Baffling!

[krait]

I was just browsing AO3, as you do, when I ran across a fic with the most baffling tag.

After CNTW, two iterations of the same pairing, four characters, "Hurt/Comfort," and a pairing smushname, the tag list ends with "You may want to skip the last chapter."

The fic's only rated M, the summary sounds like a meet-cute AU romance, and there's absolutely no other clues. So........

What FOR???? o.O

I'll be skipping all the chapters, but I'm thoroughly baffled.

Comments

[branchandroot]

That reminds me of authors who rated m/m kissing Lemon and had coy author notes about "you may want to skip X part".

[krait]

Yep, my first thought was 'inadequate smut warning,' but then I looked at the rating and went, "Wait, really?"

My policy is that any fic which advertises that you don't need to read all of it is in fact a fic you should read none of, but it's especially true when the tags are that badly chosen!

(The brave azurelunatic investigated, and it sounds like a completely untagged modern!AU/human!AU with character death plus an author too lazy to complete the last chapter. I'll not be revising my policy anytime soon...)

[flowersforgraves]

Baffling indeed! Maybe a tissue warning???

[azurelunatic]

*throws self on literary grenade*

So (from skimming the last 2 chapters) the "hurt" is cancer, the "comfort" is finding love, and the penultimate chapter is where the story would have ended, as the cancer patient finally meets a good benchmark and they get to have glorious unprotected sex. Happily ever afte--

Final chapter is not fully written out like the rest, it's short snippets (which the chapter note mentions). They get married a year later! 5 years after that? Cancer's back. He's ded.

[sholio]

LOLLLLL. "One of the pairing dies" would definitely have been my guess, but that's even more depressing and pointlessly WTF than the various things I was imagining. (Not that I even know what fandom this is.)

[krait]

Ehhh. It's pretending to be Tolkien fandom, but it's really Worst Peter Jackson Movies Fandom. Sometimes I get a craving for Elf/Human romance and go fishing in the busier end of the pond...

From azurelunatic's description it's pretty clearly an untagged modern!AU; it's probably a human!AU too, which is doubly disappointing when I was browsing an interspecies pairing tag with 'Modern AU' excluded. D:

[krait]

Okay, so... character death. Why not just tag the character death, instead of CNTW and vagueing about it? I remain bewildered, but am now disappointed on top of that.

I was hoping for something truly wacko! "Ah, there are no archive warnings for 'surprise, his husband was a zombie all along!' but I want to make people try to guess," perhaps.

[azurelunatic]

It wasn't even GOOD character death.

[sholio]

I'll be skipping all the chapters

Hahahahaaaa. The only reasonable response!

Considering some of the WTF fanfic choices out there, I can't even begin to imagine. Well, I mean, I CAN imagine ... a whole lot of things I wouldn't want to read.

[krait]

Definitely!

My policy is that any fic which advertises that you don't need to read all of it is in fact a fic you should read none of.

Judging by what this fic turned out to be, I won't be revising that policy any time soon!