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So, I just learned about this and from what I heard of it, it's universally hated. Why is that? I'm genuinely curious because I've never heard about it before and I want to know the ramifications of it.
7330912
I think its because most tend to be somewhat poorly written, an attempt to fix a problem the author sees with a work that some may not see, and some basically try and force what they want to happen and some don't do it well
7330912
I think one of the reasons is that very often (but not always) a character or characters in those stories pretty much become a mouthpiece for the author.
In the case of, say, Canterlot wedding fixfics, if Twilight goes off on her friends, Princess Celestia, and Shining Armor, it tends to feel like it's not Twilight talking, but the author talking through Twilight. This may not bother you too much if you're agreeing with Twilight/the author enough, but if you don't, well...
7330912
Basically because is a hollow way of complaining about the show's faults and turns every character other than the main (which is the unquestionable voice of reason) into a strawman for the author's furstrations.
Is not that the changes are neccessarily bad, but if the fic is only about that, and you only make everypony out to be an idiot wihtout any satire, it pretty uninteresting and can become tedious.
7330912
I believe people consider it to be essentially whining in fic form. An issue of fix fics is that they can easily come across as an author diatribe - the author didn't like something and they instead want to insist that their version of events is the "correct" or better one. Since they are likely in the minority, this means that most people are guaranteed to disagree with them.
7330912
Usually the major problem that the author of a "fixfic" will just beat the audience over the head with their intended point. Many of these stories are written in a kind of kneejerk anger to whatever in the original source offended the writer, and thus you have a pretty low standard for quality here: the majority of stories that set out to "fix" an issue from canon are just angry and resort to driving home their argument with all the subtlety and grace of a sledgehammer to the forehead.
Characters reduced to mouthpieces, bashing, other characters being put on pedestals, you name it. These stories tend to run to attract all sorts of bad and lazy writing tropes, especially in the instance of a contentious or hated moment (to name the most obvious target, Anon-a-Miss fics, but there were also "fixfics" for Mare-do-Well and Canterlot Wedding).
It’s not so much that fixfics are universally hated, but they tend to be very... questionable. A lot of fixfics basically take an issue the author had with the source and amplify a hundred fold while turning it either into a super wooby fic or one where characters are turned into author mouth pieces to rag on the “problem” characters. Combo that with better writers usually avoiding them and a bunch of poorly written ones becoming popular. This isn’t to say there aren’t good fixfics, but the ones that get popular tend to not be good. It’s a similar reputation to Displaced and the like.
7330922
Yup, and there are also fixfics for other fics here on the site, where another author tries to fix a problem with a story they saw on here, for good or ill
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7330923 I see. Well, now I understand what they mean. I was originally under the impression they were similar to AU but diffrent.
7330949
No, AU is just kind of a broad classification. You can make changes to the canon in a meaningful way and not be called fixfic.
Actually one of my stories sounds like a fixfic between the third a sixth chapter and no-one complained but when I twisted things at the seventh everyone was much happier with the story.
7330918
It's especially bad for Shining Armor because, uh, hello, Chrysalis was explicitly working on brainwashing him, Cadance had to free him with love magic?
The others, regarding the Mane Six, remember that we're seeing the episode from what's basically Twilight's point of view, where she had the context of previously knowing Cadance. Chrysalis may have been a bad impersonator, but her friends saw Twilight as being possessive, nitpicky, driving the bride to tears, and her blowing them off, because she just wasn't handling that situation as gracefully as she could've.
Twilight is also the type to turn the cheek to begin with, if you're being genuine with her on something understandable, is not the type to generally let spite color her actions on the contrite, and sometimes she'll feel sympathy for her enemies, even, as shown by Discord after Tirek betrayed him, or Starlight (at the time).
Having her fly into a tangent that would call her backstory petty is not just stupid, it's also not who she is as a character, so you'd better have a good reason for her actually doing that, which "fixfics" don't, as a general rule, because they're kneejerk reactions to disliking how something happened.
