaking you aren’t the same person to your friends that you are to your family or to your extended family or to strangers. There’s a constructed image of the “Idea of You” being made in all of these people’s eyes, they are the eye that beholds the image of you.

Now consider that everyone you know, or that you think you know, you only get a small image or slice, never the whole pie. We can argue that para-social relationships are para and parity to both parties. Meaning, you have and image or idea of another person, and that person may have an image or idea of you, and these aren’t the same as your (and their) own internal images or ideas.

You have a structure or idea or archetype for what is behavior or behaving of your friend. If they do something that is like them, then that is ‘canon’, if they do something wild or different then socially you might consider them ‘crazy’ or ‘changed’ (unless it’s characteristic of them to be fickle and spontaneous).

The point is, we have our own pet realities, head canon, of the universe as well as our own idea of the people we engage with. That idea itself is a para-social relationship because we’re not actually engaging with base reality nor the full extent of one’s being. (Unless you find a way to engage with soul magic and soul work and literally are engaging with someone’s soul and entire essence across timelines and dimensions in a transcendental state. But I’m going to go ahead and assume that you or the other readers aren’t doing that)

Arguably even the relationship with ourselves, even the darkest abyss of our shadows, and the hypothetically brightest champions of our own being exist as abstract ideas we wrestle with. So you can even argue that our relationships with ourselves are para-social. That’s quite the conundrum, especially when you dive into the philosophy of identity and question your true self as it changes over time.

Because let’s be honest, at the end of the day, how many of us even know who we are? And we’re to expect that we know everything that someone else is?

Eh, we’re all just winging it in our own little stories that we make up in our heads. That’s just life. It’s all Head Canon.

Epilogue

We construct our own realities by what we believe in and what we believe to be true, as well as testing that reality with our conceptions and notions of “base” reality itself. We create a hyperstitious reality of simulations and simulacra through the languages and belief systems, all of which is really a pet reality nested in the shared reality (Like a Fractal multiverse).

It’s head canon, our little curated scaffolding of beliefs that we cherry pick and choose to create a world weaving narrative.

And this is similar to our relationships in which we’re engaging with the idea of a person, as much as they are engaging with the idea of you. It’s para-social and we might not be engaging with the totality of someone’s being. Their true selves.

Which from a perspective of a shadow worker, you might question who you really are, and if you can take down the mask or persona to look into your own reflection without any filters. I’m sure if you accomplish that, you might be able to do it with others, but even then, you’d only get a slice, a piece of time-space and interactions that make up ‘them’.

So yea, my favorite new phrase is Head Canon. It’s like a gentler way of telling someone that they’re just making things up. But if you dive into the philosophy and ramifications of the structure of language and reality, then we’re all just head canoning life.

You know, try not to let the masks or labels wear you down. Labels and masks and ideas and structures are forms and forms are loosely Words. Words that have meaning.

Words Mean Things