#because I'm noticing a trend of people turning against Van too

[jollyreginaldrancher]

Exactly. These children are a product of their environment and I feel like Misty is no more at fault than Ethel was, in Shameless.

For context (spoilers ahead) Ethel was Kevin and Veronica's foster child. She was a 14 year old girl they fostered (V for the money, Kevin to try out being a dad) who was rescued from a cult where she was a sister-wife to a 65 year old piece of shit pedophile.

While she was with the cult she was preyed upon by the cult leader and groomed into performing acts of service and sexual favours for him, and that didn't go away when she was put into the foster care system.

That was normalised. So when she was fostered, she immediately tried to slip into her learned behaviours, cleaning the house nonstop and offering her body to her foster dad.

Did he lead her on? No. Did she have feelings for him? No. But she was indoctrinated into this belief system where sex was a duty she had to perform for the man she was in the care of, and when that became Kevin it manifested in her offering her body to him.

Misty we know virtually nothing about. We haven't seen her parents or the rest of her family. We haven't seen any of her friends or other formative relationships. We don't see the way anybody treats her one on one but we know her role on the team is basically just an honorary one just to humour her, that probably exploits her for tasks nobody else wants to do, (equipment manager probably just sets up cones for drills, etc, so the coach doesn't have to) but instead of begrudging the girls on the team or showing any jealousy, she seems to root for them, cheering louder than even the mascot and hyping them up.

She didn't hate or resent them for having or being something she wasn't, she admires them. She doesn't want anything bad to happen to them so she can feel superior, she's actively rooting for them to win. They inspire her. She doesn't want to be them, she wants to be with them.

All we know is that she basically wants to survive and to fit in with these girls. That she's desperate for belonging and affection. And that she is NOT like other girls.

We get the scene of her staring blankly as that rat drowns, not to show her cruelty or callousness, or at least I don't believe it is to show that she's psychotic as most people who dismiss her claim, but I believe it is to show her helplessness.

If you pay attention, it follows the scene where Allie gets hurt and she tries to intervene and perform first aid only to hurt her in her eagerness, and have coach yell at her to leave and call for help.

She's not clumsy and she does not panic easily. So I believe the reason for her absence of wherewithal in that scene, contrasting to her absolute clarity and single-minded focus during the crash, I believe is due to the fact that she is so used to her contributions to the team being behind the scenes, to nobody's applause, that when she finally gets the chance to contribute something valuable in a meaningful way she gets so overexcited she trips all over herself.

In the wilderness though she is in shock, and her body and brain slip into hyperfocus to avoid contemplating her own fate so she manages to carry the group's medical emergencies for the most part, and she is one of the most integral members of the group, if not the most important to their survival, next to Natalie, long term.

She stays in that state of hyperfocus throughout the entire second episode, from the moment they crash, until way into the night when she cauterizes coach Ben's leg. Something like 12 hours pass in this exhaustive state for her. And we only ever seen her finally snap out of it when she goes to pee and overhears Van and Akilah talking about her and she finally gets the tiniest bit of praise and validation after going beast mode for a whole damn day.

Like, she's not part of the group huddles when they score a point. She doesn't get a high five for putting cones down. This was the only time she got any validation on that team. She's so used to being overlooked, is it any wonder she would do something drastic to maintain some of that momentum and crush the flight recorder?

Note: it's not the reason they got stuck. Like the name implies it just records flight data and other information, and its location transmitter only works underwater so they wouldn't have gotten rescued because of that anyway.

Point being it makes sense that she would act out and make these desperate gestures for affection or attention when so long she's been on the sidelines, at least through soccer, though from what little we've seen, probably in her own life as well.

Misty displays signs of autism, which would explain her different morality (autistic people do not see the world the same way, and their morality system is different from everybody else's. She is impulsive and

And unfortunately autistic people take people at face value and tend to have trouble reading social cues and are statistically more likely to be preyed upon.

So for Misty to walk into the room, see coach at half mast and think it was appropriate to touch it, especially considering the likelihood that she has been assaulted in the past (1 in 4 typical women, and between 75-90% depending on the study for women presenting traits of autism) it is more than likely that it was a result of her disorder and past trauma and it's not some mark of villainy or psychopathy.

Something that really aggravates me is the fact that some people think Misty is completely at fault for her actions towards and with Coach Ben.

It is obvious to me that she already starts out the show with some severe abandonment issues, and the attraction to an older man and her innate need to have him need her in all ways possible is— alarming, to say the least. Seems clear to me that if she isn’t a victim of csa, she is definitely susceptible to that kind of abuse. Her curiosity towards Ben and sex seems less fueled by an actual, sexual attraction to him and instead a desire to be wanted and seen by anyone, and through trauma a child can be taught that the easiest way to get attention is to take it through any means possible. When a child has exhausted every avenue for love and attention, they will turn to extreme measures.

Should Misty have touched Ben in the cabin? Absolutely not, and his reaction was valid. Should she have poisoned him? Also no.

HOWEVER, I don’t believe that Ben’s fear of her is a good excuse for him to “play along” with this CHILD and her delusion. Think about how easy it could have been for him, an adult that is obviously impressionable to Misty, to sit her down and have an honest conversation with her. To tell her, “no, I don’t want you. But I don’t need to want you for your existence to be worth something. You are worthy of love and attention, and I’m giving you that love and attention by sitting you down and having this real, vulnerable conversation with you.”

All Misty needed was to be heard, not to be played along with. If Ben would of seen that, and talked to her, I truly believe she would have listened. That isn’t to say she isn’t already destined to become someone who manipulates others and uses her pitifulness to her advantage, and I’m honestly not sure how things would have played out if Ben had this conversation with her. But I think it was needed, and I think Ben is somewhat of a coward for not doing it.