Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-5305135-20131016220319/@comment-22525977-20131017164643

As I said, I don't think she's evil, just not inclined to doubt herself and lacking a group of people willing to contradict her because she's treated like an absolute authority, which is how we get things like "it's better for all involved that Dreamy stays an unsatisfied slave and Nova keeps blundering towards being a fairy godmother even though they'd both obviously be happier if they could go adventuring together," "sure Gepetto, you can send your seven-year-old to a strange land with no magic and a newborn child to take care of, even though that child who is the only way to break a horrific curse would have much better survival chances if she went through with her mother instead of another kid," and "even though Tink demonstrated quite effectively that Regina responds positively to kindness, she's already so steeped in darkness that she's unsalvageable NO DO NOT TRY TO HELP HER EVER AGAIN IN FACT DON'T EVEN TALK TO HER OR THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES."

These aren't decisions made with malicious intent, at all, but I think Blue has this need to be the absolute authority *because* she thinks she's the most righteous person around and clearly knows best. I think her agenda isn't much more complicated than "stay in charge," and it's not coming from a need for power (as it does with, say, Cora) so much as a need to make the world better, according to her own, at times staggeringly myopic, idea of what "better" means.

Another way to handle Tink's rule-breaking which would have been more effective in terms of doing what fairies are "supposed" to do (i.e. help people) AND getting to the root of Tink's behavioral problems would have been to actually listen to what Tink was saying, which boiled down to: "I'm a fairy, fairies help people, Regina needs help, I know how to help her, PLEASE WILL YOU LET ME HELP HER." It's not like Tink is breaking rules out of malice or boredom or disrespect for her job, she's breaking rules because she wants to do her job and Blue shuts her down with "No you can't help her, she's too evil and dark," a statement which was in direct opposition to what Tink—who knows Regina personally and has spoken to her, unlike Blue (that we know of)—observed of Regina's behavior.

If Blue had listened to Tink's proposal of helping Regina, and instead of punishing her for it (with the "you will work closely with me so I can monitor your behavior" thing), responded with something along the lines of "your enthusiasm for what we do is wonderful, but Regina's situation needs to be handled with extreme care because of her circumstances, don't do anything rash and we'll figure something out," I doubt very much that Tink would have gone as far out of line as she did, especially if Blue immediately made good on the "we'll figure something out" part.

Similarly, with Gepetto, that problem could have been solved with communication: "No, Gepetto, you can't send your son through the wardrobe—unless you really want your little boy to have to take care of himself and a newborn child in a world we know nothing about, a world which might be dangerous, a world where magic won't exist to help them, etc." Or even before they knew the timing would be so awful and Emma would be born pre-curse, pointing out the flaws in Gepetto's logic—all of which are, at their most basic, "sending your son away to avoid the curse are going to damage everyone else's chances of survival AND you're sending a small child into a world vastly different from our own that we know nothing about except it has no magic and Rumpelstiltskin said to send the savior there." Blue didn't even attempt to do so—she pretty calmly acquiesced without argument the first time Gepetto demanded that Pinnochio go through the wardrobe, and then, when circumstances changed, she showed up, ordered him not to send his son through, and left again because  of course  he's going to obey without question.

She's not evil. Certainly not Rumpelstiltskin or Evil-Queen-era-Regina levels of evil. But she places far too much faith in her own authority and her own "inherent goodness" ("I'm on the right side," and all), and that leads her to make snap judgements and assumptions that have very nasty consequences for other people. She's kind of like Inspector Javert that way, only where Javert had The Law, Blue sticks to a moral code that she created for herself (apparently. Unless the fairies really are a quasi-religious organization like I proposed in my first post, although I doubt that's where the show is actually going with them—more of a fanfic idea than anything else, really).