Nice and Mean Blog Tour - Jessica Leader

Jessica Leader is stopping here on tour for her book Nice and Mean. I find it fitting that it would fall on Buffy Week. Read her top five nice and mean characters to find out why and then enter the contest!

Jessica Leader’s Top Five Nice and Mean Characters

I was so excited when The Page Flipper gave me this assignment to write about the top five nice and mean characters in books and movies. There’s nothing like thinking about a generous, loving character to put you in an “Awww, the world is a good place” kind of mood, and there’s nothing like thinking about a one-liner queen to fill your veins with adrenaline. Thanks, Page Flipper! [And readers, if you want to nominate your favorite nice or mean character, come on over to Jessica’s blog (www.jessicaleader.com/blog) You can earn points for her giveaway by having your say!]

Top Five Nice Characters, In No Particular Order

1. Torrance, from Bring it On

Torrance: head cheerleader, super-cute, hot older boyfriend (though he turns out to be a jerk)—could be a mean girl if she wanted to, but isn’t. Torrance has a conscience, and when injustice corrupts the cheer competition, she’ll do whatever she can to make things right. Go, Torrance! Go, Torrance! Go, go, go, Torrance!

2. Meaghan from The Boyfriend List series by E. Lockhart

Let’s be honest—there’s not much about The Boyfriend List, E. Lockhart’s novels friendship, scamming, and love, that I wouldn’t put on a Top Five list. (Ruby, the heroine, would get a kick out of this—she’s forever making lists.) But Meaghan is a fun addition because of how Ruby learns to appreciate her.

At the beginning of the four-book series, Ruby takes Meaghan for granted as the literal Girl Next Door drives who her to school every day with pop songs and Starbucks. Ruby also finds Meaghan clueless in more ways than one and so doesn’t count her as an important friend. As the series progresses, though, Ruby comes to see that while Meaghan doesn’t really get irony, she does get Ruby in some essential ways. Ruby also realizes that someone who is there for you every day is better than someone who is allegedly cool but blows you off for a basketball game or fails to appreciate your cupcakes.

3. Fraulein Maria, The Sound of Music (Does she have a last name? Von Trapp, eventually, but I think she’s much more interesting when she’s a last-nameless nun.)

The hills are alive when Fraulein Maria brings songs, feelings, and puppet shows about goats to some loved-deprived Austrian children. Who didn’t want to polka in public after Fraulein Maria’s Do-Re-Mi? Clearly not these 200 Belgians, whose flash-mob performance in the middle of a train station puts “Glee” a little bit to shame.

4. Frog, from the Frog and Toad books, by Arnold Lobel

When I was a kid, I would have said that I liked the Frog and Toad books because I could read them (they are, after all, ICanRead books.) But when I returned to the books as a teacher, I realized that Toad is depressed and neurotic, and Frog always knows just how to charm him back to life. When we spill our ice cream on the great sidewalk of life, we all need someone to say, “Never mind. I know what we can do,” and then buy two more cones.

5. The Convict in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

If you’ve read the book, you know why. If you haven’t, I’ve already said too much. Read the book. It’s great. No pun intended.

Top Five Mean Characters

1. Cordelia, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Cordelia: pretty much wholly snobbish and just does not care. She actually becomes more nuanced in the spin-off, Angel, but on Buffy, she was the source of pure self-centered delight. Even when helping to save the world, she rarely showed compassion.

Classic Cordelia: in “Earshot,” when Buffy can hear peoples’ thoughts, the Scooby Gang gathers in the library to brainstorm solutions (one, two, three—sigh at the hotness of Giles.) Everybody is thinking embarrassing thoughts that they try to cover up by babbling, but Cordelia thinks, “I don’t see what this has to do with me,”and then she comes out and says, “I don’t see what this has to do with me.” No filter. No self-consciousness. Refreshing!

2. Severus Snape (from the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling, in case you live under a rock)

Yeah yeah, Snape is noble and sacrificing. We’d seen that coming. Much more enjoyable was the time before this was revealed, where he laid wizards’ egos to waste with effortless one-liners.

Sample quote : “Oh, very good....Yes, it is easy to see that nearly six years of magical education have not been wasted on you, Potter. 'Ghosts are transparent.'"

Personally, if Snape had been my teacher, I would have kept a list of these in the back of a notebook. I mean, how annoying would it be to share a class with Hermione? You’d definitely need a little comic relief. Of course, there was the minor problem of Snape’s favoring Malfoy and the Slytherins, but maybe I’d have been a Ravenclaw, so I’d have had Potions with the Hufflepuffs… Okay, I clearly know a little too much about Hogwarts. I’m going to move on now to #3.

