#AND THE SCENE WHERE CATH IS GETTING READY FOR THE DANCE

[4tarosho]

chapters 36-38 of heartless

[hforhonesty]

Book Review #2 | Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

“Cath and Wren are identical twins and until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they’re off to university and Wren’s decided she doesn’t want to be one half of a pair any more – she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It’s not easy for Cath. She would rather bury herself in the fanfiction she writes where there’s romance far more intense than anything she’s experienced in real life.

Now Cath has to decide whether she’s ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she’s realizing there’s more to learn about love than she ever thought possible…” [Official synopsis of the book]

Alternative title: “Ode to our Inner Fangirl” or “Every fangirl must-read”.

This book was pretty popular when I was still active on my fandoms but I, uhm, refused to read it.

(Because I’m disturbed)

(Ask anyone)

Seriously, though. I was only 14 at the time and I was going through that phase that didn’t let me read books outside the fantasy genre, given my not-so-little obsession toward Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, The Mortal Instruments, Hunger Games, and so on.

I bought my first copy on July 2014, during a fortnight study holiday in Dublin. I also got something like ten other books and had to purchase a carry-on because they wouldn’t fit in my luggage, but that’s another story.

Anyway, as soon as I started Fangirl, I decided to read only a few chapters for each night instead of finishing it in a glorious one-night-stand. You need to know that I have always been a fast-reader, but this time… I really didn’t want to finish it; instead, I wanted to enjoy every single line and make the book last as long as possible.

Before we start talking about Fangirl, you need to know that it is set in an alternative universe where Gemma T. Leslie is the actual author the Simon Snow Series, which is worldwide famous. Since the eighth and last book of the series is about to be published, most fans seized the day and decided to write on the Internet their own versions of the story, so that they could all have a say in the matter regarding the end.

“The whole point of fanfiction,” she said, “is that you get to play inside somebody else’s universe. Rewrite the rules. Or bend them. The story doesn’t have to end when Gemma Leslie gets tired of it. You can stay in this world, this world you love, as long as you want, as long as you keep thinking of new stories...” “Fanfiction,” Levi said.

“Yes.”

Cath Avery is undoubtedly Simon Snow’s #1 FAN. She loves the books so much that she owns something like every gadget of the series: posters, drawings, t-shirts, commemorative busts of Simon and Baz...

Just take a look at the fanart of her room made by Simini Blocker:

However, if someone asked Cath if there were something about the series that she wanted to change, the answer would be the most affirmative yes in the history of yes-s.

Because in Gemma T. Leslie’s version of Simon Snow, he and Baz Pitch are just enemies... And Snowbaz is a CRACK SHIP.

I mean, only G̶e̶m̶m̶a̶ ̶T̶.̶ ̶L̶e̶s̶l̶i̶e̶ a monster would write about their amazing chemistry and THEN DELIBERATELY CHOOSE NOT TO MAKE THEIR RELATIONSHIP ROMANTIC.

I need five minutes to calm down.

Inhala, exhala.

Inhala, exhala.

Inhala, exhala.

Okay. Fine. Fine. I’m cool. I’m fine.

So sorry you had to witness my wig snatching. Anyway...

Since R̶a̶i̶n̶b̶o̶w̶ ̶R̶o̶w̶e̶l̶l̶ Cath is also Snowbaz’s #1 FAN, she has to do something about this contempt of court, so she writes several fanfictions using the nickname Magicath and becomes beyond popular. People all around North America read her fanfictions, and she’s pretty well-known in Japan, too.

She’s currently working on her latest fanfiction, Carry on, which is her own version of the eighth book.

Wait a minute, you say. Is her fanfiction the same as Rainbow’s book?

The answer is no. Rainbow herself said that her book and Cath’s fanfiction are pretty much different, so you don’t have to worry about spoilers while you’re reading Fangirl. Moreover, here’s the link to my spoiler!free review/analysis of Carry on, which can be read by both newbies or og members of the fandom.

Anyway... As you can see, Cath loves writing – and she loves it so much that not only she’s majoring in English, but she’s also convinced her advisor to let her take Intro to Fiction-Writing, which is a class only for junior students.

Intro to Fiction-Writing is taught by professor Piper, whom I consider one of the best fictional-teachers of all time. One of my favourite scenes of the book is set during her very first lecture, when she asks her students why people write fiction.

