History Fridge / Fanfic

* In a WantForANail fanfic of "A Mother's Love" by [=lordofthelandoffire=], Kushina is enraged after awakening from a coma to find that Sarutobi publicly denied Kushina's marriage to Minato feeling it would protect Naruto, thus making her Minato's mistress/whore and making Naruto his bastard son. Some people have wondered why Kushina is so angered by this, deciding it had to do with losing the Namikaze clan compound and money. But if you look at it from a Japanese perspective, where family and heritage are very important, it makes sense. Hell, a major plot point with Chouji involved a flashback of his father telling him about how they could trace their family back 16+ generations, not to mention Sasuke's entire motivation involves avenging the Uchiha clan, including the man who murdered them after finding out he was ordered to. So what Sarutobi essentially did was steal Naruto's Namikaze heritage, which Kushina would see as being especially terrible due to the fact her own clan had been destroyed, and now Naruto was losing his by the order of a man she considered a friend.

* It took me reading [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5169753/21/The_Trouble_with_Weather The Trouble with Weather]] (an [[AlternateUniverse AU]] {{Film/X-Men}} fic) about three times before I had a moment of FridgeBrilliance. In chapter twenty-one, Ororo tells Logan that humans had put her in a cage; Logan then wonders if there was some kind of hidden meaning or test in what she'd said, since her expression to his reaction is described as "disappointment," and "her eyes had been searching" as she'd told him about being in a cage. Here's where the FridgeBrilliance kicks in: in the very next chapter, Logan has a dream/flashback of rescuing an eight-year-old Ororo from a cage, and it's revealed later in the fic that Ororo hadn't forgotten that incident. Ororo was hoping that Logan would've remembered it, too!

* Empatheia uses this to justify her sublime {{House}} / Series/{{Doctor Who}} crossover, ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5064112/1/As_the_Crow_Flies As the Crow Flies]]''. The story asserts that [[spoiler: House is a later incarnation of the Doctor, born after the Doctor died while in human form.]] This is one of those "yeah, sure, I can roll with that'' things, until the fact of [[spoiler: all the impossible things House has done with his brain - he makes impossible leaps of logic on a regular basis, he's communicated directly with his own subconscious, and so on -]] is brought up. - MaxwelEdison

* Watching AMVHell 5, I was amused by the pairing of {{Gantz}} with the song Singing in the Rain, thinking it a matter of LyricalDissonance of a lighthearted song paired with violence. Then I remembered AClockworkOrange...

* There was a HarryPotter fanfic (sadly, now deleted) in which the main character used a Time-Turner to go back and change history, sacrificing her life so that another would live. I wasn't happy about this at the time, because in HP canon we are told that Time-Turners cannot be used that way; the version of TimeTravel they use always creates StableTimeLoops and those who tried to alter things often get themselves killed. It wasn't upon re-reading that I recognized the FridgeBrilliance: the character got herself killed when trying to change history. So, yes, it was an actually canon-compliant use of TimeTravel.

* A HarryPotter / RurouniKenshin crossover fic, [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2737703/1/RuroKen_and_the_Philosophers_Stone RuroKen and the Philosophers Stone]] had Dumbledore talk to Hiko about letting his apprentice Kenshin go to Hogwarts (and that it would be dangerous if he remain untrained in regards to magic). Later, Kenshin (unaware of the 'danger' part) wonders how a headmaster has time to go out of his way to do that, figuring he has to be a busy guy. Then I remembered that not even Harry was personally seen to by Dumbledore before he went off the school, hinting at something a little more worrisome than what's being let on.

* I first thought the ending of the ''Literature/GoodOmens'' fanfic ''Its Own Place'' was a cop-out because it had the DeusExMachina of Aziraphale and Crowley's place of punishment turning out to be a renamed Earth. After some thinking, I realized that it's the only fitting ending for them. The original book made it clear that they don't belong to either extreme (Heaven and Hell) and that Earth is the "middle ground" where they can meet. Even after the Apocalypse, this middle ground ''has'' to live on in some form because while both sides love to paint everything black and white, real life just doesn't work that way. Making Purgatory Earth may be a tad convenient, but it makes perfect thematic sense. As for my related complaint about it being a ResetButtonEnding, I realized that when Aziraphale disagrees with Crowley's [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] remark, he's pointing out that while their physical location has been reset, their ''emotional'' state is where they've actually developed. They now fully know where they belong -- on the middle ground and with each other. All this elevated a "[[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot good fic that could have been better]]" to "[[FanficRecs/GoodOmens one of the best fics in this fandom, period]]". -- {{Solandra}}.

