@metagasm820

11 months ago

So I'm a parent and someone who experienced trauma as a child. And I find it tragically funny that society can't handle depictions of children being evil/manipulative, when it's painfully common that children who come forward to authority figures about abuse that they've suffered at the hands of adults or other deep problems that they need support to navigate is dismissed as lying for attention or some other such manipulation. These are just some examples of how adults regard children with distrust when much of the time they're trying to express their needs and figure out how to be human beings. I feel like these two problems are related. Children are products of the adults around them, but only when it's convenient for the adults. Otherwise the adults shrug their shoulders and are like, "i dOn'T KnoW wHeRe hE/sHe gETs thAT fRoM???" They want to think that everything that's "wrong" with children just comes out of nowhere, (unless of course it presents an opportunity to blame/judge that child's family without actually offering support) and that bad things that happen to them serve the purpose of "teaching them a lesson." Children need guidance and support. They NEED it. They need someone in who truly has their best interests at heart, in terms both of unconditional love and accountability, to grow up functional and healthy. And yes all people, including children, are capable of bad things and even outright evil. But denying them their basic needs and rights as human beings for the sake of convenience (or worse, subjugation) is just cultivating that potential to its full fruition. We see this in Rule of Rose: these girls are left entirely to their own devices in this orphanage with no guidance from people who actually care about them and worse, people that abuse them. I feel like that's the entire point, as it is with Lord of the Flies. They see the pecking order that parents and authority figures model in front of them and internalize it. Then they're given free reign to do whatever they please with the morals and social understandings that have been demonstrated to them. That makes it rewarding to be the horrible person that you might already have a disposition toward in the first place. For children it's an uphill battle to be a good person because parents and authority figures can't be bothered to do their goddamn jobs. And those that actually care have more often than not been denied adequate support and resources to improve the situation and foster a healthy environment for their charges. The way this entire controversy around the game has been handled is further evidence of this. Authority figures failed to do their due diligence in no small part because of their derisive and objectifying attitude toward children. Especially in the case of Lord of the Flies, they hated having a mirror held up to their face. And this will continue to happen because people in power generally refuse to hold themselves accountable. It requires them admitting that they messed up and could potentially result in them losing the precious power that they value over literally everything else.

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