World Ain't Ready

Fanfiction
Title:	World Ain't Ready
Author(s):	idiopathicsmile
Date(s):	14 September 2014 – 12 April 2015
Length:	185,795 words (16 chapters)
Genre:	High School AU
Fandom:	Les Misérables
External Links:	on AO3
Cover art by softshell-turtle (2016)
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

World Ain't Ready is a popular Enjolras/Grantaire fanfiction by idiopathicsmile. Sometimes abbreviated as W.A.R., it is a modern high school AU where Enjolras and Grantaire pretend to be a couple in order to make it easier for Courfeyrac to ask Jehan to prom. Considered a fandom classic, it is so well-known that reccers often note that readers have likely already heard of or read this fic themselves. As of February 2023, the fic has the highest number of hits, kudos and bookmarks and second highest number of comments in the entire Les Misérables fandom on AO3.

Idiopathicsmile has written a novel version with the serial numbers filed off, however it has only been published in Spanish. A podcast version of it is currently being produced under the name Keep It Steady. The commercial version changes Enjolras and Grantaire's names to Gabe Navarro and Zach Wilson respectively, as well as changing the gender of a few of the characters.

Author's Summary

Enjolras presses his lips together. He already looks pained, and Grantaire hasn't even opened his mouth yet. That's got to be a record, even for them.

"I need a favor," he says at last.

"With what?" says Grantaire. "Ooh, are you forming a cult? Can I join? I'd be awesome at cults, I just know it." He ticks off his qualifications on his fingers. "I love chanting, I look great in robes—"

(High school AU. Grantaire the disaffected stoner is pulled into a cause bigger than himself. Or: in which there are pretend boyfriends for great justice.)

Related Ficlets

Starting 7 June 2020, idiopathicsmile volunteered to write at least 250 words of fic for $25 USD donations to any Black Lives Matter-related cause. She also offered to do this again in 2022 for donations to abortion rights groups. A few of these donations requested World Ain't Ready fics, which are posted on AO3 and Tumblr. Most of them take place after the story, but there are also a few Alternate POV fics.

• 5 Conversations Around Enjolras's Family Dinner Table, Part One (AO3)
• World Ain't Ready Coda One: The First ABC Meeting After Prom (AO3)
• Little Dawn (AO3)
• World Ain't Ready Coda Two: The Art Museum (AO3)
• World Ain't Ready Coda Three: Grantaire, Eponine, and Gavroche (AO3)
• post-W.A.R. ficbit, in which Grantaire and Enjolras tell their friends the truth about the fake-dating (Tumblr)
• post-W.A.R. Summer ficbit (Tumblr)
• ficlet: W.A.R!Enjolras’s birthday party (Tumblr)

Comments by the Author

Also, when I was first working on World Ain’t Ready, I was like, “This is a weird one. A lot of readers won’t buy the AU premise.” In my mind, it was like working on a weird little black-and-white indie film that you kind of make peace with “oh, nobody’s gonna see this one and that’s okay.” So pretty much from the beginning, that blew my mind. It was like realizing the scrappy little independent film you thought you were making was actually The Notebook or some shit.

Use of Fanon

Like many modern Les Mis AUs before and after it, World Ain't Ready used many fanon tropes and characterizations. For some, this was a feature of the story, as it tied in to the active tumblr fandom and made the main characters more diverse. For others, it was an annoyance, to the point that they felt it was closer to original fic.

Before I talk about anything else can I just say. /Korean Bahorel./

-falls over backwards-

(it's kind of terrible but I have this thing where brilliant asian headcanons of canonically white characters are literally my /kryptonite/. finding a character so supremely relatable in a fanwork is a godsend and it's hard to articulate how much I appreciate it (even just the concept/acknowledgement that an asian kid would be able to have a place in this group of friends is such a breath of fresh air)) what I'm trying to say: thank you for the representation. stuff like this is why I so often prefer fandom over mainstream media.

