Baby-Sitters Club

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Fandom
Name: Baby-Sitters Club
Abbreviation(s): BSC
Creator: Ann M. Martin
Date(s): 1986-2000
Medium: Books
Country of Origin: United States
External Links: Official Scholastic Website
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The Baby-Sitters Club is a series of YA books written by Ann M. Martin. Spanning over a decade, the series ended up with over 200 books, and spawned three spin-off series - Friends Forever, California Diaries and Baby-sitter's Little Sister, the latter then getting its OWN spin-off.

There was also a TV series resulting in 13 episodes, and a movie adaptation.

In 2020, there was a Netflix series that updated the books' world for a modern audience. This included more character diversity (Mary Anne was now biracial, from a black mother and a white father; Claudia's sister Janine was a lesbian, Mary Anne babysat for a transgender child), adding more weight to certain story elements (Kristy's issues with her neglectful father and her mother's remarriage, Stacey being forced to leave school in New York after her ex-friends made a viral video of her suffering a seizure due to her diabetes), and the use of cell phones and texting to mirror modern technology.

The Netflix series received rave reviews and developed a strong fanbase, but was sadly cancelled after two seasons.

The fandom is active mostly around livejournal and dreamwidth, though recently a following has gathered on tumblr as well. Blogs have also come and gone over the years, either dedicated to snarking the series as a whole, or as a way to explore certain tropes and themes of the series, such as the outfits the girls wore, or the femslashy undertones.

Fandom

The fandom has always had a steady home base at livejournal, with the community babysittersclub being a gathering point for all forms of discussion.

bsc_snark is another popular LJ haunt, with community members picking the books apart and snarking on some of the more ridiculous aspects of plot and characterisation.

Fandom activity tends to spend most of its time in discussion, snark, roleplay and fanfiction.

The majority of fandom appears to have abandoned fanfiction.net in favour of other archives such as AO3, livejournal and dreamwidth. The most active fanfiction communities are split across LJ and DW, with babysitters100 being updated fairly regularly. The fandom also gets a healthy injection of fics each year during yuletide, and now and then someone will organise an exchange, challenge or fest to promote more fic.

Ann M. Martin revealed that she was queer in 2016, lending another layer of subtext to the femslashy undertones and the way the books described female characters with more love and detail than they did most male love interests. [1]

Shipping

With literally hundreds of canon characters to choose from, the potential for shipping is basically unlimited. While the majority of fanfiction naturally includes the sitters themselves, the past couple of years has brought forth several fanworks focusing on more minor characters, such as parents, siblings or sitting clients.

While the canon itself lends itself extremely well to the interpretation of f/f relationships, and fandom has responded appropriately, there is also a generous amount of gen, het and m/m fanfiction.

Popular pairings in fandom include:

Gen fic about the Pikes, the Thomases and the Spiers also maintains a fairly steady level of popularity.

While there may be a lack of fic about other pairings, fanon and endless discussion has occurred around pairings such as Charlie Thomas/Janine Kishi and Richard Spier/Elizabeth Thomas. Fic with these pairings does exist, but on a smaller scale, with most of the knowledge, discussion and acceptance of these pairings stemming from snark, discussion or roleplay rather than fanfiction itself.

Online Communities

  • babysittersclub @ livejournal | Discussion, resources, community advertisements, squee, snark and everything else.
  • stoneybrook @ dreamwidth | Discussion, resources, community advertisements, squee, snark, fanfiction, and a group read-through of the books.
  • fuck-yeah-bsc @ tumblr | A tumblr dedicated to the BSC as well as its spin-off series, including quotes, scans, links, fic recs and memes.
  • bscmemes @ tumblr AND bsc_memes @ dreamwidth | BSC memes created by fans and community members
  • The BSC Wiki @ wikia | a fan-created wikipedia detailing the canon and characters of the series
  • Stoneybrookite is another wiki site created and maintained by fans of the series
  • babysitters100 @ dreamwidth AND babysitters100 @ livejournal | A prompt-based fanfiction community open to all characters and pairings. It began on livejournal and now exists on dreamwidth as well. A newsletter with all fic updates is posted to both sites so members can stay updated with new fic even if they're only watching one community
  • bsclove @ livejournal | F/F fanfiction.
  • bscslashfic @ livejournal | M/M fanfiction
  • short_takes @ livejournal | A fortnightly F/F challenge community which, sadly, is no longer putting out new challenges, but still hosts a lot of old femslash fanfiction
  • bsc_fanfiction @ livejournal | No restrictions, challenges or prompts apply to this community
  • bsc_snark @ livejournal | Dreamwidth Mirror | A collection of snarky reviews of the BSC and Baby-Sitter's Little Sister spinoff, plus the occasional non-BSC Ann M. Martin book.

References
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Baby-Sitters_Club
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