Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20161205015930/@comment-1916997-20170103045917

Aine1989 wrote: I almost did not even watch the episode (which is why this took so long).

As an Emma fan, this episode is a slap in the face. The whole  message of this is that Emma is only a strong, capable, resilient woman becuause she endured abuse (or to use the writers' words, she "grew up with challenges"). Whatever happened to "love is strength"? Apparently if you are raised with love, you grow into a weak and spineless fool who prances through the flowers and hides behind trees and cries "Mommy, Daddy, help!" (seriously? she's a 30 year old woman with a child) and that version of you "sucks". To hear Emma say that was just all kinds of gross. Sorry but the pain does not "make me me" it is how she reacted to it. This is not only insulting to Emma fans but to abuse victims, becuase it pushes the toxic 'pain makes you strong' mentality.

[cut to save space] I think the problem is your missing the point of this episode, which is leading to this long list of complaints. The realm Emma (and then Regina) go to, is a realm that is manufactured from a wish. So while it becomes "real" when it was created, the past is completely fabricated, and the people were "created" by the wish. In a way, it is like SB during the first curse, with the difference being, that still had the people's actual bodies with a memory wipe and false memories in place. This is fictional in both the past memories as well as the people were created, their actual selves and bodies are still where ever (most of them in SB). And yes, Adam said it was "real", but he also said the wish created everything, and that because it is created by a wish, things can be weird. Long story short, it is technically real, but in the way that a computer simulation with AI is real. In that example, the wish is the programmer, and made everything how it is. But at the end of the day, it was still something made by someone.