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The Baby Sitters Club: Difference between revisions
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* Mallory Pike - wannabe writer who comes from a huge family
* Jessi Ramsey - the [[Token Minority|token black kid]], aspiring ballerina
* Abby Stevenson - Final and latest [[Sixth Ranger]]; Jewish, twin, asthmatic, athlete, prone to cracking jokes that are [[So Bad
'''Secondary characters included:'''
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* [[Bratty Half Pint]]: Karen. Dear god, Karen. Jenny Prezzioso is seen as such by the sitters.
* [[Bratty Teenage Daughter]]: Dawn has probably the worst example of this trope in ''Here Come the Bridesmaids!'' when her father is getting remarried. She all but pitches a fit because her stepmother-to-be doesn't want to have Mary Anne as a bridesmaid as well as Dawn. Remember, Mary Anne is Dawn's stepsister on her ''mother's'' side and is not remotely related to Dawn's father, let alone his new bride.
* [[
** They even ''assume'' that they will be taking a [[
* [[Butt Monkey]]: Poor Mallory! [http://community.livejournal.com/bsc_snark/39867.html Here's a list.]
* [[Character Name and The Noun Phrase]]: This series practically owns this trope.
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** [[Teen Genius|Janine]] and [[Book Dumb|Claudia]].
* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Kristy's father, Patrick Thomas, abandoned his wife and four children and almost never calls or writes.
* [[Do Not Call Me Paul]]: Stacey is not fond of being called Anastasia. Additionally, [[Last
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: The whole plotline about Stacey's diabetes and the associated stigma leading to her moving away from New York lest she lose all her friends. In retrospect, the series' origins in the late eighties makes it likely the diabetes stood in for [[The Disease That Shall Not Be Named|something else]].
* [[Drunk Driver]]: One of their classmates, Amelia, is killed by a drunk driver in ''Mary Anne and the Memory Garden''.
** Abby's father was killed by a drunk driver prior to her series debut. According to ''Abby's Book,'' his death is the reason their mom moves Abby and Anna to Stoneybrook in the first place -- to distance herself from the memories.
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{{quote| '''Jessi:''' I mean, it's like calling a restaurant The Restaurant.}}
* [[Extruded Book Product]]: What eventually happened to the series.
* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: The BSC were allowed to succeed ''most'' of the time, but once the problems got big, like trying to keep an autistic savant from being sent [[Off to Boarding School]] or reform a racist family, the [[Aesop]] was always along the lines of You Can't Make A Difference When You're Thirteen Years Old. ''Little Sister'' was even worse about this, with Karen failing at nearly everything she tried to do because You ''Really'' Can't Make A Difference When You're Seven Years Old. The only time Karen actually succeeded was during a [[Whole
** To be fair, it ''is'' unlikely that they would have been able to reform the racist family - the children did seem like they wanted to play with the other kids, but given how controlling their parents were, there probably wasn't a good chance that they'd be able to.
* [[Fan Nickname]]: "K. Ron" (after L. Ron Hubbard) for Kristy and "BSCult" have become popular on some snark communities.
* [[The Film of the Book]]
* [[Five Five Five]]: All phone numbers in this series begin with 555 (or KL5, to be more specific).
* [[Five
** Literally, [http://catandgirl.com/?p=1022 here].
* [[Five Token Band]]
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* [[Four Girl Ensemble]]: Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey in the first four books.
* [[Frozen in Time]]: The girls spent literally dozens of birthdays, holidays and summers in eighth grade. At one point Claudia was demoted to seventh grade, but the others stayed in place. They finally finished middle school in the last book of the ''Friends Forever'' spinoff.
* [[Full
* [[Funetik Aksent]]: Used for Jessi's ballet teacher, who is French.
** Also Logan's southern accent, the Hobarts' Australian accent, and any allergy speak.
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* [[Littlest Cancer Patient]]: In ''Jessi's Wish''. Other books had children with deafness, Down's Syndrome and autism. In one of the Super Specials, Stacey befriended a wheelchair-bound boy who was about to have surgery for a heart condition. May extend to Stacey herself, who was diabetic. In another book a babysitting charge has to adjust to blindness.
* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]: Many, many minor and background characters who changed with every book.
* [[Long
** In the [[Very Special Episode|Very Special Book]] that warned against drunk driving, a new character is introduced as one of the nicest, friendliest girls at SMS. [[Sacrificial Lamb|She is killed almost immediately]] in a drunk-driving accident.
** In ''Jessi and the Awful Secret'', we meet a new character, a girl in Jessi's ballet class, who is then revealed to be anorexic.
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* [[MacGuffin]]: In some of the ''Mysteries'' books
* [[Massive Numbered Siblings]]: The Pikes have eight children, including identical triplets. The Brewer-Thomases and the Barrett-DeWitts are also examples of this trope, although they are blended families.
* [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]: Appears pretty much whenever the girls deal with something weird. They usually get a mundane explanation that covers most--but not all--of what's been going on. Particular examples would include ''The Ghost at Dawn's House'' and ''Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery.''
** Also, the first book in the Little Sister series, where the only undebunked evidence Karen has at the end is that she saw the lady she thinks is a witch flying on a broom... and that might have been a dream.
* [[Meaningful Name]]: This is most likely completely unintentional, but [[Butt Monkey|"Mallory"]] is Norman French for "unlucky".
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* [[Naive Everygirl]]: Mary Anne and, to some extent, Mallory.
* [[The Namesake]]: The title club is sometimes the only thing its members have in common.
* [[
** [[Lampshaded]] in ''Here Come the Bridesmaids!'' where the narrator acknowledges that both the BSC and the W♥KC have a regular sitting charge named Ryan DeWitt, and no, they're not related.
* [[New Years Resolution]]
* [[Non
* [[No Periods Period]]: It's plausible for a thirteen-year-old girl not to have started her period yet, which makes a reasonable justification for the trope, but it's decidedly less plausible that ''none'' of them would have started menstruating by that age.
** Presumably it's not mentioned because the target age range for the books was a bit younger than thirteen, and they didn't want to freak out the kids (or their parents). One has to wonder, though, how it was deemed allowable to mention bras and bra shopping.
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* [[Playing Pictionary]]: It is suggested that one say something along the lines of "What a nice picture! Can you tell me about it?" when confronted with a child's drawing, because "you don't want to say 'what a lovely elephant!' and have it turn out to be a picture of their grandmother."
* [[Poisonous Friend]]: Ashley, who encouraged Claudia to leave the club and spend more time on her artwork. Also the "bad girls" group that Stacey falls in with later in the series.
* [[Protagonist
** The girls also viciously shun Mary Anne in another story after she commits the mortal sin of... getting a stylish new haircut. Everything's back to hunky dory by the end of the book.
* [[Pungeon Master]]: Abby
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* [[Shrinking Violet]]: Mary Anne; Kristy's little stepbrother Andrew is presented this way too.
** Charlotte Johanssen, [[Depending On the Writer]]
* [[Sibling Yin
* [[Sixth Ranger]]: Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, Abby.
* [[Snooping Little Kid]]
* [[Spin
* [[Spoiled Brat]]: Jenny Prezzioso; to many fans, Karen Brewer also qualifies.
* [[Start My Own]]: When the BSC goes crazy testing Mallory about whether she's a good enough sitter, she and Jessi start up "Kids Incorporated."
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* [[Where There's a Will There's A Sticky Note]]: Mimi in ''Claudia and the Sad Goodbye''.
* [[Wedding Day]]: Kristy's mother and stepfather, Mary Anne's father and Dawn's mother, Dawn's father and stepmother, two sitting clients, Kristy's father and stepmother...
* [[When You Coming Home, Dad?]]:
** Stacey's dad is a workaholic who rarely spends time with her.
** Abby's mother is like this too. Possibly justified to an extent, since she's a single parent with two teenagers to support.
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