A Sea Chanty Of Sorts

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I often hear a discourse where Celine in K-pop Demon Hunters, Alma in Encanto and Ming in Turning Red are seen as vilains. They’re the ones who restricted the younger generation, hurt them, and are ultimately responsible for their pain, trauma and self-doubt. They’re framed as the real villains of the story. But I’d like to differ.

These are stories of intergenerational trauma. They are women who survived, repressed, and tried to protect their families the only way they knew how: through control, perfectionism, and emotional suppression.

And yet, when the next generation begins to reclaim joy, freedom, softness — they become the obstacle. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re scarred. Their minds cling to survival strategies, unable to recognize that the environment has changed.

Alma is still stuck fleeing the colonizers.

Ming is still afraid of her true self.

Celine believes that fear and mistakes must be hidden.

It’s not about hating these characters. It’s about how unprocessed trauma twists love into control. How survival, unexamined, turns into rigidity. These women were never given space to process their own pain and they project it onto their daughters and granddaughters.

And here’s something we rarely say enough: intergenerational trauma can create toxic patterns but that doesn’t always mean there was abuse or conscious harm. Even when their love becomes suffocating or controlling, these women are not necessarily “abusive parents.” They are daughters of silence, fear, and sacrifice. And they were never taught another way. It’s important to make that distinction, especially in a world that often pushes a binary, punitive reading of family dynamics.

They’re the product of a generation that was told to endure. But endurance without healing becomes its own kind of violence.

What’s powerful in these stories is that they don’t end in vengeance. They end in confrontation and transformation. The confrontation is necessary: the younger generation refuses the silence. Refuses the shame. Refuses to carry a burden that wasn’t theirs to begin with.

The house is destroyed in Encanto.

Mei accepts her full self.

So does Rumi.

And in the best cases, this confrontation allows the elder to soften too. Alma opens up. Ming listens. And I’m hoping in the sequel, Celine will open too.

Maybe that’s also why these stories speak so deeply to POC audiences. These aren’t stories about cutting ties. They’re stories about how hard it is to transform them, to protect ancestral bonds while refusing to perpetuate inherited pain. In many racialized families, collectivity, loyalty, and intergenerational duty are sacred... even when they come at the cost of personal boundaries.

And sometimes, Western individualist frameworks read these tensions as dysfunction or villainy. But for us, they’re just the difficult truth of growing up and trying to do better.

These women aren’t villains. That would be too easy. They embody the fragile, necessary work of bringing change without breaking the thread. These stories are about refusing to inherit their pain without reflection. Because love, without accountability, is not enough.

These stories show us that each generation has something to learn from the next. And the new generation must also break free from the chains they inherited while preserving what is meaningfull.

But it’s not just their story.

One day, we’ll be the older generation.

And we’ll need to be humble enough to learn from the ones after us.

So don’t be a fool.

We may be Mei, Rumi, or Mirabel today.

But tomorrow, we could be Ming, Celine, or Alma.

And when that time comes, we’ll realize how hard it is to unlearn what once kept us safe.

So let’s have compassion for all these characters.

Because these stories show us not just how the cycle of generations works, but how it can make us better, stronger, and more connected... if we’re all willing to go through the change.

∘₊✧──────✧──────✧₊∘

If you’re curious, I’ve written more on K-pop Demon Hunters:

A post on the mental health themes woven through the songs — right here.

A breakdown of Celine-Rumi in comparaison to Gothel–Rapunzel dynamic — here.

An analysis about Rumi, Jinu, and the danger of sinking together — here.

In the case of these characters, they're abusive because of circumstance, undressed trauma, and societal constraints (girls have gotta suck it up for family reasons). It's not about inflicting harm on the next generation, it's not about asserting power through control but about trying to minimise perceived danger via the behaviour that has been proven effective in doing that before so they simply repeat the behaviour until it becomes a pattern. It's still abuse but it's the kind of abuse that, when the behaviour patterns are disrupted and no longer followed, makes the abuser regret their actions and behaviour.

The older women you mention here, Alma, Ming, and Celine, don't act the way they do because they want to make themselves feel better (i.e. gratification) but because they want to prevent harm to their children/grandchildren. Once the pattern and cycle is disrupted and broken, they change to adapt to the new structure that develops wherein their previous behaviour doesn't work.

Someone who is abusive because they enjoy it, get gratification from it, or are so traumatised that the loss of control is genuinely deadly, wouldn't react the way Alma, Ming, or Celine do. That kind of person would be the kind of abusive personality that doubles down on the abusive behaviour even with it pointed out as actively harmful (I believe the Buckley parents in 911 are potentially decent examples of this kind of thing, idk bc I haven't actually watched the show tho).

Whilst adding tags I realised I had a good example of the type of abusive matriarch who is the opposite of Alma, Ming, and Celine ready-made. Mother Gothel from Tangled. She isolates Rapunzel, manipulates her into believing that it's for her own protection and when that is proven false, Mother Gothel then gaslights and tries to manipulate Rapunzel into believing her. Mother Gothel is the perfect example of a maternal/matriarch figure who, when her behaviour is shown as harmful, doubles down on it. That's because Mother Gothel's behaviour doesn't come from love or commitment to family or her 'daughter' but because Mother Gothel's behaviour is centred entirely on her own wants and needs. Compare her behaviour and attitude to Alma, Ming, and Celine both pre- and post-revelation/turning point in the narrative and we're able to clearly see that Alma, Ming, and Celine's behaviours aren't rooted in their own wants and needs but in fear and the desire to protect their children/grandchildren from potential harm/danger.

But the behaviour is still damaging to the children/grandchildren. Mirabel, Mei, Rumi, and Rapunzel are all harmed by the actions of their respective matriarch/maternal figures but only Rapunzel is further harmed once the reveal/narrative turning point occurs because Mother Gothel's motivations are self-centred compared to the motivations of Alma, Ming, and Celine which are centred on preventing the next generation from being harmed the way they were.

Even with the context, the behaviour is still damaging and still abusive because these matriarchs are in positions of power and influence compared to the younger generation. The reasons for the harm don't change the result of the harm itself but the reasons and context do affect what follows after the behaviour is revealed as harmful.

 Intergenerational trauma happens because victims perpetuate abuse. There's no other way to say it. Victims of the system become the upholders of it and create more victims. 

These relationships are often toxic and are often abusive.  They are dysfunctional, they are hurtful. The colour of my skin or the context of my culture does not change that I hurt. 

We can't criticize a binary reading of familial relationships and then land on the opposite side of the spectrum. Intentions of harm are in no way a proper way to judge whether someone was abusive or not.  

But we can also recognize the mother exists within a system that hurts them. And fearfully they hurt their daughters. None of the mothers mentioned in the OP did these things for personal gain or ego or enjoyment. This was all done out of teaching the same self preservation that allowed them to live. I do agree with learning from the next generation and being open to growing. But we can't grow when we don't acknowledge what we're growing from, and that doesn't just include our own pain. 

I love my mother fiercely. She ruined her whole life to raise me. She has suffered in ways I can never understand. And she caused me suffering she could never understand. She has abused me and I did not deserve it, no matter how deep the love that inspired it was. I will not romanticize the pain that was forced upon me by a woman who had not healed yet. But I have found it in myself to forgive myself as she's acknowledged and grown and tries to grow. 

"The cat and the Porridge", 1935

Rosemary's Baby (1968)