Whats a fanwank?
- Thread starter PhoenixIreland
- Start date
Man, that was like the best thing EVER back in high school. hehe
Nardpuncher
Rear Admiral
Holy Christ in a chicken basket...I forgot about that cringe-inducing piece of crap! Absolutely! This thread can now be closed.
cringe-inducing pice of crap is an understatement. it's drek.
I had never heard of the term "fanwank" before today, but that trailer explained it to me brilliantly.
I had never heard of the term "fanwank" before today, but that trailer explained it to me brilliantly.
A little fanwank is good for the soul but that trailer makes me feel... so dirty.
To me, fanwankery is a game we play when we feel like making up for writers' carelessness when they accidentally violate canon. We did this a lot on ENT.
One example that touches on fanwank is "In A Mirror Darkly" from ENT.
Does Harry get to command the androids?
No, he does get to sit on Fett though...
The notion of Archer traveling to the future to hang out with Kirk to stop a borg/dominion invasion I think explains it well.
So its' stuff put in to please the fans thats not very plausable.
or
Stuff some bitchy little nerd whos never happy doesn't like
Have I got it right
So its' stuff put in to please the fans thats not very plausable.
or
Stuff some bitchy little nerd whos never happy doesn't like
Have I got it right
as for the trailer
FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD PEOPLE DIE EVERYONE DIES NO MATTER HOW AWESOME THEY ARE FUCKING GET OVER IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU WANT HIM TO LIVE FOREEVER?????
...
....ehem
sorry
FOR THE LOVE OF FUCKING GOD PEOPLE DIE EVERYONE DIES NO MATTER HOW AWESOME THEY ARE FUCKING GET OVER IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DO YOU WANT HIM TO LIVE FOREEVER?????
...
....ehem
sorry
The notion of Archer traveling to the future to hang out with Kirk to stop a borg/dominion invasion I think explains it well.
So its' stuff put in to please the fans thats not very plausable.
or
Stuff some bitchy little nerd whos never happy doesn't like
Have I got it right
Pretty much.
Geordi in the Starship Challenger in that Voyager episode is fanwankery. Cool, but fanwankery.
Had the mirror universe Kirk travelled back in time in that Enterprise episode it would have been an uber-fanwank. It was bad enough with the Defiant and the Gorn.
Basically stuff that, whilst cool, stretches credibility a bit. The first New Voyages episode is a good example too.
Fanwank (verb): /fanwaŋk/
1. When a fanatic of science-fiction, fantasy and comic books pleasures himself/herself with material related to those three obsessions. Eg. Jerking off to a picture of Captain James T. Kirk sitting in the command chair.
Useage: Johnny Fanboy fanwanks whenever he watches Stargate: SGI.
Fanwank (noun): /fanwaŋk/
1. A militant fanboy who adheres to the every last detail of a given science-fiction, fantasy and/or comic book film, television program, book or graphic representation.
Useage: Johnny Fanboy is such a fanwank because he thinks that canon is more important than good storytelling.
2. A militant fanboy who believes that the technical aspects of a given scscience-fiction, fantasy and/or comic book film, television program, book or graphic representation overrides any storytelling technique.
1. When a fanatic of science-fiction, fantasy and comic books pleasures himself/herself with material related to those three obsessions. Eg. Jerking off to a picture of Captain James T. Kirk sitting in the command chair.
Useage: Johnny Fanboy fanwanks whenever he watches Stargate: SGI.
Fanwank (noun): /fanwaŋk/
1. A militant fanboy who adheres to the every last detail of a given science-fiction, fantasy and/or comic book film, television program, book or graphic representation.
Useage: Johnny Fanboy is such a fanwank because he thinks that canon is more important than good storytelling.
2. A militant fanboy who believes that the technical aspects of a given scscience-fiction, fantasy and/or comic book film, television program, book or graphic representation overrides any storytelling technique.
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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fanwank
Some examples from the site:
Some of the most popular fanwanks revolve around:
Some examples from the site:
Some of the most popular fanwanks revolve around:
- The Klingon Forehead Problem inStar Trek -- which finally got a Ret Con in Star Trek Enterprise.
- This editor is of the opinion that they should've just done Michael Dorn up in original-series Klingon makeup and had no one say a word about it.
- ...he's black. Just picture that for a second. I've even heard the old makeup derisively referred to as "Klingon blackface."
- By that point the ridged foreheads had already been introduced in the films, so having Dorn in Original series make-up would have raised even more weirdment.
- This editor is of the opinion that they should've just done Michael Dorn up in original-series Klingon makeup and had no one say a word about it.
- Linking stories to justify an unexplained Retool.
- What various bits of Technobabble really mean (eg. in Star Trek).
- The backstory of the main character in Doctor Who, specifically:
- Retconning away the revelation of the Doctor's half-human lineage from the 1996 Made For TV Movie.
- 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, do the thing one needs to do in order to produce a parent for one's granddaughter.
- Season 6B
- The 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 Triangles (or Love Dodecahedrons) in a way other than the canon provides. This often goes as far as rewriting canon relationships to make preferred pairings more plausible. i.e. Two characters shown in love in series canon portrayed as hating each other in the story.
