Fanfic Fuel: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''[[Johnny Yong Bosch]]:''' Maybe kids will write some fanfics about it.
'''[[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]]:''' We can only hope.
Many times a creative work will leave large gaps in a character's [[Backstory]], or not mention what happened between two instances of seeing a character, or object or place. We might get a bit of explanation, usually a throwaway line that suggests a [[Noodle Incident]], but either way we are left to imagine it ourselves.
So, someone else will, of course, do it for us. Many [[fanfic]]s that don't involve [[Shipping]] will fill in any gaps, often with wild adventures [[
Summers between school years in high school dramas are often great sources of Fanfic Fuel, as well as the draw of giving a mysterious character more backstory (which may result in [[Draco in Leather Pants]]) or rewriting things from the perspective of someone else whose viewpoint we never saw in canon.
See [[Canon Fodder]], a subtrope. Can lead to [[Fandom-Specific Plot]]s.
{{examples}}
▲== General ==
* Many of the "could-have-beens" on the [[What Could Have Been]] page are prime fanfic fuel. The same goes for the ideas on the [[Wild Mass Guessing]] pages.
** Similarly, many one-shot comics and manga (as well as
* [[And the Adventure Continues...]] invites possible sequels.
* Any work with a [[Time Skip]] that doesn't cover the intervening period in enough detail.
* Putting two characters together [[Locked in a Room|in a cave or similar small space
* [[Sequel Non Entity]] characters are practically engraved invitations. ''Something'' must have happened to them to prevent their appearance in the sequel.
* ''Any'' work where the protagonists are children is bound to have several [[High School AU]] fics and [[Flash Forward]] themed fics.
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Infinite Stratos]]'', nuff said. For average viewer, it's just a mediocre [[Unwanted Harem]] [[Recycled in Space|WITH]] [[Instant Awesome, Just Add Mecha|MECHA]]. [[Vocal Minority|Fan Fic writers on the other hand]]... War, politic, social shift... the potential is limitless, and the three
* ''[[Death Note]]'' has lots of rules that don't come up in the main plot. Example: if someone's name is written in two Death Notes within a split second of each other, it is regarded as simultaneous and the victim ''lives'', unaffected by either note.
** [[Backstory]]: L's / Mello's / Near's / B's / Matt's [[Dark and Troubled Past|Dark And Troubled]] [[Mysterious Past]]. What does Wammy's House do and why was it built? / Light's career as a [[Kid Hero|teen detective]] and/or [[For Want of a Nail|what would happen if Light didn't find the notebook]] or [[What If|what would happen if]] {{spoiler|Light didn't get his memories back.}}
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* Fans of ''[[Axis Powers Hetalia]]'' have plenty of fun writing for the nations, with all the history between them.
* The ''[[Naruto]]'' fandom already were fond of writing [[Alternate Universe]] fanfiction set in high school but when the anime released an ending theme that pretty much set up the roles of each character for them the amount of fanfiction (and fanart for that matter) exploded.
* ''[[Sailor Moon]]'' spans
* Three words: [[Pokémon|Ash Ketchum's]] [[Disappeared Dad|father]].
* ''[[
* ''[[Ranma ½]]'': The urge to [[Continuation Fic|resolve the no-ending ending of the manga]] has been spawning fics both big and small for ''decades''.
* The Virtual Nightmare Arc in the original ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]'' was supposed to be a [[Filler Arc]], but it introduced a unique set of [[House Rules]] to the game called the Deck Master system. Despite Kaiba's insistence canon-wise that [[Let Us Never Speak of This Again| they forget it ever happened]], Fan Fic writers never seem to get tired of using this house rule and putting unique spins on it. In fact, ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists Of The Roses]]'' may have been a "legit" example of expanding the Deck Master system with the similarly functioning Deck Leaders.
* In ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! GX]]'', Daichi Misawa has six different decks in the first season (not counting a "practice deck" he uses in his entrance exam and the "7th Deck" he uses against Judai) but he only uses two of them over the course of the series, and the themes and strategies of the other four remain mysteries. A lot of fanfics that feature him explore this further, each author giving opinions on what at least some of them are.
