Be More Chill

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This book is absurd. I love all the pop culture references, and I love how all over the place the narrative is. This book is so bad that it is good. I found this book to be really funny, especially all of the Keanu Reeves stuff. I really enjoyed this book. The book follows Jeremy Heere, his crush on Christine Caniglia (who he only likes because of her looks, as he has never spoken to her), and his discovery and use of the SQUIP. Now that you get the main idea, let's start with my complaints. Jeremy, the protagonist is a normal high school nerd that goes through life being teased and writing it down on his humiliation sheet. He happens to like Christine, but the problem is that Christine is already going out with somebody and Christine herself is hard to get. Jeremy hears about squip, a pill-size supercomputer that you swallow and he gets it right away. The squip teaches him how to get girls, do his homework, and even helps him remember his shakespear lines. This supercomputer helps him change from the weirdest nerd in the school to the coolest kid in the school. But is the squip really as perfect as it seems? Every character in this book "slutshames" or shames girls for being sexually active or having multiple partners -- this is a serious matter.

One thing that i really like about this book is that it has everything a teenager wants to read about. Well maybe this is true for all the boys. Girls can read it only if they don't get grossed out by the male sexual details inside. But still, who couldn't relate to Jeremy? Almost every high schooler has at least one crush and needs to find a way to get to their crush. They rely on advice. Who would have though that it would be a supercomputer that gives you all the advice you need? How unique is that? It is true, the computer does tell you everything you need. Even though this is a more visual format of storytelling, the squip has no physical manifestation in the graphic novel and I have mixed feelings about this: At the end of the novel, as you might expect, the boy sheds the chip/pill from his system and feels regretful of his actions. However, this isn't brought on by the realization of his terrible treatment of girls or his old friends, but by a freak accident that injures his new friends. And, he regrets the decision of taking the chip because his crush ultimately rejects him. Well, are you? Because, like, there's this pill. Yeah, it'll make you act, look, seem, sound, make, break, buy, sell, find, invent, STINK of coolness. And... get this, you'll be able to touch boobiesYou might have been thinking - wait, wait, as YAF shouldn’t this book have ended with the boy realizing he’s better off as himself, without the aid of a microcomputer telling him exactly what to say? No. No, that’s not the moral: the moral is wait to buy yourself the exact piece of technology that will make imperfect-you more perfect so that you might have money, friends, and sex. Its also cuts out a lot of objectionable content (like references to drugs, pornography, and self harm) so the story is more suitable for younger audiences. Thus, at the end of the novel, though the Squip is realized to be a bad and immoral influence on the main character, no comment is made whatsoever about his behavior with the female characters. Jeremy is just portrayed as a tragic hero.

He's not unnecessary--he's my friend. He could have all of the hot girls, but instead he only wants Christine: "That's who I like and that's who I want to be with" It would be epic, but honestly I'm so stoked and really looking forward to any graphic novel of this thing actually existing! Jenna went into her thing about, 'Elizabeth let four guys do her on the bus' and I had the balls to say to her what I've always wanted to say, deadpan: 'Shut up, Jenna. We know Elizabeth is like your Spider-Slut alterego or something.'" (171).Meet Jeremy ( Dear Evan Hansen's Will Roland), a nerdy high school outsider who just wants to be popular and get his manic pixie dream theater girl of a crush Christine (an over-the-top Stephanie Hsu) to kiss him. His first idea is to join the activity she likes, but the opening number, "More Than Survive," finds him singing, "It's a sign up sheet for the after-school play! It's a sign up sheet for getting called gay!"

