#Eddie’s characterization is so inconsistent and bizarre

[vvitchering]

My only nonspoilery thought about the new venom movie is that I have never really minded that the Venom movies are Bad Movies until now. I really wish this one had been a good movie.

[gch1995]

See, I actually would have been happy with the show ending with 3x11, so that way I wouldn’t have had to see beloved characters completely butchered for recycled nonsensical PLOT twists that A&E and the writers pulled from their asses because, even if Nealfire had survived and Rumple had either never made that sacrifice in 3x11, and/or been able to be brought back without losing his son, they, Emma, Regina, Belle, Snow, David, Henry, and Belle would still be facing the same problem of increasingly contrived, cheap, and nonsensical magical contrivances and PLOT twists pushing them inorganically back-and-forth from one extreme to the next. Now, if Lindlelof hadn’t left in 2B, and Kitsowitz hadn’t taken over to do “The boy will be your undoing,” “Lacey,” and Neverland contrived PLOT twists, then we could have had seven seasons of great slow-burn organic character development.

But Adam and Eddy were too lazy to run and write slow-burn organic character development or growth on their own, and once Lindlelof left in 2B and Kitsowitz finished off his plans for the original main cast in Neverland with 3A, they went into 3B not knowing what else to do.

I do agree that Nealfire’s death changed a lot of the dynamics in an annoying way from 3B-S6 (and even S7), and certainly, the character assassinations would probably be less painful without “needing” to outright destroy characters to prop up Hook or Zelena.

But we’d still have the same problems of disregard for continuity and characters getting butchered and/or destroyed for asinine magical PLOT twists, contrivances, and macguffins that made no sense to inorganically derail and rerail the characters back-and-forth in increasingly OOC ways.

The best way to get a strong seven seasons of OUAT would be to go all the way back to S1 or 2A when Lindlelof was still there and had him take over the show from Frick and Frack before they got carried away with too much contrived PLOT twist fuckery over continuity of the rules, organic character growth, and realistic characterization. They even could have said that TLK didn’t work for Rumbelle in SB the first time because Rumple wasn’t letting it break, had him restore Belle’s memories with TLK in the 2A finale, and we could have gotten more Goldstiltskin floor family moments with Belle going to New York with Rumple, Emma, and Henry to meet Nealfire. But once we got into 2B, they were already bending and breaking their rules, and obstructing linear organic character growth with asinine magical PLOT twist fuckery contrivances with the whole “The boy will be your undoing” stupidity, Eddy’s misogynistic treatment of Belle and general disdain of Rumbelle with the mini fridging of her as Lacey, his bizarre twist of trying to sexualize Rumple with the Mills’ women, his distancing Rumple from Bae after they reunited and talked in “The Millers Daughter,” so that he could be shady with Belle when she was Lacey because they wanted me to somehow believe that Rumple couldn’t find a potion or spell to break it without trying to make her fall in love with him, even though he was a genuis sorcerer...

They even started stringing around Emma, Regina, Snowing, David, and Henry back-and-forth inorganically with the strings of contrived PLOT twists in ways that dumbed them down and made them repetitive in 2B. Also, was anyone ever going to mention all of the atrocious crimes that Regina committed? How was it really that easy for her to be accepted into the Charming fold without really even trying? We had another story about how Snowing kept dark secrets...Emma was still trying to open up her heart to believe, even though that was what she had done in S1-2A, and her learning magic meant that even she started losing common sense.

But yeah, as it was paced and written with A&E as the sole show-runners after 2B with more and more inconsistencies of “WTF” PLOT twists, inorganic contrivances starting to obstruct organic character development in 2B, bent and broken rules of magic, and Neverland, one season was all they could handle on their own without Lindlelof after 2A as such unstructured and mediocre writers of PLOT, so I think the best bet was just ending it with 3x11 (“Going Home”).

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The Big Problems With OUAT’s Writing:

My favorite characters were Rumple, Belle, Emma, and Nealfire, Once Nealfire got killed off though, their characterizations and their relationships, as well as everyone else’s thereafter, went to total shit in canon. Adam and Eddy obviously couldn’t come up with any more than two-and-a-half seasons of organic or satisfying character growth for the original main cast, and it should have ended in 3x11, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure that Damon Lindlelof helped them out with the writing a lot for the first two-and-a-half seasons, which is why the story is at least coherent enough to be enjoyable up to 3x11.