The first time I read Fangirl, I remember putting the book down for a moment and asking myself how I would have answered if I had been one of those students. I probably would have kept the answer for myself, but the point is that, as I was getting lost on my thought, I couldn’t come up with an explanation of why I write.

It’s a tricky question for a writer, isn’t it? I bet that we could all come up with replies that couldn’t be more different from each other. We have a urge to write and we try to get along with it, but where does this urge come from? And what does it say? Does it speak a universal language?

Five years later, I think I’ve found my answer.

I’m an introvert. I’m loud and talkative when I’m with my friends, but I can’t even order a pizza on the phone — which is kind of funny, whatever.

Being an introvert also means that I have a hard time identifying myself with fictional characters. They are what I like to call the ‘Quiet Ones’, of course, but they seem to overcome their introversion, which is described as a huge problem that needs to be fixed, and gain tons of ““confidence”” (see: extroversion) toward the end of the book | series | movie | tv show, becoming totally different people.

So why do I write?

I write because I want people like me to know that they are not alone, that there’s nothing wrong with them, that there are people out there who think and feel things just like they do.

Because darling, we don’t need to be fixed.

We are just introverts.

Why do I write? Cath tried to come up with a profound answer – knowing she wouldn’t speak up, even if she did.

But she does. I mean, she does come up with an answer. More than one, actually. And while I was reading this scene, I was like, how is it even possible? How can I relate so much to a character that I’ve known for less than twenty pages?

“To explore new worlds,” someone said.

“To explore old ones,” someone else said. Professor Piper was nodding.

To be somewhere else, Cath thought.

“To set ourselves free,” a girl said.

To get free of ourselves.

“To stop hearing the voices in our head,” said the boy in front of Cath. [...]

To stop, Cath thought.

To stop from being anything or anywhere at all.

“Why do we write fiction?” Professor Piper asked.

Cath looked down at her notebook.

To disappear.

Cath can’t help isolating herself from everyone but her loved ones. Her father suffers from bipolarism, and her mother abandoned her and Wren because she wasn’t interested in motherhood.

When your family is incapable of loving you, it leaves a mark that lasts a lifetime. You’re afraid of rejection, you know that nobody will ever accept you for who you are, and you can’t stop thinking that if your own mother left you, then everyone else will eventually do the same.

So what’s the point in letting them break your heart any way?

“No,” Cath said, “seriously. Look at you. You’ve got your shit together, you’re not scared of everything. I’m scared of everything. And I’m crazy. Like maybe you think I’m a little crazy, but I only ever let people see the tip of my crazy iceberg. Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and socially inept, I’m a complete disaster.”

Reading this quote was like watching my reflection on the mirror. I felt every single word of what she was saying, I felt her insecurities, her second-guessing, her fears. For a moment she was me... and I was her.

Fangirl made me realise that I’m not alone, that there is nothing wrong with who I am, that there are people out there who think and feel things just like I do.

So it’s pretty obvious that Cath belongs to the Quiet Ones. What makes her different, however, is that she doesn’t give anything up; instead, she accepts herself for who she is. And at the end of the story, she has gained more confidence, it’s true, but she’s still Cath Avery, which is one of the reasons why I love this book so much.

Thank you for reading my review. I hope you guys enjoyed it! :)

With love,

M.C.

Post scriptum: I can’t believe that my first review on Carry on got 102 notes! That’s insane, guys! I can’t believe it! Okay, enough with the exclamation marks. It’s just that... Wow. Even Rainbow Rowell herself liked it. I mean, RAINBOW ROWELL. For Heaven’s sake, I couldn’t be more thrilled.

So thank you, thank you very much. You’ve made my year.

[five-wow]

alriGHT so i watched 9x11! and i wasn’t blown away by any means but i kind of liked it? or maybe i just think so because i’d prepared myself for even worse things? so here’s my semi-liveblog:

steve and danny reunion!! it was good!!! that hug was oddly bro-ish in its constant backslapping (steve’s hurting, so just hold him, danny??? let yourself be held for a second, steve???), but the words were less no homo, at least

steve’s been there for a month, whoa

and then catherine comes out of the house and i was like, oh gosh, i’m a little scared of what they’re doing here

but... they were torturing a guy inside. they’re not even pretending that was a lovenest somehow they were just. straight up torturing a guy for information

