Characters from the Goosebumps novel Why I'm Afraid of Bees.
Gary Lutz
- "At that moment, I would have happily traded lives with a tree. Or a bird. Or a bug. Or just about any other living object on the planet."
The constantly bullied and tormented protagonist of Why I'm Afraid Of Bees.
- All of the Other Reindeer: He's a social outcast and a perpetual loser. Even his mom, neighbor and the family cat make fun of him.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: He wishes he had the life of anybody except himself and ends up switching places with a bee.
- Bee-Bee Gun: Defied at first, as he stops himself from stinging enemies because he's aware that bees die when using stingers. Then kicked into high gear when Dirk refuses to give him back his human body, at which point Gary whips the nearby hive into a frenzy and assaults his usurper with a swarm of angry bees.
- Body Horror: Due to a mishap, when he tries to swap bodies with a handsome local, he instead swaps bodies with a bee.
- Butt-Monkey: Hands down the biggest one in the entire series, and that's saying something. He has ZERO friends, his sister hates him, his beekeeper neighbor is a sadist who loves tormenting him with his biggest fear, and when he finally has a chance to escape his miserable life, he's turned into a bee.
- The Chew Toy: He suffers a lot of injuries, especially on his bike, and that's before he's turned into a bee.
- The Dog Bites Back: After Dirk, the Jerk Jock who has his body, refuses to give it back, Gary finally has enough and coerces his fellow bees into dive-bombing him.
- Description in the Mirror: This is how he describes his physical appearance while checking himself out at the beginning of the book. This is notably the only instance in the original series when this trope is in play.
- Deus ex Machina: He remembers too late that bees die after using their stingers, but instead, the shock of his sting somehow puts him, Dirk, and the bee back into their rightful bodies.
- Disappointing Older Sibling: His younger sister, Krissy, thinks he's a failure in the first half of the book. She thinks he's wimpy, laughs at him whenever she had the chance, and insulted him constantly. By the end of the book, on the other hand, she doesn't think he's that bad.
- Driven to Suicide: His life sucks so much that at one point, he is tempted to sting his Jerkass neighbor, at the cost of his own life.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Does he ever. After getting his body back, he becomes much more confident and popular, although he does retain some of the bee's senses and characteristics.
- Embarrassing Nickname: "Lutz the Klutz".
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: He is the Foolish Sibling to Krissy's Responsible Sibling, at the beginning of the book. Gary was highly afraid of bees, was a weakling, and could be pretty foolish. Krissy, on the other hand, is hardly afraid of bees in general, is pretty strong for her age, and is usually intelligent.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Dirk dismisses Gary's attempts to take back his body, believing he's helpless as a tiny insect. However, being a bee also means he's connected to the larger hive, and Dirk pays for that when Lutz summons the whole angry swarm to divebomb him.
- Not Quite Back to Normal: He's swapped back into his human body, and all appears to have been the same as before. However, he still enjoys sucking out pollen from flowers just like he did as a bee, which he does at the end of the book.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When he gets back to his human body, he is not afraid of bees at all. He shoos away a whole swarm of them off his bed and tells them to have a good time. He then looks back, and his parents saw the whole thing, and they look at him as if he grew a second head.
- Picked Last: This is how he gets treated with two baseball captains at the start of the book, being argued over who takes him. He is not happy about this, but doesn't want to leave right away in fear of being thought of as a weakling. Eventually, though, he calls it quits.
- Platonic Kissing: When he finally gets back in his human body, he meets his sister, and in his joy, he kisses her on the cheek, much to her disgust.
- Straw Loser: He sucks at sports, he doesn't have a single friend, and he spends most of his time on the Internet (or what passed for Internet in the early/mid-90s).
- Too Dumb to Live: When out riding on his bike, he spots Judy walking nearby and he wants to impress her, so he shows her riding the bike without using the handlebars. He wasn't even wearing a helmet at the time. Thus, he almost gets hit by a car, and he ends up colliding into a signpost. When his father finds out about this, he chews Gary out for being so careless.
- Took a Level in Cheerfulness: After his adventure with the bees, he learns to appreciate his life more.
- The Un-Favourite: Even his mom and sister seem to delight in making fun of him.
- Weak, but Skilled: Gary is smart, but a clumsy weakling, even before he becomes a bee. Fortunately his bee form is much more fast and maneuverable, which combined with his human mind eventually lets him overpower Dirk by leading a swarm of bees.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: As the title suggests, he's terrified of bees. Naturally, his neighbor is a beekeeper and a total Jerkass.
Dirk Davis
The boy whom Gary wants to swap bodies with.- Alliterative Name: Dirk Davis. Gary even thinks his name sounds cool this way.
- Book Dumb: Why he signs up for Person-to-Person vacations. He is bad at math, and wants to swap bodies with someone who is good at math so he or she can give him good answers for him to pass summer school. When it comes to skateboarding, however, he is a pro at it, and makes "Gary" popular by showing off his skills in his body.
- Easily Forgiven: After all the trouble that he puts Gary through by refusing to give back his body, when he's finally defeated, Dirk later approaches Gary in his own body to apologize. Gary accepts it, and the two become friends.
- Heavy Sleeper: Gary in his bee body is frustrated when approaching Dirk in his body and trying to wake him up. No matter what he does, "Gary" continues snoring asleep.
- Hidden Depths: Dirk is a Book Dumb kid who initially just wants to use Gary to get through his math tests, but it's suggested later on that he's not happy with his original life. He's also much more sociable than Gary and even makes a friend out of his cranky cat.
- Jerk Jock: What he was probably like in his original body. Also overlaps with Dumb Jock.
- Not So Above It All: As stoic and smug as he is when hanging out in Gary's body and refusing to hand it over, he is visibly shocked and scared when he comes back with an entire swarm of bees to defeat Dirk.
- Took a Level in Kindness: At the end of the adventure, he gains a massive amount of humility from what he's been through, and goes to Gary to make amends.
