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Not to be confused with a fixup, which is a novel composed of older and/or unpublished short pieces of fiction, often tied together with some sort of Framing Device.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.
Bleach fic is general 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 EvangelionFan Fic 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 40K, 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.
It's "sister" series Thousand Shinji has a more direct connection with the 41st Milennium, with Shiji meeting and training under a Thousand Sons Chaos Sorcerer as a child. The story fixes a few things, only to later come back and break them in new and interesting (and often horrifying) ways.
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 the its set in, 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.
One Neon Genesis Evangelion fic by Jake Tanner, author of Naruto Veangance Revelaitons, sets out to make the series good in his eyes. For those unfamiliar with NVR, this means including a Gary StuAuthor Avatar who curb stomps his enemies, has sex with virtually every female character and spouts the author's views.
Sailor MoonFix Fics used to frequently feature ways to explain 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? Some audacious fan doesn't like Kishimoto's plot and believes that they can do better.
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.
Many fics have pointed out the seemingly ridiculous usefulness of the Shadow Clone learning technique and Naruto subsequently takes multiple levels in badass.
Since the nature of the Tailed Beasts was rather ambiguous during Naruto: Part I, many fics simplify matters by making them conform to Inu Yasha demon standards.
Now that we know of their origins and most of the questions are answered, this has decreased, although that unsatisfied minority simply use Fanon Discontinuity and ignore said revelation - which, granted, is not unheard of for the fandom to begin with.
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 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.
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.
The fandom has also produced 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 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 (or their relationship getting off to such a rocky start), Ranma being a Jerk Ass, and Ranma being raised by Genma. Ranma might still be a cursed Jerk Ass 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 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. 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 ending of the first season of the Black Butler 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 LoversBittersweet Ending they get in canon. Another common option is to have Fakir turn himself into a duck.
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.
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.
Gundam 00 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 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.
He later does the same thing with Sekireiwith In Flight. With Shirou having the experience of partipating in another secret tournament, he's much more competent, serious, and prepared than Minato, the story is much different than Sekirei. It also made the reunion of Kusano and Shiina happen much earlier, made Akitsu an official Sekirei, and saved Chiho before Uzume's Main/Canon Death. Also, with how the story's progressing, it has pretty much lessen the chance of Shirou becoming Archer. With more action and badessry (courtesy of Shirou), it won't be going too far if one says it's better than the original. It seems it will end in a different way than the original.
Puella Magi Madoka Magica's concept is that the life of a Magical Girl is very tragic and that it doesn't have a truly happy ending. As you can probably guess from that concept, a lot of fanfics are dedicated to saving someone from death. It doesn't quite help that one of the main characters is looping time over and over to save the titular character for an unknown amount of times, which simply added fuel to the fire.
Magica Madoka Veneficus Puella arguably plays with this trope. While the characters 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 DalekSec to help fix things. On the other, it also adds the rest of the Whoverse to screw things up even more.
As Time Diverges The Mitakihara Case adds a quirky yet genius detective and equally smart grad student to the mix, and while L catches onto what the antagonist is planning right away, but this soon gets subverted as the events still play out, and soon get worse as Light face heel turns and kills Kyouko. It gets double subverted though, as L goes back in time and fixes much of the problems that belied their first loop... Though it gets triple subverted when L decides to kill Kyousuke and have Sayaka become a Witch... Would you believe this is quadruple subverted, since this was L's plan to invoke the Decon-Recon Switch?
If you're reading a fanfic based off the 2003 anime of Fullmetal Alchemist that takes place after The Movie, you can almost guarantee it's a "Edward and Alphonse figure out how to get back to their world" fic - with the occasional "Winry or Roy or [insert preferred love interest here] goes to our world" fic.
A lot of fics based on the manga/Brotherhood continuity will have it so Ed doesn't lose his alchemy at the end. And obviously, people who prefer Ed and/or Winry with other people will often write fics eliminating their Official Couple status.
And both versions have tons of fics where Hughes's death never happened.
Of The Stars by the same author does something similar with Sailor Moon, except it aims for Science Fantasy rather than Magitek and is a straight up remake rather than a divergence.