** And on that note: Fire Dragon. The first OP shows him flanked by two monsters: Water Dragon, a dragon made of water that we do see him use, and a similar monster made of fire, that we do not, nicknamed Fire Dragon by fans. Some take his later monster Carbogeddon to be related to it (since Water Dragon is created from two Hydrogeddons and one Oxygeddon), but it was never elaborated upon. Some [https://www.deviantart.com/alanmac95/art/Fire-Dragon-733736142 have even done so with fan art.]
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The [[X-Men]], and all related books, went through a canonical "six-month gap" around 2000, where Cyclops was believed dead and Cable joined the team to take his place. All that is known at the end of it was that Psylocke and Phoenix had switched powers, giving the former telekinesis but no telepathy and the latter, the reverse.
* In Earth-3490: [[Captain America (comics)|Captain America]] married [[Iron Man|Iron]] [[Gender Flip|Woman]] and thereby prevented the Civil War. So how did Natasha Stark become Iron Woman? How did this affect team dynamics? [[Lemon Fic|What was the wedding night like]]?
* Any comic book universe with alternate timelines throws the door wide open for any number of AU fics.
== Film ==
* Happens a '''''lot''''' with ''[[The Dark Knight Trilogy|Dark Knight]]'' fanfics featuring how [[The Joker]] got those scars of his, simply because he was [[Unreliable Narrator|so inconsistent about them]] in the film.
* An example from ''[[Transformers: Dark of the Moon]].'' By the third film, [[The Masquerade]] is completely broken, and everyone is aware of the Autobots' existence. The movie doesn't go into much detail about this, but there are many ideas that can inspire a fanfic. One is how the nations of Earth are shown to dislike the Transformers (there's a mentioning of poll results stating that half the world would feel safer if the Autobots left). One must also wonder how other countries feel about the US using Autobots for non-Decepticon related problems (such as destroying illegal nuclear plants in the Middle East). Overall, there's a whole potential to explore how Earth must cope with the knowledge that one of the world's most powerful nations has [[Humongous Mecha]] on its side, as well as the fact that said support also warrants even more alien attacks.
** There's also the matter of why Mikaela broke up with Sam.
** Before
* [[Ghostbusters]] versus [[A Nightmare on Elm Street|Freddy Kruger]]... or [[The Ring|Samara]]... Or [[Beetlejuice (film)|Beetlejuice]]... Lots of potential scenarios with the Ghostbusters and ghosts from other media, especially for viewers who think some [[Invincible Villain]] types need a lesson in humility. The Beetlejuice idea actually happened in more than one [[Universal Studios]] theme park Halloween event, seeing as both used to have shows there.
== Literature ==
* The ''[[Harry Potter]]'' series has [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] (students, ghosts, professors, shopkeepers) and several summer holidays for those characters to have adventures on. The main trio in ''[[
** Also, the very explicit, but non-detailed events and descriptions mentioned by various characters throughout the series, coupled with very effective characterization set up by the chapter "Snape's Worst Memory" have given rise to a huge quantity of fanfic set in the era of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs, with dozens of different plays on various unseen canon events.
** And there's the short span in which Ron and Hermione are absent from the narrative in ''[[
** Every fan has their own opinion about the various inconsistencies of the saga. Some issues (like how the school(s) were created, how magic and technology have evolved together, or how British wizards can possibly be so bloody dumb) are almost never addressed and are calling for a lot of imagination.
* Two points in ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia]]'' have launched a thousand fics:
** 1.) Most of ''[[The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]]'' covers the first several days the main characters spend in Narnia. [[C. S. Lewis]] devotes approximately two paragraphs in the final chapter to the following years—or likely, ''decades''—they spend in Narnia {{spoiler|before abruptly returning (and de-aging) to England the very day they had left}}.
** 2.) Susan's absence in ''[[The Last Battle]]'' is brought up once, quickly dismissed, and never mentioned again. Adding to [[Inferred Holocaust|the potency of]] [[No Endor Holocaust|this fuel]] is the [[Unfortunate Implications|phrasing of the reason given for her absence]].
