Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-4839682-20131003142941/@comment-22525977-20131007050753

Regina did not murder Leopold simply because she didn't feel affection for him—she murdered him because she was his pretty prize second wife with no autonomy and no means of escape other than his death. The point I was making was not why  Regina killed Leopold, but why she could justify killing Leopold WHILE ALSO having affection for Snow. My second point was intended to illustrate that Regina does not, in her own words, know how to love very well. She cares for Snow, but Snow is a constant, inescapable reminder of everything that is wrong in Regina's life. Of course she has the mental duality she needs to murder Leopold while caring for Snow.

The reason I argue that Regina was not seriously plotting against Snow is that, unlike the Leopold murder, Regina's initial plan for getting rid of Snow makes no sense.

Diverting blame from herself in Leopold's case is easy; just exploit any scrap of xenophobia she can find (and I'm sure it's there) and say that the dirty foreigner did it—after all, no one's seen him since the king died and he used snakes from his own land to do it. No one knew that Regina was stringing the genie along; there's nothing to link her to him.

Snow, on the other hand, would have been murdered by someone who appeared to be Regina's personal, hand-picked guard. There's no way to not make that look bad. It wasn't a "handling delicately," it wasn't anything—there was no plot there, there was only seizing an opportunity and recklessly taking it. When someone shows the capacity to effortlessly run rings around people to get what she needs done without implicating herself, and then turns around and does something as politically idiotic as using the huntsman against Snow in the way that she did, I don't think it takes a big leap in logic to assume that the latter action was extensively premeditated or even thought through at all.

I believe that Regina was searching for a good way to get rid of Leopold without looking guilty for a long time before the genie showed up; I don't believe the same of getting rid of Snow, because what we see in the text does not, in any way, suggest that. She may well have wanted to get rid of Snow, but she wasn't thinking about semantics; it was all emotion, no forethought.

Kathryn was going to find out about the affair sooner or later. People outside of the triangle knew about it; Sidney, Regina, and Emma at the very least, and probably more since, again, public kiss in broad daylight. How much better for Kathryn to find out from someone in the triangle rather than a casual observer, right? I mean, let's not operate under the belief that the only people Kathryn could find out from are David or MM—that's not how real life works, and many an affair has been found out because someone else found out and told the spouse in question.

Kathryn and Mary Margaret are both women who value honesty very highly. The conversation would absolutely be an uncomfortable one, would more than likely have emotions running rather high on both sides. But the thing is, Kathryn knows the marriage isn't going well and she's more invested in it than David is. Being told that there's an affair going on wouldn't exactly be out of the blue. There would be an element of "but why isn't David telling me this?" but I think it would be more of a sense of betrayal than being indignant with Mary Margaret for not sitting around doing nothing.

And yes, David would be angry at Mary Margaret for doing this, for making him out to be a coward (although he is), but that's no reason for Mary Margaret not to do what she feels is necessary and right. Why should it be? She's having a crisis of conscience, and yet she should do nothing about it because David would be upset with her for following her principles?

I see absolutely nothing wrong with the proverbial "other woman" coming clean to the wife in this kind of situation. She's involved in the affair; she knows that the husband is talking about leaving his wife but doing nothing about it and generally refusing to communicate/be an adult, and she knows that the truth is going to come out sooner or later and that the sooner it happens, the less it will hurt (it's a bit like ripping off a bandaid, if you will forgive the cliche). If she is also as stridently opposed to lying as MM, then why shouldn't she make that first attempt at honest conversation? Why shouldn't she own where she was wrong and take that plunge with the aim of serving everyone's interests? It's not as if the husband will benefit in the long term from continuing to lie. And if she ends up breaking up with the husband permanently as a result, it's pretty clear evidence that they're incompatible in the long run—love alone cannot sustain a permanent relationship (just ask our 50% divorce rate if you don't believe me!).

