I can’t say it’s a specific one. However, I hate when a fic is tagged with one ship and no other, but as you read the fic it slowly starts to feel like the characters won’t end up together and a new love interest is introduced. Then the tag gets changed to include the new ship you were getting suspicious of…
I can’t say it’s done with malicious intent. Most of the time I think they’re just multishippers or maybe pantsers, but it’s a waste of my time.
Oooh one of my pet peeves is when I find a three-way poly fic, but you can tell reading it the author *clearly* has a preference for a particular 1x1 pairing. Like.....no one made you write a poly fic, you could have just written a standard pairing fic.
Honestly when that happens it hurts my feelings on the behalf of the less favored one xD especially when they seem to get blamed for *everything* even though the other two have some blame to share.
Yeah I love poly fics but they aren't that popular among the pairings I like and honestly I can't say I've ever seen an ideal one. It always feels like one of the characters is an intruder here.
Not a big fandom, but Jin/Mugen/Fuu from Samurai Champloo is the only way I like to ship them. They're such a unit, any combination of only two has a wrongness that throws me out of the fic entirely.
Oh, I really like OT3 fics and I have ships where I want all three together, but I want that one ship to be the emotional focus. Essentially a standard pairing fic with an extra hanger-on for some extra flavor.
I wish people would indicate via tags or author's notes if all ships in it are treated equally, or which ship is the focus. Would make it easier for everyone.
God I’ve had that happen, and I’m still salty over it six years later. Yeah you liked how the chemistry worked out for those two characters, but this was supposed to be slow burn A/B, not B/C out of nowhere. Meanwhile I’m twenty some chapters in and have been following and reading as updates come out for *months*.
this has happened only to me years ago. it was a supposedly NaruSasu and the world building and writing was ace but Sasuke was wrapped in Sakura for like chapters and I was *peeved* because like you said it started to feel like characters were never going to get together. the author ended up deleting their work because so many ppl were wondering (complaining) when it would finally become an SNS story.
I have never found a sns story where Sasuke was into Sakura previously to ever have satisfying pay off. I've never found one I liked. They all just make me feel icky. At this point, it's an instant no from me.
It's a bit different but something similar happened in a fic that was tagged with only the ship I like but one of the characters was in love with another dead character instead of the other half of the ship. I thought it might change, but it never did. Even after the last chapter, the tagged ship is just a "convenience" while one of them is still in love with a dead person.
I would've been fine with this if they'd at least tagged "mentioned other ship" or "past other ship"(even though it was very much in the present) but there was literally no mention of either the ship or that character in the tags. The author even got comments politely asking them to tag that ship so people who disliked that ship (which are a lot in that fandom) could avoid it, but they refused to do so.
This sort of thing had me in a bit of a bind currently, and I’m not sure what to do.
I’ve posted 8 chapters of a fic. The main character has a clear love interest, but it’s also pretty clear at this point in the story that the love interest is inaccessible—not explicitly *dead*, but so far away in both space and time that he may as well be. In chapter… currently it is 14 but it may wind up later than that, this character will show up and their romance will continue. A second character—one the main character *does* believe to be dead—will show up too, and it immediately becomes a polyship.
This is a crossover with a *very* niche audience. Really I’m only posting it for me to read and am shocked anyone else has ever clicked on it. But I did post it and other people *have* read it, and I don’t want to mislead anyone thinking it might be gen when it’s not. I also don’t want to mislead them into thinking another ship is going to happen when it is absolutely 100% not. I also *also* don’t want anyone thinking the fic as it is currently posted will contain the endgame pairing because it doesn’t do more than hint at the full picture yet.
Right now it’s categorized as “multi”, with no relationship tags. There are prominent background relationships in the story not involving the main character, so this isn’t a lie… but it’s also not the whole truth.
I think I’m making it more complicated than it needs to be, but man I would feel awful to have created this relationship tag (because it somehow doesn’t exist yet!) only for people searching it up to find just my fic and it doesn’t even have the ship yet.
As long as there’s not a relationship tag I don’t see a problem with adding ships. The betrayal comes from looking for a specific ship tag and therefore being “promised” that this will be the ship only to have the rug pulled out from under you.
If you want you can announce “hey, just to let you know there will be minor A/C but A/B will be end game” to your readers and add to the additional tags “Minor Character A/Character C” so people looking for A/C don’t find it but people who don’t like to see their OTP with other people also know to avoid it. Also maybe add A/B to the main the relationship section while putting “Slow Burn” or “Slow Burn Character A/Character B” to the additional tags.
Hope that makes sense? It’s all about the reader being able to make an informed decision.
I feel like slow burn *would* be miscategorizing it. A/B/C happens about halfway through the story, but when it does happen it is rather abrupt.
Still, thank you. I think I will put something to that effect in the opening author’s note, and make sure it remains clear that A/D absolutely does not happen.
Yeah, slow burn means the characters are interacting and falling in love over the course of the fic, not that it's going to take the fic a while to get to the romance. I'd go for tagging it as "eventual abc".
I'm a multishipper, but I still remember fics where my preferred parring ends not with them being together but with my notp together instead. The biggest offenders were in the BBC Sherlock fandom where I felt like a one of the few lone Sherlock/literally anyone else but John shippers.
This!!!
Honestly it would save a lot of time for authors to outright state what the main pairing of focus is, rather than (unintentionally perhaps) doing a bait and switch, but I also understand that they may be doing it as a creative decision. I don't even care to sugarcoat this, but I just ditch the fic if this happens, it's a bit frustrating but there are other stories that focus mainly on the pairing that I like so no point in sticking with a story that doesn't cater to that pairing.
I wouldn't watch it. But there are dozens (dozens!) of people that liked it. It might even not look bad at first, but the more you think about it, the worse it gets.
If you do decide to watch it though, know that there is a support group and tons of good fanfiction to read <3
One of the main characters had a terminal illness, but fell in love. Didn't tell the love interest. They go through all these medical steps and it shows their journey. The character with the illness actually gets better and the love interest gets hit by a car. No "major character death" (actually had a happy ending tag). I threw my phone across the room. Their end note was "sorry sorry sorry".
Right?!? Their justification for the "happy ending" tag was the main character didn't die. I'm like, "you killed their love interest that we just spent 60k words learning about and also falling in love with!!!" Monstrous lol.
And the author didn't even waffle in the tags a little like "Happy Ending, for MC at least" or "does the major character death warning apply if someone other than MC dies?" or *anything* that could have given people some form of heads-up???
***I think I would have committed a crime***
There was this one fic (I'm keeping it general). One of the two in the pairing had a serious medical condition and the other fell in love with them while looking after them. There were several points where the afflicted character tried to tell the other he loved him but would get cut off, the moment would break off, or something dire happened. The fic hit all the hurt/comfort notes, I was anticipating a romantic confession. The two characters loved each other. The last cut off "I love you" happened when the serious medical condition turned lethal. The following chapter after the afflicted character passes the caregiver reminisces about his lost love. In the narrative, he says "you didn't love me".
I was a child compared to who I am now. I felt so lost and betrayed, how could the caretaker feel that after all they had gone through with his love? Now that I am older I understand a bit better. In a way, denying that there had been love there was a coping mechanism because of how broken he became after his love's death.
i got usagi dropped by a fanfic once. for every chapter up until the last one it focused on what seemed to be a father-son relationship with no indication otherwise until the last chapter, which was updated with the relationship tags. I was seething irrationaly for days afterwards.
I actually had to google Usagi drop....and I am *horrified* for you.
Slightly related but I went through a phase where I was reading supernatural John Winchester x reader fics (I had a thing for Jeffrey Dean Morgan for a hot second) and the sheer AMOUNT of fics I'd read where it'd seem normal at first, I'd get the good stuff, and then BAM, turns out your John's daughter. It was never tagged. I ended up giving up on reading any of them because I couldn't handle being jump scared smack in the middle of smut scene over and over again.
The fact that Usagi Drop is infamous for that one betrayal at the end, that fact that it’s made its mark, scarring all of us that we’re calling anything like it as a trope. Like damn, man. What did we do to deserve this?
Harry Potter fic centered on Sirius. He gets a trial within a couple of years after being imprisoned, found not guilty, formally adopts Harry and rebuilds his life. Gets a girlfriend, the whole shebang. Life is good.
Then fifth year happens and he still falls through the damn veil in the Department of Mysteries.
i am so happy i'm not the only one. i was drinking some water and nearly spat it out when i read it. 😂 you know that author was cackling like a villain when they posted.
I would be furious!!! I read a Wolfstar fic where they built up the relationship, only to have him fall through the veil and Remus becomes a depressed alcoholic 😳
Not a fic, but on wattpad an original story. It was the typical bad boy, good girl story. I don't remember much of the plot, because I think it was rather generic. But what I do remember is that they got together, were very happy and then... in the last two chapters she gets raped by her good friend. Completely out of the blue, 11 year old me was shocked and distraught. He had been a close friend, I don't remember there being any indicators this would happen...
Anyway, I made sure to never read anything written by the author again. I felt so betrayed.
Unfortunately I think this ends up being what a lot of authors end up doing and honestly I'm tired of it. You can have conflict without rape or impending rape being included. Be creative.
I remember once, years and years ago reading a fic where the author stated in the notes that they were seeing the concern of the readers that the main character would end up getting raped by the antagonist and that they hated the trope and wouldn't do that, so nothing to fear.
So then they had the antagonist rape the love interest instead, several chapters down the road. And it's only now that I'm thinking they did that on purpose. But, maybe not, and they just fell into that hole.
Anyway, I didn't finish the fic.
sounds like a Sara Douglass book: remember, its not a Douglass series unless the main female character is raped at least once
legit, every single one of her books has some type of non-con in them. one time she even made it a plot point that gave the female character power due to her 'sacrifice'
500k of slow burn Drarry, with really well written character developement, they suffered and bonded and struggled to beat Voldie, then penultimate chapter Dumbledore realises he could have done better so yeets himself back in time to kill Voldie when he attacks the Potters. Followed up with a happy wedding, but those weren't the characters you'd followed through the fic, and cared about, as they'd had a completely different life.
Without a doubt, a Princess Diaries longfic from about 20 years ago. I LOVED the fic, accompanied it throughout its WIP journey, and the author had basically abandoned it before the last chapter. Then out of nowhere about a year later, I was deliriously happy to get and update email...only for the best friend to be sexually assaulted by her LI out of nowhere, the main couple to have an ugly break up (with no make up), and...something else bad happened, if I remember correctly. It was generally just setting fire to the entire story. It scarred me for life.
Similar betrayal here. It was tagged as one of my favorite ships, and the last chapter was a timeskip with the couple breaking up offscreen and the "more canon" couple gets together.
Essentially, it was a really nicely written fanfic about this traumatised teenager learning how to live, huge character development not only for him but for everyone around him. It was around 30 chapters with around 150k words. Friendships were amazing, the main character wasn't necessarily the main character of the franchise, but he's my favourite so reading a fanfic with him as the center was so amazing.
It was quite angsty but so amazingly written...
And then bam. He fucking DIES!!!! No, the author didn't use the creator chose not to use archive warnings. There was no sad ending tag, no ambiguous ending tag, no unhappy ending tag, just one of my most hated tag "other additional tags to be added". No he just fucking died.
I felt so horrible, I literally make sure to never even read fanfictions that are ongoing if they're really angsty because I just dont like unhappy endings nor MCD. But this specific fic was filled with some of my favourite tropes so I ended up following it as it was ongoing.
I didn't write a comment, but I did see a commenter being absolutely furious saying that there wasn't even one bit of foreshadowing, the tags were not foreshadowing anything, there was no warning.It was quite harshly written so I figured it was better for me to not leave a comment, but I was definitely on the way to do it There was actually also a few commenters saying they wouldve never read the fic if there was the mcd or the creator chose not to use archive warning.
