Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-7302713-20130321104107/@comment-7302713-20130323073444

I don't know. As a curse to strip away happy endings, it seems to have functioned rather brilliantly. Until Emma arrives, it seems that most people are stuck in this terrible state. Not just Snow and Charming, but Cinderella is stuck pregnant without the man she loves. The woodcutter does not know he has children. Hansel and Gretel have no parents and are squatting and stealing to survive. Jefferson has lost his daughter. With the curse he can see her but she doesn't know who he is. They live next door to each other, right? That's terribly cruel. Positioning people so closely to the ones they love but not actually with them makes their misery all the more acute. Even the dwarf turned to stone is Regina's lawn gnome.

During the actual curse Sidney is the only one who seems to have it better. He's not a magic mirror, and while he's still ridiculously devoted to Regina at the cost of himself--well, he was like that before his wish went south.

The nice thing I think is that even though everyone was trapped in this awful state for 28 years, it's still better than what would have happened to them without the curse. The curse torments Jefferson for 28 years (more than most because he has his memories), but he gets reunited with his daughter which wasn't possible otherwise.

The woodcutter is seperated from his children for 28 years, but he'd been destined to never find them. And because the curse stops time, he finds them when they are still children.

And no, these events can't be undone. Jefferson was ripped from wonderland, and his daughter from FTL and they were placed in SB and found each other again. If they travel outside of SB, even if it's too another realm, I can't see why they'd return to their previous state. The dark curse broke through the magic keeping Jefferson in another realm.

But it's not clear that that's true for everyone. Other changes occured simply because magic functions differently here, but there's nothing to say that curses, spells and wishes stop functioning simply because the occupant spent some time in SB. Anton was shrunk to human size so that he would travel better to SB. What ends Cora's curse? Her dying? Not that we've seen, though he could be giant again and we just don't know. Why would travelling to FTL undo a curse that was enacted in FTL? Certain magic being put on pause makes sense. SB had no magic and even when it gets it, magic functions differently. But I just don't think that travelling to SB made fairies stop being fairies. That they don't look like fairies while their here--perfect sense. But that the dark curse was strong enough to undo all other magic? Curses and spells and wishes and even who a character is? Maybe Regina's curse would undo her other curses....she's the caster and her intentions pull people here. But I have trouble seeing it undo the blue fairy's magic, a genie's wish and so on.

Maybe it's not so much that the curse gave some people happy endings, as it gave them second chances. Grumpy and Astrid being here, the way things are isn't a happy ending. He's torn away from his home, and she isn't exactly working toward being a fairy godmother. But while they've been torn away from their lives, they get sort of a second chance with each other. They get to spend more time together. It's not running away together, and it's not her getting to be a fairy godmother. But while things are like this, something good does come.