Chapter 8 crosses the fic with Loups=Garous thanks to an Alternate Universe portal, so it's now turned to two Fix Fics in one-
''The Trainer From A Far Away Land acts as a Fix Fic for the Pokémon for people frustrated with Ash's Not Allowed to Grow Up status and Flanderization into an Idiot Hero. While most Fix Fic make Ash/Satoshi into a badass uber-genius, this fic maintains Ash/Satoshi's childishness and thoughtlessness but has Satoshi learn from his past experiences. He grew as a person along with growing older with his Aura powers from the eight movie not being forgotten.
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.
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.
Chick Tracts have become a magnet for Remix Comics and Fix Fic of this sort, thanks to their endemic research failures. Most of them completely change the worldview espoused by the comic, but there are some exceptions: Morrakiu's Dramatic Reading of this tract is just as anti-communist as the original, but is far more intelligent about it.
With bothversions of Peter Parker now dead, there's naturally a lot of this floating about. In Ultimate's case, these mostly consist of Peter returning to life and taking the name Ben Reilly, since his replacement, Miles Morales, is almost universally loved.
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.
Fix-fics of The Avengers where Coulson doesn't actually die and was actually just in a coma, because Fury tricked the Avengers into thinking he died to give them a "push" are so common that if you didn't watch the movie, you'd think it was canon — hell, fics where he actually is dead as per the events of the movie are a rarity, and even then he is often brought back to life with comic book style shenanigans. The fact that the audience never actually sees the paramedics call the time of death, that the events of the movie (specifically, the revelation that Fury dipped Coulson's Captain America trading cards in blood offscreen and showed them to Cap as to make his death hit them all the harder) actually hint that the former explanation could very well be canon, and that the actor has signed up for several more movies with Marvel, make this trend far more plausible than most of the examples on this page.
More than a few pieces of Scream fanfiction bring back, in addition to Sidney, Gale and Dewey, Kirby from Scream 4, who like Agent Coulson above is never actually officially confirmed as gone in the movie. And in most cases she does not get Killed Off for Real by the end.
Out of the 900 or so fanfics for The Social Network, approximately 85% are fix-it fics for Mark and Eduardo. Just check out the ao3 page.
Then there's the stories where Harry becomes "more intelligent". The most over-the-top example of this is probably Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, in which Harry mutates into a super-genius by having a professor for a stepfather, and several other characters also become vastly more intelligent because... they're wizards. Harry then uses his vast intellect to revolutionize magical research as a sort of wand-wielding Mighty Whitey.
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!
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 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.
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.
An odd version in some fics for The Dresden Files is to ignore the end of Changes and subsequently "Ghost Story". This may be less due to dislike of the events therein, and more about the fact that Changes pretty much obliterated the Status Quo, and/so it's hard to tell where the story is going to go after Ghost Story.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians has a staggering amount of these, almost all of them either regarding Luke and un-killing him, Thalia and her quitting the hunters in order to be able to be romantically involved, or Rachel Elizabeth Dare being able to date someone even though she too cannot become romantically involved.
Hundreds of Fix Fics were written and circulated during the Great Hiatus of Sherlock Holmes stories, after Arthur Conan Doyle released "The Final Problem" in an attempt to dispose of a character he'd grown heartily sick of writing. Doyle's displeasure with the low quality of such fanfiction is thought to have contributed (along with Money, Dear Boy) to his reluctant resurrection of the character: if Holmes had to return, at least he'd do it himself and not leave the task in the hands of hack amateurs.
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries qualifies toward the end. At the time Pride and Prejudice was written, Lydia marrying George Wickham was the best possible ending for her, as otherwise she'd be seen as "tainted" and never be able to marry someone better. By moving the story to modern times, Diaries gets rid of that problem, and she splits up with George for good. Also, Bing isn't quite so Easily Forgiven for dumping Jane just because his friend told him to.
Many fics save a character who died in canon. These stories often insert a fan character, who protects or heals it and becomes its love interest. Most of these Fix Fics rescue one of two popular characters (either Boromir or Haldir, though Haldir only died in the movies), but a few stories save minor characters such as Théodred, son of Théoden.
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.
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.
There used to be a lot of shipping 'fics that were sort of fix-fics by default, because the author would rewrite the series based upon the notion that Buffy and Willow or Faith were a couple and go from there. The end result was usually a much happier show in one way or another.
