Rambling SVH graphic novel thoughts.
Aug. 8th, 2019 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyI'm going to hold off on my ~official~ SVH: Academic All Star? recap until I have the physical copy in hand, but you know damn well I read the Kindle version yesterday.
Let's answer the most pressing question: No, it's not worse than SVC. It's not The Sweet Life or even the weirdly short-lived re-do of the first six books (those were painful at points to the degree I either did not finish them or forgot a LOT) .
It is also not Sweet Valley High.
I wasn't kidding about spoilers.
Last chance to run. Don't worry, if you want to discuss things via comments, I'll be leaving spoiler space at the end, too.
As you might've guessed from yesterday's teaser, this is Sweet Valley Twins go to SVH. To some people this isn't going to mean a damn thing, but I always felt there was a difference, for good or bad, between the feel of SVT and SVH. I enjoyed them both for different reasons but they don't quite scratch the same itch and it makes sense as they're not exactly meant for the same audience.
Also, the cast dynamic is different, even if there's a lot of character overlap.
Enid is nowhere to be found. In fact, Elizabeth doesn't seem to have any actual friends aside from Todd based on this book, and Todd's a bit of a tool. She chats with Amy a bit, but this isn't SVT Amy. This is a Mean Girls quoting (but legitimately asking if butter is a carb, not making a joke) brunette Amy. She's not full on SVH levels of Amy, as she seems a bit dim, kinda like Ellen always seemed dim. Speaking of Ellen, she's here, too. Why? Who the fuck knows. Hell, there's a whole gaggle of girls who stop by the Wakefields to watch their favorite soap but I only remember Amy, Ellen, and Lila being named.
Lila's a youtuber, btw, annnnd this one I waffle on. I could totally see Lila deciding to try her hand at being a beauty influencer. I could also see her being good at it. But Lila was also never great at sticking with something and tended to be worse than Jessica at that. So maybe I'll just say that for me, SVH with cellphones and the internet as we know it now is a bit of a mixed bag. Jessica's IG fixation rings true but it's a case of a reboot doing something I know isn't meant for me if that makes sense.
Liz has completely bypassed my favorite version of herself and skipped right to possibly my least favorite: the completely over-scheduled and more than a little preachy Liz of the end of the series. It's a plot point that Liz is SO busy with being a good citizen and college bait that she and Todd don't see each other enough. Listening to her list off her various activities exhausted me and she's a fictional character, dammit. But Liz needs someone to balance her and she doesn't have that here.
What she's got instead is Todd who has also skipped straight to being stupidly loaded (his mother shows up and is nothing like how I ever pictured her) and also lacking in common sense. One of Elizabeth's various activities is being a lifeguard, and when an irate parent comes up to Liz to bitch her out for telling her precious not to run, Todd keeps trying to engage Liz in his conversation with her instead of waiting the crazy woman out. Why? Todd's not stupid.
I guess maybe to give us enough trouble in paradise that towards the end when a new guy, Ben, shows up, we're going to look the other way as Liz makes a date with him? And is Ben meant to give me vaguely Jeffrey French vibes (but sunburned to a crisp because everyone from their meeting scene onward looks red) or no? Not that it matters as Liz cheating on Todd is a tale as old as time but not really something I was looking forward to jumping right into, either.
Now, to discuss Jessica is to discuss the plot even more than I have. SVH Jess and SVT Jess were always different to me though I can't really pinpoint it without going through and reading some SVT to jog the old memory. But the Jessica we get here feels more SVT than SVH. But she does get my absolute favorite moment in the whole book.
Other SVT things? The Boosters are mentioned, a lot, despite the fact that this was purely a SVT thing. The Unicorns get a mention when Lila has Winston make her a Unicorn frappe (which I wish we'd gotten to see, dammit) and I wouldn't be surprised if they were meant to be the group of friends at the start of the book.
S
p
o
i
l
e
r
S
p
a
c
e
E
n
d
i
n
g
It just feels like someone decided to see what the SVT group would be like if they grew up and went to SVH currently and this is what happened.
