tags are confusing.

[amalnahurriyeh]

Would you tag a story where a character has a terminal illness, has stopped treatment, and is discussing their mortality and end-of-life decisions with a friend or family member with "major character death" if they don't actually die in the course of the story? I can see arguments on both sides; on the one hand, nobody dies. Everybody alive when the story starts is alive when the story ends. On the other hand, there's no ambivalence here: the character is going to die, and everybody is fully aware of it, so it's not, precisely, a story with no character death in it--the character death is simply in the story's future.

(I know that 'terminal illness' is a canonical AO3 tag, so there's that, if nothing else.)

Comments

[cathexys]

personally, I'd want it to be tagged. There are too many last minute rescues with terminal illness to have that be a certain death...

[amalnahurriyeh]

Ha, yes, that is the issue. "No, I mean it, they're gonna be dead after this. No magical cures. Perfectly ordinary death by death. Don't go looking for them in the sequel. Because they're dead in that. Look, here's some tissues, I agree, circle of life, everybody have their feels."

[azurelunatic]

Yeah, either death & terminal illness, or terminal illness & no-last-minute-rescue or the like.

[amalnahurriyeh]

dear reader: death in this story follows the rules of death in life

not the magical fictional rules we make up for our magical fictional universes

sorry bout that

Well...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I would probably tag it "major character death" for the reason that people who don't want to read about a character dying onscreen probably will not want to read about a character preparing to die offscreen either. I'd include tags for "terminal illness" and "offscreen or implied death."

Re: Well...

[amalnahurriyeh]

people who don't want to read about a character dying onscreen probably will not want to read about a character preparing to die offscreen either

This is a very accurate point. It's a weird little story--basically a place-and-time-and-occurances marker within a series. But I want to get it up there. Sigh.