Snow White had no problem carrying on with Charming while he was engaged to be married to another woman until George threatened her into it by threatening to have Charming assassinated—and then she spiraled into despair so intense that she purposefully destroyed her love for him and turned herself into a caricature of a psychopath.

The author is always dead. I am under no obligation to interpret the text—any text—the way the writer wants me to. I am under no obligation to let Nolan's vision take precedent over the events on the screen in Inception; I am under no obligation to read Harry Potter the way J.K. Rowling does; I am under no obligation to interpret what I see in OUaT according to the views of the writers, actors, or directors—and bear in mind that these are the writers who make light of the fact that Regina enslaves and rapes the huntsman/Graham for decades. I do not want to use their interpretation of the text.

Regina was completely being an unreliable narrator when she said "everybody in this town does exactly what I want them to." She straight up does not have that kind of control over anyone except Graham; that is supported by literally everything we see happening in Storybrooke.

David is also an unreliable narrator; the only way his behavior changes post-curse is that he suddenly remembers how to swing a sword and ride a horse.

Killing the siren is, again, the slaying-a-dragon kind of bravery (physical risk, not emotional). One is not comparable to the other; Charming knew the siren would kill him and he had the strength of mind to remember that through her magical compulsion; that doesn't say emotional bravery to me, it says down to earth and Herculean focus. The bravest man in the world could face a siren and fail if she managed to convince him that she wasn't a monster.

I don't know a single person who doesn't find the concept of One True Love ridiculous—and many people I know find the kind of One True Love touted by OUaT insulting, as well, for reasons that should be obvious. The general consensus is that love and love alone cannot sustain a relationship—there are variables like economics, personal ethical systems and values, childcare, stability, health, and on and on and on that need to be taken into account. Everyone knows that love can fade away.

Love itself is not a laughable concept and no one is arguing that it is. True Love—the fairytale kind of love that Snow and David claim to have, the kind that always triumphs over everything and is permanently infatuated because that's just how it is—that's what's laughable, because real life is messy and chaotic and haphazardly put together at best.

Don't forget that Charming is living a lie when Snow meets him, and he continues to live that lie (that he is Prince James and not shepherd boy David) indefinitely—Grumpy is one of Snow's closest confidants and he has no idea that James used to be David or that he wasn't a prince from birth until Storybrooke, and the truth only comes out because there's a giant rampaging through town. Yes, at first Charming played to George's tune out of fear for his mother, but his mother died and he kept lying. He and Snow overthrow George and he kept lying. And, again, he chose to run away rather than let Abigail in on the truth—she knows because she paid attention, not because he told her ("I have ears in the King's court. And, despite everyone's best efforts to shield me from it, I know the truth..."). Telling the truth regardless of consequences is not his first choice by any means.

Humans are social creatures who are wired to conform to their ingroup; this makes it extremely difficult to stand up to friends versus standing up to an enemy (i.e. the outgroup). It's not a generalization; it's how people are put together. Some people are better at resisting this phenomenon than others; emotional cowards like David and Rumpel do not rank among them.

Even as a bandit, Snow had people like Red and, later, the dwarves to thoroughly rely on, and random villagers who opened their homes to her and protected her at the risk of inciting the Queen's wrath (the very real risk; look at what happened to the village in "The Evil Queen."). Even when she was completely alone, she had very strong evidence that people were on her side. On the other hand, as Mary Margaret, she's living an unfulfilling life and is clearly miserable.

Being alone is not the same as being lonely. Snow was alone; Mary Margaret was lonely. It's a very, very important distinction.

The show has thus far been very inconsistent about the level of detail the curse memories had. Graham and Mary Margaret don't seem to know each other well and can't remember when they met; on the other hand, David—who spent almost the entirety of the curse IN A COMA—remembers reading Alice in Wonderland as a child, and thus far we've seen none of the severe holes that I'd expect to see if the curse really was that vague (i.e., everyone in Storybrooke appears to have a fully functioning memory of childhood education and, in the case of Archie and the staff of the hospital, medical school).

