Read It and Weep is a 2006 made for TV Disney movie.
When Jamie Bartlett is in a rush to send in her homework, she accidentally emails her teacher her "journal" which is actually a Wish-Fulfillment book about her alterego the amazing Isabella or "Is". The book wins a writing contest, earning Jamie fame and seemingly bringing Is to life to advise her creator and help her out.
But wait! Jamie manages to reveal that the book is in fact not a work of fiction but everyone is based off of people she knows, leading to everyone at school scorning her while Is reveals a distinctly darker side. Can Jamie set things right?
Contains examples of:
- Accidental Public Confession: When discussing the villain in her book, Jamie accidentally uses the local mean girl's name instead of the villain's, easily allowing everyone to figure out that everyone in the book is based off someone Jamie knows.
- Adults Are Useless: No adult seems to see much wrong with Jamie's new-found fame, even after the reveal about people in her book being based off those she knows. The only tension with the adults possibly comes from her quitting her parents' business and since the adults don’t seem to see anything wrong with Jamie’s life after she exposure none of them are any help to Jamie in dealing with the backlash she gets later.
- Alpha Bitch:
- Sawyer Sullivan, bane of Jamie's life, which leads to Jamie casting her as the villain of Is Saves the World.
- Is turns out to be one as well much to Jamie's horror.
- Deconstructor Fleet: The films manages to deconstruct a number of classic tropes as Is' nature is fully revealed, including:
- Author Avatar: Is is intended to be Jamie but better. However, Is can’t actually do the things that Jamie has trouble doing. In her book, Is can “Zap” the problems in her world away with no issue, but that’s only because Jamie herself doesn’t know how to solve her own problems in real life.
- Protagonist-Centered Morality: As a character made for Wish Fulfillment, Is cannot comprehend not getting her own way and sees any attempt to block her or even present a different view as bad.
- Self-Insert Fic: Shows what others think of a book when a character based off of you interacts with caricatures of themselves once they know. It's not pretty.
- Magical Girl: Is has powers that others in her setting apparently do not. This simply allows her to get her own way by "zapping" away her troubles, meaning she doesn't seem to get how to deal with people. It also kind of looks at how most teenagers would probably like to use such powers if they had them.
- Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Is is built to be Jamie's perfect self with a perfect life. Turns out this means she is also possibly the worst person to advise Jamie about real life.
- Informed Ability: Jamie's writing, at least of Is Saves the World. All we really get are scenes of Is "zapping" people away and is pretty shallow writing, even taking the author's age into account.
- In-universe with most of Is' good traits, since we only really see her using her powers or her mean girl side.
- Nice Guy:
- Connor, the only person to try and help Jamie after the fallout.
- Marco is also rather nice, but just not the right guy for Jamie.
- No Social Skills: Not only is Is not the perfectly socially savvy young woman her creator envisioned, but she can border on sociopathy due to being a character who was made to get her way.
- Single Girl Seeks Most Popular Guy: Jamie to Marco.
- Something Only They Would Say: Subverted. Jamie thinks Marco wrote the defense of her in the school paper since she's seen his work, but it turns out that was because Connor did that assignment for Marco and also wrote the article.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Jamie gets a ton of these once her characters are revealed to be stand-ins for people she knows, mostly from classmates who feel flanderized for misrepresented. Ironically, no teachers or adults see anything wrong with it.
- You Are What You Hate: Jamie is horrified to find out the Wish-Fulfillment character she created to "beat" the Alpha Bitch is just as much of one as her nemesis is.
