#ouat brainrot never dies ig!

[sevenfifteenam]

one last thing before i go to sleep: Storybrooke and Free Will

so, i've been wondering about this for a while now.

apparently, the inhabitants of storybrooke had free will during the dark curse- which i find hard to believe, because they're trapped in this little town and have no memories of their real selves. i mean, how much of it is free will when you're stuck in the confines of a persona that isn't you? mary-margaret may have had free will but was forced to do the same thing over and over again, and had no memories of who she originally was... even jefferson who has his memories, doesn't seem to have much of it, although for different reasons). the notion of free will under the dark curse is completely ridiculous, but for the sake of this, i'll roll with it (or at least, try to)

in my mind, people gained free will as emma came along- that's what makes the most sense, because no one has free will when stuck in a time loop (so of course, when the clock starts moving... shit goes down) + regina's influence on the town decreases when emma arrives imo (with ruby leaving granny, ashley taking back the contract, graham leaving regina, etc etc. these characters finally get to "break out' of the loop, and to which i say good for them!!)

which brings me to my "analysis" of the day: david nolan. i'm highkey obsessed with this little guy in a /neg way because he started out with no cursed memories, therefore giving him more free will than anyone with this show- and i think it initially helped a lot with this decision-making because charming still shined through david nolan. he knew he wanted mary-margaret, and immediately left kathryn to be with her, just like charming has never been afraid to pursue what he actually wants. i guess we could look at the parallels between 1x06 david nolan and charming but we'd be here all day, so i'll just say that it's interesting to see david give up on love for what he deems a "noble reason" in both timelines but in completely different ways with him being 'trapped' by his fake memories and george. especially since in the first case it's because he has his fake memories that he has to... anyway

i understand that the amnesia and suddenly remembering his cursed memories must have not been easy, but that definitely did not warrant the mess that was cursed snowing LMAO

what's interesting is that david has the same problem as anyone else: he technically has free will (solely as his cursed persona, which is a whole other can of worms...), but this town is so under regina's control that in the end, one could say "ah well, regina's curse made me do it!" because i like to think it's everyone's go-to excuse when discussing the fucked up shit they did under the dark curse BUT david doesn't have that. when he woke up, emma was already there, so he didn't have the remnants of regina's influence.

but also the whole time, david was very much going against regina's will, which makes it... arguably worse? i mean, he got his memories as regina was losing control over the storybrooke narrative but damn. he was just doing whatever. regina would try to get him away from mary margaret and he'd show up at the diner at 7:15AM like... hiiiiii

i have some beef with the writing itself because i still don't know if their cursed selves were supposed to be diametrically opposite to their OG selves or if their OG selves were dormant. the latter seems more likely because mary-margaret still has enough snow in her to be able to dropkick jefferson and ashley just straight up pepper sprayed gold- to which i have to say, legend behavior by the way.

what i mean is that it's not a thing for david post 1x06, save for being irrevocably drawn to mary-margaret/snow. like, in 1x16, charming could not believe for one sec that snow would ever do something cruel while david... david went for the (in this case, metaphorical) kill by throwing out all the faith he had in mary margaret. i don't know if it's on purpose or if his cursed memories overrode every charming trait he had (badum tss) but damn... cheater coward liar annoying like pick a struggle babe, you can't have them all </3

i sound like a hater but i'm just cranky because it's almost 1AM and i'm overthinking about free will in a small fictional town under a curse that was broken when i was beginning middle school (i'm almost in my mid twenties)