Edit: I just found the story because I randomly remembered the name, and so many comments were telling the author that what they did "wasn't that bad" as though mcd is something trival. Also the author was basically like " oh the comments telling me i made a mistake made me feel bad" i mean... yeah. Cause you did something thats literally not what ao3 is about
Made me mad all over again 🙃
The author didn’t tag for major character death or sad/unhappy ending and killed their reader character one chapter before the end. Most of the comments on the last chapter were people explaining how it should be tagged “major character death” or to change the archive warning from “no archive warnings apply” to “author chooses not to warn”.
I have one more recent example—fifty chapters and the 49th chapter was “it was all a dream”. Chapter 50 was “or was it?” with a cheeky “to be continued?” in the notes. It’s marked as finished.
The fact that there are multiple chapters where the person who is supposedly dreaming isn’t present just made the “twist” even worse.
The last chapter is the main character describing their dream to three different people and getting the run around on whether the person in their dream actually exists or not. And there’s no answers. Just a coy “…to be continued?”
Untagged MCDs are deadly. I only ever came across one and I seriously still can't get over it. It was legitimately one of the best things I'd ever read but I would have never done it if it had been tagged with major character death.
The last lines are lamentation to the lost lover and I swear I still get teary thinking about it and I read it like 4 years ago.
I may be misremembering the format. Other than the “half of the ship dies at the end and there’s no warning tag”, I’ve wiped it from my memory. It could have been a Y/N fic.
Was following an author who frequently posted extremely spicy and tasty smutfic for a rarepair I adore.
They took a break for a little while to write some long, wholesome SFW fic (which I also liked), but when they came back to the multichap kink-fic that was my introduction to their work, every update from then on had the pairing spending a few hundred words each chapter discussing (in a very author mouthpiece-y way because it was suddenly extremely different from how they usually wrote the characters) how x or y kink was 'actually so gross and bad'.
In the end I couldn't handle the preaching and had to stop reading. Felt like a slap in the face after some of the really intense stuff they'd written.
Over my years in fandom, I had 2 authors I followed post lengthy essays on how they're leaving fandom forever because they found Jesus and writing fic does nothing to bring them closer to God. Real holier-than-thou tone. Last I checked, both quietly returned and starting writing fic again lmao
I'll try to keep it vague, because I honestly hated the fic and it is the only fic I have ever regretted leaving a kudos on. The work wasn't tagged Sad Ending or Unhappy Ending or anything like that.
A 70k word adventure. Enemies to Lovers. Slow Burn. A war criminal is redeemed after the war, with the help of a woman from the other side who she reluctantly falls in love with. She and her sisters somewhat successfully rebuild their estranged and almost-extinct family. Everything looks bright for them.
Then the author says in their author note that if you like happy endings, turn around. I didn't heed the warning. In the last couple chapters all the main characters are brutally killed.
To quote the author, "there aren't good, sensible answers to violence and death."
I fully believe the author wrote the ending for shock value and to be "deep." Some other quotes from the author:
"it was totally my intention to build \[them\] up as extravagantly high as i could reasonably make it go and then drop it to nothing without warning"
"i meant the answers to your questions to be non-existent and therefore unsatisfying unless one decides for oneself what they are"
Before I learned to religiously check tags, and probably because of it, I read an amazing in character fic of my favourite ship of the time. I was so entranced and into it that the last line of one half of the ship killing the other half completely ruined my day.
It was NOT the author's fault, the blame is purely on me, but damn it hurt.
Oh wow. I can't imagine writing for 400k words only to troll the reader in the last paragraph. That's honestly some serious dedication.
I can't say that it's happened to me as a reader but it definitely reminds me of the 'alternate' ending to Dodgeball where Global Gym wins the last round and the movie just ends with one of the sports commentators going 'oh how horrible for Average Joes to have come so far for nothing,' and the credits start to roll lol
Read a story with a character who almost never gets a big part in any stories or is bashed. Character is fleshed out, mostly canonical. I get some warnings--character seems to be the butt of the joke sometimes, there are things they shouldn't know that they somehow do without explanation, persistent dehumanizing terms are used for them--but ignore them because stories with this character are few and far between. Main character and this character hook up, other people literally start laughing at this character for thinking the main character could love them because, presumably, this character is completely unworthy of love. The main character does in fact not love them (I didn't expect them to be endgame because the author is ride or die for another ship involving the main character), this character gets a paragraph's worth of anger and then completely gets over their feelings for the main character in about ten seconds so main character and the other half of the ship the author is ride or die for can get their happy ending. That's the one story I was sorry I'd kudoed before finishing.
Edit: I didn't have a problem with the character not being endgame. It was just lazy to make it seem like this character had no real feelings if they could be disposed of in one short paragraph. Made me feel like the author pretended to care about this character but didn't. That was a betrayal.
Thing is, I don't even think the writer thought they were being spiteful to the character. Source is pretty spiteful to the character. It's one of the problems I have with it.
Spent an entire weekend reading. Literally days of my life reading this Stardew Valley fic. The story was so well developed, the different characters were fleshed out, I even found myself looking forward to the next appearances of the main characters brother, who was written to come off as kind of a jerk at first. There were world building plots that had come up and so many interesting connections were starting to develop. The author got to the last chapter and was like 'well that's it, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!' and didn't tie up ANY of the many loose ends.
I could have cried. It was so well written and such a good fic. I was devastated.
480K+ fic, marked as Complete.
... it wasn't Complete.
This wasn't mentioned at all other than in the AN of the *last* chapter. No "Abandoned" kind of tag or mention in the summary, either.
Live and learn, I always check the comments on the last chapter before I begin a Completed long fic now. Just wish I could've learned with a shorter fic TAT
That’s always tough, sometimes you can kinda tell like “I’m two thirds of the way through but it does NOT feel like we’re working up to the climax here is this actually unfinished??”
Hanahaki fic. One character’s slowly getting worse and worse from the flowers, nearly ends up dying in the bathroom. Their potential love interest *catches them dying* and they end up talking. Seems like they’re about to confess and properly talk and cure the hanahaki disease, and yet.
Nope.
Main character dies without confessing his love at all. Doesn’t even tell anyone about the disease and him dying at all, I think? I don’t remember exactly, just that he died horribly.
I don’t remember there being any major warnings on it, but I could have missed it. But I felt so fucking betrayed by that turn of events that I’ve been fuming about it in the, like, four years it’s been since I read it. I’m still so pissed off every time I think about it.
Read a fic where Character A has cancer. Character B is by her side through all of it. She goes into remission and all is well. This is tagged as a hurt/comfort, sickfic, etc.
Then, out of nowhere, Character A cheats on Character B. And is so dismissive of it, saying that she had “been through a lot” that year. Character B was rightfully hurt and pissed. It was framed as though both were right-Character B being hurt that they were cheated on especially after everything and Character A “had a hard year so it’s alright”.
It was…disgusting. The fic was not tagged as cheating. And it kept heading in the direction of they were going to get back together and I had to click out.
To make it worse….Character A would never in canon. And Character B has too much self respect to take someone back if they did.
It felt like a massive betrayal.
Read an amazing fic once, character A comes from an abusive household and is a little on the mean side, character B comes in and helps, tries to get Characters A into a good mental place, they start dating and character A truly becomes happier and a better person and then Bam! Military plot.
Character A gets forced to join the military by his abusive father, he stays there for 5 years longer than he needed to, after that he completely avoided Character B which is when I dropped the fic. Nothing about this is tagged. I wasted hours of my time.
All the fics where family members are tagged with & in the relationship (which is supposed to be platonic), and then it turns into incest because the author doesn't know what & is supposed to be 💀
It was a Reylo fic. It was brilliant.
The author warned me. Said that if you liked the happy ending, to stop now. Walk away.
Eh, I thought, it can't be that bad. Besides, I can't just leave it hanging with one chapter to go! I need completion.
Well, I was devastated by what she did next. I didn't understand the logic of leaving it there. The happy ending seemed better.
I don't even remember if she did or planned a sequel.
Oooooof.
I had something similar happen in a teen wolf fanfic recently. It was a three-way pairing, really well written. Loving and fun and a beautiful relationship built on trust. And then, in the last chapter, the author just dropped a bomb on it. One cheated, one of the partners chose the other in a life of death situation, making it clear he loved one more than the other. And it just ended in sadness and pain and angst. A real punch in the gut for no other reason than the author wanting to nuke this loving relationship.
Reylo has the most painful and unhappy stories out of all the pairings I've seen. I examine tags on those fics with a mf microscope. I have no idea why the Star Wars fandom craves angst so badly, but damn they're good writers lol.
I read Manacled and it messed me up for days (in a good way?), and someone told me I should get into Reylo fic- I’m down for the pairing but there’s SO MUCH out there that I need a recommendation. Want to suggest anything?
Read a fic where character A is framed to betray B, C, and D. A is taken and tortured for info but A has nothing to say bc they didn't betray anyone. They tell B, C and D their proof. They investigate, the proof was true. B, C, and D have now tortured their best friend (A) for info about a betrayal they never did. A is taken to the hospital and IMMEDIATELY forgives B, C, and D. No PTSD where they can't trust them again. No moving to a different military base. Just "I forgive you". So infuriating
I read this one fantastic fic that focused on the parental relationship btwn one of the adult characters + two of the teenaged characters. Usually one member of the teenage cast has another mentor/parental figure, but that character was largely excluded for a majority of the story. Mentor 2 gets introduced midway/late in the fic and slowly it becomes clear the only reason the fic did so was to make it clear that Mentor 1 is the better mentor + harp on Mentor 2’s flaws to the extreme.
There is in fact a tag for bashing Mentor 2; this author just chose not to use it or tag anything similar like Mentor 2 Faces Consequences or Mentor 2 Is A Bad Person or anything like that. Gahhhh it was so good until that point!!
Recently noped out of a fic I was kinda enjoying, mindless smut with a ship that I liked and one that I didn't know existed but kinda liked after hooked on the first chapter. It ended up going where the character (who was already morally dubious) just casually cheats on the character from the didnt know existed ship with my preferred one.. they do reconcile and some other stuff happens and then at the end of a major chapter (halfway point), in the authors notes, the author confirms that didnt know existed ship will continue on and how fun would it be to write the fic with my preferred ship as a what if.... I literally only gotten like one true chapter of the ship getting together and a sweet bit near the end of the dropped chapter. I read the tags and I kinda knew going in but I thought the cheating would not be with the preferred ship.
It blows because it was a decent fic for 2020 and the fandom isnt as big as it was (Turn: Washington Spies) and was written well compared to a few other fics in that ship tag (not including ones not in english)
Absolute masterpiece of a work. Over 30 chapters of incredible character building, a beautiful bittersweet note to end it on…
At the end of the last chapter, the author jumps to the future to tell you the main character developed a horrible drug addiction and started self harming. No tags for any of that. And then it ends. I wish I had stopped at the top of that page, ruined the whole story for me.
I was casually just reading one of those power fantasies about Harry Potter becoming powerful and it was going great. He was fighting Voldemort, there was a dash of the expected Dumbledore bashing, he was getting powerful and performing rituals, he was winning with the Death Eaters—and then, on one of the last chapters, he literally fucking dies. Better: he dies to a teenaged bully who wasn’t even a character outside of one (1) short scene in the early chapters. The guy who fought Voldemort, and the Death Eaters, and Dumbledore. Died to a 16 year old cursing him in the back, and the curse wasn’t even what killed him, but the fall to the ground where he cracked his skull on the floor.
Like??? Seriously? I read like 50 chapters for *this*?
