Unrelated to the last post but MAN I wish I could make a list of characters view the canon fics that do it so well across fandoms but I really don't want to risk opening them up to deletion. It's only recently that these sorts of stories have been allowed to stay up, as only a few years ago they were considered 'too close to canon' and could - would - get forcibly taken down from just about every site.
I've lost too many amazing cvtc fics to staff deciding they were bending the rules too much to just post a list of links but... I wish they were more popular because there's some absolute gems.
Here, I'll talk about a few things they did:
Killed the protagonist and everyone had to rewatch his memories to bring him back. This was very controversial in universe and it made it work so well.
The protagonist was oblivious to the reading, not part of it. This meant everyone could theorise and debate between themselves and actually REALLY solved the pacing and dramatisation issues common to these fics.
The protagonist actually replaced a villain in canon; the reading was done pre canon and the villain believed he had gone insane was the one acting like that. It was mortifying but seeing his body make friends and get a happy ending when he believed he was beyond hope and vicious about it was heart wrenching.
The young protagonist accidentally wished to be understood and a villain took advantage of it. It switched between the reading and reactions and the protag desperately trying to defeat the villain and make plans to run away to prevent his revealed secret getting him killed by the government.
The very large cast was split into groups, but could contact each other via texting. This enabled each group to have wildly varying reactions and theories without having to constantly argue and fight. It made it more fast paced, and added tension as the villains plotted unsupervised.
A very small cast were on a road trip and found the protags audio diaries of his adventures in the glove compartment. This was a Percy Jackson one, and it built off the books' first person format brilliantly.
The protags purposely wrote down their adventures in books and sold them on the market to fix their reputation and earn some money doing so. It involved people frantically trying to verify the books and evolved into a pr nightmare.
The orphan protag somehow time travelled back to when his family was in hiding with his books. His parents and uncles read the books and got to know their currently infant kid in the process. (This was a Harry Potter one, and both the series and author got permanently banned from ffn years ago and it had gotten all the way to deathly hallows 😭. It had been in progress for over a decade and was immaculately written, I miss it so much. Author if you're out there ily.)
Midway through canon a group of the protags friends combined all of their memories in a crystal ball and shipped it to a conference where just about every important figure was in attendance. They did not tell each other of the memories they included. They did not tell the exiled protag what they'd done. Many unexpected revelations and betrayals happened during the viewing. It also made it so the only scenes that appeared were ones where other people were there, which was so creative and well done.
The protag was a powerful psychic brought in for questioning and made it everyone else's problem. It was hilarious.
For a video game canon a handful of trusted allies (and villains before they went insane) were secretly delivered the games by THE TIME TRAVELLING GHOST OF THE PROTAGONIST IN DISGUISE and played them. The main focus was the main villain finding out a) how to even play video games (there was an ongoing joke about ridiculous video game logic) and b) the reasons he went insane, in excruciating detail, c) his victim's perspective including his own history that future him died not knowing about. One of his friends got a spinoff video game about how all his other friends died tragically. Many people saw their own traumatic deaths on screen with about twenty pixels.
A group of next gen kids accidentally fell into their parent's memories (of a war they'd been lied to about).
The protag was the 'child' of an omnipotent being who got sick of them being a self fulfilling prophecy (which ended horribly in canon) and locked them all in a fourth dimensional cave. In the same fic, the protag was using illusions to maintain the appearance of on-screen canon while fleshing out canon scenes and implications. Really well written and the character relationships were 👌.
The characters parents got the books, and had to reverse engineer the events that led up to canon and also which character was whose unborn kid.
A villain made a wish to publicly expose the main group's 'lies', accidentally exposed them as telling the truth and themselves as the corrupt liars. Whoops!
Traumatised side character time travelled back to pre canon from an apocalypse (that wasn't in canon), demanding the canon be viewed to understand and prevent the events that led to the apocalypse.
Characters broke after the events of canon publish their stories as fantasy books to the unknowing civilian public. The fantasy people accidentally get hold of it and everything goes to pot. I swear this is a totally different fandom to the other one.
Dead villain ghost secretly witnesses a viewing, time travels back to adopt the protagonist and change history to his image.
Crossover where one character was revealed to be a character from the other fandom in hiding with a fake identity.
Protag lost his memories and everyone uses a magical device/ritual to restore it, becoming witnesses themselves in the process.
Characters were forced to watch amvs of each other and had to try and extrapolate the order of events and the symbolism of the song. No one walked away with the full picture, but they got the main problems sorted.
Someone made an uncannily accurate play and the characters had to track the creator down to sue them (and figure out how they'd done it) without revealing that the portrayal was accurate.
A travelling seer took severe umbrage to the body stealing protag and exposed him with receipts. He spent basically the entire fic curled in a ball of mortification.
The protag on trial for many crimes got the magic viewing device used on him in front of everyone in the courtroom.
One fic was pretty normal but every time someone on screen got hurt or sick, so did their 'irl' counterpart. It sped up the fic a lot as no one wanted to linger on the worst bits. Also the author used canon implications, that the protag was oblivious to, to low key scare everyone who noticed them.
Crossover where the adults of one fandom fought over adoption rights of the other fandom's teen protag.
The author only used cherry picked moments of canon to massively streamline the fic, which worked! All the high moments you want a fic to cover - epic fights, dramatic reveals, important conversations, silly moments, developing relationships. And absolutely NOTHING else, there was very little context. Made for some excellent moments of people frantically trying to explain themselves lol.
Character stared too long into the void, broke the fourth wall to watch their own media. They spent most of the fic about to cry.
Protags patron deities hosted a viewing to try and get him a gf/bf from their other avatars. He wasn't looking for romance but did eventually end up in a poly relationship.
Prophet reluctantly revealed his own version of events with the help of his sentient house. This was about a movie so it was pretty fitting thematically lmao.
There is so much potential!! There's so many ways to do it, branch out, give these sorts of fics a try! Don't get stuck in the rut of the same methods as everyone else, even in this genre there's all sorts you can do with it! Use some of these examples if you want! Get creative and don't forget you're writing a story!!
Of course, if you recognise or are reminded of these please don't link or name them*, but you're more than welcome to guess which fandom each belongs to XD!
*Except that Harry Potter one, please I need closure, it's been a decade-
