I need to get out some Fairy Tail HCs!
WHOO! Headcanons, LET'S GO!
These're all free to use in any fanfics, art, or anything you want to make btw. I love sharing my ideas and having them be used in things, so don't be afraid to take what I shout into the void and run with it. If something does get made I'd like to see/read/experience it because I think that's awesome, but you don't have to credit or share if you don't want to. :D
LONG, long post! Seriously, I have a LOT of thoughts. This is a big one!
This probably should've been a two or three parter. But it's not. Hope you're in the mood to read!
-Bisca and learned how to ride horses back west when she used to live in Alvarez (it's canon that she used to live there), but Alzack never learned how to so she teaches him. I'd imagine this being for a joint job they're doing together pre-marriage and it leads to some trust and more fondness growing between the two.
-Natsu still knows how to read and speak ancient Mildian from growing up in the past, as does Gajeel, but Wendy, Sting and Rogue have all forgotten how to communicate in the dead/nearly-dead language. Gajeel helps Levy with her translations since it's his first language even if he's not the most well-read in the now ancient script. Natsu will sometimes just glance at an 'illegible' passage and confidently, boredly state what it says; this used to baffle and frustrate Levy to no end before Gajeel joined the guild because she couldn't figure out HOW Natsu of all people understood a dead language that would've taken her hours to decipher- AT A GLANCE. Turns out having your memory wiped of any past connections to your older brother doesn't erase the lessons and reading sessions spent with said brother.
-Kinda connected to the last HC; Zeref didn't just write Demon Books. I'd imagine he wrote a LOT of medical texts, maybe he studied magic-mobiles at one point and influenced a revolution in engineering, but most of all I 100% believe he'd have written some childrens' books. He lost his brother when they were both young and would've wanted to leave something for Natsu, even if he himself couldn't be with his brother, so picture books! Natsu may not always be a big reader but if the story is about cool dragons then maybe it'd catch his attention? And from there Zeref would probably hyper-fixate on making these kinds of book centered on Natsu's interests for a few years/decades and become a best selling author under some pen-name.
-Lucy LOVES going shopping at the open-air markets in Magnolia, especially if Juvia, Wendy, Carla, and Erza, or some combination, are free to join her. If it's raining lightly she'll wear a sundress and sandals, it threw Juvia off the first time she saw Lucy dress like that in the rain. "Most people try to cover up in the rain. Why are you wearing a dress, Lucy?" "Huh? Because it feels nice! I love to splash in the fresh puddles and the rainy air feels good on my skin. Sure, I wouldn't dress so lightly if it was pouring out, but see? The sun's already peeking out over there. Besides, I just like rainy weather!" (These two are besties and you CANNOT change my mind, maybe they dated I dunno, but they should hang out more in a casual setting, dang it!!)
-Wendy's borderline trauma of Pickled Plums comes from a time when she went on a job while still at Cait Shelter and saw a bowl of them sitting out as free samples, she assumed they were candy and took a few pieces to eat. Needless to say; it wasn't sweet. Poor girl!
-Zeref CANNOT swim. I feel like the town he and Natsu were born into would have an open-air public mixed-gendered bath (similar to some Ancient Greek or Roman bathing areas, I think?) and Natsu fell into a deep pool of water as a kid so Zeref jumped in, not knowing how to swim yet himself, to push Natsu up out of the pool. He'd nearly drowned after saving Natsu but one of their parents found the boys soon after since Natsu has a powerful set of lungs and screamed when Zeref went under. While he can't swim to this day Zeref invented a 'cross-continental teleportation' spell to travers the ocean without a boat. He can't get all the way from Fiore's Western shore to Alvarez's Eastern shore in one jump though, he's gotta make a small pit-stop in Caracol Island due to the sheer distance between land masses. This is how I imagine he got to Tenrou pre-S-Class Promotion Arc.
