Fan Fiction: A Satire

by Tavi Gevinson

Genres: Nonfiction, Music, Essays, Contemporary, Fan Fiction

75 pages, Unknown Binding

Published April 14, 2024

About the author

Tavi Gevinson is an American writer, magazine editor, actress and singer. Raised in Oak Park, Illinois, Gevinson came to public attention at the age of twelve because of her fashion blog Style Rookie. By the age of fifteen, she had shifted her focus to pop culture and feminist discussion. Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of the online Rookie Magazine, aimed primarily at teenage girls. In both 2011 and 2012, she appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Media list.

Source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Unburdened from the plotlines that used to structure each album cycle, she could finally just sing to her narrator’s one true love: the listener.’

Admittedly, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour was one of the most impressive spectacles I have ever experienced. Multiple hours of music and theatrics in a sold out stadium full of an audience for whom fandom has taken on a whole new level of idolization…like her or hate her one cannot deny that Taylor Swift has become a cultural icon of sorts in the United States. Fan Fiction: A Satire is a rather loving investigation into Swift from the incredible Tavi Gevinson released as a free zine (you can find it HERE). Across three parts, from a look at the elements of nostalgia and framing of memory that drives the emotional resonance in Swift’s music to Gevinson’s own experiences with the pop-star followed by a satirical exchange of emails, this is a fun and insightful read that is certainly a must for any Swiftie but also a rather interesting music and icon critique for anyone even remotely interested. As a fan of both Gevinson and Swift, I couldn’t resist checking this out and quite enjoyed the look into Swift’s lyrical framing in a way one might look at the cultural impact of great works of literature, using ideas by people such as Roland Barthes or Virginia Woolf. Sure, it gets VERY deep in fandom and celebration, but I doubt few would read this without expecting (or even wanting) that, and is rather metaficitonal several layers deep, but this was an enjoyable little read.

‘She is also showing us a way forward through our own nostalgia, zooming out from individual heartbreaks to the real arc.’

I really appreciated the way Gevinson looks at how Swift’s songs take experiences that are sung as highly personal but make them universally felt. The framing around ideas of memory is what sells it, Gevinson explains.‘Her memory becomes our big-budget fanfiction,’ she writes, making Swift the narrator a stand-in for the listener and making her not only a musician but the ‘ultimate’ protagonist. Gevinson looks at how the teenage search for identity also makes Swift an ideal person to fall deep into a fandom for because of the ways her songs tend to nudge teenage heartbreak and so seeing her live was like ‘a slow dance at ghost prom: Swift, myself, and all the other heartbroken teens’ living in her lyrics. Not that these lyrics are always real experiences, something she has been judged harshly on despite it being common for musicians to sing fictionalized experiences. Gevinson shows its a long tradition of doing ‘what Dylan and Springsteen did, draw on the culture’s armchair nostalgia and let it seem lived-in.’ And it really sells. She points out the delicious irony in songs like All Too Well when Swift describes a certain relationship as ‘rare’ and the Swifties on the Eras Tour reveal ‘the relationship was not unique. Other people could relate to its story. Find solace in it.’ That song in particular is meaningful in a way because when Swift sings ‘the idea you had of me--who was she?’ one can deduce that the man she was dating ‘was the first to dehumanize-by-idealizing’ and the relationship was her living in his fantasy, but for the fans they are also idealizing her and forcing her to live in their fantasies.

'I actually think the internet has turned all of us into perpetual teenagers—defined by what we like, very tribalist, irrationally ascribing morality to taste because IDENTITY!!!!!!'

There is also an aspect on the criticisms of Swift that reveal a hint of patriarchal gatekeeping. 'And why not be glad that a woman’s inner life means this much to this many people for the first time ever? Because I’ve monetized it like everyone else on earth?' Gevinson examines how what is "smart business" for some is cutthroat coming from Swift. She also nudges ideas on power imbalance and how when Swift was still a teen girl the burden of scandal was always placed upon her instead of acknowledging her as a target in a society that likes to sexualize young girls and then hold their own sexualization against them. Hence much of Reputation or songs like Blank Check where she plays with the public perception of her as some crazy young woman. She nods to Britney Spears which reminds me of Tavi Gevinson's INCREDIBLE article on Spears that serves as a cultural criticism of society for giving young women the illusion of holding the power and sexualizing them only to hold it against them and disparage them for it without considering that these teen stars never did have the power. You can read it HERE, and I highly recommend it.

