Note: The article excerpt below includes spoilers for “The Last of Us.” The linked article includes spoilers for other shows as well.
Have you ever been disappointed, shocked or upset by the ending of a TV show, movie or book? Did you have your own ideas as to how it should have ended? If so, how would you have written it, and why?
As a longtime player of the Last of Us video game series, Sam Gaitan knew the death was coming. Still, the brutal murder of Joel in a recent episode of the HBO adaptation hit her hard. It was already midnight when she went on 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,” Gaitan, a tattooist and artist, said in a recent phone interview. By 5 a.m., she had written 3,761 words featuring Joel and Red, an original character Gaitan had previously created, and an alternative scenario that spares Joel from his onscreen 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.”
In this alternative plot to “The Last of Us,” Joel, the beloved male lead played by Pedro Pascal, avoids being detained and murdered by a rival group.
He is saved by Red, an invented heroine who convinces the gunmen that Joel is already dead and sends them off.
“Joel’s eyes were on her, watching, a breath away from being up and ready to fight if needed,” oh_persephone writes. “They were both tightly wound coils, waiting to explode.”
Gaitan’s 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 succor.
Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.
