Miltantly Romantic

I had a conversation with a friend of a friend a couple of days ago that made me very disappointed in myself.  To  understand why, we have to rewind to the fall of 2001, aka, among a few other minor things, the first semester of my senior year of college.
  

Fall of senior year, I enrolled in a course on Victorian Lit.  I didn't want to.  It was not an area of interest for me.  It filled a credit I needed for my major, though, and my friend at the time (who later became an author, sometimes of romance novels), convinced me it would be fun.  Said friend, it should be noted, WAS very much into Victorian Lit.  I was, to put it lightly, doubtful.

The course was being taught by a fresh-out-of-PhD adjunct.  Kate Thomas had incredible taste in heels, a British accent that made everything sound better, and was easily, far and away, one of the smartest people I'd ever met.  In that class, she introduced me Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's 'Epistemology of the Closet', and I am not being hyperbolic when I say that reading the introduction to the book was one of two foundational paradigmatic shifts in my intellectual approach to the world.  

The analogy I'm about to give of one of the principles she discusses in that piece is a vast oversimplification and I hope that wherever she is in the afterlife, she can't hear me butchering her truly elegant work.

Sedgwick asserts that conversations cannot be had without agreeing on certain underlying concepts, usually, the definitions of words being used.  So, let's say you and a friend are playing a game of checkers.  Both of you have stated that you know how to play.  Only, it turns out that you were each taught a slightly different set of rules, maybe because you're from different regions, or because one of you grew up in a family with its own slapdash set of rules.  The game is probably not going to go well.

Sedgwick argues that we, as humans, consider many things givens that are not, and that, in reality, those "givens" need to be stripped back several dozen layers to get to shared facts upon which a dialogue can be built.  That is, we all assume we know what words mean, that what we mean when we say something is the same thing our conversant hears and comprehends.  This is rarely true unless the terms have been discussed and unpacked ahead of time.

I realize I have deeply buried the lede here, but all of this is to say: I made the assumption that the term "romance genre" would have a set meaning in this blog because it--for the most part--does within "romancelandia," aka, the space wherein persons who seriously read and discuss Romance, capital R, exist.  I forget that, no more than eight months ago, I read an article about a bookstore owner who just last year had to be taught that no, Nicholas Sparks is not a Romance writer.

So, for the purposes of this blog capital R Romance, the romance genre, or romance books are defined as:

1. having two or more sentient beings who are of appropriate age to be with each other and who have the capability of having romantic love for each other

2. having a plot primarily focused on how these beings come together romantically

3. having a happy ending

Now, those are pretty broad requirements, but they are hard and fast.  For example, the difference between being a mystery novel with romance elements in it, and being a romance novel in the mystery subgenre is number two: does the plot focus on the mystery, or is its raison d'etre the pairing at the forefront, and the mystery is a vehicle for them to get to know each other?

The difference between being a romance novel and so-called literary fiction with a romance element is the same.  What drives the plot?

The difference between a romance novel and a love story--and this is the one that trips up most people--is that a love story can have an unhappy ending.  A romance novel cannot.  Which is to say, all romances are love stories, but not all love stories are romances.  To be clear: happy ending does not mean a marriage contract, babies, communal property, etc.  It simply means that when we leave our protagonists, they are happy together and in a secure position in life.  But those basics are a must. 

If you do not have any one of those three, your book is not a romance.  If you have all of those three, no matter WHAT else you have--a metric tonne of dungeon sex, a weresnake from a different planet and a nice Christian girl who just wants to save his soul and is ride or die about abstaining until marriage, serious historical drama and political intrigue, literally anything--your book is first and foremost a romance.  It might have a subgenre, but your top-level genre, as it were, is Romance.  

Lookit that, we have our discursive axiom.

Okay, got thrown for a loop by a Life Emergency, but pulling myself back on track.

I'd been putting off reading this.  For a whole slew of reasons.  Partly because I had fond memories of Chase from the early 2000s, which can be dangerous, partly because it's so well regarded in the way that say, you know, Bridgerton is, and I'm quite clearly a duck very out of water there.

