Fan Wank: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== Anime and Manga ==

* ''[[Code Geass]]'' gets a lot of it even ignoring the shipping and endless debates about whether X character is a tragic hero / heartless villain / something else entirely. A good portion comes from all the questions left unanswered by the staff either by choice or as a result of being [[Screwed by the Network]]. This includes things like C.C.'s real name, the true nature of Geass, the origin of Suzaku's superhuman abilities (and their suggested connection to Geass), the true fate of Kallen's supposedly dead brother Naoto and countless other potential topics.

* [[Naruto]] fanfiction is very nearly the most written anime fanfiction on ffnet. More than half is yaoi....this is not a place for opinions, so that shall be left alone....The points that really fit this trope were things that Kishimoto decided to wait to reveal: the name of the Fourth... Fans thought his name was "Arashi ___" with the common idea being "Arashi Uzumaki" because everyone thought he was Naruto's father. In truth, his name is {{spoiler|Minato Namikaze}}, his actual situation (reincarnated as Naruto after sealing the Kyuubi in himself?), village laws (the idea of "Clan Restoration Act" for a dieing clan), the concept of a council (sometimes split into a Shinobi Council and a Civilian Council), shipping of characters, Naruto's mother, bloodlines, members of Akatsuki, and even now, there is plenty to speculate about, like whether or not Madara is actually immortal....this could go on for a very long time, so it stops here.

* Never has an anime inspired more Fan Wank and [[Epileptic Trees]] than ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' - a practical inevitability when you consider [[Mind Screw|just how weird the story is]], the [[Gainax Ending|sheer number of things that go unexplained]], and the fact that [[Teasing Creator|the creators]] [[Shrug of God|keep invoking post-modernism and refuse to explain]] ''[[Shrug of God|any]]'' [[Shrug of God|of it!]] Faced with this insanity, fans have proceeded to Fan Wank all over everything, theorizing that Yui Ikari was the mastermind behind everything, that Unit-00 {{spoiler|kept going berserk}} because Naoko Akagi was the soul inside it, whether or not Rei is {{spoiler|technically related to Shinji}}, whether or not Rei {{spoiler|as an Angel/Human hybrid}} can have children, that Misato was {{spoiler|the one who shot Kaji}}, and that only children can sync with the Eva because it's fueled by teenage angst to name just a few.

== Comic Books ==

* When a mini-series pitted roughly-analogous Marvel and DC characters against each other with the winners determined by fan vote, Wolverine [[Wolverine Publicity|unsurprisingly]] got more votes than Lobo. Since even comic book artists don't have enough imagination to figure out how Wolverine could actually beat someone who's fought Superman to a standstill (and this was back when Wolverine just healed pretty fast, and wasn't functionally immortal ... but Lobo ''was'') the fight took place entirely [[Take Our Word for It|offscreen]], which lead to a common fan explanation that Wolverine bribed Lobo to take a dive.

** Later made canon in an issue of Lobo. Except it was implied that Professor X paid Lobo to take the dive as to spare Wolverine's ego and reputation.

== Film ==

** The Jedi thought "bringing balance to the Force" was a good thing, but it ''actually'' meant that Anakin would kill all but two Jedi, so there'd be the same number of Jedi as Sith. (Never mind that [[Word of God]] says "bringing balance to the Force" meant destroying the Sith, and Anakin just did it much later than the Jedi expected.)

** Why didn't Chewie get a medal at the end of ''[[A New Hope]]''? You see, Wookiees don't believe in medals and awards. The Rebels wanted to give him one, but he refused. So instead they made a contribution to his family back on Kashyyyk.

== Literature ==

** Havelock Vetinari's sexuality - which way does he bend? (To extrapolate from the canon that the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork is naturally self-sufficient, austere and celibate is ''way'' too boring.)

*** If Vetinari is gay, which recurring male characters would he get off with?

** Susan Sto Helit and Jonathan Teatime. Given time, or an alternative universe, would they have got it on?

** On a more intellectual level, the issue of the much-mangled and twisted Discworld timeline - which was eventually explained ''in universe'' as the History Monks having to repair the timeline, twice, after some idiot human broke it into little pieces.

* Much of Star Wars EU, ESPECIALLY post-EII ICS, is this; thought not only technical details are wanked up - Force powers are too.

* The backstory of the main character in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', specifically:

** [[Retcon]]ning away the revelation of the Doctor's half-human lineage from the 1996 [[Made for TV Movie]].<ref>River Song said it best: "Rule One: The Doctor lies."</ref>

* The penchant ''[[Skins]]'' has for ambiguous series endings leads to lots of this.

* ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]'' is specifically designed to spawn this, with fans spending pages of threads on [[Television Without Pity]] and other sites guessing who the mother is, how the many events Future!Ted says are important to the story with factor into the story of the mother, what is the significance and context of many orphaned, [[Noodle Incident]]-like flashforwards that Future!Ted promises to explain later and how they will fit into the future storyarcs. There has also been constant wank trying to justify how one of Ted's previous girlfriends might be the mother, as well as speculation about how Ted will meet the Mother (it was finally revealed that he met her at Barney's wedding), and theories about what the goat in Ted's bathroom on his birthday was about (it was part of a multi-sided [[Kudzu Plot]] and wound up putting Ted in the hospital) and the most recent topic of wank is who Barney's bride is from the flashforward to his wedding (the main argument is between Robin or a new love interest), and what the reason for the Mother's presence there is.

== Tabletop Games ==

** Recently officially sanctioned on the ''D&D'' website; there was an Insider article both describing the practice an encouraging it.

** Earlier than this, it was specifically mentioned as something that should be done with Warlock powers so that they fit your character's contract, and used to explain why the contract labels for powers were dropped after the ''Player's Handbook''—the labels led people to an attitude that they could only pick appropriately-labeled powers for their warlock, when they had only been intended as a guide and if you really wanted a power that wasn't appropriately labeled, you could just change the fluff to match.

== Video Games ==

** Allegedly this was the intended effect, if the head writer really did write "LOTS OF SPECULATION FROM EVERYONE" in his notes on the ending. [[Downer Ending|Most fans took this in a direction he didn't intend.]]

* Some fans of the ''[[Ninja Gaiden]]'' series try to fit in the events of the original arcade game (which is largely unconnected to the NES version and its later sequels, save for a few superficial similarities) into the continuity of the later console games by claiming that the two player characters (a pair of ninjas, one in blue and another one in red) are actually Ryu Hayabusa and his father Joe (or [[Dub Name Change|Ken]], depending on the version) undergoing a mission that they went through before the events of the Xbox and NES games (despite the fact that the player characters in the arcade version were never given identities).

== Web Comics ==

{{reflist}}

[[Category:It's Not Porn, It's an Index]]

[[Category:YMMV Trope]]

[[Category:Fanfic Tropes]]