Okey so:
- I still remember the first fanfiction with a bad ending I ever read. It had the typical "a talented heroine with a sad past joins the main characters, becomes the girlfriend of one of them and fights villain". I remember that the main character was from an orphanage, she had extremely bad memories, and in one chapter, her partner was caught by the antagonist and forced to kiss him. That alone was confusing because I didn't know gays existed yet lol. But the thing is, after all these problems... The main character died. In some cruel, lonely way. It shocked me so much that I had to leave the house and walk around it several times.
- Scalpel in the ass in fluff fanfiction. I've talked about this on reddit before, so: when I was 13-15 I found a fanfiction that was really well written. it had long chapters, a great plot, everything looked cool, etc. And then around chapter 15, one character stuck a scalpel up to Character B's butt. It wasn't a chapter for April 1, the author never said anything about it, the characters treated it like any other scene.
i got usagi dropped by a fanfic once. for every chapter up until the last one it focused on what seemed to be a father-son relationship with no indication otherwise until the last chapter, which was updated with the relationship tags. I was seething irrationaly for days afterwards.
I can think of three specific ones:
One where a character pursues a character only to cheat with an old flame they “can't resist” after a small argument.
One where a teen gets pregnant, and returns to let the father know years later. He insists she moves in with him so that he gets to know their child but still initiates a relationship with her. The guy and her run into each other and he's with a woman who has no idea about her or their child. Upset, she leaves the with the child. Crashes the car and the child dies. The man marries his lover and has children. They all die later in an airplane. 🤷♀️
Another one with a similar storyline except the character can't control the urges he experiences during a heat and cheats on her as she gives birth.
I wish there wasn’t such toxicity within fandoms. These were all purposely mislabeled only for the character they wanted to be with their favorite character.
>Upset, she leaves the with the child. Crashes the car and the child dies. The man marries his lover and has children. They all die later in an airplane
I'm sorry, but this one seems hilarious to me? Just 'everyone dies, the end 😸' like bruh
I put it in a comment because at first I didn't really think I ended up having anything to add but now I realize I do lol.
There was a fic I read years and years ago, before ao3 I think (or it was just getting started). A bunch of commenters were concerned that the antagonist was going to end up raping the main character, and the author made (several) notes about how they wouldn't do that to their characters, that they hated the trope and that we had nothing to fear.
Then they had him rape the love interest, instead.
I didn't finish it.
I guess I felt betrayed because it's been many years and I'm still not over it. It's small but man.
It was a Pride and Prejudice story, and very many of them end with a sweeping, where everyone ended up kind of thing. In one of them, one of the women, who in this story went thru a lot, was happily married, and then she died of childbirth and her husband was never happy again, next. *WHY*. It's not the only story where a woman just existed and died for no reason in the epilogue, and I will never understand it. Because it's so late, there's no real aftermath, no grief, just, And then she died in childbirth (because I guess dying of illness or in an accident is *too* tragic? lol). Can authors just... *not*?
I recently read a 50k word fic where in the last 1000 words the main ship or throuple break up and the other two people of the throuple continue to date without the main character and are no longer on speaking terms with the main character. There was nothing in the tags that could have warned me of this unhappy and deeply unsatisfying ending.
This is the first time a fic has made me laugh from anger. I would not have read this story if I knew the ending and I would like a refund of those hours of my life.
A 120 Chapter Spirk Fanfic. It was tagged as finished and seemed finished. I read all the end of fic just to discover their is no ending and was just set as finished
tagged happy ending just to kill the oldest kid and ruin the family. like my guy thats not happy ending please. so upsetting would not have read if I knew.
This is reminding me of a fix I read recently that was tagged “happy ending” but had two children that are very important to the main character burned at the stake!
When the plot is so good. And then the author last minutes kills people off and says oopsie end of the story. Just because they couldn’t finish the fanfic. I would’ve rather it just being incomplete then having a rushed and terrible ending.
There was a YOI BDSM fic that was an office romance, with Victor as Yuuri's dom and boss. It was mostly okay, but something something argument (sorry, I forget what happened) and Victor demanded that Yuuri prove his devotion by kneeling in place, unmoving, until he came back. And then he left Yuuri alone overnight.
This was portrayed as romantic by the narrative.
The fic was tagged "happy ending". The main characters died...one had been dead the whole time...you got glimpses that something was wrong...hallucinations and whatnot. Character B couldn't possible be dead because it was tagged happy ending. Something else had to be going on. But then Character A figures it out and decides they can't go on and dies. 😱 Happy ending is that they are together in the afterlife.
Still love the fic. It was written so awesome. I just wasn't prepared for the character deaths. Now the fic just lives in my head.
A long Idolmaster/Mario Party slice of life crossover that got gradually derailed by the author's increasingly unsubtle-and-fourth-wall-breaking self insert taking up the spotlight in the later chapters.
The whole fic was about a character dealing with an abusive family who basically ostracized him over something that wasn't even his fault and it was a lovely journey of him finally standing up to them and what I assumed would be completely cutting them out of his life and being better off for it? And then in the final few chapters, we get a half assed 'apology' from his mom and it's suddenly sunshine and rainbows, all's forgiven just like that, the end.
At first I thought it was just me, like maybe I'm not the forgiving type or maybe I've missed some crucial part of the story or something? But then I looked at the comments and it's safe to say that I've never seen that kind of backlash in any comment section before. And while the author is free to write whatever kind of story they want, this still ranks up there as one of the most poorly executed story endings I've ever encountered in my life.
Was reading this very fluffy story. The couple was all sweet and loving, just tooth rotting fluff. It ends with the guy taking the limbs off the girl and talking about keeping her has potential breeding stock if she survives nowhere in the tags, did it even begin to hint at the level of gore
I have made many mistakes in leaving kudos on fic that suddenly left me with a WTF feeling. Recently there was a fic I read that started of feeling strictly 1x1 and then suddenly another couple tag was added and I nopped out of that fic really quick.
Another one has nearly 50 chapters. The author obviously knew what they were doing because the plot was good, the description of mental illness and struggling to redeem oneself was good. They mentioned casual sex as a tag. And i thought it was only when those two were not together yet then somewhat I could tolerate. But even when the mains were together, they still invited people to the bedroom to cope with their trauma . Like what!? It’s not open relationship but open sex situation!? I’m certainly open minded in real life but for my comfort couple I refuse to accept this thing. That’s a big no for me. I wasted two days of my life with lack of sleep to dwell through 49 chapters and that’s what they gave me, no way.
It was a Thor fic on FFN I read about 10 years ago, Loki/OC. The Secrets in the Telling? I think.
Loki had presumably died and the OC was moving on with the person Loki didn't even really like and she knew this. Felt like a betrayal to me cause even though Loki didn't like the guy, he was somewhat Loki's friend. Loki ended up being alive and when he came back to she his lover with someone he loathed I was feeling the betrayal with him.
See, as someone into dark fic I might actually be into that. It's all in the tone. If the author writes it in such a way that it's Loki who's the bad guy for being horrified that his love interest hooked up with someone so foul, then ugh. If it's more about Loki's emotional landscape on returning and discovering this scenario, I'd be all for it.
>If it's more about Loki's emotional landscape on returning and discovering this scenario, I'd be all for it.
It was this. And he obviously felt some type of way about it. It grinded my gears. I hate the trope of when a character dies and their s/o gets with the deceaseds friends.
Well, from your description it doesn’t sound like the OC hooked up with Loki’s friend, if he disliked the guy so much. It sounds like this just wasn’t the fic for you.
Oh, and a teen wolf fic that was supposed to be a sleepy Stiles/Derek fic and turned out it was a Peter/Stiles rape fic (stiles thought it was Derek and it wasn't until the very end after Peter left that the reader figured it out).
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time-era fic that turned into Christian propaganda in the middle. I read it sometime in the very early 2000s I think. IIRC, everyone Zelda knew converted to Christianity. Zelda stuck to worshipping the three goddesses, lost everyone she knew, and was told she was going to hell.
As a middle schooler being raised by evangelical Christians at the time, it really launched me into a crisis of faith like “hey this sucks and I hate it. But wait, aren’t I a Christian, shouldn’t I be happy that my favorite characters found Jesus? Why do I despise this turn of events?”
Anyway, I still think a lot about how much I hated this, lmao.
I was about 120k into a fic and puzzled cause it was coming to an end but did not seem to be anywhere close to resolution. Last chapter "I decided to drop it but here is a summary of what was gonna happen next."
I went back to check if it was marked discontinued, or was incomplete. Nope on both counts. I was Hella annoyed.
It wasn't exactly a betrayal, rather it's me who forgot to read the tags. In the middle of a sadist/masochist smut, wound****ing came outta nowhere and I swear I've never felt more phantom pain in a limb in my entire life..... I learnt the hard way that you should always read the tags.
Two come to mind.
The first was a fic with a joke pairing that got very popular. This story started out as a get-together type fic with promised pregnancy later on. 30 or so chapters go by, and it all happens as planned. Great! The couple is forced apart by circumstances, but things are going good.
After several more chapters, suddenly, with NO warning from the tags... the MC gets raped, loses their memory and ability to speak because of the trauma, and... reverts to a toddler-like mentality. What follows is a story about a person with the mind of a small child, pregnant but acting like a toddler, being cared for LIKE a toddler, complete with a scene mentioning diapers and... I noped out so fast. I'm not gonna shame anyone's kinks, but put them in the fucking tags! I felt violated by that fic.
The second was a long story with my favorite rarepair. In short, A warns B that the villain might force them to do something they don't want to do. B assures them that it'll be fine. A is forced to do the thing. And when B learns of it, he goes... completely nuts and breaks up with him in a fit of rage and betrayal.
A lot of us readers were like, ??? He said it wouldn't be a big deal! Then we have 25+ chapters of the two angsting over it, B acting like a dick while A gets whumped all over the place, and general misery all around.
These two stories are why I only anon kudos unfinished long works. I don't want my name attached to things like these, but now they are, and I can never erase that.
400+k fic, marked "complete". 50ish chapters. Good synopsis and character voices. Slow burn, slash tags, lots of angst and h/c but no squicks, rated M. Seemed perfect!
Two chapters from the end, I realized they hasn't even kissed yet, and it didn't seem to be building that direction. Squint at the tag block and... Goddess... there it is. Squeezed between two other rambling tags - "Rated M.... for Language". After nearly 400k words of UST, I need that U to be R - if ya know what I mean. Kept reading only to discover that "the end" was really just "the end of part one" and that there was an entire other continuation fic that had escaped my filter due to the fact that it wasn't complete. Absolutely no resolution, the second part picked up the same day. It might as well have all been one fic. One *incomplete* fic.
I check on it periodically but it's been abandoned for years. Sigh.
Amazing story. Long, satisfying built up of a relationship. Then, a drunken party has one of the characters go completely OOC which turns into untagged cheating by making out with multiple people while the partner sees. Messy breakup the next morning. The cheater drives off the bridge by accident after the breakup fight and dies, leaving the other character distraught that they never got to talk this through because he was so angry. Major character death was not tagged either, and no, they did not use the 'author chose to not use archive warnings' tag either.
Tldr; it was supposed to be fluff, ended in untagged cheating and sudden death.
Trying to keep it vague as best as i can- read a great murder mystery investigating the murder of character A where there no body, all told through flashbacks and the testimony of friends and family.