* ''[[The Hunger Games]]'' has [[Elsewhere Fic]] fuel aplenty. After all, ''someone'' (be it a canon character or an OC) has to have won the [[Deadly Game|Games]] for years 1-73, and most of them we know little or nothing about.
* Many times in the ''[[Sherlock Holmes]]'' canon, Dr. Watson includes references to cases that Holmes has solved but which were not fleshed into stories, such as the the tale of the giant rat of Sumatra (a story "for which the world is not yet ready"). A large percentage of [[Fanfic]], including published pastiche novels, centers on one or another of these [[Noodle Incident]]s.
* ''[[A Wrinkle in Time]]'', in addition to all the science fiction elements not explored in great detail (the history of the [[Individuality Is Illegal|planet]] [[Dystopia|Camazotz]], the [[Another Dimension|2-dimensional planet]], etc.), there's also the specific story of the project Meg's father was working on (with the tesseract) and what happened to the first man who tried to tesser. He's mentioned ''very'' briefly, when Meg's father is giving Calvin some of the backstory about the project. He left successfully, but they never found out what happened to him (and none of the sequels give any indicator, either).
* ''[[Charlie and the Chocolate Factory]]''; like it or not, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_inflation a certain type] of weird [[Rule 34]] trend could likely be traced back to what happens to Violet in this novel, and [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|let's just leave it at that.]]
▲== Live Action TV ==
* Given that it's a show about [[Time Travel]], ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has ''lots''. {{spoiler|[[Doctor Who/Recap/S31/E13 The Big Bang|Rory's more than 1,800 years guarding the Pandorica]]}} and [[Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E17 E18 The End of Time|the Doctor's time with Queen Elizabeth I]] are just the tip of the iceberg; pretty much anything that isn't shown onscreen or in an audiobook/audio drama is game. And sometimes even then.
** [[Doctor Who/Recap/S30/E15 Planetofthe Dead|Lady Christina de Souza]]'s past and future capers, especially now that she has a flying bus, could qualify.
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* ''[[Angel]]'':
** Connor!Be-Gone-Fic: Angel [[Deal with the Devil]]-ed his son into a happy family and removed all memories of his son from his crew. How did this affect their recollection of seasons three and four? How did Wesley get that scar? Also obvious fodder for Connor/Dawn angst-fics.
* ''[[Firefly (TV series)|Firefly]]'':
** ... anything, really. How Wash and Zoe fell in love, Simon's time studying as a doctor, what Book did before he was a shepherd (heck, let's just say ''everyone's''
* The alternate universe on ''[[The Middleman]]''. What happens with Fatboy Industries? Do alt!Middleman and alt!Lacey save the world? And what does aerosolized soup taste like, anyway?
* ''[[NCIS]]'': Season gaps tend to inspire this on NCIS. How did Tony hold the team together after Gibbs quit? How did Gibbs adjust to his temporary team? How did Ziva survive Somalia? Look up "NCIS" and "Somalia" on fanfiction.net, and you get over two hundred results.
* ''[[iCarly]]'': Everyone's parents. Out of the 6 parents of the main trio (and Spencer, who is Carly's brother), only 1 was shown (Freddie's mom Mrs. Benson), 1 was [[Noodle Incident|referred to]] (Sam's mom) until she showed up in a single episode, Spencer and Carly's dad is in the military and rarely shows up in one-sided phone conversations. This leaves Sam's father, Freddie's father and Carly/Spencer's mother, and they have never even been mentioned.
** Why did Freddie end up in Seattle, or more accurately, why did his mother come to Seattle on her own, with him. Often combined with the father question.
* Similar with the parents of characters from sister show ''[[Victorious]]''. Only Tori and Trina's parents are seen regularly, Jade's dad was mentioned on one occasion, and both Beck's parent's appeared off screen in on episode. Often fics that mention the parents will have Andre's parents dead, Jade's parents either abusive (especially if it's an angsty fic) or just neglectful and uncaring, the latter being more supported by canon. Cat's parents are generally pretty neglectful as well, though just ''how'' neglectful they are depends on the fic. Robbie, being the [[Chew Toy]] and [[The Woobie]] will almost never, ''ever'', have a happy home life, and as of "Locked Up
* It's easy to wonder about all the possibilities for adventure surrounding the concept of the Red Pirates in ''[[Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger]]'', as they traveled the universe gathering the Ranger Keys.
