The Princess - Violet the Elf

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.

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