One fic changed some of the events of season 3, so that Wesley and Giles were in a relationship and Wesley tried to help Faith instead of having the council take her away; though he did ask them for help, they were a lot more civil about it. Played With a bit, since it actually seemed like Faith would accept their help, but it was just an act and she ended up working for Mayor Wilkins anyway. Although, Wesley actually chose to stay in Sunnydale instead of deciding to go back to England (and ending up in LA.)
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, everyKnight 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 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 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 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
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 possibleplot holesthey try to plug, others that the things being fixed weren’t too much of a distraction anyway.
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.
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 The Virtual Season Four, from the same fandom, is written as a backlash to season three and takes some elements of the real season four while repairing some of the things it and preceding seasons did. For example, the mass ship sinking of "The Breakup" is averted; the characters still have their problems with separation and loneliness, but deal with it in other ways (some better than others).
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 reuniting them that claimed it was a fake (the person responsible usually being Kat), or that Kim was hiding the real reason for the breakup.
Due to a controversial cast change that wrote out the main character due to Real Life Writes the Plot, House Of Anubis has a lot of fanfics revolving around season 3 that has Nina Martin either return in a rewrite of season 3(she had to leave the show due as the actress was suffering from Real Life Writes the Plot complications) or return for a fan-imagined season 4, or reunite with Fabian in a Distant Finale years later and get back together again. Unsurprisingly, most of these fics were written by Nina/Fabian shippers that wanted them to stay together. There are also fics that make Eddie/Patricia stays together for the whole of season 3 instead of breaking up early in the season.
"Forever Knight" ended with the apparent death or imminent death of most of the principal characters. Because of the fade-to-black ambiguity of the last scene of the series finale, fan writers can often contrive ways to let the supposedly dead characters survive. Another option for "Virtual Fourth Seasons" is to continue the series as if the last two episodes didn't happen.
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 called The New Retcons; the final 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.
One of those bloggers went on to write The Unauthorized Liography of the Patterson Family, and while more a backstory fic, the ending falls squarely under Fix Fic. Michael realizes he's become Elly, seeks therapy, and becomes a Cool Old Guy, Liz realizes she made a mistake marrying Anthony, divorces (with Therese, of all people acting as her attorney), and marries Warren, April reconciles with her siblings, and John and Elly...die within minutes of each other from bad eating habits. Hey, for the fans, that was an improvement.
An awful lot of BattleTech fic falls into this category. Mostly, it comes off as a negative reaction to story developments, with many fics that could be summarised as "Faction I Like didn't do Thing I Didn't Like and instead did Thing I Think Is Cooler, like beating up Faction I Don't Like." This is especially common with fans of the Taurian Concordat
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 William 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.
Videogames
Fan-made remakes of older PC games sometimes do this. Among the more notable examples are AGD Interactive's remakes of Kings Quest II and Kings Quest III. Besides expanding on the plot, characterizations, and backstories of both games, which were made at a time when technological limitations simply did not allow for much by the way of storytelling, they also fill in the plot hole of who imprisoned Valenice in the first place and why, explain how Graham knew about lifting the curse on the winged horse, and provide a way for Alexander to learn about what happens to Manhannan's slaves, among others. Most ambitiously, in both games they gave the foundations for a Myth Arc spanning the entire Kings Quest series and explaining why Daventry's royal family had such a knack for getting on the bad side of evil magic-users.
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 Plus 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 GLaDOS or Wheatley if she's gone.
Thanks to the feelings of many gamers towards the ending, Mass Effect 3 is starting to have many fics that are trying to fix this problem.
The fanfic Razor's Edge Requiem does this unlike the previous parts Razor's Edge and Razor's Edge Dark Witness that followed Mass Effect 2 and LotSB rather well with a few changes in order to fit the novel structure. These changes include giving the Rachni a larger focus, putting Miranda and Kasumi back on the ship and Shepard fight against indoctrination. The reactions have mostly been Better Than Canon.
Visual Novel/Fate/stay night: Post-Fate fics where either Saber returns to modern Japan or Shirou time travels to Arthurian Britain are very common among Shirou/Saber shippers.
This short Sly 4: Thieves in Time fan fiction attempts to explain Penelope's utterly nonsensical Face Heel Turn by having her complete change in personality caused by brainwashing from contact with Clockwork's eye.
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!"
There's loads for "The ReviewMust Go On", whether it's Donnie's friends refusing to let him go or trying to explain why Critic had suddenly turned evil.