* After reading most of Peter Chimeara's works as well ''MyImmortal'', I've come to realize that even horrible fiction can be deep and meaningful upon drunken nights and deep consideration. ''{{Doom Repercussions of Evil}}'', itself a parody of twist-heavy pretentious faux-deep fiction, has deep insight into the motives and drive of the human race. Don't get me started on analogues to racism. Then there's Batman: Nemesis Fight, which if played straight and filmed, would be BY FAR the best batman movie ever made. Why does Robin leave batman? Because, Batman has broke his own rules after losing everything. Robin loses the will to fight. Regarding My Immortal, Tara Gilesbie creates a fictional world so completely bizarre and surreal that it's hard to call it anything but original. Put simply, gay vampire witch goffs go to a magic school, split on West Side Story style grounds.
* At the original ending of ''MyImmortal'', before the (supposed) hacking and the author's hiatus, Enoby wakes up in the nurse's office after getting shot. Voldemort then appears and is said to look "less mean than usual", and cries at the sight of Enoby. This could easily be seen as just another example of VillainDecay, until you consider the reason Enoby went back in time in the first place was to redeem Voldemort! It looks like she ''did'' manage to soften him up a bit, after all.
** As the fic progresses, the author's [[RougeAnglesOfSatin spelling]] and, well, ''everything'' get steadily worse. The author notes also become increasingly incoherent. This could either be explained by a falling-out with her friend Raven, who apparently proofread the earlier chapters (and was either only slightly better than Tara or didn't really try and was laughing behind her hand), or, assuming she followed through on her threats to slit her wrists every time someone spammed the comments, the effects of blood loss. [[AlternateCharacterInterpretation Or she could have been a troll doing it on purpose.]]
*** Another bit of Fridge Brilliance: "Goff" is apparently the way chavs in northern England pronounce "goth". So either Tara's a chav, or a brilliant troll who knows some chavs.
** Voldemort is often called Satan; at first it seems odd since they are satanists, but in his youth he used the nickname Satan, and it could be taken as a lampshading for this.
** When I was going through My Immortal, trying to find all the errors I could (I found over six thousand), I noticed something. After Ebony has her vision, she leaves with Vampire and Draco to tell Dumbledore about it. In the process, they leave Draco's flying Mercedes-Benz parked in the forest. When it shows up again, Snape suddenly has it, which you'd write off as Tara forgetting where she left the car--then it hit me. They left the car in the forest twenty chapters ago, where Snape could have easily stolen it.

* I first thought the ending of the ''GoodOmens'' fanfic ''Its Own Place'' was a cop-out because it had the DeusExMachina of Aziraphale and Crowley's place of punishment turning out to be a renamed Earth. After some thinking, I realized that it's the only fitting ending for them. The original book made it clear that they don't belong to either extreme (Heaven and Hell) and that Earth is the "middle ground" where they can meet. Even after the Apocalypse, this middle ground ''has'' to live on in some form because while both sides love to paint everything black and white, real life just doesn't work that way. Making Purgatory Earth may be a tad convenient, but it makes perfect thematic sense. As for my related complaint about it being a ResetButtonEnding, I realized that when Aziraphale disagrees with Crowley's [[LampshadeHanging lampshading]] remark, he's pointing out that while their physical location has been reset, their ''emotional'' state is where they've actually developed. They now fully know where they belong -- on the middle ground and with each other. All this elevated a "[[TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot good fic that could have been better]]" to "[[FanficRecs/GoodOmens one of the best fics in this fandom, period]]". -- {{Solandra}}.

* A HarryPotter / RurouniKenshin crossover fic, [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2737703/1/RuroKen_and_the_Philosophers_Stone RuroKen and the Philosophers Stone]] had Dumbledore talk to Hiko about letting his apprentice Kenshin go to Hogwarts (and that it would be dangerous if he remain untrained in regards to magic). Later, Kenshin (unaware of the 'danger' part) wonders how a headmaster has time to go out of his way to do that, figuring he has to be a busy guy. Then I remembered that not even Harry was personally seen to by Dumbledore before he went off the school, hinting at something a [[{{Understatement}} little more worrisome]] than what's being let on.

** A possible second fridge brilliance is these chapters in relation to the OC. The OC is a ghost, and in the very early chapters it is stated that she gains power by being around people who acknowledge her existance - specifically, Kyo. As the plot progresses, Eris shows increasingly more and more abilities - and its those abilities that give her the ability to aid in the final fight against Akito, aka the BigBad.

