Casey McQuiston is flattered when people compare Red, White & Royal Blue to fanfiction

polygon.com:

For better or worse, readers and reviewers alike often describe the bestselling romance Red, White & Royal Blue as reading “like fanfiction.” Four years after its debut, the queer love story and political commentary of Casey McQuiston’s novel have amassed a certifiably huge online fandom. Matthew López, director of Amazon Studios’ newly released movie adaptation, described himself as a “rabid, passionate fan” of the book himself.

There are plenty of reasons for the comparison to fanfiction: Red, White & Royal Blue’s central relationship, between a U.S. president’s son and a British royal, feels like a crossover story between outsized fan-favorite character types. It’s full of tropes like enemies-to-lovers and fake relationships. It also has its fair share of light smut. The characters are modern-day young adults, tapped into pop culture. It’s also a queer love story, a favorite theme in fanfiction.

But no matter how or why the descriptor is used, McQuiston is flattered.

“I think that ultimately, it’s a compliment,” McQuiston tells Polygon. “Fanfiction is pure pleasure reading. It’s not like almost any other kind of reading. It is here to be fun. It is here to pacify, it is here to transform something that you love into something that you could love in a different way. It’s just pure love.”

Red, White & Royal Blue follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, the son of a fictional first female president of the United States, and his romance with Prince Henry, fourth in line to the British throne. The leads’ highly publicized lives contribute to the book’s tense political landscape, but the book digs into broader politics as well. Alex’s mother, Ellen Claremont, was elected in 2016, when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were facing off