And, on not being able to remember the exact details of how you met someone else: I'm in a queerplatonic relationship with my roommate, whom I've known for about two years. I couldn't tell you where we met or under what circumstances (neither could she—I asked). It's not a curse thing, it's a human-memories-are-fallible thing.

On bullies and bullying: First: Perfectly nice adults can be absolute shits as children. In-show, even if you disagree with me about adult!Snow's personality, it's been demonstrated that young!Snow was an entitled brat who yelled at a servant with very little provocation. Second: Every single character in the show is morally grey. Every single one. Many of them have killed other people (Red/Ruby, MM, David, Regina, Gold, Cora, George, Graham, Hook, all the dwarves...) and plenty of them are just regular people who are, as a rule, jerks. Some of them are less jerks than others, but none of them can be honestly said to relish having nice and respectful relationships with everyone else in town.

[Yes: Women need certain advantages in order to be treated equivalently to men. That's because we live in a misogynistic, sexist culture that does not treat women well. If Mary Margaret had the kind of privilege Snow did as a member of the royal family, she would not have been immune to the effects of our misogynistic and sexist culture, but she would have been better equipped to overcome or at least avoid the warped attitudes our society has toward women. Denying that this is true or that the society we live in is overbrimming with misogyny is every bit as insulting as trying to claim that homophobia doesn't exist anymore.]

Rumpel is most definitely a sociopath. I've already discussed why I think so. His relationship with Belle is also uncomfortable and unhealthy if not outright abusive—I mean, he treats her like a possession!—but the narrative doesn't treat him that way and that's why I'm not surprised there are a gazillion Rumbelle shippers. (That, and there are people—myself included—who will ship unhealthy things because they are unhealthy and it's weirdly fascinating as long as it's acknowledged as unhealthy and not the epic romance that the writers seem to be trying to sell us with Rumbelle)

Literary and visual analysis aren't different at all, though, at least not in the sense that you're talking.

The creative team of Oz the Great and Powerful can sell their intended story ("Conman with a Heart of Gold saves Oz from that bitch Evanora and her scorned-woman sister Theo") as hard as they please and I'm still going to gape at the screen and think "but but but Glinda is a crap leader, Theodora was clearly unhinged from the start, and Oscar is an unrepentant, slimy narcissist; why am I supposed to not be routing for Evanora the well intentioned extremist again?" [though, sidenote on OtGaP: David Lindsay-Abaire is an amazing playwright, how the hell did he write such a dull script?]

I came to these conclusions not because I wanted to be edgy and interpret the movie "incorrectly," but because I sat in the theater and boggled at what the narrative was trying to tell me versus what I was actually shown, which was that Evanora was the least terrible of four terrible leaders.

Yes, visual media have a lot more going for them and the director has a lot of power to influence the way the text gets to the audience; visual images can be incredibly powerful. That doesn't mean I should go to the director and say "so why did you choose to put Alice on a boulder and Bob on the ground for the scene where they declared their love," it means I should take the "text" as it's given to me and make my own decisions.

What you're doing is making it sound as if writers of written media don't also have incredible amounts of power over what they write and what it means. Words, like images, have meaning and power. There's a huge difference between this:

''"Thank you for returning my books," she says stiffly. "You can leave now."''

and:

''"Thanks for bringing my books back," she says, smiling. "I'll see you tomorrow."''

In both cases, "she" is thanking the other person for returning her books and making it clear that she doesn't want the other to say; however, everything about them is designed to paint a different picture in the reader's head. "Thank you" is more formal than "Thanks." Saying something stiffly implies a different emotion than saying something with a smile. "You can leave now" is upfront and bordering on rude while "I'll see you tomorrow" brings with it the implication of goodbye without seeming like an outright dismissal. Even the difference between "returning" and "bringing back" is important—bringing back sounds more relaxed than returning and that underscores the different formalities of "thank you" and "thanks." Is the reader going to sit down and dissect a book word by word like this? Of course not. But the writer thinks about it and the writer, ideally, knows how to pick the words and phrasings that will best create the impression that the writer wants to inspire in the reader.

