\\RE: SVHSY: Why do they hate you so?;

Because it Really Does Sort of Suck: A Rebuttal and/or Extension

Though you present several good points in your rant, I just wanted to take the opportunity to speak out for those of us who do not particularly like SVHSY--for the purely political practice of keeping this site even-sided. (*snicker* As if we'd ever do that on purpose....)

1. It disrupts the continuity of the series.
2. It fucks up the Liz-Todd relationship.
and 3. They got rid of so many characters and changed the rest.

Allow me to retaliate.

1. Continuity! HAH! What continuity? If you threw that against the originals you would read in Double Love that Todd had recently moved to Sweet Valley, yet he was there the whole time in Twins. And how is it the twins are 12 in sixth grade and 16 in eleventh. That's five grades and four years. Is this mathematically possible? Only if Liz and Jess and their entire grade were skipped a grade.

1. First, I have to say you missed quite a bit. I thought you'd at least bring up Todd's disappearing-sex-changing siblings. I confess myself disappointed. Second, I would like to contest that the very presence of continuity in the SY series is what makes it disagreeable to most people who so love the free-flowing, fun feeling of SVH. By setting down a solid tone and time line, a lot of the escapist nature of Sweet Valley was lost in this series. (Indeed, all of it was lost: see item 3.) A possible reason for the character continuity issues would be a lack of interest from the creator (once again, see item 3), the time span over which the series was written, and the number of authors to whom it was doled out. A simple character chart with eye colors and family stats would have cleared that up, yes, but that would be just a bit too logical for the editors who opted out of real-life drama for werewolves and vampires cults.

2. If you think the Liz-Todd relationship wasn't fucked up in SVH, you need to be in therapy. Seriously. The Liz-is-ever-so-virtuous-and-pure-but-she-gets-caugh-up-in-the- passion-of-the-moment-and-cheats-on-todd-in-every-other-book-thing go old real quick. She needed a new male love-interest that was, you know, interesting. Devon Whitelaw was the most interesting, but that went absolutely nowhere.

2. I have no rebuttal for this one. Todd could do better things on a dark football field with a goal post than he could have with Liz. After dealing with her for several dozen summer vacations, Christmas parties, and first-days-of-junior-year, his psychologically state probably did drive him to looking for love in inanimate objects (ref: Jeffrey French).
As for Liz's taste in men.... She didn't need a more "interesting" man like alcoholic-Conner. She needed a convent. Or a good sex therapist.

3. Each series is about a different main group of characters surrounding the twins. And each series has a cast which is unique to it. So why is it that SVHSY gets knocked for doing the same thing that each other series did? And the fact that they changed the characters. They did change the characters, yes, but they changed them in accordance to their surroundings and circumstances. They weren't unbelievable changes (with the exception of Jade Wu, who went from being the conservative daughter of an extremely overbearing Chinese man and a ballerina and was a grade lower than the twins, to being in their same grade, wild, and divorced parents). SVHSY was a new twist on an aging and tiring series. It expanded Sweet Valley's reign by four years and won over a whole new fan base. It was more realistic (no completely, but there weren't psycho's and serial killers trying to kill the twins every few books). And it added a whole new cast of likeable characters to the SV populous.

3. SY takes characters who were barely hanging onto their identities by fraying threads and tears them from their roomy comfort zones all together. True, character continuity has never been a priority, but after several books, the twins--or Bruce's mother--would always slip back into their originally roles. In SY, the twins and many other characters who people actually like are unrecognizable. They might as well have been completely different people, and, indeed, are. The writing base for SY was entirely different from the writing base for SVH, so naturally the characters have morphed to suit new styles, new times, and new tastes.
I'm not saying this is all good, nor all bad. This was the purpose of the series. The change in styles was suppose to pull in new readers to make up for the old ones the series was losing: a perfectly valid form of marketing and management. None too popular among the old crowd, but valid. The flaw was, in changing the characters and situations, Pascal destroyed what everyone loved about Sweet Valley. The naivety, childish charm, and just the tiniest hint of teen fantasy were what fueled the popularity of the series. The characters had their problems, but they were always resolved by the end of the book and/or three-book miniseries. It had the safe, familiar feel to it that all things designed to make children believe in happily-ever-afters have.
SY was never suppose to make people feel safe and cuddly. It was made to be real. It was suppose to identify with the pains of today's teenage, female audience, not sooth them away with promises that better things are out there somewhere. Ironically, this was the original intention of SVH. Pascal wanted to create a series of real life. She tried. The earlier books try to deal with harder issues in a more real way than the later ones, but sales weren't where they "should have been." So the editors made Pascal step back a little into the safety zone: the series took off with its creator standing on the sidelines, shaking her head, and reluctantly plotting out the next outrageous adventure of the Bobbsey twins just to keep her paycheck coming; not out of any real love or dedication. In our newer age, where just about anything is acceptable, she tried again to bring to life a series based on real, gritty, bare-bones honesty: as with early SVH, the series began to plummet, earning criticism and contempt. Ms. Pascal is just learning what she could not understand when first her editors took corrective measures after the first third of SVH: more people read books for escapism. People can't escape if the world they're reading about is as bad as the one they're in. Thus SY ends with a short life and only one Christmas to speak of. How sad.

In conclusion, SVHSY is a different series, about different people, written by different authors, and created by a women with a newly-uninhibited agenda. It would be fine if it was given a new title, the characters new names, and marketed to a new audience, but it wasn't. By virtue of its Sweet Valley title, it drew people seeking the cuddly reassurance that came with every other Sweet Valley series produced. SY and most of the people who read it were the unfortunate victims of poor marketing and production misunderstandings.