CONTENT WARNING: GIVEN WE'RE YET AGAIN TALKING ABOUT REVENGE R US, JUST A HEADS UP THAT THIS BLOG CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF ABUSE, PHYSICAL, MENTAL AND SEXUAL. DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED.
I've read most of Goosebumps at this point. Not every single book out there, but enough to cover the general spectrum of Stine's mainline works in the series. Choose your own or tv books of episodes about books notwithstanding, I've covered well over 100 books at this point. There's a lot of crap in this series. Both in the original era and the 2008 revival. Stine's work for the most part can get pretty bad. Sometimes legitimately damaging to the reader. But of all of those books, none have struck me as legitimately bad on every level. Except one. And that is the seventh book in the Goosebumps Series 2000 run, Revenge R Us.
I've been dabbling with the idea of doing a reread/re-review of Series 2000, maybe sometime after I finally complete it. But the point where I feel like I don't want to bother is always Revenge R Us. A book I find to be Stine's most reprehensible moment. And with the book recently being covered by a few Goosebumps podcasts (links at the end of the blog), what better place than here? What better time than now? So welcome to the edition of Case of the Bumps where I finally get this book's BS out of my system at long last. Will it be cathartic or will I just feel crappy regardless? Can I find a glimmer of good in an otherwise horrible book? Only one way to find out. Let's talk about why Revenge R Us, or RRU as I'll call it just for simplicity's sake, is as bad as I feel it is.
#1. THE PLOT
I'll give a quick recap of the book itself before we go deeper into the book's real problems. Wade Brill's life is rough on account of her seventeen year old brother Micah. Micah is a scumbag in every possible sense. He enjoys humiliating her at every chance and does crappy things like run over her bike or... we'll get to that later. Wade finds an ad for something called Revenge R Us, and meets a woman named Iris who offers Wade the chance to get revenge on Micah by rubbing her crow Maggie. But each time Wade sets up a revenge on Micah, she's the recipient. It's not until the end of the book we learn that Micah and Iris have been working together. Wade steals Maggie and tries to implement a bunch of wishes on Micah, but ends up turning Micah and herself into frogs after too many wishes.
So, the best comparison for this story is Be Careful What You Wish For... Both books implement a similar structure of a girl getting wishes from a mysterious woman, but they all backfire on her until at the end, she gets turned into an animal. In RRU's defense, they at least give a reason for why Wade's plans fail as Micah counters them while Be Careful seems more vague in explaining if Clarissa has it out for Sam or not. Other than that, aside from the more concerning areas that RRU goes, both books are about the same. Even going to the point of both Wade and Sam making a wish to make people disappear. Heck, now that I think about it, both girls use less feminine sounding names, more so with Wade. Given I'm not the biggest fan of Be Careful, of all books to emulate, that's not the best choice.
#2. MICAH
Let's talk about Micah and why he might be the worst character in Goosebumps for more than the cursory "mean older sibling" trope. Micah Brill's entire character in this book is seemingly focused on making his twelve year old sister's life a living hell. No real answer as to why, just that he enjoys doing it. And, maybe that would be fine with a younger sibling. Best example being Tara Webster, who throughout The Cuckoo Clock of Doom makes Michael's life a living hell for no reason other than she enjoys being a terror. But here's the thing about Tara. Yes, she's a brat, but the problem lies more with the Webster parents in how they play favorites and let her run wild, punishing Michael for even daring having a problem with it. Oh, Tara wrecked your party? Well we can't blame Tara, clearly it's Michael being the bad one here. There's a reason I listed them as among the worst OG series parents.
And here's the thing. Micah isn't six like Tara. He's not twelve. He's not thirteen or even fourteen. Micah Brill is SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD. He's a year away from being a legal adult and he gets his kicks ruining his younger sister's life for no really good reason. Be it just humiliating her in front of everyone or straight up blackmail. And not only is Micah a pest, he's a gym rat. He's written to be someone who goes to the gym often and is pretty strong in his own right. It might explain another thing I'll talk about shortly. So yeah, we have the closest equivalent to a man just attacking his kid sister and getting away with it. And as we'll talk about, how he attacks his sister makes him a deplorable human being. Someone with no regard of consent or the feelings of others. Let's be honest, if Micah's fate wasn't as a frog, it would no doubt be as a potential rapist. Which is an unfortunate segue to our next reason.
#3. DID A PEDOPHILE WRITE THIS BOOK?
R.L. Stine has written a lot of questionable scenes in these books. We've had naked kids, kids in their underwear, twelve year old boys wolf whistling a camp counselor, a twelve year old girl's skirt falling down to her ankles, THE EGG BLANKET, etc. I worry about the man. So, while there's precedent for this kind of thing, last thing I expected was to have a book where a seventeen year old boy wears his sister's panties over his head then pants her in front of someone she likes. And if that was the worst thing the book did, then I'd be disgusted, but far less angry about the book than I would be.
