This is so incredibly rude. "Gentians in Bloom" is a 75,000 word Wangxian and Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing WIP.... except the second pairing is actually Lan Xichen/Wen Qing, which isn't revealed until CHAPTER 22. The fic is purposely mistagged to fool readers. https://archiveofourown.org/works/23359486/chapters/55964599

As one of the maybe fifteen people who specifically goes looking for Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing, I left the author a comment asking them to change the tag, in consideration for the few people who might feel disappointed and cheated by that.

The author... clearly does not care.

Apparently the author is not going to change the tags because they "study fandom phenomena."

I'm just at a loss. I get wanting to do everything in your power to surprise your audience, but deliberately lying about your fic's pairing just means that you're attracting an audience who has MADE THE AFFIRMATIVE CHOICE TO SEEK OUT SOMETHING YOU'RE NOT ACTUALLY PROVIDING.

Also, the idea that you can lie in your tags and then get away with it by also tagging your fic with "one of the tags is a lie" is... the weirdest thing I've ever seen? What is this, the two guards and two doors riddle? What if THAT tag is the lie??

And by the way, the faux-edgy "this is just a social experiment" attitude is so old and tired. You are not Philip Zimbardo, and being a dick on AO3 is not the same as setting up your own Stanford prison experiment.

Also, you want to prove you're an iconoclast who's too cool for AO3's rules? Don't pick on a tiny pairing like Jiang Cheng/Wen Qing. Write a 75,000 word fic and tag it with Wangxian, except at the end Wei Wuxian throws Lan Wangji in a pit and marries Wen Ning. See how that goes.

Purposely mistagging a fic with a different pairing (especially a rarepair that people use to sort for) is the equivalent of going into a bookstore, swapping the book jackets of all the romance novels and WWII histories, and refusing refunds to anyone who buys the wrong book.

It's clear there's no justice to be had on this. AO3 doesn't accept pairing tag disputes— a policy I actually accept. And I doubt this author will ever see this thread, or care any more about what I've said here than what I said in my comments. But just like.

WHAT THE HELL, MAN.