# Abused kid goes on adventure in Faerie, wants to stay. Should she be allowed to? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 15, 2014, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538 "2014-05-15T17:51:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538/61 "2014-05-23T02:16:02Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > This is a good argument as long as we’re on Earth, but when we’re talking about a magical fantasy land in which truth can be detected with a spell… well, I’d be inclined to trust that the motives being expressed are genuine. > > Also, the elf-maid Aredhel who wants to adopt is not just some random adoptive mother. In this scenario, she’s a character that I’ve been on a quest with. This doesn’t mean I know her every motivation, but you’d have to know someone pretty well by the end of a fantasy quest. I’d certainly have seen Emma and Aredhel interact together and that would tell me a lot about whether the adoption would be a good one. > > For that matter, I’ve also been on the quest with the Prophet. So I also feel like I’d have a pretty good appreciation of her personality as well. > > As for the real world: we’d all like to see justice done and Emma sent to live happily ever after here. But seriously… how often is justice done right? What are the odds that she winds up in a loving family with someone who can attest under a truth spell that they have no ill will? Sure, and within the confines of the story as it’s told, that’s pretty fair and standard. It’s just strange and amusing that this standard that’s completely the norm in fiction would be really, _really_ weird in real life, sometimes unthinkable. Take the first Harry Potter book, it’s totally acceptable and normal to send Harry off to an extradimensional school on the say so of a weird giant and some letters, a place that his guardians have never seen or visited and can’t actually contact even in an emergency, and say “seems legit.” What if Harry gets molested there? Who can they even report it to? Can they contact Hogwarts? If they can and Hogwarts administration says “we’ll look into it” and never does, what do they do? They can’t even really contact this school they’ve sent him to, can they figure out how to notify the Wizard SVU? It’s almost curmudgeonly to point out that that adults let children routinely get into insanely dangerous adventures in literature, but sometimes I wish for some sort of curmudgeonly Sam Vimes character in one of these stories to stand up and say “What? No, I’m not letting a child do that! Are you insane?” ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538/62 "2014-05-23T02:23:37Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > As for the real world: we’d all like to see justice done and Emma sent to live happily ever after here. But seriously… how often is justice done right? What are the odds that she winds up in a loving family with someone who can attest under a truth spell that they have no ill will? Missed this: it happens often enough to make your heart sing and keep you moving forward in a sometimes ugly world. It’s not happily ever after, but it’s a happy beginning and it definitely, definitely happens. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538/63 "2014-05-23T04:46:48Z")
Emma isn’t going to be any worse off if she stays and is adopted. If there’s any type of counseling in Pangea, I’d still have her and her adoptive mom lined up for at least a session or two. It sounds like an ideal pairing, but hopefully Emma’s new mom won’t expect her to be the child she lost. If you send Emma back to our Earth she’ll surely talk about where she’s been and what she has been doing. Everyone will think she’s crazy, she’ll end up drugged to her little eyeballs, and eventually the abusive mother will get her back anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538/64 "2014-05-23T14:54:07Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > P. S. Major kudos to the Prophet’s mother. Viviparous placental reproduction of an organism with functioning wings can’t be a lot of fun. The wings are clearly a badge of office. I thought the Athena picture made that obvious. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538/65 "2014-05-23T15:20:11Z")
> [@Grestarian](#): > > The problem with this premise is that there’s not much information about the (ultimately successful) adventure in which Emma and I played important (if not key) roles. Forgive me Skald if I’m off-base, but I’m going to read into this story a couple background assumptions. > > I) To keep Pangea operating correctly (or make things right again) Pallas needed to reach over and grab a couple humans to play specific roles in the team (or maybe the whole team is just Emma and me) that is key to the adventure. That’s not the assumption I had in mind. I was thinking of a situation more like that in Lewis’ _Magician’s Nephew_–that some early, human wizard was experimenting with travel between worlds, and that “you” and Emma got sucked in accidentally (or suckered in on purpose) into making the jump. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2014, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538/66 "2014-05-23T16:25:41Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > Sure, and within the confines of the story as it’s told, that’s pretty fair and standard. It’s just strange and amusing that this standard that’s completely the norm in fiction would be really, _really_ weird in real life, sometimes unthinkable. Take the first Harry Potter book, it’s totally acceptable and normal to send Harry off to an extradimensional school on the say so of a weird giant and some letters, a place that his guardians have never seen or visited and can’t actually contact even in an emergency, and say “seems legit.” What if Harry gets molested there? Who can they even report it to? Can they contact Hogwarts? If they can and Hogwarts administration says “we’ll look into it” and never does, what do they do? They can’t even really contact this school they’ve sent him to, can they figure out how to notify the Wizard SVU? It’s almost curmudgeonly to point out that that adults let children routinely get into insanely dangerous adventures in literature, but sometimes I wish for some sort of curmudgeonly Sam Vimes character in one of these stories to stand up and say “What? No, I’m not letting a child do that! Are you insane?” I think that’s part of what attracts people to many stories in the first place. The real world is just so much more complicated and uncertain that it’s nice to have a little artificial simplicity. As for your second post: I do agree that there can be happy outcomes. I also think even a relatively unhappy foster living situation is still better than the original abusers. But the truth is often not going to compete with the fantasy options in the OP. I dated a girl in high school who’d been abused by multiple family members, then was abused by a foster parent she was placed with. In high school, she was living in a group foster home with six other girls who’d all had similarly unsuccessful results (though for some of these girls, it was their behavior that screwed up earlier placement rather than the fault of the foster parents). Anyway, it was a step up from their original families, but only by a little. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/abused-kid-goes-on-adventure-in-faerie-wants-to-stay-should-she-be-allowed-to/688538.md?page=3)