Yeah, same. It always left a bad taste in my mouth with Scanlan, like I was supposed to just write it all off as not that big a deal, everyone’s supposed to love the funny gnome forever no matter what he does, ha ha ha, when there were reasons it wasn’t funny and tripped some bad red flags with me. With Molly it feels more like HI I HAVE NO SENSE OF PERSONAL BOUNDARIES, which is its own flavor of problem, but it feels so different to me. Still dodgy! But less self-serving and less creepy.
Scanlan’s uses of it coincided roughly with his breakdown and disturbed me a lot. I’m still mad that he tried to pull it on Vex when he snuck back in disguise. What he did to Jarett in particular upset me. He also never properly apologized for any of that stuff. I’m not entirely sure he seemed to know doing those things was wrong, just that doing them made his friends upset and he didn’t like consequences. He had the power to do it, so he did.
With Molly … I still don’t know tbh. It unsettles me how readily he pulls stuff like that. He’s at least aware that it’s wrong, or at least that people will be upset about it later … but he does it anyways. None of the party exactly stand-up people yet though: they’re all working for a mob boss right now, most of them have criminal backgrounds or dodgy pasts. Molly’s had to survive with a face that often makes him a target of bigots; better to charm someone briefly in order to run away than get into a physical fight, so I get it being more of a survival reflex for him at the moment. It still makes me a bit edgy. I look forward to how the character will develop, and if he’ll view those spells as something repellant or not in the future.
Remember that time Scanlan gave Percy overly sexual memories of having a fun time with a bunch of nymphs? Thaaaat could have backfired so hard, was kind of before his breakdown, unless we count the breakdown as anything after Kaylie showed up, and was also never talked about again. Like most of the shit Scanlan pulled.
With Molly, it has been mostly utilitary uses and traceable spells people called him out on, at the very least.
Overdressed & Underappreciated 