(It's also worth noting she had expressed cautious optimism on Starlight at the end of the S5 premiere)
Even at some of Twilight's worst, in No Second Prances, she kinda had her hostility (which she had a point on, the way Trixie carried herself and admitted to trying to do later) dissipate when she saw Trixie was genuine.
...and they got along fine entirely after S6, it seemed, no ill-will shown in Road to Friendship.
7330918
The Canterlot Wedding fixfics are the exact ones I think of whenever the topic of a fixfic comes up, because it really demonstrates the flaws that commonly come with fixfics. The author mouthpiece is bad enough, because it takes the whole thing from being a full story to being a rant that brings the whole story to a crashing halt; it's clear at this point that you're not reading a story, you're reading a rant that's hollowed out a story and is wearing its skin around to blend in.
But another thing that makes them bad is that they're often very black-and-white, and tend to go just as extreme in the opposite direction as they accuse the original of being. So when they accuse the Canterlot Wedding of having Twilight's friends callously dismiss her and that they're terrible people for not begging her forgiveness (Applejack apologizing is usually brushed off with "well she still agreed with the others"), the fixfics generally have Twilight instead going off on everyone and verbally tearing into them for not doubting her when she laid out her concerns.
Except it's not that simple, is it? Twilight did lay out her concerns... but offered only very circumstantial reasoning that, even if they accepted it at face value, simply showed Cadance as somewhat cranky or snobbish, not some outright terrible person for which they needed to break up the wedding for. When presented with Twilight's few hours around Cadance, versus Shining Armor's apparently happiness for however long the two had been together, it's pretty reasonable to be skeptical. And even if Cadance really was like that, Shining Armor seemed happy, so why should they get in the way? Their counterpoints were reasonable. So what would be a reasonable response from Twilight? Maybe getting them to look into it a little more, bring up her concerns with a few relevant parties, and basically get to the bottom of what's going on. Except Twilight got frustrated (As she tends to do), snaps at them, and storms off to do it all herself. She's the one who made that decision. And what does she do when she finds Cadance magically assaulting her brother? Does she try to stop it? Does she go to Celestia to tell her what's going on? Does she find her friends to let them know she found something much more serious? No. She sits on the information overnight so she can bust into the rehearsal to confront Cadance in the most dramatic fashion possible.
And that kinda encapsulates one of the big problems with fixfics. Could Twilight's friends have handled it better? Sure. But Twilight could have handled it a lot better, too. Yet fixfics amplify the first part into being some grand friendship-destroying betrayal while pretending the second part isn't even there. They rely on a very simple and often skewed perspective of the original, and if you're not already on-board with that, it can look extremely shallow. Assuming the rant-posing-as-a-story aspect doesn't ruin things on its own.
But the really funny thing? The only technical difference between a "what if?" AU exploring some other possibilities and a fixfic that does the same, is whether the author calls it a fixfic or not. There are a lot of alternate takes in stories, but if the author picks up the fixfic label, odds are pretty good that they're falling into these traps. When it comes to writing alternative possibilities, "this seems like a fun idea" can produce a good story, but "this is bad and needs to be fixed so I can show why it's bad" generally doesn't.
7331027
I think this excerpt from a fanfiction I won't name (it was featured a bit back) sums that up well, in its self-demonstrating nature:
The mask fell off entirely in the story during that ending, where you can blatantly see the author's puppet strings in their gripes on how the show went, and yes, if you look at the story description, they outright say something like "this is for those who don't like how it went."
The problem is, for "fix-fics," it's about telling an alternate story second, and complaining about what happened first. If you don't want Celestia and Luna to retire, the thing is, you could just have them... not proceed with anything like what happened in The Beginning of the End, instead of it proceeding normally until Twilight goes on a long rant/argues them into submission?
Even something as simple as a headcanon dump with a kinda basic story to tie it together often has more value than those, because in the end, it's related to telling something at its core.
7331079
For your information AC97, I happen to be one of those that hates on the lousy Season 9 arc. -_-*
7331084
Did I say there was anything wrong with disliking how S9 was handled?
