Fix Fic

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"HE'S NOT DEAD OK! PRETEND NETYRI DIDN'T KILL HIM OK!" —Avatars II When Qwaritch Takes Revenge

Sometimes the fans think that The Powers That Be screwed it. Maybe they've wasted the storyline, or they went for the obvious when a better solution should have been favoured. Maybe they've paired the wrong couple together, or they've derailed the character or they don't even understand who the true hero of the story should be. Or, even worse, they've killed the most important character.

Whatever the reason, some fans are dissatisfied and they won't be content to complain about it. They're going address it, in a Fanfic. In short, an AU with an agenda rather than as an intellectual exercise.

Fix Fics come in two varieties. Either they can be an Alternate Universe Fic that ignores the unwanted elements and replace them with something better. Or they can be an elaborate explanation in story form that gives a whole new spin to the latest episode/chapter/volume.

The motivations for writing these can vary greatly, along with the perceived justification—they may want to "correct" something that went just fine, or want to offer an alternative to something incredibly stupid. If the writer is lucky, the trend may be popular enough the fans don't mind at this point.

Some Fix Fics use a Peggy Sue to get the ball rolling. Others bring in a Fixer Sue.

Usually a side effect of Die for Our Ship or He's Just Hiding.

Compare Retcon, the Canon version of a Fix Fic. In very rare cases, may lead to Ascended Fanon. Contrast Deconstruction Fic.

Not to be confused with a fixup, which is a novel composed of older and/or unpublished short pieces of fiction, often tied together with some sort of Framing Device. For that, see Patchwork Story, or this nice discussion on Wikipedia.

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Fan Fiction Examples

Anime and Manga

• Bleach fic is generaly rather darker than its canon, mostly due to the prevalence of disney deaths (unless you're in a backstory). Notable examples of fanworks with a far darker premise are abundant. YMMV on weather this qualifies as a Fix Fic, though.
  • Downfall is an example of a fic that starts out much lighter than canon—several characters that were dead in backstories are alive -- only to start killing off several others in heartrending ways. Also, Unohana makes a great villain. Somehow, it still manages to feel like a fix fic.
• Any Neon Genesis Evangelion Fanfic that affects the overall plot will fix something horrible that happened to the characters. But that's like firing a grenade launcher and breaking glass while standing inside a 10' by 10' greenhouse. Accordingly, Eva fix fics tend to be either hilariously bad or Crazy Awesome (and, sometimes, both).
  • Another specific example is Shinji and Warhammer 40 K, where the changes begin with Shinji discovering a case with some Warhammer 40000 sourcebooks and miniatures early in his childhood. The butterfly effect takes hold with the result that every change following flows mostly logically from the previous changes, until you're halfway through the whole thing and Shinji is holding a nuclear explosion in his hand, and you wonder how the heck you ended up there.
  • And Aeon Natum Engel takes an unusual perspective on the whole thing. The author's actually said that he believes in the Conservation of Psychological Problems; for every time he treats someone nicer than in the original timeline, he has to make up for it somehow. And given that it's a Mythos setting, he's doing rather well at that. Just look at who Rei's other mother is.
  • Nobody Dies keeps Yui Ikari and Kyoko Sohryu alive through the series, which in turn manages to make Shinji reasonably well adjusted, turns Asuka into the woobie, and turns Rei into...Rei.
  • Mobile Fighter Evangelion has succesfully turned the original series into a complete Reconstruction of what it deconstructed. So far we have Landshark killing Shinji, Mad Scientist!Ritsuko, Gundams piloted by Pen-Pen, and a Grappling Hook!Gendo. It's as awesome as it sounds.
• Cori Falls' works are an example of Fix Fic Gone Horribly Wrong. While technically she's a good writer, her idea of a "fix" was distorting the Pokémon world so that Team Rocket were the "true" heroes and Ash was an unfeeling monster who existed only to make an ass of himself and cause problems for everyone.
• Sailor Moon Fix Fics used to frequently feature ways to explain away why Haruka and Michiru weren't really gay. Some settled for Fixer Sues, others would twist the canon around to make Haruka turn into (or always have been) a boy. Still others would just pretend they weren't gay at all and change their relationship to merely being close friends or relatives (and this was before the dub did it for them). Other Fix Fics, conversely, focused on getting rid of Mamoru and pairing Usagi up with other characters, usually through severe Character Derailment of either of them (e.g. Mamoru as an abusive psychopath, Usagi really being in love with Seiya... or even Haruka!). Others just thought he got off too easy post-breakup in R and devised further punishments for him to suffer through.
  • Generally, Seiya and Rei are the two characters most often switched out for Mamoru in fix-it fics. These fics are almost exclusively based on the anime, since manga Mamoru wasn't such a jerk and Seiya's crush was severely smaller in the manga.
  • Also, Nephrite comes back from the dead a lot, to Naru's joy. Umino gets stiffed. Sometimes they take pity on him and simply have Nephrite come back from the dead but accept that Naru moved on.
  • Oh, oh! Don't forget "ChibiUsa doesn't exist" fics! Either some twist of fate makes Usagi have a different child (who fits the author's appeal better) or ChibiUsa is just removed, with no regards to the fact that she's vitally important to three seasons. Sometimes ChibiUsa is killed off so she can still save the world with Usagi, but isn't around to annoy the author.
• Let's say you decide to read some Naruto fanfiction. Wait didn't that guy die in the manga? When did Sasuke come back, and why is he dating Sakura? Did Naruto just give up on winning Sakura's heart for an unexplained reason? That doesn't sound right. And was Hinata ever this bold? What just happened to the world you knew?
  • One of the most common alterations is changing the makeup of Naruto's team, which results in many subsequent changes, such as the group dynamics (the group often gets along better without clashing personalities or a Type 5 love triangle), and even the course of the story. This often happens when the author wants to ship with Naruto with a character outside Team 7, and replaces Sakura and/or Sasuke to do so.
  • Or alternately, they replace Naruto, putting on him on a different team altogether. Team 8 is probably the best known example of this.
• Mahou Sensei Negima: Seeing as Ken Akamatsu decided to offer No Romantic Resolution with regard to Negi's love life (most likely to avoid incurring fan wrath from those disappointed he didn't end up with their preferred ship) epilogue and sequel fics in which the writer's preferred pairing became reality were inevitable.
• Dragon Ball, being such a big franchise, has entire genres of fix fic, and it's all too easy since the series has a canonical Reset Button.
  • First, you have resurrections of whatever villains the author happened to like. Raditz probably takes the lead here, Zarbon's also a semi-popular target.
    • Nappa has recently started getting this as well, primarly due to his portrayal in Dragon Ball Abridged
    • It's worth noting that one of the DBZ games has something of a fix, where Raditz was beaten by Picollo when he showed up and had a Heel Face Turn which lead to him being a good guy. He later sacrifices himself to stop Vegeta and Nappa. Zarbon also has a What-If scenario dedicated to him.
  • Then there's craptons of "Planet Vegeta was never really destroyed/gets revived" fics. Admittedly these are loads of fun to write.
  • And then you have Die for Our Ship fics. Think Bulma/Yamucha is a better pairing than Bulma/Vegeta? Just make Vegeta out to be a wife-beater so poor helpless Bulma can run to her one true love for comfort. Or for those who are more into Goku, killing Chi-Chi or changing her from a simple Tsundere into a murdering Psycho-bitch is always an option, so that he can have a "real" relationship with your oh-so-virtuous Relationship Sue instead.
  • Another common theme is Vegeta becoming the hero at Goku's expense. Sometimes Goku will simply stop training or become evil,or he'll be revealed as always being evil, either way gives Vegeta a chance to be in the spot light.
  • Recently, the fandom has begun to produce Gohan fics on the premise that "Gohan trained after the Cell Saga, and subsequently killed Buu." Most of these end up with Gohan being a Mary Sue.
• Pick a Ranma ½ fanfic, any Ranma fanfic. Any one of them that isn't set after continuity will attempt to fix one of four problems: Ranma being cursed, Ranma being engaged to Akane, Ranma being a Jerkass, and Ranma being raised by Genma. Ranma might still be a cursed Jerkass who has No Social Skills, but he'll invariably wind up stuck with a suddenly-caring Nabiki or Kasumi. Or someone else raised him, he's still cursed and engaged to Akane, and still a Jerkass. Or suddenly he's not cursed, and he's a jerk raised by Genma, but it's okay that he's engaged to Akane now because she's not pissed he turns into a girl! Seriously. It's always one of those four. The method by which this happens might change. It might be time travel, changing the curse, derailing Kasumi and Nabiki into wanting the pigtailed wonder, but if it travels the canon road, one of those four issues will quickly become noticeable.
  • There are some that focus on "merely" shrinking down the Love Dodecahedron. These are split between the ones that consider the Harem members removed as problems or operate on the assumption that They Can Do So Much Better.
  • Let's not forget the "Ranma decides to stay a girl forever/some period of time, which magically fixes everything" subgenre.
• Code Geass has Lelouch's unfortunate choice of words to Euphemia. Just changing the words of that one line has unleashed dozens of alt. verse stories, with the possibilities being endless. "Give me all the power and authority you possess", "Publicly announce that The Empire indeed sucks", "Make out with Cornelia , "Do the Macarena". The list goes on and on...
• Practically every Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfic set after the Grand Finale will bring Atemu back from the afterlife or have the Ceremonial Duel between him and Yugi proceed differently. This becomes a virtual guarantee if the fanfic writer ships Atemu/Yugi. And that's not counting the number of fics that bring all the yamis back and give them their own bodies with little explanation...
• Several Blood+ stories fix Diva killing Riku. Whether it be changing her mind of "having him for herself forever" (read: killing him) by abducting him or Riku being able to fight her off by the transformation properties of chevalier finally manifesting, it fixes that bit.
• Death Note has a growing number of these. It seems that the most common fix is undoing or preventing L's death. Another variation is having Light win or live at the end.
  • Even the live action movie changes the ending, incorporating one of the more common fan suggestions.
  • The typical Death Note fanfic: L and Light are dating and so are Mello and Matt (or Mello and Near); They Fight Crime and get along very well together despite Light being a (possibly reformed) megalomaniacal Serial Killer Killer and Mello (potentially) being a mafia crime boss.
• The ending of the first season of the Kuroshitsuji anime. Although it technically ends with an ambiguous Fade to Black, it's more than a little obvious what's about to happen. Fans have other ideas and love to share them in fic form.
  • Of course, now that there's the second season, and seeing how that ended, it looks like the writers may have been reading fanfic themselves.
• Many Princess Tutu fanfics for Fakir/Ahiru turn Ahiru back into a human to reverse the Star-Crossed Lovers Bittersweet Ending they get in canon.
• Many Hellsing fics leave Alucard and Walter quite alive in the aftermath of the invasion, sometimes Pip too. If Millennium is not ignored, they're defeated with relatively less horrific losses, with even Iscariot's membership surviving the ordeal.
• The most common sort of fics for X1999 Seishirou and Subaru seems to try to find a way for Seishirou to not die/ not be a bastard
• Weiss Kreuz fanfiction mostly ignores everything after the end of the first anime season. Given what happens next, this isn't entirely surprising. More deliberate examples can be seen in the sheer number of fanfics out there where Aya cures Youji's amnesia and 'saves' him from the horrible fate of marriage to a girl through the Power of Love.
• Gundam fanfics tend to have some version of this.
  • The most common one is having Zeon win the One Year War, thus preventing the rise of the Titans and all the subsequent wars in the Universal Century. Zeonquest is arguably a deconstruction of this, as more often than not, things have gotten worse.
  • Gundam00 fans like Lockon the first to be alive in their fics...
• It's literally impossible to go to the The Cat Returns section of FFN and not find a Fix Fic within the first thirty seconds where Haru stays in or goes back to the Cat Kingdom and marries Baron.
• The same thing happens in the Vision of Escaflowne fandom - it sometimes feels as if every third Escaflowne fanfic written retcons the ending to push Hitomi back into Van's arms regardless of whether or not it makes the slightest bit of sense.
• One of the best-known recent examples is The Hill of Swords by Gabriel Blessing, which does this for The Familiar Of Zero. The original series is frequently criticized as being a waste of a good plot which is ruined by fanservice and harem antics (the anime especially) and an excessively abusive relationship between a tsundere with a hair-trigger temper and an idiot of a male lead who doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut around her. Gabe's solution? Replace Saito with Shirou Emiya, and watch in awe as the Belligerent Sexual Tension vanishes, the harem dynamics disappear almost entirely, and Louise is Rescued From the Scrappy Heap and develops into a character who is not only likable but admirable. While it has its share of flaws, it proved successful enough to spawn a massive following of fics with similar "Replace Saito with _____" premises.
• My Life Can't Lose Its Normality, an Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai fic with the premise that Kyousuke is cool. He goes from someone who just does whatever his sister says into a Chick Magnet of a martial-arts master who leads a vigilante group more effective than most military forces.
• Magica Madoka Veneficus Puella arguably plays with this trope. While the characters of Puella Magi Madoka Magica are now capable of finally getting their happy endings, the fights that take place cause collateral damage on par with your average war. Add to the fact that a potential class X-4 apocalypse is heading over the horizon and you have yourselves a problem.
• A Hero, another Puella Magi Madoka Magica fanfic, is a subversion. On one hand, it adds Dalek Sec to help fix things. On the other, it also adds the rest of the Whoverse to screw things up even more.
• If you're reading a fanfic based off the 2003 anime adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist that takes place after The Movie, you can almost guarantee it's a "Edward and Al figure out how to get back to their world" fic - with the occasional "Winry (or Roy if you like Ed/Roy) goes to our world" fic.

