Morality in Storybrooke / Social Issues: Threads Combined!

[KingOfHearts]

44 minutes ago, Camera One said:

They need two support groups in Storybrooke.  The "My Father Was Murdered" support group.  And the "I Killed My Own Father" support group.

Regina would probably join both, since the Evil Queen™ murdered her father.

Edited March 19, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Olivia Y]

5 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

You know what gets me about this show? Its shockingly dark...but the writers don't really seem to realize that. 

I think the problem is that the writers don't treat most of the non-Regina characters (including the main characters, never mind one-shot or background characters) as people. They're just props or plot devices or whatever to be used to illustrate a point and then to never be thought of again. They're trying to brush off all the mass killings etc with 'the past is in the past' and emphasis how Regina's good now, but...that's not how redemption works. The reason they're able to do that so easily is that all those people she killed don't matter to the writers, so they seem to think it's reasonable to expect the audience to feel the same way.

(And truth be told, outside of this forum, I'd say their view is pretty well supported. There's some stuff on Tumblr that's truly astounding. Just in the latest episode, there are people applauding Regina's 'sassiness' with the 'hears of my enemies' line. Ugh.)

[Camera One]

Morality Lesson of The Week:  If you want to kill someone but don't want to darken yourself, hire an assassin.

Tune in next week for a new lesson.

[KingOfHearts]

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Morality Lesson of The Week:  If you want to kill someone but don't want to darken yourself, hire an assassin.

#TheDaggerMadeMeDoIt

[InsertWordHere]

Didn't Rumple give Neal the dagger in Neverland? I guess he was okay with Neal asking him to kill any of the "heroes" present. 

[andromeda331]

No, wait Rumple didn't give Neal the dagger he asked for it to prove he was changed or wasn't going to hurt Henry but Rumple had already given it to his shadow. He didn't get it back until Storybrooke when he killed his father. Neal did control Rumple for the lack of better word he made Rumple agree to make a potion to cure David being hit with the poison arrow and wouldn't let Rumple use his magic when they rescued Henry.  

[Camera One]

Let's share some important life lessons we all learned from 6B so far.

1. If someone else does something immoral on your behalf (eg. murder), then don't worry, you are still morally clean.  

2. Even if you murdered people and destroyed people's lives, it's most important to love yourself.  No matter what you did, you deserve a happy ending.  To hell with collateral damage.

3. If you try to fix your past mistakes, you will end up dead.

4. If you catch someone lying, kick them out asap.  If you are the one who lied, use alcohol liberally and then contemplate running away.  This indicates you two have true love, and coincidence will surely bring you back together sooner rather than later.

5. True love is more important than duty to your family or country.  If you choose duty over true love, you will be punished (eg. someone will blackmail you and take away your family and country).  To fix it, just accept love and kiss your true love and everything will be fixed.

For more information, don't hesitate to call Rumple/Gideon (#1), Regina or The Evil Queen (#2), David's father (#3), Emma/Hook (#4) and Jasmine (#5).  They will be happy to help.

Edited April 9, 2017 by Camera One

[HariboPeach]

With all that author nonsense, does that mean no one in the book has any free will? The author from a million years ago started the book of the fairy-tale people and they're just characters? So Rumple, Regina, Black Fairy, etc etc are just puppets? And the good guys aren't even good because they just get written like that, so no morals required? That would mean the whole series was a complete waste of time and everyone should just sit back waiting for their page to come around. No point in planning anything, the story will be mapped out by an annoying teenager with a fashion problem. 

[KingOfHearts]

Jessica Rabbit can use that excuse because she never actually did anything wrong. She fits the "misunderstood villain" description much better than anyone on OUAT. (Except Elsa.) She was blackmailed, and she appeared very suspicious. Rumple wasn't holding a knife to Regina's throat while she raped Graham or exiled Jefferson. Cora didn't possess her when she torched villages.

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 So Rumple, Regina, Black Fairy, etc etc are just puppets?

Here's the punchline - Regina was not written to do anything. Snowing were the only victims of Isaac's meddling, that we know of.