No, I didn't.
For instance, the fact that they retconned Ahuizotl to justify reforming him, so that Fluttershy could be in the right, instead of what might be a more congruent moral (considering the last two-parter) of "sometimes kindness works, sometimes not," or having an entirely different character than him involved, and Daring Doubt also had a glaring continuity error in that Fame and Misfortune had established Daring Do was real to the public, because the Journal of Friendship that was published back in S7 mentioned her, and Rainbow Dash also offhandedly mentioned it to Clear Sky in Common Ground, and Rusty Bucket had a copy of that exact Journal in Frenemies.
(S7 outright confirming that she mentioned her being real in the book; she didn't even try to deny it)
(which, as pointed out, doesn't make sense, even within the context of S9)
(different Egyptian-inspired area entirely than his home basin, and he's trying to separate artifacts ["Daring Done?", S7])
Again, the issue with "fix-fics" is that they, mostly, are secondarily focused on telling a story, as opposed to blatantly venting out frustration wearing the skin of X character(s).
You can reduce the "story" of these sorts of fics to "Twilight calls her friends out for doubting her over Fake Cadance regardless of how legitimate their doubts were," or "Twilight refuses to take over ruling Equestria and goes on a rant that echos the author's complaints, then Discord makes a snide comment of that nature without any attempt to thinly-veil his POV as being in-character," or "Twilight calls Starlight out for her backstory being petty by antagonizing an uncharacteristically passive Starlight into submission before she surrenders, ignoring that she's interrupted you once before..." and that's it. That's the entire "story," because there's nothing else to them, it's about preying on your agreeing with what they're saying, characterization be damned.
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7331106
I think you've summed it up quite nicely.
And I didn't even notice that little plot hole in "Daring Done". Thanks for pointing that out.
7331079
I think you may have just said it better in one sentence than I did with five paragraphs.
7331203
Lol, I am not the best at being concise either, exactly. I'll be 100% upfront with that one, and it's probably put people off before.
Being specific, outlining examples to help get the point across, it definitely has its place, and your post was well-written, either way.
7330912
You know how when you're doing something, and then some stranger comes up and starts talking about how you should be doing this other thing that would work better? And you may or may not have tried it already or perhaps you just know it's a bad idea?
Or Rando Calrissian wants to run the no-knight strategy on Oryx when everyone's over-levelled?
Alright, it doesn't have (much) of anything to do with that.
Simply put, most/many fix-fics exist mainly as a vehicle for authorial commentary. He rearranges the characters/setting/McGuffin/events/other into the pattern he feels is correct and leaves it at that. It's, uninspired. A good story is rooted in good characters, people acting and reacting in character in response to events and each other. Fix-fics often feature characters acting out of character, such as Rainbow violently lashing out at her friends over Mare-Do-Well, or Twilight abandoning Equestria due to the wedding fiasco.
The first rule of fiction is that it has to make sense to the reader. The archetypal fix-fic makes sense primarily to the writer.
7330912 Fixfic in a gif:
7331295 ...?
7331241
The examples definitely helped outline your points. I remember exactly which story that was from, too.
Also, "Princess Erroria"? Is that something you made up or is it from the transcript or what?
7331778
It was from the transcript.
Apparently "Princess Erroria" came from an animation error where she was an alicorn in a Lesson Zero imagine spot for "Magic Kindergarten," so she was called that for being a pegasus version of her in Fame and Misfortune (they really reused bodies quite a bit, especially early on).
(I just learned that one myself, so I didn't know it off the top of my head)
7331793
Huh. Learn something new every day, I guess.
A fic that actually fixes stuff can be quite good. A fic that just rants about the author's issues might be better served as a blig post.
7332181
Exactly. A friend of mine once described that kind of fic as "a blog post disguised as a story".
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7332223
The key to a fix fic I think is that even if your fix fic turns out to not really fix the issues in an episode, that it would still be a worthwhile read in its own right.