Meet Molly

[osprey_archer]

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS, TERRIBLE NEWS. Well, okay, mildly unfortunate news. AMERICAN GIRL IS RETIRING MOLLY.

Molly, the 1940s girl who thirsts for glory and leadership and may someday achieve them if her tactlessness does not do her in first!

Pretty sure tactless is her middle name. When Emily the English refugee girl stays at Molly’s house, Molly is all friendly and welcoming and “Hello, refugee from the blitz! How about you come down in the basement and play fake bomb shelter with us! It will be fun!”

Emilly: O.O

Molly eventually realizes her mistake, and the two girls bond over their shared love of the two English princesses, only to almost destroy their friendship having a fight over Molly’s birthday party. They decide that it should be an English tea - only Emily, who despite being quite reserved is as stubborn as the day is long, wants it to really be a proper English tea, whereas Molly, though in theory enthusiastic about all things English, wants a proper birthday cake.

Molly is rather stunned that Emily won’t give in, partly because, after all, it is Molly’s birthday, and partly because Molly’s two everyday best friends generally follow her lead. Susan and Linda are all but indistinguishable, and I have the impression that - while Molly really does like them - she also likes the fact that she can lead them.

Molly, you see, is forever coming up with Plans. When we first meet her, she is trying to think of a way to convince Susan and Linda to be the ugly stepsisters to Molly’s Halloween Cinderella. This particular plan falls through, but fear not, Molly has plenty more! She wants to be the leader, the star: the guiding light to her class’s contribution to the war effort, the leader of her team in the summer camp game of capture the flag, the principal dancer in her tap class’s variety show.

This self-assurance - self-centeredness, even - is both one of Molly’s most winning qualities and her greatest flaw. Winning, because she has the talent and persistence to bring her Plans to fruition, and I admire that; but at the same time a flaw, because this is at the root of her tactlessness: she so wrapped up in herself that she often doesn’t seem to notice other people (and she positively sulks when she doesn’t win).

One of the things I love about Molly’s portrayal is that it does capture the duality of this quality: she’s great fun to read about because she’s always making things happen, but nonetheless this thirst for glory does lend a certain prickliness to her relationships with almost everyone in her life. She wants to be at the center of things; she doesn’t want to compromise!

But she does learn to compromise with Emily. In the end, they both apologize: Emily for taking over Molly’s birthday party because of her own homesickness, and Molly for losing her temper with Emily. It’s unfortunate that Emily and Molly probably never see each other again once Emily goes back to England. Maybe they could be penpals?

EPISTOLARY FIC. It could be a thing!

***

I have been thinking about American Girl against recently because there is going to be children’s and YA book fic exchange called fic_corner (the dreamwidth mirror community seems to be more active) (THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH EXCLAMATION POINTS IN THE WORLD TO SHOW HOW EXCITED I AM ABOUT THIS) and so I have been STRATEGIZING.

I think it is probably better to ask for fic about the American Girls who have been around longer (which, fortunately, tends to dovetail with the ones I want fic about...) because people are more likely to have the emotional investment to write for them.

Also the necessary canon knowledge. Caroline fic might be fun, but I am pretty sure I am the only person over the age of ten who has read her books.

Comments

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness, Molly! I loved her. (I had the Samantha and Kirsten dolls, but I had all the books for Felicity and Molly as well, and book-wise I think the Molly ones were some of the best.)

I would love love love epistolary fic for Emily and Molly.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I just need to think of something for them to write about. Maybe the McIntyres could send Emily's family hams and so forth, to relieve the monotony of rationed food in England after the war?

That is still not quite a plot, but it's a start, anyway.

[artemis_wandering]

How does one retire an American Girl? I stopped reading/paying attention in junior high. I didn't know they retired them! What does that mean? Who else have they retired?

Samantha was always my favorite.lol

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

When they retire a doll, they stop selling the doll and its accessories. They keep printing the books, though, which I suppose is the important thing.

So far, they've retired Kirsten, Felicity, and Samantha, and at the end of this year Molly is going too. A clean sweep of all the original dolls.

[artemis_wandering]

Ah, ok. I'm glad they don't stop selling the books! I was kind of concerned. Sad that all the originals are gone, though. :(

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Epistolary fic could *definitely* be a thing--go for it!

Meanwhile, Wakanomori and the healing angel are in the land of cream tea, and Waka posted this picture of a cream tea, which immediately made me think of you!

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/86761435@N00/9246533582/)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Look at those beautiful scones! And preserves, and...is that real clotted cream? I've used cream cheese as a substitute, but it's not quite the same...

The world always needs more epistolary stories, and I think having Molly send Emily food she couldn't get in rationing would be a good way to start the correspondence.

The big danger with epistolary fic is that it won't go anywhere - that the characters will send each other letters that are individually interesting but don't add up to anything.

Do you think ending with Molly breaking the news that she'll be visiting England (her dad was there during the war, maybe he made friends with his fellow doctors) would give the story enough direction?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ha! I am *not* the person to answer this, as the only feedback I got back from an agent about Pen Pal was that it was too slow for the first half and then veered suddenly to the too-dramatic for the second half. Which is to say, I'm not sure I'd recognize too-slow. To be honest, too, when it comes to fic, I just enjoy reading for vignettes and scenarios, so I don't really require a whole lot of direction. If it's you writing, I'm pretty much guaranteed to enjoy it.