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No point in planning anything, the story will be mapped out by an annoying teenager with a fashion problem.

Deep inside, A&E are annoying teenagers with fashion problems. Henry is their self-insert.

Edited April 17, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[HariboPeach]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

 

Here's the punchline - Regina was not written to do anything. Snowing were the only victims of Isaac's meddling, that we know of.

 

I don't get it. How can he make two people do stuff...but not the others in their world that would presumably need to have a certain reaction to fulfill his story?

[Shanna Marie]

2 minutes ago, HariboPeach said:

How can he make two people do stuff...but not the others in their world that would presumably need to have a certain reaction to fulfill his story?

They've been kind of inconsistent about how the Author stuff works. For the most part, though, he wasn't writing the story or making people do stuff -- at least, he wasn't supposed to. The Author was supposed to record events as they happened -- it's kind of a misnomer to call him an Author when he's actually just supposed to be a historian. The magic pen and the books allowed the Author to write events as though he'd witnessed them even though he hadn't. We saw some of that with Henry in the Underworld, where he was basically writing in his sleep and didn't even know what he wrote. It just poured out of his pen. But the Author also has some ability to manipulate events, which he isn't supposed to be using. That's what Isaac was doing when he messed with the Charmings because he thought heroes were boring, and he was punished by being stuck in that page, and later he was stripped of his position for creating that alternate universe. However, Henry has used that power a few times with no repercussions.

Regina only believed that the Author was the one keeping her from having a happy ending. It turned out that Isaac was a huge fan of hers and never did anything to manipulate her or events surrounding her.

Which is why that plotline was so terrible. The entire basis of the heroes' goal turned out to have been entirely wrong -- the Author wasn't doing anything about villains, Isaac had actually acted against the Charmings, and it was wrong for the Author to manipulate anything. The Author didn't write Regina wrong, wasn't wrong about Regina. He only recorded the things she did.

[Camera One]

Something valuable I've learned from this show is mothers are horrible people.  Motherhood ruins lives.  Except when it's Regina or Zelena.

[jhlipton]

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

Something valuable I've learned from this show is mothers are horrible people.  Motherhood ruins lives.  Except when it's Regina or Zelena.

Fathers aren't much better,   Charming seems to be the only exception, and he's borderline.

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/8/2017 at 11:27 AM, RulerofallIsurvey said:

Since when does being a hero, or even just not-a-villain mean that you have to tolerate a bully?

They do have this weird thing of throwing a whole bunch of things into the same category, not making distinctions. So, according to this show:

• being angry at a friend who betrayed you and lied to you (Snow and Gepetto, about the wardrobe's capacity) is as bad as
• wanting some kind of justice against someone who did wrong but who isn't being held accountable (Killian and the king), which is as bad as
• wanting revenge against someone who harmed you and people you love (Hook and Rumple), which is as bad as
• defending a child against someone threatening to kill him (Emma and Cruella), which is as bad as
• killing a mass murderer who has recently committed murder and who is in the process of gaining the power to cause even more harm (Snow and Cora)

They don't seem to make any fine distinctions here. Hook's revenge scheme was bad because he let it become too much of an obsession, so that it interfered with his own life and morality and caused him to do harm to innocents who got in his way. But he wouldn't be wrong for wanting some kind of justice or for wanting an ongoing threat dealt with (how much harm would have been prevented if they'd let Rumple die when Hook poisoned him?). He shouldn't be considered wrong for being angry that Rumple has harmed him yet again or for wanting to do something to stop Rumple from doing more harm. Here, it looks like at least some of the audience has bought what the writers are selling because I noticed a few tweets during the musical episode about how Hook hadn't changed and was clearly still evil that he was willing to use the poison on Rumple to stop him. They didn't seem to see the difference between a revenge quest that harmed everyone who got in his way and taking action to stop someone who was in the process of betraying them to their enemy.