But after 3A, Lindlelof’s plans for the show were butchered, Kitsowitz completely took over the show with Captain Fuckboy, PLOT, and making money their main focuses, so they kept it on air for the next four-and-a-half seasons not knowing what else to do now that they had run out of new story. Thus, it got to the point where it essentially devolved into such badly written crack!fic soap opera on screen by the end of 5A where the writing for everyone’s characterization had become so unbelievably OOC, annoyingly self-contradictory, changeable, hypocritical, illogical, melodramatically problematic, and toxic in favor of the PLOT that I had to quit to preserve my sanity.

I enjoyed reading Rumbelle fanfic moreso than the actual show because it made sense and felt more satisfying, well-written, in-character, and entertaining than the nonsensical toxic garbage the show had devolved into.

After 5A, Eddy Kitsis said in an interview that he thought “good storytelling” was making sure the audience goes “WTF? This makes absolutely no sense! This isn’t fair! This totally contradicts everything that I was shown before, and feels too stupid, too contrived, and too OOC to even believe possible.”

It wasn’t worth getting emotionally or mentally invested in this show or any of the remaining characters as written in canon anymore post 3A because A&E and these writers formula kept becoming more and more of “We’re doing our jobs if we can trick our audience after deliberately teasing them by dangling the carrot of organic growth of character that we’re too lazy to follow through on by yanking it away from them as soon as they start making logical predictions abruptly, cruelly and inorganically with constant twist of ’HOLY SHIT, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED?”

When Eddy basically said that at the end of 5A, I realized I was done with having any hope for this show, and I decided to finally quit watching after 5B because I knew every time something started to seem to make sense and go in a direction of organic growth for the characters, A&E and these writers would deliberately pull the rug out from under them and their audience for trying to get invested in them with some inorganic contrivance that ruined everything in an unfair way that made no sense and never would make any sense in canon from what we were led to believe would happen beforehand on this show by them because that was the whole point: A&E and these writers so often didn’t want you to make sense of their show because they were lazy hacks who didn’t know how to write a cohesive plot or organic character growth/realistic characterization after 3A.

They admitted that they liked whiplashing their audience for using common sense and logic in regards to fans whenever the story and the characters would seem to be potentially headed in a way that would make sense. They considered that “genuis” storytelling with their overinflated egos, rather than just very cruel, mean, lazy, and low bad writing that ultimately destroyed most of their main characters’ credibility and their fans willingness to stay emotionally invested in their canon show that the creators/writers refused to let unfold organically in a way that made consistent sense long term.

Instead, they used a constant series of contrived magical macguffins and twists of “WTF just happened? This makes no damned sense from what was just previously established on screen, and does not at all relate to it! This is unbelievably absurd! The characters would never do or say this shit in real life!”

It destroyed the credibility of most of their characters’ in canon and their fans willingness to stay emotionally invested in their show, and it was insulting, especially when you had showrunners like Eddy Kitsis admitting to the fans “As always with this show, once the audience gets onto what we’re doing, we have to change it.”

When they said “We hope things will be ‘fun’” for the character assassinating, wildly OOC, nonsensical, and melodramatic garbage writing of 6A for Rumbelle with the Morfetus bs twist or in 5A of the Dark Swan arc, they didn’t mean that we would necessarily be legitimately entertained as an audience when they threw in a character destroying inorganic magical contrivance or bizarre twist out of nowhere that forced the characters into weird directions that made no sense from what had been previously established.

Adam and Eddy meant that they would be having fun pissing those of us in their audience off by insulting our intelligence and common sense by constantly giving us inorganic contrivance of OOC characterizations, magical macguffins, and bizarre PLOT twists and contrivances that didn’t consistently, logically, and thus satisfyingly add up with what had been previously established, rather than entertaining us with organic character growth that made satisfactory sense by letting our predictions for characters come true in their sheer laziness to slow down and write organic character development.

There were even hints of this problem before 3B-S7 that I was seeing potential for in 2B. OUAT could have gone strong for longer than two to three ish seasons if A&E and these writers had slowed down from 2B, not gotten obsessed with Hook, not gone to Neverland, and not gotten so obsessed with the next big, bizarre, and contrived magical PLOT twist or macguffin that, oftentimes inorganically forced their characters to 180 regress in ways that made no sense for moments of “HOLY SHIT! WTF JUST HAPPENED?”