I finally forced the issue because I had a zoom session through Carey library featuring her approaching and I wanted at least one of her works to be in the forefront of my mind.  Good news: my concern was largely for naught.  (I mean, I've purchased her latest because word on the street says as good as she was then, she's that much better now, but given how little bandwidth I have for terribleness in this arena at the moment, it was quite the relief to not be punched in the face with mid-90's misogyny.)

It's not that Sebastian Ballister/Dain isn't a child who needs to grow up in order to be worthy of Jessica Trent.  Because, frankly, he is and he does.  It's that Chase puts in the work to make the reader understand why he's stuck in a child's emotional state and then makes Dain do the necessary work to push himself past that, which is a) not something we get to see a lot of in this era of histrom (or, you know, in the overwhelming majority of histrom) and b) really satisfying on a bone deep level.

The set up is you have Dain's bumhole of a father, who loses his wife and all his heirs later in life and has to start over again.  He chooses to do so with a young, Italian wife, who gives him a son.  Enter, Dain.  Dain's father is prejudiced AF against his Italian mother, who, when Dain is roughly eight, runs off with her lover and dies from a fever a few years later.  One of the elements that Chase gives a lot of nuance to is Dain's mistrust of (and surface hatred of) women as relating back to his mother.  The thing that really works for me here is that while Dain might judge women's actions in the text, the text never does, and actively works to make it clear where those women are coming from.

Anyhoodle.  Dain picks up enough of his mother's darker coloring and his father's larger size to be bullied relentlessly at school until he proves himself able to bite back effectively.  When we next meet him, Dain is an adult living firmly in the demimonde, answerable to nobody but himself, and doing whatever the fuck he pleases in France.

Jessica Trent is twenty-seven, making her an older heroine for a histrom, but unlike many older heroines, she's not been ruined, she's highly desired, there's nothing wrong with her, she just does not wish to marry.  Rather, she's extremely good at finding antiques at bargain cost and reselling at actual worth and wishes to found a shop and support herself.

Before that, however, she needs to extricate her idiot older brother, who's running in Dain's circles and is going to ruin himself doing so.  This brings her and Dain into each others' orbits.

I rarely feel sexual tension between characters in books.  I don't know if it's an aspect of me being so heavily grey and disinterested in vanilla sex as a whole, or what, but even the writers that everyone swears are steam-level-off-the-charts, I'm usually entirely unaware of sexual tension that isn't spelled out to me.  And even then, I don't really feel it.  Yeah, no, these two have sexual tension the second they look at each other.  And it never lets up for a minute.  

The famous scene from this book, of course, is where Jessica shoots him, with premeditation--which, I'll be honest, score for sheer moxy, but I don't actually love physical harm between will-be partners, and I think this scene would play a LOT differently if the two were reversed.  (In fairness, she shoots him because it's the only power she has in the situation, really, so there would be a number of things that would play out differently.)

For me, where this book absolutely shines is in the ways that Jessica is not just intelligent intellectually, she's emotionally intelligent.  There's not a bunch of "oh, he has man parts, however shall I understand him?"  In fact, she's all, "I raised roughly a billion male cousins, I know what your damage is, and I'm gonna need you to fix it."  But instead of using her emotional energy to constantly be at odds with him, she does three things: 1. she stops fighting with him.  She gives him EXACTLY what he wants, in order to show him that, uh, he doesn't really want it, 2. she makes sure he has the knowledge and the awareness that she, as an outside party, can have regarding his damage, and 3.  she trusts him, when push comes to shove, to be the caring human she knows he can be.

There are a lot of ways in which this book feels almost outside the scope of romance in moments, not in bad ways, but in the sense that it pays more attention to the outside factors that weigh on the characters than many others do.  (This actually feels somewhat reminiscent of McNaught, but I don't think Chase had read her at this time.)  The way Chase weaves it first into character and then into the relationship between the characters is what makes it....well.  A classic. 

I fell down a work/high holy days hole there.  But I have mostly crawled out.