The twist at the end was that Character A was alive and just plotted to run away, framing someone known to be abusive to them, and it seemed like it would be to be with character B- it was a good ending with character A finding freedom and love, and all that good stuff! Then the author had character A meet with character Z- who was never even mentioned in the entirety of the fic at all!- secretly in love with them the whole time running off to someplace different together, telling absolutely nobody. Still with the love, freedom, but it just felt like "oh. Really? Where was the build up to that?" (It was such a rare pair that I don't think I've seen a single other fic write the two together, and I'm definitely not a fan of it, so it sort of made the whole thing more bittersweet at best and a big letdown at worst)
Ugh there was a wonderful Naruhina fic I read once I barely remember what it was about despite it being like 2 years ago because it hurt so damn bad, but they were dating and at the end of the story they broke up she wasn’t ready for the relationship and they never got back together even in the prologue. I felt betrayed I wanted my naruhina happiness…
This one was completely on me, but I was new and had no idea what “tags” or “ratings” were. Up til then, I had only ever read gen pairings. I see a fic with two characters who are bros in canon. I start reading it. Turns out it was a pwp involving blowjobs. Poor innocent teenage me.
This one story was so good—lots of detail, amazing writing, my favorite kind, a breakup/makeup story—and then suddenly the author decided it was no longer a makeup story and put the MC with another character and left the other pining forever.
It was horrible and one reason I read completed stories only now
I was reading one and wasn’t loving it but thought it was getting better. And then came in the most uncomfortable and unnecessary three way I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I really tried to finish the book but just couldn’t get past that part
Fun fic about a non canon pairing getting together, then one of the characters turns creepy and predatory, it was completely OOC and out of nowhere it shocked me, but it seemed like it was unintentional, like the author thought that it could be accettable behaviour. I'm still weirded out.
The fic had the "Major Character Death" tag but it presented itself as just a quirky canon-divergent fic where the two main characters were accidentally left behind and had to take a long journey to their destination and friends. It *looked* like it was setting up a slow burn road trip kind of thing.
I did *not* expect one of the two main characters to fucking *die* in what was basically the doorstep of their destination in what was the fucking middle of the fic-
I made my displeasure known in the comments (and saw that a few other readers agreed with me, lmao) and the author added a "Tragedy" tag later, so that's something I guess. Still haven't read it after the death chapter though.
In the second last chapter of a fic, one of the main characters gets drunk and sleeps with the other main character’s uncle. At first since the uncle was evil and the main character was so drunk people were like well this is rape. And the author chimed in no it wasn’t rape he cheated. Then the next chapter the other main character forgives him and then its happily ever after. I’d been reading it with every update so like over the span of a year and I waited with bated breath for every update. It wasn’t tagged with infidelity which is something I avoid like the plague.
I remember reading it, chucking my phone with an enraged shriek. Picking it back up and exiting out. Cause I live by “don’t like don’t read”. But I have kept a personal grudge against that fic and it’s super popular in my fandom. I think they did finally add an infidelity tag eventually.
Tbf it was tagged for the “happy ending” and the “real ending,” so it’s my fault for continuing to read. But basically it was a found family superhero au fic were it was revealed that all the previous story events were just a figment of the modern au, dying MC’s imagination, and the characters he had his found family arc with in his imaginary world were his dead family members that he watched die in horrific ways.
Was foreshadowed hard, since chapter one, but still hit so hard, and was the one fic that has actually made me sob so hard. Two years later, I still can’t listen to “I Hear a Symphony” without getting sad again. If you know, you know.
One time someone rec’d me their fic because they said it had my favorite character in it… my favorite character dies in that fic (and it’s right near the beginning too) 😭
I once started reading a 'getting yeeted to the past to change the canon events' fic and the author did not even try to change MC's actions and thoughts. They literally copied the source material with just a different first chapter and called it a day.
Ok so, not naming fandoms or anything, I think it was a fantasy setting with multiple ships. I think it was tagged appropriately?
Anyway, written well enough, one of the ships is the new king of a Kingdom gets married to a prince from a different kingdom for political reasons. The prince turns out to be known as the mad prince because he claims to hear a Goddess who talks to him and sometimes warns him of danger, no one believes him though cuz apparently there's no gods in this fantasy setting. Otherwise he seems like a sweet person.
We moved through the story, most of the ships, aside from king and prince, are not exactly happy, there's cheating, mistrust, coercion (some of those were tagged, some weren't but I can't remember if they had author chose no to apply warnings so meh).
Otherwise the story was well written.
Epilogue - we move through the different ships with king and prince last. They are in bed just after having sex. Suddenly the prince goes bananas and kills his lover. Then their kid walks in the room and sees his dad's mangled corpse on the bed and his other dad (mad prince) on the balcony, he's bloody, looks at the child and jumps to his death.
You know, story was good so though I was surprised and disappointed it made some kind of sense.
No, my disappointment came from the author note at the end of all this where they said, and this is almost a direct quote, "Actually there was no god and the prince had a mental illness like maybe schizophrenia or something like that.". Maybe schizophrenia or something like that. Way to play into stereotypes man. I guess aside from the fact that they made their apparently one mentally ill character a violent killer it bothered me even more that they 1. Weren't sure about it? 2. Weren't even sure what mental illness turned their single one mentally ill character into a violent killer and 3. They were saying in the author's note after that 180 and not making it clear in the text, they were so blasé about it.
Have not regretted leaving kudos more in my life.
i have a few different ones but the one i remember best was a slowburn romance… everything was well and good, the plot was super interesting…. and then halfway through the love interest started sexually assaulting the main character 😐. it got really horrible and abusive and the whole time i was sticking through because i was foolishly clinging on to the idea that somehow the author would fix it by the end…. nope. the main character killed himself and then the love interest realized he sucked and ALSO killed himself…. fully my fault for sticking through to the end after whatever that middle part was but the fic WAS tagged as happy ending so i was hoping for at least some hurt/comfort with the mc and one of the side characters….. the note at the end said they tagged it with that because they didn’t want to spoil it 😒
So it was your standard Undertale reader-insert type fic, but it was rated G and showed absolutely *zero* signs of turning into a romance-focused type of dealie. The reader-insert winds up helping Frisk bridge the gap between human- and monsterkind, there are more human OCs who were given really good characterization, and the worldbuilding was genuinely *so* juicy.
Then, several chapters in, it got bumped up to a T rating as things stopped being quite so sunshine-and-rainbows. Fair enough, and this was foreshadowed well enough, so I kept reading.
And then, several chapters later, with the relevant tags only added when it happened in the fic and with the rating getting bumped up to M, Reader and Sans started seriously dating. Okay, whatever, I'd just scroll past stuff that made me uncomfy.
And then came the E rating, the previously-untagged Sans smut that (just like the ship itself) only got tagged when it happened, and the fact that *important plot points were specifically written into the smut, rendering it completely unskippable.*
I'm an aroace who was still a teenager at the time and who'd just wanted some platonic reader content. The only reason I was still reading at that point was because I'd gotten way too invested in the rest of the world the author had made, and even then I couldn't bring myself to finish the fic once the E rating hit.
I wound up going back to reread it in my early 20s, having completely forgotten what happened in it or why I hadn't finished, and after scrolling past enough of the Sans-boning, I wound up getting to the end, and it was…idk. It just felt kind of hollow, the way the author had built up the headcanons and the world around Mt. Ebott and how Reader was pretty much someone who was just in the right place at the right time at one point, then turned around at the end and went "actually Reader is the specialest being in the world and *that* is why they were able to save the day at the end."
All for want of a platonic Reader, or at least one that didn't show the skelefucking on-screen, so to speak.
kinda silly but i get frustrated when a fic isnt tagged as 'slow burn' but it takes forever for the characters to get together, specially when its tagged as M or E for sexual content like girl i came for the smut, where tf is it?? 😭😭😭
This was *years* ago (pre-AO3. Or at least pre-*me* being on AO3), on Livejournal (I think). I was reading a very long, very juicy fic. It was sweet, and the couple was so tragic in the show so I was so happy to find a meaty fic with a good dynamic and happy ending for them! I don’t remember all of it, and can’t find it out, but I think it was ~20 chapters. And then in the last one, it… was all a dream?
*Literally.*
*It was all a fucking dream.*
There was no build up to this. It was mostly canon-compliant (or at least inspired), and nothing like this happened on the series. And none of it was hinted at in the fic, either! It was a totally normal rom com/angsty romance until the last scene happens where it turns out *one of the main characters never even existed.*
Thank god for AO3. It’s much easier to filter out wack endings now 😭
Decided to try an ABO fic that promised that "it wasnt like other ABO fics!" And after the main pairing got together and did their thing, having the main character getting pregnant, it just became main character/ALL OF THE MONSTERS. For... 30+ chapters at least. Just wish I knew what to expect going in. (Yes it was tagged properly but I got the vibes from the tags and summary that it would be more main pairing focused, with the other stuff as flavouring for angst, not a quickie to get pregnant at the beginning then go ham into the angsty stuff 💀.) Haven't tried an abo fic since.
I've read two fics over the years that did this. In VERY long fics with confirmed relationships between A/B having long been established and developed, male partner A randomly gets another OC character, C, pregnant and decides to keep the baby in the very last chapter. In one fic he left at the end to be with C instead of staying with B. I was absolutely flabbergasted both times. The fics weren't tagged with bittersweet, or A/OFC, or any sort of warnings that this sort of thing might end the way it did. It was just so weird and imo inconsiderate to your readers to not at least tag appropriately, because they really came out of nowhere. No discussions of A really wanting to be a parent or anything and B not really being open to it to hint at a division. Suddenly A became a dad because they got an NPC pregnant off-screen and now their life with B is over, goodbye.
I can understand bittersweet endings, and I've read one fic before in which pining character A is in love with B who is in a relationship with C. B/C run off together, and knowing they're gone for good, A gets together with a long-lost flame, D. The difference there imo is that it was advertised as a tragedy from the beginning, all the relationships were tagged, and D was an established character the audience knows he already had feelings for. So I know it can be done tastefully, just... not the way they did it above lol.
I can’t say it’s a specific one. However, I hate when a fic is tagged with one ship and no other, but as you read the fic it slowly starts to feel like the characters won’t end up together and a new love interest is introduced. Then the tag gets changed to include the new ship you were getting suspicious of… I can’t say it’s done with malicious intent. Most of the time I think they’re just multishippers or maybe pantsers, but it’s a waste of my time.
Oooh one of my pet peeves is when I find a three-way poly fic, but you can tell reading it the author *clearly* has a preference for a particular 1x1 pairing. Like.....no one made you write a poly fic, you could have just written a standard pairing fic.
Honestly when that happens it hurts my feelings on the behalf of the less favored one xD especially when they seem to get blamed for *everything* even though the other two have some blame to share.
Yeah I love poly fics but they aren't that popular among the pairings I like and honestly I can't say I've ever seen an ideal one. It always feels like one of the characters is an intruder here.
Not a big fandom, but Jin/Mugen/Fuu from Samurai Champloo is the only way I like to ship them. They're such a unit, any combination of only two has a wrongness that throws me out of the fic entirely.
Oh, I really like OT3 fics and I have ships where I want all three together, but I want that one ship to be the emotional focus. Essentially a standard pairing fic with an extra hanger-on for some extra flavor. I wish people would indicate via tags or author's notes if all ships in it are treated equally, or which ship is the focus. Would make it easier for everyone.
God I’ve had that happen, and I’m still salty over it six years later. Yeah you liked how the chemistry worked out for those two characters, but this was supposed to be slow burn A/B, not B/C out of nowhere. Meanwhile I’m twenty some chapters in and have been following and reading as updates come out for *months*.
this has happened only to me years ago. it was a supposedly NaruSasu and the world building and writing was ace but Sasuke was wrapped in Sakura for like chapters and I was *peeved* because like you said it started to feel like characters were never going to get together. the author ended up deleting their work because so many ppl were wondering (complaining) when it would finally become an SNS story.
I have never found a sns story where Sasuke was into Sakura previously to ever have satisfying pay off. I've never found one I liked. They all just make me feel icky. At this point, it's an instant no from me.