I understand why it's popular because the author is a very competent writer, but the characterization is a mess and it contains every Tumblr headcanon cliché that the fandom is riddled with (including demisexual!Enjolras, disabled!Joly, gender non-conforming!Jehan, POC!Bahorel, etc.), on top of being, you know, a Modern American High School AU.

Removal of Harry Potter References

At some point in late 2021, idiopathicsmile changed the book Grantaire asks Enjolras about in Chapter 4 from Harry Potter to Animorphs. A reader noticed this and commented all the other places in the story where Harry Potter concepts were referenced by the characters. The author later confirmed that this was due to J.K. Rowling's Transphobia.

in the wake of jk rowling’s extremely harmful and depressing transphobia, i ultimately decided to scrub any references to Harry Potter from WAR. it would’ve been true to the time period to keep them there (HP was huuuuge in the mid-aughts), but i know some people describe the story as their comfort read and i figured that the references might sour the comfort a little for trans readers, and readers who are sympathetic to trans people, which is hopefully all of you. (this is also the case for the fully-voiced audio drama adaptation of the story, currently in the works.)

at first, i just switched out Harry Potter in favor of Animorphs when Grantaire first tries to recommend a book to Enjolras, and then an observant reader noticed i’d done this and helpfully directed me to other moments in the story acknowledging HP, chiefly Eponine’s “you can say his name” line and also i’d had Grantaire refer to Jehan as a true Gryffindor, which now feels noticeably uncomfortable given that Jehan is WAR’s only gender non-conforming character. (in that particular case, i think i changed it to calling Jehan a badass or something.)

i’m not going to pretend those books weren’t important to me when i was growing up, but yeah, i want WAR to be a safe space for trans readers in present-day and this seemed like some small gesture i could make towards that.

Reactions and Reviews

Unknown Date

This my favorite fic in the entire world! I laughed out loud, I'm pretty sure I cried at some point, and I've only gotten a few hours of sleep because this fic is so much better than any dream I could have come up with. If you can only read one e/r fic, read this one. I promise you won't regret it! <3

2014

I lost it at the hickey, I really did. I literally fell out of my chair because I can't even handle these two dorks.

Embarassing fangirl reaction moment aside... No, actually, I need to dwell on the hickey thing for a minute. Because of all the fake dating fics I've ever read, yours is the most well-thought out, realistic, and gloriously awkward one ever. The sheer amount of description of the logistics of giving someone a fake hickey when you're /that/ far gone for them... Lovely.

That's a nice segue into the rest, I guess. I love how well-thought-out EVERYTHING is. The interpersonal relationships between ALL of the characters and how they evolve, how Enjolras and Grantaire's relationship is affecting the whole school, and just... everything. I wish I could better articulate just how blown away I am by this entire fic and all the little details and your gorgeous writing style.

Two scenes that particularly stick out for me are when Enjolras and Grantaire came out to each other (Can I please give you a million extra kudos for including demisexuality in your fic) and Grantaire and Courfeyrac's conversation in this chapter. Just... The way you wrote the conversations and the emotions behind them and Grantaire's inner thoughts... Wow. Just. Wow.

This whole fic is just wow.

Dear god, the Grantaire voice is perfect in this one. It’s a high school fake dating AU AND ACTUALLY IT’S A REALLY SATISFYING TAKE ON THOSE TROPES GOSH. Also, Joly is flaily and has cerebral palsy and is very enthusiastic about TV shows.

2015

Oh, my God. Grantaire not knowing when prom is made me laugh so much. Perfect characterisation.

And Jehan Prouvaire, the superhero. It was brilliant and I loved it.

The conversation at lunch was so well done, too. Les Amis are all really weird, but it's a good weird. It's like an awkward, high school teenager weird. I love it. And dear God. "In my defence, I was thinking about affirmative action" -- I laughed so hard at that. I love that your characters are so funny.

The really, really cool thing about this fic is that it could stand on it's own without Les Mis. You don't treat it like a fanfiction; you treat it like your own novel. You explain things without relying on the fandom to do it for you, and that is what makes you especially fabulous.