then they’re at the airport getting ready for the plane and they meet up with junior and wade gutches, and look, i love catherine, okay? i’m not a huge fan of cath/steve at this point in the series (meaning i’d love for them to still be friends but i want the writers to please, please let all romantic connotations in that relationship finally die), but catherine, i love. but the way she’s acting all familiar with junior and wade suddenly? that was so awkward to me and i liked her “call me catherine” thing towards junior in principle but it was just... really awkward (and i’m not even completely sure why, but i think it just grates on me that this is a way that they’re making it look like she’s been involved in steve’s life when she seriously hasn’t for a long time. it’s unfair to almost all the characters)

then they’re ON the plane and steve has this flashback to his first night with greer and obviously she’s bad, we know she’s bad, but ??? they’re really cute here

except for the bit where she tried to get him to join the cia. that’s not steve. just let him eat his chinese and smile for once without trying to push him in some way pls.

and then the flashback ends and catherine asks him where he went mentally and he didn’t actually say “to that time i had sex with the woman i now hold responsible for the tragic and traumatic death of yet another parent figure in my life” but oh boy

(side note, at this point i’m very confused about if they’re trying to give us steve/cath vibes or not. on the one hand there’s the way she appeared in the episode and the things they made danny say about playing house, but on the other here’s steve, sitting literally right next to catherine, lost in thought about his sex-filled weekend with another woman, and they made cath the one to ask him about his thousand yard stare which... i don’t know how to interpret that)

adam: “i still remember getting love letters in high school.” tani: “oh, of course you do. look at you, that face, those dimples. i’d have been all over that in ninth grade.” fdjkfdjk i loved this. (and their case so far seems pretty interesting as a sideplot! it’s just that i can’t pay as much attention to that because i’m trying to keep this commentary away from war and peace lengths)

i love that harry’s first line in this entire episode (and the way he greets steve) is a warning about how terrible the cocktails at the bar are. that’s definitely harry

“oh and um, for the purposes of this operation, you two are married.” oh NO harry what are you doing

danny’s extremely unsmiling “mazzel tov” gives me life though

okAY harry is really giving me a rollercoaster ride here. now he’s saying steve looks “absolutely magnificent in that tux”, making cath say that steve’s spoken for and danny accuse harry of being a kiss ass. ??? SO much to unpack there omg

okay so in the end this undercover as married thing that steve and cath do lasted for two seconds and was really just slapped on. it served barely any purpose and i’m relieved they didn’t linger on it because i never wanted it in the first place, but it was also super weird, because if you’re going to put something like that in your canon episode, then at least do something with it. read some fic, h50 creators, and learn how it’s done

catherine asks steve how he’s doing! and that’s really good because people should ask him that more often, except, uh, why is she doing it now? i get that this might have been easiest to work in for the writers, but... she was already at the ranch when danny turned up, so i’m assuming she’d been with steve for a couple of days at least of that month that he’d been there? so... she decided to just wait until right in the middle of their mission to try to talk to him about his crippling feelings of guilt over joe’s death??? why, writers???

greer once said unfair things about steve to cath (out of pure manipulative jealousy, it seems) and all catherine has to say about it is that it was before she and steve started dating and that she didn’t believe anything greer said anyway and that’s good. let’s keep the unnecessary drama out of this (for once)

djfkd danny’s role in this episode (after that very first scene) seems to just be “sit/stand next to people who are competently hacking stuff, look serious, and say maybe two lines of quips”. first with harry, now with catherine in some van

um. this whole storming of the building and killing a bunch of people to avenge joe’s death is an unsanctioned mission they’re undertaking because it’s personal, right? that’s why it’s such a weird team with no backup? so... when the police turned up (even if it was as a favor to harry), shouldn’t they have arrested all of them, including cath and danny? haven’t they been doing a bunch of illegal stuff?

i did like the twist that harry’s random pretty woman in the city that he alluded to earlier is actually a super competent police woman, though. that’s nice.

this scene all the way at the end is where steve is wearing joe’s super soft looking warm jacket!!! i love him in that. it looks so comfortable.

aaaand wade is telling steve to find himself a good woman. why is everyone always so eager to meddle in his love life omg

wade also says that steve won’t follow wade’s advice to give retirement some thought? which is pretty hilarious after steve and danny spent a year and a half misguidedly trying to open a restaurant specifically as a retirement plan. but no, steve has never once thought about retirement, not ever

wait oh god “you still don’t know, do you? joe wasn’t just a father figure... my mentor. he brought you into my life, catherine.” ... are we doing this? we’re doing this. it was all going so well until now.

a flashback! that we’ve already seen once! of joe telling steve to ask cath out! oh god!

oh. but. there’s also this new bit of steve in the hospital after his mission with joe, calling cath to ask her out for the first time, and that’s kind of sweet. that’s okay. (as long as it stays in the past.)

