To My Beloved Royalty...

And here's the story of Violet.

Speak Out

Comments:

Amy!
*Guest*

Guest post by "Amy!"
...I kinda want a trinicorn.

Submitted April 13, 2014 at 9:53PM

yipelina
*Guest*

Guest post by "yipelina"
"That's why everyone was SO jealous."

This is going to get really dark really fast isn't it?

Submitted April 14, 2014 at 10:08AM

Bonnie
*Guest*

Guest post by "Bonnie"

Quote from Amy!:

Guest post by "Amy!"
...I kinda want a trinicorn.

.I most certainly want a trinicorn! Actually, make mine a septicorn. I gotta thing about seven-pointed stuff.

Submitted April 14, 2014 at 2:30PM

Ravenbird
*Guest*

Guest post by "Ravenbird"
This reminds me of a few complicated feelings that I had been through...

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 3:16AM

Being Useful
*Guest*

Guest post by "Being Useful"
You know, at this point, I'm sorta hoping that "Molly" was born "Matthew" and this is all happy and good.

Otherwise, this is a new level of creepy.

Also, how meta: A comic within a comic!(And to get really crazy, what if it turns out that Violet also writes comics, and is writing Eve's apple... which then makes this a comic within a comic within a comic within itself...!)

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 4:14AM

Ravenbird
*Guest*

Guest post by "Ravenbird"

Quote from Being Useful:

Guest post by "Being Useful"
You know, at this point, I'm sorta hoping that "Molly" was born "Matthew" and this is all happy and good. Otherwise, this is a new level of creepy

well this might be off topic but:
Sometimes the line between "Molly and Matthew" is not clear to draw. There are just too many possibilities.

But so far I think Molly just sees Sarah in so far as wrong that Molly thinks Sarah shows something like a fancy inspiering performance art.
(By the way, English is not my native language and I hope I'm not too hard to understand, many of these TG issues are so complex I do not know whether I could even express myself clearly in one of my mother tongue.)

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 5:29AM

SeventhMoon
*Guest*

Guest post by "SeventhMoon"
I feel sorry for Molly quite honestly, both in terms of her character in the comic and in terms of reader reaction to her so far. She's lonely and she wants to feel special, that doesn't seem particularly incomprehensible or awful to me. She's expressing it in a way that I think the creator has done exceptionally well-- a very honest and appropriate portrayal for those feelings in a character this age. Not every child can be really clever and precocious. Many are. But most are more like this-- outward transparency to their inner hurt or lack. Children (or even adults) who sacrifice self for a feeling of belonging are not exactly uncommon (anything you want to do! anything at all!).

Sarah has had some really wonderful role models and great people who accept her, support her, and both show and tell her ways to express herself sensitively and get needs met-- and where the author could have made this seem like a path to perfect happiness, she's instead shown that even smart and goodhearted Sarah has to stumble while she figures out what to do with that and how to apply it.

Other kids in Sarah's universe, just like other kids out here in non-comic-land, maybe don't have such a fortunate hand dealt them when it comes to their social and emotional success. I mean, we already know Chuck's parents are neglectful when they're at their parenting best and abusive most of the rest of the time. We only have a throwaway line from Molly's so far, but they didn't seem that interested in engaging her about what's going on in her life, or that concerned about where she goes or what she's doing. Are they really busy with something and Molly feels left out? Could be anything. There are as many ways to parent as there are parents, and we don't know who else is in her life either or what other challenges she might be facing (might even be on the spectrum). There's a million possibilities here. I wanna see what they are before I'm all "eewwww Molly she's so annoying and fake she's just using Sarah to feel cool!"

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 8:37AM

Z
*Guest*

Guest post by "Z"
" She's lonely and she wants to feel special"

Show me proof. I keep seeing people say Molly is lonely yet no one has pointed to a comic strip that shows her lonely. Post the link tothe strip that reveals Molly's loneliness. Based on the comic, she had friends before Sarah, she plays with kids other than Sarah, she hasn't shown any signs of loneliness. She isn't latched onto Sarah because Sarah is the only kid who's nice to her, she latched onto Sarah because she's transgender. That's the only thing we've been shown.

We're getting backstory now, but we don't know much yet. We can't really judge anything from the strip with her parents.

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 12:16PM

RachelN

I know I've described Molly as "stalkerish" before. Maybe that's hyperbole, but it's easy for a person to make the mistake of ascribing adult motives to these characters. They're kids, but comic-strip kids in the "Peanuts" vein: at times like actual children, and at times profound beyond their years. So I suppose some of us aren't sure how we're supposed to view them.

I genuinely feel for Molly, I really do. There's just something "off" with her that goes beyond a child's normal desire to fit in. I feel as you do,SeventhMoon, that even based on what little we know, she's probably not getting much attention from family. I don't think she's necessarily using Sarah to feel cool, but she must feel she has no personality of her own, and therefore has to adopt someone else's.

