History Main / FanWank

** Making matters more absurd? Those who ship Magus with [[IncestIsRelative ''Schala''.]]

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' has a very prolific {{fanfic}} collection with its share of fan wanking; one of the most prolific is ''FanFic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'', which tries to explain as much of the mythos as it can. The biggest question facing the fandom, though, is how exactly [[SuperpowerfulGenetics magical inheritance]] works; no matter how you do it, it cannot be explained simply by a single gene -- if magic is recessive, [[MuggleBornOfMages Squibs]] can't exist, but if it's dominant, Muggle-borns can't. (Incidentally, ''Methods of Rationality'''s author gave up on this question and made it a single recessive gene, explicitly ignoring the canon.)

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' has a very prolific {{fanfic}} collection with its share of fan wanking; one of the most prolific is ''FanFic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'', which tries to explain as much of the mythos as it can. The biggest question facing the fandom, though, is how exactly [[SuperpowerfulGenetics magical inheritance]] works; no matter how you do it, it cannot be explained simply by a single gene -- if it's recessive, [[MuggleBornOfMages Squibs]] can't exist, but if it's dominant, Muggle-borns can't. (Incidentally, ''Methods of Rationality'''s author gave up on this question and made it a single recessive gene, explicitly ignoring the canon.)

* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' has a very prolific {{fanfic}} collection with its share of fan wanking; one of the most prolific is ''FanFic/HarryPotterAndTheMethodsOfRationality'', which tries to explain as much of the mythos as it can. The biggest question facing the fandom, though, is how exactly [[SuperpowerfulGenetics magical inheritance]] works; no matter how you do it, it cannot be explained simply by a single recessive gene. (Incidentally, ''Methods of Rationality'''s author gave up on this question and made it a single recessive gene, explicitly ignoring the canon.)

** Luke uses the Force to [[PsychicStrangle choke a Gammorean]] in ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' -- but isn't that using TheDarkSide? Fans have wanked this away by claiming that any Force user can do it (the Dark Side just likes it a lot more, and there's no BadPowersBadPeople at play here), to there being no intent to kill (thus not the Dark Side), to Luke using the JediMindTrick to make the Gammorean ''think'' he was choking but not put him in any real danger.

** The {{shipping}} industry is quite profitable. There's a huge debate in particular about Link/Zelda or Link/Midna.
** Are the Link and Zelda in the different games the same people, or are they {{Legacy Character}}s? If so, are they descended from their predecessors, outright reincarnated, or different people altogether. ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSkywardSword Skyward Sword]]'' strongly hints that all the Zeldas are reincarnations of the original Zelda; no word on whether the same is true for Link.
** The many, many efforts to make a coherent timeline out of the series have led to endless FanWank. The most accepted resolution is to split the timeline in two in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]'', made possible by the game's use of TimeTravel. Creators Creator/EijiAonuma and Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto confirmed that there was a timeline but refused to show it to anyone, only occasionally saying which games come after which. That was until the 2011 release of the artbook/encyclopedia ''Hyrule Historia'', which indeed reveals the whole timeline -- and shows that ''Ocarina of Time'' split the timeline into ''three''. Fans still aren't sure what to make of it.
** Is Sheik [[WholesomeCrossdresser just Zelda crossdressing]] or [[GenderBender did she actually use magic to turn herself male?]] That one should have been resolved through WordOfGod- Sheik is, officially, canonically, absolutely a WholesomeCrossdresser. But, for various reasons, some fans simply refuse to accept this as canon.

The etymology of the word "wank" shows that it means "indulgence", particularly extreme self-indulgence; from there, it passed into British slang for [[ADateWithRosiePalms masturbation]]. Thus, "fan wank" refers to writers stroking their own egos by writing at length about things only they care about. The term was coined by ''Series/DoctorWho'' fan and ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'' writer Craig Hinton, who was no stranger to fan wank himself, and applied the term to his own work. That said, some fandom circles also use "wank" to refer to a fan behaving [[UsefulNotes/BritishEnglish like a wanker]], such as BrokenBase feuding and other gross displays of FanDumb.

** "What would [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII Rinoa]] be like if she was in ''KingdomHearts''?", a question that resulted in a [[http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Dion_Roger%27s_Rinoa cosplay firestorm]].

