#the concept of david being their personal cheerleader AND getting pulled into the relationship to be loved by both of them?

[bramblepaws]

paulo x daisy: boring. boring as hell.

paulo x daisy x david: extremely based and swag

[j-philly-b]

8, 9, 17, 36 If you are feeling salty!

Sorry it took me so long to answer, Holli,​ but here I am. I love all of your Salty OUaT Asks, thanks for the ask!

8.  What are your feelings about the show’sconcept of “true love” and/or TLK?

Oh man, this is the one that made me pause and walkaround the room a few times while preparing an answer because I feel like theshow didn’t actually have a cohesive concept of a true love or a TLK. Ofcourse, having said that, let’s see if I can get my thoughts down in a way thatmakes sense going off of the TLKs that are most prominent in my memory.

TL/TLK started out as something unique, rare, the most powerful form of magic,which over the course of seven years was eroded down to something as common andubiquitous as a three-leaf clover. There’s no tension if it works for everyone,and that’s what ruined the original conceit.

First we have the Charming/Snow TLK juxtaposed with the Emma/Henry TLK. I lovedthis one, there was the tension of whether Emma would put her faith in Henryand believe and whether that would be enough for a TLK. Plus there was anelement of sacrifice in each TLK – Charming and Emma each thought they weresaying goodbye to their heart, and who they loved enough to let go. So the TLKwas almost like a reward for their love and faith in the other. 

We see the element of sacrifice and TL again when Emma and Killian are in the UW.They pass the test and open the door because each of them is willing tosacrifice themselves for the other. So while we didn’t get a TLK because deathisn’t a curse and a TLK wouldn’t have cured Killian’s condition, we did get thesame criteria of sacrifice and faith and the ultimate final reward of Killianbeing given a second chance at life so he and Emma could be together. I know alot of people were disappointed that CS never had a TLK, but I think what wegot was a lot more powerful.

Then we have the unsuccessful Rumpel/Belle TLK, which was the perfect parallel.Rumpel’s fear kicks in midway through the kiss and we see how that makes himpull back and become unwilling to give up his power for love. Because hebecomes unwilling to sacrifice his power for his heart, the TLK doesn’t work.It’s heartbreaking and beautiful and lends weight to the successfulsacrifice-based TLKs.

We also have the unsuccessful TLKs where one half of the pair had missingmemories (I could go on a whole other rant about missing memories, jfc). Butagain, there can be no sacrifice and not agreement on intent if one half of thepair either doesn’t remember the other – Snow not remembering Charming/Emma notremembering Killian, or doesn’t remember all the details of the curse – Killiannot remembering that he’s a DO, added to the fact Emma didn’t want to break herown memory curse. 

But then we have the TLKs that didn’t seem to have any element of sacrifice ordanger and were just TLKs for the sake of a TLK to break a curse. The firstthat comes to mind is Brennan Jones and his nurse. I mean, WTELF? First, wehave Brennan under a sleeping curse for a century or two? All right, that justtakes away from the danger of the sleeping curse full stop. I’m pretty surethat in S1 it was established that if the sleeping curse wasn’t broken theperson under the curse would eventually die – wasn’t that what eventuallyspurred Emma and Charming on? Not only was there no apparent danger of imminentdeath for Brennan, but he gets a TLK from someone he’d never even met? So whatthe hell was this unnamed nurse sacrificing? Was Brennan the only patient shewas responsible for, so if he eventually bit the dust she’d be out of a job? Idon’t know, the Brennan/nurse TLK was one of the stupidest things the show everdid.

The stupidity and rule-breaking TLK between Brennan and his nurse was equaledby the TLK between Zelena/Hades. Zelena’s intent may, arguably, have been pure(honestly, I’ve blocked a lot of this from memory because it was so infuriatingat the time), but Hades was knowingly deceiving her. 