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' gives fans Dean and Sam's entire childhood to deal, Sam's "Stanford Era" is popular, though it doesn't necessarily focus on Sam. The rest of their childhood leaves plenty of questions. Just how much [[Parental Neglect]] did the boys actually suffer? How many schools did they go to? What caused the rift between Bobby and John? The list goes on.
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*** ''[[Alternate History|My Heart Will Go On]]'' 6x17
** Also, the four months Dean was in hell (or the 40 years, depending on the brother the fic focuses on)
* ''[[Bones]]'': the post-Season 5 hiatus (during which time Booth and the Jeffersonian team went their separate ways for nearly a year) has produced quite a few fics. Many of them are also Fix Fics, designed to get Booth and Brennan together, usually [[Die for Our Ship|eliminating Hannah Burley in the process]].
** The fact that we didn't actually see Booth and Brennan [[They Do|finally resolve their]] [[Unresolved Sexual Tension]] in "The Hole in the Heart" has been fodder for more than a few fics. One notable(and lengthy, at nearly 200 chapters and still going) fic, "[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7177882/1/The_When_and_the_How_bA_b_bBone_b_to_bPick_b The When And The How: A Bone to Pick]", suggests that they didn't actually do the deed while she was staying at his apartment after Broadsky killed Vincent, but sometime a few days later, prior to "The Change in the Game", after dealing with Vincent's death and getting some perspective on what they really mean to each other.
* A surprising number of ''[[Lois and Clark]]'' fics were inspired by the episode "That Old Gang of Mine", specifically one scene where Clark is shot at point blank range by a mobster's bullet. More than a few stories tried to explain how Superman dealt with the possibility that he might never become Clark Kent again, since the rest of the world thought Clark had been killed.
* In ''[[Wednesday]]'', the title character from ''[[The Addams Family]]'' becomes the roommate (and reluctant friend) of a bubbly and perky girl her age named Enid Sinclair, a clear [[Red Oni, Blue Oni]] pairing; fanfic writers were putting out shipping fics (of varying degrees of seriousness and accuracy) even ''before'' the series' official release.
== Tabletop Games ==
* ''[[Warhammer
== [[Theater]] ==
* In the ''[[Wicked (theatre)|Wicked]]'' musical, the fact that {{spoiler|Elphaba is alive}} but Glinda is [[Locked Out of the Loop]] is shipping fuel for [[Fix Fic]]s and [[Dark Fic]]s alike.
** Not to mention the 2
== Video Games ==
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* Very little is explained about Malefor's backstory in [[The Legend of Spyro]]: Dawn of the Dragon. Any fanfiction that's not Spyro/Cynder shipping is probably this. His "death" in the final game was also vague, leading to many fanfiction and fan comics.
* ''[[Soul Series|Soulcalibur V]]''. Gets barely over a year in development. [http://train2game-news.co.uk/2012/03/26/train2game-news-soulcalibur-v-story-mode-one-fourth-of-planned-size-each-character-was-to-have-own-story/ The length of story mode is drastically shortened due to time constraints,] with ''numerous'' plot elements mentioned in official bios prior to the game's release being ignored or glossed over left and right and only a [[No Export for You|Japanese-only artbook]] attempting to [[All There in the Manual|fill in the blanks]] of exactly ''what'' happened in [[Time Skip|the seventeen-year interim between]] ''SCIV'' and this game (heck, there aren't even character-specific Arcade endings to help shed light on things). You can bet your soul (pun intended) fanfic writers are scrambling at this very moment to answer the various questions that ''SCV'' couldn't bother to.