A quick read, but quite fun for the fans and Gevinson delivers plenty of crisp social commentary as always. I really enjoyed 'my smug little “culture critic” attempt at talking about some aspects of Taylor’s music that I think get over­looked' and the email segments where we read Swift as a cultural critic of her own work in context of a society that judges women harshly and how criticisms of her can often be made as individual but have a universal sting that treats teen girls as hysterical and women as conniving. I think Leigh Stein says it best in her article for Lit Hub about this zine when comparing the level of metafiction and satire or autofiction present here to Nabokov's Pale Fire. 'If Pale Fire was “a trap to catch reviewers,”' she writes, 'then Fan Fiction is a trap for the Swifties who work as full-time cryptographers.' With Gevinson as our Kinbote 'using the genre of fiction as insurance' in her critiques of Swift, there is certainly a lot to pour over, google, and consider here and it is certainly worth the effort with a payoff of fun.

[emma]

i'm a hater at heart, but i'm ready for tavi gevinson to change that

[Boy Blue · Rating 4 out of 5]

The best interview of a teen star I've ever read was Tavi Gevinson's interview with Lorde. If you've never read that you really should. It manages to be both deeply insightful and unintentionally a powerful indictment on every interview of a child star that had come before it.

Gevinson seems to have captured lightning in a bottle once more. This zine about her relationship with Taylor Swift both as a fan, a somewhat contemporary, and a friend provides an angle that has until now remained unvocalised.

The reason no one who has actually had some degree of friendship with Taylor has ever come out with their true feelings to the public is probably part loyalty, part fear of swift retribution. Imagine being immortalised as a bad friend in a song known by billions of people worldwide.

The zine is broken into three parts.

Part One: New Romantics is a classic critical attempt to interpret Swift's Eras Tour. While Gevinson has more heartfelt authenticity, it does read a lot like it could have come from some hip cultural studies professor, the sort who invented the term parasocial relationships.

Part Two: Mirrorball is a biographical look at both Gevinson's own story and the few times she was in Swift's orbit. This is interesting mostly in how it sets up part 3.

Part 3: Mine is an email thread between Gevinson and Swift, largely about whether this Zine can be published. And it's Swift's emails that are startling. It's the first time I've ever seen Swift writing for an audience of one. Her thoughts are deeply penetrating and the power emanating from her is palpable. She writes like a Roman Emperor. In some ways she's probably about as close as a human has got to one of those in a long time.

The whole thing is worth reading just to get to the one long email of Swift's where she just decimates Gevinson's project.

Gevinson fights back but in an oddly hysterical way and then we get the almost disappointed concession from Swift to allow Gevinson to publish.

If the Swift emails aren't real and they are a work of fiction then Gevinson is a true master of writing. If they are real, then Swift is the most powerful woman currently alive. Either way Gevinson has done Swift a huge favour; her own neuroticism and dark thoughts make Swift's appear as exhaulted angelic musings (albeit incredibly controlling). Gevinson's despair at the path of her own fame is contrasted so sharply with Taylor Swift's revelry in her position. It's as if the will to power that seems to suffuse every fiber of Swift's being is completely alien and unintelligible to Gevinson.

One small thing I found particularly interesting was Swift noting that Gevinson was fixated on the lyrics and didn't address the music at all. You'd absolutely expect that and it's quite clear so little of the swirling dialogue around Swift ever focuses on the medium, it always remains fixed on the message. But it seemed Swift expected more from a one-time friend.

There's also an ode to Nabakov's Pale Fire in both the structure and ambition of this piece. I think the use of the word satire is solely for legal protection, and the title Fan Fiction actually works really well. It's not the genre of fan fiction but is fiction by a fan. This work is going to be discussed for a long time to come.

[Marysia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this author is clearly a genius which really is making me examine some of my own prejudices about the type of people (especially cis women) who engage with Taylor Swift’s work. Really really well-done and unique- I’ve never read a long-form cultural commentary piece like this before

[Livia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autofiction is so brainbreaking, and autofiction about Taylor Swift by someone who is/was irl friends with Taylor Swift is doubly brainbreaking. Hearing Tavi talk about this work referring to the “me character” and the “Taylor character” feels very parallel to the folklore era itself – using the idea that once the truth doesn’t matter, once the work is theoretically unburdened from being totally diaristic, everything can get more interesting. But it also just has this weird vibe, like it’s almost teasing the audience, like it’s a cop-out from the limitations of being totally honest about the details of her relationship with Taylor – but I think that says more about my vantage point as a fan, where we treat every discussion about Taylor as some new way to gain insight into the details of her life. But this isn’t Taylor. It’s a character based on Taylor. It gets very meta. It opens with a quote from Pale Fire. The first section is straight from a media studies reading. Tavi’s dad and Taylor have a misunderstanding about Proust questionnaires at Holiday House. She quotes bell hooks, Pablo Neruda, Virginia Woolf, Carson McCullers, Iris Murdoch. Overall it’s an extremely fun to read work about subject, narrator, truth, celebrity.

