Denialfic

Tropes and genres
Synonym(s)	Live Kennedy Universe, EWE, Everybody Lives
Related tropes/genres	alternate universe, fix-it
See also	retcon, reset button
Related articles on Fanlore.

Denialfic is a genre of fanfiction in which a major event in canon is ignored or contradicted, such as the death of a character or a development that makes pairing two characters more difficult. Denialfic may explain why the canonical event in question didn't happen the way it appeared to, or may just ignore its existence.

Denialfic has some overlap with fix-it fanfics, which are written in order to change something about canon that the writer wasn't happy with - usually a negative event like character death. Denialfic tends to be a little broader in terms of the events it will "correct", and usually manifests itself in the form of canon divergence rather than a fic written to correct a single issue.

In many ways, denialfic is a form of alternate universe.

Some Notable Fandom Examples

• Remus/Sirius shippers in Harry Potter fandom often wrote post-Order of the Phoenix denialfic. Another common genre of denialfic in HP fandom is Epilogue? What Epilogue? fanfic, which ignores the events of the much-deplored epilogue to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
• In Star Wars: The Phantom Menace fandom, it was so common among Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan shippers to write as if Qui-Gon's death never happened, that people placed Warnings for fics that followed canon.
• Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles is another fandom where denialfic was common. As fans became more and more dissatisfied with later books in the series, many began writing fics that ignored everything after the third or fourth book.
• Many fans of Beauty and the Beast (TV) ignore or retcon the third season and Catherine's death, this is sometimes called "She's Not Dead" or SND fic for short.
• In Blake's 7, the series-ending episode, "Gauda Prime", ends with one character shooting another; many Post-Gauda Prime stories ignore that inconvenient fact.
• In Forever Knight, the final two episodes, "Ashes to Ashes" and "Last Knight", apparently kill off most of the main cast. Most Last Knight stories reinterpret events so that one or more survives.
• Some fans ignore the existence of the Sherlock episode "The Reichenbach Fall" or the character of Mary Morstan and write or read fiction where neither reality exists.
• Many How I Met Your Mother fans choose to ignore the official series finale and base their fanworks on the alternate finale made back in the season 2. Whether or not Tracy survives varies depending on fan's tastes.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender fans ignore that the season 1 episode "The Great Divide" ever existed; the episode was widely criticized for being boring and pointless, and the season 3 episode "The Ember Island Players" even lampshaded this. Shippers also employ this trope to do away with the canon ships of Aang/Katara and Mai/Zuko to make way for the preferred Zuko/Katara, or Sokka/Suki to make way for the popular Toph/Sokka.
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney fans become attached to characters who end up dead, resulting in many an AU fic where they survive and live happily ever after. The most common stars of such fics are Mia Fey or Gregory Edgeworth from the original trilogy and Clay Terran, Metis Cykes, and the real Bobby Fulbright from Dual Destinies.
• If there are enough fans who are in denial about a particular canon event, they may self-identify by giving their group a particular name, such as Clan Denial (Highlander fans who denied Richie's death ) or Tribe Denial (Sentinel fans who denied that the show could end with Blair's death.) These groups may have their own archives or mailing lists strictly for denialfic.
• The Hobbit fans, especially the film series fans, can be very unhappy that the Durin Family dies at the end. Therefore Everybody Lives, in particular Everyone Lives (The Hobbit) is a very popular alternative.
• The high concentration of fans let down by Voltron: Legendary Defender's ending have led to many writers pretending the whole final season never happened; more accepting fans simply ignore the epilogue in which Shiro gets married and Allura has yet to return (the scene before then implies the Lions were going into space to bring her back). Other fans change the outcome of the final fight to have the Lions sacrifice themselves rather than Allura.

Some Fan Comments

From a Stargate SG-1 fan:

On Monday, February 4, 2002, I finally saw via squinty vision the SG-1 episode Meridian, Daniel Jackson's final episode on Stargate SG-1. That episode. The one in which he dies/ascends/whatever the hell happened.

Okay, I cried a bit. I've carried the sadness around with me for several days now. I'm a bit puzzled by why such a wonderful character would be so misused by the writers and producers of SG, but hey -- I have no inside information, I'm the wrong demographic, I have no power. I'm just another middle-aged woman who gets off writing and reading about Jack and Daniel exploring their complex relationship.

The only power I have is as a writer of fanfiction, a much-despised genre. Only my husband and three close friends know how I spend my free time, and one of those friends I met because I write. So how much power is that?

Well, it's just enough power that I can keep Daniel alive/unascended/whatever the hell happened. I can do that. And so I have.

In my world, Meridian never happened, and SG-1 remains intact. If I ever do write a post-Meridian story, I will label it clearly (and as you can tell from my index of stories page, I'm not big on labeling).

Just wanted y'all to know.

From an X-Files fan:

"Spoilers: Breaks with canon after "Requiem." Seasons 8 and 9 never happened. Mulder and Scully have a son named William, but he wasn't born in a ghost town or adopted by farmers or anything stupid like that.