So now we have two successful TLKs where there is no equality between theparticipants and no sacrifice. Each of those should have gone the way of theRumpel/Belle TLK, but noooooooo, the rules go out the window because it waseasier to write a TLK explanation than to think of something else. I’m going toadd in the Ruby and Dorothy TLK here as well. I don’t think we knew enoughabout Ruby and Dorothy’s relationship to say whether or not they had TL, but myproblem with the TLK they had is that Ruby went there intending to wake Dorothyup with the TLK, there was no tension or doubt that it would work and there wasno element of sacrifice in the kiss because of that. 

My memory of the Philip and Aurora TLK isn’t good enough to say whether or notthe element of sacrifice was established. But because of Aurora we learnedabout the room of fire that apparently exists and where people who have beenunder the sleeping curse are doomed to spend their time (except for Brennan?JFC, why did we ever need to know anything about Brennan, at all?). So thatlead to David undergoing the sleeping curse to be able to communicate with Snowwhile she was in the EF, to be awoken by Snow when she returned. Ok, we knowSnowing had TL, that was established, and in S2 there was still an element ofdanger for the person that was under the curse, so a TLK there I can accept. 

But then we have the S6 shared sleeping curse and the daily TLKs for Snowing. Iguess? There was still tension built into that, but the solution? Snowing’sclosest friends and family will take on the sleeping curse for a few minutesand somehow that the curse that was on Snowing’s shared heart? Ummm, what? Asleeping curse is broken by TL, does that mean this huge group of people sharedTL with each other, I don’t… I can’t… *sigh* This is one of the instances wherethe show’s concept of TL lost all meaning.

I don’t even know what to say about the TL sapling that formed when Snow andCharming first spoke to each other through that hole in the carriage. Whatexactly was the point of that thing? They introduce the concept of the TL greenthumb, destroy the sapling as soon as it’s found, and then never revisit theidea. So… yeah.

But, let’s go back to the element of sacrifice and TL, because we did getanother example of that without a TLK in the UW when Liam sacrificed himselffor Killian. (Hey, look at that! Killian got two major TL moments in the UW,why don’t we talk about that more?) I am not a fan of the way they wrote Liam,but that moment in the cave was without doubt TL, and Liam was properlyrewarded for his sacrifice and faith in Killian.

TL/DR; the show did not have a consistent concept of TL/TLK and used theconcepts and used the TLK as a crutch when they got too lazy to think aboutplot.

9.  Which character arc was more like a line?

Belle is the first one to come to mind. Hercharacter was very poorly treated by the writers. She would get her soloadventures with the visiting princess of the season, but then go right back tobeing Rumpel’s cheerleader. She came close to character growth in S6, but thatwas cut short to serve the Rumpel as savior plotline and she was once againrelegated to the background.

Mulan also comes to mind. We know she was a fierce warrior, but she never gotthe emotional development she deserved.

17.  If you could recast someone who would it beand why?

This is a hard one, I tend to think the fault in thecharacters was with the writers rather than with the actors. That being said,the flashbacks where the characters were supposed to be teenagers but wereplayed by the main actors always fell flat for me – giving someone bangs doesn’tmean they suddenly look 20 years younger, and made it difficult to accept thestory they were trying to tell. Also, I was not a fan of S7 Cinderella/Jacinda,I don’t know if was actor or director choices, but there were a lot of sceneswhere the emotions of the character didn’t seem to fit with the emotion of thescene.

36.  What thing that was not meant to be funny made you laugh?

Oy, I feel like there were so many, and yet I cannotthink of a single example. Oh, wait! Robin’s death scene. I apologize to Robinfans, but omg it was ridiculous and over the top – Zeus’s double-ended dildo,the extreme lingering close-ups on Robin and Regina’s faces, Robin’s bodyfalling and leaving his spirit/sparkly essence behind, the “wings” forming ashis sparkle turned to dust and floated away. Sorry, I’m laughing just thinkingabout it.