"Quite frankly, you kissing your producer is the most interesting thing that's ever happened on this heteronormative cesspool of a shitty television show."
— Parisa, to Charlie
The Charm Offensive is a 2021 Queer Romance novel written by Alison Cochrun.
Charles Winshaw is a tech wunderkind and Silicon valley millionaire with an image problem and deep anxiety issues. In a desperate attempt to make himself hirable again after he was deemed too difficult to work with by everyone in the industry, he ends up as the bachelor in a The Bachelor-esque show named "Ever After".
Dev Deshpande is a romantic man whose personal romantic life is in shambles and the Story Producer for "Ever After". He believes in fairy tales in romance, and his drive in that has made him one of the best people on set, leaving him to handle Charles, when he turns out to be too awkward and an awful bachelor for the show.
Tropes
- Affectionate Nickname: "Charlie", for Charles. His closest friends call him that.
- Broken Pedestal: Dev used to worship Maureen and how she carved her way into the top of the TV industry in a time where she received heavy reprimands for her gender and nobody was willing to bet on her idea, but it all goes downhill when he realized she manipulated Charlie to make sure he couldn't back out, setting up multiple scenarios to trigger him and gather enough footage of his attacks to make him look insane in the editing room if he crossed her.
- Cast Full of Gay: Almost all the recurring and main cast is gay. Dev, Ryan, Jules, Charles, Parisa, Skylar, Angie, and Daphne are all queer in some way. Maureen and Megan are pretty much the only straight recurring characters.Dev: Was the network trying to make a queer party?
- Central Theme: In order to find love, one needs to be willing to be vulnerable. Both Dev and Charlie fall in love by opening up about things they don't to others to each other, as well as being willing to show them a side of them they don't show others, with Dev being depressed in front of Charlie and Charlie letting Dev help him through his crisis.
- Character Development: Ryan is introduced as a Hate Sink, a terrible boyfriend to Dev and the villain of their break up, and someone who follows Maureen's footsteps into a cutthroat personality. After he and Dev have a heart-to-heart, they both acknowledge the ways that failed in the relationship, but Ryan admits to have loved Dev dearly, and often sides with Charles and Dev during the rest of the book.
- Chekhov's Gun: There are a few times where things truly go off the hinges in ways that seem too amateurish for the crew to let happen, like getting a wool suit and a massage challenge for Charlie when he has told the crew he can't wear wool and hates being touched. Maureen turns out to have engineered those to have enough footage to blackmail Charlie if he crossed her.
- Closet Key: Dev for Charlie. It had never occurred to Charlie he might be attracted to men before falling for him. Furthermore, by realizing his lack of attraction to everyone else, he realizes that he might be in the asexuality spectrum.
- Dramatic Irony:
- Dev and Charlie have a hard time communicating with one another, and the reader, who gets to experience both Point of views, knows when they are saying the completely wrong thing about one another.
- Week Eight sees Lauren L. sent home. The end of the chapter notes are about her confessional claiming she always wanted someone like him as a husband.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: In-Universe. Daphne is a perfect match for what Dev believes to be Charlie's ideal woman, she was also hand picked due to being able to pander to the two main audiences of the show: conservative woman (by virtue of being a devout Christian daughter of a minister) and feminists who claim to like the show ironically (by virtue of being a college educated woman that is more than just a pretty face), making her the perfect candidate for this.
- Executive Meddling: In-Universe. In order to keep the show interesting, it is intensely produced. Aside from manipulative editing to make the contestants seem more antagonistic than what they really are, games are rigged in favor of one contestant or another in order for the date at the end of the week to favor one or other character. Maureen also doesn't let Megan be sent home for a while since she is the main source of drama and in-fighting of the show, something that is also nudged by having her handler encourage her to be more dramatic. Maureen also doesn't let Angie be the winner, due to her being bisexual and the show having to pander to a conservative audience.
- In Love with Love: Dev is a romantic man who loves his work on the show because he gets to make those fairy-tale romances real. Deconstructed in that this is shown to make it really hard to make a real romantic connection to people in his personal life. Ryan calls out that although Dev complains about him only liking "Fun Dev", Dev himself would close himself off to letting Ryan meet any other Dev. Ryan never could help Dev during his depressive episodes because Dev would totally close himself off to him, ignore his calls and attempt to enter in contact with him. Ryan admits he loved Dev, but the kind of love Dev wants doesn't really exist.Ryan: Of course I loved you. We were together for six years. I know I couldn't love you the way you wanted to be loved, but in my defense, the kind of love you want doesn't exist without a team of producers, a ton of editing, and a really good soundtrack. [...] You love orchestrating big romantic gestured, Dev, but you're scared shitless of anything that's real.
