Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20150420004954/@comment-5106672-20150420040921

Raelizflo wrote: Good point Eskaver (above). My only 'beef' is that we were led to have sympathy for Cruella. I did! She was a little girl with a terrible mother that had trained her dogs to chase after her daughter. 2nd, why would a grown ass woman allow her mother to lock her up in an attic for sooooo long? Why would the mother be bothered by her enjoying some radio and music? I don't understand how in so much time she hadn't killed her mother sooner if she really was the psycho we are meant to identify her as at the end. But during the beginning and the middle, her childhood sucked, and her mother was pretty identical to Lady Tremaine, a bitch. I guess psychopathy run in the family. Cruella is as nuts as they come, but Madeline didn't seem very normal either. Probably, on the one hand Madeline loved Cruella enough not to have her locked up in an asylum but also enjoyed being the one who "punished" Cruella cruelly for what she did at the same time; on the other Cruella was torn between her desire to roam free and murderous and her love for her mother, and was accustomed to feeling powerless in her presence until an actual taste of the world outside made her reach the breaking point and reject her altogether. Perhaps killing all her husbands was a way to keep Madeline all for herself, perhaps the abuse led to a sort of Stockholm syndrome, perhaps she was so traumatised by the dogs she wouldn't go murderous on Madeline until she knew she could control her fear…

The fact that both seem so bonkers allow for much creative freedom in writing them. But from what I read around, even stranger family dynamics do happen in the real world.