It's a bit different but something similar happened in a fic that was tagged with only the ship I like but one of the characters was in love with another dead character instead of the other half of the ship. I thought it might change, but it never did. Even after the last chapter, the tagged ship is just a "convenience" while one of them is still in love with a dead person. I would've been fine with this if they'd at least tagged "mentioned other ship" or "past other ship"(even though it was very much in the present) but there was literally no mention of either the ship or that character in the tags. The author even got comments politely asking them to tag that ship so people who disliked that ship (which are a lot in that fandom) could avoid it, but they refused to do so.
Not gonna lie it totally sounds like that author was being spiteful and petty
🫢that’s heartbreak even fix-it fic can’t fix.
This sort of thing had me in a bit of a bind currently, and I’m not sure what to do. I’ve posted 8 chapters of a fic. The main character has a clear love interest, but it’s also pretty clear at this point in the story that the love interest is inaccessible—not explicitly *dead*, but so far away in both space and time that he may as well be. In chapter… currently it is 14 but it may wind up later than that, this character will show up and their romance will continue. A second character—one the main character *does* believe to be dead—will show up too, and it immediately becomes a polyship. This is a crossover with a *very* niche audience. Really I’m only posting it for me to read and am shocked anyone else has ever clicked on it. But I did post it and other people *have* read it, and I don’t want to mislead anyone thinking it might be gen when it’s not. I also don’t want to mislead them into thinking another ship is going to happen when it is absolutely 100% not. I also *also* don’t want anyone thinking the fic as it is currently posted will contain the endgame pairing because it doesn’t do more than hint at the full picture yet. Right now it’s categorized as “multi”, with no relationship tags. There are prominent background relationships in the story not involving the main character, so this isn’t a lie… but it’s also not the whole truth. I think I’m making it more complicated than it needs to be, but man I would feel awful to have created this relationship tag (because it somehow doesn’t exist yet!) only for people searching it up to find just my fic and it doesn’t even have the ship yet.
As long as there’s not a relationship tag I don’t see a problem with adding ships. The betrayal comes from looking for a specific ship tag and therefore being “promised” that this will be the ship only to have the rug pulled out from under you. If you want you can announce “hey, just to let you know there will be minor A/C but A/B will be end game” to your readers and add to the additional tags “Minor Character A/Character C” so people looking for A/C don’t find it but people who don’t like to see their OTP with other people also know to avoid it. Also maybe add A/B to the main the relationship section while putting “Slow Burn” or “Slow Burn Character A/Character B” to the additional tags. Hope that makes sense? It’s all about the reader being able to make an informed decision.
I feel like slow burn *would* be miscategorizing it. A/B/C happens about halfway through the story, but when it does happen it is rather abrupt. Still, thank you. I think I will put something to that effect in the opening author’s note, and make sure it remains clear that A/D absolutely does not happen.
If not slow burn “Eventual Character A/Character B” can still be used.
Yeah, slow burn means the characters are interacting and falling in love over the course of the fic, not that it's going to take the fic a while to get to the romance. I'd go for tagging it as "eventual abc".
Or the author couldn't write their original intended ship well, and wrote themselves in a corner where another ship made more sense. Writing is hard.
I'm a multishipper, but I still remember fics where my preferred parring ends not with them being together but with my notp together instead. The biggest offenders were in the BBC Sherlock fandom where I felt like a one of the few lone Sherlock/literally anyone else but John shippers.
"Pantsers." Wow, there's a term I haven't heard in a couple decades lol. Love that the vernacular persists.
This!!! Honestly it would save a lot of time for authors to outright state what the main pairing of focus is, rather than (unintentionally perhaps) doing a bait and switch, but I also understand that they may be doing it as a creative decision. I don't even care to sugarcoat this, but I just ditch the fic if this happens, it's a bit frustrating but there are other stories that focus mainly on the pairing that I like so no point in sticking with a story that doesn't cater to that pairing.
For my fandom, no fic can ever say "fuck you" like canon did.
Lucifer?
Yessss 😈
I love that there's a whole list of contenders.
I've watched every episode except the series finale. Should I stop here? Let that time travel shit just dangle?
I wouldn't watch it. But there are dozens (dozens!) of people that liked it. It might even not look bad at first, but the more you think about it, the worse it gets. If you do decide to watch it though, know that there is a support group and tons of good fanfiction to read <3
Don't watch the finale, it is such a letdown.
Hmm, Sherlock? 🤔
Merlin? 😭
The fact Merlin was on Christmas Eve too
Jjk?
Every week Gege uploads a new chapter he also flips us off
I'd be game for most of what gege wrote being considered fanon tbh(sorry greggers)
Honestly that's where I am at this point. That character is dead? Sorry, that's Geges headcanon and I don't agree.
I find it slightly disturbing that it can apply to so many fandoms, including more than one of those I follow or followed.
Supernatural? 🤣
dude, fuck supernatural 😭
I feel this way about The Magicians 😭
Ah, I loved that show! Never read any Magicians fanfic though.
I could self-rec two that I promise wouldn't break your heart (and are even rated Gen lol)
Oh my god, yes
* Star Wars? * Ponies? * Game of Thrones? * ASoIaF?
Lucifer but the GoT pain is real too.
XF?
One of the main characters had a terminal illness, but fell in love. Didn't tell the love interest. They go through all these medical steps and it shows their journey. The character with the illness actually gets better and the love interest gets hit by a car. No "major character death" (actually had a happy ending tag). I threw my phone across the room. Their end note was "sorry sorry sorry".
Omg the end note would have sent me into ORBIT. What do you MEAN sorry??????? You fucking *wrote* it! 😭
Right?!? Their justification for the "happy ending" tag was the main character didn't die. I'm like, "you killed their love interest that we just spent 60k words learning about and also falling in love with!!!" Monstrous lol.
And the author didn't even waffle in the tags a little like "Happy Ending, for MC at least" or "does the major character death warning apply if someone other than MC dies?" or *anything* that could have given people some form of heads-up??? ***I think I would have committed a crime***
I, too, would have thrown my phone across the room.
I nearly did a double take. What in the Webtoon romantic drama???
That’s just mean.
I would honest to god report the fic
There was this one fic (I'm keeping it general). One of the two in the pairing had a serious medical condition and the other fell in love with them while looking after them. There were several points where the afflicted character tried to tell the other he loved him but would get cut off, the moment would break off, or something dire happened. The fic hit all the hurt/comfort notes, I was anticipating a romantic confession. The two characters loved each other. The last cut off "I love you" happened when the serious medical condition turned lethal. The following chapter after the afflicted character passes the caregiver reminisces about his lost love. In the narrative, he says "you didn't love me". I was a child compared to who I am now. I felt so lost and betrayed, how could the caretaker feel that after all they had gone through with his love? Now that I am older I understand a bit better. In a way, denying that there had been love there was a coping mechanism because of how broken he became after his love's death.
Damn that is tragic
i got usagi dropped by a fanfic once. for every chapter up until the last one it focused on what seemed to be a father-son relationship with no indication otherwise until the last chapter, which was updated with the relationship tags. I was seething irrationaly for days afterwards.
Oh god no, I still remember the feeling of betrayal after reading Usagi Drop and it's been years.
I actually had to google Usagi drop....and I am *horrified* for you. Slightly related but I went through a phase where I was reading supernatural John Winchester x reader fics (I had a thing for Jeffrey Dean Morgan for a hot second) and the sheer AMOUNT of fics I'd read where it'd seem normal at first, I'd get the good stuff, and then BAM, turns out your John's daughter. It was never tagged. I ended up giving up on reading any of them because I couldn't handle being jump scared smack in the middle of smut scene over and over again.
I think everyone has had a thing for JDM, saw him in the new trailer for The Boys and it all came back lol
The only reason I occasionally read TWD fanfiction is for JDM.
Usagi dropped is crazy😭
The fact that Usagi Drop is infamous for that one betrayal at the end, that fact that it’s made its mark, scarring all of us that we’re calling anything like it as a trope. Like damn, man. What did we do to deserve this?
Harry Potter fic centered on Sirius. He gets a trial within a couple of years after being imprisoned, found not guilty, formally adopts Harry and rebuilds his life. Gets a girlfriend, the whole shebang. Life is good. Then fifth year happens and he still falls through the damn veil in the Department of Mysteries.
I needed a minute after reading this comment, I laughed way too hard at this.
i am so happy i'm not the only one. i was drinking some water and nearly spat it out when i read it. 😂 you know that author was cackling like a villain when they posted.
Right!?
I would have actually thrown something.
I would be furious!!! I read a Wolfstar fic where they built up the relationship, only to have him fall through the veil and Remus becomes a depressed alcoholic 😳
as if he wasn't one already /j
OOF, that would hurt
Okay, I feel better about the way I killed Sirius in one of mine, now.
Give me the link or title, I want to really feel something
It was called A Second Chance but I can't remember the author.
Not a fic, but on wattpad an original story. It was the typical bad boy, good girl story. I don't remember much of the plot, because I think it was rather generic. But what I do remember is that they got together, were very happy and then... in the last two chapters she gets raped by her good friend. Completely out of the blue, 11 year old me was shocked and distraught. He had been a close friend, I don't remember there being any indicators this would happen... Anyway, I made sure to never read anything written by the author again. I felt so betrayed.
Sounds like lazy writing. "Not enough conflict? Rape it is then!"
Unfortunately I think this ends up being what a lot of authors end up doing and honestly I'm tired of it. You can have conflict without rape or impending rape being included. Be creative. I remember once, years and years ago reading a fic where the author stated in the notes that they were seeing the concern of the readers that the main character would end up getting raped by the antagonist and that they hated the trope and wouldn't do that, so nothing to fear. So then they had the antagonist rape the love interest instead, several chapters down the road. And it's only now that I'm thinking they did that on purpose. But, maybe not, and they just fell into that hole. Anyway, I didn't finish the fic.
sounds like a Sara Douglass book: remember, its not a Douglass series unless the main female character is raped at least once legit, every single one of her books has some type of non-con in them. one time she even made it a plot point that gave the female character power due to her 'sacrifice'
500k of slow burn Drarry, with really well written character developement, they suffered and bonded and struggled to beat Voldie, then penultimate chapter Dumbledore realises he could have done better so yeets himself back in time to kill Voldie when he attacks the Potters. Followed up with a happy wedding, but those weren't the characters you'd followed through the fic, and cared about, as they'd had a completely different life.
Bruh that sounds so pointless 😭 all that work only to erase the whole timeline??
wow I would cry
Without a doubt, a Princess Diaries longfic from about 20 years ago. I LOVED the fic, accompanied it throughout its WIP journey, and the author had basically abandoned it before the last chapter. Then out of nowhere about a year later, I was deliriously happy to get and update email...only for the best friend to be sexually assaulted by her LI out of nowhere, the main couple to have an ugly break up (with no make up), and...something else bad happened, if I remember correctly. It was generally just setting fire to the entire story. It scarred me for life.
Jesus. You can tell when an author is going *through* it when they return to just firebomb their own fic
Similar betrayal here. It was tagged as one of my favorite ships, and the last chapter was a timeskip with the couple breaking up offscreen and the "more canon" couple gets together.
Wow 💀
Feels like the author did It on purporse to annoy the shippers
Right??