-Lisanna can speak to animals due to the affects of her Animal Soul magic. Lots of magic powers in Fairy Tail leave permanent affects on the mage's body (Draconification, Makarov's shrunken body due to his Giant Magic, Warrod's tree-like skin and hair, Juvia's water body(?), and maybe even the one lady from Mermaid Heel 'Chubby power RULES!' that lady), so why not have this Soul magic affect Lis's senses? I say she can speak with any animal like a fairy tale (heh, Fairy Tail!) princess! :D
-Everyone in the Dragneel family can pack in food like they've been starved since the day they were born, but in different ways. Natsu is a messy eater, he eats to clean his plate as fast as he can because some long-forgotten part of his memories still knows about this one time Anna tried setting up a picnic for the young slayers; the boys all fought over the food, Wendy (accidentally?) almost stabbed Gajeel with a broken turkey bone while she was trying to get the marrow out, Sting just straight up ate the bones, and both Gajeel and Natsu were left with several bruises and at least two broken fingers a piece. Due to that incident which he can't truly remember he feels the draconic urge to eat everything in sight before his den mates can snatch anything from him. •Zeref eats like Minerva from Sabertooth; steady but constantly over a long period of time. He can and will eat you out of house and home, then ask if there's still time for a twentieth helping. •Mr. Dragneel eats like a rowdy knight or traveling warrior, with a mug of booze and a group of buddies/or his family to share in the great meal, he never eats alone if he can help it and he'll eat a whole cow's worth of food too. •Mrs. Dragneel is similar to Zeref, but more conscious of how much she's eaten and if there's enough left for everyone else. She doesn't want to put anyone out.
-Happy has gone on multiple solo adventures throughout the years and the are WILD but he never really mentions them fully to anyone but Natsu, of course Natsu fully believes his little buddy and sometimes worries about him but he trusts that Happy can handle himself. Sometimes the Exceed will randomly mention a tiny fragment of one of his adventures and either no one really takes it seriously or they're so confused about it. This cat found dragon bones before Gajeel did, Natsu checked that they weren't Igneel's at some point even though he was scared that they might be.
-Tenroujima was a Land Tortoise Dragon at one point! Long, long before even Irene Belsarion or Zeref were born the dragon was already old, older than the x-however-many-years dating system used in the manga/show. This dragon died in the ocean of some unknown natural causes and a sailor planted a special sapling on top of it's back; the more ether (raw magic energy) this plant absorbs the larger and stronger it will grow; this later becomes the legendary Tenrou Tree. I think Tenroujima would be a gentle sage-like dragon who loved humans and wanted to nurture their curious nature, aiding travelers across the sea like a Lapras (pokémon), though it'd be a very, very slow ferry ride.
-Zera was real, kinda. I think there's some sort of overlap with Illusion Magic and Soul Magic, plus Mavis seems very skilled at both Light-based and Black-Magics so it's not unreasonable to claim she may have unknowingly bound Zera's actual soul to herself in some way. Since Zeref is intimately familiar with Soul-based magics in his search to revive Natsu I think he'd be the only one capable of seeing and speaking with Zera aside from Mavis. This also means that Zera did, in a sad sort of way, get to grow up along side Mavis and that they really did get to be best friends.
-Guildarts and Cana do really get along well, sometimes at the detriment of the surrounding properties, and they have get togethers to just share memories and do stuff together. They each have lists of things the other either likes or dislikes and they'll make notes of activities they could try together to make up for some lost time. Guildarts once tried to take her to some amusement park and at first it was a disaster but by the end they were both busting a gut laughing at how outrageous the whole thing was. They absolutely wrecked a ball-throwing game booth. Cana got the BIGGEST most ugly-cute plushy possible from that game. Cana was also the one to wreck the booth that time, not Guildartz, like father like daughter I guess!
-Ultear is legally Meredy's adoptive mother. She has always treated her as such too. While Ultear tried to end the cycle of generational trauma she herself was put through, raising a child in a Dark Guild like Grimoire Heart is NOT a safe or normal upbringing, plus Ultear still had her own unresolved trauma and misplaced anger she hadn't worked through yet. Despite this she always tried to be the best parent she could be for Meredy, including throwing birthday parties for her and giving important talks when needed.
