#ned vizzini

I know book!Christine is getting a lot of hate. And some of it I think is deserved: her first interactions with Jeremy were pretty rude. But like, I think there might be a whole side to her we’re missing out on. The story is first person POV, so it’s kinda hard to pick up on exactly what the deal is with the secondary characters. And I guess that’s kinda the point of the book: people are more complicated than you might think they are, they’re a force to be contended with, and attempt to manipulate them at your own peril.

Given that premise, I can’t help but notice some things that keep coming up for Christine and Jeremy in the story that kinda explain where she might be coming from and why she behaves the way she does:

( **Warning: spoilers for the Be More Chill Novel below**)

▪Christine and Jeremy have a similar need to bring order into their social lives: Christine through her “system of stages” for relationship classification, Jeremy through his “Humiliation Sheets”.

▪Jeremy is a loser raised by cool parents.

▪Christine is a cool person raised by nerds.

▪Jeremy is wired into what other people are saying about him and about each other. To the point of it being an obsession at the beginning of the story.

▪Christine is described as being in her own bubble, seemingly unconcerned with what other people think of her. (Until Jeremy inadvertently makes the assertion that she should, at which point she becomes resentful.)

▪Christine believes intelligence is correlated with success. (“Successful people are always smart.”) Jeremy points out an exception (“My dad’s pretty sucessful. He’s an idiot.”)

▪Jeremy assumed Christine is going out with Jake because of his social status, but she later tells him that his success as a student and leader was only one factor that attracted her to him: she was drawn to him because he’s a writer (of journals).

This is where I kinda go into speculation/headcanon territory, but it makes her character make more sense and it’s loads of fun:

1) Its possible that being raised by nerd parents reinforced in Christine the concept that social standing shouldn’t matter as much as it does. Intelligence should matter, competence should matter. And the fact that her father’s intelligence and competence have not been rewarded is supremely unfair to her.

The idea that what other people think is of suprime importance is something Jeremy (a kid raised by “cool” parents) takes for granted. Even when he recognized that it puts people into unfair situations, he’s quick to dismiss it as ‘that’s just the way the world works’.

2) Jeremy’s mom (the parent he seems to most identify with) is a successful lawyer. Quick with words, encouraging and supportive, but not necessarily the most perceptive when it comes to the emotional needs of her family members. Jeremy clearly wants to talk to her about some of his problems at school and tries to invite a more personal interaction, but she’s too preoccupied with work to notice.

Christine’s dad is a formerly successful computer engineer-turned-amusment-park-ride-supervisor. His preferred mode of expression is writing and his daughter seems to have become close to him emotionally through writing letters . It is possible he has difficulties with communicating verbally or maybe he has social anxiety because later on in his career, when he loses his job at AOL and takes a job closer to home, Christine and her dad seem to have lost a bit of the psychological intimacy they used to share through letter writing, even though they live at the same house full time now.

3) Christine’s relationship with Jake was at least partially formed with the hope that she could provide her with that, and it fell apart because he was more interested in sex.

So Jeremy confronting her about a non-existent letter upsets her because she’d really LOVE to receive a letter like that and she hasn’t. (She’d love to have the type of psychological intimacy with someone, the way she had with her dad when she was younger.)

Christine, at least, has some idea of what she’s looking for in a partner. Jeremy isn’t even aware, or can’t articulate, why he’s drawn to Christine more than the girls who are more physically attractive. But judging from the “furry” reveal, I think it’s safe to say that Jeremy recognizes that the expectations his body preferences/fetishes orient him to are unfair to women (because women with tails don’t actually exist).

But he suddenly there’s Christine…and she’s exceptional because he likes her exactly the way she is: as a normal girl (a winged Halloween costume doesn’t hurt, but it neither does it make her more attractive than she already is to him.)

I like to think that there is something a little more substantial to his attraction as well: the fact that she’s chill when he’s wired. Jeremy is slowly comming to recognize that there’s something deficient about his upbringing and the way he’s been taught to veiw the world, and now that he’s “not a little kid anymore” he wants to correct that. If that’s the case Christine isn’t just someone to attain in a relationship, she’s someone to aspire to be like.

On Christine’s end, I think it’s hard to read because she doesn’t display a lot of sexual or romantic interest in Jeremy (aside from a chaste kiss on the cheek she wasn’t uncomfortable doing in front of Jake). But for her, I think that would come after they became confidants.

And the fact that, at the end of the book, Jeremy is being so totally honest. Painfully honest. He’s even honest about the parts of the story he’s omitting/censoring! And the fact that he’s doing it in written format: in a method of communication that is preferable to her, that she has fond associations of…

She’s still angry, and at this point rightfully so, but as a girl with an expressed interest in psychology I think Christine would also be intrigued.

I think that bodes well for the future of their relationship.