  The general picture of how thermal AGNs work has become clearer in recent
years but major observational puzzles threaten to undermine this picture. These
puzzles include AGNs with extremely asymmetric emission line profiles,
inconsistent multi-wavelength variability, rapid apparent changes in the sizes
of emitting regions and in the direction of gas flow, a curious insensitivity
of gas in some narrow velocity ranges to changes in the ionizing continuum, and
differing dependencies of polarization on gas velocity. It is proposed that all
these puzzles can readily be explained by off-axis variability, and that there
is no need to invoke exotic explanations such as binary supermassive black
holes or recoiling black holes.
