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that probably came down to two things. First, a character’s appearance has really never been of interest to me. Second, because I am white, I'm likely not as sensitive to the coding that can be put into a story to indicate race and ethnicity. She made some really good call-outs about things that could certainly have made me aware the Rue was black if I had been paying attention.

Her points about how black women, as she really doesn’t discuss black men,

are presented in fantasy by white authors were quite interesting, Though her discussion of Bennett from the Vampire Diaries was a little odd. She talked about how Bennett wasn't seen as a sexual character in the show, not having the same level of physical intimacy as other characters, and interpreting that as Bennett being seen as unattractive. But there's this competing trope of black women as over-sexualized and predatory. I guess her point was about

how different Bennett was from the other characters.

She gets into a thing about pale skin being coded as innocence, Which I felt was a cogent argument. I've definitely seen it in stories myself, even when they're just talking about white women. Overall, if was a good read and made me think.

The end of the book gets deep into “restorying" mostly in the fanfic world. She mostly lost me there, as I have never dived into the world of fanfic, and haven't gotten

into the whole parasocial relationships thing that I think really drives it. I could sort of see her points. And the fact that she was apparently pretty big in the early Potter fanfic world certainly explains why she delved pretty deeply into it. Personally, I’d have been fine without that part of the book, though it was an interesting view into how readers take a story and make it more relevant to their own experience. It made me think so it did its job.

/end