#like from a writing standpoint it makes SENSE that cora regina and zelena all have very similar styles

[iverna]

I’ve been thinking about this lately, and I think I’ve figured out one of the main problems that the writing on Once ran into. Disclaimer: I’m not anti-anyone, any criticism here is of the writing not the characters, if you have anti comments to make kindly make them somewhere else.

So. One of the best earlier examples of what I’m talking about, and the thing that made me think about this, is after Snow shares what she found out about her mother, Ava, telling Cora’s secret and thereby forcing her to give up Zelena.

Emma: “I thought our family were the good guys.”

Regina: “Life is too messy for it to ever be that simple.”

This, to me, is a perfect example of OUAT’s writers looking at things from one particular point of view and not really examining the situation and its implications.

Yes, Ava spilled the beans on Cora’s pregnancy and she did it for personal gain. But Cora was the one who was lying to begin with. She was planning to trick Leopold into marrying her, and presumably she was going to tell him that the baby was his. I’m not sure you can really call Ava the bad guy in this situation. It wasn’t really comparable to what Snow did at all. If you stop someone from lying to and duping someone else, does that really make you the bad guy? That’s a weird moral stance.

And yet it’s portrayed that way. David, Emma, Snow, and Regina all seem to see it that way. Nobody questions it.

I think it’s because the flashbacks in this episode were written from Cora’s point of view, and the writers got stuck in that. It happens a lot on Once and it leads to a lot of out-of-character moments or moments that feel like pandering or a betrayal of a certain character.

You get the same thing when, in a Regina-centric episode, you’ve got Emma apologising to Regina for ruining her life. Because from Regina’s point of view, that’s what Emma did. From a more objective standpoint, of course, what Emma did to Regina pales in comparison to everything Regina has done, directly or indirectly, to Emma. But the writers are approaching the scene from Regina’s point of view, and from Regina’s point of view, Emma is wrong, so the writers have Emma responding as if that’s actually the case.

Same thing with Rumple. He’s a villain--a sympathetic one, but definitely a villain. But when it comes to Belle, he tends to be the focus character, and she reacts according to what he and/or the plot requires.

So you end up with Rumple repeatedly being the bad guy... but Belle forgives him, even though it often doesn’t make any sense and we get no rationale for it.

It was also noticeable in the Underworld where various characters got closure or no closure (or rather horrific ends) according to what the viewpoint characters wanted or needed. Milah’s end wasn’t about her, it was about Rumple. Cora’s end wasn’t about her, it was about Regina and Zelena. Even Neal appearing to Emma instead of Rumple or Henry was imo a case of prioritising plot and Emma’s point of view over what made sense for Neal as a character.

I think this isn’t the writers pandering to fans as much as just neglecting to look at the actual situation that they’re writing. When you write, you have to get into the characters’ heads to a degree, so I think that’s how things like this happen.

The longer the show went on, the more it happened. Instead of considering the situation from various characters’ points of view and having them react accordingly, the writers went with the focus character, and wrote other characters’ reactions accordingly. Possibly because the longer the show went on, the more they got used to the characters, and the writing fell into a routine, I don’t know.

I think a lot of the perceived hypocrisy of various characters can be explained by this. If we’re looking at things from Emma’s point of view, then naturally her lying to Killian will be different than Killian lying to her. We all tend to do this. We have our reasons for doing things, but we don’t know other people’s reasons, so it’s easier to condemn them.

And nobody ever questions this or points it out, it goes unchallenged, which makes it look worse. But in my opinion it’s a writing issue, not a character issue. There’d be nothing wrong with Regina telling Emma that she ruined her life if Emma stood up to her and yelled back about all the ways in which Regina ruined her life, and the scene ends with Regina reflecting on her choices and maybe learning something. The situation with Ava could have been portrayed as her calling out Cora’s lies, and nothing would have changed. Belle continuously forgiving Rumple could be an interesting exploration of an unhealthy relationship and why people stay in it.

But that requires looking at things from various points of view, and I think the writers often simply neglected to do that. And that’s why, when you look at various situations from a bit of a distance and really get into the implications etc, you end up with a lot of very iffy moral stances, hypocrisy, and the like.

#idk just something that occurred to me #over breakfast earlier :D #so i wanted to write it out #ouat meta #my opinion