[ SECRET POST #2296 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2296 ⌋

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

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


__________________________________________________



10.


__________________________________________________



11.


__________________________________________________



12.


__________________________________________________



13.


__________________________________________________



14.


__________________________________________________



15.


__________________________________________________



16.


__________________________________________________



17.


__________________________________________________



















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 056 secrets from Secret Submission Post #328.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

OP again

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I'll concede Bela didn't get much screen time. If she'd stuck around longer we might have learned more about her that would have changed my opinion. As it is, though, I unfortunately only have her canon appearances to go by.

And yeah, actually I'm pretty sure most 14-year-olds grasp the idea that killing someone is a Very Bad Thing even if they've done bad things to you. (I have in fact just consulted with my own 14-year-old daughter to confirm this.) She could have cut a deal to have them put in prison for life where they could never hurt her again, as one option. Now, if it were established in canon that young Bela didn't know that the plan was for both her parents to die, I'd say it was a slightly different matter. But all we got to see was the demon saying "I can take care of them for you." We'll probably never know the full story.

I'd have to say that arranging the murder of two people when other options were available to get out of a bad situation is a more awful thing to do than making a stupid personal choice and sinking just one's own boat, yes. This is not to be construed as sympathy or approval of the parents' actions. They fully deserved to be punished, and certainly needed to be gotten away from Bela and rendered harmless. I'm just against revenge killing without due process on general principle.

I think you're right, and thank you very much for for being civil about it. I wish I could debate stuff like this more often without it degenerating into ad hominem attacks and name-calling.

Re: OP again

[meredith44]

I just want to quickly say that of course most teenagers understand that it is wrong to kill. It's just in certain situations (the heat of the moment, or in this case, Bela not really seeing much of an "out" for herself) they react differently than adults do. Their frontal lobes are not developed.

Here is one article.
~ "This also may explain why teenagers often seem so maddeningly self-centered. "You think of them as these surly, rude, selfish people," Jensen says. "Well, actually, that's the developmental stage they're at. They aren't yet at that place where they're thinking about — or capable, necessarily, of thinking about the effects of their behavior on other people. That requires insight.""

Another
~ "MRI research has also revealed that during adolescence, white matter increases in the corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This allows for enhanced communication between the hemispheres and enables a full array of analytic and creative strategies to be brought to bear in responding to the complex dilemmas that may arise in a young person’s life. Once again the role of experience is critical in developing the neural connectivity that allows for conscious cognitive control of the emotions and passions of adolescence."

Another
~ "In calm situations, teenagers can rationalize almost as well as adults. But stress can hijack what Ron Dahl, a pediatrician and child psychiatric researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center calls "hot cognition" and decision-making. "

There are more, and those are more "populist" versus in-depth, scientific ones, but they have the science right. I'm not entirely excusing Bela's behavior, but she was in a stressful situation that her teenage self-centered self probably couldn't see a way out of and someone came up to her and gave her an out that her teenage impulsive self didn't think entirely through. I have a really hard time blaming her. Plus, there have been many abused people (wives as well as children) who have been allowed to cite self-defense reasons for killing their abusers. I don't see this as that much different.

But, again, agree to disagree. I just wanted to put that out there for a different perspective.

thank you very much for for being civil about it. I wish I could debate stuff like this more often without it degenerating into ad hominem attacks and name-calling.
Agreed on this part, at least. :)