Gooseblog: Goosebumps #15: You Can't Scare Me!

It's time to get muddy and messy, ladies and gents. Because we got us a story today about mud monsters, scare tactics, and the most frightening thing of all, Mary Sues. That's right, it's You Can't Scare Me! AKA Who Do I Root For?

COVER STORY

This cover is absolutely amazing. Another one of Tim Jacobus' finest works. The bright oranges, the misty haze, and most importantly, the creepy looking mud monsters rising from the ground, looking menacing and deadly. After looking at this cover and Fever Swamp, I've come to the realization that Jacobus is really good at drawing trees, managing to make them look both realistic, and even scary enough to fit the aesthetic. We're in the golden era of Tim's work, and this is one of his finest. I haven't really mentioned much about the book borders, but when they're colored just right, they can really help the book. Case in point this one with the muddy yellow border works perfectly to accentuate the artwork on the front. Great foresight.

STORY

Our protagonists (for lack of a better term) are Eddie and his friend Hat. Yes, we're back to the Bird school of bad nicknames.They're part of a class field trip to the "clearly took a while to name" Muddy Creek, to check out the wildlife. They are more transfixed however at their annoyance of Courtney, the girl who knows everything, is liked by all the teachers in school, and is "me" in the book that you can't scare. She's also written to be a massive show off, constantly bragging about how much she knows about everything. She can even hold bees in her hand, and throw them at Eddie without them stinging her. That's pretty damn impressive. There's also Molly and Charlene in this story that also hate Courtney, so it's not just a gender specific hatred I guess. Good to see Jovial Bob got that ground covered.

They all bring up the legend of Muddy Creek's mud monsters, creatures that rise from the mud at night, looking for victims to drag down. They think that if Courtney's scared of anything, that might be it. But they dismiss it for now, since it's way to early in the book to test that theory out. So the four kids instead try to come up with other ways to scare Courtney. Their first attempt is putting a rubber snake in her lunch. Courtney however must have some sort of foresight, and gives her lunch to a teacher, who gets frightened instead. And Courtney, ever the hero, stomps the rubber snake to death.

We get another scene where Eddie fails to get a cat out of a tree, but Courtney once again makes the save. Eddie, feeling emasculated yet again, decides the next plan to scare her is to put a live tarantula on her head. Hat and Eddie sneak into the science lab to steal one, but when the science teacher shows up, the two hide in a cabinet, only to get stuck in there with a live tarantula crawling around. These kids are kind of stupid if you haven't caught on. Eddie panics enough to open the door, and the two recapture the tarantula so they can execute their plan the next day. They head up on a balcony, ready to drop it in Courtney's hair, but it falls on Molly instead. Courtney once again comes to the rescue, grabbing the spider without any ounce of fear.

Eddie is still stewing over the failed tarantula plan. So much so that he gets easily scared by his brother Kevin, who is dressed as a mud monster for a movie he's making with his friends. Kevin says that if he wants to scare Courtney, he needs to think bigger. This gives Eddie a dream where he's siccing a giant dog on Courtney that goes for her jugular. This... this is who I'm supposed to root for, Jovial Bob? The kid who is fixated on trying to get revenge on a girl so badly that he has dreams of harming her? What in the hell. So, this time Eddie tries to get a dog to attack Courtney. Eddie wants a real attack dog like a German Shepherd, but gets upset when the best they can get is a Saint Bernard. This kid has issues.

After a week of waiting for the opportune moment, the kids get the dog ready by covering its mouth with shaving cream to make it look rabid. They spot Courtney and release the dog, but the dog just runs off into the woods instead. Eddie searches but gets lost, only to almost be attacked by another dog. Hat rescues Eddie and the kids go off to search for the Saint Bernard, only to see that Courtney has found not one, but both of the dogs mentioned in this paragraph. Eddie is about ready to retire his plans to scare Courtney once and for all, but the kids eventually come up with one final plan. Lure Courtney into the woods at night and use Kevin and his friends as mud monsters to scare Courtney. It's fool-proof. I mean if it hasn't been made abundantly clear at this junction that Courtney is beyond fright, this should do it most certainly.

We do get a bit more backstory on the legend of the mud monsters. When the settlers of the town first started building houses, many people built their homes near Muddy Creek. However, the townspeople, a bunch of assholes, wouldn't offer supplies to the Muddy Creek folk. Then a plastics factory accident... wait, wrong book. Then a massive rainstorm fell upon the creek, causing the people living there to fall into the water and die. Legend has it that the mud monsters are those settlers, who rise from the mud to get revenge for the town not aiding them. Well, it's a better backstory than evil Nazi science camera.

The kids call Courtney about mud monster sightings to get her to come to the creek at night. After some reservations, Courtney ultimately agrees to show up. With Courtney and her friend Denise in place, the kids get ready to scare her. They also see what appears to be mud monsters coming up out out of the shadows. It must be Kevin and his friends right? Well, funny thing about that. Kevin and his friends arrive shortly after, saying that they were late due to a flat tire. All the kids (including Courtney) scream and run away. Ultimately though, Courtney returns to just bragging about how she actually saw the mud monsters. Eddie still wants to scare her, but he's just too scared to do so. Wah-wah!

CONCLUSION

There's things I like about this book, and things I really hate. I like that this book is slightly set around more realism than just being a book about the supernatural. Sometimes I'd just rather have a story that doesn't involve magic and mad science. With that said, I don't even mind so much that the most we get of the mud monsters from the cover is just a "but if you're here, then who's that over there?" bit. I just wish this book had a character I can root for honestly. Eddie is extremely unlikable, as are the other three kids. But him particularly. His fixation to finally get one over on Courtney goes from somewhat innocent, to hoping something terrible truly happens to her. It's hard to say I want to sit through a whole book where the protagonist is kind of a prick. While not prevalent, it does also feel like a sexism thing too. This mentality that girls are inferior and easily scared. So, having Jovial Bob quash that stereotype is kind of reassuring.

But, it's kind of hard to gauge how I feel about Courtney. I think Stine's intention was to write her as almost a Mary Sue type character. That's a term that gets thrown around a lot, mostly from people who get their nuts in a knot about a female character who's written to be strong and confident. Courtney is certainly that, but she's also written to know everything, be loved by everyone, and be able to control seemingly every animal that comes in contact to her. She's written so flawlessly that it's really hard to find something to latch on to her with and consider her a character worth following. If Courtney was written with some traits that weren't perfect and still written as a character that was scared of nothing, I think I could side with her more. But even with all that said, she's still the best character in a muddy lake of douchebaggery. You Can't Scare Me! is hard to enjoy, which is a shame because I think Stine can do more slice of life style kids stories better than over the top horror. I just wish we had a better cast to follow.

You Can't Scare Me! gets a C-.