Comic Books

• Chris Dee's Cat Tales series Fix Fics every piece of Character Derailment and bad Retcon inflicted on Catwoman in the past thirty or so years of comics—the Wangst-filled past as a ghetto prostitute, the string of Squicky non-Bat love interests and the infamous goggle-wearing costume change are cleanly slate-wiped as the machinations of a low-brow tabloid, to which the real Catwoman responds in a... unique... way. The series has evolved into an Alternate Universe Fic with over 50 stories.
• Superhero comics fandom has a fix fic for any minor change in character or plot that you didn't like in the last decade, but an unusually large number popped up after the death of Stephanie "The Spoiler" Brown either reviving or vindicating her. The fact that Chuck Dixon seemed to take a leaf—if not his entire plot and most of the angst—from the fanficcer's books when he brought her back a few years later didn't help matters much.
• The return of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern was much the same, using elements from more than one fic written by outraged GL fans after the Parallax arc and the (temporary) destruction of the Corps.
• The absolutely excellent Breaking the Deal by NKSCF (available here) follows what should have happened the moment after Spider-Man was forced into selling away his marriage to the Marvel version of Satan, complete with a reasonable plot and an ending that actually has consequences for the decisions Spider-Man and Mary Jane made.
  • While Breaking The Deal is arguably the most well known, One More Day, Brand New Day, and/or OMIT fix fics are something of a Fandom Specific Plot for Spider-Man writers.
• Not a Typical Civil War is not just a fix fic about Marvel's Civil War, it actually has instructions by the author on how to fix stories every chapter. According to him, he does little fix fics in his mind all the time, and this is just one of them he's decided to write.