(A side question: How long will people find art about celebrity interesting? I feel like it’s an interesting Catch-22 because celebrities will always have art to make about the woes of celebrity while they will also be the only people that ever fully relate to it. I know we can often see ourselves in it in some facet if it’s good art (mirrorball) but at some point… I just wonder why put this stuff out? At worst it can alienate the audience. For example I think Who's afraid of little old me is bad sorry.)

The Taylor emails literally have an aura of power to them. You can almost hear the indecision, the anguish over phrasing, the tamping down on expectations in Tavi’s replies to her. It makes Taylor seem like the most powerful woman in the world. The list of things to delete is hilarious. Getting to the one email where Taylor just decimates the whole project and its worldview feels like getting chastised by a likeable teacher whose approval you desperately want. I literally felt myself wincing at Tavi referencing Taylor's own art to her too much.

Content-wise, the most interesting part to me is probably still the first part, where she quotes something Taylor said at the Eras Tour about how she doesn’t care about anything that happened to her when she was 19, to say she no longer cares about the men she wrote these songs about, she only cares about the songs themselves: ““I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19, except the songs I wrote.” This framing was once viewed as sociopathic—“She dates guys just to write about them!”—and now it holds a simpler truth: meaning outlives experience.” She might have even pre-empted this by decades in her songwriting by fostering a closer relationship between narrator and audience than with the subject/muse of the song themselves. Especially in the Speak Now-Red-1989 run, it’s like you can hear her winking at the camera, never truly in the moment because she’s too focused on remembering or capturing or freezing time, thinking just as much about how the moment looks as how it feels.

A quick tangent about Tavi’s discussion of All Too Well: I so agree that the shorter version is far superior. I very much enjoy the 10-minute version, but the Taylor Swift true magic happens when she knows exactly how to edit herself (see TTPD…). In the 10-minute version, the narrative arc is a lot muddier, it’s difficult to locate the emotional climax (it’s still “maybe we got lost in translation…” but it loses so much of the bite it has in the original version), and – this is the kicker to me – she undermines herself by asking the subject if he remembers it and was hurt too. The power of All Too Well was that SHE REMEMBERED IT!!! and it didn’t matter if the nameless subject would try to deny any of it. She was there, she remembers it, she knew it was magic, rare. He was there too, he knows this, she's the one that tells us. His account doesn’t matter. 13 years later, she wonders if it does.

“I actually think the internet has turned all of us into perpetual teenagers—defined by what we like, very tribalist, irrationally ascribing morality to taste because IDENTITY!!!!!! But— another time.”

“Still, my diary insisted this was all “fun,” that I “never said anything weird”— the way I wanted to remember it.”

“And why not be glad that a woman’s inner life means this much to this many people for the first time ever? Because I’ve monetized it like everyone else on earth?”

[Adrienne Blaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

No notes.

[Isabella :) · Rating 4 out of 5]

i love tavi. i hate taylor swift. this was a bridge and gave me some insight into tavi’s writing post-rookie and the impact its had on her while being the same person. unfortunately, my pride makes it hard to admit, i too was once a swiftie - whose entry points were also our song and speak now. the writing was brilliant if at times too too too self-interested if that even makes sense to say about an autobiography. but what gems tavi has to offer on fame, girls, and women! i will always appreciate her unique and useful perspective and that is no different from this. FINALLY someone said taylor is a COWARD. also love the final email exchange and funny to think that taylor really did read and think to respond all of this about herself, emails included, even though i know that was most probably fiction- its still fun to think that taylor cannot escape her friend and fan that is at heart a critic.

the remove, the remove, the remove of a writer always in her head. the unrealistic expectation that life is anything but what it is — simultaneously, the only way to live through it (as a writer).