[Anonymous fan]
I've been following World Ain't Ready, the E/R high school fake-dating AU (I know, I know, but it's fairly good as high school AUs go). And it finally finished, at 185,000 words, and I'm kind of unsatisfied? Not so much with the romance resolution, which was fine, but I was actually really hoping to see Grantaire's session with Myriel, or get some kind of resolution for the mental health stuff beyond "he made an appointment". I kind of get it, because one session with a counselor isn't going to magically fix everything and I understand why someone might choose not to end their fake dating high school AU with a detailed account of the difficult process of mental health treatment, but I just. The way Grantaire's issues were written, and his denial that he needed help, rang really true to me and I was hoping for at least one moment of catharsis where he admits that he does actually have a mental illness and isn't just being selfish/stupid. I guess the moment where he takes that first step by making the appointment is the important thing, but he spent the whole conversation with Myriel denying that he had "therapy problems", so I was really hoping to see how the actual session went.

I really enjoyed the rest of the fic, though, so it's not that big a deal. Just a little bit of a letdown.

[Another anon replied]
Heh, you're not alone, nonnie. It's a good fic, and I really enjoyed it, but Grantaire's issues really resonated with me and were actually the most interesting part of the fic for me, and yeah, I would have liked more about it in the last chapter, especially since it's because of them that Grantaire nearly managed to sabotage his relationship with Enjolras! I thought we were going to have more about it when Enjolras was all "but when I did this or that you still didn't understand that I liked you??" I mean, in the last chapter Grantaire was still going uh, what? when Enjolras spoke of his self-esteem issues.

Hey, okay, I haven't finish reading this yet (Jesus Christ, 180,000+ words), but I am absolutely loving this story. You've probably heard this twenty dozen times in twenty dozen different ways, but your writing skills are phenomenal, and this is probably one of the greater and more original works on Archive. You took the philosophy of fanfic and did it the right way. You capture teenagers' dictions perfectly -- a mixture of "fuck" and "shit" with stupidly impressive vocabulary, and your witticism is brilliant. Even nine chapters in, your jokes are still as impressive as the beginning, and I literally had to stifle my laughter so many times.

The incorporation of classic literature is something that I've been wanting to see in fanfic for the longest time, and very few authors are able to accomplish it; they either use something completely unrelated to the plot, or just a single, extremely well known work that makes their point way too overt. You balance this really well, and I'm assuming that the pieces that you've chosen to incorporate so far are indications of where Enjolras and Grantaire's relationship is going (although I hope not...). The amount of tension you build up between Grantaire and Enjolras is amazing, and the way you've fleshed out Hugo's character is ridiculously astounding; they barely belong to Hugo in this fic, you've literally created new characters with Hugo's as just a skeleton structure. You're especially commendable on giving away just the right amount of information about characters to keep readers wanting more -- Eponine's situation is obviously extremely delicate, and you handle that so well; Grantaire's past, even though it's from his perspective, is still mostly a mystery to the reader, and the unreliable narrator you create is wonderful; not visiting Enjolras' house yet (I'm still cringing from the whole...

(“They’re fine, they [my parents] love me, it’s not a problem.” (“...oh,” says Grantaire.) [from chapter four.]

Not to mention the parallel structures that you've set up in the story to emphasize the changes in Grantaire and Enjolras' relationship. Unlike so many other authors on this website, it feels like everything you do in this fic is purposeful, which is obviously how you're supposed to write a story. I really think that you if you wanted, you could go through this and edit it a bit for some grammar/spelling/technical errors and change the names, and you'll have yourself a completely "original" (I put this in quotes simply because your story IS original, you're just utilizing names and a sort of structure from Hugo), publishable book. The dedication that you put into this is evident. If you write anything that isn't fanfic, I would highly suggest looking into literary journals (The Adroit Journal, The Blueshift Journal, Transcendence, The Winter Tangerine) for publication, because your control of language is definitely on par with what is being published in them.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this fic -- not only is it wonderfully fun to read, but the messages and themes that you weave into it are really uplifting.

