Readers are not given any indication that he dated her for three years because of heterosexist pressure or that he discovers something new with Baz that he never felt with Agatha. If Simon had either of those experiences, that’d be great! Yay for showing the complexities of sexual identity.īut Simon’s relationship with Agatha is not presented in either of those ways. I also know some gay people who never had viscerally negative reactions to different gender relationships (sometimes only feeling a kind of ‘meh’) but feel infinitely more excited and fulfilled by same gender relationships in a way that made them realize they’re gay. Many gay people have stories of having different gender relationships they knew they didn’t want, especially as young people, because of the overwhelming pressure of compulsory heterosexuality. I want to be clear I understand gay people have many different paths to how they came into their sexuality. Unfortunately, after Simon and Baz get together there isn’t much time for adorableness before monosexism rears its ugly head. Some other plot stuff happens, but what we care about is that eventually Simon and Baz kiss. Simon never tells readers directly his sexual orientation or that he’s interested in Baz before they kiss, although many readers will likely suspect something since Simon is kind of obsessed with this guy he claims is his enemy. Baz tells us straight up that he’s gay and hopelessly in love with Simon. Pretty early on in the story we get Baz’s perspective (one of the other interesting changes Rowell has made to Rowling’s formula is that she offers readers direct points of view from multiple people). It’s clear their relationship is not great and they’re just kind of going through the motions so it’s not surprising. For the first part of the book Simon has a long-term girlfriend Agatha, who breaks up with him. I mean, he even slicks his hair back like Draco. In case you haven’t read Carry On: the character named Simon who is essentially Harry Potter is in his 8 th year at Watford, aka Hogwarts, and has a roommate named Baz who is pretty obviously Draco. Unfortunately I was listening to the audiobook so I had nothing tangible to throw. Namely: the way Carry On deals with queer sexuality is so deeply monosexist (enforcing the assumption that people are either gay or straight and therefore erasing bisexuality) that I want to chuck it at the wall. And I was soooo into the Harry/Draco Simon and Baz queer romance, at least at first.īut then this book disappointed me in a way that makes me angrier and angrier the more I think about it. Magicians, aka witches and wizards, use nursery rhymes, song lyrics, and popular phrases to cast spells! I loved that Penelope/Hermione was explicitly brown! I was even amused at Agatha, a person with magic who kind of just wanted to forget about it and live in the normal world and ride horses and get manicures. I also loved how Rowell used linguistics as the basis of magic. (Sidenote: if you like Harry Potter and the idea of two self-described lady scholars talking about Harry Potter with equal parts affection and critical eyes, you should definitely be listening to Witch Please, it is awesome).Īt first, I loved Carry On! I loved the interrogation of so many of the details of the Harry Potter and Hogwarts world–like, house elves aren’t necessary if the students just do some of their own fucking chores. The old English Lit student in me could not bare to listen to the podcast episode without having read the book. But the two women of one of my favourite podcasts Witch Please were going to discuss the book in the context of it being a part of the Harry Potter world (it’s legitimized Harry Potter fanfiction, essentially). I had a few apprehensions before starting it, to be honest, because I tried to read Eleanor & Park earlier this year and found it boring as well as a pretty sloppy handling of race by a white author. I recently read the fantasy YA book Carry Onby Rainbow Rowell. Bisexual erasure is always a piece of poopy garbage, but it’s especially disheartening to encounter it while reading a book during Bi Visibility Week.
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