As a preface to what I am about to talk about, let me state, categorically, that I believe that #OwnVoices literature is important and will always be important, even in a world where humanity could manage to stop being raging cocksnots toward each other.  And that is notably not the world we live in.  Nothing that goes after this is to suggest otherwise.  Rather, it is to suggest that (1) for diversity to exist, #OwnVoices cannot be the only people writing stories about non-privileged communities, (2) that there are ways for people who are not part of a community to responsibly write characters from it, and (3) the greater the proliferation of #OwnVoices and outsider texts there are, the greater our ability to determine what might be problematic elements in a text, and not take them as gospel truth.

At the beginning of this week, one of the romance newsletters I subscribe to linked this discussion of romances with Indian leads written by Indian-American or Indian-Canadian women .  While this summary does not do the article credit, the author argues that all of these books are written on the theme of proximity to whiteness--with whiteness being a desirable thing--and, as such, are written for white audiences.  I will discuss in a moment why I do not agree with that thesis, but I nonetheless recognize it as a valid frustration.

Today, entirely by coincidence, I read this Modern Love column in the NYT, in which a Pakistani-born, American-raised woman talks about learning from Bend It Like Beckham that white men were romantically desirable as brown men could not be, and how, when she finally fell in love with a Pakistani man, there were a million ways they understood each other that she had never managed with white men.

To explain my beliefs on this issue, it is necessary that I give a broad overview of American anti-Semitism historically and currently, and living as someone who practices Judaism as an element of her daily life. 

I am 97% Ashkenazi.  My father's family left Russia to escape the progroms, my mother's grandmother made it out of Germany in time to survive.  The rest of her family did not.  I am, in the eyes of today's world, white.

Anti-Semitism is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it, and yes, that includes people who have experienced other kinds of "isms."  For one thing, it comes in different forms from the right and from the left.  For another thing, it no longer looks the way most other isms do.

Let me be clear: this change to being more subtle is a fairly new thing.  And it is something that has been accomplished only by the majority of American Jewry's willingness to assimilate.  That is: it has been gained by our willingness to give up the things that make us Not White.

(Side note: when I presume whiteness of Jews in color, I am referring very specifically to genetic Ashkenazis.  Sephardis and Jews by Choice are often not Caucasian, and so there are a completely different set of circumstances.  That is outside the scope of what I am discussing here.)

Brandeis is the Jewish version of the HBCU.  It was created because Jews weren't allowed into the Ivys, among other institutes of higher education.  I grew up going to a Jewish country club--founded because Jews weren't accepted into the others.  In fact, it was not until the mid-1990s that Kansas City Country Club accepted someone Jewish, and they did it only when forced.  That Jewish person was Henry Block, of H & R Block.  They had turned him down, but the golf pro who played there, Tom Watson, was nationally known, and he had married a Jewish woman and had children with her.  He threatened to leave the club if they did not accept Block.  They did so, grudgingly.

The racial covenants for housing that were struck down in '48 but remain on the books until this day?  Jews were included in those covenants in many places, my hometown being one of them.

Many Americans, knowing very well what was happening in Germany in WWII, wanted to side with the Germans.  After WWII, unlike the Russians, who prosecuted Nazi scientists, America pardoned them and gave them a home.  Meanwhile, it was highly reluctant to accept the Jews streaming out of Europe, desperate for somewhere to go.

This kind of anti-Semitism fades as religious Judaism fades outside of haredi pockets like Williamsburg.  It no longer looks systemic and easy to point to, except for the incidences every few years where someone shoots up a Jewish dayschool, pre-school, Jewish Community Center, etc.

I was almost eighteen when I figured out that (white) churches didn't hire security for every service, the way synagogues did.  All religious buildings are inherently dangerous, right?  I was a full-grown adult when I learned that not everybody has a passport that they keep updated religiously (pun intended) which they've had since birth just in case they need to flee the country.  

