I read it years ago, and I wouldn't even know where to find it anymore. Featuring unfairly gorgeous, lyrical writing in the first part, followed by an infuriating level of mediocrity and closing out with surprise!bestiality. Seriously. (I don't know if this was before the first big serious warnings wank, but it was a couple years before I first witnessed one. And the story wasn't in the LJ community).
I should probably also specify - it was a surprise for me, but not the characters. Everyone was consenting.
It was either a shifter or werewolf AU, I'm not sure - I was seeking both out at the time, in a lot of fandoms - and it began beautifully. I never bookmarked it, but part of the reason I consider it the worst story I've ever read is because I still remember its beginning fondly. There was something like a thousand words of moody atmospheric brilliance, with werewolves skulking/stalking about and while it's never mentioned I just knew there was mist drifting through that forest and it was all mysterious and shit, you know? YES.
But then the relationship was boring and going nowhere and once the actual, you know, plot started it got boring and a bit awkward. Once the author was dealing with her story at the "stuff has to happen now" level, the werewolves ceased to be werewolves, just people - there was literally no reason for the story to be supernatural. It wasn't terrible, by any means, but it fell solidly within the type of thing that would make me shrug and click the back button these days (but this was back when I refused to leave any book or story unfinished). But even though I was bored and kind of zoning out, I wasn't pointlessly slogging through, I did want to see if the author would ever return to that interesting mood from the beginning.
The pairing was Werewolf/Human. And there was everyone-is-human sex (fairly generic, not character-driven sex - Tab A in Slot B, so again, boring but not terrible). But, uh, then there was elongating teeth. My thought processes started at "the author is totally not doing this at all, not at all, not at all, I just have to wait out the token nod to the werewolf premise" and then "okay, she's taking this a little farther than I'm comfortable with" and then "oh my god she's going there, she's really going there" immediately followed by "WHY THE FUCK AM I STILL READING CLOSE THE FUCKING WINDOW." I'll spare you a blow-by-blow, but I will mention that the last straw was the werewolf's bones breaking, something about the knee joint going the other way as part of the change.
Also! I was underage at the time. It was something like three in the morning, and I was staying up at the family computer downstairs, surreptitiously reading fic way too late into the night and my parents were sleeping peacefully upstairs and this was when I first realized I needed to figure out how to clear internet history!
The worst part? Um. I sort of went back? It was a few days later. I skipped the rest of the sex, but yeah. I was not yet at the part of my life where I could leave a story unfinished.
And no, in case you were wondering; the author never returned to that early mood.
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Date: 2012-02-19 05:11 am (UTC)I read it years ago, and I wouldn't even know where to find it anymore. Featuring unfairly gorgeous, lyrical writing in the first part, followed by an infuriating level of mediocrity and closing out with surprise!bestiality. Seriously. (I don't know if this was before the first big serious warnings wank, but it was a couple years before I first witnessed one. And the story wasn't in the LJ community).
I should probably also specify - it was a surprise for me, but not the characters. Everyone was consenting.
It was either a shifter or werewolf AU, I'm not sure - I was seeking both out at the time, in a lot of fandoms - and it began beautifully. I never bookmarked it, but part of the reason I consider it the worst story I've ever read is because I still remember its beginning fondly. There was something like a thousand words of moody atmospheric brilliance, with werewolves skulking/stalking about and while it's never mentioned I just knew there was mist drifting through that forest and it was all mysterious and shit, you know? YES.
But then the relationship was boring and going nowhere and once the actual, you know, plot started it got boring and a bit awkward. Once the author was dealing with her story at the "stuff has to happen now" level, the werewolves ceased to be werewolves, just people - there was literally no reason for the story to be supernatural. It wasn't terrible, by any means, but it fell solidly within the type of thing that would make me shrug and click the back button these days (but this was back when I refused to leave any book or story unfinished). But even though I was bored and kind of zoning out, I wasn't pointlessly slogging through, I did want to see if the author would ever return to that interesting mood from the beginning.
The pairing was Werewolf/Human. And there was everyone-is-human sex (fairly generic, not character-driven sex - Tab A in Slot B, so again, boring but not terrible). But, uh, then there was elongating teeth. My thought processes started at "the author is totally not doing this at all, not at all, not at all, I just have to wait out the token nod to the werewolf premise" and then "okay, she's taking this a little farther than I'm comfortable with" and then "oh my god she's going there, she's really going there" immediately followed by "WHY THE FUCK AM I STILL READING CLOSE THE FUCKING WINDOW." I'll spare you a blow-by-blow, but I will mention that the last straw was the werewolf's bones breaking, something about the knee joint going the other way as part of the change.
Also! I was underage at the time. It was something like three in the morning, and I was staying up at the family computer downstairs, surreptitiously reading fic way too late into the night and my parents were sleeping peacefully upstairs and this was when I first realized I needed to figure out how to clear internet history!
The worst part? Um. I sort of went back? It was a few days later. I skipped the rest of the sex, but yeah. I was not yet at the part of my life where I could leave a story unfinished.
And no, in case you were wondering; the author never returned to that early mood.
:(