-Loke actually really likes and will often still hang out around the guild when he's not needed by Lucy, only when she's also in the guild just in case she needs him for anything. He and Gray are still best friends and get into trouble together. The whole Celestial Spirit thing was... a shock, but Gray accepted it quickly enough. Loke loves to push Gray's buttons in an attempt to fluster him, this got easier when Juvia joined the guild. He once tried teasing Gray about liking Lucy but got no embarrassed reaction, Gray sees her as a sibling and it's mutual on her end.
-Gray can't eat spicy food. He's super sensitive to it.
-After being brought to Magnolia by Makarov but before the cabin in the Eastern Woods was build Natsu used to live in an apartment with the Strauss siblings. This'd likely be sometime around when Erza was trying to teach him to read modern language and I feel like he slept in their living room fireplace instead of a bed or the couch. "The smell of burnt wood and stone reminds me of the cave where Igneel and I slept..."
-More on the last one; Mira competed with Erza to see who could teach Natsu to read. This competition may be part of the reason why Natsu's reading comprehension isn't so great, he was always getting confused and distracted by 'The Warring Girls'.
-Mira and Bixslow both knew something was different about Natsu's soul growing up since they're both very skilled with soul-base magic. Where Bix can see it Mira can feel and sense it, they both knew he had something demonic mixed in but they both just assumed he was mixed race or disguising himself to keep himself safe from people who hate demons, so neither of them had any reason to bring it up.
-Dragons have cat-like mannerisms. The slow-blink, stretching a certain way, purring, hissing sometimes instead of always growling, half-playfully half-annoyedly swatting each other without actively trying to cause harm... and so on.
-Zeref isn't afraid of them but he doesn't like bugs so his curse doesn't actively kill them, he has to do that himself. He IS; however, afraid of being on a boat! He can't swim (see above) and he knows what kinds of leviathans live in the deep seas of Earthland's oceans. He's been down there once or twice before, he is not going back.
-Natsu isn't great at a lot of constructive tasks but he is great at making random designs with wood burning since he has great control of his flames and the heat they do, or do not, produce. He also makes a bunch of metal-working projects when he needs to get his feelings or thoughts out but doesn't have anyone to spar with, so not often; but when he does he leaves them at the shop owner's place who let him use the materials. Natsu's pieces actually sell for quite a lot of Jewel, though he refuses to accept it for himself. It's not just because the famous 'Salamander' built the metal chair or burned a design on a panel of wood, it's because Natsu's been doing this since he was 11 years old and is a practiced hand at these two crafts, he makes great work.
-Juvia is canonically a very skilled craft person; from dolls, to cakes (most of the time), to blankets and scarves she's very handy and loves to make hand-made gifts for folks in the guild. She and Laxus get along pretty well and he offers some designs for her to try out since he and his whole team have some fashion interest as a hobby (some of their outfits are certainly... a choice... but I do feel like they'd all have some interest in fashion, except maybe Bickslow he'd only pay attention to what's NOT fashionable and wear it on purpose to mess with Evergreen).
-Erza can seem like an overbearing big sister sometimes but if you need to know something about one of the other guild members (with a good reason, or else she won't tell you anything) she's the one to ask. Mira has all the gossip, but Erza has personal info, detailed personal info. She's just trying to be thoughtful and helpful by memorizing her guildmates preferences, hobbies, B-Days, heights... weights... past relationships...?? Erza knows all and if she doesn't she will sooner rather than later. She tried using her sleuthing to uncover Segrien's true identity but hit a wall back when Jellal was still using that thought projection.
