#the narrative (and snow) holds her just as culpable- if not moreso- as the genie for getting him to kill the king. as it should (and good fo | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

henryhas2moms · 3 years ago

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ouat’s reluctance to validate regina’s anger is something i could go on and on about but i’m gonna try to only talk about one specific thing: they always always always use “vengeance” or “revenge”, words associated with “villains” and “evil”, to talk about regina’s war against snow and never “justice”, which has a more positive/neutral connotation, even from regina’s perspective. many of regina’s actions would still be wrong, but their complete lack of trust in the audience to read her as an unreliable narrator (especially when the book itself is an unreliable narrator) is… weird.

#there’s SO. SO much more i have to say about this— the flashbacks repeatedly try to make regina unreasonable to make snow more sympathetic #and the first time they do show snow as being clearly in the wrong in the millers daughter— the other heroes contemplate preemptive murder?#and she is treated as the villain even though she is the one who makes the right choice both at the well and at her own doorstep #the show seems like it wants to examine ‘i am not all good and you are not all evil’ but it won’t shed that grey light onto the original war #like yes snow was a kid and cora was manipulative but snow decided she knew what regina needed from cora better than regina did and #if snow and the king (as much as i hate grouping them together- they are connected in this) hadn’t felt entitled to regina at one point then #coras plan wouldn’t have worked at all. and the speech about the bowing little horse eq gives in s6 hits this so perfectly #and it goes all the way back to the stable boy with lana struggling to understand reginas anger with this child and the writers telling her #‘just figure it out’ and i’m glad they did bc lana arrived at the same place i just described (this happened bc snow wanted regina as her #mother) (this is from interviews) which is surely better than anything the writers would’ve come up with BUT shows an extreme reluctance to #let snow white be anything other than pure and innocent which is ANOTHER thing i can go on and on about because it’s SO weird #and the standards are drastically different for regina and snow #like charming jumping in front of an arrow to keep snow from killing regina but it’s pushing for her execution? like it’s fine to have her k #for the charmings to have her killed as long as snow didn’t fire the arrow? but the same never holds true for regina (as it shouldn’t)#the narrative (and snow) holds her just as culpable- if not moreso- as the genie for getting him to kill the king. as it should (and good fo #good for her anyway) snow and the narrative hold her exclusively culpable for all the people she has her knights kill in the evil queen (whi #(which btw is one example of making regina look unreasonable to make snow’s withdrawal of forgiveness look reasonable— why else would you #raise the body count of a character you’re trying to redeem by at least 100???) but she is responsible for that. fine. BUT why is snow speci #special???? again in the queen is dead charming agrees with snow that cora needs to die but ‘not at snow’s hand’ which on top of this weird #purity thing is pretty infantalizing as well. but if snow AGREES and CONTRIBUTES to a plan to kill cora HOW is she still pure as the driven #snow as long as she doesn’t get her hands dirty?? (the fact that in the end she gets reginas hands dirty as well further complicates matters #okay i said i was just going to talk about diction but i. lied. whoops!#sorry #sorry but if you’re on this blog you should know me as a regina warrior hashtag team regina!#text #tag essay #i don’t think this is anti snow white i love her as a complicated and flawed character but im certainly holding more fire to her than the #narrative does

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