Carry On (Simon Snow, #1)

by Rainbow Rowell

[nannah]

DNF @ 7% (aka page 34) with extreme prejudice.

I've seen this book cover and book everywhere, especially on LGBT book lists and recommendations. I thought it was a book with good LGBT representation! Boy, was I wrong.

The first thing I noticed was that its universe is almost identical to that of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter. Except with different names and labels. Spells have different phrases, the muggles are called Normals, Hogwarts is now called Watford, etc. But Simon Snow is still the Chosen One, spells are still cast by wands, Simon is still an orphan, he's still friends with someone on the grounds who tends the animals, school is still "the safest place for him", etc. etc. etc.

Thirty-four pages in, I closed the book and went to google. Is this a shameless rip-off of Harry Potter? I'm not even a huge HP fan, nor have I even read all the books, but this is extremely obvious.

Here's what I learned (and why I dropped the book):

Rainbow Rowell (the author if Carry On), previously wrote something called Fangirl. Fangirl is about, you guessed it: Fangirls. Straight women who write slash aka gay fanfiction of their favorite straight (and usually white) characters in any given media. These fangirls are usually treated with mock and scorn by most people. Me included ... because I'm not straight, and most of these women are fetishizing gay men and using them for their own and usually sexual enjoyment. Aka treating gay men as only tools for their own enjoyment, and not as people themselves. Which is why canon gay representation is ignored by them in favor of their "fav white (straight) boys", the likes you've probably heard of: Destiel, Sterek, Johnlock, Stucky, etc.

That book sought to say "fangirls writing fanfic of slash is a legitimate hobby!".

And yet . . . every character (even the side characters) was straight. There were NO non-straight characters in the book. At All. So the ONLY gay characters were in fiction. For the straight characters to ship for her own enjoyment. And they weren't even gay in canon.

The worst part of it is?
The characters she was shipping and writing about were from the Harry Potter universe: Harry and Draco. The actual fic she was writing was This Book: Carry On.

This actual book is a slash fanfiction published.

A gay fetishization fanfiction published.