Film

• Star Wars Fix Fic that's actually fanfiction is practically a genre unto itself. A number of fix fics purport to do a better job of making the prequel trilogy justifiably fit into continuity better than George did himself: The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster, a story presented essentially as Darth Vader's personal journal during the events of the original trilogy (making a number of references to the prequels) and the short, almost essay-length A New Sith or Revenge of the Hope: Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III.
  • Sidereal and Tyranny Reborn are Fix Fics where the author explicitly states that they are AU according to how he wanted the franchise to go and specifically named Dark Empire, the Jedi Academy trilogy (which these stories are specifically to override), New Jedi Order, Dark Nest, and Legacy of the Force as what he was avoiding. (Sidereal begins five weeks after the end of The Thrawn Trilogy.) This one from a different author is more of a straight AU, but has a specific point that it takes off from (right after The Truce at Bakura) and goes in an intentionally far different direction from the profic. (In general both authors seem to reject the idea of Luke Skywalker, "tame Jedi.")
  • Phantom Menace: The Unauthorized Rewrite is the first in a series of three attempts by a fan to squash the prequel trilogy into a more palatable substance in novel form. Read: No Jar-Jar, no Midi-Chlorians, no 14-year-old elected Queens and no wee Anakin staring wide-eyed at anything and everything. It's pretty dark with a major focus on Dooku and pre-cyborg Grievous even in the first volume.
  • Star Wars: Cerulean retcons the events of the Revenge of the Sith film: Bly disobeyed Order 66 and instead of killing Aayla Secura, he just faked her death. Part 1, prequel.
  • Legacy of the Sith is a fanfic series that replaces the last two books of the New Jedi Order and continues on afterwards, with the premise being that Anakin Solo was not killed by the Yuuzhan Vong but rather captured and brainwashed, and has just managed to escape. It wraps up the NJO in a manner largely reminiscent of the canon (though with different characters filling different specific roles) and then goes in a wildly divergent course. It's awesome.
  • There was a short fic in Russian (a translation to English exists) about how the events of the Naboo occupation were distorted when the First Episode was made (due to Historical Hero Upgrade, Rule of Cool, and certain other things featured on this site). Instead of a pointless dispute over taxing a remote world, for example, you have a dispute over a very profitable drug trade, Watto was ready to accept dataries, but only in cash, and the Federation droids didn't shut down... actually, they defeated the Gungans right when the station blew up, and simply received no pursuit orders.
  • After Revenge of the Sith, there was a huge influx of fix fics resurecting Padme, usually revealing she faked her death to protect Luke and Leia and help with the resistence against Vader, who she usually still loves, unless it's an Obidala fic.
• Several Rocky Horror Picture Show fanfics involve Dr. Frank N Furter being brought back to life or are simply AU fanfics in which he doesn't die in the first place.
• Already there are a vast number of X-Men: First Class fics where what is commonly referred to as 'the divorce' never happened, and Erik and Charles lived happily ever after. Many of these also retcon Charles into not having been paralysed. The fandom literally calls them Fix-Its and they can range from just reworking the beach scene so that the divorce never happens, to developing a completely alternate timeline that come about through what-if? situations.
• Nine fan fiction has a good number of stories that have the characters that died being revived in one way or another.
• Barely a week after Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie came out in 2010, Fanfiction.Net was flooded (thirty fanfics in the new section and at least that many more in the general Alice in Wonderland section) with fan authors who either have Alice stay in Wonderland with the Hatter, or have him go to her.
• Slash Fic fans of the 2009 Star Trek film who support Kirk/Spock tend to have Uhura a) end her relationship with Spock on amicable terms b) get dumped by Spock c) run off with Bones, Scotty, Chekov...any one else with a penis... or d) get eaten by the Gorn. It's starting to get a bit ridiculous.
• Once Upon a Time In Mexico fandom features far too many fics involving Sands magically getting his sight back. Or to be more specific, his actual eyes.
• Many, if not most, Brokeback Mountain fics undo Jack's death and give him and Ennis a happy ending.
• Sucker Punch is a newer example, many fanfics have Babydoll surviving the lobotomy with memories, or avoiding it altogether. There are also a few with Rocket surviving being stabbed (which is understandable since it was never shown where she was stabbed and may not have been a fatal injury)
• John Tucker Must Die fanfiction may result in Kate either staying with, or getting back with John instead of the possible relationship with Scott the ending suggests.

Literature

• The Harry Potter fandom seems to have made quite a fashion out of Peggy Sue fics in which someone goes back in time to undo events, mainly deaths, from the books which the author didn't like. This, by the way, violates the time travel rules used in the actual series.
  • Then there's the stories where Harry becomes "more intelligent".
  • The Distant Finale epilogue is either ignored or Fanon Discontinuity to many fans, mostly to get around the issue of their pet ships not sailing.
    • There is at least one fic which states that Dumbledore slipped Harry and Ginny some potion to make them fall in love... and the epilogue is a delusion by Ginny, whom this potion brought to St. Mungos.
  • The Severus Snape fans tend to write stories that either ignore Deathly Hallows entirely, or simply the epilogue.
  • Let's not forget all the people Ret Conning Sirius' death after Order of the Phoenix.
  • This happens a lot, especially after Deathly Hallows, where the story seems to mostly fit into canon but where Snape, Fred or some other popular character is just inexplicably alive. It's not even a traditional "here's how they lived" sort of thing, they're just alive because the author didn't want them to be dead.
  • My Immortal actually has a Fix Chapter added by a hacker, in which Ebony dies and everything returns to how it was in canon...well, almost everything:

And, because the replacement author also likes to screw around with canon, Draco and Hermione fled the scene and got married.