- Incompatible Orientation: Charlie realizes he isn't attracted to women during the show, making all the relationship he has with the contestants pretty much pointless. Maureen says that they have had gay princes before, but they all acted straight for the cameras.
- Locked Out of the Loop: With Maureen fired, massive changes were made to season 37, including making Dev appear in the story, and build up his romance with Charlie as the central plot of the season. Because he left town and his job and has been avoiding all information about the show and Charlie, he doesn't know that. Out of a respect for his boundaries, neither his parents, nor his therapist admit that is how the season is going.
- Manipulative Editing:
- The notes about the story at the end of each chapter shows that some degree of it goes on in the backgrounds. One of them, which features the contestants speaking of each other is edited to make them seem even more at each other's throats by removing the measured responses of each contestant, like Angie refusing to call Megan crazy because she thinks the word is offensive, Megan not thinking Daphne is arrogant, or Daphne refusing to say mean things about others.
- Maureen blackmails Charlie by admitting she intends to edit the show to make him look insane in case he doesn't go through with their planned story.
- Matchmaker Crush: Dev is supposed to coach Charles so he can get a happily ever after with one of the contestants of the show. By being one of the only people that can and is able to break him out of his shell though, the two end up falling for one another instead. This of course, is a big issue to Dev, who has a non-fratenization clause with the show's stars.
- Meet Cute:
- Dev and Charles meet in a comedic version of this, when Dev accidentally throws Charles on the ground by opening a door he was leaning against.
- Subverted with Charlie and Daphne. Daphne accidentally slips up and falls towards Charlie, but the opportunity is wasted when a nervous and touch-averse Charlie refuses to catch her and moves away when she starts slipping.
- Mentor in Queerness: Parisa, to Charlie. Charlie is caught off-guard when realizing he isn't straight (he mentions having spent so long repressing so much stuff, he might not even have realized he was also repressing his sexuality). Parisa then explains to him about the spectrum of asexuality, that he shouldn't feel the need to identify himself with any label he isn't comfortable, and that his feelings are valid.
- Rank Up: Ryan takes over as showrunner once Maureen is fired from Ever After.
- Romance on the Set: In-Universe. That's the main premise of the book, as a romance starts between a producer and the start of a show.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Dev and Charlie aren't good at keeping their relationship a secret, both Skylar and Ryan had already figured out they were dating without having to be told.
- Spear Counterpart: Daphne to Charlie. In appearance, both are blond and beautiful in a way that makes them perfect to play the role of prince and princess, but they're also realists who realize they're unlikely to have a fairy tale romance in the show, and are dealing with personal things they're trying to fix through a very public, seemingly perfect relationship. They also both realize they're queer during the events of the show.
- Stress Vomit: A nervous Charlie, once it comes time to start shooting, ends up vomiting on Dev.
- Switching P.O.V.: The book switches between Charlie and Dev being the focus character telling the story.
- Troubled Production: In-Universe. Season 37 of Ever After is already under scrutiny due to growing complaints from the fanbase, immediately a shitstorm due to Charles being extremely awkward and having no charisma or chemistry with almost any of the contestants (save for Angie, but Dev chalks it off to the fact that she is infinitely charismatic and could get chemistry with anyone). The following weeks have Charles trigger being pressed one after the other and causing even further issues to the production, which feeds on Charles own insecurities and issues and makes him worse. And then Charles falls for someone who isn't a contestant as well. In the end, Maureen is also fired from her position after forcing a recently out Charlie to go through with dating a woman, which accounted as prejudice.
- Wham Episode: Week Eight. Daphne tries to back out of the competition, realizing she doesn't want to be in a fake relationship with Charlie when its over, and Charlie comes out to the crew as gay, but Maureen forces everyone back in line, admitting she intends to make Charlie look like an insane man with footage of his panic attacks if he doesn't toe the line.
- Wham Line: "I think you should send me home tonight", said by Daphne in the penultimate elimination of the show.
- Workaholic: Charlie could very well no longer work, since he is already a millionaire, but he desperately wants to be at work. he later acknowledges that he uses working all the time as a coping mechanism to not have to deal with anything else, since he hated his life when he wasn't working.