Every single year that I was in school, every single one of them, there was one teacher who would be an absolute dickmunch about me taking two days for Rosh Hashanah and one for Yom Kippur.  Without fail.  Employers were often worse.  This year, I put in for a religious accommodation at my work and was told that I didn't need one, but I could take a disability accommodation instead if I got a doctor's note.  Thankfully, my therapist is Jewish.  I cannot even begin to tell you how many major work trainings and life events get scheduled on major Jewish holidays.  AwesomeCon in DC was impossible for me to make for years because it was always on Passover, which is not an easy holiday to work around.  The amount of resistance I have encountered around certain requests for essentially vegetarian meals to make sure I wasn't getting something egregiously unkosher has been unreal at times.  Also, people treat keeping Kosher like you're a high maintenance picky eater.  (True story: I can find something to eat ALMOST anywhere.  Except soul food restaurants.)  

A lot of anti-Semitism is being treated on a semi-constant basis, like you're a problem.  And if you would just stop being a problem, everything would be fine.

There are also the elements of just not being welcome in certain spaces, like my complete discomfort with lesbian spaces since they've started disallowing Jewish star flags in parades.  That's a sign of my religion.  You have told me, a lesbian, I'm not welcome in this lesbian space.  

My point to all this is that while I might not be able to speak to the experience of proximity to whiteness, I can certainly speak to the experience of proximity to Christianity/secular Protestantism, and if you think the two are all that different in the U.S., I would truly advise you (a) to consider whether you would think that if this were a Muslim talking, and (b) to think about the fact that the closest thing there's been to a non-Christian president in the U.S. was a Catholic.  And that was quite the uproar at the time.  (I see Catholics as Christian, but within the U.S. there is no question in my mind that theirs is an existence of proximity to Protestantism.)

When Jews are in the media, which is exceedingly rare, it is always and forever about their proximity to Christianity.  Jews in media (1) are so assimilated that the only thing that signals their Judaism is either their name or something far more offensive such as a high level of neuroticism mixed with dark hair and a longer nose, (2) relate to their Judaism only through Hanukah which any practicing Jew will tell you is one of the least important holidays of the year and only well-known because, yup, of its proximity to Christmas, or (3) both.  I saw one representation of Judaism in the media that I was like "okay, this could be something," and that was when Kate Kane was brought to the screen.  It wasn't amazing.  But there were elements of Kate's Judaism woven in slightly, beyond "I don't celebrate Christmas" aka, Judaism as the ABSENCE of Christianity.  Then Ruby Rose left, and they kept Batwoman's lesbianism and jettisoned her Judaism.

In romance, Judaism is even more rare.  And if there exists a romance novel where both hero and heroine are Jewish, I'm unaware of it.  (That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.  But at the same time, I have looked.)  The closest, I would say, is Felicia Grossman's second, Dalliances & Devotion, where the heroine is the child of a mixed marriage but identifies as Jewish, and the hero is Jewish.  Grossman's first, Appetites & Vices is an intensely smart commentary on the safety acquired by moving toward the Christian norm (and the dangers in trying to get there).

Here's the thing, though, and this is why, in the end, I disagree with the assertion that because a story is about proximity to the dominant culture, it's written for the dominant culture: for a lot of Jews, this is their story.  It's not mine.  My Judaism runs on a calendar wholly apart from the Roman one, it involves a community that is nothing short of family, and it knows exactly what the Pakistani author is talking about when she discusses how she fits with another Pakistani more than she ever managed with someone white.  I tried dating Christians.  Unlike the author of the article, for me it was "this is what there is" rather than "this is what I prefer", but I tried.  And no matter how secular they were, Christianity was always a thing between us, largely because Americans often think things that are Christian are secular.  

While a story that aligns to Christianity being a default might be more comfortable for a Christian/secular American reader, that doesn't make it for that reader, in the same way that because white readers might find stories of racial assimilation more understandable, it doesn't make those stories for white people.  I feel like it's harsh to say that because someone desires assimilation/acculturation, their experience isn't legitimate and they don't deserve to see themselves in fiction.  The issues underlying that desire are certainly a problem, and one that we, as a society, should be working on, but I don't think delegitimizing the experience of living in a problematic society is a fair  or even productive way of going about that.