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 theUnicronTrilogy, 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 Always Chaotic 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 fanfics (and at least one fan comic) that try to end the events of "The Best Night Ever" on a less bittersweet note.
In a similar manner, there are a handful that try to address the minimal apology Twilight received at the end of "A Canterlot Wedding", which range from sweet (Post Nuptials) to dark (Faith And Doubt).
My Little Unicorn is a fix fic which also happens to be aHate 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 FiM universe), and thinks that the power of belief is the strongest there is (whatever he means by that)). It's not aTroll Fic.
Similar to the Pony POV Series example listed above, the fix fic "No Hard Feelings" takes place right after the events of "Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", where the rest of the Mane Cast have a Jerkass Realization over how their plan to teach Rainbow Dash a lesson in humility ended up unintentionally hurting her feelings.
Cupcakes has created many, many alternate endings by fans who hated the ending. For good reason. It's popular to explain the entire events of the story as All Just a Dream of Pinkie's or Dashie's, have them be shocked and horrified, then have them comfort each other leading to a Heartwarming Moment. The Light in the Darkness is perhaps the most beloved example.
"Ten Minutes: Aftermath" was written as a response to the pro-human sentiments of the original story, intentionally subverting the message of the original in order to fit the author's own work into JDR's setting.
Today, Tomorrow, and Forever is about a loving mother, Derpy Hooves, having her daughter taken away by the Foal Protection Service for being unfit to care for a foal. This was too heartbreaking for many, so a different ending (Forever and Ever) was written when it turned out the whole case was handled incorrectly, several ponies vouch for Derpy's qualifications as a parent, and they are reunited happily.
Many Family Guy fic, mostly dealing with Meg getting revenge for all the abuse she had to suffer from her family. As well as a few having Brian shoot back against those who wrong him, specifically Quigmire after his "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
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.
Likewise there are a lot of Real Life fanfics and alternate history stories about the Cold War that averts many of the more "controversial" American foreign policy directions taken during that time and averts the Vietnam War, which leads to less Anti-Americanism in the world compared to today. It is also not uncommon to find alternate history that prevents the death of JFK, which also prevents, or contains said war from occurring. An example of this is The ISO Td House One Woman Goes From 2012 To 1952 found on Alternate History Dot Com.
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.
Comicbooks
Marvel 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: 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". The mini-series took several liberties and pot-shots at the Saga and later developments in Spider-Man books, climaxing with the message that Peter Parker should be a proud father by this point in his life.
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). There's also the fact that there were now two different sets of the Nolan twins (Ferro Lad and his brother), born in the present and future of New Earth, and a bigger continuity snarl concerning Impulse's mother and grandfather.
First, Geoff has stated outright that the "restored" OG Legion diverted from the original stories during Crisis on Infinite Earths, shortly after #14 of volume three (when Tellus, Magnetic Kid, Quislet, and Polar Boy joined the team and Projectra took up the Sensor Girl costume identity). As such, only broad strokes of what happened from #15-63 happened and moreso, Magic Wars never happened, since that storyline and it's fall-out (IE the United Planets basically collapsed economically because of it) basically what caused the "Five Year Gap" to happen.
Sometime during the 70s, Marvel published a pretty reprehensible The Avengers story involving Ms. Marvel, in which the Earth's Mightiest Heroes decide that Loving Force 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. 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.
The cult Spider-Man spin-off Spider-Girl basically ignores everything established in 616 after 1998 and establishes that Peter Parker and Mary Jane were reunited not with that elderly succubus Aunt May, but their infant baby daughter Mayday, who had been captured immediatly after her birth by agents of Norman Osborn. The book also follows up on long aborted or long-forgotten storylines from the 1990s and brings them forward in a consequential manner, creating fresh problems for The Parkers and other characters to overcome. Joe Quesada, a fan of the book, has often called Spider-Girl the "natural continuation of the Parkers' lives" in interviews, making some beleive it is in fact the "proper" continuity, though this is still heavily disputed.
Its basic premise involves the X-Men trying to revamp their image by donning new spandex costumes and acting as superheroes full-time. One of New X-Men's main selling points was the X-Men's decision to trade their colorful spandex costumes for black leather, which went along with Morrison's plan to distance the book from the superhero genre.
