Veronica has a GREAT relationship with both of her parents. On Mother’s Day she brings her mom coffee and takes her mom out on a Mother-Daughter date
Chandler is a mama’s girl. I can’t decide if she’s really close with her mom or if she has a horrible relationship with her but still wants her attention and approval
Duke isn’t really close with either parent, but she still loves them. She doesn’t really do much for her mom, but she does leave a card and a flower for her on the kitchen counter in the morning
McNamara’s mom is an alcoholic and left her and her dad years ago, but McNamara still made an effort by getting her stuff like cards and candy and flowers, but stopped when her mom moved away and never gave her her new address
Veronica buys everything that catches her mom’s eye even a little bit, she insists despite her mom’s protests
McNamara tries to hang out with the girls during the day, but Veronica either has limited time or has to decline though due to hanging with her mom
Chandler doesn’t do a whole lot for her mom, but she does get her candy. Though, she steals some as she cuddles with her mom. Shes rarely affectionate with her, but Mother’s Day is an exception
Duke complains about Mother’s Day and the marketing and items, calling it a “quick cash grab at gullible idiots” Chandler agrees, but snaps at her anyway
McNamara loves the marketing and items, wishing she could get stuff for her mom
Duke wishes she had a better relationship with her mom, but it’s really hard for her since her brothers tend to steal both her parents attention, leaving her with none most of the time
Chandler complains about Mother’s Day, saying she doesn’t get why they need to celebrate a natural part of life and saying “moms are careless bitches anyway.” She’s just bitter about her own mom
Veronica feels bad about the other girls’ relationships and such, but doesn’t let it ruin her own time with her mom.
In the future, in a Chansaw universe, Veronica’s mom doesn’t really like chandler at first, but eventually basically adopts her. Especially when she learns about her relationship with her mom. Either she feels bad that their relationship isn’t that good, or she notices how upset chandler gets when she can’t spend Mother’s Day with her mom. Regardless, she treats chandler like her daughter for the day
It would be difficult for chansaw to be more precision engineered to appeal to me, specifically, honestly. I could ramble for ages. And since I am being invited to, I shall.
Noting in advance here that my views on these characters and their relationship is based primarily on the original off broadway musical. Certain things might be informed by the movie (though not really other versions of the musical), but OOB Heathers is Heathers to me.
Individually, I am already unreasonable about these characters. Veronica Sawyer is the best part of Heathers, she's the icon, she's the moment, I love her, she's the best. What I love most about Veronica is her contradictions. She's so smart, and she constantly makes incredibly dumbass decisions. She's so good, capable of such empathy and compassion and courage, and also she fucking sucks. The opening song is her saying, "These kids used to be such kind people, and I genuinely think they could be again, now listen to my incredibly mean and bitchy opinions about them."
It's very real, to me. Everyone contains some contradictions. And the thing is that both those sides of her are authentic. Her compassion is so powerful that it eventually saves Heather McNamara's life even though she has tons of very good reasons to hate Mac. But at the same time, she's capable of judging and dehumanizing her classmates enough that she's calling them monsters to justify being part of their murders. She judges the Heathers and thinks she's better than them, but at the same time she covets their life and falls so easily into being a part of it. If the transition had been a little slower, if Heather had picked a target Veronica cared about less, she could easily have become just like them. She's someone who wants so much —love, protection, status— but is constantly in tension with her unwillingness to accept the cost of getting what she wants. It makes her a great protagonist.
Heather Chandler is an obsession of mine and I'm not sorry about that. I love her, she's the worst. She's honestly a perfectly designed character to put me, specifically, in a chokehold. The only way she could be more precision designed for me is if she were thirty-something and extremely divorced. (Incidentally, yes, I do have fic outlines where she's thirty-something and extremely divorced.) I love a mean queen bee, and I love a crass woman, and I love a powerful woman who tries to bring the women she's obsessed with under the umbrella of her power.
The thing that makes me most feral about Heather is that she's someone who is a product of her environment, who has made herself master of her environment to survive and thrive in it, and who, because of that, can never be happy. Like, as shitty as Heather is, she is what the queen of Westerburg has to be. Westerburg sucks. Every adult in Heathers is at best useless, and more often actively harmful. There is no protection, no support, no safety.
Except Heather Chandler.
Like, our introduction to the Heathers is that we're told they're solid Teflon, never harassed, and then we are basically immediately shown a guy fantasizing about sexually assaulting a Heather. The spectre of sexual violence is there from the very start. But it is true that they're not bothered or harassed, and that is because Heather is master of this shit-ass environment. As soon as Chandler dies, the other Heathers are immediately threatened by Ram and Kurt, because Chandler was the only one who could control them.
But she does this by leveraging their misogyny and her own objectification, just like she maintains her status by being a cruel bully, even to her own friends, and acts happy and vapid while reading complex, dark literature privately, and pretends to be aloof and annoyed with Veronica while kind of being obsessed with her. And, y'know, in my opinion, hides that she's a massive lesbian. Because that's what she has to do to be queen, to be in control, to be safe with absolutely no support structure. Even if it sucks for everyone else and honestly, sucks for her, too.
So, individually, I am unreasonable about both of these characters. But then on top of that, they have my absolute favourite ship dynamic: two people whose flaws are what makes them perfect for each other.
Veronica is attracted to someone a little broken, she likes a fixer-upper. She's willing to overlook red flags and stay with someone well past the point where she should. This works out not great for her in canon, but it also means she's exactly the type of person capable of getting past Heather's defenses, of enduring her attempts to avoid vulnerability, until Heather feels safe and stable enough to actually form a meaningful relationship. There is a human in Heather, and if Veronica is willing to let herself, she's capable of having empathy and compassion and even love for that human in spite of everything shitty Heather has done.
But Veronica also craves safety and protection and, yeah, status and comfort, and those are the things Heather creates. Heather is ruthlessly pragmatic, but she is that way in pursuit of creating the very things Veronica so badly wants. And Veronica lacks the stomach and, often, the knowledge and ability to go create those things, but Heather doesn't. A version of Heather that was capable of reining in her worse impulses and excesses is the perfect person to create the supportive environment to allow Veronica to be as good as she wants to be. There is, somewhere between the two of them, a possible synthesis where Veronica's kindness blunts Heather's edges and Heather's pragmatism creates a safe foundation for Veronica's idealism.
Also I just think they'd have really good sex. I mean, come on, Heather gets a bit rough with Veronica at Ram's party and half an hour later Veronica's all, "Slap me, pull my hair?" There's compatibility, is what I'm saying.
What does Veronica see in JD when she has a blonde, blue-eyed, truly feminine and beautiful woman in front of her, a dreamy redhead, and another beautiful blonde
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