Love Fools

Fanfiction
Title:	Love Fools
Author(s):	noorie
Date(s):	1 April 2007
Length:	~2,500 words
Genre:	badfic
Fandom:	Mary Renault
External Links:	archived on MRF
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"Love Fools" is a short story by noorie, based on Mary Renault's 1953 novel The Charioteer. It includes mpreg, implied twincest, multiple character deaths, and reincarnation, as well as bad grammar, misspelled words, and prose so purple it's practically magenta. It was written for April Fools' Day.

In "Love Fools", Laurie receives a letter telling him that Andrew is pregnant with his child. Multiple tragedies ensue, unto the second generation.

Laurie grabbed his head in both hands and started crying, pearly tears glistening their downward trail, longing to be united with mother earth. He could not believe this was happening to him. He and Andrew were careful, those few times their love found its joyous physical expression. Andrew had shyly mumbled something about a genetic anomaly in his family. Laurie wasn't really listening at the time, but he followed Andrew's instructions to the (French) letter. How could this have happened? He felt as if the sky had fallen on his head, not before drenching him with cold, harsh rain. His surprise and shock were complete.—excerpt from "Love Fools" by noorie

Lest anyone misunderstand the significance of posting such a story on April 1, the author followed up the next day with "WTF?! explained", a post about its genesis. This was headed with an excerpt from a Yahoo!Messenger transcript from 2 Aug 2006 in which noorie and my_cnnr had swapped crack plot bunnies.

I saved the original chat log, shortly forgetting all about it. Then around mid-March, my laptop exhibited signs of impending doom (the blue screen of death, freezing, automatic scandisk operations upon reboot, etc.)... In my desperate efforts to sort and back up everything, I found the log file, aptly titled "horribly ridiculous TC AU for fools' day.txt". It was St. Paddy's night. Since it was more interesting than sorting through my hard-drive, I started messing with it and posting each paragraph, as it was written, to a couple of friends over Y!M. There was much of the giggle that night. Around 4AM I decided to wrap it up as I had to work that day, hence the rushed ending. After that, it was just waiting until the right date to post (and not chickening out).—excerpt from noorie's 2 April 2007 post to maryrenaultfics

Comments

"Love Fools" elicited considerable response from readers, including the following:

• "you are my hero" - comment by my_cnnr
• "I was totally taken in by this....totally...until I thought about your anomaly, french letter? WTF.... So, aside from the artistic writing, do you have a life beyond this uncanny ability to mix metaphors and prose? Baby, this is absolutely WILD...only sorry I didn't think of it!! Congrats!" - comment by biggerbuns
• "You need to write more fic - it was awesome. I think people might feel ashamed of their love for it - that's why you haven't gotten all the reviews you deserve. It's the love that dare not speak its name!" - comment by poicale

The follow-up post also elicited comments, including:

• "I tried to write a comment on the story itself, but I'd gone blind from reading it crying so many tears at the Tragedy of it all and from the twincest Great Angstiness.
  Thank God April 1 only comes once a year..." - comment by lorie945

The story and follow-up also inspired duskpeterson to begin a lengthy discussion of litslash, which segued into a discussion of the problems of writing historical fiction.