The Unicorn Club #6: Unicorns at War

[daniellafromage]

Before I begin, I just want to say that I wrote most of this recap over two years ago, around the time of the last US presidential election, but for various reasons never posted it. These jokes are vintage 2008, ladies! (Who knew that Sarah Palin jokes wouldn't stand the test of time?)

Comments

[author_by_night]

Forget Kimberly - I want to know what Janet "Mad Dog" Howell thinks.

Yeah, I remember being so baffled by the revelation that Kimberly had been this manipulative Regina George type when it always seemed Janet was the one who held all the cards. I actually don't think Kimberly was even mentioned much in the SVT books, and certainly not the way she is here. If anyone else was manipulative, it was Lila and Jessica, and Jessica's manipulation tended to affect Elizabeth more than anyone else.

Mandy doesn't want to side with either Mary or Kimberly, as both of them were really nice to her while she was recovering from cancer, apparently.

I don't even think Francine Pascal needed to add that reasoning; nobody knows what to do when friends fight, but especially teenagers, and especially teenagers who really need that group. I seem to recall that Mandy was what I call a "foster friend" before she found the Unicorns - she never had anyone she could really confide into

[daniellafromage]

I guess Francine Pascal wanted a bitchy character for this book but didn't want to use Jess or Lila...? So she brought Kimberly back because...?

It's kind of an odd book. I remember thinking, years ago, that it was strange how there was another Unicorn reshuffle halfway through the Unicorn Club series, after they'd gone into all the trouble of making Liz and Maria Unicorns in the first place.

[blue828]

During Mandy's one week cancer scare, she was desperate to join the Unicorns, and they were all like, get away from us. From what I remember, Janet, Kimberly, and Lila were the worst (making fun of her behind her back while asking her to do them favors, which she did extremely eagerly). Jessica genuinely liked her but didn't want to admit it, and Mary, in a rare moment of being cool, told the other girls to either let Mandy join the Unicorns or stop using her and getting her hopes up. I won't consider this non-continuity though because even though Mary was way nicer to Mandy than Kimberly, there really isn't any way Mandy would have known what was what since all the girls were pretty nice to her face. Once helping Mandy became in Vogue at SVMS, Kimberly put her game face on.

Mary and Mandy were fairly consistently portrayed as being the nicest of the Unicorns, while Kimberly was probably consistently the biggest bitch, she just didn't have Janet's authority.

[ysl42]

Bruce was absent because he was 2 years older than Liz and Jess, so he would have gone to high school :)

[daniellafromage]

Oh, was he an eighth grader in SVT? He was a senior when the twins were juniors in high school - so continuity fail?

[ysl42]

I just re-read SVH #1, and I noticed that he was a senior... I thought he was in 8th grade when they were in 6th, but I just checked SVT #1 and he was in 7th...so my bad on that one. Maybe he went to SVJH for his 8th grade year?

[anastrophe]

I thought Bruce was in 7th grade during the SVT series?

[redacted]

Jessica, in a surprise twist, is left-handed.

I've read that twins are often mirror images of each other, so Jessica could be a lefty and Elizabeth a righty.

I always wanted to go to Unicorn sleepovers, too. I think they were kind of what I imagined sleepovers to be when I was a tween, the Ur sleepover if you will. Where people hold seances and put shaving cream on whoever falls asleep first.

[daniellafromage]

The best one was in the book where they had a weird pyjama competition and filmed Lila acting out the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet with a mop!

SVT ruled.

[jaynesgottarun]

Is that the one where they made Jessica fake kiss a pillow so she could practice for the movie? I know the book is The Slime that Ate Sweet Valley but I can't remember the specific slumber party.

[daniellafromage]

That's the book! It was one of my very favourites. The sleepover with Romeo and Juliet was to get revenge on Lila for filming Jess kissing the fake pillow at a previous sleepover.

(All this, and I can't remember algebra.)

[esc_key]

Words cannot say how happy I was to see daniellafromage posts back on my flist!!!!

This book is ostensibly not about the Wakefields. Nevertheless, it is Jessica to whom the eye is drawn immediately. Much like renderings of Jesus in Medieval paintings, she is the tallest character present and, by inference, the most important. Moral: You can write books about other Sweet Valley characters, but those Wakefield twins will always crawl their way back to centre stage.

Jessica, in a surprise twist, is left-handed.
I LOLed so hard. It's true.

mean jokes about Lois Waller, who's also running for president. When I read that Lois was running, I thought, "Fat chance,"
Random (fat) Lois references for the win!!!

I think Bruce Patman would've been in high school in the Unicorn Club continuity. But he should still be creepily hanging out in the parking lot and hitting on young girls.

[daniellafromage]

Would he be learning to drive yet? Ngl, I would like to see 1BRUCE1 plastered with learner plates.

[esc_key]

...and sippy cups for raping?

[hanfastolfe]

I seriously almost choked laughing so hard at this mental image. XD

[isabelquinn]

Oh yay, I've missed your recaps!! :D

Mary tries to get Rick Hunter to vote for her. He was her boyfriend in the previous book before he decided to dump her without telling her - and yet there is no mention of any of this in either their conversation or Mary's narrative. I think that this is an all-new continuity low.

In book #7, it suddenly becomes an important plot point that it was Mandy who was treated badly by Rick Hunter. This is my most hated piece of YA series discontinuity, alongside the now-we're-sisters-present fiasco from the Baby-Sitters Club.

[daniellafromage]

This is my most hated piece of YA series discontinuity, alongside the now-we're-sisters-present fiasco from the Baby-Sitters Club.
What was this? In the BSC, I always hated how Dawn's dietary preferences changed from book to book. Sometimes she was an all-out vegan health food nut, sometimes she just avoided red meat, sometimes she ate potato chips, sometimes she was veggie but ate fish.

She always seemed to make an exception for the BSC pizza parties. And WHO CAN BLAME HER. I badly wanted to attend when I was ten.

[isabelquinn]

You know the two-book arc where Dawn's mum and Mary Anne's dad get married? It was in those. In the first book, narrated by Mary Anne, Dawn gives MA a now-we're-sisters present at the wedding. In the second book, narrated by Dawn, Dawn gives MA a now-we're-sisters present after they've had problems getting used to living together, because she wanted to leave giving hers til they felt more like sisters.

Haha, I think Dawn always got slices with ~mushrooms for bsc pizza parties! My friend had a bsc-themed 16th birthday party, it was the greatest thing ever. If she and I were Sweet Valley characters, we would have been universally hailed as dorks. By Liz.