WHO IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER YOU RELATE TO?

Crazy: holiday edition

I remember around 10 years ago there was a prompt circulating on Instagram, “Describe yourself in three fictional characters.” (This was back when everything went on the grid, because the grid was all we had. It was a simpler time, a time when the likes of Alex From Target could get booked on Ellen.) Anyway, I chose Homer Simpson, Rayanne Graff from My So-Called Life, and Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood. I still think this was a pretty accurate selection, as I am a lazy-yet-animated sociopath. But there was a character I forgot about, one that I have connected to since I was a little girl in cockeyed pigtails: Dolly.

Dolly (officially known as Dolly For Sue) is a supporting player in the Rankin-Bass holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Like most of Gen X I watched this movie every year as a kid; it would air once on CBS and if you missed it, you missed it. You knew it was about to drop when you saw this phantasmagoria on your screen:

Chills! Anyway, Dolly lives on the Island of Misfit Toys, a place where imperfect toys are exiled. There’s a boat that can’t stay afloat (same), a spotted elephant (cute?) and a pink fire truck (slay!) I know what you’re thinking, of course this bitch thinks she’s a Misfit Toy. This is exactly the type of Hot Topic-adjacent content we’ve come to expect from Diablo. I get it. But here’s the thing about Dolly, my Animagic avatar— there’s nothing actually wrong with her. She’s just a normal-looking rag doll, the kind I carried with me to doctor’s appointments and ten o’clock Mass. When all of the Misfit Toys describe their various quirks and imperfections, Dolly remains mum. (She does have a few lines in the movie, though, and her voice is disarmingly mature for a little doll.)