** At the end of ''Film/ANewHope'', everybody got a medal except for Chewbacca. Not wanting their heroes to look insensitive, fans have wanked that Wookiees don't believe in medals and awards, and that Chewie was offered a medal offscreen and declined the honor. One comic book {{continuation}}, however, cheekily suggested that Leia was just too short to actually put the medal around Chewie's neck, and it would have been undignified to give her a ScullyBox during the ceremony.

*** Claim that the Kessel Run can be made shorter through dangerous shortcuts that only a really fast ship can survive. That's why it would be impressive for a ship to make the run in so short a distance. This can be ferrying goods between two ships traveling away from each other, to maneuvering through an AsteroidThicket, to skirting dangerously close to a black hole. The latter theory was popular enough to be established officially in ''Literature/TheHanSoloTrilogy''.

** Did "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS17E6Shada Shada]]" actually happen, and if so, which version? The "Shada" audio drama takes the view that it was [[CosmicRetcon cosmically retconned]] out by "[[Recap/DoctorWho20thASTheFiveDoctors The Five Doctors]]" and shoehorns the Eighth Doctor into the story, but the novelisation presents it with the Fourth Doctor as originally intended.

* In the backstory of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'', there were twenty Space Marine Legions before the Horus Heresy, where ten said Legions rebelled. In order prevent another organized revolt in the future, the remaining Legions were split into much smaller Chapters. Two of the original twenty Legions -- and whether these Legions stayed loyal or rebelled -- were intentionally left blank, so Space Marine (both loyalist and Chaos) players could fill in the details themselves when making their own Chapter/Legion, if none of the established lore fit the tone they were going for. The explanation for the identities and fates of these two blank Legions has caused no end of FanWank. Later novels set during the Horus Heresy expanded considerably on the time of the Space Marine Legions, including the "Lost Legions"; while they are never named nor are their Primarchs brought up, dialogue suggests they did, in fact, go with Horus -- and were wiped out for it.

* A rather interesting example occurred with ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond''. Fans theorized that Terry and Matt's lack of resemblence to their father, specifically their black hair, genetically improbable given their parents' hair colors (red and brown respectively for Mary and Warren), had a role in the divorce. Flash forward to the ''[[WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Justice League Unlimited]]'' FullyAbsorbedFinale "Epilogue," and guess what? [[spoiler: Bruce Wayne is revealed to have been the boys' biological father, with Warren's genetic material having been, unbeknownst to anyone but CADMUS, overwritten with his. According to [[WordOfGod the series' writers]], this decision was influenced by the realization of said improbability.]]

* ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' gives us the fan wank of V's gender. In both the graphic novel and film, V is consistently referred to as "he" and "the ''man'' from room five", but V is also [[spoiler:Valerie, a female character we only see in flashback, presumably after some serious surgery]].

** At the end of ''Film/ANewHope'', everybody got a medal at the end except for Chewbacca. Not wanting their heroes to look insensitive, fans have wanked that Wookiees don't believe in medals and awards, and that Chewie was offered a medal offscreen and declined the honor. One comic book {{continuation}}, however, cheekily suggested that Leia was just too short to actually put the medal around Chewie's neck, and it would have been undignified to give her a ScullyBox during the ceremony.

** The FandomRivalries between it and Halo is all but guaranteeing a mountain of Fanfics.

** The many, many efforts to make a coherent timeline out of the series have led to endless FanWank. Furthering this is the infuriating fact that Aonuma and Miyamoto have ''confirmed'' the existence of a timeline, and made the placement of a few games WordOfGod, but refuse to reveal the document itself to anyone not working with the games until the release of the 2011 artbook/encyclopedia ''Hyrule Historia'', which contained the entire timeline. Fans originally theorized that the timeline split in two in ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOcarinaOfTime Ocarina of Time]]''; ''Hyrule Historia'' revealed that it split in ''three''.

** The 1996 MadeForTVMovie had the Doctor claim he was half-human. What to make of this? The revival series {{retcon}}ned it, but why would he say it? Many just give up and point to River Song's line, "Rule One: The Doctor lies."

