Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6175354-20130930170041/@comment-23906605-20131002141854

TNOandXadric wrote: Regina does not believe that Snow is good.

I completely agree. I don't believe Regina thinks Snow is good. Which is also another difference I see between them. After the Daniel episode, all Regina could see in Snow was betrayal and everything but goodness. She let her grief and rage cloud her judgement and she blamed a child -- who only did what she did because of Cora's slyness -- for all the misery in her life. Because of that, all she ever wanted is revenge and after repeated attempts to ruin Snow's life, I've rarely seen Regina feel sorry for any of her actions (that not only hurt Snow, but also countless others). Snow, on the other hand, felt horrible at the moment she learned what happened to Daniel because of what she did as a (naïve) child. And after all that history of hate between them, Snow still believes Regina can be good as she once was.



Again, I agree. It is not correct to try and justify your actions this way. But I completely disagree that MM ever thought it was ok to lie to Kathryn just because she thought she was meant to be with David. On the contrary, MM was always against the idea of sneaking around and she was the one who convinced David it was better to be honest and tell the truth, which he didn't. She expected him to do the right thing, and was so disappointed at him because of that, that she broke things off and we didn't see them together again until they remembered they were Snow and Charming. And I honestly believe that if it were Snow instead of MM, she probably wouldn't have agreed to the affair in the first place given that she's very attached to her moral ideals.



She also risks her life and makes decisions she'd rather not make because people she loves may be compromised in some way. That's exactly what happened when she called out that ogre which was about to kill Emma. Like she said later, she hadn't shot an arrow in 28 years and yet she risked her life to save her daughter's. Same thing happened when she decided to give Rumple's dagger to Cora and Regina because she was afraid they'd kill poor Johanna. They had a fixed plan for that dagger and in fact the last thing she should've done was to have given it to Cora. But she did, she put her plans aside to spare the life of someone who was innocent (which didn't really work). The other biggest examples that I can think of are the apple and the infertile drink episodes that you mentioned. Snow didn't eat/drank those because she's a thrill seeker. It wasn't unnecessary risk-taking and she wasn't behaving dangerously. She was doing something you claim she can't: putting others (in both these particular cases, Charming) before herself. She ate the apple so Regina wouldn't kill him. She decided it was better to eat that, to have her body become her tomb, to be stuck in there with nothing but dreams formed out of her own regrets than to have Charming be killed. Now the drink thing, that was indeed naïve, I'm not arguing with you there. But she wasn't thinking about herself at the moment. It didn't even occur to her that her enemy could have put something in her drink, because in her mind, King George only brought her there to know the whereabouts of Charming, to which she responded "no matter what you do to me, I'll never tell you where he is".



Regarding her relationship with Emma, I think qualifying her behavior as "creepy" is unreasonable. That's also being too technical by saying Snow shouldn't behave the way she does just because she and Emma spent little time together as mother and daughter. That's almost like saying she shouldn't try to be Emma's mother because now they're the same age and she already lost her chance. If she sometimes treats Emma like a rebellious child, I'm sure that's not intentional and yes, that matters. How could it not? She is trying to get the hang of things, to learn what it means to be a mother. She never did that before. She probably has no idea how to do it properly. And the situation is 10 times more difficult, considering her daughter is also a mother who is the same age as she is. But she is TRYING! And I believe that makes all the different to Emma, although she might get annoyed at Snow sometimes. Should Snow simply stop trying to have Emma as her child and simply treat her like a friend? I'm sure Emma would feel deeply hurt and she'd resent Snow even more if that were the case.



"We all saw what happened to Regina" - Actually, yes, we did. Despite being raised by Cora in that inhospitable environment, Regina was always afraid of turning evil like her mother. She held on to the believe that she wouldn't as long as she believed power was not as important as her mother claimed. Even when she was having lessons with Rumple, she still believed she could use magic and still be good, be nothing like Cora. But then, at the moment she allowed herself to believe magic was power and that power was important to her, she was able to take out her first heart and crush it in a matter of seconds. And that's what I meant. I think Snow honestly believes the same thing could happen to her if she doesn't try to keep her dark side at bay. Everybody has a dark side. Like you said, people do not fit neatly into "villain" boxes or "hero" boxes. But some people choose to embrace that darkness and go about doing whatever they feel like it under the lame excuse of "Oh, I'm embracing my dark side. I have one, I'm human" while some people choose not to let that darkness manifest itself. Like Jiminy said, "giving into one's dark side never accomplishes anything". But I'm aware Snow did let that happen on quite a few occasions, like by convincing Regina to "kill" Cora, or also that Gepetto episode you mentioned. But my point is, she doesn't want to embrace it. She definitely believed what Regina said about "once you blacken your heart, it only grows darker and darker. Trust me, I know." So for me it is completely understandable that she doesn't want to admit she let her own heart blacken, even it only a little bit. And when David asks her why she didn't tell him about her heart, she answers "Because telling you makes things real, and I needed to believe it wasn't. That I could find a way to stop it, that redemption was possible." Snow wants redemption. And Regina wants it, too. Let me borrow your alcohol analogy to illustrate the difference I see between the paths they choose to redemption. Regina admits she has the problem, because her son wants her to. She looks for help, she even stops drinking for some time. After a while, she realizes how much she misses alcohol and she eventually relapses and starts drinking like there's no tomorrow again. Snow didn't have a problem with alcohol for most of her life, but she's seen what it can do to people. As an adult, following the advice of drunkhead Rumple, Snow get a taste of alcohol, goes a little too far and immediately regrets the repercussions of her drinking bacchanalia. Since she can't erase what she did, the best thing she can do is burry that episode and try her best to never even see a drop of alcohol again.



I just hope, at some point, to see Regina actually wanting to change for herself. Not just for Henry. Because as long as she keeps the "I tried to be the person you wanted me to be, but I couldn't" motto, her strategy will never lead to permanent success.