I have no problem with characters regressing when it’s done organically, slowly, relatably, and realistically. The problem with OUAT was that they used inorganic contrivances to push them back-and-forth between increasingly bizarre extremes that made no sense, rather than focusing on human or realistic motivations to get them from point A to point C organically. It felt fake, and it felt forced. I know it was fiction, but it felt like lazily badly written fiction when the characters swung back-and-forth by the writers playing God with them on the strings of their asinine PLOT twists inorganically.

It had gotten beyond exhausting trying to invest in a show run by petty hacks who were never going to allow their audience’s common sense and intelligence lead them through an organic path of growth for these characters with the writers dangling the carrot in front of them for a story that actually could make sense, and then abruptly, cruelly, and inorganically yanking it away from them with an absurd twist because they were too lazy to come up with any more ideas for organic character growth after 3A.

Let’s talk about Hook and CS becoming such a main focus on this show, and the romantic male lead/couple.” It’s not that Hook couldn’t have been organically developed into a sympathetic character worthy of redemption in his own right. A&E couldn’t write that, though. He also didn’t fit together with the ensemble main cast in the place of Nealfire as Emma’s main love interest. He and Emma had absolutely no chemistry. Hook’s sudden interest in her was bizarre and creepy.

Then, they killed off Nealfire through absurd means for Hook to take his place in the picture where he didn’t fit in the family circle, so they could have CS. They broke their own rules to bring Rumple back from the dead to turn him into the wildly OOC on-and-off-again “big bad” scapegoat cartoonish villain PLOT twister “foil” to Hook, even after having been given two-and-a-half seasons of the most well-written and well-earned sympathetic reforming anti-villain/tragic hero backstory and redemption arc from S1-3A. They ruined Emma, Belle, Snow, David, and even Henry’s original sympathetic characterizations by obliterating their self-respect, intelligence, self-awareness, and moral integrity, so that they could inorganically force this bullshit narrative of Hook/CS being the “best hero” ever in a world of now simplistic black versus white hypocritical morality that Nealfire and the common goal of family balanced out with a sense of realism, common sense, organic growth and emotional depth that got lost with his death in favor of contradictory character destroying magical PLOT-twist driven Drama™️, mutually toxic soap opera “hero versus villain” fuckery, and Hook/CS.

No wonder they lost more and more viewers as every season passed…Getting emotionally invested was no fun when the writers deliberately pulled the rug out from underneath your favorite characters whenever things started to seem making sense by totally ruining it with some bizarre magical contrivance or characterization that doesn’t add up to what we were shown before, and your logical predictions for stories that made organic and consistent sense for character growth were mocked by these writers because they refused to slow down and develop the characters after S1-3A. You were punished for being smart and using common sense, and that’s why most of these main characters’ credibility and integrity got completely destroyed in one way or another by this very lazy, petty and unfair bad writing technique of theirs that made them mostly feel like pod!people after just the first two-and-a-half seasons of the series.

tldr; You could only suspend your disbelief by turning off your brain to disregard the bullshit writing choices on OUAT and just blindly enjoy the show by getting invested in the characters for so long as written in canon without asking any questions before the writing became too infuriatingly repetitive, too contrived, too OOC, too character assassinating, and too stupid to believe. Also, Captain Fuckboy ruined the show after 3A, and he should have died and stayed dead back in early S2. It could have been different if A&E were good writers who could come up with organic character growth, and not shoehorned him in as Emma’s love interest in a way that ruined the whole show’s dynamic and sense of emotional depth by replacing him with Nealfire.

Nealfire’s death was the metaphorical death of the show’s canon, though. My personal headcanon was that the real show ended with “Going Home” (3x11) because that’s the last time there was any sort of compelling, consistent, organic, realistic, or relatable characterizations or any satisfying growth of character. After that, it all went to hell (literally), and I had to finally quit watching after S5 to preserve my sanity before anything got any worse, and on this show, it only would because A&E and these writers never learned.

A&E didn’t trust or respect their audience, so after awhile it felt like why should I respect their shitshow’s canon if it doesn’t make any consistent or well-developed sense, and they don’t care that it doesn’t themselves anymore either?