Now, onto my second major complaint. The Super Quantum Unit Intel Processor. The SQUIP. The SQUIP (or squip) is the turning point of the book. The squip's objective is to take an uncool person and make him cool. It makes him be more chill. It does this by implanting itself into the subject's brain (via a travel through the bloodstream after the subject injects the pill that contains the squip). After the squip is in the brain of the uncool person, it feeds the person instructions on how to speak and act. This is a problem. The squip says that having a predatory attitude toward women, disrespecting your parents, and abandoning your friends is cool. Jeremy takes the squip, listens to all of its instructions and you can probably guess where it goes from there. Why is Jeremy so mean to Michael? And why did Michael just accept all of Jeremy’s crap? At some point Jeremy should have realised that the Squip is just a piece of technology and Michael has been his best friend for many years and treating him like dirt is just going to make him leave. Of course, it’s all explained that Michael realised what was going on, and there were no hard feelings, but that just takes the onus off of Jeremy completely. Jeremy wasn’t a bystander, he chose to do what the Squip told him, but the book ends up treating him like he was a bystander. The first complaint I have to say is that the book doesn't age very well. There are words and ideas that are very outdated. This mostly applies to what's considered "cool" and even more with what's considered acceptable. The reader is supposed to sympathize with Jeremy (and to a lesser extent, Michael). I had a hard time doing so. Both of these boys (and all of the boys in the novel, in complete honesty) are such insufferable douchebags, I don't feel bad about them not having friends. They are all incredibly misogynistic, as pointed out by many other reviewers. Michael even has a specific interest in Asian girls, which was off-putting. The ladies in the novel are reduced to nothing more than walking sex dolls. The only girl given a hint of personality is Christine, who clearly doesn't like Jeremy and explains to him that she'd like to stay friends with him. But Jeremy isn't satisfied with that, no no, because he's a cool man and goes out of his way to make unwanted advances toward Christine, even making her cry in front of 300 people, (but it's okay because the SQUIP told him to! More on that later). Along with the misogyny, there's subtle homophobia mixed in, too. Basically, what it comes down to is the fact that this book was published in 2004. This stuff was a lot more accepted in literature over 10 years ago than it is now. It's disgusting, yes, but this is how teenage boys acted, and some still do act this way. Don't even get me started on what is considered cool in this book. It's basically all of the aforementioned misogyny and homophobia, but with Eminem thrown in a little bit. This book ages like a bottle of fine milk. A girl physically harms herself due to mental illness, but she is portrayed as a manic-pixie girl. The main character treats her with skepticism, and just says, "weird." (196) End verdict: I think I (kind of) enjoyed this book because I love the musical. Had it not been for the musical, I probably would not have finished, let alone enjoyed, the book.Of course, getting everything you wish for, especially because of a supercomputer, is fraught with disaster and never turns out quite like you think it will. I mean, does anything turn out well when you let a digestible supercomputer take control of your life? Some guys are bullies, others are just there, like Jake, to add conflict and make himself harmless when the plot demands it. Be More Chill was a really funny book. This book is about a boy named Jeremy, who is the stereotypical geek in high school. Jeremy has a crush on a girl and he wants to become cool. Then he figures out a way to become cool. The way to become cool is to ingest a micromachine called a squip. The squip lives inside your brain and tells exactly what you need to say to sound cool in any given situation. Nobody pays much attention to Jeremy in high school, other than to make fun of or spread rumors about him. He's so used to this occurring that he keeps score of the insults and jibes he sustains in each class. The only person who really talks to him is his best friend and fellow misfit, Michael.

But Jeremy never pauses to consider the fact that he is handing control over his life to the squip. The consequences of this may not be what he bargained for. This venue has additional Covid-19 safety measures in place to ensure the health and well-being of the staff, performers, and guests. Jeremy has a crush on Christine, but of course she’s dating a popular boy and Jeremy will never have a chance with her. He can barely sustain a conversation with her half the time. But somehow he hopes that things might change someday.After a run-in with cool bully Rich ( Spring Awakening's Gerard Canonico), Jeremy is told he can be popular, too, he just needs to ingest a supercomputer in pill-sized form called "The Squip" (a funny, Keanu Reeves-esque Jason Tam) to instruct him on his every move. Naturally, things go south fast.