But there’s so much more to love about World Ain’t Ready—the way Grantaire is written, in particular, deserves all the kudos. The inside of his head perfectly captures his depression and self-esteem issues; they’re so intrinsically woven into his character and his way of thinking that the miscommunication that comes with every fake dating fic actually makes perfect sense in this one. It never feels contrived, because we inhabit Grantaire’s brain so fully that we think it’s perfectly reasonable to think the way he does. (May be a little triggering for those with depression and self-esteem issues.) And it’s not just sad feels; World Ain’t Ready is Sorkin-esque in its banter and its references to old experiments and bands and space exploration, without any of Aaron Sorkin’s exasperated condescension. It’s educational. It’s hilarious. [...] If you’re still looking for a reason to give World Ain’t Ready a chance, do it for the writing. I haven’t read a cleverer, more relatable fanfic in ages, if ever.

porluciernagas, Fanfiction Fridays: World Ain’t Ready by idiopathicsmile, ^{Archived version}

2016

the fic pretty much everyone in this fandom knows: enjolras and grantaire are pretend-boyfriends for great justice

2017

World Ain't Ready is horrifically OOC, but it actually makes for a very good comfort read. I just have to ignore the fact that these characters happen to have the same names as Les Misérables characters.

I was reminded of this by some nonnies talking about this in another thread. It's technically not original fic, but a Les Mis modern AU – however, I think it probably works better if you don't know the fandom and so aren't as annoyed by its generic tropiness. Read it as an original YA novel about two high school boys fake-dating and slowly falling in love and it's WAY more enjoyable than actually trying to map it on to anything related to Victor Hugo. SO MUCH PINING.

if youve ever been in the les mis fandom i know you know this fic. i know youve already read this fic. i know that your dog has probably already read this fic. i know that this fic has been recced to hell and back, and currently resides as the most kudo-sed work in the les mis tag on AO3. but im reccing it anyways because it’s just THAT GOOD. this fic got me INTO THE FANDOM. pacing. plot. characterization. teen angst. HUMOR. this fic is perfect. literally no other words. it’s just perfect. i read this in my last few months of senior year high school, and never before have i ever read a fic that actually, truly, felt like it was about teenagers. the narrative and the voice. the dialog. god. if this were a book, id buy it. and that’s saying something because im always BROKE. but id buy this fic. several times. who am i kidding. you dont need to know this bc youve read this fic before. if you havent, please. do yourself a favor. oh my god. oh my god. (and when youre done, read all of idiopathicsmile’s other fics too god theyre all SO GOOD)

This story is one of my perennial favourites—I’ve read and re-read it, and it never fails to both cheer me up immensely and offer a new joke, pun or observation that I’d missed on all previous readings. The writing is spectacular, and the depiction of the characters in their high-school setting is spot-on.

2018

It's a fairly good, if hamfisted, original work, but an absolute shit Les Mis fanfic. I've never seen such a wrong take on Grantaire's character, on top of everyone else being a caricature of Les Mis Tumblr fanon.

I feel like this one is kinda of a no-brainer. If you haven’t read this yet then stop everything and read this. It’s got fake-dating, high school, justice, humor, friendship, and all that good shit.

Iconic: The World Ain’t Ready by IdiopathicSmile (@idiopath-fic-smile)
ExR fake-dating fic, Grantaire’s perspective. I’m not providing a description because this is required reading for anyone in the Les Mis fandom. Just read it if you haven’t yet.

Yes, this is fanfiction. Yes, it's a high school AU featuring Les Amis de l'ABC from Les Misérables. Yes, it imagines an angsty, pretend-boyfriends scenario between Enjolras and Grantaire as seventeen-year-olds. And yes, it won't be everyone's cup of tea.

But still. This turned out to be one of my favorite non-fantasy teen novels (yes, novel—it is not in any sense short) in years. Edited down a bit, and with a slew of name changes, I could absolutely see it being picked up by a mainstream publisher.

If you like unrequited pining, bisexual angst, high school students being ridiculous and adorable gay couples, this may be the story for you.

