Not even a few pages into the book, she describes herself several times as Queer – which to the average person is a sort of blanket term for the LGBT community – but then Quinn doubles back and describes a string of heterosexual relationships both past and present. While Quinn’s sexual orientation doesn’t actually matter in the context of Gamergate, what does matter is the questions this raises about the veracity of other events and facts she has written about in the book. If Quinn is queer on page three and dating a straight male colleague just ten pages later, what does this say about 1) her mental stability and 2) the accuracy of what she’s written about in Crash: Override? Authors of fiction scrutinize inconsistencies like this and intentionally keep character bios readily accessible to ensure Jack doesn’t have blue eyes on page twelve and brown eyes on page three hundred – but Quinn makes it clear that this was something she wanted the world to know about herself. It’s an ultimately fatal creative choice.
In a couple of paragraphs that will undoubtedly be removed from future publications, Quinn has a panic attack while she begins taking inventory of all the people she’s wronged over the years, and wonders which one of them came forward with evidence so damning, the internet is having a difficult time putting a lid on it. This says all you need to know about Quinn’s character, and casts serious doubts on her narrative that the ex boyfriend was the abusive one – she seems to be aware that on some level, she’s a tremendously shitty person, and in brief moments of clarity it causes her a lot of grief.
She’s known as the lesbo slut in high school just days into her first semester after hooking up with a classmate, she gets into hard drugs basically out of curiosity, marries some guy at nineteen (keep in mind, every few pages she reiterates that she’s a lesbian and has known this since a young age), fucks up her finances to the point where her and her husband are homeless, and gets into sex work as a means to an end – albeit on the “lighter” side with softcore modelling.
Adding to the absurdity of her overreaction, is a phone call she receives from her father about the situation, in which he seems only mildly annoyed that people are prank calling his house but otherwise goes back to work on his motorcycles and just sort of brushes the whole thing off. Zoe, on the other hand, talks about collapsing onto the floor and sobbing as people she doesn’t know and will never meet in her life toss generic insults at her on Twitter. This interaction says a lot, as it seems the father has more or less become accustomed to Zoe losing her mind at what are mild inconveniences to anyone else.
She attempts to hand over screenshots of hundreds of anonymous 4Chan shitposts as proof of harassment, and the cops basically shrug their shoulders and go “not my department.” Quinn is too retarded to realize that’s professional speak for “are you fucking kidding me, get the fuck out of here, nobody cares you were called a whore on Twitter” and tries to over-explain to readers why she received similar answers from multiple police departments – until she finally lands on a department bored enough that day to cooperate and grant a restraining order. Quinn deems this endeavor a success and continues to paint her Ex as a one-dimensional supervillain who is obsessed with her, but fails to realize that people are going to read her book and discover that she literally flew coast to coast in an effort to shop around for a restraining order.
I desperately wanted Zoe to get off this topic, and to my surprise she did, only to jump back to “present day” and admits the man she moved to France with after dating for a week (yes, you read that correctly) didn’t work out – mostly because she was getting blackout drunk and getting into fights with him as a way to prevent an onset of “depressive cycles.” The sheer lunacy of Zoe’s behavior – admitting she is a deeply flawed, sick, and destructive individual before accusing everyone she doesn’t like of either beating her or being Neo-Nazis – is exhausting; and it seems she too needs a break.