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Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it! .... Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!Fix it!
— Fry, Futurama

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 to fix it. In a fanfic.

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. Unfortunately, like all fanfic, most of these suck, no matter the intentions, and even the well-intentioned ones can counter bad decisions with equally bad or worse decisions. It's all subjective of course.

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 Hes Just Hiding.

Compare Ret Con, the Canon version of a Fix Fic. In very rare cases, may lead to Sure Why Not.

[Note: this is not to be confused with a fixup, which is a novel comprised of older and/or unpublished short pieces of fiction. The Other Wiki has a nice discussion of these.]

Examples:

  • Perhaps the single most successful and best-known commercial 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.
  • 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.
  • And that's just the pros. Star Wars Fix Fic that's actually fanfiction is practically a genre unto itself. This troper has seen (and in fact, rather likes) a number of fix fics that 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. Despite being fanfiction, this troper considers them particularly well written.
    • This troper considers Sidereal and Tyranny Reborn to be noteworthy examples of Star Wars Fix Fics, in that 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.")
    • Star Wars: Cerulean retcons the events of the Star Wars III movie: Bly disobeyed Order 66 and instead of killing Aayla Secura, he just faked her death. Part 1, prequel.
    • This troper once had a friend who did nothing but write fics fixing what she considered to be the most egregious offenses of the New Jedi Order series. And had a large group of friends who did the same.
    • The example most often cited on this wiki, though? Darths And Droids, although the Irregulars probably never had an explicit intent to make the story "better than the original."
      • ...That's debatable. Darths and Droids does not have Scout, Able, any of the X-Wing pilots, Mara, Pellaeon, or anything else from the Star Wars Expanded Universe. If the X-Wing pilots appear, and they probably will, they'll just be more idiot throwaway NP Cs. Therefore, while Darths and Droids may be enjoyable and provide entertaining explanations for Plot Holes, it will never even be able to equal the 'verse it's parodying, for This Troper.
  • Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords is basically Chris Avellone's Fix Fic for the entire Star Wars universe. Whether it actually works as such can vary.
  • 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... this editor considers it the closest thing possible in Fan Fiction to authentic Adaptation Distillation.
  • This troper recalls reading a Chrono Trigger Fix Fic that (brilliantly, IMHO) subverts this at the end. The main premise involves an Original Character who was never meant to exist and has the ability to alter Fate, and just happens to save Schala on his own and render all of Chrono Cross moot. The Big Bad turns out to be the unborn spirit of Serge, the main character of Cross, who denounces the protagonist's right to fix a world that wasn't broken just so that he can become the main character.
  • This troper remembers a pair of excellent fanfics that fix much of went wrong in the Buffyverse by exploring the premise of Xander wearing an Obi-Wan Kenobi costume during the Halloween episode, not a soldier costume. Part 1 and Part 2. (Part 2 is a work in progress).
    • There's a Buffyverse Fix Fic listed on the Fan Fic Recommendations page: I Am What I Am, where 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.
  • Cori Falls's 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 Pokemon 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.
  • A Whole New World, on the other hand, is an example of a Fix Fic done brilliantly. Basically, the author 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 extra credit in his freshman English class, This troper wrote a Romeo and Juliet Fix Fic, attempting to keep to Shakespeare's writing style while eliminating that irritating Act 5 twist. He got an A, but looking back, he's not so sure if he'd do it again...o.O
    • Well, William Davenant and David Garrick thought it was a good idea, too... Even Shakespeare himself reportedly wrote an alternative ending, long since lost.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Any Neon Genesis Evangelion Fan Fic that affects the overall plot will fix something horrible that happened to the characters. But that's like throwing a brick firing a grenade launcher and breaking glass while standing inside a 10' by 10' greenhouse.
    • Subverted by the recent and in-progress fic Taking Sights by Lavanya Six, in which it's Gendo Ikari who goes back to fix his mistakes. In the process he manages to make things worse for himself, both through not understanding why things originally broke down, resulting in his fixes just blowing everything to hell, and through the butterfly effect pissing on his plans. Going crazy probably doesn't help much, either.
      • While definitely an example of It Got Worse, this fic still has definite potential for improvement. Other Peggy Sues on the recommendation page have used that formula. Now, random one-shot Hate Fics done to spite characters, those are exceptions to this rule.
    • Another specific example is Shinji And Warhammer 40 K, where the changes begin with Shinji discovering a case with some Warhammer 40 K 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 Earth Scorpion's (as yet incomplete) 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.
    • Averted completely by Random1377's Aoi, starting with Rei being forced to kill Shinji (completely justified by the circumstances) and spiraling downward from there. It's a very good read, but holy crap...
  • The Severus Snape fans tend to write stories that either ignore DH entirely, or ignore the epilogue. This troper found one spectacular pair of fics that actually stick to canon, but telling the story from Hermione's point of view and thus showing the reader action that Harry didn't directly see. The fic is very well written, and actually feels like a Harry Potter book. The characters are all in character, and there's no silly time turners thrown in. The fics are called Phoenix Song (Hermione Granger and the Half Blood Prince) and Phoenix Tears (Hermione Granger and the Deathly Hallows). Warning: these fics are rather addicting.
  • 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.
    • See here. Ginny returns to the past after they lose the war and proceeds to Fix. Every. Last. Thing! She robs Harry of everything that made him who he was in the books and outsmarts everyone without a single problem to confront. The fact that the dialogue reads like an essay doesn't help either.
    • There have been a number of fanfics that follow the events during the last book, only from Neville Longbottom's point of view at Hogwarts.
  • 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 show. Keep an eye out for Darker And Edgier, elimination of perceived Scrappies, and the Decepticons as Always Chaotic Evil.