• • Pstibbons wrote a story titled The Writer, where Hermione travels to our world to find that Ginny had fled to our world and wrote the entire Harry Potter series under the name J. K. Rowling. The entire purpose of this fic is nothing more than to establish an explanation on why the final two books are WRONG!
• Wicked bookverse fics in which Fiyero doesn't die are highly common among the Fiyeraba shippers. In fact, The Musical is an example.
  • Post-musicalVerse fics make sure Fiyero is turned human again (often without explanation) as fast as possible.
  • Similarly Gelphie (Glinda/Elphaba) shippers like to alter it so that Elphaba's death at the end Wicked was faked or simply just have Elphaba not leave Glinda at the Emerald City. Glinda finding Elphaba is also a common fic.
• The Storm Dragons is a well-written fanfic series presenting the world of The Inheritance Cycle from the perspective of a family of Dragons, the titular storm dragons, and from Galbatorix. Turns the canon series on its head, and worth a read at least once.
• The Redwall series has quite a few Fix Fics dedicated to reviving Rose, Martin's love interest. Some try hard to keep it within Canon and provide a legitimate reason for her being Only Mostly Dead. A Mask and a Song is an example of such a story.
• These ones are also known in the His Dark Materials fandom, to bring Lyra and Will back together.
• Much of the Bridge to Terabithia fixfics have Leslie not dying, or as the fans call it, LDD, which stands for Leslie Didn't/Doesn't Die.
• A number of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's literary peers were troubled by the ending to his 1787 novel, Die Leiden des Jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther) and the behavior that it was inspiring among many of its youthful fans. One of them, a man named Friedrich Nicolai, wrote a satirical alternate ending called Die Freuden des Jungen Werthers (The Joys of Young Werther), in which Werther's attempt to kill himself is foiled by the husband of the woman he loved, who withdraws out of friendship and allows Werther to pursue her; he eventually marries her, sheds all of the "storm and strife" of his youth, and becomes a respected gentleman in society. Goethe hated this treatment of his work and wrote a poem in which Nicolai desecrates Werther's grave, starting a literary war between them that lasted the rest of Goethe's Nicolai's life.
  • Nicolai, who died in 1811, was one of the leading German literary critics of the Enlightenment, and belonged to an older literary generation. He was rather sceptical of the new movements like Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. Die Freuden des Jungen Werthers is therefore correctly described as a parody, and it is worth noting that Goethe not only was angry at Nicolai specifically, but was violently opposed to parodies in general. Nicolai meanwhile not only parodied Goethe, but also the folk songs that were then being eagerly collected by the early Romantics.
• A significant number of Twilight fics have been written based on the premise of Bree Tanner not dying.
  • As well as many ignoring or rewriting events from the final book so the author's favorite pairing(s) can be together.
  • There is also Luminosity, which fixes Twilight, period. Utilizing a simple What If scenario where Bella was "derailed" into a more rational, thinking person turned much of the Hatedom of one of the most divisive modern literary works into fans. Many readers should be warned that reading this fic might make them sympathetic to the actual franchise.
• In the Animorphs series, quite a few Fix Fics involve a complete rewriting of the final part wherein Rachel and Tom don't die and Jake and the rest magically recover from their traumas during the war. Of course, this kind of misses the point that K.A. Applegate was trying make in writing the series, namely that War Is Hell and many soldiers are damaged beyond repair even after the war is done.
  • There are also a few fics where Elfangor didn't die after the crash and was able to lead the Animorphs. Elfangor's Folly is a particularly well-written example.
• Right Behind, a community devoted to fixing and expanding Left Behind.
• In 1610 at Spain, a time that favored Theatre above any other medium, Cervantes published an experimental novel full of bad writing, (Series Continuity Errors, Wacky Wayside Tribes, Romantic Plot Tumors, and a Chuck Cunningham Syndrome) but that it was full of Crowning Moment of Funny. Nobody took it seriously and Cervantes waited almost 10 years to wrote the continuation that his editor wanted (the book was a best seller). Enter perhaps the most famous (and less read) Continuation in all literature is "The second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licenciado (doctorate) Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, of Tordesillas". This book had only three editions and the only thing we knew about him was the angry answer Cervantes gave in the second part about some cruel teasing in the prologue and Sancho and Don Quixote claiming Character Derailment.. The original was never re-edited and in the next four hundred years nobody really read it, but all thought it was awful. Modern critics have read the original fanfic and found that the prologue was bitterly disrespectful of Cervantes, but the book showed the characters having adventures in the City and well written. As a matter of fact, Avellaneda did the most insulting work an author can get: a Fix Fic, to show Cervantes the right way to use their characters. This means that the only guy who took Cervantes work seriously and acknowledged poetic relevance to Don Quixote and Sancho also thought that Cervantes didn’t do a good enough book. Cervantes was so mad at Avellaneda’s Fix Fic that he really took the next book as Serious Business and made Don Quixote an Even Better Sequel.

Live Action TV

• There are a pair of fixfics focused on fixfic-ing the Buffy the Vampire Slayer by exploring the premise of Xander wearing an Obi-Wan Kenobi costume during the Halloween episode, not a soldier costume. Example: Part 1 and Part 2. (Part 2 is a work in progress).
  • There's a Buffyverse fixfic listed on the Fan Fic Recommendations page, I Am What I Am, wherein Xander wears a different Halloween costume, and really is able to fix everything. And when I say everything, I mean literally everything, because he has the memories of a 97-year-old Xander who remembers almost everything bad that happened to any of the Buffyverse characters.
  • Difficult to Fight Against Anger is a two-part alternate ending to season six, where Tara Maclay lives. It still manages to be Darker and Edgier, though, as Tara is instead raped by Warren Mears.
• A Whole New World basically undoes the events of the Boy Meets World series finale, but in a way that makes sense and explores things the original canon long since abandoned.
• For some time after Team Knight Rider aired, every Knight Rider fanfic would include KITT writing off the events of that series as a bad dream. Insulting the Ford Motor Company was also par for the course.
• Kamen Rider Kiva has recently seen a large number of fic writers go with the AU side of the coin, disregarding everything from episode 43 onward. This has happened with Kamen Rider in the past, as many seasons prefer whipping out the Kill'Em All method of storytelling near the endgame.
  • And then there's outright editing the footage to make the show be watched in chronological order... which leads to a very interesting experience, with a Kamen Rider show devoid of Riders for the first three episodes, a great deal of time put into character development and world building, and calling it Kamen Rider IXA.
• Heroes: This Peter/Claude fan community has a bunch of Fanfic that treats Peter Petrelli as a competent person while keeping the naivete and innocence that are an integral part of his character. Essentially, they make him a much more interesting character than canon has of late.
  • There are also a bunch of fics out there that stop or undo Elle's death and she runs off to live with Sylar (despite having tried to kill her again) or Peter, or Claire happily ever after. There are also stories where she shows up alive and well at the Sullivan brothers carnival. Elle is quite popular in this because writers like to undo what some feel were poor handling of her character (Other examples include: She never walks into Pinehearst or she is rescued before Sylar gets to her. And then there are the stories where she is revived by means of Claire's blood
• Firefly has many stories that undo Wash's death in the Big Damn Movie. Here's one of them.
  • Dyce's "Horseshoe Nail" series fixes both Book and Wash's deaths through The Butterfly Effect of Jayne becoming closer to River. Somehow it works.
  • There's also Forward, which also undoes Wash and Book's deaths, though in a much more straightforward Retcon.
• Doctor Who:
  • A blog once rewrote the entire Colin Baker era in order to "correct" the influence of Eric Saward, whom the writers despised.
  • After the second season finale of the new series, the internet was flooded with Fix Fics of Rose escaping the Alternate Universe in which she was trapped so she and the Doctor could return to making googoo eyes at each other. Became canon with the fourth season finale, though with a method far more inventive than any of the fans devised (not that such a thing was difficult). That same finale, however, spawned its own flood of Fix Fics with Donna regaining her memories.
    • After The End of Time, another kind of Fix Fic emerged which repaired both it and "Journey's End" in one fell swoop; when 10 regenerates, his mind/soul doesn't die. Instead it gets transferred into the body of 10.5, bringing 10 back to life and reuniting him with Rose.
• Many, many Torchwood fics, which undo (from the end of series 2) Tosh and Owen's deaths. And an even larger raft of post-series 3 fics which address Ianto's death and Jack's actions regarding his grandson. One large and vocal subset of these fans have even created a campaign and a website to coordinate efforts to petition The Powers That Be to bring Ianto back. Unlike the series creators or one main actor's comments in interviews, there are well over a thousand registered members—with more joining daily.
• Beauty and The Beast (the 1980s TV series) fans call a version of this "SND" -- "She Never Died". They are, of course, referring to Catherine's death at the end of Season 2. All subsequent canon is disregarded, except that Gabriel may be dealt with, if he is considered to exist at all. If so, Catherine usually gives up living Above and moves into the Tunnels for good, living Happily Ever After with Vincent and their child; if not, then the entire Gabriel sub-plot is ignored, and possibly much of season 2, and the characters go on as they did in the earlier episodes, usually with Catherine and Vincent sorting out their star-crossed love and settling down together.
• A classic Star Trek example, fixing an apparent continuity glitch—in the film Star Trek II the Wrath of Khan, Khan and Chekov recognize each other upon meeting. However, "Space Seed", the episode of Star Trek the Original Series in which Khan appears, is a first season episode, and Chekov did not join the cast of the show until the second season. The semi-official Retcon (not explained in any of the shows or movies, but widely propagated by producers and actors in convention appearances) is that Chekov was on the Enterprise at that time, he just wasn't part of the bridge crew yet and thus didn't appear on screen. A very funny Fanfic distributed in print ('zines, photocopies, etc.) not long after the movie came out expands on that, envisioning Khan and Chekov bumping into each other in the bathroom. Sillier versions have Khan vowing revenge on Chekov for making him wait for the cubicle.
• In response to two different elements of the Star Trek Voyager finale, fans created two very popular Fix Fics: Voyager Season 7.5 and Voyager Virtual Seasons 8 and 9. The former started from before the hated Chakotay/Seven Canon Ship got started, rewriting the last half of the season, allowing them to completely avoid the finale. The latter kept everything including the final scene, but then used a Diabolus Ex Machina to subvert the Happy Ending (itself a Deus Ex Machina) for a couple more seasons.
  • Currently these guys are working on rewriting the whole show.
  • The modern novel continuity from the Star Trek Expanded Universe gives us the String Theory trilogy. Why is Janeway so out of character at the beginning of Season Five, and other points later on? Why did the Nacene Caretaker species not show up after season two? Why is Voyager in top condition as of the later seasons despite dwindling supplies? Why did Kes suddenly turn bitter and evil in "Fury"? This trilogy fills in all the gaps, and helps make Voyager's continuity a lot easier to swallow. However, some readers have suggested that the answers given here are weirder than the possible plot holes they try to plug, others that the things being fixed weren’t too much of a distraction anyway.
  • Oddly enough, the show's single worst episode, "Threshold", did not receive similar treatment. It was just ignored by fans so much that Word of God made it Canon Discontinuity.
• The number of Dollhouse fics that retcon Bennett's murder is particularly impressive.
• The_Paladin_Protocol This is what happens when a Culture Alien fails to get the point of a generic US sitcom—the author (a 'shipper of the Fan-Preferred Couple) really, really didn't like season 3 of The Big Bang Theory.
• Very popular in Blakes Seven fandom due to most of the main characters' lives being screwed up in some way. Not to mention the Bolivian Army Ending.
• A popular theme of The X-Files fanfics is to explain away the fates of Scully's children: some fics bring Emily back to life, even more explain away putting William up for adoption (it didn't happen or they get him back), and some do both.
• iCarly: Changing the end of several episodes:
  • iKiss: Carly and Freddie kiss and not Sam and Freddie.
  • iSpeed Date: Freddie notices Sam and runs after her, not the actual ending with Carly and Freddie dancing after not noticing Sam.
  • iOMG: Adding a post-script which solves the cliff-hanger. Freddie gently letting down Sam then going after Carly or having Carly come after him, the same but with Carly going after Sam, or just having Freddie respond to Sam positively.
• Glee: Hunting the Unicorn is a Deconstruction Fic of the Kurt/Blaine relationship involving liberal amounts of Cerebus Retcons, Backstory, and Fridge Horror for Blaine—which turns him from a Relationship Sue into a severely damaged person who desperately needs a hug. The author mentions that if the writers had given Blaine less songs and more writing, his characterization could have been similar.
• Most "virtual sixth seasons" of Sliders follow Rembrandt as he earns a happy ending by separating Quinn and Mallory, freeing Colin from the vortex, and finishing off the Kromaggs for good. And this one story, "Slide Effects," has Quinn Mallory waking up to find time has been rewound to the Pilot, with only Quinn remembering sliding, and cheerfully resets the show to just after Season 2.
• Power Rangers. With one well remembered couple throughout the seasons (Tommy/Kim), which ended because of a "Dear John" Letter sent by Kimberly, there are plenty of fics claiming it was a fake (the person responsible usually being Kat), or that Kim was hiding the real reason for the breakup.