2020

Really Really Really Really Really good HS AU slowburn… like. Hot damn good. Idek how to explain it, it’s that good. It’s the best writing of Ép I’ve read, and the author is actually getting it like, real published!

OH MY GOD... This was so, so, so good!!!

Honestly, this is the best fanfiction I have read in a while! (maybe ever???) I love slow burns, and it had been so long since I just... sat down and DEVOURED a huge fic. (and devour I did, by the way, did I even do anything else since I started it on Sunday evening??? Besides eating, sleeping, showering and studying?? I actually don't remember spending my free time doing anything other than reading this fic wtf)

I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT ENJOLRAS AND GRANTAIRE AND THIS AU... GOOD. JUST, GOOD CONTENT! The only thing I'm sad about is that it doesn't have an epilogue... I just want MOREEEEE!!!! THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! THE ANGST! THE SLOW BURN!!! THE ACTING!!!! THE FRIENDS!!! IT HAS EVERYTHING I LOVE IN FANFIC!!!!!!

I don't reread fic, unless it's a one-shot, but I feel like I might come back to this...

2022

If you want IC enjoltaire maybe go elsewhere. If you want interesting origfic and don't mind highschool setting, it might work for you.

Grantaire isn't really wallowing in self pity and indeed it takes him a while to develop self awareness that his matter of factly negative self talk is actually a distortion and not reality. There's also some very clear reasons for why he developed his negative thought patterns that I felt weren't OTT dramatic.

I have no idea if you still read comments on this, but i wanted to say how much this fic means to me. I watched les mis a couple times but never really got into it, but after the second watch I found this fic and read it in like one sitting four years ago. I related so painfully hard to grantaire, feeling like a burnout and terribly anxious and barely, barely holding it together. I think I've read this about five times all the way through over the years? I kept coming back to it, something about the way you wrote the High school Experience just spoke to me on some fundamental level, even though I graduated in 2019 from a VERY different kind of school than these kids went to, lol. I cry every time I read this, and it's very dear to me. The bits where grantaire has to face how fucked up his experiences have been are very cathartic to read :') I wanted to thank you for writing this, it's genuinely one of my favourite pieces of writing ever and I am listening to Shake the Sheets right now and it's very good music <3

Every once in a while, once you spend enough time in fandom, you run into That One Fic, the one that transcends all other fic, even by the same author, because concept, style, execution and maybe even luck converges to create this thing that just Shines.

World Ain’t Ready, written in 2014-2015 by @idiopath-fic-smile is one of those fics. By just a quick description, it has no business being this good; “les miserables fake dating high school AU” sounds silly at best. Except when you think about it, there are few modern environments that match the authoritarian nature 18th century France better than an American suburban high school during the George W Bush administration. The story focus isn’t on the Les Mis mains, but on the secondary characters Les Amis de l'ABC, the student revolutionary group; on Enjolras, the beautiful leader who cares about nothing other than than justice, and on Grantaire, the cynic who believes in no cause but loves Enjolras.

Except in high school, Enjolras is the new kid from the university town who immediately gets in trouble with the school authorities for arguing against racist and homophobic classmates and teachers, and Grantaire is the burnt out stoner who stopped caring long ago. The plot takes off when Enjolras, trying to protect another same sex couple and having run out of options, suggests he and Grantaire start a brief fake relationship to divert the ire or the student body. And it becomes a story about being a queer kid in the early 2000s, about being in love and having anxiety, what kind of horrors can turn you into a cynic by the age of seventeen, shitty adults and gaining perspective. It features numerous side characters with important relationships that contribute to the whole and creates a story that goes many miles beyond any ordinary fic, no matter how good.

The comments on World Ain’t Ready start suggesting scratching off the serial number and publishing it as a book really early on, and honestly, at this point, I recommend everyone just go and read it as-is. You don’t need to know Les Mis, everything relevant is in the text. But! Now, in the year of our lord 2022, it has been adapted to an audio drama called Keep It Steady (2 parts out at the time of writing) with some details changed, and into a book in Spanish. If that book is successful, perhaps it will be published in English as well. I really really hope so, because everyone should read it. Everyone. And I want to be able to buy it and physically plop it down in front of their faces, leaving no escape.

