Thoughts on Fangirl
At first this was going to be a comment on ikel89's readthrough, but then, uh .... *waves downward* that happened. So it gets its own post. :D I may figure this LJ thing out yet ...
On the whole I quite enjoyed this book! It was a nice, breezy read; most of the drama was not of the "unnecessary bullshit" variety, the characters themselves were mostly fun ( Read more... )
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the summary of every discussion ever xD <3
I did find that the closer I thought about it when trying to pull together these bullet points, the less impressed I was by some of the author's narrative choices*nods* I know what you mean, except in my case the distance between the breezy read and raised eyebrow was shorter, probably, as I already went into Fangirl with a clear bias towards Carry On :') This is not CP-levels of disappointment, as there hasn't been anything bigger than "whee breezy read and a context to another book I liked" going on, but yes. The scepticism for arcs concerning Wren, Nick, ending - all there and growing ( ... )
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*nods* That's about where I am as well. Though to be fair, even my quibbles I don't think it messed up nearly as badly as CP3. :D
But it did seem weird to me how easily she dropped by Starbucks when cafeteria was such a terrible chore.Well, this is all speculation based on my own personal experience, which means I feel like I ought to make a handwavy "never officially diagnosed, etc." disclaimer, but what really clicked for me was her describing the cafeteria thing as a block ( ... )
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I think if she "grew up" fandom-wise in the ff.net era (or pre-internet), that could definitely help explain the lack of close fandom friends - especially if she was similarly twitchy about the internet being full of Axe Murderers Who Will Steal Your Credit Cards or whatever XD
... Though now I'm really wondering about that European beta who was mentioned, like, twice ......
But one more thing that made me raise eyebrows was her attitude for Nick - it seemed very inconsistent.YES! Thank you for reminding me. That was the other thing that bugged me about the situation with Nick. (I think we discussed this yesterday? idk ( ... )
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I think the difference with Cath would be, she's always had an external stimulus (Wren) to be that voice that both understands her and will bossily get her to do/not do stuff. So it makes sense to me that she could get to the point of college without knowing how to do this herself (and in effect Reagan kind of takes over the Wren role there at first, which also makes sense).
But this still leaves open the primary question of inconsistency about her anxiety.
WHY MAKE HIM HER TA? Especially if she had no compunction about firing him later for ??? something she had strong suspicions about already ????I was confused by the TA mentions, but the handwavy explanation I gave myself is that Piper must have known Nick from a previous (lower div) class, probably the one he was TAing for right now ( ... )
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I did find that the closer I thought about it when trying to pull together these bullet points, the less impressed I was by some of the author's narrative choices.
We agree on I think all of these questionable choices (except I didn't notice the inconsistent anxiety manifestation thing, which I'll defer to you on), and yet, weirdly, my overall impression of the book seems to be much more positive than yours and K's. It might be a right thing at the right time kind of deal, it might be just that I really love college stories and it has been a long time since I read any, or just clicking with the prose -- I seem to have really clicked with the prose.
Like, she'd make a point of how she always took basically the same path, which was a familiar pattern for me -- but then she just randomly wanders around the English building enough to find a nice ( ... )
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SAME! It was the family stuff, meaning Cath and her dad, since Wren was largely absent, that elevated the book beyond "cute YA + HP fandom nostalgia" for me.
I was also, actually, glad that their dad didn't seem to appreciably reconcile with her, either - and that he was shown as not wanting to have to deal with it, and actually not having to.
Yes, this was also really nice! I loved his line to Wren when she said she'd tell Laura he said hi: "That's probably not necessary."
* That said, that just made it additionally irritating that we never find out for sure whether she met her self-imposed deadline or not!
This was really frustrating! And in general the ending felt oddly rushed for reasons I don't understand...
I also get the feeling that the entire discussion was there to attempt to set up a meta moral about how happy endings are harder, but more satisfying, than giving up. :P No! This is a story about writing fanfic! Have her briefly consider the ( ... )
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Bring it on. :D I'm not always great at mustering enough focus to respond in a timely fashion, but I always enjoy reading commentary. :D (And I uh ... apparently still have plenty of words left about Fangirl myself. :D)
weirdly, my overall impression of the book seems to be much more positive than yours and K'sHaha, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. :D The nice thing about reading with friends is that even the things that had me howling, I could just go wail at K about. And, well. A certain amount of complaining is almost as fun as not having anything to complain about. :DD ( ... )
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Just going CATH AND HER DAD <3333 again here, don't mind me. :D
(Though I was actually pretty pleased even by the Wren-related scenes over Christmas, at least from the perspective of Cath and her dad's reactions / interactions. Just wish that Wren had been less one-dimensionally petulant, and that she hadn't done quite as thorough and not-well-supported about-face in the spring semester.)
And in general the ending felt oddly rushed for reasons I don't understand...
*nods* Agreed. I wonder if maybe part of it was that a good chunk of it was devoted to the Cath/Levi relationship? Which, good for them, but maybe that was why the rest of the plot felt ... lighter? More sidelined than previously?
then was completely dropped (apparently?)I got the vague impression that Cath eventually agreed with Wren? But wouldn't swear to it ( ... )
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