Why I don’t want new Heathers
So, the new Heathers looks diverse, right? There’s a person of color, a trans girl, and Heather Chandler is not conventionally attractive. That’s good, right? No.
Here’s the thing about the Heathers: As much as I fucking adore Heather Chandler and Heather McNamara, the Heathers are villains. The entire point of Heathers is that the title characters are so terrible that JD gets into a self-righteous tizzy about murdering them and Veronica doesn’t care so much when one dies. They’re so terrible that the audience has to stop and ask whether they care that Heather died.
Additionally, the Heathers’ entire thing is that they look a lot alike - same walk, same/similar hairstyle, same clothes - and sound a lot alike. They stick their heads so far up their own asses that they willfully deny the personhood of folks who don’t look like them.
To be perfectly frank, as a trans girl, I know exactly how the Heathers would treat me. And it wouldn’t be fashion tips, shoes, shopping, or letting me into their gang - not unless I passed and they simply didn’t learn that I’m not cis. And when they did learn, they’d hold that over me, invent cruel jokes, blackmail me, or simply make me a laughingstock in front of the school for their personal amusement. There wouldn’t be any of Heather Duke looking like she does in the trailer we have.
Making Veronica and JD straight and white - and they seem to be in this new series - and the targets of their murder spree being the diverse kids who are mean to them is an ass-backward kind of bigoted propaganda I’d expect to see out of 1989. If the entire cast were diverse, it would be different, but frankly everyone being white and straight would be better than this.
How would I do it? Like this.
Heather Chandler is white and straight - she epitomizes everything toxic associated with 16 year old white girls in high school - white feminist, racist, transphobic, exclusionary, simply fucking cruel to anyone she can lash out at - but is clearly going through her own issues with associating all of her power with her body and men’s interest in it. She’s awful, but she’s just 16 - she has a lot to learn, and could be a decent person someday.
Heather Duke is white and bi, but really wants to be Heather Chandler. She copies Chandler’s movements, facial expressions, hair style...and the way Chandler treats other people. She was friends with Martha Dunnstock once upon a time, and observing how Chandler treats overweight women is a reason for Duke’s issues with bulimia. Duke doesn’t consider lesbianism to be valid for a myriad of reasons, and reacts to women she likes by treating them much worse - this comes into play with Heather M. especially.
Heather McNamara is a straight white autistic trans girl. She keeps two of those statuses - autistic, trans - secret, having (correctly) intuited that the other Heathers would turn on her immediately. She follows the Heathers around because they’re goddamn tough, and being shit on by Chandler and Duke is better than being shit on by the entire school. Her assholery through the series is performative - she’d rather shove someone else off a cliff than be shoved herself. In a lot of ways, she’s cripplingly afraid of what she thinks might come to pass.
Martha Dunnstock remains largely the same - she’s straight, cis, not conventionally attractive, and most of the school shits on her for that, though a lot of them are performing to keep the approval of the Heathers and the jocks. I would keep Martha as the composite character from the musical, so this is Veronica’s upbeat best friend. They drift apart as the series goes on and Veronica bows to pressure to treat Martha badly.
Veronica Sawyer is a black, bi woman. She doesn’t “fit in” with the Heathers well, but Veronica buys entry with her talent at forgery and willingness to kiss Chandler’s ass. Veronica has no personal hangups with her sexuality, but keeps it secret. Veronica has a heart and regrets what being with the Heathers means doing, but she’s not willing to give up the safety of being near the toughest women in school.
Jason Dean (JD) is a straight white guy who wears a trench coat, worships slushies, quotes old books without understanding them, has an undeservedly high opinion of himself, and doesn’t believe that people change over time. He’s also an entitled rapey psychopath Veronica misinterprets as deep and conflicted, and frankly it’d probably be better if someone else wrote JD.
Frankly I’m too out of energy to do Kurt, Ram, and teachers and parents right now. Or to discuss Betty Finn.