Better than I feared but not what I hoped for. We'll really get into the details after I've read the physical copy.
Let's answer the most pressing question: No, it's not worse than SVC. It's not The Sweet Life or even the weirdly short-lived re-do of the first six books (those were painful at points to the degree I either did not finish them or forgot a LOT) .
It is also not Sweet Valley High.
I wasn't kidding about spoilers.
Last chance to run. Don't worry, if you want to discuss things via comments, I'll be leaving spoiler space at the end, too.
As you might've guessed from yesterday's teaser, this is Sweet Valley Twins go to SVH. To some people this isn't going to mean a damn thing, but I always felt there was a difference, for good or bad, between the feel of SVT and SVH. I enjoyed them both for different reasons but they don't quite scratch the same itch and it makes sense as they're not exactly meant for the same audience.
Also, the cast dynamic is different, even if there's a lot of character overlap.
Enid is nowhere to be found. In fact, Elizabeth doesn't seem to have any actual friends aside from Todd based on this book, and Todd's a bit of a tool. She chats with Amy a bit, but this isn't SVT Amy. This is a Mean Girls quoting (but legitimately asking if butter is a carb, not making a joke) brunette Amy. She's not full on SVH levels of Amy, as she seems a bit dim, kinda like Ellen always seemed dim. Speaking of Ellen, she's here, too. Why? Who the fuck knows. Hell, there's a whole gaggle of girls who stop by the Wakefields to watch their favorite soap but I only remember Amy, Ellen, and Lila being named.
Lila's a youtuber, btw, annnnd this one I waffle on. I could totally see Lila deciding to try her hand at being a beauty influencer. I could also see her being good at it. But Lila was also never great at sticking with something and tended to be worse than Jessica at that. So maybe I'll just say that for me, SVH with cellphones and the internet as we know it now is a bit of a mixed bag. Jessica's IG fixation rings true but it's a case of a reboot doing something I know isn't meant for me if that makes sense.
Liz has completely bypassed my favorite version of herself and skipped right to possibly my least favorite: the completely over-scheduled and more than a little preachy Liz of the end of the series. It's a plot point that Liz is SO busy with being a good citizen and college bait that she and Todd don't see each other enough. Listening to her list off her various activities exhausted me and she's a fictional character, dammit. But Liz needs someone to balance her and she doesn't have that here.
What she's got instead is Todd who has also skipped straight to being stupidly loaded (his mother shows up and is nothing like how I ever pictured her) and also lacking in common sense. One of Elizabeth's various activities is being a lifeguard, and when an irate parent comes up to Liz to bitch her out for telling her precious not to run, Todd keeps trying to engage Liz in his conversation with her instead of waiting the crazy woman out. Why? Todd's not stupid.
I guess maybe to give us enough trouble in paradise that towards the end when a new guy, Ben, shows up, we're going to look the other way as Liz makes a date with him? And is Ben meant to give me vaguely Jeffrey French vibes (but sunburned to a crisp because everyone from their meeting scene onward looks red) or no? Not that it matters as Liz cheating on Todd is a tale as old as time but not really something I was looking forward to jumping right into, either.
Now, to discuss Jessica is to discuss the plot even more than I have. SVH Jess and SVT Jess were always different to me though I can't really pinpoint it without going through and reading some SVT to jog the old memory. But the Jessica we get here feels more SVT than SVH. But she does get my absolute favorite moment in the whole book.
Other SVT things? The Boosters are mentioned, a lot, despite the fact that this was purely a SVT thing. The Unicorns get a mention when Lila has Winston make her a Unicorn frappe (which I wish we'd gotten to see, dammit) and I wouldn't be surprised if they were meant to be the group of friends at the start of the book.
S
p
o
i
l
e
r
S
p
a
c
e
E
n
d
i
n
g
It just feels like someone decided to see what the SVT group would be like if they grew up and went to SVH currently and this is what happened.
Better than I feared but not what I hoped for. We'll really get into the details after I've read the physical copy.
