Heya guys! So I thought I'd start us off with a pretty light rant (lol this isn't really light but it's lighter than the others will be). It's a few months old but I still like it.

I wrote this right after the midseason finale for season 5 of Once Upon a Time. I haven't caught up quite yet to the rest

And of course...

SPOILER ALERT FOR SEASON 5A OF Once Upon A Time

#AntiCS
#AntiRumbelle
#AntiA&E  

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Right now, the Internet is blowing up with tons of shocked and furious and heartbroken CS fans because of this new episode. I normally don't get involved in these kinds of drama-arguments, but I felt like putting my two cents in because I am appalled at so many things people are saying and that have happened in the series itself.

1) "It's not Hook, it's the darkness."

Uh, excuse you? No. Just no. This is ALL Hook. He's not being possessed or controlled. He is making these decisions. Yes, he has the darkness within him, but it's been proven multiple times with all three of the most recent DOs (Dark Ones) that it is possible to overcome the darkness and make better choices if you try hard enough.

What this runs into is culpability and capability for change. To do anything, you have to have motive, means, and opportunity. You have to want to do it, you have to be capable of doing it, and the circumstances have to permit you doing it. For a DO, all that changes is the ease of capability, not the capability itself. Everyone is convinced that what they think they want will make them happy. We normally just don't have the means to get it. However, if there was literally nothing standing in your way and you could have literally anything you wanted, it's human nature to go for it. That's what Hook is doing. He's falling into human nature and giving in to the temptation. That's his own fault.

Now you also have to consider the darkness as an environmental obstacle. He has MORE he has to overcome to make the right choice than a normal person does. That doesn't mean it's okay to make the wrong choice but that does mean you can understand and empathize with the humanity of what's going on inside him. Root for him to overcome that obstacle. It's not "the real Hook is still in there and is just being blocked by the darkness", it's that "this is the real Hook making these decisions." He didn't make them before because he didn't have the means to act upon those buried desires. He may have wanted revenge above all else and Emma right below that, but knew that he could never attain his revenge so buried that desire so he could be happy with Emma instead. We as humans will settle for the best we can get, and are perfectly capable of being happy with it even if it's not at the top of our list. But if something else becomes available, we may very well abandon what we have to go for what we truly believe will make us happy. Now that he has the means, the desire is back at the forefront of his mind, and he is really the same person he was all along.

You could compare this to Regina's struggle with evil. Unfortunate and horrid circumstances fostered misdirected desires for happiness (things that wouldn't truly make her happy), but she was for a time unable to act upon them. But when she chose to keep using magic, she was choosing what she believed would make her happy. The magic was not "controlling her" or "forcing her hand" or "covering up the true her", it was simply the means. The way she went about getting what she wanted. The same goes for Hook now. He is perfectly capable of NOT choosing to use the magic, but his desire for revenge is stronger than his desire to make the right choice. He is also perfectly capable of "repenting" and being "redeemed" afterward, just as Regina was. But he's got to make that decision himself. I think that if he makes that decision while still the DO, it will be more valid and important than if he makes it if the darkness is removed from him. It'll mean he truly has shifted his priorities.

I just saw someone bring up the incident with his hand, and how he was still a Dark One in Storybrooke even before he found out. That is a fantastic proof of my point. His hand had no real effect on him, it simply gave him permission to be the person he truly was. And in Storybrooke, he was still the Dark One, and he seemed to behave completely normally. But the second he found out, it gave him PERMISSION to let himself out. This whole thing with him is completely psychosomatic. Finding out just turned a switch in his head that said "oh, no I can be a sh*tface to everybody because that's what I really want to do but the darkness will seem to make me do it". Maybe the darkness does help him amplify it, but it still all comes from him. The darkness only amplifies who you truly are.

2) Dark Ones are not possessed. They are human beings perfectly capable of making the correct decision.

Just look at Emma now. She had the same obstacle he has, yet is making good choices again because she has been exposed as someone who had he intent to help people all along. She may have gone about it in a bad way, but she was focused on saving people whereas Hook is focused on his own happiness (in the form of revenge).

Even if you count the fact he has previous DO's whispering at him, he could easily choose to ignore them. The things they say are really quite obvious things that he has been able to ignore before, but CHOSE to listen to! Multiple times! Emma did that a few times in the beginning, too. But she's stopped, and so could he if it was a high enough priority for him.

All the DOs have been shown making a decision where they gave in to some temptation. That's kind of what being a DO is about: what do you truly prioritize? If you can have anything you want, what will you take? What is your perspective? How does the world work in your mind? What is your happiness? Who are you truly?

3) Is Emma really in love with Hook? Vice versa?

It feels almost as if Emma is in love with a version of Hook that doesn't exist. In love might not even be he right word. She seems infatuated. She idolizes and overvalues their relationship to the point she would violate his express wishes for the sake of continuity. She didn't want to lose him because he was the one person she let herself become attached to, and she wanted him alive and with her even if making that happen did something horrific to him that he'd begged against. Because he "makes her feel good" and she seems to value that over his probable suffering.

