Cather Avery

Character Analysis

Meet Magicath

Cath's kind of Internet famous, which you have to know in order to understand her extreme awkwardness in the real world. She's not just a Simon Snow fan; she's the ultimate Simon Snow fan. And she doesn't just write fanfiction; she writes "the eighth-year fic." In case you don't speak the lingo, allow us to break it down.

Simon Snow is Harry Potter, and Gemma T. Leslie is J.K. Rowling. No, they're not direct analogs, but Cath is every slavish Hogwarts dork you've ever met. As her freshman year of college begins, Cath has two main goals: survive with minimal human contact, and finish Carry On, Simon—her version of the eighth book—before the actual eighth book comes out.

Writing fanfiction was a lot easier when Cath had her sidekick, Wrenegade. But now that they're officially young adults rather than adolescents, her twin sister, Wren, just rolls her eyes and says, "Forgive me, but I'm not going to spend my college years sitting soberly in my dorm room, writing about gay magicians" (30.10). The problem is, that's exactly how Cath plans to spend hers—or at least her freshman year, anyway.

Maybe the Simon and Baz Busts are a Bit Much

Cath arrives at UNL with minimal Simon Snow paraphernalia—after all, she doesn't want to look too obsessive. She's only got a few posters, a few Etsy tee-shirts featuring Simon and Baz, and, okay, commemorative busts.

When Cath takes Professor Piper's Fiction-Writing class, she makes the rookie mistake of turning in a Simon/Baz story for an assignment. And when Professor Piper tells her that doing so amounts to plagiarism, Cath argues, gently:

"The whole point of fanfiction," [Cath] said, "Is that you get to play inside somebody else's universe. Rewrite the rules. Or bend them… You can stay in this world, this world you love, as long as you want, as long as you keep thinking of new stories—" (11.291)

Professor Piper wants Cath to write what she knows, as the old adage goes, but Cath has no idea how to approach fiction based on her real life. Plus, "Switching from her Fiction-Writing homework to Simon and Baz was like realizing she'd been driving in the wrong gear" (17.23). Moral of the story (1): Coming up with your own characters and worlds is way more challenging than having characters and worlds handed to you. Moral of the story (2): Cath has a bit of difficulty checking into the real world—and her real self—so she'd much rather hang out in the land of Simon Snow.

Then There's the Boy Situation

To say Cath's still a virgin is an understatement. While Wren, Reagan, Courtney, and even Abel are getting busy, Cath still calls a guy's junk his "lap." (And we realize we just called it junk, but even that's more descriptive than a reference to a general area that also includes the lower torso and tops of the thighs.)

When Cath and Levi finally get together, the narrator tells us, "She'd spent a lot of time in his lap lately. […] She also spent a lot of time deliberately not thinking about anything else that might be happening in his lap; his lap was abstract territory, as far as Cath was concerned" (33.20). Going from abstract to specific is one of Cath's greatest fears. Fangirl includes a slightly ambiguous scene in which Cath lets Levi take her shirt off, but at the end of the book, she's only edged slightly closer to what, exactly, lurks in a boy's lap.

Still, it's progress, especially for a girl who's been known to eat protein bars in bathroom stalls instead of face interacting with other people.

Mothers (or Lack Thereof)

It's no secret that mothers and daughters often have a tumultuous relationship during the teen years. But what if you don't have a mom at all? What if your mom took off to find herself when you were a little kid, and never came back? If you're Cath, you hold tight to the family you have left—particularly Wren—but this still doesn't make the situation any brighter.

Making things even trickier is the fact that Wren insists on having a relationship with Laura as soon as she asks for one. Cath doesn't get it: "They had the same DNA. The same nature, the same nurture. All the differences between them didn't make sense" (8.65). The idea of embracing Laura just because she's decided she wants to know her daughters doesn't appeal to Cath in the least, but Wren is immediately all about it. In a year in which Cath's generally lamented the loss of her sister, as Wren has embraced a college social life, this is just another wedge between them.

The thing about their differences, though—think: Laura, drinking, fanfiction—is that in her willingness to bust loose and explore herself, Wren forces Cath to face the fact that they're two separate people. She may do it from the bottom of a bottle of tequila, but a lesson's a lesson. And as Cath is forced to make her own way through the school year, she makes some peace with herself and the world around her that she likely wouldn't have come to if Wren had buffered her experience the whole way through.

On My Own

Though it isn't easy for her—hello, avoiding the dining hall for the entire first two weeks of school—Cath slowly stops hiding from the real world, and instead finds herself apologizing to her Internet fans for not posting as often as she once did.

Gradually, she becomes more caught up in interactions with people she can see and touch, and finally takes the leap into writing about things other than her beloved Simon and Baz. Not only is she well-received as she takes these steps—Levi loves her and she wins a prize for the piece she writes for Professor Piper—but she also seems pretty darn happy as the book ends. Yay.