#this meta is as bazcentric as ever... sorry i DO love simon but i can't help my villain apologist instincts 😔

[tyrannuspitch]

objection your honour this propaganda is NOT fair representation of snowbaz!! yeah the cover is okay but the CONTENTS of the book are capable of turning a teenage brain inside out (source: it happened to me.) thankfully as tumblr user tyrannuspitch i consider myself qualified to remedy this situation.

the basic concept of carry on is that it starts out as a parody, as the most cliché young adult fantasy book you can imagine, with every melodramatic speech and villainous flourish dialled up to eleven... and then it slowly but surely makes the inevitable gay fanfiction of its central homoerotic rivalry canon. my reaction the first time i read it was literally: "this shouldn't work. this shouldn't be allowed to be good." and yet it IS!

it's a Story About Stories. it's a love letter to the genre and a brutal genre deconstruction at the same time. it's intensely meta and genre-aware, but not in a cynical or undermining way - in an intensely compassionate one. it's both honest and EARNEST, both funny and genuinely heartbreaking, and these things are never in tension with each other - they flow into each other naturally as how people in extraordinarily terrible circumstances cope.

"doomed by the narrative" this, "doomed by the narrative" that, and yet none of you guys seem to care that tyrannus basilton grimm-pitch has been aware that he is the villain(tm) and he's going to have to be murdered so the happily ever after(tm) can happen since he was eleven years old...

it is [ao3 voice] a slowburn enemies-to-lovers arc, and again - it's executed so well. the hero (simon) and the villain (baz) are two young figureheads for opposing factions in their magical society, currently in a kind of cold civil war, always on the verge of tipping over into an actual war. they can't be in the same room starting a fight, and they've tried to kill each other multiple times. and. they're roommates. they are child soldiers on opposite sides of a war, and they had to grow up in the same bedroom. the intimacy! the yearning! the tragedy! you sleep next to this boy every night and you know what his shampoo smells like. and one day he's going to kill you!

THE LOVE TRIANGLE. of course there's a love triangle. but it's an m/m/f love triangle, and at least one of the boys is gay, so how can this be? the answer is that it's an intricate web of closet cases and increasingly desperate attempts at denial. and it's both genuinely interesting and incredibly fun. you've heard of lavender marriages, now get ready for: lavender infidelity!

vampirism as queerness. god, have i really not mentioned the vampires yet? well. of course, we all know that vampires are gay because they're sexy, sinister outsiders - but i think what this book does particularly well is setting up vampires as a legitimately unjustly persecuted group, and fear of vampires as a irrational and deeply damaging stigma. you do have to work for this one a little bit, but it's absolutely in there. simon showing compassion towards baz's internalised vampirephobia is key to the central turning point of the book!

this is a child soldier story. both simon and baz are used as weapons and pawns by their own families from a very young age. that means the story has to hold onto three simultaneous truths: firstly, that sometimes your parent is a terrible person, and you love them anyway. secondly: that even if do you love your parent, sometimes they're such a terrible person that you'll have to kill them if you ever want to escape. thirdly: that violence takes an immense toll on people, especially children, and forcing them to commit it is itself a form of abuse. so, yes, you can kill your abuser and be justified in it. but it's still a tragedy, because you never should have had to.

on a lighter note... the oft-screenshotted wikipedia page's table of contents reads as follows:

finally, i leave you with one of the songs from my playlist which i think most definitively captures the vibe(tm): sleep alone (bat for lashes)

thank you, and good night.

ROUND 1: POLL #46

ROUND 1 POLLS [HERE]

PROPAGANDA BELOW

Simon Snow/Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Grimm-Pitch:

SnowBaz looking awesome

[SPOILERS]

Ren Amamiya/Goro Akechi:

They're rivals but obsessed with each other. Goro tries to kill Akira and fails, but not before he spills his guts and tragic backstory. Akira is the only person to make Goro question his worldview and start on the path to become a better person. They mirror each other perfectly, since they're both fighting for justice and a better world, but in different ways. SPOILERS: When Akira thinks Goro has died, he carries around Goro's glove as a reminder of their promise to be rivals and constantly oppose each other.