Emmy's parents sound like The Worst (tm) but I can't imagine how terrifying it will be to hear that the being that kidnapped your daughter SHOWED UP AGAIN
Emmy's parents suck - i wont deny that. but im actually gonna pull back a bit on The WorstTM
The Trouts experienced an extremely traumatic loss of their child, with no hope that she would be returned or was even alive, for seven years. The child that returned was, in a way, the child that they lost - but in many ways she wasn't, and there was no going back for any of them.
The Trouts are extremely controlling and overprotective - because they did lose her once, and have no way of knowing if they will again. Because they do love her, but they're parenting her from a place of fear, not love.
They're paternalistic and babying with her well into her teenage and young adult years, because they never really managed to recover from their own trauma enough to recognize that Emmy's trauma 1. exists, and 2. changed her. Emmy is different before and after her time with the fae, and the Trouts just have too much cognitive dissonance and unprocessed grief over the loss of their seven year old daughter that they never learn how to parent or treat the one who is 8, 10, 15, 20, etc
None of this makes the Trouts treatment of Emmy okay, and I don't mean to say that they're absolved because they genuinely love her and are better than the lotus pixie (which they are, by far). But they are not nearly on the level of some of the parents i've written like, say, the bitchroys
the entire trout family got dealt a shit hand and unfortunately, Emmy played hers well but her parents didn't.