[jellyfishiii]

this was kind of fire lmao.

i went on a rabbit hole of reading all the substack essays im subscribed to that i didn’t touch during the semester and found a rayne fisher-quann interview with tavi gevinson abt this zine which then made me go down another tavi rabbit hole (her essay on britney spears is rly good) and then finally read this. im so intrigued by the idea rayne and tavi talk abt (playing with the misogynistic trope of women’s writing being unfiltered and autobiographical and writing smth purely fictional instead) purely bc i have never written like that but now i kind of want to try? maybe for thesis hehe.

anyway this zine!! wow so interesting the emails at the end completely turned the way i was thinking abt the whole thing even though i knew going in that it was a satire, fictional, untrue etc. i still felt myself falling into the trap of thinking it was real — which idt was misogynistic on my part? i think that’s just how being a reader works, you’re inclined to believe the narrator. even when they are explicitly telling you not to lol re: roland barthes quote at the beginning.

also wow this zine kind of made me like taylor swift! craziness. “we don’t need to be able to picture ourselves in the song. because we can just picture what we are sure is her reality — which is so much realer than ours — and sublimate our own desire and frustration into the narrative of this ultimate, ideal protagonist.”

wow maybe i just needed to read interesting crit of taylor swift to like her music slightly more.

overall though gevinson is such a good writer!!!! note: “note that janet malcolm wrote that the author of a love letter falls in love only with her own epistolary persona. note that when i wrote letters to boys in high school, i made copies of them first.” (pg 8).

i also have many notes on the rayne fisher-quann and tavi gevinson interview piece but for future me: read tressie mcmillan cottom and further think abt the idea of beauty. also check out out rookie magazine!!

other notes (i only rly took notes on the first part): meaning outlives experience and “fanciful, to vacuum-seal the message away from the medium”

edit: it’s kind of interesting how other commenters think abt the lines of fiction and reality in this but i will say the character of swift that gevinson sets up in the third part is sooo fascinating bc in some ways it’s just critiquing the zine/gevinson herself through the character of swift. idk. like the whole zine is abt taylor swift but then when she is physically inserted as a character at the end what purpose does she serve??

would love to reread this at a later time!!

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This very meta fictional autobiographical essay opens up with an interesting cultural commentary around Taylor Swift’s lyrical and performative artistry. Analyzing first how nostalgia, memory, and adolescence have served to enhance Taylor’s work. Gevinson then uses her connection with Swift to unweave her own relationship with writing, fame, and youth. The term “brain-breaking” is tried under the review section of this piece, and rightfully so due to its multi-layer split of detachment between the self, narrator, and artist (“the one who speaks (in the narrative) is not the one who writes (in real life) and the one who writes is not the one who is”) of both herself and of Taylor.

A “fictional” recollection of what we can (and should?) assume are misconstrued memories between the girls takes place. The author wittily uses the genre and term “fan-fiction” as a sky to unleash and liberate her intellectually-poetic musings of these skewed recollections as her own literary “masterpiece” to either fall in or soar over. “Artistic freedom. Uninhibited impulses. The chance to return to a childlike state. Do it, Taylor. Release your grasp. I’ve built you such a gorgeous sky for falling.”

The piece ends with a satirical email exchange, wherein Gevinson finds herself having to defend her work and the cultural commentary-turned-fictional autobiography molds into a bit of a social and artistic critique, ultimately arguing in favor of the literary freedom to analyze the meticulously-crafted narrative of a pop-star from a more intimate perspective. “Won’t you let me frolic in these intellectual pastures, caught between critic, fan, and friend, the same way you are caught between person, artist, and brand? It’s not cynicism, Taylor, it’s delight.”

Overall this was an incredibly fun, short read that I would recommend to any Swiftie and/or pop culture enthusiast.

[Duarte Cabral · Rating 5 out of 5]

Isto coça tanto neurónio que precisava de ser coçado no meu cérebro. Para onde se vira o fanatismo quando a vida real nos põe em contacto com a figura deificada que projeta/permitimos projetar em nós toda a sua história, destilada e filtrada e recondicionada por tempo espaço idade versões-alargadas-de-10-minutos, ao ponto de acharmos que somos nós que irradiamos toda aquela luz e ignoramos aquela quer brilhar sem amarras. É um exercício crítico, honesto e tão bem feito que fico parvo com o quão económica e direta Tavi Gevinson conseguiu ser ao longo deste pequeno mutante de ficção/não-ficção, ao mesmo tempo pautado por uma das vozes escritas mais interessantes que tive o prazer de ler nos últimos tempos.