Breaking the news about coming could be enough, though, sure. Or, if you're thinking about rationing, what about an arc that starts with Emily letting Molly know what it's like, and Molly then trying to get together a care package or something. There was rationing here too (I remember my mom talking about getting butter and sugar for Christmas cookies), just not as severe, so maybe the drama of realizing that Emily's rationing is a whole magnitude more severe.

.... I'm just thinking out loud. I know you're going to write something excellent, whatever tack you take and whatever events you put in.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking I would set it a year or two after the war - or maybe even later - when American rationing was over (although apparently sugar was rationed until 1947) but British rationing was still in effect. (I think it went on until 1955. I was astonished when I first learned this.)

And you're definitely right, Molly would be just stunned by the fact that Britain still had rationing - and how severe that rationing was.

I wonder how travelers got food when they went to Britain during rationing? Maybe they got ration books along with their visa stamps. Hmm...

[sarajayechan]

I know this is years late but I appreciate your take on Molly. So many adult collectors think she's The Worst because of her flaws but she's also a kid who craves normalcy and control and just wants her dad back. Her books imo were good about pointing out that other people have it worse without shaming Molly for feeling like her world's turned on its head. Kids can get agitated when things change for the worse!

But yes I digressed so back to your points: Molly's a natural leader who has good ideas and that'll take her far in the world, but a lot of her stories involve learning to compromise. Which is a good lesson for kids to learn.

(I also appreciate that she didn't get chewed out for 2+ pages about the bomb shelter business, she saw for herself that Emily was upset and realized on her own that it's not a game.)

[osprey_archer]

I think adult readers of children's books sometimes forget what it's like to be a kid and expect the characters to have more maturity than it's really reasonable to demand. Rereading the books as an adult, inviting Emily into a play bomb shelter seems like such an obviously bad idea, but when I was a kid I didn't see what was wrong with it until Molly figured out why it upset Emily. It was a really relatable and understandable failure to me.

And, more generally, I think this kind of "this character didn't deal with this situation in the best possible way and is therefore The Worst" really shows a failure of empathy, or rather a refusal to engage empathically, on the part of readers. There's no attempt to understand the characters, even in a situation like this where the problem is so clearly youth and inexperience, not malice.

In general I think the AG books are really good for having the characters learn things naturally, rather than stopping the narrative dead to lecture the readers. I guess in the Samantha books, Samantha does learn about factories because Nellie tells her all about them, but the framing is very much that Nellie is sharing information, not that Samantha is BAD for not knowing it.

[sarajayechan]

I think so, too. I have a memory like a steel trap so I haven't forgotten being a kid so I can still relate to the worse behaviors of kid characters, even the stuff that makes me cringe. (It's one of the reasons I like Karen Brewer even though it's practically a requirement to hate her.) And that goes double for kids who've led fairly privileged lives and don't know everything going in.

And, more generally, I think this kind of "this character didn't deal with this situation in the best possible way and is therefore The Worst" really shows a failure of empathy, or rather a refusal to engage empathically, on the part of readers. There's no attempt to understand the characters, even in a situation like this where the problem is so clearly youth and inexperience, not malice.

Pretty much! I've fallen into the same trap, admittedly. Sometimes it's a kneejerk reaction but other times people can read the same thing over and over and still declare the character The Worst for not doing things perfectly.

They are, yes. They save the purely informative things for the "peek into the past" chapters so the characters themselves can experience and learn these things organically.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I think almost all of us are going to run into characters who just hit our buttons for whatever reason, and even if the reason they do X annoying thing is youth and inexperience, if X is the most annoying thing in the world to you it's still hard to forgive.

But there's a big difference between just sometimes not meshing with a character, and habitually declaring characters The Worst for not being perfect models of virtue. Do these reviewers live up to the standards of empathy that they are foisting upon these poor benighted 9-year-old fictional characters? Given their inability to extent empathy to those self-same 9-year-olds it honestly seems unlikely.

[sarajayechan]

Exactly. I can understand people in BSC fandom finding Karen or Molly annoying because they dislike bossy people or wanting to be the center of attention as a character trait, but the way these people talk you'd think they were being horrible little witches on purpose.

Do these reviewers live up to the standards of empathy that they are foisting upon these poor benighted 9-year-old fictional characters? Given their inability to extent empathy to those self-same 9-year-olds it honestly seems unlikely.

Worse is when people like this go "lol they're fictional get over it" anytime someone points this out. Yes, they're fictional, so why act like Karen personally called their puppy a dirty name and stole their cookies?

[osprey_archer]

I wonder if part of it with Karen specifically is a sort of "Barney effect" - her books seemed babyish to readers at just the age (seven or eight) when it's VERY important not to be babyish. But still you'd think that readers could reassess this reaction as adults. (And there are a lot of characters where this isn't a factor at all!)

[sarajayechan]

There's also the fact that her appearances in the BSC books have her acting more like a kid due to being seen from an older POV. Some people say she's as bratty as Jenny Prezzioso, but Jenny gets groaned at while everyone fawns over Karen. I feel like there's some sort of nuance they're missing, though - Karen can be a brat but she tries to be friendly, Jenny isn't a bad kid but she comes off worse because she's more outwardly fussy and high-maintenance.

[osprey_archer]

Jenny gets groaned at while everyone fawns over Karen

It's true, it really helps when the book takes basically the same attitude toward a character as the readers. If a character is annoying but the book knows it, it's a lot more bearable than an annoying character that a book bends over backward to coddle.