Once you're no longer a villain, you're no longer allowed to get angry or defend yourself, no matter what's being done to you. But the big problem with Rumple is that he's too overpowered. There's nothing much that can be done to him. I think that if he were as reformed as they act like they think he is, he'd submit willingly to some kind of justice, and they should take the fact that he hasn't as some kind of sign.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 3/19/2017 at 5:52 PM, tennisgurl said:

Or when the Count came by, and Regina was forced to kill him, even though he was being controlled and his actions weren't really his fault. Regina killed a guy, and it was just considered the semi tragic ending of a one shot character who we will never see again. We go back to our light fairytale tone again like it never happened.

Which, come to think of it, is inconsistent with the finale's claim that Emma would have turned dark if she had killed the similarly-controlled Gideon.

[KingOfHearts]

Also, it was "wrong" for Emma to kill Cruella because she was defenseless. So let me get this straight - killing an evil person who can't hurt you is wrong, but won't turn you dark forever. (But it might, you never know!) But killing an innocent who is trying to kill you will, but only if you're the Savior. If you're Regina, all you have to do is feel bad for five minutes and you're good. You know, Walsh was technically innocent too, and Emma threw him off a building into nothingness. She also killed Hook, which didn't turn her dark either. (Oddly enough, saving his life is what did that.)

Did you know executing a murderous public menace is almost as bad as telling a secret?

Edited June 10, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[tennisgurl]

Of course the rules are always different for Saint Regina, Our Lady of Perpetual Woobiedom. She could slit the throats of a dozen puppies in middle of the town square, and everyone would say that the puppies had it coming for accidently breathing too hard on Regina's amazing lasagna, and that we should love her even MORE for riding the world of the canine menace.

[KingOfHearts]

21 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

Of course the rules are always different for Saint Regina, Our Lady of Perpetual Woobiedom. She could slit the throats of a dozen puppies in middle of the town square, and everyone would say that the puppies had it coming for accidently breathing too hard on Regina's amazing lasagna, and that we should love her even MORE for riding the world of the canine menace.

And the Charmings would still judge Cruella for making dalmatian coats.

Edited June 10, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[KingOfHearts]

Apparently, in the musical episode, the Charmings agreed to give Hook his revenge against Rumple in exchange for passage to Regina's castle. They were okay with letting Hook kill Rumple, but not with an executioner shooting Regina with a bow? When is it murder and when is it just necessary bloodshed?

[Camera One]

When you think about these plot points, they really unravel fast.  The Writers never think about the actual ramifications.  Then again, there's the fact that they wouldn't actually need a random pirate to take them to Regina's palace.

Edited June 11, 2017 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

They were okay with letting Hook kill Rumple, but not with an executioner shooting Regina with a bow? When is it murder and when is it just necessary bloodshed?

I guess that's like it being okay for Rumple to do something for Gideon so Gideon didn't get his hands dirty. If they enable Hook to kill Rumple, then it's not their fault, it's all on Hook. But if they order the execution, it's on them?

I really can't keep straight when and when it isn't okay to kill. Hook killing Rumple would have been okay when the Charmings were giving him Rumple in exchange for his help, but later Hook killing Rumple was bad and he had to be stopped, and then later he was a hero for killing Jekyll to save Belle. Snow killing Cora to save Rumple and stop Cora from becoming a Dark One was bad, but Charming killing Percival to stop him from getting revenge on Regina wasn't worth a moment's thought.

[KingOfHearts]

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I really can't keep straight when and when it isn't okay to kill. Hook killing Rumple would have been okay when the Charmings were giving him Rumple in exchange for his help, but later Hook killing Rumple was bad and he had to be stopped, and then later he was a hero for killing Jekyll to save Belle. Snow killing Cora to save Rumple and stop Cora from becoming a Dark One was bad, but Charming killing Percival to stop him from getting revenge on Regina wasn't worth a moment's thought.

It's mainly a question of who's in the family. Rumple wasn't Snowing's grandson's grandfather at the time. As long as they're not related to you anyway, they're fair game to kill. Cora was Snow's step-grandmother, but Percival and Jekyll were not family members. So the Charmings don't care about them.

[Kktjones]

15 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's mainly a question of who's in the family. Rumple wasn't

Oh my god - when you put it like this Snowing really looks terrible, don't they? Yikes!

