#whoever thinks heavily foreshadowed theories aren’t satisfying needs to spend more time in fan communities

[curemoonliite]

The more I think about it, the more I think that good storytelling captures the same feelings children get when they receive gifts. Shaking a gift to guess what’s inside is a natural extension of a child’s curiosity, and in the same way, fan theories are natural extensions of fandom. Theories capture the same sense of wonder that many of us had as children, and in the hands of a good writer, a reveal is never 100% disappointing.

When a child opens a gift, they will either find that it is A) exactly what they expected and wanted, B) something they wanted, but didn’t expect to get, C) something they wanted a little less that they still like, D) a completely unexpected item that still caters to their interests and hobbies, E) something that you expected and didn’t want, and F) a completely unexpected and unwanted item. Say, for instance, that you asked for a guitar for Christmas and see a roughly guitar-shaped box. Your six options here are:

A) expect a guitar, get a guitar

B) expect your parents to get you a banjo from the pawn shop, get a guitar

C) expect a guitar, get a bass

D) a lamp made from an old guitar

E) that old banjo from the pawn shop

F) a life-size cardboard cutout of a guitar

For many, A is the most satisfying option. You got what you wanted and you expected it, leaving you with a victorious feeling of “calling it.” B comes pretty close, even without the feeling of “calling it.” But even C-E aren’t entirely disappointing, even if they come with feelings of initial disappointment.

You still think basses are cool in this scenario, and figure it’ll be easier to find a band that needs a bassist than one who needs a guitarist. The lamp can’t play music, but it’s pretty funky and impresses your friends. You can’t stand banjos, but you know your parents don’t have much money and maybe there weren’t any old country singers who wanted to pawn their guitars where you live. But even that’s okay—it can make music and it shows you that your parents care.

Just like this scenario, I like to think that A and B are the options that truly make fans lose their shit. Sure, the “X is really evil/Y/Y’s sibling/Y’s parent” twists are pretty predictable at this point, but they can give the same feeling as the guitar in this story. That feeling of either “I called it” or “I was hoping for it, but I never thought the creators had the balls to actually do it” fuels fandom. At first glance, you’d think this would disappoint fans, but often, this just fuels them to ever more passionate theories. For instance, “we know now that Y’s brother was evil, let’s predict how he became evil” is a common fandom line of thought because it uses the sort of engaged reading and prediction-making commonly taught in schools. Children who are able to pick up on subtle foreshadowing and make accurate predictions are hailed as “bright,” while authors who use these sorts of details in children’s books are seen as “classics.”

So why is today’s media so populated by unpredictable, unexpected, and unwanted plot twists? This topic has been covered to hell and back on Tumblr, and I can’t claim to have any more of a definitive answer than anyone else on here. But here’s what I think—surprise, as an emotion, is becoming increasingly valued in our entertainment trends.

Think of gacha games and LOL Surprise dolls. There’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these two, but they both market themselves almost exclusively on the “it’s a surprise” gimmick, as opposed to past toys and video games that didn’t. They are, in a few short words, surprise for surprise’s sake. There is no guarantee of satisfaction when it comes to these objects—in fact, the rarity systems that many of them have practically guarantee that you will stay in the E-F slot unless you have a lot of luck or spend a lot of money. And make no mistake, these things are made to maximize profits—a giant LOL Surprise egg can set you back $205.00, and that’s just at Walmart.

So here we have a commodification of surprise taken to its logical extreme, where satisfaction is almost completely removed from the equation and disappointment is basically inevitable. Why does that sound so familiar?

Because a lot of places where we hear about twists ruining the plot are multibillion dollar franchises—Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Marvel, and so on. Now, I can’t say that any of these lack artistic merit—in fact, many of these are known for great scores, cinematography, costumes, and the like. Their writing is intensely flawed, but we still get bright spots from them where everything seems to come together. But at the end of the day, they seem to be built with the same principle as a gacha game.

Didn’t get the character you wanted? Spend more in-game currency until you do! Didn’t like that plot twist from the last movie? Check out the next one to see if it gets better! And on and on and on.

These plot twists aren’t inserted for artistic merit, at least, not most of the time. Mostly, they’re for the money, the social media buzz, the equivalent of seeing how many views the next great unboxing video can grab. Not to say that no lesser-known authors have ever relied on shock value, but as a whole, something about their twists often feels more genuine, because they understand that the world is not their unboxing video. It’s a home video of their son, daughter, sister, brother opening the gift they’ve spent months or even years waiting to give them.

Surprise, as an emotion, requires thought not just about your fans, but about your stories, too. It requires knowledge and passion about both, and a drive to make a twist make so much sense that if your fans don’t love it right away, they’re sure going to love it by the end.

Because at the end of their day, gifts and surprises are meant to touch someone’s heart, not the algorithm of things a website assembles for you. And the best gift-givers are the ones who find things that people’s hearts need, whether the receiver recognizes it or not.