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Post by anzuhana on Nov 25, 2012 14:28:06 GMT -5
That the California Diaries and Little Sister continued a little more so that they could have a proper ending.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
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Post by cnj on Aug 17, 2018 7:08:43 GMT -5
Kristy and Mary Anne end up going to NYC for college and so does Mona Vaughn from the former Fabulous Five series.
Mary Anne and Mona become roommates.
Kristy meets Randy Zak, a student at Julliard and befriends her and introduces her to Mary Anne and Mona.
The four of them become good friends.
Together they survive the 9-11 tragedy.
Randy is especially traumatized by 9-11 since she felt the tremors and she needs lots of counseling and support to overcome the resulting PSTD from 9-11.
Midway through their sophomore year, Kristy's first roommate dies of a heart condition and Randy's roommate drops out of Julliard, so they become roommates in an off-campus place for the rest of university.
Mary Anne and Mona move to a nearby house with two other women they've befriended and rent jointly during their senior year of college and undergrad school.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
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Post by cnj on Aug 17, 2018 7:11:32 GMT -5
Did Ann ever touch on homosexuality? I don't think so since they were still in middle school. But I am sure there were quite a few gays and lesbians living in Stoneybrook and I am sure the open-minded BSC wouldn't be at all surprised.
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cnj
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Post by cnj on Aug 17, 2018 7:12:58 GMT -5
diabetes sucks. my grandmother and uncle have it as well as a family frirend and i always worry that i'm going to get it when i'm older (because it seems to run in the family) if i don't take better care of myself now, but sugar is soo good. although i guess it would be type II diabetes in that case? either way i wouldn't wish it on anyone and i think it's awesome that you work with kids who have it, aln. i always liked how they made the most "sophisticated" fashionable baby-sitter the one with the sickness, it was a nice example of how having diabetes or something like it isn't going to change you as a person or make you some kind of outcast. True...diabetes is a very common disorder...not the rare 'tragedy' that some people still occasionally think it is. I have several family members with it...I know sweeteners like Splenda and Stevia are safe for people with diabetes.
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Post by booklover85 on Jul 11, 2019 22:54:14 GMT -5
I wish to read about the Baby Sitters in their high school and college lives. It would be fascinating to read about the girls when they are older, as well as the New England autumns.
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Post by booboobrewer on Jul 17, 2019 17:44:27 GMT -5
Agreed! I would like to know where each girl went to college.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
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Post by cnj on Jul 19, 2019 22:28:25 GMT -5
Agreed! I would like to know where each girl went to college. I see Mary Anne and Kristy ending up in NYC for college...and possibly the Stevenson twins and possibly Jessi.
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cnj
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Post by cnj on Jul 19, 2019 22:50:19 GMT -5
What stories do you think would occur? Would Mary Anne and Logan break up and get back together? Or would she finally find the love of her life: Pete Black? I would have liked to have seen Mary Anne branch out beyond the BSC and Logan. Maybe have another break-up arc, where she dates someone else. It would be a better storyline to have a plot for Mary Anne outside of just bouncing from boyfriend to boyfriend. I think I would like to read about another new sitter - but one with something radically different about her. Maybe a Muslim in a post-9/11 world, and how her family actually faced discrimination. Being a Muslim is not that "radically" different in New England...but it would be an interesting storyline...perhaps this new baby-sitter's family fled to New England to escape the discrimination and tells the BSC her tale in a meeting. But in my college take on them, Kristy has a roommate with Muslim roots and the roommate becomes good friends with Kristy, Mary Anne, Mona [from the former Fabulous Five series] and Randy [from Girl Talk]...they all are in college in NYC. I also have a story on FF.net where Claudia, in college in Minnesota, helps a friend of a friend escape an arranged marriage in Iran. Karen falling in love with Harry Potter and trying to fly on a broomstick. That sounds fascinating and funny! I actually started a story where the Harry Potter gang...Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna and Neville...are on a sorcerers' retreat in New England in Salem, Massachussetts during their late teens and the BSC meets them up there. The BSC is four years older than the HP gang. The BSC learn lots about the magical world and are fascinated. I have the retreat in mid-November, so it's in a beautiful backdrop of a New England autumn.
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cnj
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Post by cnj on Jul 19, 2019 22:53:12 GMT -5
I know this sounds terrible, but I would have liked to have seen the girls have to deal with a serious illness or injury - I know Claudia broke a leg, Mal had mono, Abby had asthma, but I would have liked to have seen them deal with something serious - one of them having a terrible accent, or developing a life threatning disease. It would be interesting, but it might have been too much drama if the illness were something like AIDS or terminal cancer. One of the charges, Danielle, did deal with leukemia, though.
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cnj
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Post by cnj on Jul 19, 2019 23:03:37 GMT -5
^I agree with all of this. (except Dawn. I love Dawn). I would love to see the sitters have actual different opinions on things -- when I was 13, I knew where I stood on many, many different political and social issues. Some of these were radically different from my friends, and sometimes we couldn't "make it work" or look past our different opinions. I think it would be really interesting to see what the sitters come up with - do they just not talk about these things, or do they agree to disagree? It's something that could really shake up the club. I think they just agree to disagree...the BSC members have a strong friendship that disagreeing on issues does not have to ruin the club or their friendship. Too many other books often pitted girls against each other back then and it got tiresome.
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Post by eternalstudent on Jul 29, 2019 18:23:49 GMT -5
I don't really remember any specifics about Richard and Sharon's marriage later on in the series, but I think it would be interesting to see if they managed to stay together. Within the series' timeline, they were only married for like, what, a year or less?
