Gerard, why you gotta hate the fun?

[epershand]

Anatomy of a Fall, guys. It had been recced to me and recced to me and recced to me and I just kept not reading it. And then it took over the last 48 hours of my life.

This story. It is, hands down, the best YA novel I've read in the last few years. I wish teenage!epershand had had this novel to read when she was desperate to escape high school. I wish this thing was professionally published with swapped names so queer teens today could have it to cling to. It gets the hopelessness and desperation and day-to-day putting-up-with-it-allness of being a bullied teen like nothing else I've read ever has.

And queer teens deserve love stories like this one, sweetly endearing romances that reach beyond the grave without turning into Truly Madly Deeply or something like that.

It's just so smart, this story. It's smart about pop culture, it's smart about dealing with death, it's smart about romance and sadness and all the things that suck about high school. Also about the fact that the band room is totally where it's at when you want to escape from bullies, even if you're not in band.

I want to press a copy of this book into the hands of everyone I know and make them read it. I have been raving about it at length to multiple people who don't read fic in the hopes that they will read it and fall in love too.

(My Chemical Romance RPF, Supernatural High School AU, Gerard/Frank. NC-17, but as the author says, NO NECROPHILIA)

Comments

[naraht]

I started reading this but I have to admit that I lost a lot of sympathy with Gerard over the idea that walking down the street to school is some sort of hardship.

I also have never seen a truck decked out like that in Vermont and I've spent a lot of time in Vermont. I have no doubt that there's the usual amount of high school homophobic bullying there but I could have done without the "yokels" angle.

[were_duck]

I stumbled over that, too, at the beginning, but... I guess, I am not a person who has to have an enlightened protagonist, and in fact often prefers not to especially for a teenager. He's worried about his brother, he's going to a new school where he doesn't know anyone, and he's kind of a jerk about how much that stuff actually scares him, and brushes it off by being sort of an asshole as a protective layer. He's very self-involved, can be kind of a drama queen, and that's just how he is, you know? Kids can be like that! Even ones who get bullied. Sometimes especially them. And that characterization is really important for later on, and I think it rings true both with canon characterization to some extent and with what being a teenager can really be like.

I actually have seen trucks decked out with antlers and stuff in small town Wisconsin, so I didn't find that detail too appalling, and I may be culturally positioned to read that as showing 'this is a small town' and not 'here are the obligatory rednecks', even if that's the conclusion Gerard leapt to, because he is not a character I trust to interpret events for me. I've never been to Vermont, though, so can't speak to how the meanings shift in that context.

Also, I don't really read the bullies as 'yokels'--many of them come from the most powerful families in the town, so while their class position is easy to mistake early on in the fic because of stuff like that truck, it isn't actually about low-income farm kids bullying queer kids (even though Gerard does mistake them for that).

Obviously, your mileage may vary, and if those details put you off, then that is fine and it's probably not the story for you!

[epershand]

Actually, one of the things I liked the most of the stories is how flawed all the characters, including Gerard and Frank, are so flawed. Especially at the beginning of the story, Gerard is this suburban kid who is unwilling to do so much as walk to school (canon is that there were a few years when he basically never left his parents' basement), and by halfway through the story he's tromping miles through the woods after Frank and making fun of himself for it.

I've actually been thinking about your point about Vermont/the "yokels" angle. Having lived in Massachusetts for a few years, my set of New England prejudices is that I responded to the location with "What? Vermont? Not New Hampshire?" but I've seen some really close-minded, insular towns in a lot of places--VT, NH, ME, even the town I grew up in Northern California. I know and love enough people who have a whole lot of redneck pride that I found that angle completely reasonable.

[were_duck]

Hee your tag!

And yes. Love.

[tei]

..okay, this is the billionth time I have seen someone saying that it is the best thing ever and I do indeed have a few free hours today! So... this has been an effective post? I will probably read it instead of studying! :P

[epershand]

Yessssss it is so good. It has some structural problems in the overall plot but the character arcs are all just so brilliant.

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[(Anonymous)]

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