2. I've just mainlined most of my collection of Abby-era books, and in Kristy and the Dirty Diapers, Kristy's Worst Idea, and the Hawaii Super Special (Aloha, Baby-Sitters?), I didn't like Abby very much. Partially it's Kristy's lasting animosity towards her, where I'm inclined towards Kristy's side because I'm much more in favor of organization and rules and Doing Things Right than Abby's laxer attitude. (In this same set of books, Kristy really comes off as a bit of a control freak, but still.) I sympathize a lot with Kristy's alarm when a cool new girl comes along and she Kristy seems to be getting pushed aside.
I do like Abby, mostly, in the books I've just reread, and Abby's Book made me sob like a baby. I do think she adds neat chemistry to the club and helped keep the series alive for an extra couple of years -- it's cool that she doesn't have a best friend in the club and keeps it from being just a bunch of OTPs BFFs hanging out together. From a narrative point of view, good move, but I find myself much more sympathetic towards the long-standing members.
Dawn Schafer has at times been my favorite character, but right now she resides at the bottom of my list, mostly because I can absolutely not STAND her in California Diaries. I think my issue with her really begins with Farewell, Dawn. Besides finding the entire "kids adjusting their own custody arrangements" scenario annoyingly unrealistic, I don't really get a good sense of why Dawn needs to move back to California... and it does come off as pretty selfish. And it's sold as an essentially selfish decision -- she does it for herself. Sure, she misses her dad and brother, and the W♥KC, but mostly it's a geographical decision... and again, annoyingly unrealistic. I moved when I was a little kid and spent four or five YEARS acclimating to a new state.
And I find it kind of poisonous that Dawn doesn't understand why her leaving could possibly upset Mary Anne. Mary Anne's behavior in that book isn't the greatest either, but Dawn is the one leaving and she seems essentially unaware that her leaving will affect people other than herself.
In the CA Diaries series, I'm really turned off by the way Dawn treats Mary Anne (she's outgrown not just her BSC friends but her sister!) and Jill, whom I find way more mature and attractive than I find Dawn, who continues to seem unaware that other people's problems (i.e., Sunny's) are more serious than her own. She seems perennially incapable of looking past her own situation and realizing that her friends are struggling; she reads every event as all about her: "Maggie isn't eating enough. Why isn't she confiding in me? I would really like to be her friend, and she's just ignoring me. Gosh, she's so mean to me. Why don't any of my friends want to talk to me?"
I think I'm mostly bitter about her unwillingness even to try to save her friendship with Jill, though, especially since Jill is often compared to Mary Anne in the BSC-canon and seems to be a symbolic representative of her in CAD-canon.
I... might've gotten a little longwinded, when I should be editing my Yuletide fic. Yikes. (And no offense intended, obviously, by any of this. I'd love to hear why you like Abby and Dawn best!)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-12-19 04:29 am (UTC)I do like Abby, mostly, in the books I've just reread, and Abby's Book made me sob like a baby. I do think she adds neat chemistry to the club and helped keep the series alive for an extra couple of years -- it's cool that she doesn't have a best friend in the club and keeps it from being just a bunch of
OTPsBFFs hanging out together. From a narrative point of view, good move, but I find myself much more sympathetic towards the long-standing members.Dawn Schafer has at times been my favorite character, but right now she resides at the bottom of my list, mostly because I can absolutely not STAND her in California Diaries. I think my issue with her really begins with Farewell, Dawn. Besides finding the entire "kids adjusting their own custody arrangements" scenario annoyingly unrealistic, I don't really get a good sense of why Dawn needs to move back to California... and it does come off as pretty selfish. And it's sold as an essentially selfish decision -- she does it for herself. Sure, she misses her dad and brother, and the W♥KC, but mostly it's a geographical decision... and again, annoyingly unrealistic. I moved when I was a little kid and spent four or five YEARS acclimating to a new state.
And I find it kind of poisonous that Dawn doesn't understand why her leaving could possibly upset Mary Anne. Mary Anne's behavior in that book isn't the greatest either, but Dawn is the one leaving and she seems essentially unaware that her leaving will affect people other than herself.
In the CA Diaries series, I'm really turned off by the way Dawn treats Mary Anne (she's outgrown not just her BSC friends but her sister!) and Jill, whom I find way more mature and attractive than I find Dawn, who continues to seem unaware that other people's problems (i.e., Sunny's) are more serious than her own. She seems perennially incapable of looking past her own situation and realizing that her friends are struggling; she reads every event as all about her: "Maggie isn't eating enough. Why isn't she confiding in me? I would really like to be her friend, and she's just ignoring me. Gosh, she's so mean to me. Why don't any of my friends want to talk to me?"
I think I'm mostly bitter about her unwillingness even to try to save her friendship with Jill, though, especially since Jill is often compared to Mary Anne in the BSC-canon and seems to be a symbolic representative of her in CAD-canon.
I... might've gotten a little longwinded, when I should be editing my Yuletide fic. Yikes. (And no offense intended, obviously, by any of this. I'd love to hear why you like Abby and Dawn best!)