I love Peppermint Patty/Marcie, but I feel like people are missing out on so much potential with Violet/Patty... 💜🧡
NOW TIME FOR ME TO INFODUMP ABOUT THEM BECAUSE THIS IS MY BLOG AND I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT BWAHAHA!
Patty (not to be confused with Peppermint Patty), Violet, and Shermy are the oldest of the Peanuts gang--if you look closely you'll see that they're just a little taller than Charlie Brown and the others. Patty started out as the token girl with Shermy and Charlie Brown, but once Violet arrived the two became inseparable: they opened a mud-pie diner together, became (somewhat questionable) older-sister type figures to baby Lucy, decided they'd like to become little old grandmothers together, and, of course, made fun of Charlie Brown.
As the first decade of Peanuts drew to a close, Patty, Violet, and Shermy had been mostly overshadowed by the growing personality of the rest of the cast, leaving them to become background characters. In a 1971 interview, Schultz explained that they were "straight men, only there to feed gag lines to other people." Still, while Shermy disappeared in the '60s, Violet and Patty remained into the final years of the strip, their last appearance occurring in late 1997--of course, together.