[gch1995]

I’m glad most of us in the fandom agree that, although this show was always kind of problematic, everything after “Going Home” was garbage because most of the remaining characters were completely destroyed without Nealfire there as a common link to connect them all together as a family and ground them all in favor of all the lazy writing tropes to inorganically repeat their arcs over and over again. They shoehorned in Hook/CS by breaking their own rules and bringing Rumple back from the dead to kill him off, so they could have a “foil”/antagonist “big bad” magical scapegoat PLOT twister to deliberately vilify in their laziness to write organic conflict and character development for everyone else on this show that they wanted to “redeem” without actually having to make them do anything to earn it. It’s just too bad that they ended up completely ruining the best redemption arc of a main villain on this show that felt truly well-earned, heartfelt, and well-written on their show by bringing Rumple/Gold back from the dead to deliberately character assassinate him and Belle, so that Hook could have a nemesis.

That just felt like such lazy and mean writing from them. I heard that Rumple and these other remaining main characters finally got a “happy ending,” and I watched one RB episode in S7 for old times sake, but like, I just didn’t care anymore about the endgame for any of these characters in canon like I once did in the first two-and-a-half seasons because A&E and these writers had ruined them by jumping the shark with all of them one too many times now. They all felt hollowed out by the idiot ball for idiot plots, Aesop Amnesia, compressed vices, illogical self-destructing soap opera plots, and bent and broken rules of magic in favor of the PLOT, and wildly OOC characterizations in favor of the PLOT. The writers abruptly forced them all to react in wildly ooc, ridiculously bizzare, melodramatically cruel, cartoonishly evil, blindly illogical, exceedingly dangerous, exceedingly reckless, exceedingly gullible, and ridiculously stupid ways that did not fit with their previously established characterizations at certain intervals out of nowhere to create cheaply shocking drama to drive them to needless extremes by forcing them over the edge with these contrived macguffins and asspulled plot twists for needless climaxes and falling action scenarios that should have and could have been easily avoided if the characters had been allowed to use their brains, ask questions, learn from past experience, and slow down by considering what should be obvious, rather than immediately losing their shit over some bizarre magical ass pull or plot twist, so that they could redo their arcs all over again by undoing them.

I agree, the writers totally did a huge disservice to all of these characters in favor of cheaply shocking, contrived, repetitive, and meaningless soap opera PLOT twist melodrama in favor of shoehorning in Hook/CS as the main lead, especially Neal, Rumple, Belle, Emma, and Henry, and retelling the same stories for the characters over and over and over again after running out of story once they finished the Neverland arc. The actor who played Rumple, Robert Carlyle, totally called out Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis for killing off Nealfire as this show’s biggest mistake too, and I totally agree. The core theme of family for the original main cast that connected all of them was lost with him, and replaced with Hook/CS, romantic melodrama, “hero versus villain” bs; “Rumple’s the worst” bs, repetitive storylines, simplistic and meaningless black versus white double standards, wildly OOC bs, ass pulls, cheap shock value, and inconsistent magical soap opera PLOT twist fuckery.

Maybe, Nealfire was lucky in a way...Sure, his character was thrown away for Hook/CS, and he deserved better. However, given how awful these writers were at coming up with organic character development after two-and-a-half seasons, and given how obsessed they were with magical Drama™️, no matter how much continuity, character integrity, and credibility they “had” to sacrifice for them, I do wonder if he lucked out by getting killed off when he did in a way because if he had survived past season three, it’s very likely that his character would have been destroyed for bizarre plot twists too.

The whole thing with the destroying the characters for plots and repetitive storylines slowly started showing potential to become a problem later on early in 2B I think, so I do wonder how much different it would have been if Neal had survived from 3B-S7. It probably would have been less gimmicky, but I actually think we would have had a lot of the same problems of recycled storylines, bent and broken rules of magic for plot as demanded, and the character assassinating bad writingtropes of Aesop Amnesia, compressed vices, dull surprise, the idiot ball for idiot plots, sexist shock value tropes, character derailment, and retcons. I think the characters, the actors, and the fans deserved better show-runners and writers than ABC, A&E and their team of hacks.

The problem was that they cared more about plot and shock value than consistent, realistic, and organic characterization and development long term once we got to 2B and they decided to start throwing in bizarre twists and contrivances to sidetrack the characters a little, and then decided to go to Neverland, so they ran out of story to tell for these characters after 3A when they didn’t know how else or what else to do to grow most when they’d reached their organic peak by the end of 3A. If Damon Lindlelof had booted A&E out in S2, and we’d gotten a better team of writers it might have been able to go strong for seven seasons.

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