- In Sailor Moon fanfiction, this often takes a strange twist due to the fact that Sailors Uranus and Neptune are lesbian lovers. Fans more familiar with the 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.
- Actualy, that is more serious Fan Dumb from the writers, who for some reason believed what is widely regarded in Sailor Moon fandom as the worst ever English-language fansite (saveoursailors.com). In particular, the theory that Sailor Uranus had been a man in a past life is something that can pretty much always be directly attributed to that site.
- In Sailor Moon fanfiction, this often takes a strange twist due to the fact that Sailors Uranus and Neptune are lesbian lovers. Fans more familiar with the 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.
- 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 in order to produce Crystal Tokyo.
- What exactly happened after the Too Good To Last show ended (see Firefly and My So Called Life).
- Events in The Matrix sequels. The plot is so impenetrable that it has actually spawned a cottage industry of books seeking to explain it. The content of these books ranges from cutting-edge philosophy to some nonsense about space lizards, suggesting that Lovecraftian madness awaits any mortal who should happen to solve the mystery.
- In Merchandise Driven fandoms, especially Transformers, fanfics will often single out anything that never got a turn in the official fictions as something that needs to be featured. Of course, this can be really problematic if you have a bunch of toys that never got screen time and a fanfic author who doesn't know when to say when.
- This troper remembers a fan-author named Stormcloud, who seemed bound and determined to use every Beast Wars character not in the show in his 'fics. The end result was fight scenes that were so step-by-step and plotted out that they resembled a pre-publishing RA Salvatore, with character names made up of bad animal puns.
- The speculation in the plot analysis for the original Silent Hill ended up astonishingly close to the official backstory from Konami that wasn't revealed until Silent Hill 3. Almost as though Konami shared the plot with the guide's author from the beginning, or simply read the plot guide, thought: "Uh... Yeah, let's just go with that," and decided to use it as canon.
- What gender the main character's Pokémon are in the anime.
- Also, how old starting Pokémon trainers ''should'' be.
- In the games, whether Raikou, Entei, and Suicune are cats, dogs, or whatever. Many forums moderators decided that people are free to call them whatever, but if there's any arguement they are officially the three legendary gerbils.
- Military history and tactics in the Star Wars franchise. Good God.
- And for that matter, the Star Trek franchise.
- Due to its rather simplistic storyline, Enchanted fans have been left with the task of interpreting several plot threads left at the end, including the rhyme and reason behind Edward and Nancy's last-minute hookup and how someone as naive as Giselle would react when she learns about sex.
- Why, exactly, we have never seen a male Mithra in Final Fantasy XI. The official explanation for a lack of male Mithra 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 Fan Wank engine got the push start it needed. The most popular fan explanation is that they're too rare for use as anything but dedicated breeding stock, and what man would complain about that job, even if they are chained up in the shadows? Wings of the Goddess does finally show one male Mithra in a cutscene (clothed, no less), but this may be too little, too late.
- The 2007 film Beowulf was a well-funded Fan Wank on the relationships of Grendel's mother to various characters, spawned from the creator coming up with the "only" option of who Grendel's father was.
- What happens to characters after they're Put On A Bus.
- What might have become of characters who were left out of a new reboot or adaptation. For example, what the movieverse version of an X-Men character who wasn't in the movies might be like: is he an X-Man? A government agent? A Brotherhood member? So awesome and powerful Magneto wants to have his babies?
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Fans using their imaginations to try to explain inconsistencies or oddities in their favorite show or movie series is not fanwank but creativity.
Likewise, retcons on the part of official writers or producers are not something I would consider fanwank if they make sense and do not overpower the story at hand.
In my view, fanwank is making the universe too small. Connections between things that ought to have a connection and small winks at fans are more fan service. I would put the passing mention of "the recent Borg attack" in a DS9 episode in this category. It shows that an attack of that magnitude will be noticed by other Federation officers, but it stops short of making an entire episode about the Defiant joining the battle.
Likewise, retcons on the part of official writers or producers are not something I would consider fanwank if they make sense and do not overpower the story at hand.
In my view, fanwank is making the universe too small. Connections between things that ought to have a connection and small winks at fans are more fan service. I would put the passing mention of "the recent Borg attack" in a DS9 episode in this category. It shows that an attack of that magnitude will be noticed by other Federation officers, but it stops short of making an entire episode about the Defiant joining the battle.
^ Those definitions, particualrly the latter two are not remotely correct. I've never heard anyoen referred to as 'such a fanwank'
Creative material is referred to as 'fanwank' as you might call something 'drivel'.
"Humor; it is a difficult concept."
It was a joke and a play on the vulgar terms of wank, wanking and wanker. It was by no means meant to be taken seriously. I am quite aware of the "true" definition of fanwank. Geez, get a funny bone will ya?
I guess it depends. Mentioning it -- cool. Having the characters remember a similar event -- yeah that's fine.
Trying to make an entire story about what happened to Thomas Riker and Deana's Identical Sister behind bulkhead number 4 -- nuh uh.
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