Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-25701646-20151001004105

So OUAT has always paid a bit more attention to female characters than male. We see way more of Regina, Emma, and Snow than we do of Charming, Hook, and most males on the show. Even the side characters tend to be female. We see more of Cinderella's story than her prince, Ariel's more prominent than Eric, and Kristoff barely even makes it into the show. Part of that is because most fairy tales do focus on females. Either as heroes, villains, or damsel's in distress. However, in Season 1, Henry's battle to convince his mother and the other characters he wasn't crazy and get Emma to break the curse was very big. Charming might not have been as big a part of the show as Snow, but we do get a back story for him, he has at least some storyline for most of the episodes he's in.

But more recently, it seems like the male characters have just kind of been there. Charming seems to follow Snow around going along with whatever she does. Henry took kind of a side seat for at least half of last season while Emma was trying to break the curse and figure out what was going on. We got a bit of Hook's backstory when Ursula arrived but that was kind of it. Rumple's in a coma and is only being used as a figment of Emma's imagination. And Robin is...well, he's Regina's boyfriend and the father of Zelena's child and that's kind of the extent he's used.

Anyway, is it just me or are the male characters becoming pawns who only seem to exist because of what they can do for the female characters? And yes, I know that's how females are used in a lot of shows. But I like OUAT because, historically, it's given both genders equal or almost equal storylines. 