So, just because the Jewish stories I see around me aren't my Jewish story doesn't mean they shouldn't get told.  What it means is that someone like me, or someone who's not Jewish, but is interested in writing about someone like me, needs to write more stories.  Now, is it risky for someone who's not Jewish to write about my kind of Judaism?  Boy howdy.  Jews are insular for a million reasons, we're a hard nut to crack.  A good way to crack it, though, to crack that problem with any community, is to find sensitivity readers.  And not just for the sake of using their brains.  For the sake of listening to them as humans who have lived whatever it is you're writing.

And sure, if we could say "only #OwnVoices get to represent" and that meant that tomorrow there were--for simplicity's sake, leaving out religious, sexual orientation, and gender identity disparities, among others--20% Latinx creators, 20% Black, 20% Arab, 20% Asian, and 20% white, that would be a pretty sweet world.  In the meantime, as the author of the critique notes, eight percent of romance writers are non-white.  So if only #OwnVoices write non-white characters, only eight percent of romance novels get to have them.  And within those eight percent, as discussed above, only certain types of minority experiences get told.  Frankly, that's a shitty solution.

To be clear, like all problems with representation, I don't think there's a good or right answer here.  The only thing I can say with any certainty is that I don't believe limiting representation works nearly so well as pressing for an increase in the sheer volume of it, even when that road has foreseeable pitfalls.

In the interests of full disclosure, I'm starting with this book because it allows me to talk about some overarching issues I have with media, genre, representation, and "accuracy."  Also, this post is longer than the beards of even the most dedicated hipsters.  I'm pretty sure these will get shorter as I slowly get all the things that have been building up in my brainspace with nowhere to go for twenty-five years out.  Ninety-five percent certain, at least.

The truth is, I'm not clear on what caused me to pick this book up. I feel like I must have seen something that made me go "huh, I'll check it out," but on the surface, this book is not for me. I do not like (1) college fic, (2) road trips, (3) most contemporary romance, (4) enemies(lite)-to-lovers, (5) male fan spaces, (6) representations of fandom in pro-media, and (7) while I don't DISLIKE the whole "there was only one bed" trope, it sits at a solid "meh" on my give-a-fuckometer.

Basically, this book should be a disaster for me. It's not. Albert pulls off a sweet, quiet little story that's not going to make me a fan for life or anything, but if any of the above tropes are your jam? I'd highly recommend it.

The set up is this: you've got Conrad, Kansas-bred kid who's been disowned by his parents after being accidentally outed to them by a guy he's fooling around with. Lacking the funds to continue at his clearly-intended-to-be-Ivy school, he drops out and takes a few jobs to try and get things back under control. Conrad is an extrovert, spontaneous, and a superficially open person. That said, there's almost nobody who knows what's going on with him.

Our other hero is Alden. Alden reads as someone slightly on the spectrum, but within the confines of the book his parents have had him repeatedly tested for all sorts of things and he's never been granted a diagnoses. He's the youngest of three kids, and his two older sisters have gone on to become medical doctors. One of his mothers is a well-known physician who teaches at the University, his other mother is also a professor. Alden has failed to get into med-school twice and is faltering in terms of his life plans. Both mothers are pressuring him to figure out what his next step is. Alden is awkward, by-the-rules, and intensely private.

Alden is also Jewish. This is where I'd like to pause for a tangent. Alden's Jewishness, is, obviously, not a main theme of this story, nor do I feel it should be. BUT, and this is a significant but, Alden is represented as having a connection with the traditional aspects of Judaism. He's not religious. But he makes hamantaschen with his Jewish mom on Purim, and when they stop at restaurants, he won't eat pork.

This probably doesn't seem like a big deal. It is. Jewish representation is a) incredibly rare, far more rare than almost any single cultural minority that actually interacts with the broader population, b) generally bad when it happens, and c) often not even seen as necessary, because Jews are white, right? Let's set aside the fact that, no, there are Ethiopian Jews, and Irani Jews, and Jews from basically every country in the world and the presumption of Jewish whiteness is dismissive of all those people. Let's pretend we are talking purely about Ashkenazi-descent American Jews.

