Spoiler Alert, by Olivia Dade

[sophia_sol]

A fun and charming romance novel that I mostly really liked. BUT. Okay this is a non-fanfiction novel about people who are intimately involved in fandom, putting them through a set of tropes common in fic. And this felt to me like it was....drawing too much attention to the tropiness of the tropes and the way that it would actually be an uncomfortable set of circumstances to happen in real life, and it only works in fanfic because we all agree it's not real. But when fandom exists in the narrative to contrast with the "real" life of the main characters, it makes it feel too real and then I was uncomfortable with the power dynamics inherent in the relationship, between the identity secret being kept AND the social power of a famous actor dating a fan. Sigh.

It's too bad because if this was fanfic I would have loved it, I think! I was very charmed by the two leads, and enjoyed how invested they were in the characters they loved, and liked the deliberate anti-fatphobia stance too. And a few of the excerpts of fanfic included in the novel, I felt invested enough that I was disappointed I couldn't read the rest of the fic! So I did really enjoy reading this book, despite my discomfort.

One other point though. Although the book was careful to include a couple of background queer characters, it felt very glaring to me that literally the entire ao3 fandom for their show shipped only het ships as far as we were shown. And yes the lead characters are specifically fans of one het ship, but other ships in the fandom are also mentioned and they're all het too. I genuinely do not believe that the show as described does not have any slash or femslash fandom, but the book stayed totally heterosexual in this regard and it just felt wrong to me, like it was straightwashing the way ao3 fandom is for the benefit of the assumed-straight readers of this straight romance novel. Sigh.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

Oh, now that I know this is fandom-adjacent I must read it and add it to my growing index of what novels dealing with fandom are worth reading! That's too bad about the potential hetwashing of AO3 -- I know mostly-het fandoms exist, but one rarely comes across them on AO3…

[sophia_sol]

Yeah, the author apparently comes from Game of Thrones fandom, and like, yes that's a fandom that leans more in the het direction than many on ao3 but there's still LOTS of slash and femslash so it's still weird the way the author pretends it doesn't exist. Especially since the vibe I get from the in-book tv show is such that I am convinced at least some fans would absolutely ship the characters played by the leading man and his best friend.

Anyway I hope you enjoy this book when you get around to it! It is largely very good.

[superborb]

I felt uncomfortable reading the summary for this book, and I can't quite identify why. Maybe it is the intense care and explanation being laid out for tropes that are usually well understood?

[sophia_sol]

Hah, fair! I almost never read the official summaries for romance novels because I generally find them uncomfortable tbh.

[katherine]

Interesting! I've now put a hold on it (actual paper copy the library has on order). Might not like it, from your description, and I recently tried and gave in on another author's fannish romance, but.

[sophia_sol]

Hope it works for you! :)

[aria]

YES omg I found myself repeatedly thinking "what, like literally no one has written Aeneas/Cupid??" (or Lavinia/Dido but tbh slash seems like the bare minimum and I'd be pleasantly surprised by femslash, alas that this is my expectation standard). I also found the fanfic excerpts charming, but a lot of the Terrible Scripts Starring Marcus where extremely on the nose in terms of what they were lampshading and I rolled my eyes a bit. Otoh: while I agree that the social power of a famous person dating a fan thing is yikes, and juxtaposing it with fandom did make it seem more "real," a lot of that really was ameliorated for me by them having been fandom BFFs for years, which I found really delightful and helped sell me when often my biggest romance hurdle is believing that people who met super recently are already in love forever.

[sophia_sol]

YES EXACTLY Aeneas/Cupid just seems so obviously a thing that fandom would be into, there is ABSOLUTELY an Aeneas/Cupid contingent of the fandom out there even if the leads of this book are completely oblivious to it. But you're right that the fact that they've been BFFs for years is extremely charming, I'm always way more on board with romances that demonstrate how much the characters like each other as people and this is a great way of doing it!

[glitteryv]

Although the book was careful to include a couple of background queer characters, it felt very glaring to me that literally the entire ao3 fandom for their show shipped only het ships as far as we were shown.

Huh, that IS kinda weird. Especially since all fandoms (regardless of how many actual!queer characters are in it) will always have a queer branch. I would have had a similar >___> kind of reaction too.

[sophia_sol]

Yeah exactly! And yeah, some fandoms do trend more het than others, but there's always SOMETHING queer going on in fandom, especially if you're on ao3 instead of like, only spending time on a ship-specific archive somewhere. You have to be putting on some significant blinkers to think that a fandom could be het-only.

[glitteryv]

Hmmm, it's the AO3 angle that would have thrown me off as well. Unless it had been for a het only exchange type of thing.

FWIW,I wasn't going to read this book (after reading several YA and romances centered around fake fandoms, I have developed a kind of secondhand embarrassment abt thst subgenre.) But it had gotten so much positive buzz that I had been considering giving it a chance. Alas, it will be a no from me.

[sophia_sol]

The leads do spend most of their time discussing the fandom in a forum specific to their ship, in their defense -- but they post all their fic to AO3, clearly spend time on AO3, and mention other ships that can be found even if they're not the ship their forum discusses. So yeah. Sigh.

I do think it's overall a very good book, well written and charming, but I can understand this being a deciding factor, especially if you've been burned before!