playing That Alphabet Meme (R-T)

R: Which friendship or other platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

So many choices! As favorite, let's go with Nick and Natalie's friendship a la FK's first season, where arguably in only one episode does romance raise its head in canon.

I also love HL's Duncan and Tessa trying to make a real family with and around and for Richie, with all the challenges of just his age, never mind everything else. I love Presto and Eric's odd-couple buddy routine in D&DC. I love Riker's choices about serving second to Picard beating commanding without him. I love Brian's acceptance of Jim in The Dragon and the George novels. I love Moomintroll and Snufkin's friendship in Tove Janssen's Moomin universe. And many more.

S: Show us an example of your personal headcanon.

I have extensive headcanon about Nick's experiences in the Crusades and immediately after, from being taken prisoner at Damietta to his eventual escape, and his journey back from the Holy Land to France. I researched as deeply and widely as I could then, and built it into all the fanfic I was writing back in those years, matched up meticulously with our few canon references. Mostly in: "In the Light of Day" (~48K words) (yes, I actually used to write much longer stories than today).

After all this time, I suspect that I almost take it for granted that those flashbacks I created myself actually happened in canon. Which of course they didn't. Some of them should have, maybe.

Examples: Taken prisoner after a certain infamous historical battle disastrously ending the siege of Damietta, after a long time in a dark cellar, wondering why he hadn't been ransomed, Nick escaped during a fire, and made his way first to Jerusalem, where he was disillusioned to learn what the Holy Roman Emperor had been up to while he had been fighting, another politician like Lord Delabarre... I told you it was extensive! :-D

T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

Hyperbole! Any interpretation I love that much, I am probably claiming for canon, not headcanon. Some of you who have witnessed me nitpick Fleur interpretations know this. Or my fiercely held belief that HL immortality is not -- not not not -- caused by violent death; people who are to be immortal are born to be so, and will be so, regardless of the manner of their first death (unless said first death involves losing said head). (Another that I cling to: that Eurominute where Duncan says he can get sick, he just can't die of it.)

But of things I know perfectly well that I made up myself and cling to ... I choose to believe that Nick met Janette before the first encounter we see on screen. I choose to believe that she choose him based on some interaction before that, something where, for at least a moment, he was the best of Nick, and she experienced that. My headcanon is that they met at a shoemaker's stall at sunset, and that Nick took her seriously on her own terms... that's all, a tiny thing. But that she thereby stuck herself (and Lacroix) with all the joy and pain of Nick, because she knowingly chose a better man... a better soul.

( the rest of the alphabet, for future use )