Ship It

If you love fandom, you're gonna hate this book. If you hate fandom, you're gonna hate this book. This is not a good book.

FAN ENTITLEMENT. Also, Britta Lundin writes for The CW‘s Riverdale. Everything makes sense now. ---- You can also read my review on my blog Blattzirkus. Plot 16-year old Claire is a fanfiction writer and living for her favorite show Demon Heart. When she hears that the two main actors, Forest and Rico, are coming to a comic convention close to her town, she’s living for it and can’t wait to see her favorite characters in flesh at the Demon Heart panel. But when it’s obvious that no one is addressing that Forest and Rico’s characters, Smokey and Heart, might be gay, Claire takes the initiative and aks the showrunner if Smokey and Heart are going to kiss in the upcoming season finale. The Showrunner, Jamie, is avoiding answering the question, while Smokey actor Forest laughs the question off and calls Claire crazy. Not being the most known actor, Forest has done damage to the show and by all means, made the fandom angry. To control the damage and hype the show up for a chance to get picked up for a second season, Claire gets invited to join Demon Heart for the convention tour and being on the side of the fans, make the fans realize that the show is worth it after all. My Opinion Okay, so I got to know this book because of watching a video of the booktuber A Clockwork Reader, who introduced this book and mentioned that this was a really interesting concept. Also, the basic plot excited me, since the keywords fan, Hollywood actor and fanfiction fell. I really enjoyed reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell back when it came out, so I was hyped for this one. Far too hyped. But it became clear fast that I was in for a ride of the bad kind. Where I was going to hate the main character because she felt just so ignorant of everything around her. First of all, within the few first chapters, she got introduced as a hardcore SmokeyHeart shipper, which would be okay, since people can like whatever they like as long as no one gets hurt. She’s sitting opposite of two of her classmates, in which she both thought of as bland. She also hates her town, which she moved to quite recently, from big city Chicago, where no one was a farmer to be, like now. Which I think is ignorant and stereotypical, thinking of to be farmers as boring. So, when Claire finds out that Demon Heart is coming to a convention close to her hometown, she, of course, wants to go. Since she has no friends, her mom accompanies her but won’t go to the convention itself with her daughter, so Claire ends up alone in the line, waiting for the Demon Heart panel. There, she gets to know Tess, a queer girl, and closeted fangirl. In a sense, that she doesn’t talk to her friends about “nerdy” passion since that would freak the others out. Tess calls fanarts not real art and fanfictions just some hobby, which isn’t really writing. And to Claire’s horror, she thinks that ships just should stay within the fandom. Claire was hating all of her statements, yet it was obvious that she was liking Tess. Yet Claire was always like “I don’t know what I am, am I straight, bi, lesbian, pan,…?” but wanted to force SmokeyHeart on basically every breathing human. She freaked out about her own sexuality but was comfortable with focusing on everyone else’s. I’m slow clapping. The time comes and Claire asks a question, after not standing that everybody “was beating around the bush” by not asking a single SmokeyHeart question. She knew that the fandom would love some good SmokeyHeart action, so why was no one asking about her favorite ship? Hm, I don’t know Claire, maybe canon shipping and fandom shipping are supposed to be separated? Ever heard of fanservice? Like, what Riverdale is doing? Giving the fans their ships, while the plot is struggling to make any sense without being overdrawn or cheesy as hell? Basically destroying the show? Oh wait, Britta Lundin is a Riverdale writer, now the book and Riverdale makes so much more sense. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when ships that aren’t in the original material, get official, but only if it fits. I don’t force ships, that are only fandom based on the show itself, because that is rude. Movies and TV shows aren’t there to please the fans, it’s there to tell a story the creators imagined. They aren’t fandom slaves. And Ship It basically said that the studio, showrunner, producers, and actors are fandom slaves. That fans have the right to have a say in how the plot is going to run. That happened so many times and every time the story gets ruined because of producers who give in to the fans. Back to the plot, where Claire is asking if SmokeyHeart might kiss in the season finale, because there is obvious subtext, that both main characters are gay for each other. Jamie, the showrunner, doesn’t give a straight answer, while Forest, who plays Smokey, is laughing it off and calling Claire crazy. Claire runs off crying, feeling misunderstood, especially by one of her favorite characters. To be honest, Forest isn’t a likable character as well. Apart from being an insecure homophobic idiot, who got daddy issues, he doesn’t really want to star in Demon Heart and instead wants to move on to a video game based movie called Red Zone. He doesn’t believe that Smokey and Heart are gay for each other, but basically gets bullied by Claire into having at least doubts by the end of the book. I mean, Jamie spoke it out loud, that Claire is harassing everyone to get what she wants. Which is so ridiculous when thinking about the fact that she is fighting for a fictional couple to be happening. She could put her energy elsewhere pretty good. And the worst of all, Claire never faces consequences. Instead, she always gets her way, which is really frustrating to read. Claire states that she is fighting for “representation”, but totally forgets that there might be that racial issue, that needs representation as well, as Tess points out. Tess can’t stand the fact that Claire is fighting so hard for a gay fictional couple, which is totally a personal egoistic fight, that she completely forgets, that Tess, who is black and queer, rather wants to see black people in a mostly all white TV show as representation. So, fighting equally hard for every representation when it comes to race, religion or sexuality, for example, would be idealistic, but I don’t know how realistic that might be. Not pushing too hard for one topic might be a start. Speaking of Tess, who is an outed queer girl, and not perfect in any sense: she pushes Claire to out herself and then decides, after a fight with her, that she simply outs Claire to her mom. Not cool at all. And if Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda taught me anything, then it is that being outed is not nice at all – it’s super rude. Which should be common sense either way. Okay, Claire was extremely rude as well before Tess did what she did, by telling her girlfriends that Tess was a nerd although Tess didn’t want to tell them at all. So Claire took the decision from Tess and Tess took the decision from Claire by outing each other to people. My brain melted because that was only the cherry on top of all the issues I had with these people. The Fanfiction and Fanart Theme Last but not least, Fanfiction and Fanart are a huge theme around there, which affects me personally. Tess says that Fanart isn’t real art. I have seen this discussion over Social Media so often and all the time it’s the same conclusion: that Fanart is real art. There are people out there who get commissioned to do Fanart, they live from it. Or, they get jobs in the industry because they became known by Fanart! Fanfiction, for example, is nothing else than the 1000th version of a Star Wars novel being published. Or remember the fact that Shades of Grey was a fanfiction at the beginning? Questioning the content, but it got popular nonetheless. Else, writing fanfiction is a great way of practicing writing. And practicing never hurt anybody. The Fandom Basically, I hate how I read this book and now can’t stand the word fandom or shipping anymore, because it had such a negative imprint on me. Claire is the worst fan ever to represent a fandom, no matter how popular her fanfictions are. She pressed a topic that was important to her on everybody and wasn’t respecting their opinions at all. She’s the worst 16-year-old fan nobody wishes to meet at a convention. It felt like reading as if a fandom is only existing to ship people, which simply isn’t true. A fandom is there to support every aspect of the topic, let it be Harry Potter, Supernatural, or for the sake of it, Riverdale. It’s not a moshpit for crazy fans to ship their couples until they get their way, no. It’s also about respect, a word, which Claire obviously doesn’t know. Conclusion Ship It by Britta Lundin got 1 out of 5 stars from me because I had a huge problem with the characters, how they behaved around each other and how fanservice is basically worshipped.

If you love fandom, you're gonna hate this book. If you hate fandom, you're gonna hate this book. This is not a good book.

Every fangirl should read this.