* Empatheia uses this to justify her sublime {{House}}/{{Doctor Who}} crossover, ''[[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5064112/1/As_the_Crow_Flies As the Crow Flies]]''. The story asserts that [[spoiler: House is a later incarnation of the Doctor, born after the Doctor died while in human form.]] This is one of those "yeah, sure, I can roll with that'' things, until the fact of [[spoiler: all the impossible things House has done with his brain - he makes impossible leaps of logic on a regular basis, he's communicated directly with his own subconscious, and so on -]] is brought up. - MaxwelEdison

* This can occur quite a lot in ''Hetalia Axis Powers'' AU fanfiction. They'll be the obvious relations there, but sometimes you look back at a situation and realise that the author has written the entire base outline of WW2 in the form of a soccer game.

* {{Embers}} originally had me quite annoyed. It was loaded Fire Nation apologetics, used to paint literally the whole Fire Nation - every single one of them, even Sozin, as innocent victims of a ruthless Avatar Kyoshi off on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. At the same time, Katara and Aang were [[CharacterDerailment mysteriously transmogrified]] into IdiotBall carriers with one-dimensional, mind-numbingly ridiculous takes on life that were completely contrary to the personalities established over Season One's canon (which the fanfic claimed to be adhering to). Throw in [[spoiler: Dragon!]]Zuko the fire-water dual-wielding [[spoiler: reincarnation of Kuzon]], erase every single bad decision he made in canon and make him a self-flagellating noble hero who can do no wrong, add awesome into everything Zuko does and have the multitudes of Original Characters taking his side, reminding the reader in stylized "monologues" of exactly how fantastic Zuko is, hide behind a variety of excuses ranging from everyone being an UnreliableNarrator to "There are no excuses, only reasons" (suspending this rule if your name is Zuko or Iroh or you're Fire Nation)... [[spoiler: this is officially the most brilliant satire/trollfic of all the hundreds of less well-presented fanfics with similar plotlines.]] Realizing all that, then going back and reading Embers from the start... Vathara is a genius. A '''genius'''..

*** "The latest chapter shows what the Air Nomads were like" - in her ''fanfic''. There's nothing in ''canon'' that hints at this, so the OP has a good point about the Fire Nation apologism [[spoiler: and {{Embers}} being potential trollfic/satire.]]

* {{Embers}} originally had me quite annoyed. It was loaded Fire Nation apologetics, used to paint literally the whole Fire Nation - every single one of them, even Sozin, as innocent victims of a ruthless Avatar Kyoshi off on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. At the same time, Katara and Aang were [[CharacterDerailment mysteriously transmogrified]] into IdiotBall carriers with one-dimensional, [[WallBanger mind-numbingly ridiculous]] takes on life that were completely contrary to the personalities established over Season One's canon (which the fanfic claimed to be adhering to). Throw in [[spoiler: Dragon!]]Zuko the fire-water dual-wielding [[spoiler: reincarnation of Kuzon]], erase every single bad decision he made in canon and make him a self-flagellating noble hero who can do no wrong, add awesome into everything Zuko does and have the multitudes of Original Characters taking his side, reminding the reader in stylized "monologues" of exactly how fantastic Zuko is, hide behind a variety of excuses ranging from everyone being an UnreliableNarrator to "There are no excuses, only reasons" (suspending this rule if your name is Zuko or Iroh or you're Fire Nation)... [[spoiler: this is officially the most brilliant satire/trollfic of all the hundreds of less well-presented fanfics with similar plotlines.]] Realizing all that, then going back and reading Embers from the start... Vathara is a genius. A '''genius'''..

* According to Nounai Kanojo's Touhou-related doujins, Cirno knows more about sex than Marisa.

* The Spike/Xander fic "Nothing The Same" features the premise that the change to the series occurs when Xander doesn't handle Jessie's death as well as he did in the series, and everything changes. However, when Spike comes to Sunnydale, Drucilla is already dead. At first, I thought, as the author personally claimed, that Drucilla had just been ruthlessly killed off to better arrange the pairing. Than I read the bits about Drucilla's prophecies about Spike's destiny and the "wounded kitten" he was to care for. Not to mention musings on how Drucilla and a court of other vampires never did mix well, it dawned on me that Dru probably let go of her will to continue so Spike could go be Master of the Hellmouth with Xander at his side!

* At the original ending of ''MyImmortal'', before the (supposed) hacking and the author's hiatus, Enoby wakes up in the nurse's office after getting shot. Voldemort then appears and is said to look "less mean than usual", and cries at the sight of Enoby. This could easily be seen as just another example of villain decay, until you consider the reason Enoby went back in time in the first place was to redeem Voldemort! It looks like she ''did'' manage to soften him up a bit, after all.

* After reading Chapter 23 of ''Kyo Kara Maoh'' fanfic ''Whispers from the Rye'', when Wolfram [[spoiler:and Yuuri finally have sex]], Yuuri remarks that Wolfram is "so quiet." At first, I didn't think anything of it, until I realized that Wolfram is afraid that Yuuri will remember he's a boy and be disgusted all over again.