Newspaper Comics

• Foob's Paradise can only be described as a Fix Comic that seeks to address the very bitter feelings many fans have had about the last few years of For Better or For Worse and its ending. Namely by portraying the final canonical plotline about Liz's wedding as the delirious fantasy of a broken Elly Patterson while the webcomic's plot deals with what "really" happened, mostly from Liz's perspective.
  • Foobar is a Fix comic that assumes that the new-runs are the result of a magic spell Elly cast immediately after Liz's wedding in order to fix everything that she thinks went wrong with her life; the problem is that the characters born before 1979 also have their 2008 personalities in their 1981 bodies leaving the rest to fend for themselves in an adult-free 2010. Both factions are communicating by April's ability to time travel and are trying to resist this.
    • The strip is celebrating the transition to straight reprints by having April and the other characters call Elly out and forcing her to send them back to their 2010 lives. Elly agrees to this because she realizes that she can't actually change the past to any great extent. The end result is that while the other characters use the insights they derived from the change to better themselves, Elly, who is at this point been divorced for six months, is more or less isolated, having learned precisely nothing except that she was destined to be a housewife. Eventually, public discussion of the time warp leaves her trapped in her own body, endlessly replaying the past.
  • Finally, a group of bloggers have written unofficial continuations of the monthly letters that used to appear on the website; the latest development is Elly Patterson's death as the result of a bungled attempt to murder John by a third party; the logic behind that is the strip is going into straight reprints because Elly is dead and we're seeing her life flash before our eyes.

Music

• An example In-Universe: In the original book by Gaston Leroux, Erik, The Phantom of the Opera, (who terrorizes his beloved Christine into being his wife) is writing a musical masterpiece based on the Opera Don Giovanni, The Casanova who really believes the woman who wants to love him has to accept him as a cheating Jerkass boyfriend, and who ends being dragged in hell to please the Moral Guardians. Why is a Fix Fic? Because the title: “Don Juan Triumphant”.

Theatre

• For extra credit in a freshman English class, someone once wrote a Romeo and Juliet Fix Fic, attempting to keep to Shakespeare's writing style while eliminating that irritating Act 5 twist.
  • Well, William Davenant and David Garrick thought it was a good idea, too... Even Shakespeare himself reportedly wrote an alternative ending, long since lost.
• Older Than Steam: You also have, back in the 17th century, Nahum Tate rewriting King Lear to give it a happy ending, keeping Cordelia alive and marrying her off to Edgar. (Incidentally, Tate's version was incredibly popular; it kept Shakespeare's original off the stage for decades.)
• A lot of Spring Awakening fans fix Moritz's death by having him walk Ilse home instead of staying and shooting himself. Unfortunately for fans who want to fix the other death in the musical, it's really hard to "fix" a botched abortion.