[Anonymous fan]
Everyone raved about World Ain't Ready, but it truly was an agglomeration of every single identity headcanon that was popular on Tumblr at the time. Its saving grace is that the writing is good, but I would have liked it a lot better as original fiction, because the characterization managed to be a mess even considering how little canon characterization there is for Les Amis.

[Another anon replied]
I love that fic with all my heart, but I nearly noped out when Enjolras said he was demisexual. Then I was like… sort of like the Hermione arguments upthread—if someone WERE to be researching this stuff, and trying to use the right wording, it would be Enjolras and his circle. And ultimately the fic handled it fine, so I kept rolling with it.

[A third anon]
I felt similarly. But also, I felt like it was vaguely anachronistic? Like, the fic is very clear about its setting being mid-2000s, and the word was first coined in 2006. So I guess it's technically possible since I don't think the fic gives an exact year, but also, it would make Enjolras one of the very earliest adopters of the word. If it had been set in the mid-2010s or later it would have felt a lot less jarring to me.

2023

for the last six months i've gotten obsessively into the les mis fandom (and only a decade too late), and World Ain't Ready is by far my favorite les mis fic. it may even by my favorite fic ever (according to ao3 i've visited it 171 times.) i recently got a friend into the fandom and it was the first thing i made them read and now we both kick our feet and giggle about it.

marbleluvrofliberty

It's sweet and well written, and some of the stuff in it is super similar to experiences I had in high school so I feel #seen.

Mostly, though, it's a fic that is so extremely of its time and of its community. It captures that wide-eyed, clueless, but staunch and relentless progressivism of 2013 Tumblr so perfectly, I feel like I've time travelled every time I reread. And it does it in a way that's like... IDK, at the time I was like Hell Yeah, but as I've gotten older (and more socialist lol) it hasn't gotten cringe, it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling of "oh these sweet kids... I was like them once"

Inspired Fanworks

Fanart

• World Ain't Ready Comic
• cover-ish thing for idiopathicsmile’s ExR fanfic World Ain’t Ready, which i love to death, ^{Archived version} by hatarlakrits
• so i have world ain’t ready downloaded as an epub… cover art by sleepnoises
• I READ A FANFIC (by idiopathicsmile) AND NOW IM IN HELL, ^{Archived version} by meruz
• pov: it’s 2020 and you’re me and you’ve accidentally re-ignited your 2016 obsession with @idiopathicsmile ‘s World Ain’t Ready but now you can actually draw and you want to make it everyone’s problem, ^{Archived version} by snattacat
• I recently finished rereading the masterpiece of a fanfic that is World Ain’t Ready by @idiopathicsmile and I just had to draw some fanart., ^{Archived version}
• high school crush, ^{Archived version} by leascno

Example Art Gallery

• 

  World Ain't Ready sketch by hatnhousejacket (2015)

• 

  “He lifts his head from the depths of Courfeyrac’s couch, gestures with his cane...' by sleepnoises (2016)

• 

  after all these years it’s still you…. the Best Fanfic of All Time by asaethiel (2021)

• 

  Cover art by leascno (2022)

Podfic

• [Podfic] World Ain't Ready read by fulldaysdrive

Fanfiction

• Steadiest of Pulses by aslightasthistledown
• World Ain't Ready - Unapproved Epilogue by irrelevantbutfabulous
• rose-colored boy by orphan_account

Fanmixes

• verisimilitude, ^{Archived version} by bitterblue on 8tracks
• Broccoli? No way!, ^{Archived version} by feasted on 8tracks
• world ain't ready, ^{Archived version} by achilliads on 8tracks
• world ain't ready by thestonedsoldier on Spotify
• World Ain't Ready by purewanderlust on Spotify, Tumblr post tracklist + explanation, ^{Archived version}

Translation

• 【授翻】World Ain't Ready by potomacin

Fanvids

• A fan music video (okay fine, a slideshow really) for World Ain’t Ready by vapaus-ystavyys-tasaarvo