We Love Kids Club - Jill, Maggie and Sunny

[aln1982]

booboobrewer said:

Right, Jill's only in the first one (and mentioned briefly in others). There's a scene that makes me laugh where they are walking to school and the other girls notice she is wearing shoes that have ponies with actual little tails on them and they're horrified. And there's another scene where they all go to the mall and Jill drags them to a store called "The Bear Necessities" (clever).

The actual tails on the ponies sound a little much (but pretty funny) I was thinking along the lines of my friends who used to be too embarrassed to wear tshirts with a horse breed logo (from the breed that we showed) to school and places where they would be "seen". Being a "Kristy", these shirts were practically all I owned.
What did the Bear Necessities sell? It sounds like that could be an interesting store for an alternate subplot if the name was spelled differently I'll get my mind out of the gutter now. ;D

[aln1982]

Okay, I realized what it is about Maggie that bothers me - a "tail" dyed different colors. I really think this is what I dislike most about her. I dislike Sunny even more after reading Dawn's book because of her ideals - I guess it's not so much dislike as just not being able to relate to her. Except for Jill, the CA group just don't seem like the type I would hang out with.
Sorry for the 2 posts in a row. Ideas just keep popping into my mind

[liss31d]

The Bear Necessities shop sells any merchandise connected to bears! Hence why Jill loved it

Aln, the girls in the CA Diaries are very very different from the WLKC. Maggie isn't punkish in the slightest in the diaries - she has blond hair and acts more conservative to please her pushy father and alcoholic mother. Dawn claims that she doesn't miss the BSC or her mother (how nice Dawn :, Sunny far from past "sunny" personality and exterior goes off the rails and Jill, who used to be typed as the "serious mature" member is the most immature. They're like different characters altogether. Their shared love of health food is not mentioned at all and as Maggie said, the WLKC has been defunct for ages. New characters Amalia (replaces Jill as sensitive caring character) and Ducky (strongly debated as being gay, but I'm not sure).

[lyricalangel]

aln1982 said:

Okay, I realized what it is about Maggie that bothers me - a "tail" dyed different colors. I really think this is what I dislike most about her. I dislike Sunny even more after reading Dawn's book because of her ideals - I guess it's not so much dislike as just not being able to relate to her. Except for Jill, the CA group just don't seem like the type I would hang out with.
Sorry for the 2 posts in a row. Ideas just keep popping into my mind

LOL. Yet another character with a tail. Gotta love all those tails and mullets in BSC world.

[aln1982]

Even though they were only in about 1 chapter, I actually liked the WLKC in Dawn and Whitney FF. I've had a more positive opinion of them lately. I also liked Sunny more in this book than usual, especially the part when she's baby-sitting for the Carsons and tells Whitney that Dawn can "keep her company". Thought that was a good way to handle it.

[lyricalangel]

I love them in Dawn on the Coast.

[Deleted]

All of the girls are just so different in the BSC and in the CA diaries books. I think I like Dawn and Sunny better when they're still carefree members of the We Love Kids Club (though, oddly, I enjoy their CD books more than some of the others'). I don't particularly care for punkish Maggie -- she doesn't seem to have much of a personality beyond her weird wardrobe, but I still prefer her in the We Love Kids Club to her hyper-perfectionism in the CD series (that kind of thing grates on my nerves for some reason ... not so much her body issues, but, for example, constantly thinking she's going to fail her tests when in the end she'll get like an A-, or even ACE it).

I felt sorry of Jill in the CD books, but, as has been pointed out, she is REALLY an entirely different girl.

I guess, overall, I prefer the We Love Kids Club days.

[aln1982]

Am rereading Dawn and the WLKC and I don't really like her CA friends in this one. Maybe it's the disorganization thing since I'm kind of like Kristy in that respect ;D I would have been driven insane by a club like that.
The description of Maggie's "green tail" never fails to make me laugh ;D

[fluffycakes]

One random thing that bugs me about the WLKC is that Jill's parents are divorced. Enough already! I know that divorce is common and everything, but it just seemed so unnecessary.

Anyway. In the BSC books, I don't care one way or another for the WLKC girls. I don't think I've quite forgiven Maggie for calling Kristy, Mary Anne and Claudia Kristy T., M.A. and Claudi-o (or whatever she calls them) in Here Comes the Bridesmaids. Other than that, I don't really have an opinion of them, other than Sunny seems cool.

CD is a different story! I'm glad they changed Maggie's character - I could relate much more to her than the ultra-cool, grunge-punk Maggie we see in the BSC. Sunny's awesome, too. She'd be frustrating to deal with, but she was easily the most interesting character.

At first I was annoyed they wrote Jill out and replaced her with Amalia, but now I'm glad they did. Firstly because Amalia was awesome. But also because I think Jill would've been too Mary Anne for the series, and they probably wanted a stronger character than her. And I hate to say it, but I bet another reason for replacing Jill with Amalia was to be PC and have an ethnic minority character.

[aln1982]

Did Amalia ever show up in the BSC books? I've never read CA Diaries so have no idea who she is. What is she like?

[fluffycakes]

^ Nope, Amalia wasn't in the BSC (even though they sit for Amalia Martinez in Silent Witness). I liked her. She was closer to Maggie than Dawn and the other girls. She drew a lot so she had a bunch of (sort of weird looking) cartoons in her diary. I can't say too much about her because it's been so long since I've read CD. But she seemed to be pretty well-rounded and had a good head on her shoulders. She was pretty strong, too - she handled an abusive boyfriend and an anorexic best friend pretty well. She kind of reminds me of early Dawn, pre-ghost writers.

[mckay]

I always liked Jill because she was like me, liking the cute, "babyish" things in life without being ashamed of it. I'm sure a lot of people thought I was a "baby," but I didn't really care. I liked what I liked, and if they thought I wasn't "cool" enough, THEY were the babies.

[booboobrewer]

aln1982 said:

Did Amalia ever show up in the BSC books?

Not physically, but she is mentioned in The Secret Life of Mary Anne Spier when Dawn goes to the mall with Mary Anne and Logan and buys presents for her California friends.

[aln1982]

mckay said:

I always liked Jill because she was like me, liking the cute, "babyish" things in life without being ashamed of it. I'm sure a lot of people thought I was a "baby," but I didn't really care. I liked what I liked, and if they thought I wasn't "cool" enough, THEY were the babies.

This is exactly how I feel. These were my thoughts on Jill, too, and why some of the characters bugged me when they thought they were so "cool." I totally agreed with MA in Stacey vs the BSC when she said that Stacey was the immature one. So glad to hear that someone else shares my feelings about being "babyish" (I just got a new American Girl doll for my 25th bday ;D)

[sotypical42483]

Jill bugged me, not gonna lie. I mean I'm all for being interested in whatever you want to be (obviously I am on a BSC board and all!) but she honestly came across as like, an 8 year old.