3. Massie Block, The Clique and its offspring, by Lisi Harrison

Another character who, like Cordelia, doesn’t have much of a filter and will stop at nothing to get her way, aka The Only Way. In my favorite chapter, she apologizes to an adult she’s wronged, and you think, “Really? Massie feels bad?” But then you realize she’s just faking it to steal the purple hair-dye that acts as a VIP pass (don’t ask.) Massie is shallow, controlling, obsessed with shopping and a bad friend, but for some reason, I can’t seem to pass up a Clique novel in an airport bookstore. She cracks me up every time.

4. Tyra Banks, from America’s Next Top Model and The Tyra Banks Show. Strictly speaking, not a fictional character, but she might as well be.

She may have done good things for dark-skinned girls’ self-confidence, and I’m sure she’s done her share of celebrity philanthropy (hello, she’s written A Guide to Owning Your Inner Fierceness. If that’s not generosity, I don’t know what is.) But what cracks me up about Tyra is that while she acts nice, I think that at heart she is a raging control freak and occasional bully. She actually is fierce, and it’s kind of scary.

Remember that time during the final two, before Tyra could deliver her judgment, one of the girls spoke up and said, “Actually, Tyra, I want to go home?” Tyra was pi-issed. She whipped out the winning photo with an extra flourish and snarled something to the effect of, “Ha ha, we didn’t even choose you. We rejected you before you rejected us.”

So, um, why do I like her, exactly? Maybe it’s the middle-school trouble-maker in me, but I get a kick out of seeing authority figures knocked off their game. Especially when they try as hard as Tyra does to conceal their inner lunacy!

5. House, M.D. from the TV show called…you know…House, M. D.

Dr. House could give a crap about his patients. He pretty much just uses them as a chance to solve problems—one of his many addictions. The few friends he has, he exploits, badgers, bullies, and tricks. Hardly any of the episodes reveal that he secretly has a heart of gold; if anything, they just show him to be obsessed with Vicodin, unavailable women, and being right.

Why the heck is this guy on my top-10 list? Especially when so many of his zingers are so sexist, racist, homophobic, or ageist that I don’t even want to reprint them? First of all, his zingers are funny; here’s a random clean one. “Who's here for a runny nose? (After a couple of people raise their hands) It's a cold! It will get better. Go home!” I would also add that his prejudiced humor is more making fun of others’ prejudiced attitudes than displaying his own (he’s an equal-opportunity hater.) Lastly, there’s just something so pathetic about House that I have to feel for him a little. Mainly, though, it’s those awesome one-liners.

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As you can see, boys and girls, nice and mean people are fun. And that’s who you’ll see on display in Nice and Mean, about two such girls forced to work together on a high-profile video project. Here’s a quick taste of what you’ll see in the book:

Sachi Parikh, Resident Nice Girl, Sample Line:
“Listen.” Tessa sighed. “I lost that pencil you lent me.”
“Oh!” I felt bad that she felt bad. “That’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” Her dark skin wrinkled in worry. “It was one of those nice mechanical ones.”
I tried to smile, but all I could think was Video, Video, Video.

Marina Glass, Class Mean Girl, Sample line:
“I had no desire to join the Grease cult. My friends had already started quoting the songs so often that I’d had to tell them, ‘Hold the cheese. This is not Burger King.’”

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For one week only, you can win prizes!

One pick from the box o' books (pictured) AND Nice and Mean related swag, including:

* signed N&M bookmarks
Swag of Nice Girl Sachi:
* Indian bangle bracelets (not as special as Nani's ring, but still important)
* Indian coconut candies (these are so good--you're lucky Jess didn't eat all of them)
Swag of Mean Marina:
* Dr. Pepper lip gloss (Dr. Pepper: the only drink)
* Pilot Rolling Ball pens (PRBs: the only pen)
* stick-on rhinestones (Yuck! Marina wishes you wouldn't mention these. The mess with Rachel is their fault!)

Who are some of your favorite nice and mean characters? Comment below for your chance to win. Please leave an email address or website where I can contact you. Contest ends next week!

Don’t forget to head over to Jessica Leader’s blog to enter the Nice and Mean Grand Prize Giveaway—aka, all this swag plus a copy of the book. Learn how to earn points by spreading the word, or win the battle of wits, where you get others to vote for your favorite nice or mean character in books, tv and movies.