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UnevenEdge

Why doesn’t anyone talk about the tragedy that is Peppermint Patty?


Still Me

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you know, the Charlie Brown character?

charlie brown is the walking talking punchline for all the kids in the neighborhood. He’s always wanting to be loved and accepted, but consistently fucks up. And when he finally gets bullied to the point he just walks away, the kids do make right, but they still treat him like shit. Which makes him sad, pathetic, and endearing. 
 

but what about peppermint patty? 
 

she always flirts with him regardless of how the other kids treat him. She enjoys his company and always makes an effort to make “chuck” feel better. Mind you she does force herself upon him, and she has a domineering personality, but she always reaches out to him. Yet at every turn she is always disregarded by him, even pushed away. To be shunned by the kid shunned by everyone else has got to fucking hurt. I assume that she reaches out to her lesbian friend Marcy for support. And for that matter what about Marcy?

the only person she talks to is peppermint patty. She’s a “disappear into the background” person. So does she only talk to PP because she’s in love with her? Or because she believes that PP will protect her from the ignorance of others? To potentially gain some of PPs courage and don’t care attitude to find the strength to live her truth?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

tl;dr: I’ve been having a rough couple of months and it’s not about to get easier so I’m hyper analyzing a fucking cartoon.

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I always took it that there are different aged kids.  Linus is younger than his sister Lucy.  I always thought Marcy was around Linus's age and Lucy at Charlie & Peppermint Patty's age.  Charlie's sister Sally is Linus & Marcy's age.  Violet and the other Patty (who are barely shown in later comics) are older than Charlie.

My take always was that the younger the character, the more innocence they portrayed and therefore attached themselves to one of the older characters.  Linus to Charlie, Marcy to P. Patty.

As much as Charlie gets dumped on, particularly by Lucy, she still hangs around him a lot.

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1 minute ago, scoobdog said:

I don't know if you want to be psychoanalysing Charles Schultz's work.  Most of the girls in Peanuts represent an aspect of his troubled relationship with his ex wife, so there's an undercurrent of misogyny to Charlie Brown's dealing with them.

Not entirely.  The little Red Headed Girl was actually someone from his childhood that he had a crush on.  I picked up on a lot of stuff from my Mom having a ton of Snoopy stuff - to the point that she sent Schultz a picture of all the music boxes, watches, etc. after he retired.  He autographed a book for her (which he purportedly no longer honored such requests).

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2 minutes ago, tsar4 said:

Not entirely.  The little Red Headed Girl was actually someone from his childhood that he had a crush on.  I picked up on a lot of stuff from my Mom having a ton of Snoopy stuff - to the point that she sent Schultz a picture of all the music boxes, watches, etc. after he retired.  He autographed a book for her (which he purportedly no longer honored such requests).

Most, not all.  But even the little red headed girl is problematic.  I recall her real life counterpart being interviewed in a documentary about his life, and she was somewhat ambivalent about him in the interview.  He spent most of his life feeling invisible, and that had a damaging effect on all of his relationships.

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I don't know who needs to hear this but Peppermint Patty and Marcy were in the same class.

But as far as the OP goes, I can't recall any outright "shunning" that Chuck did to PP but I havent read peanuts in decades outside of the occassional Sunday paper that showed up when I was out at Dragon, but to me it always seemed like she was just another boy pal to him...not unlike Schroeder....Their relationship was never one of urgency to the series....She was almost more if a spinoff character.....Like "ok, we broke up the Charlie bs with some Snoopy and Woodstock, let's toss in a small PP/Marcy arc, or maybe cut to that kid that always was on the back of his mom's bike."....

 

Was that Linus?

Edited by cyberbully
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6 minutes ago, cyberbully said:

I don't know who needs to hear this but Peppermint Patty and Marcy were in the same class.

But as far as the OP goes, I can't recall any outright "shunning" that Chuck did to PP but I havent read peanuts in decades outside of the occassional Sunday paper that showed up when I was out at Dragon, but to me it always seemed like she was just another boy pal to him...not unlike Schroeder....Their relationship was never one of urgency to the series....She was almost more if a spinoff character.....Like "ok, we broke up the Charlie bs with some Snoopy and Woodstock, let's toss in a small PP/Marcy arc, or maybe cut to that kid that always was on the back of his mom's bike."....

 

Was that Linus?

Yeah that was early Linus.  Charlie was pretty much oblivious to P. Patty's hints, not shunning.  

I could have sworn that there was a larger version of the below, possibly posted on these boards.  It seemed like it listed a number of the girls having crushes on Charlie.

image.png.2d300fc560dd88de42498eccb22904d5.png

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1 hour ago, tsar4 said:

I always took it that there are different aged kids.  Linus is younger than his sister Lucy.  I always thought Marcy was around Linus's age and Lucy at Charlie & Peppermint Patty's age.  Charlie's sister Sally is Linus & Marcy's age.  Violet and the other Patty (who are barely shown in later comics) are older than Charlie.

My take always was that the younger the character, the more innocence they portrayed and therefore attached themselves to one of the older characters.  Linus to Charlie, Marcy to P. Patty.

As much as Charlie gets dumped on, particularly by Lucy, she still hangs around him a lot.

Well I don’t think that she has much of a choice. Because her brother hangs with Charlie all the time

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1 hour ago, cyberbully said:

I don't know who needs to hear this but Peppermint Patty and Marcy were in the same class.

But as far as the OP goes, I can't recall any outright "shunning" that Chuck did to PP but I havent read peanuts in decades outside of the occassional Sunday paper that showed up when I was out at Dragon, but to me it always seemed like she was just another boy pal to him...not unlike Schroeder....Their relationship was never one of urgency to the series....She was almost more if a spinoff character.....Like "ok, we broke up the Charlie bs with some Snoopy and Woodstock, let's toss in a small PP/Marcy arc, or maybe cut to that kid that always was on the back of his mom's bike."....

 

Was that Linus?

I’m not just looking at the written work. I mean look at the thanksgiving movie. Or, the newest iteration, the peanuts movie..

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18 minutes ago, Still Me said:

Well I don’t think that she has much of a choice. Because her brother hangs with Charlie all the time

I think that's more that she can bully those two and that Violet & the older Patty were abandoned.  P. Patty wouldn't be the type to be pushed around by Lucy and P. Patty would stick up for Marcie.

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10 hours ago, Still Me said:

Well I don’t think that she has much of a choice. Because her brother hangs with Charlie all the time

Lucy is a classic bully.  She would gravitate toward a guy like Charlie regardless of who he hangs with because he fills a void in her personality.

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