#dark swan thirst gang RISE

[swanqueensalad]

You got me talking Dark Emma! Oh Jeez, From the Emma Side. I don’t know if I can send an ask this long but I’m soo gonna try! Sorry for Grammar/Word Vomit.

When they were doing Dark Emma I was hoping for more from Emma! She was an Abandoned street kid from the foster system, they barely graze that.

Yes she knows the reasons why, they briefly touch on that in S2 but, they never touch on that trauma full on, I would have LOVED to have seen Emma in Foster Care. To show what they meant in S1 when she was let her background out with Henry at the original castle. (I think that’s the scene.) S3 We See “Lost Girl” we hear the feeling and the story of her being alone but we don’t really see very much of it I don’t think.

To have seen Dark Emma touch on that would have been awesome because like you said, the antithesis of what she is as the savior. So much to unpack I would have loved to have seen fate and destiny come up here. (especially if S6 was going of be as weird as it was.)

I’d love to see Emma be pissed about her destiny as the savior, the toll it took on her. Show more on the insanity of the darkness Her background of never being anything special to, 28 almost 30 and being The Savior- to the Fairytales.

I’d love to see the Snow/Charming/Emma family dynamic here to. It’s the antithesis of Emma! Show the angst there and the complexity you built.

What are your thoughts on this subject? I’d love to hear this in correlation to your thoughts on Regina and well being the castor to all of this and the Emma/Regina Dynamic.

Sorry for this Chaos. 😂

-Runs Away because I don’t do this-

don't apologise or run away! this is such a good ask, loved reading through it. i agree with you 10000% and when i talk about the wasted potential of this arc, a huge chunk of what i mean is how much was there to be explored in emma as a character. exactly what you said, her childhood, her lingering resentment, her relationship to her role as 'the saviour'...

so of course i am going to take this opportunity to do an emma companion to yesterday's ramble!

so yeah, the giant antithesis you talk about; going from being nothing, to being the saviour, to being the dark one. that's SO MUCH and none of it was ever explored properly. emma swan was honestly one of the most interesting protagonists whose 'reluctant hero' journey was actually complex and understandable unlike many and... yup, they abandoned it all in favour of silly stories about a sexy pirate man

again, i want to draw the focus to the season STARTING with emma sacrificing herself for regina. for emma as well as gina, this was huge. i don't think emma ever saw herself as the great destined saviour/hero she was, so her sacrifice in terms of that was never a big intentional thing - she just saw the woman she loved in danger and could not stand to let it happen. she had to save her no matter what the cost, and if the cost was her own goodness, well. emma never put as much stock in that as everyone else did for her anyway. she made a promise to regina that she would help her find her happy ending. and she did.

i really think emma acted out of pure instinct and panic. we know it is her instinct to protect regina above anything, even her own safety. she didn't think it through. she just threw herself to the darkness to save her, and then...

then she would have to deal with the fact that she did that. in front of all her family. in front of h00k. they SAW that raw panic in her, they saw that her priority was regina over herself, over her place in her destiny, over the man she was supposed to love. this was the closest emma ever came to a public declaration of her feelings imo and in emma's gay paranoia brain too, i'm sure.

so while we have regina grappling with how and why emma could do that for her, we have emma suddenly fucking buried in defensiveness and trying to recover from that lapse in her own repression. this is why every time regina tries to talk about it with her she shuts off. refuses to confide in her parents, though we all know snow sees and knows deep down. this is why it makes sense for her to cling to h00k as a beard, a distraction from her greatest heroic act of love

(but at the same time, emma does not regret it. she kicks herself for being reckless and not thinking stuff through, but she does not regret it. she would do it a hundred times over if she had to.)

it also makes perfect sense she trusts regina with her dagger over anyone and she rationalises this well (she has frequently been the one to keep regina in check, to look after the bigger picture and they both know they know each other better than anyone, enough to make those decisions) but then again, this pushes her deeper into defensiveness and repression to counteract the fact rumple gave belle his dagger (as a fucking marriage proposal too)

i would have loved to see emma grappling with the things you mentioned. i would have loved a return to the complex emma of season 1: because through s1, we saw emma grow and develop from a very closed off, defensive loner who wanted nothing to do with anyone, to a fiercely protective mother and eventual reluctant hero. but that journey was not easy.

like you say, emma grew up alone. it's implied she stuck up for herself most of the time because if she didn't, no one would. she had to learn at a very young age how to hang on to her food, her possessions, her time. she was a skilled thief and used to living out on her own. she was incredibly resilient and selfish and closed off because ever since she was a kid, that was how she survived. she didn't know any different.

and then of course she let neal in and he betrayed her in the worst way, and after that adult emma found her way to a job she liked and was good at (that often involved beating criminals up... hello unresolved anger) and lived in her shitty apartment by herself, taking 'care' of herself in same, bitter, bare minimum way she had always known as 'normal' . she learned very early on she was not special.

and then... she suddenly is the most special. the fated hero, destined to rescue her family and all their people, and of course she doesn't believe in anything, she believes in survival and harsh realities, but god she starts to believe in her son, to love him, to let him in and want to protect him and fight for something and then everything is real and she has almost no time to reconcile any of this before she is thrown off on one adventure and the next

i love the arc with her and snow in 2a where they slowly reconcile their former friendship with the new parent/child dynamic, but so much more was there to be explored. emma grew up with so much longing and resentment for both parents and then finding out they are snow white and prince charming? not great for a morally grey lesbian with identity issues, or for any kind of realism, plus so much more pressure to be some hero she never wanted to be in the first place

(and THEN on top of that her burgeoning darkness bursting out of her throughout 4a with nowhere to go, and the realisation of how terrified her parents were that she wouldn't be the perfect hero, of what they did to maleficent just to ensure she would be... fuck)

dark swan arc SHOULD have given emma the space, time and capacity for darkness to explore all of this.

to process in a way she had never been able to before, because she was too busy having to be the hero

well. now she's not the hero anymore, is she? now she is the dark one and oh boy does the darkness have a lot of repressed stuff to feed on...

i wanted to see emma exploring all that pain and fury of her childhood self. i wanted to see her finally snapping at her parents and letting everything out, some kind of climactic scene where she tells them they weren't there for anything, they chose to give her up, that she never asked for her destiny, never wanted it

and i wanted to see SNOW (my beautiful, complex, well written and real snow of the early seasons) dealing with all of this, coming to terms with what they did to mal and feeling that grief and guilt, mourning emma's lost childhood and trying to comfort regina through it while knowing emma needs this. that she deserves this.

i wanted dark one emma to be more like, well, emma.

not like every other villain, pretending to taunt and murmur threats and everything else they forced on her for no reason. i wanted to see emma at her darkest: bitter, selfish, cut off from her feelings and those of the people around her, dismissive of their fairytale bullshit. making the most harsh and grating jokes about things. not giving a fuck about anything or anyone. swaggering and messy and defensive

a dark emma who would be dismissive of hook and weirdly obsessive about regina (pushing her around and taunting her like season one emma but with the added years of connection, complexity, willingness to die for each other with no willingness to speak about any of it at all)

an emma with the voices of all the dark ones in her head, vocalising all the things she usually never let herself think, pushing her over the edge

(and of course, i wanted regina's true love's kiss to be what pulled her out of it. but i also wanted emma as the dark one to have the genuine time to work through all her unresolved issues, to release all that pent up anger and frustration that was never quite reconciled.)