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A review by jdhacker
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Meddling Kids was definitely not was I was expecting when I cracked it open, and in this case that's not a good thing. Even were I to disregard not living up to expectations, there are also some jarring craft issues that leave me baffled as to its popularity and success (besides what I'm sure is Blumhouse's marketing machine).
First, do not go in expecting an actual scooby doo, or in even scooby gang, style romp. It bills itself as that and as horror/comedy and neither is really fitting. Scooby doo and lovecraftian influences can be mixed to a great deal of success, as Mystery Inc. showed us, and a more grown up, adult version of those characters could have been a lot of fun. Though I do think a lot of current things playing in this space overlook the fact that in original scooby doo the gang was clearly in their late teens through mid 20s rather than stranger things-esque children. That's not what we get here. There's backstory about them as a scooby style troop in their pre-teen years, but by the time we pick up the story one of them is dead and the rest aren't really analogous to scooby gang characters (velma and daphne seem merged into one character and we have a non-anthropomorphic dog, but otherwise the characters seem disconnected from that mythos).
There's a lot of weird anthropomorphizing of one characters hair throughout the book that seems to serve no purpose?
The dog is definitely *not* anthropomorphized, yet we get occasional and seemingly random internal monologue from him, that also doesn't seem to be explained by the pay off at the end.
We have a hallucination, that insists its a ghost, that apparently isn't a ghost, but is also not effected by if or how much of his medication the hallucinating character takes, which feels nonsensical but also serves to make the entire character extraneous to the plot?
Culturally, I feel like there's some questionable treatment of LGBTQIA+ folks. Its great we have an LGBTQ main character, but her internal narrative and behavior towards others seems *very* male gaze-y and insists she's not a lesbian save for one specific character? Which feels like a combination of erasure and just being poorly written by a male author. There's also a lot of distasteful stuff towards where everyone seems to be pressuring that character to be trans because they're a butch/masc maybe lesbian? There's also a character that is repeatedly referred to as a 'hermaphrodite', but I'm not even sure its referring to their sexual organs?
On to the problems with craft...
Seemingly at random, the structure of the writing changes back and forth between a novel and a script. This includes stage and camera direction. Sometimes there is stage and camera direction even when its structured like a novel. There are also, again seemingly at random, offhand meta-textual comments about the structure of the text and how it relates to events which *sometimes* characters also seem aware of? This might mean describing or referencing an event that happened as 'it occurred two lines ago' or 'as we saw in the previous paragraph'. Maybe I'm too dense and there's some pattern to all of this that is absolutely brilliant ala House of Leaves playing with text, but I'm pretty sure there isn't and its just lazy.
The author also has a bad of making up words...not in a creative, Shakespearean, expanding-the-language sort of way but rather by just mashing two pre-existing words together an calling it good. Again, it feels lazy.
I have some piddly quibbles with how the action is written as well, but those are minor.
The positives I would say I had were 1)I think its got some great things to say about traumas and how they effect the rest of our lives, have the potential to change us as people, and the road to recovery. And 2) I think some of the minor, side characters were a lot of fun and a lot better written than our protagonists.
All in all, a disappointment that really misses the mark on what could either have been a very dark and grown up interpretation of scooby doo, or a very fun light hearted romp that either way I could have seen expanded into a series.
First, do not go in expecting an actual scooby doo, or in even scooby gang, style romp. It bills itself as that and as horror/comedy and neither is really fitting. Scooby doo and lovecraftian influences can be mixed to a great deal of success, as Mystery Inc. showed us, and a more grown up, adult version of those characters could have been a lot of fun. Though I do think a lot of current things playing in this space overlook the fact that in original scooby doo the gang was clearly in their late teens through mid 20s rather than stranger things-esque children. That's not what we get here. There's backstory about them as a scooby style troop in their pre-teen years, but by the time we pick up the story one of them is dead and the rest aren't really analogous to scooby gang characters (velma and daphne seem merged into one character and we have a non-anthropomorphic dog, but otherwise the characters seem disconnected from that mythos).
There's a lot of weird anthropomorphizing of one characters hair throughout the book that seems to serve no purpose?
The dog is definitely *not* anthropomorphized, yet we get occasional and seemingly random internal monologue from him, that also doesn't seem to be explained by the pay off at the end.
We have a hallucination, that insists its a ghost, that apparently isn't a ghost, but is also not effected by if or how much of his medication the hallucinating character takes, which feels nonsensical but also serves to make the entire character extraneous to the plot?
Culturally, I feel like there's some questionable treatment of LGBTQIA+ folks. Its great we have an LGBTQ main character, but her internal narrative and behavior towards others seems *very* male gaze-y and insists she's not a lesbian save for one specific character? Which feels like a combination of erasure and just being poorly written by a male author. There's also a lot of distasteful stuff towards where everyone seems to be pressuring that character to be trans because they're a butch/masc maybe lesbian? There's also a character that is repeatedly referred to as a 'hermaphrodite', but I'm not even sure its referring to their sexual organs?
On to the problems with craft...
Seemingly at random, the structure of the writing changes back and forth between a novel and a script. This includes stage and camera direction. Sometimes there is stage and camera direction even when its structured like a novel. There are also, again seemingly at random, offhand meta-textual comments about the structure of the text and how it relates to events which *sometimes* characters also seem aware of? This might mean describing or referencing an event that happened as 'it occurred two lines ago' or 'as we saw in the previous paragraph'. Maybe I'm too dense and there's some pattern to all of this that is absolutely brilliant ala House of Leaves playing with text, but I'm pretty sure there isn't and its just lazy.
The author also has a bad of making up words...not in a creative, Shakespearean, expanding-the-language sort of way but rather by just mashing two pre-existing words together an calling it good. Again, it feels lazy.
I have some piddly quibbles with how the action is written as well, but those are minor.
The positives I would say I had were 1)I think its got some great things to say about traumas and how they effect the rest of our lives, have the potential to change us as people, and the road to recovery. And 2) I think some of the minor, side characters were a lot of fun and a lot better written than our protagonists.
All in all, a disappointment that really misses the mark on what could either have been a very dark and grown up interpretation of scooby doo, or a very fun light hearted romp that either way I could have seen expanded into a series.