Baby-Sitters' European Vacation, Part the Second

[alula_auburn]

Comments

[gokaitrey]

I also would have immediately tripped up on the question of whether that means Susanna (or Judith! She existed too!) would end up in MY time, and I’d read enough time travel stories to know about the whole messing-up-the-future, butterfly effect deal.

It is absurd the number of fanfictions I have written dealing with that exact plot. My personal favorite is to swap a character from a TV show with the actor who plays them. HILARITY ENSUES.

Man, I loved this book so much when I was a kid. What was wrong with me? I also vividly remember wanting a hug machine, and I'm not sure what to think about that.

[kakeochi_umai]

Oh man, I am so fucking tired right now from another hardcore work rush, and seeing this posted totally made my day.

“Weirdest” trip goes to Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks
Oh HELL no! Madame Tussaud's rocks! I just wish I'd done a bit more planning so that my trip didn't coincide with the school holidays and therefore I didn't have to fight my way through hordes of kids (bless me Ann, for I have committed the sin of blasphemy.) And I love that they're doing this whole Super Special about going to other countries but all the actual sights in those countries warrant is a bullet point list.

Eeeee, that cat with the Dalek looks like my cat! Also, Daleks will always make me think of this.

Or detached his testicles for Claudia to make some dibble earrings out of?
AHAHAHAHAHA I love you.

Sunshine Gang Day Camp
I totally pictured a gangsta special needs camp, which would have made a much better subplot than the awfulness we all know is going to follow.

[alula_auburn]

I was so psyched when I found that "no." gif. Grumpy Cat understands my pain!

[coffeecommunity]

That post about the special needs kids psyching people out on the street is priceless. Can't tell you how hard I laughed at that one!

[anabellabobella]

Have you seen The Ringers? The guy from Jackass pretends to be disabled to with the Special Olympics purse, but the rest of the disabled athletes are disabled in real life (The SO committee had final say over everything with this movie, and it is really a sweet one in the end), and they had a loose script. The zingers in that movie was aaaaallll them and absolutely brilliant. The sense of humor many disabled people have really shows that they are a lot brighter than given credit for. That prank of all slowly staring at one person to creep them out shows how brilliant people with disabilities really can be. I love that one and laughed pretty hard too. :)

[lippian]

Lemme get this straight... it's a mental illness to believe that your deceased mother is in some kind of afterlife and that if you die you will be with her. It's a mental illness to tell the older sister of a kidnapped girl that said girl is "in your prayers." These things are a cause for embarrassment and shrugged shoulders and excusing of bullying the said mentally ill person to death. But praying to the ghost of William Shakespeare is okay?

Ann, go step on a Lego, fall into a vat of human breastmilk and fight the overweight introverted bespectacled practicing Christian kraken who lurks within its cloudy depths.

[alula_auburn]

Best image ever!

[anabellabobella]

Which books were those first thing in?

[lippian]

Pre-BSC books. Slam Book and Missing Since Monday.

[carey_pontmercy]

When I was reading the series as a kid, I figured out that I was supposed to identify with a BSC member, because duh. I assumed it should be Mallory because she wrote and I wrote...but then I noticed that she was humiliated in practically all of her books and wanted no part of that. I tried identifying with Dawn for a while, but it didn't make sense because I liked meat okay and found environmentalism a worthy but boring subject. I probably had the most in common with Mary Anne and Stacy, but I actively resisted identifying with them for various reasons.

[carey_pontmercy]

I loved Abby! I started reading the books around the year 2000, so I didn't see her as a sign of decline. I enjoyed her sense of humor and irreverent attitude towards Kristy, plus I also liked old music (although not Elvis so much at the time). I found the passages about her dad genuinely moving, and I really liked that book with the Bat Mitzvah and the accidental cheating. I just never thought to identify with her because she appeared in relatively few books.

I was also awkward (and prone to writing embarrassing "novels" about needlessly complex middle school love polygons, although now I look back on them and they're kind of awesome), but I liked my portrayals of losers to be more sympathetic than the BSC series could manage. I did read quite a few of the Mallory books, anyway, but I never enjoyed them as much as I expected.

[author_by_night]

She says Whitney is an “absolute doll.” That’s not condescending at all!

I'm not defending it, but you'd be surprised at how many people say that IRL. :/ So I suspect AMM came across one of those "focus groups" that insists on telling parents that they're just taken the wrong flight and are in for an angelic surprise. It's all kinds of gross and insulting. (I need to find that great article I read recently, by a man whose son has DS basically saying, "stop calling my son a sweet angel. He's more than that.")

And can fictional American teens never go to England without meeting royalty? Or finding out their father's a Lord? Not everyone in England *insert cringeworthy accent here* is posh with noble blood.

[alula_auburn]

Oh, yeah, it's definitely a thing real people say. My brother and I used to snark the show 7th Heaven together (because we have no family values) and they did an AWFUL episode based on the premise that people with Down Syndrome were angels.

It's just awkward because Ann clearly prides herself a little on her "understanding" of special needs kids from volunteering in the 70s and teaching for one year at a special needs school, and she still writes about them in the most trite and cringeworthy ways, so there's no hint that it's actually not cool to depersonalize and stereotype disabled people. Even "positive" stereotypes.

Of course, Ann also thinks everyone in England is posh, and the children are all dressed in fancy clothes at all times, so basically she's actually as "sophisticated" as the characters she writes.