-Whereas Erza uses her vast knowledge of personal info for good and hoards it to herself to protect and make her guildmates happy; Irene Belserion hoards personal info in Alvarez to use as blackmail. This is another reason she's known as 'The Scarlet Despair'; legend has it that decades ago when she was first installed as a member of the early Spriggan Twelve she was irked by something His Majesty had said or implied, thus she released a bit of juicy gossip which left Emperor Spriggan holed up in despair for ten months straight. The anniversary of the date she spread this information (The contents of which are lost to time and a LOT of careful cover-ups!) is now known as Horror Night, the Alvarez version of Halloween.
-Erza has some draconic traits, though they're mostly non-visual/physical. Her superhuman strength and magical prowess for example, but she does have some physical traits in common with the dragon slayers. Her soul is untouched by dragon slayer magic, but she has slit pupils and enhanced vision (at least in her original eye, Porlyusica was stunned by her strength of vision and had to readjust the artificial one several times to get it to match), her personal scent is very faintly draconic, and her nails are all a lot tougher than normal keratin similar to the Slayers' claw-like finger and toenails.
-Yuri Dreyer had a childish and semi-raunchy sense of humor and repeatedly referred to Zeref as "The world's oldest virgin!" after finding out the true identity of their magic teacher. The guild still has some of Yuri's letters and personal notes referring to someone by the acronym W.O.V, no one knows who this is and the context of the letters doesn't help. Yuri only ever uses the acronym in writing not the full phrase, so no one even knows what it means, they only have the context of the old letters to give them clues about how it's supposed to be referring to a person.
-Zeref, upon getting super detailed info about Fairy Tail from Jacob Lessio, begins to resent Gray as the closest thing Natsu has to a brother. In private he gets jealous and thinks of Gray as a 'thief' who took his own place as Natsu's big brother, but then spirals and becomes apathetic towards the whole situation again. Deep down though, he's just a little bit jealous and knows he's being unreasonable about the situation since he wasn't in Natsu's life all this time, but he can't stop feeling his way.
-Lisanna likes to have tea with all kinds of members of the guild and as a social butterfly it lets her get to know new members. It's the closest thing to 'a rite of passage' that Fairy Tail has, just have some tea-time with Lisanna and relax, but not too much since the guild-wide brawls are near-constant!
-In a modern AU I love the idea of Juvia, Erza, and Mira plus some other characters on a women's roller derby team! Gray is Juvia the 'Rain Woman' Loxar's BIGGEST FAN, and Juvia is Gray the 'Frozen Crown' Fullbuster's biggest fan at his boxing matches. (THIS IDEA CAME FROM ANOTHER TUMBLR USER ORIGINALLY, I'm sorry I can't remember your username!! 😰) I feel like Nastu would do mixed-martial arts as both a profession and just keep taking classes, Lucy takes the same classes but she's doing it partly for self-defense training and partly because she told a friend she would so now she can't back down! She'd be a beginner while Natsu's in the advanced classes.
-Irene is older than Zeref. His father is a dragon slayer in my mind so he'd have to have gone through Irene's experiments to create the first slayers, but he wanted to live and start a family more than fight in a war, so he abandoned his duty to pursue his future wife. Irene didn't know Mr. Dragneel personally or anything, though.
-Ancient Mildia, in my mind is a desert nation somewhere quite a ways farther east of Bosco. Originally the Kingdom of Dragnof didn't have any authority over the Mildian Empire, which was made up of many nomadic desert tribes and a few larger-scale permanent settlements for trade and such, but General Rung was from Mildia and entered a political marriage to Queen Irene to bring their nations together. Zeref and Natsu came from a small permanent settlement farming-village near Mildia's capital city of Mildia where the Mildian Academy of Magic was located.
-Zeref was actually conceived before his parents were properly married, he didn't know this for all the hundreds of years he was alive until one day Yuri got frustrated with the magic lessons and called him a 'bastard'. He took this insult literally and started to say he wasn't a bastard but had to stop and check the math. He, uh, learned something new about himself that day. Needless to say, he never actually responded to Yuri's comment, just stared blankly.