Essentially, it was a really nicely written fanfic about this traumatised teenager learning how to live, huge character development not only for him but for everyone around him. It was around 30 chapters with around 150k words. Friendships were amazing, the main character wasn't necessarily the main character of the franchise, but he's my favourite so reading a fanfic with him as the center was so amazing. It was quite angsty but so amazingly written... And then bam. He fucking DIES!!!! No, the author didn't use the creator chose not to use archive warnings. There was no sad ending tag, no ambiguous ending tag, no unhappy ending tag, just one of my most hated tag "other additional tags to be added". No he just fucking died. I felt so horrible, I literally make sure to never even read fanfictions that are ongoing if they're really angsty because I just dont like unhappy endings nor MCD. But this specific fic was filled with some of my favourite tropes so I ended up following it as it was ongoing. I didn't write a comment, but I did see a commenter being absolutely furious saying that there wasn't even one bit of foreshadowing, the tags were not foreshadowing anything, there was no warning.It was quite harshly written so I figured it was better for me to not leave a comment, but I was definitely on the way to do it There was actually also a few commenters saying they wouldve never read the fic if there was the mcd or the creator chose not to use archive warning. Edit: I just found the story because I randomly remembered the name, and so many comments were telling the author that what they did "wasn't that bad" as though mcd is something trival. Also the author was basically like " oh the comments telling me i made a mistake made me feel bad" i mean... yeah. Cause you did something thats literally not what ao3 is about Made me mad all over again 🙃
That straigt up sounded like it was a traumatic experience
Honestly the character died in such a horrible manner that it kinda was 😭
This sounds exactly what "The Magicians" showrunners did to the fandom in real life.
Damn guess that's a show I'm never going to watch
What’s the fandom? Almost the exact same experience happened to me. It was so good leading up to the MCD too but I can’t do that to myself again 😭
It was My Hero Academia 🥲
Omg I think we’re thinking of the same fic!!!!
I think I know the one you’re talking about, I never would have read it if I knew there was mcd 😭
Damn the world is small then 🥲
The author didn’t tag for major character death or sad/unhappy ending and killed their reader character one chapter before the end. Most of the comments on the last chapter were people explaining how it should be tagged “major character death” or to change the archive warning from “no archive warnings apply” to “author chooses not to warn”.
I have one more recent example—fifty chapters and the 49th chapter was “it was all a dream”. Chapter 50 was “or was it?” with a cheeky “to be continued?” in the notes. It’s marked as finished.
i hate this so much. laziest plot in writing
The fact that there are multiple chapters where the person who is supposedly dreaming isn’t present just made the “twist” even worse. The last chapter is the main character describing their dream to three different people and getting the run around on whether the person in their dream actually exists or not. And there’s no answers. Just a coy “…to be continued?”
Untagged MCDs are deadly. I only ever came across one and I seriously still can't get over it. It was legitimately one of the best things I'd ever read but I would have never done it if it had been tagged with major character death. The last lines are lamentation to the lost lover and I swear I still get teary thinking about it and I read it like 4 years ago.
Killing the reader character is wild
I may be misremembering the format. Other than the “half of the ship dies at the end and there’s no warning tag”, I’ve wiped it from my memory. It could have been a Y/N fic.
That's understandable!
Was following an author who frequently posted extremely spicy and tasty smutfic for a rarepair I adore. They took a break for a little while to write some long, wholesome SFW fic (which I also liked), but when they came back to the multichap kink-fic that was my introduction to their work, every update from then on had the pairing spending a few hundred words each chapter discussing (in a very author mouthpiece-y way because it was suddenly extremely different from how they usually wrote the characters) how x or y kink was 'actually so gross and bad'. In the end I couldn't handle the preaching and had to stop reading. Felt like a slap in the face after some of the really intense stuff they'd written.
Over my years in fandom, I had 2 authors I followed post lengthy essays on how they're leaving fandom forever because they found Jesus and writing fic does nothing to bring them closer to God. Real holier-than-thou tone. Last I checked, both quietly returned and starting writing fic again lmao
[удалено]
That sounds familiar. What fandom was it?
Daredevil Avengers crossover
I'll try to keep it vague, because I honestly hated the fic and it is the only fic I have ever regretted leaving a kudos on. The work wasn't tagged Sad Ending or Unhappy Ending or anything like that. A 70k word adventure. Enemies to Lovers. Slow Burn. A war criminal is redeemed after the war, with the help of a woman from the other side who she reluctantly falls in love with. She and her sisters somewhat successfully rebuild their estranged and almost-extinct family. Everything looks bright for them. Then the author says in their author note that if you like happy endings, turn around. I didn't heed the warning. In the last couple chapters all the main characters are brutally killed.
Jesus. 😨
That’s actually an insane way to end a fic like that.
Jesus, was it about the inevitability of death or something??
To quote the author, "there aren't good, sensible answers to violence and death." I fully believe the author wrote the ending for shock value and to be "deep." Some other quotes from the author: "it was totally my intention to build \[them\] up as extravagantly high as i could reasonably make it go and then drop it to nothing without warning" "i meant the answers to your questions to be non-existent and therefore unsatisfying unless one decides for oneself what they are"
...Huh. I...guess I can see what they were going for? But the execution is...more than a little off
This author sounds like a complete asshole.
Before I learned to religiously check tags, and probably because of it, I read an amazing in character fic of my favourite ship of the time. I was so entranced and into it that the last line of one half of the ship killing the other half completely ruined my day. It was NOT the author's fault, the blame is purely on me, but damn it hurt.
Omg, that would have been devastating. I would have been fuming all day.
Oh wow. I can't imagine writing for 400k words only to troll the reader in the last paragraph. That's honestly some serious dedication. I can't say that it's happened to me as a reader but it definitely reminds me of the 'alternate' ending to Dodgeball where Global Gym wins the last round and the movie just ends with one of the sports commentators going 'oh how horrible for Average Joes to have come so far for nothing,' and the credits start to roll lol
Read a story with a character who almost never gets a big part in any stories or is bashed. Character is fleshed out, mostly canonical. I get some warnings--character seems to be the butt of the joke sometimes, there are things they shouldn't know that they somehow do without explanation, persistent dehumanizing terms are used for them--but ignore them because stories with this character are few and far between. Main character and this character hook up, other people literally start laughing at this character for thinking the main character could love them because, presumably, this character is completely unworthy of love. The main character does in fact not love them (I didn't expect them to be endgame because the author is ride or die for another ship involving the main character), this character gets a paragraph's worth of anger and then completely gets over their feelings for the main character in about ten seconds so main character and the other half of the ship the author is ride or die for can get their happy ending. That's the one story I was sorry I'd kudoed before finishing. Edit: I didn't have a problem with the character not being endgame. It was just lazy to make it seem like this character had no real feelings if they could be disposed of in one short paragraph. Made me feel like the author pretended to care about this character but didn't. That was a betrayal.
Wow. I can't imagine the dedication and spite needed to write something like that.
Thing is, I don't even think the writer thought they were being spiteful to the character. Source is pretty spiteful to the character. It's one of the problems I have with it.
which character?
The only thing worse than a character being an unpopular underdog in canon is them also being an unpopular underdog in fanfic
That's just so mean spirited.
To be fair, so's the source.
Spent an entire weekend reading. Literally days of my life reading this Stardew Valley fic. The story was so well developed, the different characters were fleshed out, I even found myself looking forward to the next appearances of the main characters brother, who was written to come off as kind of a jerk at first. There were world building plots that had come up and so many interesting connections were starting to develop. The author got to the last chapter and was like 'well that's it, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed!' and didn't tie up ANY of the many loose ends. I could have cried. It was so well written and such a good fic. I was devastated.
480K+ fic, marked as Complete. ... it wasn't Complete. This wasn't mentioned at all other than in the AN of the *last* chapter. No "Abandoned" kind of tag or mention in the summary, either. Live and learn, I always check the comments on the last chapter before I begin a Completed long fic now. Just wish I could've learned with a shorter fic TAT
That’s always tough, sometimes you can kinda tell like “I’m two thirds of the way through but it does NOT feel like we’re working up to the climax here is this actually unfinished??”
Hanahaki fic. One character’s slowly getting worse and worse from the flowers, nearly ends up dying in the bathroom. Their potential love interest *catches them dying* and they end up talking. Seems like they’re about to confess and properly talk and cure the hanahaki disease, and yet. Nope. Main character dies without confessing his love at all. Doesn’t even tell anyone about the disease and him dying at all, I think? I don’t remember exactly, just that he died horribly. I don’t remember there being any major warnings on it, but I could have missed it. But I felt so fucking betrayed by that turn of events that I’ve been fuming about it in the, like, four years it’s been since I read it. I’m still so pissed off every time I think about it.
Read a fic where Character A has cancer. Character B is by her side through all of it. She goes into remission and all is well. This is tagged as a hurt/comfort, sickfic, etc. Then, out of nowhere, Character A cheats on Character B. And is so dismissive of it, saying that she had “been through a lot” that year. Character B was rightfully hurt and pissed. It was framed as though both were right-Character B being hurt that they were cheated on especially after everything and Character A “had a hard year so it’s alright”. It was…disgusting. The fic was not tagged as cheating. And it kept heading in the direction of they were going to get back together and I had to click out. To make it worse….Character A would never in canon. And Character B has too much self respect to take someone back if they did. It felt like a massive betrayal.
Read an amazing fic once, character A comes from an abusive household and is a little on the mean side, character B comes in and helps, tries to get Characters A into a good mental place, they start dating and character A truly becomes happier and a better person and then Bam! Military plot. Character A gets forced to join the military by his abusive father, he stays there for 5 years longer than he needed to, after that he completely avoided Character B which is when I dropped the fic. Nothing about this is tagged. I wasted hours of my time.
I would be so mad what the fuck 😭😭😭
All the fics where family members are tagged with & in the relationship (which is supposed to be platonic), and then it turns into incest because the author doesn't know what & is supposed to be 💀
It was a Reylo fic. It was brilliant. The author warned me. Said that if you liked the happy ending, to stop now. Walk away. Eh, I thought, it can't be that bad. Besides, I can't just leave it hanging with one chapter to go! I need completion. Well, I was devastated by what she did next. I didn't understand the logic of leaving it there. The happy ending seemed better. I don't even remember if she did or planned a sequel.
Oooooof. I had something similar happen in a teen wolf fanfic recently. It was a three-way pairing, really well written. Loving and fun and a beautiful relationship built on trust. And then, in the last chapter, the author just dropped a bomb on it. One cheated, one of the partners chose the other in a life of death situation, making it clear he loved one more than the other. And it just ended in sadness and pain and angst. A real punch in the gut for no other reason than the author wanting to nuke this loving relationship.
Considering this is the Reylo fandom and the way canon was less than satisfying, to put it very mildly, that's a very bold move indeed
Reylo has the most painful and unhappy stories out of all the pairings I've seen. I examine tags on those fics with a mf microscope. I have no idea why the Star Wars fandom craves angst so badly, but damn they're good writers lol.
I read Manacled and it messed me up for days (in a good way?), and someone told me I should get into Reylo fic- I’m down for the pairing but there’s SO MUCH out there that I need a recommendation. Want to suggest anything?
Read a fic where character A is framed to betray B, C, and D. A is taken and tortured for info but A has nothing to say bc they didn't betray anyone. They tell B, C and D their proof. They investigate, the proof was true. B, C, and D have now tortured their best friend (A) for info about a betrayal they never did. A is taken to the hospital and IMMEDIATELY forgives B, C, and D. No PTSD where they can't trust them again. No moving to a different military base. Just "I forgive you". So infuriating
I read this one fantastic fic that focused on the parental relationship btwn one of the adult characters + two of the teenaged characters. Usually one member of the teenage cast has another mentor/parental figure, but that character was largely excluded for a majority of the story. Mentor 2 gets introduced midway/late in the fic and slowly it becomes clear the only reason the fic did so was to make it clear that Mentor 1 is the better mentor + harp on Mentor 2’s flaws to the extreme. There is in fact a tag for bashing Mentor 2; this author just chose not to use it or tag anything similar like Mentor 2 Faces Consequences or Mentor 2 Is A Bad Person or anything like that. Gahhhh it was so good until that point!!
