Today is IWSG day, a monthly event Alex Cavanaugh started to get writers
sharing about their insecurities and other stuff happening in their lives. I am
late to post today, but we still have a couple of hours left in Wednesday and
here I am! This month’s IWSG question is: When
do you know your story is ready? My
story might feel ready after I have had it properly critiqued, have given it an
honest revision, have taken a break from it, and when I revisit it after a
break, I don't itch to revise everything I see. Right now, my story is not
ready.
Today I'm here to share an insight, not an
insecurity.
There are a lot of fan theories
about popular stories of various mediums on the Internet. These fan theories
range from the one about the classic film Grease, that Sandy actually died
when Danny tried to rescue her from drowning, as referenced in "Summer
Nights," to the speculation that HARRY POTTER’s Ginny Weasley drugged Harry with a love potion, to Gilligan being Satan while the other inhabitants on Gilligan’s Island were
the seven deadly sins, to how, in the movie (or theatrical production, which I'd recently seen) of The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's Bizarro
twin was actually the deceased Wicked Witch of the East, whose face is never shown. But
interestingly, the two ladies share a shoe size.
The creator of Grease dismissed
the fan theory about his musical being merely Sandy's coma dream. It wouldn't
surprise me if other creators of stories coming under speculation would
brush off out-there fan theories as well. Still, I find some fan theories quite insightful, regardless of whether or not I believe in them. The
"what if" questions presented in some of these fan theories challenge
my notion of what seems familiar and comforting in these stories and encourages
the exploration of a darker or more twisted perspective of what could be
lurking beneath the surface.
Taking the concept about hidden stories past fiction into
reality, I am reminded that it's important to take a closer look at what,
at first glance, might seem familiar and comforting and to remember what
is intentionally projected in any environment for an audience might not necessarily reflect
what is actually there.
Do you have any fan theories surrounding a story? What fan
theories have you heard that you find interesting? (I myself could spend a
day discussing my fan theories about the movie Inception.)