[Noneofyourbusiness]

On 6/10/2017 at 9:12 PM, KingOfHearts said:

Also, it was "wrong" for Emma to kill Cruella because she was defenseless.

It would have been wrong if Emma had known Cruella was defenseless, but the show didn't seem to hold it against her for killing Cruella when she didn't know the latter was incapable of following through on her threat against Henry, so at least they were sensible about *that*.

Although Cruella's plan was dumb. If Emma had been willing to kill Isaac to prevent Cruella from hurting Henry, she'd logically be even more willing to kill Cruella.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Noneofyourbusiness

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

It would have been wrong if Emma had known Cruella was defenseless, but the show didn't seem to hold it against her for killing Cruella when she didn't know the latter was incapable of following through on her threat against Henry, so at least they were sensible about *that*.

They did refer to Emma as "murdering" Cruella, so the show gets only partial credit here, since killing in self defense or defense of others isn't murder.

[KAOS Agent]

In post episode interviews, the writers specifically called out Emma for "crossing a line" when she killed Cruella. That's where it's obvious that they have very little care or understanding of how they portray these things. David killed Percival, Regina killed Edmond Dantes, Hook killed Jekyll all in self defense/defense of others and it's all good, but Emma doing the same was beyond the pale and set her on a bad path. There is no coherency with the narrative except Emma is to meet an impossibly high standard and must die over any other choice. Note that Emma got slapped by Cruella in the Underworld, whereas Regina was apologized to  by her main victim

[tennisgurl]

The morality in this show is more inconsistent and nonsensical than the Wheel of Morality in Animaniacs.

*Wheel of Morality turn turn turn, tell us what lesson we have learned..."Killing a known evil person directly threatening your child is bad, but killing a guy who is no longer a threat to anyone and is justifiably pissed about being confronted by the person who killed everyone he grew up with is good!"*

[Shanna Marie]

The discussion about Hook's hook in the Unpopular Opinions thread got me started thinking ... In a world in which any injury can apparently be healed with a wave of a hand, with no cost to the healer (except when there is -- like Dark Emma healing Robin, a cost that hasn't come up with any other healing), what is the morality in letting any injury or wound go unhealed, in someone living with a disability that could be magically healed or having someone go through a normal surgery and healing process, with all the pain and recovery required?

I guess it's one thing if they're back in the Enchanted Forest and more spread out, so a magic user isn't always available, but in Storybrooke, where Emma, Regina, and Rumple (who's apparently good this week) can all heal, why let anything go unhealed? Rumple reattached Whale's severed arm, but Hook's hand is still sitting in a jar. Emma healed Ashley, but they brought Nemo to the hospital and apparently did surgery on him the regular way, with what was seemingly a normal healing time (given the amount of time between him being shown in the hospital and him being ready to leave town).

[Camera One]

Why is Dr. Whale putting in so much energy with healing, when Emma, Regina, Rumple and Zelena (formerly) can do it with a wave of the hand?  Has Blue healed?  It would have made more sense if the hospital was at the nunnery and that's what the fairies did all day.  

[Shanna Marie]

12 hours ago, Camera One said:

Why is Dr. Whale putting in so much energy with healing, when Emma, Regina, Rumple and Zelena (formerly) can do it with a wave of the hand?  Has Blue healed?  It would have made more sense if the hospital was at the nunnery and that's what the fairies did all day.

