Fan Wank: Difference between revisions
m
clean up
m (update links) |
m (clean up) |
||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
[[File:
{{quote|These two methods clearly do not agree with one another, which means one of two things: either I'm terribly over-analyzing the content of the illustrations of a beloved children's book, or the bunny's bedroom is moving at extremely high velocity relative to the earth, so that relativistic time dilation makes the six-minute rise of the moon appear to take an hour and ten minutes. Calculating the necessary velocity is left as an exercise for the interested reader.
The ''[[Rule 34|other]]'' reason you should use [[MST3K Mantra|protection]] when reading [[Fanfic]].
Line 10:
Many of the fan theories which make their way into [[Fanfic]] seek to "[[Fix Fic|fix]]" something the writer believes to be wrong with the source. The fans usually put a lot more thought into this than the show's writers ever did (though show writers have gotten a lot more attentive in recent years, primarily ''because'' of the growth of this kind of fan activity). They often come up with answers to questions that either make not a whit of difference in the end, or are more fun ''without'' an answer than with.
Naturally, these theories often venture way out into fantasyland. When the theory makes you say, "Oh come on!", the fanfic author has stepped over the line into
When the show itself canonizes such a theory, it's a [[Retcon]] or a [[Revision]] or one of the two varieties of [[Continuity Porn]]. When a fan does, it's
The etymology of 'wank' shows that it means 'indulgence', particularly any kind of major self-indulgence. Not surprisingly, this leads to it being British slang for [[A Date with Rosie Palms|masturbation]], though it's mostly just their own egos that such writers are stroking. [[Lemon|Mostly]]. The term was coined by ''[[Doctor Who]]'' fan and [[Doctor Who Expanded Universe]] writer Craig Hinton, who was no stranger to it himself, and applied it to his own work.
Line 23:
* [[Ensemble Darkhorse|Characters]] who were [[Demoted to Extra|left out of]] a new [[Continuity Reboot|reboot]] or [[Derivative Works|adaptation]].
* [[Crossover]] versus arguments between two or more major sci-fi franchises. ''[[Internet Backdraft|Good]] [[Serious Business|gravy]]'', the fanwank.
* The [[Shipping|romantic and sexual relationships]] between various characters, especially those for whom there is little to no evidence in the [[Canon]], and the resolution of [[Love Triangle
* Justifying [[Hollywood Tactics]] or anything done for [[Rule Of|Rule Of X]] as being appropriate in-universe.
Compare with [[Epileptic Trees]], [[Continuity Porn]] (the [[Canon]] variety of this), and of course, the TV Tropes [[Wild Mass Guessing]]. [[Shrug of God]] and (even more so) [[Sure Why Not]] will, at least in theory, validate
See also [[Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny]], an entire trope driven by
{{examples}}
Line 39:
** How old starting Pokémon trainers ''[[Comic Book Time|should]]'' be.
* ''[[Ranma ½]]'' is notorious among the fans for having an open ending. This leads shippers to writing piles upon piles of fanfiction hooking up the main characters with each other, [[Fan-Preferred Couple|especially Ranma with someone who isn't]] [[Base Breaker|Akane]] [[Tsundere|Tendo]], despite Ranma/Akane being the series' [[Official Couple]]. The [[Ship-to-Ship Combat]] that developed between various factions was bloody - in fact, this very entry was changed to stop a [[Flame War]] from starting.
** The exact laws and origins of the Cursed Springs of
*** Another common fan wank on the Jusenkyo Curses is adding the secondary effect of actively attempting to induce the transformation rather than simply making it possible. Typically by making the victim a [[Kryptonite Is Everywhere|water magnet]] and [[Invoked Trope|invoking]] [[Contrived Coincidence]] to wet the victim if they haven't changed for too long. This idea is often used either (or both) to [[Doing in the Wizard|do in the]] [[Rule of Funny]] explanation of where the convenient buckets/thrown water comes from in more [[Deconstruction|deconstructive works]], or to explain why Ranma [[Voluntary Shapeshifter|gaining partial control]] over his curse doesn't simply turn into an effective cure due to the canonical [[Aversion]] of the [[Second Law of Gender Bending]]: even if the water trigger of his curse is removed, and replaced with a voluntary mental triggering or other far more controllable trigger, the curse still forces Ranma to spend some time in his cursed form.
*** A gag scene in the Herb saga led to one of Ranma 1/2s most enduring fan wanks. In the story, Herb mentions he hates female Ranma because she resembles a monkey he threw into the Spring of Drowned Girl - a monkey, who in turn caused him to be cursed. As a result, the idea spread that anyone who falls into the Spring of Drowned Girl ends up looking like the original girl who drowned there. There are huge fanfic sagas dedicated to telling the back story of this drowned girl who looks exactly like female Ranma. Clones of female Ranma have been created by throwing other characters into the spring. It's also been used as an explanation for why female Ranma has red hair. Never mind that Herb in his cursed form looks nothing like Ranma's female form. The creation of the Spring of Drowned Akane, introduced into the manga long after this piece of fan wank was created, just made matters even worse.
