As stated before, I love the musical. These characters have an actual personality, for one thing. There is much more development of the friendship between Jeremy and Michael, and it makes a WORLD of a difference. Michael is my favorite character in the musical because of his role and my emotional attachment to what he goes through. As for the book, I don't think it would make much of a difference if Michael was never a character in the first place. It is INCREDIBLE how much of an improvement there is when the narrative is told in more than one point of view (though, I understand why the book was in Jeremy's POV to work for the ending). Another thing to note is that Jeremy's love interest is not as sexually active as other girls, and is often described to be different than the other girls he meets whom he respects very little, once again, enforcing the hypocritical view of sexuality between the genders.

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).Jake Dillinger: Christine's love interest at the beginning of the book, constantly having sex with hot people. The Squip, after an interaction with one girl says to Jeremy, "GOOD JOB. THAT'S THE WAY TO DO IT. NEVER EVER BE MEAN TO GIRLS, UNLESS THEY'RE UGLY. [...] SHE'LL TELL HER FRIENDS HOW GOOD YOU WERE AND WE CAN BUILD FROM THERE." (152) So, yeah, this book is sexist crap. A nerdy, lustful teen boy swallows a mind-reading micro quantum computer to teach him to become a cool womanizer. This plot was old when Jerry Lewis swallowed a serum to become Buddy Love. It's Cyrano de Bergerac tossing his heart and wandering into John Hughes' Weird Science. For now, we would like to thank you for your ongoing support and patience in these uncertain times.

RICH shoves JEREMY against a wall—) BUT IF YOU TAKE MY ADVICE AND IF YOU PAY THE LISTED PRICE, WELL THEN YOU GO FROM SAD TO INTERESTING TO HIP YEAH, YOUR WHOLE LIFE WILL FLIP YEAH, WHEN YOU BUY A SQUIP RICH I was hoping that this would break that formula. I was hoping that the attempts of hipness would be, idk, groundbreaking. I didn't want a freakin' modern day after school special. The Broadway musical Be More Chill was based on a YA novel of the same name by the late Ned Vizzini.

Critics' Reviews

On one hand it curtails #book!squip's character development, which is one of the most fascinating aspects of the original novel for me.

Be More Chill is based on Ned Vizzini's 2004 novel of the same name. The Be More Chill musical was first seen in 2015 at the Two River Theater in New Jersey. But it was thanks to music streamers that Be More Chill gained popularity, with hits like "Michael in the Bathroom" taking over the social media platform, Tumblr. What is just terrible about this book is that the author portrays and discusses girls and women as objects.From what I can glean from my first listen of the album, the plot of the musical was tweaked in several ways. I'm going to read the CD booklet to find out exactly what I've not been hearing. Regardless, some of the songs are catchy, and I can always fix them when I sing along in the future.