And then chapter nineteen, pages 81 and 82 happen.
_____________
"You can't make me do all these chores" I said. I shoved the list back at him. "No way you can make me!"
"Of course I can" he replied nastily.
"How?" I demanded shrilly.
"This little photo." Micah waved a polaroid picture in front of my face.
"Give me that!" I demanded. "What is it?"
He held it high above my head . "Didn't you hear me sneaking into your room this morning?" Micah's smile was so wide, I wanted to punch him.
"Huh? You what?" I screeched.
"You were sleeping like a baby" Micah said. "Snoring. In your underwear. With a line of drool dripping in your mouth. I caught it all on film."
I shook with anger. I couldn't believe anyone would be so mean.
"You didn't!" I cried.
"Oh, yes, I did" Micah flashed the photo in front of me. One glimpse was enough to make my heart sink. With a THUD.
There I was, eyes shut, mouth hanging open, drool hanging down my chin. In my underwear.
"You'd better get to work. If the chores aren't done by the end of the day, Steve Wilson is going to get this glamorous photo of you in the mail tomorrow."
_____________
This is the moment that broke me with this book. The fact that a main plot point of this book is that Micah, again, a seventeen year old, seems to easily sneak into his sister's room and just takes candid pictures of her sleeping in her underwear and takes those pictures of her to use as blackmail. You know how I said "potential rapist" earlier? Well, this may be the strongest reasoning for what I mean. Think about it. Micah doesn't believe in boundaries, especially those of his sister. If he gets pleasure out of taking pictures of his nearly-nude sister, what's stopping him from doing far worse things? You have this muscular near-adult freak getting his jollies looking at a nearly nude TWELVE YEAR OLD. WHAT THE HELL, STINE?
Stine could have done this differently. Maybe it's a picture of Wade sleeping with a teddy bear, or a night light. Safe stuff that would be humiliating. But instead, the photo is of her nearly in the nude that he plans to give to someone she cares about. And there's a safe bet that Steve wasn't the only person he would give this picture to. Not to mention scenes where he tickles her while she's in a headlock, and you know, putting her panties on his head before again, grabbing her pants and pulling them down! This whole damn book reads like they were really hoping this would turn someone on. And scarily I don't think they meant the actual child demographic. I get what Series 2000 was intended to be. The more edgy and extreme Goosebumps. Even if most of that is just more vomiting scenes and maybe some gore. Why Stine felt this was needed to be in a book series for kids confuses me. And how Scholastic was oddly fine with it is even more damning.
It speaks to the hypocrisy of both R.L. Stine and Scholastic. Stine's stated in the past that Goosebumps never featured children in real danger. That's a lie, Wade's brother's an email away from sending a copy of Wade's picture to Barely Legal while also feeling he's just fine putting her panties on his face, let's not forget that shit. Scholastic often had Stine tone the books down, once telling Stine to remove a scene in The Girl Who Cried Monster in which Mr. Mortman eats a child. Yet were fine with Stine pumping out this? Screams of Scholastic going more lenient once Goosebumps brought in the big bucks. Maybe this book was self sabotage on account of the whole legal issues between Scholastic and Parachute? I don't know, but I do know this is looks bad on everyone who greenlit it.
#4. BECAUSE GOOSEBUMPS PARENTS
So we have Micah ruining Wade's life. Literally threatening to send a pic of her in her underwear to someone. Someone who physically abuses her, destroys her things, enjoys her suffering. Why are the parents not stepping in? Oh, because they think it's Wade picking on Micah and that maybe Micah's doing all this because he likes her. Yeah, but he doesn't seem to like her they way they think. They even find Micah to be funny all while chastising Wade for her issues. Again, Tara was a six year old girl. The Webster parents turning a blind eye to it while blaming Michael is infuriating, but it makes sense. Micah is, yet again, a seventeen year old gym rat who is abusing his sister, and they take Micah's side? I just... why? I get it's Goosebumps and Goosebumps Parents, but on what conceivable level would it make any sense for them to side with Micah and not their daughter who is, again, being abused? Call child protective services, my god!
I'm not going to defend the Brill parents on any of this, but I have a theory. They're afraid of Micah. It's established that Micah goes to the gym, that he can be intimidating. And maybe the parents know that and are just as worried about Micah's abusive side and know he's liable to hurt them as well. And maybe just keep him happy until he turns eighteen and leaves. IF that's what he intends. Why leave? He has free room and board, free meals and all the entertainment he needs bullying Wade. Of course none of this absolves the parents for not being on Wade's side here, but it would at least provide an explanation that makes some sense as to why they're kid gloves with Micah but ready to heap blame on Wade at a moment's notice.