Video Games

• The Command & Conquer fanfic Tiberium Wars was written more or less as a Fix Fic aimed at the official Novelization of the game itself. Even though its not even past the first act of the game thus far, the general consensus among the readers is that it has well surpassed the actual novel.
  • Surpassing the novel itself isn't really that much of an achievement, considering how stupid and awful it was. Some people are speculating, though, that this fic could surpass the game.
• There's some Mega Man X fic that doesn't try to "fix" the story as much as it tries to have it make sense, like explaining how a computer virus can actually affect a physical environment (even humans) or how reploid "souls" can go back to their bodies. Besides that, there's a lot of fic splintering off from X5/X6, which had multiple endings and was a pretty important point in the series.
  • Other stories include ones where Iris never died, ones where Gate lives and gets together with Alia, ones where the author's favorite Maverick never died and became good again ...
  • For a while, there was a common fanon theory that everyone in the Mega Man universe was killed during the 100-year gap. A few authors tried to fix this by having them plausibly disappear off radar or get new bodies.
  • Most of the "common sense" problems of the X and Zero series actually seem to vanish if one assumes as many Capcom games as humanly possibly are actually part of the same continuity, and the "big evils" that keep showing up are all related, at least in terms of their "stuff of evil". Psycho energy as the basis of the maverick virus makes a lot of sense, if you're not too terrible worried about maintaining the serious tone of the later games.
• Final Fantasy VII also houses many of those, often with some time travel and centering on Cloud. Some of them can be very entertaining as they explain it with quantum mechanics, didn't forget any characters somewhere and threw in a reference to the Revolutionary Knitting Circle for extra flavour.
  • And then, we have the fanfics for those irritated by Aeris/Aerith's death.
• There's at least one Warcraft fanfic in which Taretha Foxton leaves Durnholde Keep with Thrall and survives as a result. There are also a few that address the chemistry between Jaina and Thrall during Warcraft 3 (and the expansion) that even Thrall's voice actor doesn't want to admit to. And that's not even getting into events with Garrosh.
• Many fans who were upset by the implied fates of certain Chrono Trigger characters in Chrono Cross set about rectifying this in fic form. Of course, given the Chrono series' core conceit of time travel and parallel dimensions, it practically invites this.
• Originally, in Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow the Hedgehog fell into the Earth's atmosphere and "died" after fighting the Biolizard with Sonic's help. Since then, Eggman resurrected Shadow, who'd develop amnesia, and even went far as to develop Shadow androids to confuse Shadow, and in turn, the player. So, one fanfic author developed two fanfics explaining the alternate ending where Sonic actually saves Shadow from falling into the Earth. That way, Shadow won't be able to whine, complain, and mope about his past, instead vowing to protect Sonic and friends as his new friends, while Eggman doesn't build the Shadow androids at all to confuse Shadow and the player. The first fanfic takes place through Shadow's perspective, while the second takes place through Cream's perspective, to explain Cream the Rabbit's addition to the story.
  • In fact, the storyline to the first Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast was so terrible, that even Sonic himself was underdeveloped and therefore terrible. So, the same author wrote an alternate version of the same story to correct the problems with not only Sonic's character-development, but also every other Sonic character, including Big the Cat as well as two new additions, Cream and Rouge. The fic is told through Sonic, Cream, and Rouge's perspectives, similar to Sonic Adventure's multiple-perspective storyline. In the alternate version, each character goes through a moment of development; Sonic struggles to learn what it means to rely on friends just as much as to protect them, while Cream learns the value of growing-up and protecting the people she cares for, and Rouge becomes less of a dirty slut and more of an honorable thief with compassion for all life.
• There's one fic out there for Persona 3 that does this - but from a gameplay standpoint, it actually makes sense. After finishing the game, a New Game+ option appears, allowing you to keep your level, Persona Compendium, all items and social stats - but forcing the player to stay on the rails when all they really want to do is change what they know is going to happen. Of course, opinions vary, but all in all the "Fixed" elements were handled quite well. Shinji is saved, though it is explicitly mentioned that the side effects of his medication mean he will die within a year. Minato lives by holding back Erebus with the combined power of his social links, though he mentions he doesn't know if that will hold back The Fall forever.
• There are already several fics out there that "fix" the ending of Portal 2 in which Wheatley is either not sent out into space, or brought back to Earth some time after the game's end. A particularly good one can be found here.
  • Another thing that verges on Fandom Specific Plot is Chell returning to Aperture. After all, you can't 'ship her with G La DOS or Wheatley if she's gone.
• Thanks to the ending and how bad it is to most people, Mass Effect 3 is starting to have many fics that are trying to fix this problem.

Webcomics

• Red Dead Virgo wasn't this originally, but for a time became this after certain events in the canon. To quote the author: "Stay tuned for updates to the RDV-verse, where everything is actually pretty fucking happy and functional and sane. Who woulda thunk!" This didn't last.

Web Original

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is prone to fixfics that give Penny a Disney Death or make her Only Mostly Dead.

Western Animation

• There's rewriting Transformers: The Movie and leaving out the Dinobots. How does that even work?
  • There's also ignoring the movie (and Seasons 3 and 4) completely.
• Many Transformers fans are discontent with the Unicron Trilogy, and try to rewrite the entire series (yes, 52 episodes for each) to make it better fit with their sensibilities. This usually results in a fanverse that, but for the names of the characters, is absolutely nothing like the original shows. Keep an eye out for Darker and Edgier, elimination of perceived Scrappies, and the Decepticons as Exclusively Evil.
• Teen Titans fic that resurrects Terra after her Heroic Sacrifice are almost as endemic are those that inflict Die for Our Ship on her. After she actually was resurrected, or something, it changed into fixing what the author didn't like about it. One of them, part of the "Sanza Salazar trilogy", has Terra revived by the actions of a group of villains instead of whatever mysterious circumstance revived her in the original series, mostly so the Titans can get to her before she decides I Just Want to Be Normal like she did originally.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom has Canon!Zutara, and there are too many fics to count that, using various means, have made it their mission to correct what they see as the biggest mistake of the series.
• In the wake of Toy Story 3, a cottage industry of Fix Fic has sprung up, getting Woody and Bo back together.
• Galaxy Rangers has a very small fandom, but there are at least four different takes on how Eliza is rescued. It's rarely a matter of "if".
• Frankie Rules, a Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends fic set after an 8-year Time Skip, features fixes for some less-than-popular episodes of the series (for example, the events of "The Little Peas" are revealed to be a wild rumor started by Bloo, and in the final chapter Frankie gets even with Goofball John McGee from "Impostor's Home for Make-Em-Up Pals"). There's also a prequel by the same author that makes amends for one of Madame Foster's most controversial actions.
• The Total Drama Comeback Series, an alternate version of Total Drama Island's second season, actually wasn't intended as a Fix Fic at first... but when the actual season two aired, many people started to see it that way. Its author, the Kobold Necromancer, has since started to do a purposeful Fix Fic for season three, largely because his favorite characters weren't given the nicest treatment by the writers. (His favorite is Ezekiel, if that gives you any indication.)
• Some Codename:Kids Next Door fan fics portray the Splinter Cell being an actual villain organization bent on ridding the world of all adults instead of being cover-up for the GKND, either with the GKND still coincidentally in existance, or removing the GKND entirely. The KND Splinter Cell's nature and motives vary depending on the author writing the fanfic. One example is titled Operation SPLINTER CELL.
• In the past couple of years, a vast majority of Tiny Toon Adventures fans have been so upset over what happened to Fifi La Fume at the end of "Out of Odor" that some of them have written some alternate endings in which Fifi A.) gets saved, B.) outsmarts Elmyra, C.) gets help from somebody else, D.) manages to escape Elmyra in any way, or E.) gets saved by an unexpected twist.
• The Pony POV Series isn't solely a Fix Fic, but the author typically does major edits with every new episode to intergrate the canon into the story, in the process providing explainations that, in the universe of the fic, make perfect sense and actually explain a Plot Hole or two. For example, Rainbow Dash's behavior in "Mystrious Mare-Do-Well" was the result of her trying to cover up/compensate for her Heroic BSOD resulting from how she handled Discord's Sadistic Choice. Noteably a very well done example of how to do a Fix Fic right.
  • The Friendship is Magic fanfic Whisper explains the parasprite infestation in "Swarm of the Century", and Twilight's attempt to fix it going horribly awry, as the work of sabotage by the Great and Powerful Trixie, who wrongly blamed Twilight for an apparent curse (actually a case of poison joke) that spoiled Trixie's stage presence.
  • There are also a number of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fanfics (and at least one fan comic) that try to end the events of "The Best Night Ever" on a less bittersweet note.
  • My Little Unicorn is a fix fic which also happens to be a Hate Fic, with the author trying to change the entire universe and its concepts to fit his ideas (for example, he absolutely hates the idea of friendship (the main concept of the Fi M universe), and thinks that the power of belief is the strongest there is (whatever he means by that)). It's not a Troll Fic.

Other

• The Never Again novels are a set of fanfics that attempt to fix the entire Twentieth Century (hint: it involves time travel. And a few judicious assassinations: let's just say that Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act has been thoroughly repealed.) Written as a kind of therapy by a professor who studied crimes against humanity, several of which appear as the backstory of some of the characters.
  • However, the author keeps subverting this, because the characters never get more than a Bittersweet Ending at the end of each book. The first book, for instance, ends with the main characters killing each other over a personal squabble, and its relatively-happy Distant Finale is Ret Conned by the events of the second book, which show that the characters' actions had merely made things much, MUCH worse. Yeah, the second book manages to fix everything wrong with the first one, but the characters are killed off again! In fact, that happens every time that events seem to go well for the heroes. The third book doesn't even have any interventions, being more of a thriller, which winds up getting the Reset Button pushed so hard the entire novel becomes pointless. The series seems alternately to be a Deconstruction and a Reconstruction of the Set Right What Once Went Wrong concept.