One of the earliest scenes in the run has Logan calling Scott out for sleeping with Emma immediately after Jean's death—which was one of the most criticized plot points of Morrison's run.
It has Kitty raise the possibility that Emma is manipulating Scott's mind, likely a reaction to the fact that Emma basically was doing that in Morrison's run. He also explains Emma's spoiled attitude during New X-Men as the results of...
A) PTSD from living through the Genosha incident.
B) Being psychically manipulated by Cassandra Nova as part of a Batman Gambit to free herself.
It includes a tense meeting between Scott and Nick Fury, where Scott calls Fury out for the superhero community's failure to respond to the Sentinels' attack on Genosha, which killed almost 16 million mutants—calling attention to the dodgy implications of Morrison's decision to ignore all other Marvel superheroes during his run on X-Men.
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.
There's also the fact that it was a family film and really who'd want to see such a film end on such a depressing note.
Timothy Zahn, of course. Remember the "How Zahn Could Fix This Mess" fanfics? Well, when Bantam Spectra, then-publisher of the Star Wars books, was about to lose the license to Del Rey Books, they released the Hand Of Thrawn. Luke as a Boring Invincible Hero and Mary Sue? Gone. The ridiculous Lando/Mara relationship hints? Retcon. And so on, and so forth. The duology served as a capper to an entire era and would have made a Grand Finale...
Close behind Zahn is Michael Stackpole. His I, Jedi spent half its length fixing the Jedi Academy Trilogy. Besides writing in popular characters Kyle Katarn and Corran Horn, strengthening internal continuity, the book calls out Luke (and Trilogy writer Kevin J. Anderson, really) for: enabling the universe's largest Karma Houdini, suggesting 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 yes, that's only the first half of the book.
Aaron Allston got into the game, too. All of his X-Wing Series books, solid stories in their own right, also fix other novels. The Wraith Squadron books repair The Courtship Of Princess Leia, turning the cartoonishly evil Warlord Zsinj and General Melvar into Intelligence-trained Chessmasters with a mastery of Obfuscating Stupidity, and explain the inconsistent references to the destruction of Iron Fist, with the Second Death gambit. Starfighters of Adumar 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. And Mercy Kill gives a lot of backfill to help show the individual cost of the Yuuzhan Vong War and events since, suggesting that maybe the galaxy can recover, not just get worse.
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 40000setting 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.
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.
In the Doctor Who New Adventures novel Warlock, the Doctor and his companions adopt a kitten and name him Chichester. In a gratutious Kick the Dog moment to ensure It's Personal, the villains steal the kitten and subsequently kill him. In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel City of the Dead, we're told that during the amnesia arc the Doctor catnapped Chichester and took him to live with a Welsh couple, although he wasn't sure why. (Note that this does nothing for the stolen animals that weren't named.)
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 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 Blake's 7 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.
Radio
Nicholas Briggs states that he explicitly wrote the Big Finish audio drama The Energy of the Daleks as a fixfic — he realized that Tom Baker never got a straight classic Dalek adventure, instead being the first Doctor to have all of his Dalek stories overshadowed by Davros. So, hw gave Tom a Dalek tale that was Davros-free.
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.
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.
Dynasty Warriors: Gundam functions close to the same as Super Robot Wars but exclusively for Gundam. Where the player takes the place of prominent historical Gundam heros during their battles. With enough skill, one can prevent some of the tragic deaths of these series.
The game additionally features an 'Original story' mode that functions as a crossover for most of the series and allows the player to explore the motivations of some of Gundam's classical villains, even in some cases redeeming them.
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.
No, she still has the ability as shown in the sequel Gears of Destiny, but she's still dying. She has enough time to teach Hayate the proper way to use her magic before passing away and helps create Reinforce Zwei before then. Still sad, but much better than what happened to her in canon.
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.
On a somewhat meta level, the second Hyperdimension Neptunia game was largely a case of "What could we have done if we hadn't run out of money?", helped along by the first game's True Ending leaving absolutely zero plot threads for a sequel. This is admitted right in the title, with the game branded mk2 instad of a traditional sequel.
In the video game for Peter Jackson's King Kong,destroying enough airplanes and the searchlights during the final level will earn you an alternate ending where Kong survives, is returned to his island and receives a visit from Ann.
on Wikipedia.
