Basic Trope: A fanfic rewrites Canon elements that the writer dislikes.
- Straight:
- In the show Bob's Crazy Adventures, a conflict between the heroes Bob and Charlie escalates to a regional war in which several minor characters are Killed Off for Real. In a fanfic, the war never happened and all characters (including those who died of causes not related to the war) are still alive, mainly because the fanfic is meant to be lighthearted and/or the writer opposes Character Death in general.
- In canon, Alice is a Damsel in Distress and is torn between two Love Interests, Bob and Charlie. She eventually chooses Bob. In the fanfic, she is an asexual Action Girl (possibly because the writer is a feminist) while Bob and Charlie are a gay couple.
- Exaggerated: The fanfic changes everyone's role, everyone's personality, and so many other plot elements that it basically has nothing in common with the show itself, aside from the setting and the characters' names. It also adds hundreds of original characters, several of whom crowd out the canon characters.
- Downplayed:
- In the show, Alice is (or at least appears to be) an only child. The fanfic gives her an estranged older sister who marries Charlie.
- The characters' personalities are different in the fanfic, but the writer draws no attention to these minor differences.
- Bob's favorite food is changed from mushrooms to cauliflower.
- Justified: It's an alternate universe.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: The alternate universe was All Just a Dream.
- Double Subverted: When Alice wakes up from her dream, a mysterious fairy makes it real.
- Parodied: The Fix Fic is just one paragraph long, and takes place before the pilot episode. It describes the author of Bob's Crazy Adventures deciding to make a show with a completely different concept instead.
- Zig Zagged: The writer has five Bob's Crazy Adventures fanfics, each of which change different canon elements. Another writer incorporates all of these changes into one fic, despite not particularly liking some of them.
- Averted: The fanfic does not contradict any canon elements.
- Enforced: The writer is doing the fanfic as a request for a friend. Part of the request involves rewriting a key aspect of canon.
- Lampshaded: "Now, in this fanfic, Bob and Charlie have always gotten along, and there was no war. So David, Earl, Frank, and all those other characters you like are still alive."
- Invoked: Peggy Sue
- Exploited: Bob's Crazy Adventures was an extremely Anvilicious story, so fanfic writers who disagree with the anvils being dropped write fics which rip apart the canon story's Aesop. While the canon story is about Bob leading a band of plucky rebels to overthrow an Evil Empire, the fanfic is about the United Nations putting Bob on trial for Crimes Against Humanity.
- Defied: A Peggy Sue offers to change the universe to Alice's taste. Alice declines.
- Discussed: "Unlike most of my friends' fanfics, mine doesn't change anything. It's strictly canon-compliant."
- Conversed: "Why does every fanfic on this site change something about the canon? I can understand the writers omitting some character deaths and changing some couples around, but pairing Georgette and Harry? She's good, and he's evil! It should go without saying that they'd be incompatible."
- Deconstructed: The rewrite may start to miss the point of the original story in order to cater to what the fanfiction author thinks would be a better solution. This causes the story to be derailed into a self-indulgent mess that ends up being more offensive than the original.
- The "fixed story" ends up completely missing the point of the original story because the fic writer themselves are too unwilling to recognize their own biases, thus instead creating a "better" story that in truth utterly butchers the core themes and characters worse than the original ever did. Interestingly enough, this results in people developing a far better appreciation of the original story's intent and execution, recognizing that as flawed as it may be, it still at least knew what it was trying to do.
- Reconstructed: The author tries to tell the same story, but in a way that the author feels would be the best possible telling of it. At least, from their POV.
- Implied: Bob's little sister Anita is never mentioned in the fanfic, even in the chapter where Bob visits his mother. Because Anita is too young to live on her own, the implication is that she is either dead or never existed in the fanfic's universe.
- Intended Audience Reaction: The writer misreads the facts about the show, or simply fails to check them. He then discovers his mistakes and decides to leave some or all of them in.
- Played For Laughs: It's a "dating fic" in which the couples repeatedly break up.
- Played For Drama: It's a tragedy fic, and every canon character dies. Only original characters are left at the end.
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