|
|
|---|
Spoiler Alert is a romance novel by Olivia Dade. Superfans of the popular TV series Gods of the Gates, Book!AeneasWouldNever and Unapologetic Lavinia Stan ("Ulsie") have been fandom besties for years, beta reading each other's fics and venting about the direction the showrunners are taking their favorite characters.
One day, actor Marcus Castor-Rupp from said show asks out fangirl April Whittier after seeing her plus-sized cosplay of Lavinia on Twitter. She expects just a dopey good-looking actor, but to her shock they end up bonding quickly and he asks her out on another date.
Marcus is B!AWN. April is ULS. April tells him her secret on the first date, while Marcus keeps quiet. See, he writes fanfiction because he hates the direction the show's going with his character and has a vendetta against the showrunners, who both he and April feel are uncaring misogynists out to ruin everything good about the books the show is based on. Should his secret get out, it could be the end of his career. But the closer he and April get, the more he can't bring himself to lie to her anymore.
If this sounds like Game of Thrones RPF to you, you might be right. Dade even cites the Braime shippers as her inspiration.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Called out by April, who rants about how the showrunners casting a pretty lady as Lavinia defeats the whole point of her and Aeneas's attraction to each other being based on character and personality.
- Author Appeal: Dade herself is a larger woman and a Brienne/Jaime shipper
- Big Beautiful Woman: April
- Calling The Old Lady Out: April does this with her mother late in the story, for all the years of body shaming and projecting her own body image issues onto her. She never gets a chance to do this with her father (the man responsible for her mother's problems), due to Marcus refusing to let the man anywhere near her.
- Marcus also does a variant of this with his parents, sending them a letter telling them to either respect his career and stop treating him like an idiot, or to get out of his life. The end of the book implies they either refused to listen or he cut them out of his life without waiting for a response.
- Chubby Chaser: Marcus and his best friend/costar Alex both develop the hots for full-figured women.
- Fat and Proud / Weight Woe: April bounces back and forth between this throughout the whole book.
- April's mother Joanna is clearly the latter, due to her husband's shallowness. She's known to check herself in the mirror and measure her waistline constantly, and projects these insecurities onto April.
- Food Porn: Quite a bit of it due to April being a Big Eater.
- Geeky Turn On: Fanfiction for April and Marcus, especially smutty fanfiction.
- Hero of Another Story: Marcus's friend Alex, who gets quite a bit of face time and is the protagonist of the book's sequel.
- Heroes Want Redheads: Marcus and April
- Hot Guy Ugly Wife: Subverted by the book's versions of Aeneas and Lavinia, who are both described as homely. Supposedly handsome actor Marcus and chubby fangirl April, but April is still described as incredibly sexy and irresistible.
- Hypocrite: April and Marcus's treatment of her mother. April has every right to be pissed at her behavior and call it out, but Joanne has issues of her own that she obviously needs to work through. The epilogue mentions that she met April and Marcus for lunch, slipped into her old habits of pointing out low-calorie menu options, and this caused April to walk out and Marcus to tell her off before they left her crying alone at the table. April expects her mother to fall in line with her needs in an instant, but gives no consideration to her mother's need for patience. Worse? The narrative treats Marcus like a hero for rescuing April and making an old woman cry. Joanne could be obnoxious, but she didn't deserve that.
- It's All About Me: April's rant about fatphobia in fandom boils down to "think long and hard before you put any fat characters in your fanfic because it hurts my feelings when fat people are portrayed as less than perfect":
 |
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan: I’m not asking you to celebrate my fatness or make Lavinia fat in your stories or go back and change any old fics with fat-shaming in them. I AM asking, though, for you to be thoughtful any time you reference fatness in your writing. I want you to think of me and ask yourself, “Would the implications of this hurt ULS?” If the answer is yes, please do better—for me, for yourself, and for everyone else. |
 |
- Manic Pixie Dream Girl: One of the movie scripts inserted between the chapters actually has a character named Pixie who outright states that she only cares about fixing the hero's problems.
- Most Writers Are Male: Heavily discussed in the book as a setup for the writers of Gods being Straw Misogynists in their casting choices, scriptwriting, and other projects they've worked on.
- Poor Communication Kills: Hooo boy. Not only does Marcus hide his identity nearly the entire book and have his alter ego "break it off" with April online, April and Marcus are terrible at telling each other how they really feel. As a result April ends up freezing Marcus out more than once, and he ends up thinking she hates him.
- Serial Numbers Filed Off: This is basically Game of Thrones RPF, with the show being "The Aeneid does GoT" and Marcus as a stand-in for Jaime's actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
- Soapbox Sadie: April, when it comes to fatphobia and body positivity in fandom. She makes a huge speech about it on the Lavineas Discord server, telling her sad story of being mistreated over her weight and passive-aggressively shaming the fandom for having written fat characters in a way that hurts her feelings. It ends with her begging them to think about her next time they write or reference a fat character in their writing.
- Straw Misogynist: The Gods showrunners RJ and Ron are unapologetically sexist in both the way they write women and their treatment of women in real life, particularly Alex's minder Lauren.
- Third-Act Misunderstanding: When Marcus finally comes clean about his fanfiction alter ego, April becomes livid and dumps him, angry that he made B!AWN "break up" with her and that he didn't trust her to keep quiet. They get back together at a convention via a Big Damn Kiss on stage in front of a cheering crowd.
- The Unfair Sex: Whenever Marcus and April have a misunderstanding it's invariably his fault and he's the one that must make it up to her. Though to April's credit she's capable of self-reflection and realizing her own role in things once she's had time to cool off.
- Wish Fulfillment: The book is about a handsome actor sweeping a chubby woman off her feet after they bond over fanfiction.
- Writer On Board: Can you tell Dade is unhappy about Game of Thrones's ending (particularly her ship being sunk) and thinks the entertainment industry is misogynistic? And that she has Opinions about the way fat characters are portrayed in stories?
- In-universe, some of April and Marcus's "Lavineas" fanfic makes it clear they're projecting their feelings for each other and the relationship issues they're having on to the characters.