** Who were the faces shown to the Doctor by Morbius in "The Brain of Morbius"? Were they previous incarnations of the Doctor (as intended by the production team but {{retcon}}ned due to being basically impossible), or were they incarnations of Morbius?
** Did "Shada" actually happen, and if so, which version? The "Shada" audio drama takes the view that it was [[CosmicRetcon cosmically retconned]] out by "The Five Doctors" and shoehorns the Eighth Doctor into the story, but the novelisation presents it with the Fourth Doctor as originally intended.
** As a NecessaryWeasel resulting from [[MostWritersAreHuman the actors playing the Doctor all being human mortals]], the ageing of the Doctor's individual faces is inconsistent -- the Doctor can take TheSlowPath for 400 years and not age a day in one story, but look visibly older after only five years in another. This has received an attempted HandWave by River Song in "Let's Kill Hitler", where she suggests that Time Lords can control their ageing and even age backwards if they want to (possibly used by the Tenth Doctor to reverse his age between his courtship with Queen Elizabeth in "The Day of the Doctor" and his death in the Specials), but there are points where the Doctor is physically ageing, getting only drawbacks from doing so, and clearly ''doesn't'' want to.

*** In "The Edge of Destruction", Ian uses a stethoscope on the Doctor without noting anything unusual, and in "The Sensorites", the First Doctor casually mentions his "heart", singular. But during the Third Doctor's tenure, we discover the Doctor has the BizarreAlienBiology quirk of having two hearts, easily detected by a casual stethoscope use in the Fourth Doctor story "Robot". One novel came up with the explanation that the Doctor only gained a second heart after his first regeneration, although the Second Doctor also mentions his "heart", singular. Strangely, the Doctor being AmbiguouslyHuman in Hartnell and Troughton's eras is almost never a target for this sort of thing.
*** If the Doctor is supposed to mature over the course of the show's run, why is the First Doctor portrayed as an elderly, SeenItAll patriarch? Some fans wanked that he's really a teenager with NoSocialSkills who feigns age and wisdom so that people will think he's important. The character does have ManChild qualities, which makes for a very entertaining alternative viewing of the Hartnell era. It eventually became AscendedFanon in "Time Crash", where the Tenth Doctor acknowledged trying to look old and important when he was young.
*** Why does WOTAN in "The War Machines" call the Doctor "[[IAmNotShazam Doctor Who]]"? We now know that his name is a secret, and [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep his courtesy title]] is simply "the Doctor"; so how does an early episode make such an easy mistake?

** A whole book was written to explain the simple not-quite-an-error in "Warriors of the Deep" when the Doctor claims he tried to negotiate peace between the humans and the Silurians ''twice'' when he'd only done that once (the writer was presumably including the Sea Devils, a cousin to the Silurians, in that count).

[[folder:Anime & Manga]]

The etymology of the word "wank" shows that it means "indulgence", particularly extreme self-indulgence; from there, it passed into British slang for [[ADateWithRosiePalms masturbation]]. Thus, "fan wank" refers to writers stroking their own egos by writing at length about things only they care about. The term was coined by ''Series/DoctorWho'' fan and ''Franchise/DoctorWhoExpandedUniverse'' writer Craig Hinton, who was no stranger to fan wank himself, and applied the term to his own work. That said, some fandom circles also use "wank" to refer to a fan behaving [[UsefulNotes/BritishEnglish like a wanker]], such as BrokenBase feuding and FanDumb.

* ''Series/HowIMetYourMother'' is specifically designed to spawn this, with fans spending pages of threads on Website/TelevisionWithoutPity 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, and the significance and context of many orphaned, NoodleIncident-like flashforwards that Future!Ted promises to explain later and how they will fit into the future story arcs. 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 KudzuPlot and wound up putting Ted in the hospital). 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.

** Anakin was prophesized to "bring balance to the Force", but what exactly does that mean? Creator/GeorgeLucas and others insist that the existence of TheDarkSide is an inherent imbalance and that Anakin killing the Emperor at the end of ''Film/ReturnOfTheJedi'' corrected that imbalance. But others point out that in ''Film/RevengeOfTheSith'', Anakin killed all the Jedi but two, leaving two Jedi and two Sith -- that's balance, right? And still others suggest that Anakin's creation was the imbalance (thanks to Darth Plagueis' manipulation of midichlorians to create life) and that his HeroicSacrifice at the end of ''Jedi'' brought back balance to the Force.