That's no reason to take the writer's word as fact anymore than the director's ability to make choices based on the story xe wants to tell means we, as the consumer, should base our interpretations on what the director tells us rather than what we actually see. Again, it's death of the author.

(Put another way, I, as the director can tell one of my actors "react to this with more surprise, let it shock you," but that doesn't mean that an audience member can't make their own conclusions about why the character is shocked instead of, say, gleeful.)

There is no reason that a manipulator cannot be genuinely emotional about something and use that to manipulate. None. In fact, all the better if they can—we humans respond to emotion with emotion. Look at Cora—once she comes to Storybrooke, emotion is her primary tool for getting Regina back under her thumb and it works beautifully.

Or, for that matter, look at any actor ever. Take an acting class sometime; actors are not trained to "act," they're trained to be present, available, and live the text—to allow real emotions to happen as a result of the words they are speaking and the physical motions they are making. The idea is not to emulate emotions; it's to actually experience emotions in a controllable form.

Having real emotions does not render a person incapable of manipulating; it makes that person very effective at manipulation if they know how to channel those emotions in an effective way (and Snow, as royalty, would have that training—the last thing you want in a ruler is an inability to effectively deal with and utilize emotions).

Why would OUaT have a scene with random peasants when it's never cared about them before? All the peasants who are shown are only shown in the context of named characters.

That they believe Emma, who's known Henry for a year, is "more" Henry's mother than Regina, who raised him, speaks to a deep-seated inclination to put blood relations over emotional ones, at least as far as children and parents are concerned.

Regina is established again and again and again as someone who lashes out when she's hurt. From her perspective, Snow built up a chance for her to let go of all the horribleness and have some kind of family and then changed her mind, decided that Regina was irredeemably evil after all, and tried to kill her.

She was hurt. She responded by fighting back.

Regina desperately wanted redemption in that moment. She was all but leaping at the chance she saw Snow giving her. And Snow ripped that away. That keeps happening! Regina will try to do the right thing and she gets nothing for it, if not outright punished—look at what happened with Archie's "murder," for example.

Why on earth would you expect Regina to not be jaded and burned and thoroughly frustrated with the whole "redemption" thing? Why would you expect her to keep trying at something that gets her hurt over and over again?

The difference is, Snow has demonstrated an ability to understand that she has caused Regina harm:

Charming: So, what did you do to incur that much wrath?

Snow: She blames me for ruining her life.

Charming: Did you?

Snow: Yes.

Whereas as far as Regina's concerned, she's fighting back and fighting back against someone who always comes out on top. She's looking at Mary Margaret's life and seeing all the good things that Regina never got and saying, "Where do you get off saying I ruined your life?! Your life is the opposite of ruined! No matter what I do to you, you still get your happy ending and I get nothing!"

Yeah, she's obviously being subjective. But her reasons for that subjectivity are a lot more understandable than Snow's.

Cora's mill was doing business with the aristocracy. No matter how badly the royals pay, they're not going to do business with a mill that's barely scraping along because a mill that's barely scraping along is not going to be productive enough to meet the needs of the royalty. Peasantry in a feudal society is not the same as being middle class in the United States; you're not going to have the finances to do anything but live from, for lack of a better phrase, paycheck to paycheck no matter what you do. You're a peasant.

But Cora was at the top of the peasant heap. She has a stable job and royal patronage. Yes, she has to budget carefully around her father's massive resource drain (alcoholism is expensive) and scrimp and save and has no excess to spend on luxuries, but there's a HUGE difference between having lean weeks (which Cora certainly would have—peasant!) and outright starving. Starving people do not run mills that service the local rulers.