This is where it becomes a moral question to me, and it looks like, once again, you don't matter if you're not part of the "family." If Henry or Hook gets a scratch, Regina and Emma (respectively) will heal it. Apparently, everyone else goes to the hospital for regular care. Even if a magic user can't be on call 24/7 for healing, they could probably speed healing after Whale buys time with surgery -- get past all that healing, recovery, and rehab time with a wave of a hand. And yet while Nemo and Liam were lying in hospital beds, Emma was out in the hallway, not healing them. It seems to me that if you have the capability of healing any injury with no cost to yourself, it's immoral not to heal everyone. There should be no people in Storybrooke with disabilities caused by injuries. This is why Hook still having a hook is bothering me. It's not a moral judgment on him, it's a moral judgment on the people who could heal him but who haven't. Hook did want the hand back until Rumple conned him out of it. The only reason he changed his mind was because he was afraid it had a bad influence on him. The reason he gave Rumple for wanting his hand back still stands, and probably even more so if he and Emma have children and he'd want to be able to pick up and hold his baby without worrying about hurting it. Rumple's sitting there at the family table, treated like a member of the family, and yet he still has Hook's hand in a jar. Wouldn't giving the hand back, and this time without any nonsense about it turning him back into a selfish pirate (especially given what we now know about what Hook did while he had the hook -- wouldn't it be worse karma to carry around a hook he's used to kill people?), be an act of good faith on Rumple's part? Heck, that should have been part of the "we're all family now!" closing montage.

Since the healing is done with a wave of a hand, physical contact doesn't seem to be required, but how much proximity is necessary? Could one of the magic users go up into the clock tower once a day and do a general healing spell on the whole town, taking care of any bruises, cuts, scrapes, or more serious injuries that were treated at the hospital?

Maybe I'm just fantasizing here, since I'm going through my second round of physical therapy on a knee that's plagued me my whole life, and I'd just love it if someone would wave a hand and make it fully functional without all the torture.

[KingOfHearts]

That's the problem with limitless magic wielded by the flick of a wrist. There are too many places where it doesn't make sense for the characters not to use it.

[Camera One]

Another one is apparating or not.

[Shanna Marie]

Another social issue that rewatching season one has me thinking about:

Supposedly, the relationship between Henry and Regina was retconned and magically fixed due to outcry from adoptive parents who were unhappy that the adoptive mother was shown to be worse than the birth mother (never mind that one was the Evil Queen and the other was the heroine, and it had nothing to do with adoption). Funny, that didn't seem to change the way they approached adoption otherwise. Zelena's adoptive father was cruel and abusive to her (though I guess you couldn't say he was any worse than Cora). Although George and James seemed to have a good, loving relationship (even if they were both jerks) in season one, they retconned it to having James running away, being glad to go with his birth father, and it was only the evil adoptive father who ordered the death of the birth father and forced James to stay with him. So, in the long run, all they did was whitewash one abusive relationship, doing a disservice to survivors of emotional abuse, and still seem to be saying some pretty awful things about adoptive relationships. The closest thing to a positive adoptive relationship has been Nemo and Liam 2.0, but that wasn't treated as a formal adoption. Liam hasn't called Nemo his father.

Meanwhile, they really do a disservice to foster parents, and I guess it really struck me because I have friends who are foster parents, so I'm a lot more aware of that now than I was when season one first aired. I know it has to be part of the narrative that Emma's life sucked, so all her foster homes had to be bad. And I know that there are bad foster homes. But I also know that there are a lot of cases where a foster home is the best thing to happen to a child. I've watched children who've been abused and neglected blossom when they get into a good foster home with loving parents and siblings. True, Emma was in a different situation, since she never had parents and wasn't pulled out of an abusive environment into safety, but they still make some pretty sweeping statements suggesting that being in the foster system is a fate worse than death. With Hansel and Gretel (I don't remember their Storybrooke names), they were living in an abandoned house and surviving by shoplifting. In a foster home, they'd at least probably get regular meals and live in a home with utilities. Yeah, we knew they were probably being sent to their deaths, since Regina was deliberately sending them out of town to make Emma look like a failure and horrible things happened when people tried to leave town, but Emma didn't know that then. She just knew that kids who were living on the streets were being sent to a place where they'd have a roof over their head, food, and adult supervision.

[Anna35]

I don't think A&E whitewashed Regina because adoptive moms complained. I wouldn't even say they retconned it, as Regina abusing Henry was brought up as late as 6x08. Everything Regina did was whitewashed or magically became unimportant in order to justify her continuing to be on the show, whether it was related to Henry or not. Remember her abuse of Emma and Snow is similarly ignored and there would be no adoptive moms to argue on her side for that. 

