Did a TV show hurt your feelings? Fanfic ‘fix-its' offer justice
Pedro Pascal in The Last Of Us 2. PHOTO: MAX
NEW YORK – As a long-time player of The Last Of Us video game series (2013 to 2024), Ms Sam Gaitan knew the death was coming.
Still, the brutal murder of protagonist Joel in the April 20 episode of the HBO adaptation of the same name hit her hard.
It was already midnight when she went on social networking site Tumblr to read fan reactions. Then, in a fit of inspiration, she started writing.
'I was a wreck and I needed to get those strong emotions out,' Ms Gaitan, a tattooist and artist, said in a recent phone interview. By 5am, she had written 3,761 words featuring Joel and Red, an original character Ms Gaitan had previously created, and an alternative scenario that spares Joel from his on-screen fate.
Writing under the alias oh_persephone, she posted the story on AO3, an online repository for fan fiction and other fan-created art , and crashed until her dogs woke her up the next morning .
'It probably wasn't the most coherent thing I've written,' she said, laughing. 'But I figured other people could use it as much as I did.'
Her urge to change the narrative is a familiar one among a subset of fans who write fan fiction, or fanfic – original stories that borrow characters, plots and settings from established media properties and are published mostly online on sites like AO3, Tumblr and FanFiction.net.
Increasingly, these fans are taking matters into their own hands by writing 'fix-it fics' or simply 'fix-its', which attempt to right the perceived wrongs of a beloved work – and often provide some measure of emotional succour.
The Last Of Us, which killed off its male lead surprisingly early in a hotly anticipated second season – a lead played, no less, by 'the internet's daddy' Pedro Pascal – has been particularly generative. Real numbers can be hard to track because of inconsistent labelling, but more than 50 The Last Of Us stories tagged 'Fix-It' were uploaded to AO3 in the week after Joel's death, ranging from about 300 words to almost 80,000.
But if a TV writer can dream of it, a fan can feel betrayed by it. Fix-its have appeared in recent months for series including Daredevil: Born Again and The White Lotus 3, all of which contained whiplash-inducing plot twists.
'When something happens to a character that doesn't resonate with how you see them, and you can't let it go, you want to get out there and tell the story differently,' said licensed therapist Larisa Garski , who co-wrote a book with fellow therapist Justine Mastin titled Starship Therapise: Using Therapeutic Fanfiction To Rewrite Your Life. And when that something is death, fix-it writing can resemble the bargaining stage of grief.
'We're going to fanfic to mourn,' Ms Garski said. 'We're going to fanfic to try and take back agency because this beloved character has been taken from us.'
Fan fiction has existed arguably for centuries, but its modern incarnation traces back at least as far as the Star Trek fandoms of the late 1960s, whose members published fanzines with stories by fans for fans. By the 2000s, the popularity of fanfic had exploded with widespread internet access.
Written often under pseudonyms, fanfic can be wildly experimental, playing with storytelling conventions, timelines, identity and unabashed eroticism. Occasionally, fanfic evolves a life of its own. Most notably, the Fifty Shades trilogy of erotic novels (2011 to 2012) began as fanfic of the Twilight book series (2005 to 2008).
Science fiction and fantasy are especially fertile ground for fan fiction. As Ms Garski put it, they echo the myths that people have long improvised and riffed on.
Superhero stories are a prime example. Fanfic sites erupted, for instance, after Disney+ revived superhero series Daredevil in March, nearly seven years after Netflix cancelled it, only to gun down the beloved character Foggy (Elden Henson) in the first 15 minutes.
Elden Henson as Foggy in Daredevil: Born Again.
PHOTO: DISNEY+
Many fans had considered the best friend of Daredevil (Matt Murdock, played by Charlie Cox) to be the show's heart, soul and conscience.
Almost as quickly as Foggy died, the fix-its started streaming in, much of it drawing from decades of existing comic book lore. In one story, Daredevil offers Mephisto, a demon and frequent adversary of Spider-Man, his soul in exchange for a magical do-over. In another, Dr Strange casts a resurrection spell.
Lawyer Gabrielle Boliou, whose AO3 name is ceterisparibus, wrote a story at breakneck speed that reimagines an existing comic book plotline in which Foggy survived and went into witness protection. In her fanfic version, Foggy is saved by a heroic female emergency medical worker.
'At one point, I had nine different tabs open on gunshot wound survival possibilities, and I watched a YouTube video on a paramedic,' she said.
Shows more rooted in reality get the fix-it treatment too. Ms Kensi Bui, a graduate student in clinical mental health counselling, is an avid fan of the HBO drama The White Lotus (2021 to present).
But it was not until the Season 3 finale in April, and the death of sweet Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood), that she felt compelled to write, or even read, The White Lotus fan fiction.
Walton Goggins (left) and Aimee Lou Wood in The White Lotus 3.
PHOTO: MAX
So Ms Bui wrote a fix-it, under the name alittlemoretime, in which Chelsea escapes Thailand with her troubled boyfriend Rick (Walton Goggins), who was also fatally shot.
'I really wanted what's best for Chelsea and felt like she deserved a happier ending,' she said. NYTIMES
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