Last week I read an article discussing representation in romance novels. Not surprising, it's a huge topic right now. The article brought up Alyssa Cole's 'Let it Shine' wherein it actually IS a fairly large plot point that the male protagonist is Jewish, culturally, and as a way of shaping his ethics. The article was listing books and then making bullet points of their representation. LGBTQ characters got mentioned, Blacks, Arabs, Indians, Muslims, Chinese, etc. The bullet point for 'Let it Shine' said "Black character."

I put forth this challenge: think about the last time you watched something that had a Jewish character who was not a guest-of-the-week Ultra-Orth or haredi brought in to exoticize that community. (Whole different topic.) How did you know the character was Jewish? Did they (1) have a "Jewish" sounding name? (2) mention how they don't celebrate Christmas whilst busy celebrating Christmas at someone's Christmas party? (3) drop a mention of their "Jewish mom" or "Jewish dad" somewhere along the way? or, my personal fave (4) get coded that way by being slightly dark, unattractive, highly neurotic, sounding like they're from Long Island, and being extremely concerned with money? None of this is Jewish representation. This is, at best, Jewish tokenism.

One of the few decent representations of a Jewish character in recent memory, has been Ziva David, who, notably, was played by a Hispanic Christian and who continued to mispronounce her own brother's Hebrew name for nine damn seasons. And, notably, this year, yup, the year of somebody else's lord 2020, when Ruby Rose stated that she was leaving Batwoman after a season playing Kate Kane, the producers of the show announced that they would be replacing Kate Kane, but don't worry: the new Batwoman would still be a lesbian. You know what she wouldn't still be? Jewish. A significant element of who Kate is as a character is woven through with her Judaism. Lesbian representation is clearly considered vital. Jewish representation? Nah. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I have a hard time believing Marvel could change out Kamala Khan for a different Arabic woman who was Christian.

So, yeah, this book earned itself major points by simply acknowledging that Jews aren't actually those weird Christians who kinda don't celebrate Christmas. Back to the plot.

Both boys are part of a popular vidcast called Gamer Grandpa headed up by another professor at the school--who also just happens to be gay and married to another professor.  Conrad and Alden have an on-air rivalry in this particular game, Odyssey, that's gained them some small amount of fame in this particular sect of the gaming world. Given this, the two of them and the rest of the Gamer crew: the professor, an enby named Payton who mostly comes off as a club kid, and a guy named Jasper with whom Conrad is decently close, are granted promotional passes to Odyssey Con West, which is taking place in Vegas. Conrad can't afford to fly, Alden has a phobia stemming from the fact that his bio dad was killed in a crash. The prof comes up with this plan to drive across the country stopping in gaming shops to do a little promotion along the way, and then go to the con. The con hosts a championship event, which, if won, not only has a fair amount of cash attached to the prize, but the possibility of playing in the professional circuit. Conrad needs this in order to stop drowning. Alden feels he needs the win to prove to himself and his moms that he has worth and can take care of himself. Don't ask, he's a 22-yo dude.

Through a series of unfortunate ("") events, Conrad and Alden end up on this trip with only the other for company. Conrad starts to see that Alden doesn't mean to be pedantic and lecture others, he gets frustrated by his own inability to translate his feelings into words. Alden learns about what's been going on with Conrad and begins understanding that the other boy's teasing isn't intended maliciously--he respects Alden as a player, but he doesn't feel Alden respects him, which puts him on his back foot. It's a slow-burn with tourist stops on the way to the con.

I don't read for sex.  Aside from just not being that compelled by sex in the first place, I find most pro-romance sex to be disinteresting.  That said, if your weakness is sweet, tender, very awkward-first-time feels, you're going to love it.

Now, let's chat about accuracy and what I think Albert gets right, or rather, what's completely inaccurate but in an appropriate way, and what she gets wrong, that is, what's fairly inaccurate in an off-putting way.

