#so of course talking and nerding about canon becomes stale after a while

[randomnameless]

Do you agree that anyone that uses death of the author as argument shouldn't be arguing about a text? Because according to them all interpretations are valid so why argue against other people's interpretations?

Mmh...

I guess it's part of the duality of fandom life - people want to talk about the game are very involved in it, but they also create fun headcanons to explore said game's lore/setting/characters.

So in way, participating in fandom and even writing fanfiction, or saying stupid things like "hc : Nabateans attach a great importance to golden trinkets" is, in a way, pushing your own interpretation over the game's.

But at one point, it depends on what you want to argue about.

Argue about headcanon? Uh... it's like arguing about what topping you prefer on your ice cream. It's your ice cream, your tastes, so you can prefer chocolate cookies or peanuts and it's, you know, not open to discussion as in "talking with you made me realise peanuts are was tastier than chocolate chip cookies".

I like to talk and discuss and see other people's headcanons because it's fun and when some of ours match we can nerd about pointless things like warm rocks or nabatean laying eggs, but you won't see me being an ass and tell them "uh your headcanon sucks, you should put blue cheese on your ice cream".

Now, arguing about canon?

FE16 (and Fe Fodlan in general) is a game where the devs forgot to hire a continuity game and thought letting the world "vague" would make it look "deeper and richer" than it is. 10k years of lore, after all. And we have at least 2 unreliable narrators, that are Lords so who are protagonists and usually should be believed... expect that the game shows us they're full of nonsense regarding various topics.

But, unlike headcanon, canon isn't subjective, it's the same game (well... depending on the audio, it's not) everyone played, some people were kind enough to create a website where every line (+ dub!) is available, so it's not a question of interpretation as much as going to read and check the datamine website and the hundreds of YT videos, were people recorded their PT.

Was Burnie surrounded by flames, effectively preventing her escape from her pyre, or not?

Does Cyril mention to Mercedes how he only ate every couple of days before coming to the monastery (so under House Goneril's good care and in the Almyran army) or not?

Those things can be easily checked, and there's no interpretation.

If you don't like canon, you can churn out headcanon and have fun developing them, maybe finding people who like them and expend them themselves!

But for various reasons (is it because fanfiction has a bad rep since the 2000s for being something, idk, teenage girls write? or because it's not seen as very serious (tm) as a redshit post?) some people in the Fodlan fandom don't really want to confess they don't like the canon, and prefer the headcanon/fanfiction version of the game portrayed through a certain fic that, in turn, influenced how canon is perceived by some devoted fans.

(and let's not forget the lolcalisation that, too, didn't like the base game and edited it for ~ reasons ~)

And imo, Death of the author, in those fandom circles, is a roundabout way to say "the canon is not conclusive so i interpret the situation as this, but it's totes not my headcanon nor a fanfiction bcs i'm no gross fangirl, it's still canon, but my interpretation of the canon"

Tldr : Arguing about headcanon is as pointless and fruitless as starting a shipwar, and in the 2020s apparently it's too shameful to confess liking/writing fanfictions, so instead you like and write "your own interpretations of canon or how it should be" instead, using various theories like "Death of the Author" to validate your creative process, bcs fanfics gross'n'bad'n'only for lonely teenager girls, i guess.