I've been thinking about Mollymauk, as I'm periodically wont to do, and the fandom discussion about him as a moral compass. Because the interesting thing here is, Molly wasn’t a very moral character. He was an unrepentant scammer. He had no respect for interpersonal boundaries and would deliberately push and break them. Generally, he was an asshole. As far as actually having a strong moral stance I would say Fjord was the standout of early m9, and to some extent Beau.
But here’s the thing: almost all of early m9 thought of themselves as horrible people. Fjord had been bullied so bad growing up that he still dealt with self-hate from it, and now suffered from survivor's guilt to boot. Caleb had killed his own parents. Beau, while she hated her dad, also had internalized self-hate and on some level thought she’d been such a shitty daughter she deserved his treatment. Nott was stuck in a body she considered monstrous. Yasha had survivor's guilt and knew she’d done bad things in her blank spots. Even when they did good, they didn’t think of themselves as good. Most of them were suspicious and asocial and faced the world with the same kind of distrust they expected to be (and were experienced in being) met with. (Jester was an exception, an agent of neither good nor bad but of amoral chaos)
But Molly was different. He was outspoken about loving life and people. He wanted to spread joy, even to people he didnt know or had even met: he slipped coin into people's pockets, hid a silver in a tree just so some stranger would one day be happy to find it. He openly cared for the party early on; was one of the first to step in and help Caleb when he went catatonic in battle. Above all, Molly had rules: where everyone else would agonize over what was the right or wrong or smart thing to do, Molly loudly proclaimed we don't leave people behind, and we leave every place better than we found it.
But the thing about Molly’s rules was, they were largely a cover. While the rest of the m9 thought they were bad even as they did good, Molly thought of himself as good even as he did bad. He scammed people, but made it a good and memorable experience, therefore thinking he gave more than he took. He charmed Nott and Fjord without consent, and when confronted would claim it was to help them. Out of the group, Beau saw through this, not because she was a better person but because she was a cynic. She saw that he caused harm, just as she did, and was personally affronted that he still thought of himself as good and tried to leave people happy, whereas she deliberately left every place worse than she found it.
I see Molly as a moral compass of the group not because he was actually any more moral than them, but because they made him their template. He was joy and brightness and he died trying to save them because it was the right thing to do, and they all chose to honor him by emulating his rules more than Molly himself ever did, because to them it was more than just a cover, backed up by genuine moral thought and discussion rather than small gestures. He taught them that it was possible to be kind of a shit person and still be good, to still love yourself and others. The idealized Molly they created never existed, and finally died for good when they resurrected him in the end and were met with a stranger, who they welcomed with the same love and care they would've expected Molly to show them.
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💜 happy intl women’s day to queer women, trans women, black women, indigenous women, asian women, latin women, jewish women, muslim women, women of mixed faiths, non religious women, fat women, underweight women & women struggling with body image, women struggling with addiction, women that have a complicated relationship with gender and the word ‘woman’, gender nonconforming women, women that use pronouns other than she/her, women that are unhoused or displaced, women that self ship, women that draw, women that write, women that create, and women that struggle to find their creative outlet.
happy intl women’s day to women in palestine, in sudan, in yemen, in the congo, and everywhere else in the world.
happy intl womens days to all women.
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holy SHIT put jonathan “if i have to let my undead wife fuck me into vampirism than as god is my witness i absolutely will” harker in the wife guy hall of fame and give bram stoker a medal of achievement in deranged horniness for this which i think amidst all the weird eroticized terror scenes and all the insane shit about body fluids and penetration is the first thing in this victorian novel i am well and truly shocked to find there. this is…….. SO hot, ESPECIALLY coming immediately after the most explicitly and specifically christian passage in the book thus far, i am genuinely amazed. everyone’s talking about god’s will and judgment day and sacred wafers and jonathan’s taking all this in and deciding: i choose fucking my damned wife into undead eternity. THAT is fucking ROMANCE!!!!!!!!
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