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 12:25PM

Ravenbird
*Guest*

Guest post by "Ravenbird"
Perhaps many of us are really just jealous of Molly because Irma was (until now) always the cooler side kick in this comic.

Ok I'll give her a chance.

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 2:30PM

SeventhMoon
*Guest*

Guest post by "SeventhMoon"
Z- I don't recall seeing her play with other kids. She was standing next to Felix once and talking to him, and aside from that she hasn't been around kids other than Sarah and Irma/Irving in the context of the comic. The loneliness, however, is evident in most of her lines. You could try to argue that an insecure child who is latching onto others to prop up her own frail self-image isn't lonely, but I don't believe that. One doesn't need to be isolated to be lonely.

RachelN, that's a good point. It's kinda hard sometimes to not look at it from a more adult perspective. I mean I do get it that behavior such as Molly is displaying is not easy for others to deal with and is not healthy, and most people don't have patience for that bull past a certain age unless they themselves have issues.

I dunno, I guess it's just weird to me that we can have the compassion and understanding to feel sympathetic towards a girl who beaned Sarah with a rock, but when faced with a girl who is clearly insecure and courting Sarah's favor, we're ascribing manipulation that hasn't even happened yet. She may never be a super-likable character, and I mean for all I know she'll be the ultimate archvillain of the strip but seriously, for now all I see is a kid who may or may not have social dysfunction of some kind and obviously has crummy self-esteem, in the context of a comic strip where it's already been shown the author prefers to make characters well rounded and human and flawed-- I'm not saying anybody has to love her, I'm just not seeing a reason to crown her Mistress of Evil yet is all. To me it seems like "Molly is probably a wicked user-type who will suck Sarah's soul out through a straw" is one of the less likely scenarios. Also frankly I don't think Molly's sophisticated enough for that kind of underhandedness, she really seems pretty obvious, she's got her cards laid right out with the "I think transgender is super cool and I want to be around something cool like that" shtick.

There's not evidence yet she's going to be any kind of good friend for Sarah and the other kids to have. But neither do I see evidence she's a bad person or not deserving of better than sneering that she's a Tumblr drama-llama waiting to happen. And all the characters seem to be learning as they go, so frankly, I think that even if she gets worse before she gets better there's hope for Molly as the strip progresses. I'm intrigued by this. Conflict is the heart of story, and not all conflict is the direct, obvious, all good/all bad bean-someone-with-a-rock kind.

Basically I'm just really pleased with the characters and storytelling in this strip-- even Molly. I can get why people might have bad associations and be inclined not to like her. That does make sense. I just have known people like a lot of the people in this strip, including Molly and Penny, and have felt for them, even sometimes while disliking them. Humanity is complicated like that.

And I love the trinicorn. XD

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 3:09PM

Being Useful
*Guest*

Guest post by "Being Useful"
Loneliness isn't indicated. She didn't go "oh, we could be friends" after meeting Sarah, she went "OMG, A TRANNY!" the second she learned one existed near her.

Penny we can understand the pain and feeling for, she's acting out because she has no love or support. Sarah is easy to blame for her problems, and Penny, being Chuck's sister, and Chuck, being Sarah's former good friend, likely feels somewhat betrayed by the fact that this person who she's most likely played with before is either lying to her and her brother now or was lying to them before.

Molly, on the other hand, clearly has enough parenting going on to know what a transgender person is, and she's taken it to an extreme. It's like finding a really shiny rock or a cool new toy. She doesn't seem to think of Sarah as a real person, but rather some sort of new toy. The hate for Molly is generated by that fact in a two-fold way: Firstly, she's treating Sarah as an object/play thing, rather than another person; that's rather upsetting and offensive by itself. Secondly, when children grow bored or upset with their toys, they tend to break them, so we're just sitting here, waiting for her to do exactly that: Break her new toy.

So far as "we haven't seen her playing", well, we haven't seen many of the children playing. Do we assume they're all lonely? We've met less than a dozen in a social setting that's indicated to have hundreds.

Molly's a bit of a spoiled brat(she can afford to get shinier/better costumes than Sarah, whose mother is a VP at a bank!), and we're just watching with bated breath as she looney tunes her way through this.

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 4:44PM

Ranthog
*Guest*

Guest post by "Ranthog"
Molly's behavior seems to me to be terribly socially awkward more than anything else. She doesn't seem to pick up on social cues and certainly violates a number of social norms with her behavior. We've seen her have concern for others though, such as Sarah having a good time while playing.

I'm not sure Molly really understands what being transgender means in a meaningful way.

Submitted April 15, 2014 at 7:30PM

*Guest*

Guest post by "Anonymous"
It's also possible that she merely saw references to transgender people on something like the Jerry Springer Show. I mean, these are rather young children we're being shown here. They're not always going to be very socially aware or good at moderating their reactions because they're still very young.

Submitted April 16, 2014 at 1:00PM

Pinkbatmax

So much great discussion! It's humbling that you're so passionate about the comic to discuss it so enthusiastically. Thank you!

Submitted April 17, 2014 at 10:13AM

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