The reason I bring this up is because I always got the impression the Spier/Schafer household was never very stable and was even the topic of 2 books (Dawn's Wicked Stepsister, Dawn's Family Feud) and occasionally brought up a little bit in books such as Mary Anne's Makeover. Plus, Dawn and Jeff didn't even live with their Sharon anymore, which would have been difficult for Sharon.
I'm curious to see what Dawn and Jeff's absence and the fire would have done to the Spier/Schafer marriage in the long-term.
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Post by greer on Jul 29, 2019 23:31:16 GMT -5
I don't really remember any specifics about Richard and Sharon's marriage later on in the series, but I think it would be interesting to see if they managed to stay together. Within the series' timeline, they were only married for like, what, a year or less? The reason I bring this up is because I always got the impression the Spier/Schafer household was never very stable and was even the topic of 2 books (Dawn's Wicked Stepsister, Dawn's Family Feud) and occasionally brought up a little bit in books such as Mary Anne's Makeover. Plus, Dawn and Jeff didn't even live with their Sharon anymore, which would have been difficult for Sharon. I'm curious to see what Dawn and Jeff's absence and the fire would have done to the Spier/Schafer marriage in the long-term. Although they were maybe technically only married for a year, how many times did the Sitters go through eighth grade? One of the things I really like about FF is that there is more focus on the families, especially the Schafer/Spiers. Mary Anne’s books have a lot to do with the family and their adjustment to their life after the fire. So I would reread those if this is a subject that interests you.
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cnj
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Post by cnj on Aug 1, 2019 17:33:44 GMT -5
I don't really remember any specifics about Richard and Sharon's marriage later on in the series, but I think it would be interesting to see if they managed to stay together. Within the series' timeline, they were only married for like, what, a year or less? The reason I bring this up is because I always got the impression the Spier/Schafer household was never very stable and was even the topic of two books - Dawn's Wicked Stepsister, Dawn's Family Feud - and occasionally brought up a little bit in books such as Mary Anne's Makeover. Plus, Dawn and Jeff didn't even live with their Sharon anymore, which would have been difficult for Sharon. I'm curious to see what Dawn and Jeff's absence and the fire would have done to the Spier/Schafer marriage in the long-term. I think aside from the usual growing pains of stepfamily adjustments, they had a pretty strong, stable family. Whatever conflicts they do have are resolved quickly and constructively with no lingering bad feelings. Read the later BSC books...in Mary Anne and the Little Princess, there's a scene where the absent-minded Sharon is looking for a matching pair of socks while helping Richard pack for a business trip and they're joking around and laughing, including Mary Anne. Mary Anne tells us that she feels that they have a solid marriage, despite missing Dawn and Jeff. And Dawn and Jeff do often visit during school breaks and keep in touch, so it's not as if Dawn and Jeff have simply vanished from the family. In Mary Anne and the Memory Garden, when the girl in the BSC's eighth-grade class dies suddenly, Mary Anne is glad that Richard and Sharon have a strong, stable marriage and are able to offer her valuable emotional support. An unstable family would not be able to do this. And after the fire, by the end of Mary Anne's Revenge, the family is able to re-sort itself. And later in Welcome Home, Mary Anne, both Dawn and Mary Anne are able to loan valuable support to Sunny, whose family is truly not very stable, especially since Sunny's mum died so tragically. Dawn and Mary Anne would have had a much harder time giving their love and support to Sunny if they themselves were burdened by unresolved baggage in their own family.
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cnj
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Post by cnj on Aug 1, 2019 17:54:38 GMT -5
One of the things I really like about FF is that there is more focus on the families, especially the Schafer/Spiers. True, but aside from both the main series and the FF series is the all-too common future BSC fanfic clichés that depicts the Spier-Schafers as being totally dysfunctional, bitter, often abusive and "hating" each other, which I cannot see any of them becoming. Although Richard was overprotective of Mary Anne early in the series, he loosened up quite a lot by the time he re-met Sharon. Too many fanfics fail to acknowledge this and too often depict Richard as not only rigid and strict, but portray him as overbearing, unloving and still overcontrolling even in the high school BSC stories. I remember one fanfiction of Mary Anne as a high school senior and moping about how "all" of her friends have abandoned her, then deciding to go to NYC for college only to have Richard tell her that she was not "permitted" to go away to college and Mary Anne getting into a huge yelling match with her dad. Her dad becomes angry, refuses to listen to her and orders her coldly to her room. Mary Anne goes to her room and spends the evening moping over how her entire future is "ruined" and how "restricted" she feels by her dad...a true soap opera. The author actually indirectly admitted in a later author's note that it was based on her own life more than Mary Anne's. Some stories even portray Richard as being downright abusive and have him frequently yelling at Mary Anne. Canon book Richard NEVER yelled and was NEVER harsh with Mary Anne. A few fanfic clichés also have both Richard and Sharon being mean and at times abusive to Mary Anne and Mary Anne just passively tolerating it at home, but being mean to her classmates at school. Also, not to mention the fanfic clichés of Dawn and Mary Anne allegedly "hating" each other endlessly and being mean to each other...that gets old and tiresome. One soap opera-ish, high-drama fanfic I read some time ago had Sharon and Dawn ganging up on Mary Anne and humiliating and mocking her over hidden birth control pills and a prudish!Richard screaming at her about them. Those fanfics almost make me laugh because they're so far off-canon and ridiculous.
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