    • And then there's rewriting Transformers: The Movie and leaving out the Dinobots. How does that even work?
      • This troper is rewriting TFTM to make it more of an entertaining story, cleaning up a lot of continuity in the process. I'm making the conscious decision to include Furmanisms where appropriate, avoid making Daniel The Scrappy, and paying respect to scale (hey, somebody has to!). Since I'm in art school right now, I'm hoping to actually produce my version.
  • 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 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.
  • Wicked bookverse fics in which Fiyero doesn't die are highly common among the Fiyeraba -shudders- shippers. There are some that are good, but most are crap.
    • This troper is in awe of the stunning levels of irony in any Wicked fan complaining about Fix Fic.
  • Sailor Moon FixFics 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 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. Poor Umino gets stiffed. Sometimes they take pity on the poor nerd and simply have Nephrite come back from the dead but accept that Naru moved on.
    • Oh, oh! Don't forget "Chibi Usa doesn't exist" fics! Either some twist of fate makes Usagi have a different child (who fits the author's appeal better) or Chibi Usa is just removed, with no regards to the fact that she's vitally important to three seasons. Sometimes Chibi Usa 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 character the author wants to ship with Naruto with a character outside Team 7, and replaces Sakura and/or Sasuke to do so.
  • 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.
  • Saturday Night Live's "lost ending" to Its 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.
  • Heroes: This Peter/Claude fan community has a bunch of Fan Fic 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 both happily ever after.
  • Dissatisfied with the fact that Sora only stayed a heartless for approximately 60 seconds, this Troper wrote a Fix Fic where Kairi was knocked out before she could hug him back into humanity. It ultimately resulted in one of the most fun fanfictions to write, she's ever done. Which doesn't mean that she has no regard for the Canon. It was just for fun.
  • The Command And Conquer fanfic Tiberium Wars was written more or less as a Fix Fic aimed at the Wall Banger-worthy 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.
  • Dragonball, being such a big franchise, has entire genres of fix fic. First, you have resurrections of whatever villains the author happened to like, which is all too easy with the series' Reset Button. Then there's the vast numbers of "Vegetasei was never really destroyed" and "Vegetasei revived" fics (which admittedly are loads of fun to write). And then you have Die For Our Ship fics - usually to break up Vegeta/Bulma, turning the relationship disgustingly abusive so that Bulma can end up with Yamucha instead. Or the ones that kill off Chi-Chi/turn her from a simple Tsun Dere to a murdering Psycho-bitch so Goku can have a "real" relationship.
  • 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.
  • This troper, after several years of trying to make sense out of the continuity (or lack thereof) in The Legend Of Zelda and its many sequels, wrote what was intended as a Fix Fic to sort out the details. With a little Applied Phlebotinum and The Power Of Love. It actually works, provided you don't regard timeline theories as serious business.
  • As mentioned on Troper Tales: Misaimed Fandom, there's a Teen Titans fic that attempts to "fix" the "lame villains" (according to the typist) by having the Joker come to town and kill the Titans' usual enemies off in an unusually graphic manner.
    • And another Teen Titans fic, 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.
  • 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 cannon series on it's head, and worth a read at least once.
  • This has been happen quite a bit with the new Doctor Who lately. First, there was Rose getting sucked into the parallel universe and now there's also Donna getting mind-wiped.
  • Pick a Ranma 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 Jerk Ass, and Ranma being raised by Genma. Ranma might still be a cursed Jerk Ass who's only a half-step up from being Raised By Wolves, 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 Jerk Ass. 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. Of course, they are split between the ones that consider the the Harem members removed as problems or operate on the assumption that They Can Do So Much Better.
  • 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.
    • But really, the possibilities are 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...
  • There's some Megaman 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 Megaman 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 Z 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.
  • Avatar The Last Airbender fandom has Canon!Zutara. Yes, whether it is tweaking the course of the series itself or having multiple instances of an Official Couple breaking up the Angsty Bad Boy and the Sweet Good Girl must be destined to get together and them not doing so is the catastrophic error of the writers.
  • Firefly doubtless has many stories that undo Wash's death. Here's one of them.
    • Dyne's "Horseshoe Nails" 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 Ret Con.
  • Final Fantasy VII also houses many of those, often with some time travel and centering on Cloud. I found some of them very entertaining as they explained it with quantum mechanics, didn't forget any characters somewhere and threw in a reference to the Revolutionary Knitting Circle for extra flavour.
  • 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 this troper recalls a huge number that 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.
  • 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.
  • Many, many Torchwood fics, which undo (from the end of Season Two) Tosh and Owens's deaths. And an even larger raft of post-Season Three 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 — http://community.livejournal.com/savecoffeeboy . Unlike the series creator's or one main actor's comments in interviews, there are well over a thousand registered members - with more joining daily. .
  • 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.
    • While working on a production of The Sorcerer a couple years ago, this troper and her castmates decided on an alternate-ending-slash-Fix-Sequel. Alexis (being the spotlight hog that he is) makes a last-minute heroic self-sacrifice, and Aline becomes the sorcerer's apprentice so she can look for a way to bring him back. This troper actually started writing the thing — it's entitled "70 St. Mary Axe, or, Love Me!" — and someday she swears she's going to finish it.
  • The Redwall Series has quite a few Fix Fics dedicated to reviving Rose, Martin's love interest. Your Mileage May Vary with any of them, but some do a very good job of keeping it within Canon and providing a legitimate reason for her being Only Mostly Dead. This Troper finds this story to be one of the best.