Zero notas fr, por momentos até me incutiu aquela gana de pôr TayTay a bombar assim de leve no Spotify.

[Shane Savitsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

A high-wire act all the way through. I was not expecting this to be an absolutely brain-breaking piece of literature, on top of the perfect record of the particular corner of the internet I love to inhabit.

"You've got edge, she never did / The future's bright, dazzling"

[Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Lots of reviews mention brain breaking and I agree with this description. I’ve never read any autofiction nor even heard of the term, and I’m also extremely gullible so I assumed the emails were literally real before reading more about the work. The “Taco what’s your number” and “Dear Taylore >:p” in the emails cracked me up 🤣 I want the novel she was referencing! Please write it Tavi!

I think there’s almost as much to say about the format of autofiction as there is the the content of the work, but I’ll save the analysis of autofiction for someone else bc the content itself was dense enough for me.

Part 1
I learned a lot about Taylor Swift and really respect her songwriting more after reading the analysis in part 1. Im that rare breed of person who neither loves nor hates Taylor Swift. Maybe there are more neutral folks and we just tend to be more quiet because we are… well neutral. But still a super interesting (and enlightening) read despite the not-truly-a-Swiftie status. I loved the comparison between Fleabag and Taylor Swift’s Narrator for both helping me understand and drawing very cool connections among today’s most interesting media.

Part 2
This is the confessional, dense, and interesting writing that I feel like I know best from Tavi. I love that she wants to write autobiographically and confessionally and does it despite the drawbacks. I didn’t feel like I understood everything she said since the sentences get almost paragraph length, and she uses names for terms that seem super clear in her head (The Taylor Swift Problem), that take me a lot of thinking and re-reading for me to piece together. It feels like her writing is almost too clever for me and I really have to work hard at understanding at times! Like when she’s three run on sentences deep and references “it” I’m not always sure what “it” is lol. One thing I never quite understood was why it’s important to write about Taylor Swift with a populist spirit. I feel like she frequently has these sentences that build something already complex into something that explodes and ends in an epiphany for her, but I don’t similarly reach the epiphany. The bit about triangulating Taylor Swift, the mom asking for an autograph, and the toddler (I followed until this point) turning into the multiverse was one such example! But overall her writing is beautiful, engaging, and unique. Part 2 felt like Rookie in a lovely way.

Part 3
I feel like Tavi is quite urgently trying to warn us how technology is starting to bleed further into our real lives, to the point where the more average and less famous person still has a sort of dissociation/performance of each moment based on cultural imagination before we even get to experience those moments for ourselves.

She calls the dissociation “coldness” and says her (and Taylor’s) “condition is spreading.” Then she asks, “So what’s a role model to do?” I guess she chose sharing her perspective!

Whereas the famous people perform or dissociate from the moment to the extreme and monetize their curation/storytelling/documentation of it, the average woman/girl performs and dissociates in smaller ways because of the thin boundaries between cinema and real life that smart phones, their digital cameras, and tiktok provide. An example of this that I’ve already seen on my measly diet of tiktoks I consume through Pinterest (I don’t trust my self control so I stay off TikTok itself), is when there’s a video that says: “how to romanticize going to school” and its picking cute outfits, studying near aesthetic bookcases, and taking organized notes with colorful pens. The viewer of the tiktok is then armed with how to perform “school girl” and may enjoy activities that match the TikTok content because they are satisfying some omniscient 3rd party. Which is not always bad unless taken to the extreme. But it really freaks me out to understand in some way this dissociation when it seems like this warning comes from quite an extreme perspective of medium- and mega-famous people. However I am a woman and was once a teen girl, which it seems is life experience enough (living with a 3rd person male gaze constantly present) to understand. Tavi brilliantly pinpoints the gendered aspects of the dissociation/performance too, which I so appreciate.

And in terms of technology, I feel like wherever we are headed we are headed there fast, so it’s great to have words for the way it’s are affecting us. Thank you Tavi for the insight!

I’m a huge Rookie fan, but also Tavi would probably consider me a neurotypical normie. I fall into the camp of people who devoured Rookie content and felt that it opened up more opportunities to express myself creativity via living, making outfits, playlists, etc. I always want to be cool and want omniscient 3rd person approval, I don’t deny that, but I am far from the camp of people who becomes so dedicated to the performance that I “star in [my] own movies, campaigns, careers, but not in [my] own orgasms!!” So while I am freaked out by understanding in a small way what she is saying, I ultimately just enjoyed learning about some of the “human cost of storytelling” as Tavi put it, aka hearing about the super freaky / lonely aspects of fame.