She used her murderous desires to create magic, not vice versa. "I want their necks to bend from breaking" came first, and the magic grew out of that. It's a pretty clear line of causality.

That letter came off as really, really sanctimonious and manipulative to me. I remember raising my eyebrows and going "seriously?" at the screen the first time I watched that episode. It's not a genuine apology, it's making attempting to barter Snow's life in exchange for Regina being a good leader, and it's incredibly condescending—"I know what you think you're doing is vengeance; I prefer to think of it as a sacrifice for the good of all" is just a pretty way of saying "You think this is what you're doing, but I know better." The entire letter also frames Snow as the virtuous do-gooder who thinks of the common good and Regina as an irrational force of vengeance ("For the sake of the kingdom, I hope my death satisfies your need for revenge" in particular).

Then there's the progression of "I want you to take my last message to heart. I'm sorry and I forgive you." It's basically a request for Regina to act as Snow wishes immediately followed by an apology and trite forgiveness.

(It also erases Regina's position as the queen—"my father's subjects" instead of "your subjects," but that has less to do with apologies and more to do with sexism, I think)

All the instances of Snow's apologies and forgiveness come off like this.

As far as Regina's response to Snow asking "Haven't we both suffered enough?", Regina has suffered exponentially more than Snow has, and Snow doesn't get that. Of course Regina answers with "no."

The thing is, it hasn't been acknowledged in-show by anyone except maybe Emma ("you're mom's a real piece of work") and Regina that her terrible life directly correlates to how terrible Regina became. The point here is not to say "Regina just acts that way because she was abused, because that's how she was taught," it's to say "Regina learned a lot of shitty coping strategies, maybe we should focus on helping her unlearn those before we expect her to live up to our impossibly high moral standards."

Archie came pretty close, back when she was still in therapy with him, but she doesn't even start talking about her past until "The Doctor" and then, five episodes and probably less than a month later, "The Cricket Game" happens and she stops going to therapy because Archie's "dead" and the whole town thinks she killed him. And then Cora happens, so Regina's getting those abuse-lessons reinforced all over again. Do we see Regina going back to therapy following the events of "The Miller's Daughter"? I'm fairly certain that we don't, because that was when the (stupid) Home Office subplot started being the only real arc happening and it got most of the focus.

So, while no respectable psychologist would keep hammering the abuse point, Regina isn't in therapy right now, and no one else is trying to help her unlearn the abuse lessons, they're ignoring them. Hell, it's doubtful they even know the full extent of them—Regina's not exactly a person who shares readily and some of them are probably so ingrained that Regina wouldn't be able to point them out even if she did want to share.

In-show, they're not on the next step yet. They were getting there in the events of "The Doctor," but circumstances kicked in to stop the therapy in its tracks.

And, again, not trying to justify.

Though I still think Snow is a sociopath or at least bordering on being one. I've been side-eying her since "Snow Falls." Because this conversation:

''Snow White: When it comes from a good fairy. This stuff? Is deadly. It transforms the most fearsome of adversaries into a form that’s easily squashed.''

Prince Charming: Then why didn’t you use it on me?

''Snow White: Cause you’re not worth it. It’s very hard to come by. I’m saving it for a special someone.''

''Prince Charming: Ah, the Queen. You got a lot of anger there, don’t you, Snow?''

''Snow White: The charges on her posters are lies. It didn’t stop her from sending her huntsman to rip out my heart.''

Prince Charming: What happened?

''Snow White: Well, not everyone is a soulless royal. He took pity on me and let me go. I’ve been hiding in the forest ever since. Trying to amass enough fortune to leave this place. Escape to another realm. Somewhere isolated. Where I can never be hurt.''

was immediately (like, in five or six lines) followed by this one:

Prince Charming: So, what did you do to incur that much wrath?

Snow White: She blames me for ruining her life.

Prince Charming: Did you?

Snow White: Yes.