* {{Embers}} originally had me quite annoyed. It was loaded Fire Nation apologetics, used to paint literally the whole Fire Nation - every single one of them, even Sozin, as innocent victims of a ruthless Avatar Kyoshi off on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. At the same time, Katara and Aang were [[CharacterDerailment mysteriously transmogrified]] into IdiotBall carriers with one-dimensional, [[WallBanger mind-numbingly ridiculous]] takes on life that were completely contrary to the personalities established over Season One's canon (which the fanfic claimed to be adhering to). Throw in [[spoiler: Dragon!]]Zuko the fire-water dual-wielding [[spoiler: reincarnation of Kuzon]], erase every single bad decision he made in canon and make him a self-flagellating noble hero who can do no wrong, add awesome into everything Zuko does and have the multitudes of Original Characters taking his side, reminding the reader in stylized "monologues" of exactly how fantastic Zuko is, hide behind a variety of excuses ranging from everyone being an UnreliableNarrator to "There are no excuses, only reasons" (suspending this rule if your name is Zuko or Iroh or you're Fire Nation)... [[spoiler: this is officially the most brilliant satire/trollfic of all the hundreds of less well-presented fanfics with similar plotlines.]] Realizing all that, then going back and reading Embers from the start... Vathara is a genius. A '''genius'''.
** As always {{YMMV}} on the above statement.

* After reading Chapter 23 of ''Kyo Kara Maoh'' fanfic ''Whispers from the Rye'', when Wolfram [[spoiler:and Yuuri finally have sex]], Yuuri remarks that Wolfram is "so quiet." At first, I didn't think anything of it, until I realized that Wolfram is afraid that Yuuri will remember he's a boy and be disgusted all over again. [[CrossDressingVoices not that he really has anything to worry about...]]

** Apologetics for the Fire Nation, you say? You're forgetting about the Air Nomads. The latest chapter shows what the Air Nomads were like, and how Xiangchen put together his grand scheme for "world peace" [[spoiler:which included kidnapping the new Avatar, Yangchen, shutting her away from the world, targeting Air Nomads, especially the healers, and folding them into the Temples, thus helping Skylord Subodei conquer, rape and pillage everywhere]]. Aang will have to invent a new religion to justify what his great hero did. Killing may be wrong, but erasing one's individuality should be a violation of human rights. What reason is there for that?

** Apologetics for the Fire Nation, you say? You're forgetting about the Air Nomads. The latest chapter shows what the Air Nomads were like, and how Xiangchen put together his grand scheme for "world peace" [[spoiler:which included kidnapping the new Avatar, Yangchen, shutting her away from the world, targeting Air Nomads, especially the healers, and folding them into the Temples, thus helping Skylord Subodei conquer, rape and pillage everywhere]]. Aang will have to invent a new religion to justify what his great hero did. Killing may be wrong, erasing one's individuality is a human rights' violation. What reason is there for that?

** As always {{YMMV}} on the above statement.

* {{Embers}} originally had me quite annoyed. It was loaded Fire Nation apologetics, used to paint literally the whole Fire Nation - every single one of them, even Sozin, as innocent victims of a ruthless Avatar Kyoshi off on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. At the same time, Katara and Aang were [[CharacterDerailment mysteriously transmogrified]] into IdiotBall carriers with one-dimensional, [[WallBanger mind-numbingly ridiculous]] takes on life that were completely contrary to the personalities established over Season One's canon (which the fanfic claimed to be adhering to). Throw in [[spoiler: Dragon!]]Zuko the fire-water dual-wielding [[spoiler: reincarnation of Kuzon]], erase every single bad decision he made in canon and make him a self-flagellating noble hero who can do no wrong, add awesome into everything Zuko does and have the multitudes of Original Characters taking his side, reminding the reader in stylized "monologues" of exactly how fantastic Zuko is, hide behind a variety of excuses ranging from everyone being an UnreliableNarrator to "There are no excuses, only reasons" (suspending this rule if your name is Zuko or Iroh or you're Fire Nation)... [[spoiler: this is officially the most brilliant satire/trollfic of all the hundreds of less well-presented fanfics with similar plotlines.]] Realizing all that, then going back and reading Embers from the start... Vathara is a genius. A '''genius'''.

* When I was going through My Immortal, trying to find all the errors I could (I found over six thousand), I noticed something. After Ebony has her vision, she leaves with Vampire and Draco to tell Dumbledore about it. In the process, they leave Draco's flying Mercedes-Benz parked in the forest. When it shows up again, Snape suddenly has it, which you'd write off as Tara forgetting where she left the car--then it hit me. They left the car in the forest twenty chapters ago, where Snape could have easily stolen it.