And as you point out, even after Regina and Henry become all mommy dearest, the show continued to portray adoption badly with Zelena and Lily, so they couldn't have been too worried about criticism from the adoptive community. 

[Rumsy4]

As far as I can tell, it was Lana who complained and successfully argued for the Regina/Henry relationship to be positively portrayed. She made a stink about it being an adoption vs birth mother issue even as recently as in a con a couple of years ago. 

[andromeda331]

4 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

As far as I can tell, it was Lana who complained and successfully argued for the Regina/Henry relationship to be positively portrayed. She made a stink about it being an adoption vs birth mother issue even as recently as in a con a couple of years ago. 

That's where I remember it coming from. Which I don't understand. She was the Evil Queen who gaslight her son. What exactly about that is "motherly"? Unlike most adoptive mothers Regina never would have ended up with Henry in the first place if she hadn't cursed his grandparents and everyone else. There's so many things that Regina did that if Regina and Henry's relationship was going to get better it needed a lot of time and for Regina to really work for it. Not over night. Regina was planning on using the failsafe to kill everyone and take Henry she only failed because it was stolen by Owen and Tamara who used it instead. Saving the town is hardly "heroic". Once Henry got his memories back their relationship that was it. Their relationship was magically fixed. Regina really never had to work for it.

[jhlipton]

On 7/14/2017 at 5:01 PM, Shanna Marie said:

Meanwhile, they really do a disservice to foster parents, and I guess it really struck me because I have friends who are foster parents

On TV, all foster parents are EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!  It's a sucky trope, but I can't recall seeing a positive foster parent yet.

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/15/2017 at 3:18 AM, Rumsy4 said:

As far as I can tell, it was Lana who complained and successfully argued for the Regina/Henry relationship to be positively portrayed. She made a stink about it being an adoption vs birth mother issue even as recently as in a con a couple of years ago. 

That was it. I knew I remembered something about it being made more positive, supposedly because of adoption vs. birth parent. And my point remains that this wasn't what it was really about because they've continued to show other adoptive parents as being bad while whitewashing abuse. And continuing the TV demonization of foster parents.

[Anna35]

6 hours ago, jhlipton said:

On TV, all foster parents are EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVIL!  It's a sucky trope, but I can't recall seeing a positive foster parent yet.

Guess you haven't watched The Fosters then? 

[MadyGirl1987]

So, I've been rewatching the series, in season 2 now, and have been thinking about Regina's "redemption." One question has stuck out at me; would she even be trying to be good if she wasn't caught? If everything had gone her way and the curse stayed intact, would she ever feel remorse? She only seems to feel "sorry" when called out on stuff, or when it is in her best interest (i.e. not wanting Henry to be upset with her throughout season 2). It comes across as the only reason she works to be on the side of good is because that is who comes out on top and it is in her best interest to align with them. Maybe while continuing on with my rewatch it will change but as it stands now I see her working to be "good" as coming from a place of self-preservation and self-interest, and how  real can redemption based on that be?

Edited July 18, 2017 by MadyGirl1987

[Anna35]

7 hours ago, MadyGirl1987 said:

So, I've been rewatching the series, in season 2 now, and have been thinking about Regina's "redemption." One question has stuck out at me; would she even be trying to be good if she wasn't caught? If everything had gone her way and the curse stayed intact, would she ever feel remorse? She only seems to feel "sorry" when called out on stuff, or when it is in her best interest (i.e. not wanting Henry to be upset with her throughout season 2). It comes across as the only reason she works to be on the side of good is because that is who comes out on top and it is in her best interest to align with them. Maybe while continuing on with my rewatch it will change but as it stands now I see her working to be "good" as coming from a place of self-preservation and self-interest, and how  real can redemption based on that be?

I often wonder what would have happened to Regina if Emma never came to town. 28 years of winning did nothing to curb her desire for revenge and she was essentially immortal under the curse.

Would she force Henry to stay when he was an adult? Would she eventually murder him or lock him up with Belle or would he run away? Would she continue to adopt more and more children? Maybe there would be a different little Cora or Henry for every generation that passed under the curse. Cursed Storybrooke is a horror story waiting to happen.