Licensed Examples

Anime and Manga

• In the Nightmare of Nunnally manga, Lelouch gets Powered Armor instead of a compelling voice, and the situation that leads up to the Euphinator incident doesn't happen. Instead, she ends up becoming the Empress of Britannia. The setting's kindness extends far further than that. Suzaku did not kill his father and is thus a true knight rather than a Death Seeker. Neither Mao nor Rolo get anywhere near Shirley. Nunnally ends fully recovered physically and even mentally, and with a new friend who might possibly be more. The only named characters that die are Genbu, Mao, Rolo, Marianne, Charles, Clovis, and possibly Darlton, which in turn means that the other characters don't have to angst about their friends and family being wiped out. Lelouch does take CC's code, which in this setting was probably a mercy, but parts on good terms with Nunnally and didn't break any hearts when leaving.
  • In a postscript to Nightmare of Nunnally, the author mentioned that he was impacted by the deaths of Euphemia and Lelouch in canon, which compromised his objectivity. However, he also mentions that he doesn't know if this is positive or negative.

Comic Books

• Marvel recently launched a Fix Fic aimed at one of comics' greatest dork ages, the Spider-Man Clone Saga, a six-part series named, appropriately, Spider-Man: The REAL Clone Saga. It's written by Tom DeFalco, who was one of the editors of the original disaster and purports to "explore the story as it was originally conceived".
  • And of course in the same Spidey umbrella, there's One More Day, Joe Quesada's editorially mandated fixfic for elements of around 20 years of continuity he didn't like.
    • Which, of course, most fans think needs a Fix Fic of its own.
• Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds is essentially a fix fic by Geoff Johns, simultaneously clearing up the Legion of Super-Heroes continuity boggle and bringing back two unfairly dead characters, Kid Flash and Superboy, the latter of which Johns had to kill off in Infinite Crisis. (It was either Superboy or Nightwing, so all things considered...)
  • It should be noted, though, that there were a number of things Geoff included that just caused more continuity errors. Such as the original Fatal Five being a part of the Legion of Super-Villains, even though, if this was supposed to be the "original" Legion, two were dead and one was neutralized. Sorcerer's World being intact after it was destroyed. Timber Wolf and Lightning Lass being a couple again. No mention of the Ranzz children. Andromeda being with the Reboot Legion in Limbo despite not being a member of the team when they were trapped, and the fact that there were members missing from the Threeboot Legion (Gazelle, Dream Girl) and some were added back after they left (Princess Projectra, Timber Wolf).
• Sometime during the 70s, Marvel published a pretty reprehensible The Avengers story involving Ms. Marvel, in which the Earth's Mightiest Heroes decide that Victim Falls For Rapist is good (discussed here probably NSFW). Apparently, Chris Claremont thought whoever wrote that tripe needed to go die in a fire, and wrote Avengers Annual #10 as a Fix Fic where Ms. Marvel calls the Avengers out on their bullshit. Thanks, Chris.
  • It's from Avengers #200 and is co-written by Jim Shooter, George Pérez, Bob Layton and David Michelinie. But it's notably Jim's idea.
• In the Spider-Man comics, one of the popular stories during the early 80's dealt with the identity of the Hobgoblin. The writer for the storyline, Roger Stern, left the series before revealing the identity. The storyline was passed around between several writers, before being resolved controversially and leaving a gaping plot hole open. Eventually, Roger Stern was brought back to write the miniseries Hobgoblin Lives,which undid the previous resolution and told the story as Stern originally intended.

Film

• The film of Roald Dahl's The Witches could been seen as a controversial example, given that Dahl himself was upset at the writers inserting a character who, at the end found the boys and turned them back from mice to humans, going against the explicit ending of the book.

Literature

• For a while, the Star Wars Expanded Universe had a fascinating example. Timothy Zahn had written The Thrawn Trilogy, which was often credited with kicking off the modern Star Wars craze. Many of the books which followed those, however, were...not at that level. Some fans took exception, and a mini-genre of "Zahn fixes" sprang up; that is, "How Tim Zahn could fix this mess." Parallel universes, bad dreams...you get the idea. This is one example.
  • After a number of years, Bantam Spectra, then-publisher of the Star Wars books, was about to lose the license to Del Rey Books. Two of their final releases were the Hand of Thrawn duology, written by Zahn, and taking place ten years after his original trilogy—and therefore after everything else that had been written. These books capped off the whole Bantam Spectra era, providing just enough justification (and well-deserved Take Thats) for the most Egregious problems. A hinted-at and reviled romantic relationship, for example, was revealed to be a strictly-professional search for information. The duology ended with a Grand Finale that could have worked as the ending to the entire Star Wars universe.
    • And given what came after, some wish it had been. Many fans have expressed disappointment with the New Jedi Order, and especially Legacy of the Force, because of what they see as Character Derailment, Depending on the Writer, Writer on Board, and a certain amount of Ship-to-Ship Combat. Not to mention, killing off Zahn's characters without permission.
    • Fate of the Jedi was intended as a series-long Fix Fic for Legacy of the Force, but didn't quite work out- while fandom hasn't rejected it as totally as it did LOTF, the series still turned out decidedly unpopular, fixing superficial issues while retaining the more serious ones.
  • Zahn's Allegiance fixes the Stormtroopers, disregarding the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy and showing readers that they're as individual as the heroes, and can be a real threat. It's a pity that Zahn seems to be the only Star Wars writer to respect the (non-Mandalorian) Stormtroopers.
  • Zahn isn't the only writer who has written a Fix Novel, either. Mike Stackpole's I, Jedi was a Fix Fic for the Jedi Academy Trilogy, specifically calling Luke out for enabling the universe's largest Karma Houdini, implying that a solar system is a statistic, and claiming (or perhaps forging) an Omniscient Morality License. It also does a good job of justifying Luke's actions, straightening him out, and putting him back on the right path. Yes, at the same time. And that's only half of the book.
    • The novel also writes popular characters Kyle Katarn and Corran Horn into the Jedi Apprentice trilogy, allowing the novels to better sync up with the computer games and with each other.
  • Finally, Aaron Allston's later X-Wing books are a Fix Fic for The Courtship of Princess Leia. They turn the cartoonishly evil Imperial baddies from Courtship into Intelligence-trained Chessmasters using a deliberately projected image to make their enemies underestimate them. Also, they explain the inconsistent references to the destruction of Iron Fist with the Second Death gambit.
  • The last of Allston's X-Wing novels, Starfighters of Adumar, is also something of a Fix Fic, in that in wraps up the unpopular Wedge Antilles/Qui Xux pairing and and gives the popular-but-heretofore-subtext-only Wedge/Iella Wessiri pairing a Relationship Upgrade.
• Connie Willis's Remake has one of the characters work in a place called "Happy Endings" which can "re-do" the endings to sad movies and make them happy. The main character thinks this is stupid, especially since their end to Casablanca would involve Ilsa's husband dying and her and Rick embracing, meaning the Nazis would kill them. At the end, however, he comes up with a better happy ending to Casablanca: a Distant Finale, where after the war is over, Ilsa (her husband dead) returns to the ruins of Rick's Bar and meets him.
  • The Critic did something similar to spoof this concept in "Dr. Jay" via crossbreeding it with Executive Meddling and Viewers are Morons: Duke Phillips' "Phillipsvision", which not only gives happy endings to films like Casablanca, but also incorporates Lowest Common Denominator elements throughout: Spartacus ends with a Smokey and the Bandit-inspired chase, and Charles Foster Kane's last word is "Schwing."
• Isaac Asimov wrote a short story, "The Up-to-date Sorcerer", that serves as a Fix Fic to the ending of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Sorcerer. The characters, all familiar with the operetta, find themselves in an identical situation, discard the solution used in the play as unworkable, and come up with a better way to resolve the dilemma. At least one modern production of The Sorcerer has used Asimov's ending instead of the original.
  • Marvin Kaye's novel The Incredible Umbrella has Wells reveal that he faked his self-sacrifice while dispelling the love-potion mess, in order to avoid having to deal with dissatisfied customers.
• The Adventure of the Empty House was essentially a fix-fic for Sherlock Holmes - after so many complaining fans and having a need for money, Doyle brought Holmes back to life, retconning what happened at Reichenbach and justifying the retcon admirably.
• The Cold Solution by Don Sakers provides a solution to the unwinnable scenario of The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. (This is not to say that the original story doesn't have its flaws—in fact, the author didn't like the ending, either, and repeatedly "[came] up with ingenious ways to save the girl", only for the editor to reject them.)
• The Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain series are, essentially, the result of injecting the Warhammer 40000 setting with an enormous does of optimism and competence. Yes, there is always a new horror lurking around the corner and brutal death and destruction are everyday facts of life, but even after ten millenia of constant war the Imperium is still filled with brave men and women that are willing and able to defend the innocent against the scum of the galaxy. The former series even saw a reinvisioning of the Imperial Guard, lifting them out of complete and total Red Shirt status, and into Mauve Shirt or even Men of Sherwood status within the fluff.
• Chapter's Due, Graham McNeill's sixth Ultra Marines novel, is something of a fixfic for the 5th edition fluff for the Space Marines Codex. It acknowledges that the Ultramarines do make mistakes, and that while they are some of the finest warriors in the Imperium, other chapters are still better than them at some things.
• The licensed Star Trek books of the so-called Star Trek Novel Verse gives us the String Theory trilogy, which fixes up Star Trek Voyager: Why is Captain Janeway so out of character at the beginning of Season Five, and other points later on? Why did the Nacene Caretaker species not show up after season two? Why is Voyager in top condition as of the later seasons despite dwindling supplies? Why did Kes suddenly turn bitter and evil in "Fury"? This trilogy fills in all the gaps, and helps make Voyager's continuity a lot easier to swallow. However, some readers have suggested that the answers given here are weirder than the possible plot holes they try to plug, others that the things being fixed weren’t too much of a distraction anyway.
  • There is also the Star Trek Enterprise novel series, which tells "what really happened" at the end of the series, using Jake and Nog poring over recently declassified Federation documents as a Framing Device. Included in the retcons is erasing the much-reviled Senseless Sacrifice of "Trip" Tucker.
• The Last Ringbearer, as stated by the author, originated as an exercise in trying to reconcile/explain The Lord of the Rings in the terms of a 'real' world (in his words, give it a "full exoneration"). Too bad he hasn't read the Silmarillion.
• There are at least two different books that undo the Downer Ending of Let's Go Play at the Adams.
• Love, Stargirl, the 2007 sequel to Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl, effectively retcons away the Distant Finale the first book provided, ending on a massive Hope Spot for the reunion of Leo and Stargirl.
• As mentioned in the fanfic examples for Wicked, the musical is basically a fixfic for the book. Elphaba and Fieyro don't die and get to live happily ever after, albeit in exile.
• The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf reads like one for the King Arthur legends. Morgan le Fay and Arthur are Childhood Friends and each other's true loves, only kept apart due to their being too closely related. Morgan isn't evil, and neither is their son Mordred. Arthur accepts Guinevere's adultery with Bedwyr (a Composite Character of Bedivere and Lancelot) since he cannot love her himself, and becomes their Secret Keeper. When Camelot comes crashing down it's none of their fault.