[elif sinem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cherry lips, crystal skies. Clear-eyed, bitter, fierce, loving, graceful, naive, knowing. Gevinson is a terrific writer, and her modes of fictionalizing her friendship and eventual drifting from a megastar such as Taylor Swift, one she's loved since childhood, culminates brilliantly in the third section, which is the only satire bit of it all, I believe. This one is quite short, 79 pages in total, so by all means check this one out if you have even a passing interest in Taylor Swift and/or brilliant writing. Love love love when writers get confronted by their own fiction.

[Brigid Maguire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little bit brain-breaking bc it’s meta on meta on meta but I really enjoyed this. Assuming it’s fully a work of fiction (albeit inspired by her real life relationship with TS), Tavi is an excellent writer

[Pierogi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Complete genius, unhinged to the maximum. Devoured.

[Patricia Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scrumptious !!

All I know is be bisexual eat hot chip read Tavi

Tempted to write a zine abt my parasocial relationship w Tavi’s parasocial relationship w Taylor

[milena · Rating 4 out of 5]

eu costumava achar que estava sempre ciente de qualquer informação pública que envolvesse a taylor swift desde 2009, mas percebi que estava errada quando descobri, através de uma thread no reddit, que a tavi gevinson escreveu um livro sobre ela há mais de um ano e eu não fazia ideia.

na verdade, o livro é muito mais sobre a tavi — ela compara a sua vivência com a da taylor em termos de ser uma jovem mulher escritora julgada pela mídia e reconta suas aventuras como uma das garotas do momentos que a taylor adotava nos anos 2010, presentes em algumas fotos em grupo postadas no tumblr e nada mais. a diferença é que a tavi escreve de uma perspectiva swiftie e reconhece que ela nunca conseguiria, verdadeiramente, ser amiga da taylor pois as lentes do fandom a impediam de a enxergar como um ser humano.

achei muito bom mesmo, em termos de análise cultural e estudo de personagem (tanto dela própria, quanto da taylor) e me identifiquei muito (como swiftie e pessoa que escreve sobre a taylor swift pois não consegue conter seus pensamentos), mas meu coração se partiu um pouco ao perceber que meus sentimentos em relação ao livro e tudo relatado nele seriam muito
mais positivos se eu o tivesse lido de 2023 pra trás. infelizmente, hoje em dia eu sou muito cínica em relação a taylor, o que é bom porque mostra minha evolução como pessoa mas acho que nunca vou deixar de ficar triste ao pensar que a amei tão incondicionalmente por tantos anos e hoje a odeio quase que na mesma proporção, e que ambos esses sentimentos afloram de uma relação parasocial meio embaraçosa. acho que escutar love story aos 9 anos me amaldiçoou pro resto da vida.

“fans give love, fall in love, are completely overtaken by the feeling of love. none of these is the same as loving.

i could not love taylor. i was too much of a fan”

[Olga · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was recommended this writing, I wasn't expecting THIS brain-breaking, controversial-yet brilliantly written piece of art. I read this on a matter of hours and I inevitably fell down a rabbit hole searching for all the hidden meanings and mentions in Tavi's writing, unable to tell apart what's real and what is fictional. As a swiftie, I was hesistant to read it at first, but I realize now, that throughout the commentary, Taylor was never negatively criticized. If anything, Tavi reminded us via her personal experience meeting her, that Taylor, apart from the lyrical genious and mastermind and dazzling pop star she is known as, is also just a girl that fell abruptly in the cruel world of fame and is just scared that every single thing she says or does will be heavily criticized and will take away the legacy (she gave her blood sweat and tears) for. Even IF the letters from Taylor are real, they are completely valid, given her past experiences in her career. I'm so jealous of Tavi's ability to cupture being in a fandom while growing up as a teenage girl and trying to find your place in this world so accurately.

[Tshepiso · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part cultural criticism, part self-insert fanfiction, part memoir Fan Fiction: A Satire is probably one of the strangest things I've ever read formalistically, but Tavi Gevinson's writing in all three modes is so incisive, piercing and honest I couldn't help but be compelled by it. I'm still wrapping my mind around how Gevinson moves between being self-aware, sincere, cynical, unabashedly joyful, pointedly critical, and loving. She holds the dichotomy of what it can mean to love an artist this much so well.