I will start here: my favorite romance sub-genre, hands-down, is historical. (Also a big fan of werewolves, fantasy, and occasionally space, but strangely, you don't get people calling for accuracy in those sub-genres quite as much.) If you, as an author, want your romance book to be historically accurate--and you probably don't, hygiene has been a nightmare for most of history, so at some level, you're picking and choosing when you start down that road--okay, I guess. I find it deeply unnecessary within the genre. In fact, I find it mildly eye-roll worth, since the very point of the genre is wish fulfillment, and trust me, dearest, there wasn't an earl in the entirety of the 19th century who thought about what his wife's hopes and dreams were, let alone whether he had consent to exercise his "marital rights" but okay, sure, you live that dream.

My problem is, as has been pointed out by Felicia Grossman and Elizabeth Kingston in much more well-thought out and researched essays than this rambling train wreck, "historical accuracy" is often a byword for "I don't wanna have to think about non-white, non-straight, non-Christian people." (Ignore the part where those people did actually exist in history. Don't go getting your messy "facts" in people's stupid-ass arguments.)

Now, again, this is a contemporary, so historical accuracy isn't at play here, but what is at play is the accuracy or lack thereof of the settings.  For our purposes, there are three major settings in this book: (1) the university, (2) the places on the road trip, and (3) the con.

I want to talk about one and two in comparison with each other in terms of how they're presented here.  The university is coded in a number of ways as a type of liberal utopia: the professors have different ethnic backgrounds, several of them are openly queer, there's never a sense of danger represented for any of the characters, the town is a haven.  Literally, the school is named Gracehaven.  I'm going to give Albert the benefit of the doubt and assume she's never been to New Haven and this is NOT supposed to be Yale, because if it is, she is missing some stuff.  I've spent time studying or working at five Research 1 universities, including Harvard, and I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there isn't an institution of higher learning in the United States that isn't oppressing someone.  Now, if she had treated the rest of her U.S. this way, honestly, I would have gone, "romance U.S., I loves it!"  

She can't, though, because Conrad's story requires that his dad be a religious bigot.  Okay, these people exist, cool.  My problem comes in that she uses Gracehaven as a type of foil for "the flyover states."  Does it make sense for Conrad and Alden to be careful about the PDA in super small towns in the midwest?  Yup.  As it would for them to do in super small towns on either coast.  Does it make sense for them to be all worried about it in St. Louis, or at a national park spot in Colorado?  Nope.  No, it doesn't.  It's very clear that the author researched the places they were in, the landmarks, etc.  It's also very clear that if she's ever been any of those places, she chose not to speak to a single other human being.  Wide swaths of the midwest and mountain states could not care less about two white dudes being into each other.  It's not the Big Thing she wants it to be in order to make Conrad uncomfortable all the way through that part of the country.  Which is to say: if you're going to call the midwest out on its conservative element, be sure to call the Ivies on theirs, or vice versa.  Playing them against each other is uncomfortably classist, smacks of intellectual snobbery, and is just laughably naive.

That's what she gets wrong.  Let's end with what she gets right, which is the con.  In reality, gaming is still largely a cesspit of entitled white misogynist cishet men.  It's getting better, the way most things are, you know, attempting to creep away from the sultry pits of Jabba the Hutt's ass-crack where we've landed society.  It's still not even close to "as inclusive" as say, comics, and ask any female or POC or queer comic creator, they will tell you that is a low bar.  Albert to some extent recognizes the white male supremacy of gaming culture in the way she specifically describes certain sects of people as standing out at the con--and who makes finals in the championship.  She also threads in elements that are more common in female-fan spaces, such as the mentions of fanfic, and certain types of fan-crafting.  What she elides, nicely, is the toxicity of these types of insular communities.  There is one antagonistic character, but he is presented as the exception which proves the rule.  Essentially, Albert crafts a fan culture that lands well beyond where gaming circles are now, and somewhere short of what they truly could be, and the middle ground works really nicely within the frame of the story.

That's how you do inaccuracy, baby.