even if I hadn't known Alice Oseman wrote this book when she was seventeen, I would have known she wrote it when she was seventeen. It feels almost Wattpad-fanfiction, the way that everyone at school cares about BBC Sherlock, the casual dismissal of girls more slutty than the main character even while her friends are in that category but also sort of not ("people who have sex are below me but also my friends are having sex because it's the normal thing to do in high school"), the way Tori talks about the music she listens to like nobody else in the world has heard of it. I mean come on there has to be one other hipster at this school? just one?
realistically, writing from the future, I know that a lot of Tori's not-like-other-girls complex is Oseman at seventeen untangling being acespec/arospec, terminally online, and lonely at the height of tumblr and the british cultural moment. so I don't hate it as much as I could. just, yknow, it's very obvious how young she was when she wrote this.
I did like some things, though! for one, knowing that Tori actually came first. Alice Oseman is known for Nick and Charlie and it's fascinating to me that originally they were two side characters in her self-insert novel that she gave this tragic and gay backstory and now she's writing more and more about them and oops every gay teenager on the english-speaking internet is obsessed with them. it's very obvious to me that when she was writing Solitaire she had Nick and Charlie's story mostly planned out in her head, and in some ways, even though Solitaire was written first, it feels a little bit like a spin-off novel... for a webcomic that didn't exist yet. like the way that Nick and Charlie, and the Ben Hope thing, and all of that is referenced makes it feel like oh! they're little treats for longtime readers! (this also makes me think that Oseman is the next Sarah Dessen, except like, for gay people.) so when I pick up Heartstopper/reread Radio Silence/check out the other books, I'll be excited to play I Spy Tori/I Spy Solitaire References. this sounds like I'm bashing on Alice, I'm not, this is how my own OCs work (Juliette is theoretically the main character, I keep getting distracted by Alec's tragic backstory and neglecting his sister who is supposed to be the more interesting one). if I were an author I too would have an extended cinematic universe where Juliette knows the hobby journalist who's a side character in the gay Lithuanian Maneskin book, and my fantasy world is a cool tv show or video game or something, and Evie Lee ditching her kpop group in LA is national news for Alec while he's in college. this is because I read too much Sarah Dessen as a child. (not really.)
anyway, I also liked Michael and I want his mental illness backstory because, to me, he is very obviously bipolar or otherwise has some emotional/personality disorder shit going on. this is a positive, I have emotional regulation issues that are sometimes cluster-b adjacent. Michael Holden you are the manic pixie dream boy TO ME.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