But so much of my love of this work comes from being deeply seen by it. Gevinson perfectly captures what it feels like to be consumed by Taylor Swift's music and the parasocial obsession that can spring from that. I probably wouldn't recommend this zine to people who aren't at least familiar with Taylor Swift's music, not only because this work is indulgently referential but because I'm not sure what someone who hasn't experienced at least a fraction of the collective madness of being Swiftie would get out of it.

[Lauren loc · Rating 5 out of 5]

between fan, critic, and friend i am most certainly fan (i type as my lockscreen is taylor swift pointing directly at me during the eras tour)…. I devoured this in a doomscrolling 2am frenzy

the decision to fully namedrop TS as this muse is honestly an amazing one because what other celebrity acts as the role of a “friend” to her audience in the way that she does? inviting strangers from the internet into your home, being on first name basis with them, and herself on stage saying, “If it looks like I’m staring at you super hard it’s because I’m trying to actively memorize your face.”

“So, what's a role model to do? Convince people there is some healthy way to live with the constant presence of an audience? Or pry open our brains and let them see the human cost of storytelling? How for all we gain in wealth and cultural currency, we cheapen our very existences, the only ones we've got?”

[Jordan McGarry · Rating 5 out of 5]

As both a Swiftie and huge fan of Tavi’s style blog and later series, Rookie Yearbook 1-4, I was so excited when I heard about this book. Told in three distinct parts, Fan Fiction is a work of meta-fiction that tangles with truth and autobiography in a way that leaves a clue-seeking Swiftie (like myself) wishing for concrete facts and answers and photos and receipts. While the two definitely shared a documented friendship a decade ago, how much of the story of Tavi’s friendship with Taylor described in this book- if any- is true, is unclear. A commentary on young girlhood, pop culture, social media, and friendship, this book is the intersection of so many of my interests. I’ve always loved Tavi’s writing and eagerly read this in one sitting.

[Krishna Sunder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great quick read to close out the year. I’m not super familiar with Tavi Gevinson (nor am I a major Swiftie for that matter) but I thought this was excellently written and offered a rare perspective on the inner world of our generation’s biggest idol. Tavi is a super unique character in and of herself, and her voice is clean, keen, and confessional. She is so self aware that it’s impossible to tell how much of her self-critique in part 3 actually comes from her vs. Taylor Swift.

Also I can’t believe that she literally HAS just known Taylor Swift all these years (since her ‘Red Era’) and DOES have some rare insight into Taylor’s ‘true’ nature in a way none of us ever will. I hope she writes more!!!

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting! I’m going to be thinking about this for a while. I’m really not sure what to make of it at the moment, but Tavi is a good writer and the slippery, meta way she wrote this is extremely compelling. I have the urge to read it again and go through it with a fine tooth comb.

The beginning section, which is supposed to be more “straightforward” cultural criticism, felt more amateur than I was expecting for someone with Tavi’s background, but the auto fiction part gets good. The emails are obviously fictional. Not sure how I feel about that. Much to ponder, lol.

[Frankie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this in one sitting after cutting it up to re-collate because I printed it from my phone and there was no setting for short edge printing. Seemed appropriate. Wish Tavi Gevinson was really publishing with fsg tho. Tavi is younger than TS (and younger than me) but she loomed large in my world when I was younger. My 12-year-old is a fan of TS and I am not. So there is some kind of diagram of fandom going on here. Whether Taylor wrote those emails or Tavi did, this is so interesting. Also made me cry three times, weird.

[Alayna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a different kind of book for me, I found it on a Money with Katie newsletter. She’s a finance writer who loves Taylor Swift, it was even interesting how I found this! I’m not totally sure what’s real or fake, but I did enjoy the last part that were supposed to be emails back and forth between the author and Swift. I think those emails could be real.

[val!! · Rating 4 out of 5]

(4.25)
unexpected experimental slay!

[Aimee Booth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fascinating I don’t even really know what to say??? Must read for any Taylor Swift enjoyer or hater frankly. Or anyone who’s been a teen girl

[nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although not a TS fan but a TG fan- elements remind me of idol burning and y/n … but also to look behind the TG curtain /writing. Found myself scribbling down notes. Looking forward to the Substack ‘extras’

[Bryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[audrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

this might be the best thing i've read all year