soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2020-11-20 06:41 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-11-20 06:41 pm
Spoiler Alert, by Olivia Dade
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.
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.