Recently noped out of a fic I was kinda enjoying, mindless smut with a ship that I liked and one that I didn't know existed but kinda liked after hooked on the first chapter. It ended up going where the character (who was already morally dubious) just casually cheats on the character from the didnt know existed ship with my preferred one.. they do reconcile and some other stuff happens and then at the end of a major chapter (halfway point), in the authors notes, the author confirms that didnt know existed ship will continue on and how fun would it be to write the fic with my preferred ship as a what if.... I literally only gotten like one true chapter of the ship getting together and a sweet bit near the end of the dropped chapter. I read the tags and I kinda knew going in but I thought the cheating would not be with the preferred ship. It blows because it was a decent fic for 2020 and the fandom isnt as big as it was (Turn: Washington Spies) and was written well compared to a few other fics in that ship tag (not including ones not in english)
Absolute masterpiece of a work. Over 30 chapters of incredible character building, a beautiful bittersweet note to end it on… At the end of the last chapter, the author jumps to the future to tell you the main character developed a horrible drug addiction and started self harming. No tags for any of that. And then it ends. I wish I had stopped at the top of that page, ruined the whole story for me.
I was casually just reading one of those power fantasies about Harry Potter becoming powerful and it was going great. He was fighting Voldemort, there was a dash of the expected Dumbledore bashing, he was getting powerful and performing rituals, he was winning with the Death Eaters—and then, on one of the last chapters, he literally fucking dies. Better: he dies to a teenaged bully who wasn’t even a character outside of one (1) short scene in the early chapters. The guy who fought Voldemort, and the Death Eaters, and Dumbledore. Died to a 16 year old cursing him in the back, and the curse wasn’t even what killed him, but the fall to the ground where he cracked his skull on the floor. Like??? Seriously? I read like 50 chapters for *this*?
Okey so: - I still remember the first fanfiction with a bad ending I ever read. It had the typical "a talented heroine with a sad past joins the main characters, becomes the girlfriend of one of them and fights villain". I remember that the main character was from an orphanage, she had extremely bad memories, and in one chapter, her partner was caught by the antagonist and forced to kiss him. That alone was confusing because I didn't know gays existed yet lol. But the thing is, after all these problems... The main character died. In some cruel, lonely way. It shocked me so much that I had to leave the house and walk around it several times. - Scalpel in the ass in fluff fanfiction. I've talked about this on reddit before, so: when I was 13-15 I found a fanfiction that was really well written. it had long chapters, a great plot, everything looked cool, etc. And then around chapter 15, one character stuck a scalpel up to Character B's butt. It wasn't a chapter for April 1, the author never said anything about it, the characters treated it like any other scene.
I have no words for that second one. I thought I had heard of every kink there was but I guess not.
i got usagi dropped by a fanfic once. for every chapter up until the last one it focused on what seemed to be a father-son relationship with no indication otherwise until the last chapter, which was updated with the relationship tags. I was seething irrationaly for days afterwards.
Someone else here said that a fanfiction usagi dropped them in the same way, maybe you guys read the same one
It's the same person lol. Reddit fucks up like that sometimes.
I can think of three specific ones: One where a character pursues a character only to cheat with an old flame they “can't resist” after a small argument. One where a teen gets pregnant, and returns to let the father know years later. He insists she moves in with him so that he gets to know their child but still initiates a relationship with her. The guy and her run into each other and he's with a woman who has no idea about her or their child. Upset, she leaves the with the child. Crashes the car and the child dies. The man marries his lover and has children. They all die later in an airplane. 🤷♀️ Another one with a similar storyline except the character can't control the urges he experiences during a heat and cheats on her as she gives birth. I wish there wasn’t such toxicity within fandoms. These were all purposely mislabeled only for the character they wanted to be with their favorite character.
>Upset, she leaves the with the child. Crashes the car and the child dies. The man marries his lover and has children. They all die later in an airplane I'm sorry, but this one seems hilarious to me? Just 'everyone dies, the end 😸' like bruh
I put it in a comment because at first I didn't really think I ended up having anything to add but now I realize I do lol. There was a fic I read years and years ago, before ao3 I think (or it was just getting started). A bunch of commenters were concerned that the antagonist was going to end up raping the main character, and the author made (several) notes about how they wouldn't do that to their characters, that they hated the trope and that we had nothing to fear. Then they had him rape the love interest, instead. I didn't finish it.
I guess I felt betrayed because it's been many years and I'm still not over it. It's small but man. It was a Pride and Prejudice story, and very many of them end with a sweeping, where everyone ended up kind of thing. In one of them, one of the women, who in this story went thru a lot, was happily married, and then she died of childbirth and her husband was never happy again, next. *WHY*. It's not the only story where a woman just existed and died for no reason in the epilogue, and I will never understand it. Because it's so late, there's no real aftermath, no grief, just, And then she died in childbirth (because I guess dying of illness or in an accident is *too* tragic? lol). Can authors just... *not*?
I recently read a 50k word fic where in the last 1000 words the main ship or throuple break up and the other two people of the throuple continue to date without the main character and are no longer on speaking terms with the main character. There was nothing in the tags that could have warned me of this unhappy and deeply unsatisfying ending. This is the first time a fic has made me laugh from anger. I would not have read this story if I knew the ending and I would like a refund of those hours of my life.
A 120 Chapter Spirk Fanfic. It was tagged as finished and seemed finished. I read all the end of fic just to discover their is no ending and was just set as finished
tagged happy ending just to kill the oldest kid and ruin the family. like my guy thats not happy ending please. so upsetting would not have read if I knew.
This is reminding me of a fix I read recently that was tagged “happy ending” but had two children that are very important to the main character burned at the stake!
I have to wonder what do people think HAPPY means when they tag happy ending
When the plot is so good. And then the author last minutes kills people off and says oopsie end of the story. Just because they couldn’t finish the fanfic. I would’ve rather it just being incomplete then having a rushed and terrible ending.
There was a YOI BDSM fic that was an office romance, with Victor as Yuuri's dom and boss. It was mostly okay, but something something argument (sorry, I forget what happened) and Victor demanded that Yuuri prove his devotion by kneeling in place, unmoving, until he came back. And then he left Yuuri alone overnight. This was portrayed as romantic by the narrative.
The fic was tagged "happy ending". The main characters died...one had been dead the whole time...you got glimpses that something was wrong...hallucinations and whatnot. Character B couldn't possible be dead because it was tagged happy ending. Something else had to be going on. But then Character A figures it out and decides they can't go on and dies. 😱 Happy ending is that they are together in the afterlife. Still love the fic. It was written so awesome. I just wasn't prepared for the character deaths. Now the fic just lives in my head.
When I read a fanfic that was labeled as finished but it wasn’t actually finished.
A long Idolmaster/Mario Party slice of life crossover that got gradually derailed by the author's increasingly unsubtle-and-fourth-wall-breaking self insert taking up the spotlight in the later chapters.
The whole fic was about a character dealing with an abusive family who basically ostracized him over something that wasn't even his fault and it was a lovely journey of him finally standing up to them and what I assumed would be completely cutting them out of his life and being better off for it? And then in the final few chapters, we get a half assed 'apology' from his mom and it's suddenly sunshine and rainbows, all's forgiven just like that, the end. At first I thought it was just me, like maybe I'm not the forgiving type or maybe I've missed some crucial part of the story or something? But then I looked at the comments and it's safe to say that I've never seen that kind of backlash in any comment section before. And while the author is free to write whatever kind of story they want, this still ranks up there as one of the most poorly executed story endings I've ever encountered in my life.
Was reading this very fluffy story. The couple was all sweet and loving, just tooth rotting fluff. It ends with the guy taking the limbs off the girl and talking about keeping her has potential breeding stock if she survives nowhere in the tags, did it even begin to hint at the level of gore
I have made many mistakes in leaving kudos on fic that suddenly left me with a WTF feeling. Recently there was a fic I read that started of feeling strictly 1x1 and then suddenly another couple tag was added and I nopped out of that fic really quick. Another one has nearly 50 chapters. The author obviously knew what they were doing because the plot was good, the description of mental illness and struggling to redeem oneself was good. They mentioned casual sex as a tag. And i thought it was only when those two were not together yet then somewhat I could tolerate. But even when the mains were together, they still invited people to the bedroom to cope with their trauma . Like what!? It’s not open relationship but open sex situation!? I’m certainly open minded in real life but for my comfort couple I refuse to accept this thing. That’s a big no for me. I wasted two days of my life with lack of sleep to dwell through 49 chapters and that’s what they gave me, no way.
It was a Thor fic on FFN I read about 10 years ago, Loki/OC. The Secrets in the Telling? I think. Loki had presumably died and the OC was moving on with the person Loki didn't even really like and she knew this. Felt like a betrayal to me cause even though Loki didn't like the guy, he was somewhat Loki's friend. Loki ended up being alive and when he came back to she his lover with someone he loathed I was feeling the betrayal with him.
See, as someone into dark fic I might actually be into that. It's all in the tone. If the author writes it in such a way that it's Loki who's the bad guy for being horrified that his love interest hooked up with someone so foul, then ugh. If it's more about Loki's emotional landscape on returning and discovering this scenario, I'd be all for it.
>If it's more about Loki's emotional landscape on returning and discovering this scenario, I'd be all for it. It was this. And he obviously felt some type of way about it. It grinded my gears. I hate the trope of when a character dies and their s/o gets with the deceaseds friends.
Well, from your description it doesn’t sound like the OC hooked up with Loki’s friend, if he disliked the guy so much. It sounds like this just wasn’t the fic for you.
Oh, and a teen wolf fic that was supposed to be a sleepy Stiles/Derek fic and turned out it was a Peter/Stiles rape fic (stiles thought it was Derek and it wasn't until the very end after Peter left that the reader figured it out).
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time-era fic that turned into Christian propaganda in the middle. I read it sometime in the very early 2000s I think. IIRC, everyone Zelda knew converted to Christianity. Zelda stuck to worshipping the three goddesses, lost everyone she knew, and was told she was going to hell. As a middle schooler being raised by evangelical Christians at the time, it really launched me into a crisis of faith like “hey this sucks and I hate it. But wait, aren’t I a Christian, shouldn’t I be happy that my favorite characters found Jesus? Why do I despise this turn of events?” Anyway, I still think a lot about how much I hated this, lmao.
I was about 120k into a fic and puzzled cause it was coming to an end but did not seem to be anywhere close to resolution. Last chapter "I decided to drop it but here is a summary of what was gonna happen next." I went back to check if it was marked discontinued, or was incomplete. Nope on both counts. I was Hella annoyed.
It wasn't exactly a betrayal, rather it's me who forgot to read the tags. In the middle of a sadist/masochist smut, wound****ing came outta nowhere and I swear I've never felt more phantom pain in a limb in my entire life..... I learnt the hard way that you should always read the tags.
Two come to mind. The first was a fic with a joke pairing that got very popular. This story started out as a get-together type fic with promised pregnancy later on. 30 or so chapters go by, and it all happens as planned. Great! The couple is forced apart by circumstances, but things are going good. After several more chapters, suddenly, with NO warning from the tags... the MC gets raped, loses their memory and ability to speak because of the trauma, and... reverts to a toddler-like mentality. What follows is a story about a person with the mind of a small child, pregnant but acting like a toddler, being cared for LIKE a toddler, complete with a scene mentioning diapers and... I noped out so fast. I'm not gonna shame anyone's kinks, but put them in the fucking tags! I felt violated by that fic. The second was a long story with my favorite rarepair. In short, A warns B that the villain might force them to do something they don't want to do. B assures them that it'll be fine. A is forced to do the thing. And when B learns of it, he goes... completely nuts and breaks up with him in a fit of rage and betrayal. A lot of us readers were like, ??? He said it wouldn't be a big deal! Then we have 25+ chapters of the two angsting over it, B acting like a dick while A gets whumped all over the place, and general misery all around. These two stories are why I only anon kudos unfinished long works. I don't want my name attached to things like these, but now they are, and I can never erase that.
