Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30810278-20190129033127

Imma just copy and paste my shameless Sarah and Evan stanning on the Goosebumps Reddit.

The protagonists of Monster Blood and The Curse of Camp Cold Lake respectively. Everyone seems to hate these two, but I don't.

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People hate Evan for being whiny, but he has good reason to be. His life sucks. He's bullied, beaten up, abandoned by his parents to mean relatives, mocked by his teacher, has nightmares, is on the receiving end of his mad scientist cousin's experiments, has his life ruined by the constant presence of monster blood...the list goes on and on. I'd honestly be complain just as much in his position, and I sympathise with him a lot. I'd even go as far as to say that he's the biggest Woobie in the series.

He also gets unfairly blamed a lot for constantly bringing back the monster blood to use as revenge on his tormentors when it's actually Andy who does that. Evan only agrees to use the monster blood once, in the third book (and Kermit is such a nightmare that I don’t blame him), and all the other times he tells her not to. In the second book, she even goes behind his back and feeds it to Cuddles the hamster after promising him not to. I don't understand why people love her so much when the majority of the conflict in the books could have been avoided if she learned her lesson about messing around with the thing that nearly killed her and her best friend several times.

I think it's weird how people love Andy and hate Evan, even though they do equally stupid things. I can understand people hating Evan for telling his class about the monster blood and seriously expecting them to believe it, but it's confusing how the same people love Andy even though she keeps bringing back the monster blood and trying to convince Evan to use it. At least Evan mostly learns his lesson about using it.

I also think it's admirable how Evan saved Conan by eating the monster blood. Not only did he save the life of someone who relentlessly bullied him, but he ate something he was terrified of and had nightmares about to do so. It infuriated me how Conan kept bullying him after this. I think people should save their hatred for him.

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Now for Sarah. I think people really exaggerate how bad she is

She thanks Briana for giving up her bed for her. She’s willing to have a fresh start with Meg and Briana when they offer her one, until it turns out to be a trick to put a snake on her back. She's happy to still be alive when she wakes up after meeting della for the first time; she thanks Liz for saving her and hugs everyone, including Meg and Briana, even though they were mean to her. She immediately forgives her bunkmates when they apologise for the way they’ve treated her, even though last time they apologised, it was to pull that snake prank on her. She goes on the lake with Jan after they become friends even though last time she did, Jan tipped the canoe over. She feels bad when she yells at Della and realises Briana thought she was yelling at her. She thanks Briana and tries to hug her when she saves her from Della. At the end of the book, she says she’ll return to Camp Cold Lake next year to warn other campers against being Della’s buddy. She could have easily gone home and tried to forget all the horrible things she experienced, but instead she tried to save other people from going through what she did. It's a shame the twist ending had to ruin that.

I thought Jan, meg and Briana were way more annoying than Sarah. Sure, she might've gotten off to a bad start with them and made a few mistakes, but that really didn't warrant how horribly they treated her.

Jan and Briana get mad when Sarah forces Briana to give up her bunk for her because they wanted to be near each other, but they were still in the same cabin and could interact with each other.

Sarah revealing Jan's asthma was a complete accident, and she was actually kind of doing Jan a favor by doing so. Jan keeping her asthma a secret could’ve resulted in her condition flaring up at the wrong moment and making her get hurt because of it.

Sarah didn't really insult Meg's height. Meg was the one who complained about her height in the first place and Sarah tried to tell her being short wasn't that bad by saying people stared at her for being tall. When Meg angrily said being short /was/ worse than being tall, Sarah tried to agree with her, but for some reason, that also angered Meg. What did meg want her to say? I think Meg was being way more rude and whiny than Sarah in that instance.

I really can't blame Sarah for putting spiders in Meg and Briana's beds considering how horribly they treated her. I thought they deserved it. Criticising Sarah for doing so is like criticising Evan for hanging Conan to a tree in Monster Blood III, or criticising Ricky for putting Tasha’s phone number in the newspaper in Calling All Creeps! I don’t think Sarah is obliged to meekly put up with the way they bully her, unless you suggest Evan and Ricky are also obliged to meekly put up with Conan and Tasha bullying them.

And much like people loving Andy and hating Evan, I think it's weird how some people love Della for doing the same thing they hate Sarah for. They're both desperate to have friends and do crazy things to gain them. But apparently trying to kill someone to befriend them makes Della an intriguing, sympathetic villain, while pretending to drown to gain friends makes Sarah a whiny idiot. It doesn't bother me as much as the Evan and Andy thing because I do agree that della is an interesting villain, but it still seems kind of confusing and hypocritical. 