[Shanna Marie]

9 hours ago, MadyGirl1987 said:

So, I've been rewatching the series, in season 2 now, and have been thinking about Regina's "redemption." One question has stuck out at me; would she even be trying to be good if she wasn't caught?

This made me think of something else I've been pondering. The Standard Issue Hook Episode was generally flashbacks about something awful Hook did in the past, with him feeling bad about that thing in the present and trying to atone for it. Has there been a similar episode for Regina, with a past crime shown in flashback and her present-day storyline about feeling bad and setting things right? The closest I can think of is the Monte Cristo episode. It doesn't entirely fit the pattern, as the flashback is more about the Count and Rumple being the villains, and in the present it's the Evil Queen who's the problem. Regina did something awful in the past (the village slaughter), but that isn't even mentioned in the present. However, Regina does seem to feel bad that she sent an assassin after the Charmings and that he's still after them, and she does save them. Otherwise, it generally seems that any flashback about how awful Regina was is shown in the present more as her or someone else having really been a victim or is about one of the good guys having learned some valuable lesson from going through that experience that they then apply in the present. Heck, the flashback of her randomly murdering a groom on his wedding day and trying to kill Snow was paired with a present-day story about the father she murdered apologizing to her for being a bad parent. It's also interesting that Regina's big turnaround to hero, when she was sacrificing herself to stop the failsafe (that she was planning to use to kill everyone else until she and Henry were caught in her own trap) came in a Standard Issue Hook Episode, in which the flashbacks were about Hook failing Bae in the past and feeling bad about it and turning around to help in the present.

1 hour ago, Anna35 said:

Would she force Henry to stay when he was an adult?

I've wondered about that. Bringing up a child immune to the curse in a cursed town may have been one of the most abusive (and selfish) things Regina did to Henry. It guaranteed that he couldn't really have friends because he would continue growing past them, and their Groundhog Day experiences meant they might not even remember having been friends with him even if he tried to maintain his kindergarten friendships after he moved on. Regina condemned a child to a lonely, friendless existence, then tried to convince him he was crazy and imagining it. It would only have been worse as he got older. How would he be able to have a girlfriend if his first teen crush stayed 13 even as he turned 14, then 15, then 16, then 17, then 18 and it becomes statutory rape? How would he be able to get married? He wouldn't be able to have kids under the curse if time was frozen and his cursed wife wouldn't be able to get pregnant or the pregnancy didn't progress at all. What did Regina have planned for his future? If he tried to run away, would she have done something to stop him? Or was she planning to kidnap someone for him who would be able to age with him?

[jhlipton]

15 hours ago, Anna35 said:

Guess you haven't watched The Fosters then? 

I have not.

1 hour ago, Anna35 said:

Maybe there would be a different little Cora or Henry for every generation that passed under the curse. Cursed Storybrooke is a horror story waiting to happen.

23 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

What did Regina have planned for his future? If he tried to run away, would she have done something to stop him? Or was she planning to kidnap someone for him who would be able to age with him?

Tonight, on American Horror Fairy Story, something better than the last 5 seasons of OUAT!

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

Maybe there would be a different little Cora or Henry for every generation that passed under the curse. Cursed Storybrooke is a horror story waiting to happen.

Henry would become Norman Bates.

[MadyGirl1987]

On 7/18/2017 at 6:49 AM, Anna35 said:

I often wonder what would have happened to Regina if Emma never came to town. 28 years of winning did nothing to curb her desire for revenge and she was essentially immortal under the curse.

Would she force Henry to stay when he was an adult? Would she eventually murder him or lock him up with Belle or would he run away? Would she continue to adopt more and more children? Maybe there would be a different little Cora or Henry for every generation that passed under the curse. Cursed Storybrooke is a horror story waiting to happen.