** Psychological diagnoses of the cast's various mental issues, often [[Alternate Character Interpretation|interpreting them as actual illnesses or neuroses]].
** And the biggest
** Some fans wonder if maybe Happosai deliberately drank the Nanniichuan water that was supposed to be Ranma's cure in the final manga chapters, as it's a bit hard to mistake spring water for sake on first taste and Happosai is both extremely selfish and fixated on Ranma's [[Attractive Bent Gender|sexy female body]].
* ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' fanwank has an [[Epileptic Trees]] theory which suggests that Sailor Pluto is deliberately engineering a timeline where 95% of the Earth's population is killed off in a thousand-year glaciation period [[Utopia Justifies the Means|in order to produce Crystal Tokyo]]. At ''no point'' does the anime ever say anything along the lines of 95% of the population dying in a disaster. The anime notes that Usagi awoke a frozen world from slumber in the 30th century and ascended, whereas in the manga, there was no disaster at all and the utopia evolved naturally. So the entire theory is
** Sailors Uranus and Neptune are lesbian lovers. Fans more familiar with the [[Macekre|censored English dub]] are often uncomfortable with this and have produced multiple stories that usually involve Uranus becoming a man or being a man in a former life and getting this "corrected", usually by magic. This was ''not'' helped by the bizarre Save Our Sailors website promoting the idea of a male "Prince of Uranus" being accidentally reincarnated as a female Sailor Uranus as canon. In their eyes, that removed the homosexuality of the pair.
* The so-called Turn A Bang theory from the Gundamverse. After a scene in Turn A Gundam depicting a period of history that was made up of clips from various other Gundam
* [[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
Line 68:
*** The Kessel Run involves navigating through or around a dangerous [[Asteroid Thicket|asteroid field]]. Less maneuverable ships have to take a long, circuitous route around the most dangerous areas; better ships can take a shorter path right through the dangerous middle.
*** Han was testing Luke and Ben, to see if they would correct him, thus proving they knew a thing or two about space travel. Luke didn't catch the mistake, and Ben was fine with Han thinking they were both rubes. The original script had Han making inaccurate boasts and "Ben reacts to Solo's stupid attempt to impress them with obvious misinformation."
*** The official story as set down in the Han Solo Trilogy is that the Kessel run is dangerously close to a black hole and the closer you're able to fly to the black hole the shorter the distance and the faster the run. This was a major
*** This was later retconned in the novelization of the film credited to George Lucas (although written by [[Alan Dean Foster]]), where Han states that the ship made the run in less than 12 "standard time units".
** Luke uses the Force to choke a Gammorean in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'' ... but isn't that using the Dark Side of the Force? Not if he only used the Jedi Mind Trick to make the Gammorean ''think'' he was choking! Or maybe it's only considered truly dark if you use the Force choke with intent to ''kill'' someone, as opposed to just staggering them.
Line 92:
*** They would've been corrupted by the Ring, killed Frodo, and just flown down and taken it for themselves.
*** Mordor had aerial units that would've fought the eagles, such as the Nazgul-steeds.
*** Also, it's established that the Eagles don't answer to Men, they come voluntarily when they're really needed, or owe Gandalf a favour, but otherwise they stay out of things.
*** Like Gandalf, the Eagles are agents of the Valar, and forbidden to resolve issues through their own power.
*** It would have be a hella short series if they had.
Line 103:
== Live Action TV ==
* The backstory of the main character in ''[[Doctor Who]]'', specifically:
** [[Retcon
** Explaining how the Doctor has a granddaughter in light of the unjustified insistence by the fans that no character on the show (and most especially not the Doctor) can ever, ''ever'', [[No Hugging, No Kissing|do the thing one needs to do]] in order to produce a parent for one's granddaughter.
** [[wikipedia:Season 6B|Season 6B]].
** One ''[[Doctor Who]]'' website actually features "Plugging the Holes: Fan-Wank Explanations for Continuity Errors" in the novels.