* One of the most notorious [[Easter Egg]]s in ''[[Pokémon (Franchise)|Pokémon]]'' is the “creepy elevator girl” in ''[[Pokémon X and Y]]''. Not only has this [[The Unsolved Mystery|Unsolved Mystery]] generated a lot of fanfic ideas, but it has caused Hex Maniac trainers in general to become very popular in fan art - often of the [[Rule 34]] varity, it seems.
== Web Animation ==
* ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'''s mysterious Project Freelancer has inspired numerous fan fics based on it, the [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?|questionable experiments]] it performed off-screen, and its various agents that all existed before the series occurred.
* ''[[RWBY]]'': What happened between the end of Volume 3 and the start of Volume 4, and how long did the interval actually span? Six months? A year? Team RNJR got all the way to another continent, Ruby's clearly closer to adulthood, and everyone got new outfits. And what was Blake doing between the fall of Beacon and her trip home to Menagerie?
== Western Animation ==
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** Especially since the show was canceled just as it was developing a [[Myth Arc]], and the creators have revealed their basic plans to fans.
* ''[[Road Rovers]]'' has loads of things for fans to expand on, including the relationship between Parvo and the Groomer, [[Sailor Earth|adding new Road Rovers or creating their own groups,]] and elaborating on the backstories of the Road Rovers. It also helps that [[Too Good to Last|the show only ran one season.]]
* The fate of Ursa in ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]''. The show left a few other minor plot threads hanging, but that's the one that really got everyone upset, and speculating. The way the sequel comics handled it only inspired more fic, this time of the [[Fix Fic|fixing variety]].
** And, you know, a century-long war, with plenty of rich, undeveloped ground for exciting battles and stuff. And one thousand Avatars in the history of the world, too.
* ''[[Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers|Galaxy Rangers]]''? [[Training
* Long before there was ever a [[Lilo
* Fans of ''[[My Little Pony:
** The show has confirmed the "one kingdom" theory.
** Luna's 1-year [[Chuck Cunningham Syndrome]].
** Now we have [[Daring Do]], an [[Adventurer Archaeologist]] who is the protagonist of a [[Show Within a Show|Book Series Within A Show]]; the contents of one of the books have been shown on-screen, we know the title of another, and we know that there are many other books in the series. Cue lots of fan-made "[[Character Name and the Noun Phrase|Daring Do and the [x]]]" installments.
** In
** The introduction of Tartarus and time travel spells in
** Now that the second season finale has aired, it's provided plenty more potential fuel. The biggest example is the finale's [[Big Bad]] Queen Chrysalis, who {{spoiler|isn't killed or [[Sealed Evil in a Can|sealed]], just defeated. Which means she's still out there...}} You tell me that's not a dozen fics just waiting to happen.
*** Then there's the question of just how Shining Armor and Candence fell in love (not to mention ''why'' Twilight had a Princess for a foalsitter).<ref>Okay, part of the latter may stem from the fact that Cadence wasn't supposed to be a Princess (or a winged unicorn) in the first place, but the point still stands.</ref>
* ''[[The Lion King]]'' has a lot of this. For starters, the movie [[Leitmotif]], the never ending Circle of Life, means that you can write entire sagas of the royal lion family. Then, there are lots of characters that were introduced but not developed in comics or books, like Ni, Tama, Tojo. Also there are many story gaps that fanfic writers love to fill, like the years of Scar's reign, or were the Outlanders from the second movie came from.
* Whether it's a case of a heroic Shego or a villainous Kim, ''[[Kim Possible]]'' fics with Kim and Shego on the same side have always been popular.
* In ''[[Gargoyles]]'', Elsa's gargoyle form; canon-wise, she only had this form in one episode ("The Mirror") but a lot of fans seem to wish it had lasted longer, as evidenced by fanfics.
* Every fan of ''[[Gravity Falls]]'' knows about the abundance of ''[[Rick and Morty]]'' references in the show, and vice versa, due to the creators of both shows being close friends. Unfortunately, an "official" crossover of the two is unlikely, given the difference in ages of the target audiences (''Gravity Falls'' is a TV-14 [[Disney]] cartoon while ''Rick and Morty'' is M-rated with quite a lot of NSFW material). Still, fanfics are another story, and there have been many.
{{reflist}}
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