questions for you, dear snarkers!

[heymalice]

first off, please let me know if me posting this here is inapproriate! i have a few questions about some observations i made while re-reading the first few books&i thought you guys might have the answers&if not the answers, than at least some funny responses

Comments

[shatisarockgod]

I gotta admit I look at The Parent Trap from another point of view. It's been so many years since I've watched it but I'm familiar enough with the storyline of Hayley Mills characters not knowing the other sister existed and they met at camp. The twins didn't go home with the parent they usually live with, they went to the other parent's home. And yeah, trying to get their parents back together

[heymalice]

i totally didn't even think of that possible angle! nice one!

ann's real life references always seem either completely random as fuck or like she's pushing her own interests on the readers. it's literally either something she herself loves or something she has literally zero clue about. its strange. this is a woman who needed to look through magazines or whatever to see what the kiddies of the day were wearing&referenced rosemary's baby, sixteen candles&was it friday the 13th she also mentioned? like, wth lady...at least two of those movies are probably rated R or something close to it. i know most of the 'brook parents are dumb as posts, but no way would richard allow mary anne to watch sixteen candles. she probably never saw any of those movies herself, it was another one of her attempts to look like she was hip to what the kids were into. lol.

[shatisarockgod]

*nod* Exactly. I know to suspend all disbelief when it concerns this series but there's just no way in hell for all of these characters to like this stuff. I know Nick @ Nite was big back in the day and showed a lot of older shows so I could buy some of them knowing the older shows because the parents probably thought the shows on there were "safer" to watch. But there's no way in hell you don't have somebody wanting to watch The Cosby Show or Roseanne or something else big in that time frame.

As for the movies, only way I could see Mary Anne watching Sixteen Candles would be watching a watered down version on tv. As for Rosemary's Baby and Friday the 13th..I doubt they'd be able to watch even a watered down version without being scared shitless after the first 30 minutes.

[heymalice]

seriously

[asm614]

As far as name changes, Edie can be a nickname for Elizabeth, but I agree it's a little odd that she started as "Edie" and became "Elizabeth" later, rather than the other way around.

In addition, in some of the earlier Super Specials with the girls writing postcards/letters to their families, at one point, Mr. Pike was "Daniel" and Mr. Ramsey was "Alex"... later, both became "John" (and I think Claudia's dad was also John... Dawn's dad was Jack, which is a nickname for John...) Not sure why the dad names got so one-dimensional over time.

[asm614]

Mr. Ramsey was always John...or at least...his son was always called John Philip Junior. I do remember the Alex mistake, but that really was a mistake I think, not a change.

[anonymous]

Honest question for you all: Why do you think these discrepancies were allowed to happen? For the most part, they were minor - it's not like Kristy's name changed to "Martha" or something - but they still existed. I understand the writers had a reference book for the characters and were also pumping out these books fairly frequently at the height of the series' popularity, but it's still surprising the discrepancies slipped through.

[heymalice]

i honestly don't know. i know even with editing sometimes mistakes can slip passed, from my own editing experience, but considering how big the series was that is a good question. i think maybe they were all just so under the gun when it came for time that sometimes the editing just wasn't as good as it should've been. but then, when the series was largely written by ghostwriters, each book went through at least three people - ann writing up a basic draft of what would happen, ghostwriter writing the manuscript (i'm assuming a couple of drafts of each manuscript if done right)&then the editor. maybe ann looking it over after thr ghostwriter wrote it before getting to the editor, even. so yeah, it'd have at least three sets of eyes, so how all those things got by is strange. probably just how fast they were cranking the books out. still, its not like the fans didn't notice!

[imamaryanne]

The series was in the thirties before Scholastic decided they needed a BSC bible to keep track of things. Evidently, they got letters from little girls complaining about things (like the name changes, and even about Marnie Barrett being allergic to strawberries in one scene, and eating strawberries a little later.)

So they hired an intern to create a bible, which eventually became the guide.

Fun fact: That intern was David Levithan.

[heymalice]

ooooh, thanks for the info! i didn't know when they decided to do that or why. that's really cool! :)

First comment!

[mspepesilvia]

In Dawn + Whitney = Friends Forever, I remember that one of Dawn's dad's dates called him Richard (she was the uptight and strict woman with the suit). Did they fix this in the ebooks? Cause it's kinda weird that her dad Jack would be called Richard. Unless Ann or the ghostwriter had Richard on their mind haha.

Re: First comment!

[heymalice]

whoa, that's quite the fuck up!