[ SECRET POST #2284 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2284 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 015 secrets from Secret Submission Post #326.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - random porn ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[intrigueing]

The kidnapping and fear of dying I could sympathize with. It's the abuse that I couldn't stomach. If she really cared about Rapunzel and realized that she wanted to leave and was unhappy, she could've confessed to Rapunzel that she would die without Rapunzel's hair and they could've worked something out. Rapunzel wouldn't let her mother die. But no, she didn't even try. It didn't seem like it was even a tradeoff between abuse and dying for her, the hair was just her excuse for being abusive.

[(Anonymous)]

You realize what you suggested is *also abuse*. That level of emotional manipulation is very abusive in and of itself.

[(Anonymous)]

So a, say, terminally ill parent who can't tend for themselves, should not tell it to his adult or almost adult children, when they want to travel to other side of the world, because that would be abuse? True, they should just die in silence, and if their kids are affected, they are no longer there to care right?

[bigredhug]

I think we're talking more like My Sister's Keeper type of abuse, here. I don't know that it's automatically abuse-level coercion for Gothel to nonviolently admit she needs Rapunzel to survive, but it could get to that level very very quickly.

[intrigueing]

Yeah, that's true, it could, but the first step of just admitting it isn't necessarily. Plus, I don't think Rapunzel would object to just swinging by her mother's house every so often whatever the necessary time period was to youthify her up. Yeah, some people might, but that's getting into tricky stuff that's hard to finagle even IRL.

[intrigueing]

Oh c'mon, I don't think asking your daughter to help you not die would be abuse. Purposely trying to manipulate Rapunzel into staying with her and keeping everything the same and not having her own life by saying "I'll die without you and NOPE there's nothing else we can do" and refusing to change her ways or look for a compromise or a better option -- that would be abusive, but just laying the facts out on the table isn't.

What should she do, just let herself die? True, that would be a feasible option, especially given that she's already really old, but I couldn't exactly blame someone for not wanting to take it.

[(Anonymous)]

This. It's pretty bad that after 16 years she wouldn't even let Rapunzel out of the tower whatsoever and didn't seem to be remorseful at all about it. While I can understand her fear and where she was coming from, you'd think she'd have some misgivings about keeping her 'daughter' prisoner. Then again I guess she never saw Rapunzel as a daughter, only as an object that was her's to keep.

[inkmage]

Or she could've gone to the King and Queen while Rapunzel was still a baby, leaving her out of it entirely, and said, "Here's the deal, that flower was keeping me alive and now it's gone because of you two. It's great that you're still alive, but, um, help me out here please?"

Not in so many words, but you get the picture.

She could have become a nanny, or a babysitter, or a courtesan, or quite a lot of things that would have given her access to Rapunzel like once a month at least (don't remember how often she had to do the singing thing - my headcanon suggests more frequently as her life was extended). But instead she chose kidnapping and emotional abuse.

[intrigueing]

Yeah, and that too. She could've done lots of things differently, so people who try to excuse her by saying she had a choice between dying and doing what she did are ignoring all kinds of options a decent person would consider. I'm just saying I could've forgiven the kidnapping given it's a fairy tale, not that it was an okay thing to do.

[inkmage]

Mm, true; fairy tales tend to take a "soft focus" approach to stuff like that, where "And the Evil Witch approached the Good King and Queen and bent to one knee, saying, 'I have wronged your daughter and wish to make recompense,' but the King and Queen were good and forgave the Witch, for they knew she could no more harm them than the child she had grown to love like a mother, and so they all lived happily ever after."

Which kind of fits, except for the part that someone below this brought up, where Gothel clearly values Rapunzel as an object, a thing no more animate and with no more independence of thought than the flower, rather than as a person, never mind as her child.

[intrigueing]

Yeah, that's the part that really made me despise her.

I love how stories work, where really jailworthy actions can be excused if "ah well, it's a fairy tale" but insidiously realistic abusive attitudes are horrible no matter the context ;)

[(Anonymous)]

The thing is, the really jail worthy actions are usually built straight into the story - and removing them pretty much destroys the story. The realistic abuse? Not so much - plus a lot of us had to live with that kind of behavior growing up and have it written off as 'Well, they weren't *hitting* you, so it's not *really* abuse...' or something along those lines. So excusing that? Hits way too many things that are close to home.

[intrigueing]

Yup, very true. Also, I suppose the jailworthy stuff isn't exactly something that hits home for a lot of people, not to mention it's an action that can go in a whole variety of different directions and have different meanings and effects and motivations. Whereas on the other hand, abuse is always abuse.

[(Anonymous)]

a few times you can see a sort of love for her, almost. but then afterwards, you see it's this fight between loving her as an object and loving her..... idk. She comes close to true affection, but never quite makes the mark

[darkmanifest]

I think that's also what annoyed me about Gothel's plan, besides the abuse - it just wasn't very smart. Better to insinuate herself as a beloved nurse who the girl could never bear to be parted with than to kidnap a royal child and hope she never became overly interested in the outside world for the next fifty years.