Quote:
Originally Posted by MaxJ1800
Who knows, maybe there's a whole group of people who view imaginary friends as status symbols more than anything else. This could lead to places like Foster's intervening and removing imaginary friends who aren't recieving proper treatment. That leads to another point. Does Foster's as an agency have any real authority when it comes to Imaginary Friends?
We know that they rescued food based Imaginary Friends from a fat camp. How would Madam Foster, Frankie or Herrimen go about removing an IF from a neglectful situation? Could they just swoop in and remove the friend, like a rescue mission? Or would they have to go some type of legal channels?
For that matter, is there some kind of government agency that regulates imaginary friends and their treatment? We've seen that when a child becomes too old for their friend, it's not uncommon to just drop them onto the street. Heck, in Good Wilt Hunting it appeared the basketball IFs actually lived in the alley.
I wonder how well IFs could survive on the streets or even in the wild. We've seen that Coco lived by herself, comfortably on a desserted island for presumably years. But then Coco had a natural advantage with her eggs. Who knows, some abandoned friends might even go feral, the way pet cats and dogs can, when they're abandoned.
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The status of Imaginary Friends, along with their rights, is something that is definately left up in the air in the series. We do not know if there's any government agency that oversees the welfare of Imaginary Friends, and to which adoption agencies like Foster's(which appears to be the only one of its kind)must answer, as there is in the case of human children who are neglected, abandoned, abused or put in potentially dangerous situations. At times, the public perception towards them on the show contradicts itself. It's legal, apparently, to abandon an Imaginary Friend, but you can't murder one or harm one physically, since Mac pointed out to Coco that the group would go to jail if they killed Peanut Butter. They can apparently hold at least menial jobs, but they are rquired to obey the same laws as everyone else, and rather than having the Imaginary Friend's family or creator held responsible when an IF breaks a law(as is usually the case when a child breaks the law or an domesticated animal does something bad), the IF himself is held fully acountable, so it would seem that they are regarded more or less as adult humans, albeit a lower class of humans, somewhat like minorities were(and in some cases, still are)were regarded in the past. It's illegal to abandon an animal or a young child because the law recognizes that most cannot survive or at least have any quality of life without adult human care, but it seems that since IF's are regarded more as adult humans, it's assumed that they can take care of themselves. No one seems to question the idea of an Imaginary Friend on his/her own, without a human child or family, or treat them any different than they would an adult human. We see this also in
Good Wilt Hunting, when no one even asked Wilt why he was traveling alone or treated him in any way that would make it seem that he was regarded as inferior to them, as a person. A child, or even a dog, wandering about unsupervised would have drawn some suspicion or at least comments.
I'd noticed all those apparently-homeless Imaginary Friends that populated the alleys in
GWH, too, but then, this is a part of town where there are also a lot of homeless humans and where crime is rampant, so I guess that the situations which befall many humans living there would naturally befall IF's. I don't know, therefore, if the term "feral" would apply, since the IF's do not seem to become afraid of humans or avoid them as feral cats and dogs do, but since even humans living under those conditions on the streets of a large city must live by the "survival of the fittest" code, from day to day, I guess the IF's would, too. Some, like Wilt, are fortunate enough to find their way out of that and integrate themselves back into society, while others have to tough it out.
pitbulllady