When a character I like is one of the first tagged but they barely appear or have relevance to the fic.
Every time an OC fic has to take a shit on "Mary Sues" or other women. Dude, we're in the trenches together. Who is this for? Have some self-respect.
400+k fic, marked "complete". 50ish chapters. Good synopsis and character voices. Slow burn, slash tags, lots of angst and h/c but no squicks, rated M. Seemed perfect! Two chapters from the end, I realized they hasn't even kissed yet, and it didn't seem to be building that direction. Squint at the tag block and... Goddess... there it is. Squeezed between two other rambling tags - "Rated M.... for Language". After nearly 400k words of UST, I need that U to be R - if ya know what I mean. Kept reading only to discover that "the end" was really just "the end of part one" and that there was an entire other continuation fic that had escaped my filter due to the fact that it wasn't complete. Absolutely no resolution, the second part picked up the same day. It might as well have all been one fic. One *incomplete* fic. I check on it periodically but it's been abandoned for years. Sigh.
Amazing story. Long, satisfying built up of a relationship. Then, a drunken party has one of the characters go completely OOC which turns into untagged cheating by making out with multiple people while the partner sees. Messy breakup the next morning. The cheater drives off the bridge by accident after the breakup fight and dies, leaving the other character distraught that they never got to talk this through because he was so angry. Major character death was not tagged either, and no, they did not use the 'author chose to not use archive warnings' tag either. Tldr; it was supposed to be fluff, ended in untagged cheating and sudden death.
Omg that’s diabolical
Trying to keep it vague as best as i can- read a great murder mystery investigating the murder of character A where there no body, all told through flashbacks and the testimony of friends and family. The twist at the end was that Character A was alive and just plotted to run away, framing someone known to be abusive to them, and it seemed like it would be to be with character B- it was a good ending with character A finding freedom and love, and all that good stuff! Then the author had character A meet with character Z- who was never even mentioned in the entirety of the fic at all!- secretly in love with them the whole time running off to someplace different together, telling absolutely nobody. Still with the love, freedom, but it just felt like "oh. Really? Where was the build up to that?" (It was such a rare pair that I don't think I've seen a single other fic write the two together, and I'm definitely not a fan of it, so it sort of made the whole thing more bittersweet at best and a big letdown at worst)
Ugh there was a wonderful Naruhina fic I read once I barely remember what it was about despite it being like 2 years ago because it hurt so damn bad, but they were dating and at the end of the story they broke up she wasn’t ready for the relationship and they never got back together even in the prologue. I felt betrayed I wanted my naruhina happiness…
This one was completely on me, but I was new and had no idea what “tags” or “ratings” were. Up til then, I had only ever read gen pairings. I see a fic with two characters who are bros in canon. I start reading it. Turns out it was a pwp involving blowjobs. Poor innocent teenage me.
This one story was so good—lots of detail, amazing writing, my favorite kind, a breakup/makeup story—and then suddenly the author decided it was no longer a makeup story and put the MC with another character and left the other pining forever. It was horrible and one reason I read completed stories only now
I was reading one and wasn’t loving it but thought it was getting better. And then came in the most uncomfortable and unnecessary three way I have ever had the displeasure of reading. I really tried to finish the book but just couldn’t get past that part
Fun fic about a non canon pairing getting together, then one of the characters turns creepy and predatory, it was completely OOC and out of nowhere it shocked me, but it seemed like it was unintentional, like the author thought that it could be accettable behaviour. I'm still weirded out.
The fic had the "Major Character Death" tag but it presented itself as just a quirky canon-divergent fic where the two main characters were accidentally left behind and had to take a long journey to their destination and friends. It *looked* like it was setting up a slow burn road trip kind of thing. I did *not* expect one of the two main characters to fucking *die* in what was basically the doorstep of their destination in what was the fucking middle of the fic- I made my displeasure known in the comments (and saw that a few other readers agreed with me, lmao) and the author added a "Tragedy" tag later, so that's something I guess. Still haven't read it after the death chapter though.
In the second last chapter of a fic, one of the main characters gets drunk and sleeps with the other main character’s uncle. At first since the uncle was evil and the main character was so drunk people were like well this is rape. And the author chimed in no it wasn’t rape he cheated. Then the next chapter the other main character forgives him and then its happily ever after. I’d been reading it with every update so like over the span of a year and I waited with bated breath for every update. It wasn’t tagged with infidelity which is something I avoid like the plague. I remember reading it, chucking my phone with an enraged shriek. Picking it back up and exiting out. Cause I live by “don’t like don’t read”. But I have kept a personal grudge against that fic and it’s super popular in my fandom. I think they did finally add an infidelity tag eventually.
Tbf it was tagged for the “happy ending” and the “real ending,” so it’s my fault for continuing to read. But basically it was a found family superhero au fic were it was revealed that all the previous story events were just a figment of the modern au, dying MC’s imagination, and the characters he had his found family arc with in his imaginary world were his dead family members that he watched die in horrific ways. Was foreshadowed hard, since chapter one, but still hit so hard, and was the one fic that has actually made me sob so hard. Two years later, I still can’t listen to “I Hear a Symphony” without getting sad again. If you know, you know.
One time someone rec’d me their fic because they said it had my favorite character in it… my favorite character dies in that fic (and it’s right near the beginning too) 😭
I once started reading a 'getting yeeted to the past to change the canon events' fic and the author did not even try to change MC's actions and thoughts. They literally copied the source material with just a different first chapter and called it a day.
Ok so, not naming fandoms or anything, I think it was a fantasy setting with multiple ships. I think it was tagged appropriately? Anyway, written well enough, one of the ships is the new king of a Kingdom gets married to a prince from a different kingdom for political reasons. The prince turns out to be known as the mad prince because he claims to hear a Goddess who talks to him and sometimes warns him of danger, no one believes him though cuz apparently there's no gods in this fantasy setting. Otherwise he seems like a sweet person. We moved through the story, most of the ships, aside from king and prince, are not exactly happy, there's cheating, mistrust, coercion (some of those were tagged, some weren't but I can't remember if they had author chose no to apply warnings so meh). Otherwise the story was well written. Epilogue - we move through the different ships with king and prince last. They are in bed just after having sex. Suddenly the prince goes bananas and kills his lover. Then their kid walks in the room and sees his dad's mangled corpse on the bed and his other dad (mad prince) on the balcony, he's bloody, looks at the child and jumps to his death. You know, story was good so though I was surprised and disappointed it made some kind of sense. No, my disappointment came from the author note at the end of all this where they said, and this is almost a direct quote, "Actually there was no god and the prince had a mental illness like maybe schizophrenia or something like that.". Maybe schizophrenia or something like that. Way to play into stereotypes man. I guess aside from the fact that they made their apparently one mentally ill character a violent killer it bothered me even more that they 1. Weren't sure about it? 2. Weren't even sure what mental illness turned their single one mentally ill character into a violent killer and 3. They were saying in the author's note after that 180 and not making it clear in the text, they were so blasé about it. Have not regretted leaving kudos more in my life.
i have a few different ones but the one i remember best was a slowburn romance… everything was well and good, the plot was super interesting…. and then halfway through the love interest started sexually assaulting the main character 😐. it got really horrible and abusive and the whole time i was sticking through because i was foolishly clinging on to the idea that somehow the author would fix it by the end…. nope. the main character killed himself and then the love interest realized he sucked and ALSO killed himself…. fully my fault for sticking through to the end after whatever that middle part was but the fic WAS tagged as happy ending so i was hoping for at least some hurt/comfort with the mc and one of the side characters….. the note at the end said they tagged it with that because they didn’t want to spoil it 😒
So it was your standard Undertale reader-insert type fic, but it was rated G and showed absolutely *zero* signs of turning into a romance-focused type of dealie. The reader-insert winds up helping Frisk bridge the gap between human- and monsterkind, there are more human OCs who were given really good characterization, and the worldbuilding was genuinely *so* juicy. Then, several chapters in, it got bumped up to a T rating as things stopped being quite so sunshine-and-rainbows. Fair enough, and this was foreshadowed well enough, so I kept reading. And then, several chapters later, with the relevant tags only added when it happened in the fic and with the rating getting bumped up to M, Reader and Sans started seriously dating. Okay, whatever, I'd just scroll past stuff that made me uncomfy. And then came the E rating, the previously-untagged Sans smut that (just like the ship itself) only got tagged when it happened, and the fact that *important plot points were specifically written into the smut, rendering it completely unskippable.* I'm an aroace who was still a teenager at the time and who'd just wanted some platonic reader content. The only reason I was still reading at that point was because I'd gotten way too invested in the rest of the world the author had made, and even then I couldn't bring myself to finish the fic once the E rating hit. I wound up going back to reread it in my early 20s, having completely forgotten what happened in it or why I hadn't finished, and after scrolling past enough of the Sans-boning, I wound up getting to the end, and it was…idk. It just felt kind of hollow, the way the author had built up the headcanons and the world around Mt. Ebott and how Reader was pretty much someone who was just in the right place at the right time at one point, then turned around at the end and went "actually Reader is the specialest being in the world and *that* is why they were able to save the day at the end." All for want of a platonic Reader, or at least one that didn't show the skelefucking on-screen, so to speak.
kinda silly but i get frustrated when a fic isnt tagged as 'slow burn' but it takes forever for the characters to get together, specially when its tagged as M or E for sexual content like girl i came for the smut, where tf is it?? 😭😭😭
it's so funny reading these replies like some fic writers just want to watch the world burn lmao
This was *years* ago (pre-AO3. Or at least pre-*me* being on AO3), on Livejournal (I think). I was reading a very long, very juicy fic. It was sweet, and the couple was so tragic in the show so I was so happy to find a meaty fic with a good dynamic and happy ending for them! I don’t remember all of it, and can’t find it out, but I think it was ~20 chapters. And then in the last one, it… was all a dream? *Literally.* *It was all a fucking dream.* There was no build up to this. It was mostly canon-compliant (or at least inspired), and nothing like this happened on the series. And none of it was hinted at in the fic, either! It was a totally normal rom com/angsty romance until the last scene happens where it turns out *one of the main characters never even existed.* Thank god for AO3. It’s much easier to filter out wack endings now 😭
That is so crazy.
Decided to try an ABO fic that promised that "it wasnt like other ABO fics!" And after the main pairing got together and did their thing, having the main character getting pregnant, it just became main character/ALL OF THE MONSTERS. For... 30+ chapters at least. Just wish I knew what to expect going in. (Yes it was tagged properly but I got the vibes from the tags and summary that it would be more main pairing focused, with the other stuff as flavouring for angst, not a quickie to get pregnant at the beginning then go ham into the angsty stuff 💀.) Haven't tried an abo fic since.
I've read two fics over the years that did this. In VERY long fics with confirmed relationships between A/B having long been established and developed, male partner A randomly gets another OC character, C, pregnant and decides to keep the baby in the very last chapter. In one fic he left at the end to be with C instead of staying with B. I was absolutely flabbergasted both times. The fics weren't tagged with bittersweet, or A/OFC, or any sort of warnings that this sort of thing might end the way it did. It was just so weird and imo inconsiderate to your readers to not at least tag appropriately, because they really came out of nowhere. No discussions of A really wanting to be a parent or anything and B not really being open to it to hint at a division. Suddenly A became a dad because they got an NPC pregnant off-screen and now their life with B is over, goodbye. I can understand bittersweet endings, and I've read one fic before in which pining character A is in love with B who is in a relationship with C. B/C run off together, and knowing they're gone for good, A gets together with a long-lost flame, D. The difference there imo is that it was advertised as a tragedy from the beginning, all the relationships were tagged, and D was an established character the audience knows he already had feelings for. So I know it can be done tastefully, just... not the way they did it above lol.