 

22 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I've wondered about that. Bringing up a child immune to the curse in a cursed town may have been one of the most abusive (and selfish) things Regina did to Henry. It guaranteed that he couldn't really have friends because he would continue growing past them, and their Groundhog Day experiences meant they might not even remember having been friends with him even if he tried to maintain his kindergarten friendships after he moved on. Regina condemned a child to a lonely, friendless existence, then tried to convince him he was crazy and imagining it. It would only have been worse as he got older. How would he be able to have a girlfriend if his first teen crush stayed 13 even as he turned 14, then 15, then 16, then 17, then 18 and it becomes statutory rape? How would he be able to get married? He wouldn't be able to have kids under the curse if time was frozen and his cursed wife wouldn't be able to get pregnant or the pregnancy didn't progress at all. What did Regina have planned for his future? If he tried to run away, would she have done something to stop him? Or was she planning to kidnap someone for him who would be able to age with him?

That is a good point and something I had never thought much about. What WAS Regina planing for Henry's future? Truthfully I think she didn't give it that much forethought. Did she really think she could keep the curse a secret for him and that he wouldn't notice everyone else staying the same age? We also don't know about Henry's life inside the curse before Emma came. Did she just keep him isolated as much as she could? I could maybe see her keeping a limit on his contact with others. Maybe she only let him interact with others at school or for things like doctors(Like how he was seeing Archie in Season 1). All the same, it was terrible for her to bring a kid joy that life and It makes me glad it backfired on her by bringing Emma into he picture to break the curse.

 

22 hours ago, jhlipton said:

Tonight, on American Horror Fairy Story, something better than the last 5 seasons of OUAT!

And, honestly, a lot better then much of American Horror Story the past few seasons as well. Give me that over vampire Lady Gaga anytime.

[Shanna Marie]

20 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Henry would become Norman Bates.

Yeah, I can see a few possible outcomes if the curse hadn't broken, and most of them aren't good.

Best-case scenario (for Henry) is that he wises up as he grows up, figuring out that something's wrong even if he never gets the storybook, and he escapes, and instead of going after her adult son (who's no fun to mother anymore), she adopts another kid and starts the cycle over again.

Or Henry tries to leave and Regina either kills him in a fit of rage or locks him up in the cell next to Belle's.

Or the cognitive dissonance between what he's experiencing (growing older while nothing around him changes) and what he's being told is real (nothing's strange here, really!) makes him snap and he kills Regina.

Or he eventually gives in to the gaslighting and disregards what he's seeing and experiencing and clings to Regina for the rest of his life, still acting like her little boy even as he's growing older than she is.

I can't think of a scenario with a happy, healthy adult Henry who stays in town and has any kind of relationship with Regina.

[jhlipton]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, I can see a few possible outcomes if the curse hadn't broken, and most of them aren't good.

One more -- every few years, Regina "de-ages" Henry and makes him forget the past decade or so.  Henry spends his whole life as a little boy.

1 hour ago, MadyGirl1987 said:

And, honestly, a lot better then much of American Horror Story the past few seasons as well. Give me that over vampire Lady Gaga anytime.

I haven't watched any episodes of AHS -- I figured that pretty much any show was better than OUAT.

[andromeda331]

On ‎7‎/‎17‎/‎2017 at 11:52 PM, MadyGirl1987 said:

So, I've been rewatching the series, in season 2 now, and have been thinking about Regina's "redemption." One question has stuck out at me; would she even be trying to be good if she wasn't caught? If everything had gone her way and the curse stayed intact, would she ever feel remorse? She only seems to feel "sorry" when called out on stuff, or when it is in her best interest (i.e. not wanting Henry to be upset with her throughout season 2). It comes across as the only reason she works to be on the side of good is because that is who comes out on top and it is in her best interest to align with them. Maybe while continuing on with my rewatch it will change but as it stands now I see her working to be "good" as coming from a place of self-preservation and self-interest, and how  real can redemption based on that be?

Honestly, no I don't think Regina would have felt remorse. She's not exactly remorseful now. She's still all about me instead of sorry for what she did and what she put other people through.  When she is going on and on about how much she's suffered its always to one of her victims Snow or Emma. Regina doesn't ever talk about what they went through. She doesn't care what she put them through.