Live Action TV

• Saturday Night Live's "lost ending" to It's a Wonderful Life is essentially a professional Fix Fic intended to eliminate Mr. Potter's Karma Houdini. Basically, the townsfolk discover he double-crossed George Bailey, form a mob and go after Potter, who is revealed to not even really be a cripple. It ends with them singing "Auld Lang Syne" as they savagely beat him.
• Most of the Star Trek Enterprise fandom was very unhappy with the series finale "These Are The Voyages", but one aspect in particular is largely regarded as Fanon Discontinuity: Trip Tucker's death. One of the recent Star Trek Enterprise Relaunch novels, The Good That Men Do, explained that the above event was a hoax propagated by The Federation for centuries and that he had actually gone undercover with the Romulans.
• A Blakes Seven example that seems likely: the episode "The Harvest Of Kairos", written by an author whose general work suggests serious problems with women, had Servalan suddenly and unconvincingly becoming a lust-crazed masochistic doormat to a ridiculously over-the-top Villain Stu. Two years later Tanith Lee scripted an episode called "Sand" in which a very similar character appears, lusts after her, gets squashed by her with barely any effort, and dies pathetically.

Tabletop Games

• The RPG of The Dresden Files book series has a section listing characters who have appeared in the novels. One of them is mentioned as "not coming back" after being mind raped beyond repair. The book suggests that a player might find inspiration in having that character, or one like her, recover anyway. In the margin comments, Harry Dresden is torn between being angry at the situation being treated lightly, and hopeful that the character might find peace, even if only in the context of a role playing game.

Video Games

• Perhaps the single most successful and best-known offical example of Fix Fic is the Super Robot Wars series; they quite often take series that are seen as "good but flawed", such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Zeta Gundam, and then proceed to "correct" what the fandom (and sometimes the professional critics) identify as narrative problems in the individual stories when making the Massive Multiplayer Crossover plots for the games. Examples include having Shinji become a much more mature, rational person due to more human contact or fixing some of the Character Derailment that affected Gundam Seed Destiny. Other times they simply provide the "best" scenario possible from ambiguous works, such as Amuro and Char surviving their final showdown in Char's Counterattack, or preventing tragic character deaths such as Gai Daigoji or Elpe Puru.
  • Super Robot Wars Z deserves special mention, as the first game fixes the massive Broken Base that is Gundam Seed Destiny by having everyone involved act more intelligently and treats both Kira and Shinn's sides as equally good and heroic. Then Z2 Saisei-Hen went and fixed Code Geass by letting the player decide whether or not to betray Lelouch, and thus ultimately prevent Zero Requiem from happening. On the other hand, Z2 Hakai-hen doesn't let the player prevent the "big three" plotline deaths of Kamina, the original Lockon Stratos, and Euphemia li Britannia. The latter ultimately shows up, alive and well, as Suzaku mopes post-FLEIJA explosion.
• Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is basically Chris Avellone's Fix Fic for the entire Star Wars universe. But it is a Dark Fic in terms of the storyline.
• As is Below the Root for the huge mistake author Zilpha Keatley Snyder acknowledged herself to have made at the end of the Green-Sky Trilogy. Probably also the first video game canon sequel to a book.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: Battle of the Aces makes a significant change to the A's continuity; Reinforce Ein survives instead of sacrificing herself for Hayate, but by the end of the story, loses her ability to Unison with Hayate.
• Dragon Quest IV had one added to its DS remake. The first five chapters play out as they did in the original version. The sixth chapter allows you to revive both the big bad and the elven lady he loved, whose death pushed him to become the ultimate evil. Redeemed by love, the big bad then joins your party and fights beside you to take down one of his flunkies, the one who ordered the elf's death and therefore manipulated him into becoming the ultimate monster.
• Puella Magi Madoka Magica Portable has elements of this towards its parent anime series. Player choices can make it so that the outcomes of certain Wham Episodes are more favorable than in the anime. The trope can also be inverted, though, by making said choices result in even worse outcomes. For example, the player could save Mami from being killed by Charlotte, only to have her turn into a witch later.