SVT "Evil" Stories

I started writing these SVT stories when I was about 16. I used to call them "evil" stories because they really turned me on, but since I was getting turned on by witches and demons and power-over, I felt weird about it. (Really wanted to work on them for Creative Writing Class in 10th grade, but was mortified at the thought of someone READING them. Or having to read them out loud, myself. Especially since they were essentially fan fiction for a book series I was embarrassed about reading). In retrospect, every time in my cycle, as a teenager, that I needed to masturbate, I was probably writing/re-writing "evil" stories. (I didn't own a vibrator at 16, had to get my jollies somehow).

Then one day I mentioned the "evil stories" to my psychologist at the time (they were mostly a secret: only my best friend Sa knew about them) and she was like, " 'Evil'... like Men and Little Girls??" and I was like OMG NO. *That* doesn't turn me on. Ick. I tried to explain that it was Sweet Valley twits and their babysitter was a witch (with supernatural powers, not a Wiccan) who was terrorizing them, because they were awful characters in bad literature... it didn't sound right. Piper and Tobias are supposed to be teenagers in my stories anyway, so that makes it not as bad, I think. (They don't do anything sexual to the twins and their brother, they just terrify/ bespell them, for funsies.) Although it gets a little sketchy with the scene in #1 The Babysitter with (demon) Tobias and Elizabeth. But that was toned way down from my original incarnation. He's a teenage hipster demon, not Tim Curry in Legend*. Also nothing creepy/sexual could happen in SVT, because they were 12, and even when Jessica lied about her age and tried to date a 16-year-old (Book #15), Nothing Bad happened and the guy just was embarrassed about it. SVT is far removed from real life, something I make fun of in my books. Obviously, because the publishers didn't want to freak out middle-school girls with Cautionary Tales. Not until Sweet Valley High, anyway, and even then, the twins (Jessica, mostly, and Elizabeth after coming out of the personality-changing coma) narrowly avoided rape/kidnapping/murder on what seemed like a regular basis, with no emotional scarring. In regards to that in SVH, just WHUT.

I sometimes think I should be writing Sweet Valley High parodies, because then the twins actually have the potential to be murdered (like Margo tried to do in The Evil Twin). But then there can be no supernatural stuff**, which is what I like the best. Also, they can't be killed either way, not for being annoying, at age 12 or age 16.

*I will probably end up talking more about Legend later... Tim Curry as the Lord of Darkness and Robert Picardo as the swamp witch Meg Mucklebones: So Nifty
**except for the (stupid) vampire and werewolf trilogies. I will review the vampire ones on this blog since Robin Hardwick didn't seem to have as much fun as I did (and I was defacing them, not just reading/ reviewing them)

Another trope, another dollar

One of the things I do differently (from the real SVT Super Chillers) in my plots is that Elizabeth still has to bail her twin out, even when the events are supernatural. Like, in SVT, they must've decided that Elizabeth always bailed Jessica out/ tried to rescue her anyway, so let's switch it up and have Jessica, the irresponsible twin, have to save Elizabeth. This is prevalent in #3 The Carnival Ghost (Liz is controlled by evil ghost who makes her forget her twin... too bad it didn't take) and #9 Evil Elizabeth* (Liz wears a haunted mask that she found in a dog's mouth and it makes her more like Jessica, horrors! And since there can't be *two* Jessicas, Jessica has to save Elizabeth and make her be saintly again).
I guess it's more fun to have Jessica be the one haunted/ cursed/ whatever so I can point out that no matter how annoying Jessica becomes from this transformation, it's par for the course for Elizabeth. She will always want to save her bitchy annoying twin and make her "back to normal" even if "back to normal" is awful. Dolt.
So I pushed that even further by having Jessica be turned into a vampire. This happens in Books 4 and 5 (a two parter) which I haven't published yet. I re-read them recently and I really rather love them. They are humorous. But they deal with pubescent vampirism, so maybe that's weird. Like I took the sexiness out of vampirism completely (because I had to).
Also, all my books take place on Halloween, because that's the best time for spooky things to happen in books for 12-year-olds. Various SVT Super Chillers took place around Christmas (Super Chiller #1, #3), on Spring Break (#2, #6), and Mysterious Summer (before or after 6th grade? No One Knows)(Super Chiller #4, The Ghost in the Bell Tower, the one I've defaced the most and have 3 copies of, all defaced slightly differently)(Also Super Chiller #8, another camp story, even though there already was a camp story with Super Edition #3), and were not as scary. Like they weren't even trying.
Plus, having it always be Halloween is a comment on how many times they've had various holidays in this series, and how they've been going to 6th grade for 10 years. In fashion terms, they've gone from jumpsuits to Doc Martens. I usually pretend my books take place in the 90s rather than the late 80s because that's when I was reading SVT, mostly.

*Elizabeth didn't really turn evil - she didn't go on a killing spree or anything. She was just mean/ bitchy/ a punk.