The divorce and remarriage of parents can be very hard for children. Especially if the divorce involved nasty things like cheating. Also, it doesn't help when the new partner of a parent isn't a good person.
Like in this story: a marriage fell apart because of cheating, and the dad married his mistress, which was a very sad day for the rest of the family. And what's even worse is that the stepmother basically tried to abuse her way into the hearts of his children. But they didn't give in and sought revenge on her in a creative and musical way.
More info: Reddit
Music is not only a universal language, but it can be a revenge tool as well
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
A father married his mistress, and she tried to get her stepchildren to acknowledge her by abusing them
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
Image credits: Miguel Bautista (not the actual photo)
Image credits: u/Dizzy_Yoghurt_1798
Her stepchildren decided to revenge the abuse by singing along to songs about cheating anytime they were in the same room as her
The OP, who’s a 16-year-old teen, has three brothers. All the siblings lived a happy home life with both of their parents until, one day, the mom caught the dad with his mistress. So, the divorce and a new marriage followed. What made the new marriage even more disturbing was that the father got wed the same day another one of the siblings passed away.
So, it’s no surprise the rest of the siblings feel hate towards their father for his actions. Yet, they’re still forced into contact with him, but at least he doesn’t have full custody.
Now, it’s been two years since the marriage, and the hate train still prevails. For instance, the OP doesn’t speak to her 6 stepsiblings, whose mom is the mistress. And so, for this, both the post’s author and her siblings were reprimanded -- their stuff and food were taken away. They used to hoard the food in their room, but since this was discovered, they were forced to stay in the living room and not allowed to leave without permission.
Yet, the OP didn’t give up. All 4 siblings started playing songs about cheating at full volume and singing along whenever their “evil stepmother” was in the room. Basically, this is their plan to show the woman that she’ll never replace their real mom and to get revenge on her for having a wedding on the day of their sibling’s death.
The plan worked so well that the stepmother ended up having a mental breakdown and was hospitalized. Yet, the OP doesn’t feel any remorse, but some family members do, and they came up with a plan to send her to a camp for troubled teens. But this didn’t stop her from coming to Reddit and asking whether she’s actually the jerk here.
And the verdict was that the OP wasn’t a jerk. The internet folks not only praised her for such an interesting revenge idea and offered to help with songs-about-cheating playlists, but they also worried about the abuse she and her siblings experienced from their father and his new wife.
In fact, some of these comments can be implied as a description of an infamous evil stepmother. Probably the majority of us have heard of such a phenomenon from fairytales -- unpleasant women who marry into a family and taunt their stepchildren. Well, at least the stepmom from the story isn’t a murderous one like some in the fairytales (like in Snow White). Still, she really gives off an evil stepmother vibe, doesn’t she?
Image credits: Karolina Grabowska (not the actual photo)
There’s a theory that the evil stepmother trope likely originated back in ancient Rome because of Livia Drusilla, the first Roman empress and the second wife of Emperor Caesar Augustus. After the suspicious deaths of Augustus's grandsons, Livia was thrown under the bus (metaphorically, they didn’t have buses back then, duh), being depicted as a scheming and power-hungry figure.
The thing that majorly popularized the trope was Disney films based on the Grimm brothers' fairy tales and Hans Christian Andersen’s works. These included movies such as Snow White (which we already mentioned), Tangled, The Little Mermaid, and many others.
But have we ever thought about the negative implications of this trope for the women who marry into a family? For example, stepmothers are viewed in a way more negative light than any other type of family member. In the media, stepmothers are quite often viewed as less affectionate and kind, and they are less liked as characters.
These kinds of stereotypes can spook women from committing to a man who has children from a previous relationship, even if they’re the perfect match with each other. No one would like to be perceived as evil for no reason, right? This can also harm the children because they might perceive their stepmoms as bad people, and that can surely complicate family dynamics. And that’s just a few negative consequences that can arise from the trope.
Likely for this or a similar reason, Disney recently started restoring the good name of stepmothers by portraying them in a more positive light, as a more complicated (rather than just evil) human being, or simply staying away from the trope.
So, maybe calling the stepmother from the Reddit story evil isn’t the best choice. Still, it doesn't detract from the fact that her actions towards her stepchildren were basically abuse. It’s quite normal for them not to accept her as their mother, no matter how strongly she pushes it, since it’s quite clear they have a fully functioning biological mom. And the songs about cheating… Well, that’s just quite a creative way of getting revenge for the abuse.
People online supported such a creative revenge plan, but they were worried about the abuse the children endured