** The Dalek vs. Cybermen battle of Army of Ghosts and Doomsday.
** The Eleventh Doctor is a
* ''[[Kamen Rider Decade]]'' is a short television series that [[Crossover|crosses over]] into [[Alternate Universe|alternate universes]] of the nine ''[[Kamen Rider]]'' shows that preceeded it and then brings back the leads for ALL of the shows in ''All Riders vs. Dai-Shocker'' (albeit as [[Fake Shemp
* The Klingon Forehead Problem in ''[[Star Trek]]'' - Klingons from the original series had smooth foreheads, while in every other work, they have ridges. Roddenberry initially said Klingons always had the ridges but [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|TOS just lacked the makeup budget to show them]], while it was later acknowledged in ''[[Deep Space Nine]]'' as their having had smooth foreheads when the crew meet 23rd-century Klingons. In ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise|Star Trek Enterprise]]'', this retcon was given a canon explanation as Genetic Engineering [[Gone Horribly Wrong]] resulting in a virus that infected a significant proportion of the population.<ref>Going into non-canon works, this was shown in ''[[Star Trek Online]]'' to have been cured some time in the late 23rd century by an unaffected [[Half-Human Hybrid]] from the 24th/25th century in a [[Stable Time Loop]].</ref> Before this became the canon explanation, there were various fan theories such as cosmetic surgery to pass as other species for covert operations, to being a single group not representative of their species as a whole.
* ''[[iCarly]]'': Copious amounts related to shipping. One large pro-Seddie group interpret any form of communication or interaction as supporting their ship.
Line 121:
== Tabletop Games ==
* [http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19527098/The_Dungeonomicon?post_id=331878594#331878594 The Dungeonomicon] is a pretty massive Fan Wank trying to justify (among many other things) the economics, social structures and fantastic locales of D&D.
* A common form of
** 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''
== Video Games ==
* Why, exactly, we have never seen a male Mithra in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]''. The official explanation for a lack of male Mithra [[Player Character|PCs]] was originally simply that they're unadventurous and so never leave home, to the consternation of those who are uncomfortable with the concept of the [[Non-Action Guy]] or just of not being able to play a cute catboy. With the release of the first expansion, we see our first truly wholly Mithra town and still no men (due to early fears of running into the PS2's technical limitations), the explanation was elaborated as the slightly less plausible "they never leave the Mithra homeland" without clarifying that Kazham wasn't it, and thus the
** "What would [[Final Fantasy VIII|Rinoa]] be like if she was in ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]''?", a question that resulted in a [http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Dion_Roger%27s_Rinoa cosplay firestorm].
* ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series is inspiring quite a bit of timeline fanwankery. Also, the Shipping Industry is quite profitable in that area. There's a huge debate about Link/Zelda or Link/Midna.
** The many, many, many efforts to make a coherent timeline out of the series. Furthering this endless
** The epic Shiek question: Is Shiek [[Wholesome Crossdresser|just Zelda crossdressing]] or [[Gender Bender|did she actually use magic to turn herself male?]] That one should have been resolved through [[Word of God]]- Shiek is, officially, canonically, absolutely a [[Wholesome Crossdresser]]. But, for various reasons, some fans simply refuse to accept this as canon.
** The theory that Ocarina of Time split the timeline in two started out as fanwank, until it was confirmed by [[Word of God]]. Happened the same with the fact that Link and Zelda are [[Legacy Character|different people in most of the games]]. [[The Wind Waker]] settled it... just to open up a new fanwanky question: Which exactly is the relationship between them? Descendants? Reincarnations? Both? Different people altogether?
* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]]'' has enough fan wank going about Nobodies and all associated [[Mind Screw|mind screws]] that they've caused multiple spoogenamis.
** The [[Another Side Another Story]] special ending from the first game deserves a special mention. The quantity of
** The thing about [[Kingdom Hearts]] is that there is an abundance of rules and guidelines within out-of-the-way sources or bits of dialogue in-game. After the first six games, there was enough canonical information to demystify many of the more confusing parts of the series. It's just that there are ''a lot'' of seemingly arbitrary rules that can be hard to keep track of, even if they do make things make sense. Hence, fan-wank.
* A particular Fan Wank from the [[Super Mario Bros.|Koopaling]] [[Ensemble Darkhorse|fansite]] [http://www.lemmykoopa.com/ Lemmy's Land] considered Bowser Jr. to be Baby Ludwig Von Koopa under a different name and appearance, which was finally [[Jossed]] with ''[[New Super Mario Bros Wii]]''.
Line 142:
* The ''[[Silent Hill]]'' series by it's nature encourages this in their Fandom; [[GameFAQs]] is filled with exhaustive plot and character analyses. A sure way to troll any fan forum is to cut down [[Epileptic Trees]] with the insistence that it's all just deliberately Invoked [[Mind Screw]] on Konami's part.
* The popular ''[[Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood|Assassin's Creed Brotherhood]]'' fan theory of Cesare Borgia being the creator or inspiration for Abstergo Industries... because he said the word "cleanse" once.
* The ending of ''[[Mass Effect 3]]'' has inspired
** 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).
Line 160:
{{reflist}}
[[Category:It's Not Porn, It's an Index]]
[[Category:YMMV Trope]]
| |||