The Joy of Fan Theories

Hello! I am out of town for a bit so this might not be a full Saturday Note! Or it might be! I’ll find out when I finish writing it. While I’m working on this, I am reading Persepolis, I have finished the “Bonfire of the Vanities” section on Assassin’s Creed II, and the next book is probably going to be Thieves’ Quarry, I think?

The world is rough out there, so here’s a link to cheer you up. And remember:

NO KINGS.

The Joy of Fan Theories

So I’m kind of in a Dresden Files rabbit hole.

Alright, given the state of the world, I thought it would be worthwhile to do something to keep my eyes far away from the news. And one of the ways to do that is to get lost in fan theories about Dresden Files, an urban fantasy series about a wizard in modern day Chicago named Harry Dresden. The series currently has eighteen books, at least two dozen short stories, and is aiming to have a total of twenty-five novels. Given that the inspiration for the stories is detective fiction, the novels have complex Plots and lots of mysteries, there are several fan theories about what will happen, what the answers will be, and what certain things mean–and I absolutely love it, guys.

I have complained that not every story has to be a mystery, and I hold to that. But a good mystery? In a long-running series? Ah, man, that’s good stuff. I love seeing not only how it plays out, but also seeing what fans come up with. Because good writers will be able to litter hints throughout the story that build up to really interesting conclusions.

Dragon Age was very good at this–quite a few mysteries in the series have been answered as of Veilguard, but it’s still pretty interesting to go through the archives of crazy fan theories. There were ten years between Inquisition and Veilguard, after all, and Inquisition ended with questions all over the place. Because so many of those theories have answers now, it’s less fun than a series with more open questions, yet it’s still kind of cool to read through the hypotheses fans came up with. Again, Dragon Age did a great job at setting things up, so fans looking closely found most of the hints. Most of the pre-Veilguard theories and lore posts that I found, they’re not usually right on target, but they’re very close.

We also had tons of fun in the BIONICLE fandom with this. That story was not as good about dropping hints as something like Dragon Age, though there were definitely some there (and more if you knew Maori language, which the majority of the fandom did not). The story changed directions a few times, which muddied the waters. The broad strokes of the big reveals that happened towards the end of BIONICLE’s run remained the same, though, making it immensely satisfying to the people who guessed what was going to happen.

Then you have things like Assassin’s Creed; there are very good posts by fans analyzing things in extreme detail, trying to work out what they mean and what they could be hinting at. Except the series has changed direction and writers so many times, that a lot of it feels pointless. One writer will set things up, try to push the story in one direction, only for the next game to decide that it makes the series too inaccessible to new fans and so it’s unceremoniously dropped. I like the idea of these kinds of theories in the series, I just hate how they often go nowhere.

[Probably the reason Dresden Files doesn’t have that problem is because it’s done by one single author.]

Fan theories! They’re fun! I love reading them! It makes me think over the things I read or watched, and try to figure out if I can find something that someone else in the fandom missed.

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