#5. WADE IS AN IDIOT AND THE MORAL IS TRASH
Wade's motivations for revenge are sound given what Micah does to her. But she gets burned by Iris and Maggie constantly. Her first two attempts go badly. She wants Micah to itch and then ends up super itchy. She wants Micah's hair to fall out, then she gets super hairy in the process. Like, fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, then I'm just dumb. Go back for a third try, maybe I deserve at least some of the revenges put on me. But we need the "three strikes and you're out" structure so we get another attempt by making Micah disappear, which seems to work. So, this should be good, right? No more abusive brother. Conflict resolved a la Tara's erasure.
And then Wade feels bad for making Micah vanish and tries to reverse it because... ???
Why? Why should Wade feel bad for getting rid of her abuser? Because the book is trying to ham-fist a moral about how wanting revenge makes you just as bad as the person you want revenge on? No. No, that moral doesn't work here. There isn't a moment where Micah is redeemed. Never a moment where he atones for his actions. Never any happy moments with Wade and Micah that would necessitate her ever wanting him to come back. This screams "forced Stockholm Syndrome". Making it off as if Wade liked the abuse she was going through and finds a world without Micah to abuse her as a place not worth being in. So Stine's pulling a "Seahorse Seashell Party" years before Family Guy. In which Family Guy tries to canonically give a reason as to why Meg should be abused by her family. For their benefit. To keep them sane. All at her own expense. Jesus, Stine.
It all doesn't matter anyway as Micah never vanished and was in collusion with Iris the whole time to screw Wade over. So that again makes Wade's decision to try and bring him back more confusing. And even when she gets the crow and turns Micah into a slug, this seems like where we can walk away, but no, we need a bad twist ending, and so both Wade and Micah become frogs and the book turns it all on Wade going too far in her revenge lust and the book's super weak attempt at a moral of any kind. So the title of this section misleads a little in that it's less Wade being the idiot and more Stine making her come off as one as the addition of the moral makes her actions nonsensical and tries to hand wave what is again abuse.
#6. BETTER ALTERNATIVES TO REVENGE R US
Like I said, I read a lot of Goosebumps, including plenty after my first read of RRU. And there are examples of this concept done far better. The closest example is The Revenge from Triple Header #2. In there, the protagonist wants revenge on a bully (not her brother this time) for far less creepy reasons and learns how to astral project to get that revenge, while being on the clock. Too long spent in ethereal form and she stays that way. It even has a similar mid-book swerve done better. It's also mercifully shorter being a short story in a compilation.
Another obvious example is The Haunted Mask. A story of a bullied girl who wants revenge by scaring those who bullied her. But the mask she gets starts to turn her into a real monster. The Carly Beth before the story began disappearing and the monster taking form. I'll always rep this book given it's a favorite of mine and just works where this one did not. I'll even throw Monster Blood III in for good measure as it too delves into revenge gone wrong with Evan and Andy wanting revenge on Kermit for his nonsense. It too is a frustrating book, but it at least feels better structured than RRU.
And then there's Be Careful What You Wish For... the book that this book took inspiration from most. That book is very mediocre in its own right and has its share of frustrations. Its decision to constantly screw over Sam for seemingly no really logical reason other than "I guess Clarissa's evil, or has some sort of connection to Judith so it could have been collusion?" It's ultimately the lightest recommend. Better by comparison, yet bad in the grand scheme.
#7. FINAL THOUGHTS
Revenge R Us feels like the worst Goosebumps can get. In terms of tropes, it has damn near them all. In terms of fun, there's really nothing that makes it fun. In terms of scares, it's not scary in the way it intended and scary in a way that I think would bother children of abuse, physical and sexual. Even mental as again, much of Micah's abuse weighs in Wade's head. That this book came out how it did without any forethought about how this would look for the series says a lot about what the franchise became in 1998. Quality be damned as long as it means a monthly check for Stine and bank for Scholastic. It also symbolizes Goosebumps as being more a product than a passion for R.L. Stine. Maybe at one point there was that love for the series, but by 1998 and over 100 books, two to three a month at its worst point, you can see where it disappeared. Which coincidentally is why I feel the 2000 end and Stine's exodus was the best thing to happen to all parties.
I can't say that feels like the entirety of books post RRU and before the hiatus as much of Series 2000 still offers quality works. But this is definitely where Goosebumps hit its nadir. A product that was overstaying its welcome and its heyday long gone, left instead with a more miserable behind the scenes downfall. The "who cares" mentality of Stine adding a scene where someone takes photos of a child in a vulnerable position and not realizing how fucked up that is and how that goes against what he always claimed Goosebumps was for. In the end, it leaves with the series at its true lowest point. So someday I might reread all of Series 2000. I might still reread this. But I highly doubt I'll discover this incredible revelation to this book. In the end, I'll just regret reading it all over again. Next time I do one of these cases, maybe I'll actually put out a fun one next time, huh? It can't be any more depressing than this one ended up as, right?
#8. PODCAST LINKS
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