WAIT. catherine: “what took you so long?” listen, this might be just me, but i associate those exact words heavily with that episode in s7 where danny and grace are taken hostage at grace’s school dance and steve rescues them and then, as they’re walking off into the sunset, danny goes “what took you so long, huh” just after he invited steve for a hug, a kiss, or to pick a base. hmmmmmm.

oh!! the flashback ends and we get catherine close to crying, saying she’s glad steve took joe’s advice back then, and steve agrees and they hug and then she just... leaves. there’s nothing that feels like “let’s start our thing back up” in what she does, she’s just glad that they had that time together and she says she’ll see him next time and that’s it? THAT’S ALL I WANT.

are they going to ruin it by making steve think about joe’s more recent advice to find himself a woman and making him associate that with catherine too? they probably are, aren’t they

THEY DID NOT. WHOA. not yet, anyway, but for the moment i’m 100% satisfied.

no, i’m not, there’s a lot of things about this episode that i missed (danny was just window dressing? wade and cath got a goodbye scene but harry didn’t? frank’s daugther appeared literally five seconds and i thought we’d see at least very slightly more of her than that but apparently that was all? the case back on hawaii got wrapped up really suddenly?) BUT i’m still very, very relieved on the whole by the way they handled the steve & cath thing. it could still be read as romantic, but it wasn’t explicitly so. for the most part they acted like exes who are friends and that’s just. that’s just exactly what it want for them??? i’m glad.

[lucia-redman]

Book Critic: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Rating: 7/10

Synopsis:

Cath and Wren are identical twins until recently they did absolutely everything together. Now they are off to university and Wren’s decided she doesn’t want to be one half of a pair anymore – she wants to dance, meet boys, go to parties and let loose. It’s not so easy for Cath. She would rather bury herself in the fanfiction she writes where there’s romance far more intense than anything she’s experienced in real life. Now Cath has to decide whether she’s ready to open her heart to new people and new experiences, and she’s realizing that there’s more to learn about love then she ever thought possible.

Review:

What can I say? When I opened Fangirl, I really did think it was going to be another coming of age books and first love. And let me tell you It was that but so much more. This book explores the real-life struggles of being an antisocial introvert freshman in college. I really felt terrible and felt with Cather as she was trying so hard to balance her college life to co-exist with her Father, which suffers from bipolar, a mental disorder where you have stages, first, an abnormal happy stage when you are upbeat and just weird in general. Second, a stage of deep, deep depression. In the middle of the book we know that Arthur Avery (Cath’s and Wren’s father) goes into a crazy stage and is admitted to hospital, from this scene we finally get to see how much Wren’s and Cath’s relationship has crumbled into bits.

I feel a love to this book because even if I am 13, I still relate to Cath, but in my own way, not wanting to do sports, have social media, have a lot of friends. I just want to stay at home and do my own thing but enough of me.

One of the only dislikes I have to this book is it is a typical twin story. One is popular and outgoing one is not. I really do wish they we had 2 perspectives in this book, one Wren and one Cath. I didn’t feel that we really did not get to get close to Wren as I would’ve liked to. Wren in a whole way was just incomplete as a character. But then, Wren really opens up after she got into hospital after a near death experience with alcohol. Again though, I really want to feel more connection with Wren.

Levi is AWESOME! I loved him as a character. He just is so sweet to Cather. I really like them together, but I really wish that we knew if Levi had dyslexia or not, if he just could not read, it is just unclear. I love how he is just so sweet to Cath and would do anything to her, even if they were not even together. He really made Cath open up and was not fazed when Cather opened up about her fanfiction. And I really that that was so sincere. Because Boys might think that its weird pervy stuff?

Overall, this book is such a rest of a read, a book that is just so easy, not a fast book where you must focus on this book, you can easily just relax and read!!

Such a good and innocent read - I really do recommend!

Here is the link on amazon if you want to check it out <3