Board Thread:Clean up Concerns/@comment-2059440-20160822192203/@comment-366087-20161220093433

Let's separate the issue into two seemingly-related components. The Cultural Practice of Infanticide… and if Maui's Parents are evil/villains for following it.

Without a doubt, no argument from me, to our current day modern world sensibilities and most of the cultures still intact today, Infanticide is an unnecessary and reprehensible practice.

But to an ancient culture where sharing even one day's worth of resources with an infant deemed unfit and or unlikely to survive very long, then it was the wise, pragmatic thing to do. Granted in practice there were some decisions made without full and proper knowledge of How Things Work. For example, seeing a newborn without teeth and deeming it as malformed due to not understanding teeth will grow very soon.

And for nomadic seafaring cultures like the early Polynesians whose resources were limited for weeks at a time on small fleets of boats, such un-emotional pragmatic steps could mean the life or death of other, more fit (in their eyes), individuals.

Of course, once a tribe settled and restricted themselves to specific islands and landmasses, such practices eventually had to out-weigh tradition and be cast aside.

But like the example in the thread higher up of the "punch-clock, it's a living" slavedrivers the question here is, are Maui's unseen and nameless parents wicked, evil VILLAINS for obeying the Law of their cultures?

Certainly, there are events in the lives of individuals which can be traumatic and life-shaping/changing for them, but does that make it evil? Children who've survived the accidental death of a parent(s) can go on to develop a hatred of them for "abandoning" them despite prior promises to never do so. Traumatic Event, not the fault of the parents.

Same for divorces. While some can involve and revolve around malicious actions, the majority of them do not, yet children can be traumatized anyway.

Yeah, they took a look at newborn Maui and tossed him into the sea, but that does not have to mean they did so out of malice or evil intent. The Myths speaks otherwise about them.

Besides, had they not, then the Gods would not have taken in baby Maui and raised him to be a demigod.

Plus, we need to determine a precedent about unseen/mentioned-only characters. Will anytime a character make a momentary (in Maui's case they spent maybe all of 3 minutes discussing them) mention of some abusive/weird uncle/relative/someone in their past require/deserve pages?

Finally, I'd like to point to the page's history where there were sentiments such as "…they were the most heinous villains in the story, worse that Te'Ka…", which is a statement filled with personal opinion and feelings rather than detached and objective reporting