Of course, you could also look at it as she does truly love him, but being exposed to the darkness took her greatest desire and turned it into an obsession, bringing elements of selfish infatuation back into play that had not been there before. Either way, the choice she made to violate his wishes was extremely selfish and was not made out of her love for him (if that love exists).

I'm not sure I understand all these posts I'm reading about "rape-y vibes" from Hook, but what I'm sensing from him is that he was fed up with not being able to get his revenge so he decided to TRY and move on to lesser sources of happiness. Also, Emma. He called her his "happy ending", but probably really meant his "consolation happy ending". Also, the way he completely freaked out when he found out what Emma did... yes, it was a horrible and selfish thing to do, but she's only human. She has her insecurities and flaws and he claimed to accept them and still love her, yet the time they actually affect him his "love" for her goes flying out the window? Really?

I'm also seeing a lot of out-of-place sensuality between the two of them. Each time they messed up and "fixed it" in the forest (which happened a surprising amount of times in such a short time), they just went right to making out. Like, I don't think it's normally that "heated". It took them forever to be comfortable with frequent physical touch (at least for Emma), and I always liked how they managed to show their love for each other without it in the beginning, but now it's their go-to? This just feels like it confirms my thinking of how it's mostly infatuation based. At least now, if not before. Even the "getting Emma to open up" thing felt a little badly demonstrated, like the writers intended it to be good but missed the mark and started it all off on an uneasy foundation. Guess that's coming back to bite...

I'll admit I have very much enjoyed CS up to this point, but I guess this arc just brought out the rot CS is built on that I couldn't see before.

4) This whole string of "who's good, who's evil" is really, REALLY getting on my nerves.

We too easily box people into categories of "good" and "bad" we seem to forget the real world isn't like that at all. People aren't 2D projections of abstract concepts, they are emotional being who rationalize their decisions, who always do what makes sense to them in the context of their perspectives and experiences. They are not exempt from responsibility but they are all only fighting for their own happiness in their own ways and we should empathize and forgive, while still holding accountability and trying to reveal a more logical and correct path to happiness. Rumple is not "good", Hook is not "bad" (I don't think even Zelena is "bad"), they are all humans with messed up experiences working from perspectives built on false information who can be sympathized with for their difficulties, but not romanticized or categorized for the most plot-prevalent of their choices.

All of these characters have good traits and understandable motives (or at least if you consider their perspective), but they have a sh*tload more flaws than we (and the writers) seem to like to think.

Emma, yes, was an orphan, was abandoned, has a ton of issues she has to work through. But we can't use the reason for those issues as a free pass from the mess-ups that result from them. We can empathize with her (which we do) and root for her and hope she makes the right choices, but can't keep her on this pedestal of perfection we seem to put all our main characters on.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, take Zelena, an "unquestionably evil" character. At least, according to how the writers portray her. But if you take a moment to see the story from her perspective: she's been abandoned and mistreated all her life. This has skewed her mindset so much and so far that she is truly and honestly convinced that the downfall of Regina will bring her happiness. She is also not exempt from her actions, but she is also human, and this must be considered. She cannot be categorized as "evil for the sake of evil". She is confused and misunderstood, but still culpable.

Robin and Regina's idea of using the purity and unconditional love of a child to bring things back into perspective for Zelena felt a little badly worded and misrepresented, but I think they're on the right track. I think a child could start her off on a path that will let her be more susceptible to accepting a different mindset, a different lifestyle. I think she just needs to be exposed somehow to the reality that she needs to let go of what has happened to her and trying to take out Regina (who she projects the collective sources of her suffering onto, in order to direct her pain and hate in one place), and instead focus on building up fulfilling relationships with people in the present. But that's another tangent.

This applies to all the characters. None of them are perfect, and none of them are pure evil.

The problem with this show is that it perpetuates this attitude of black and white. Good and bad. No in between. EVERY person is ALWAYS a mix of BOTH, and anything that says otherwise is not accurately representing life. Being human means a constant struggle between the two, not being one or the other. It's a sliding scale, not a yes or no question.

5) What is it with this Rumpelstiltskin arc? WHAT'S HAPPENED TO RUMBELLE??

This episode really, REALLY confused me.

Okay, so this Rumpelstiltskin thing? NO. Please, no. Yes, I get this whole "pure heart" thing. It seemed all fine and sensible at first. His heart was reset. However, I feel like the methods of turning him into a hero were completely and utterly pathetic. One fight? With no other option? No other temptation? That does not make a hero. It's like they rushed him into doing one pretty good thing so he could "fit the criteria" and they could slap a hero label on his chest for the sake of Emma's plot. Then they ran with that again for Hook's? No. I think he's making good choices currently. He's doing the right thing in pretty much every situation so far. He's on the right track. But GODSDAMMIT NO HE IS NOT THERE YET. IT'S NOT THAT EASY TO BE A "HERO".

Another problem is that Belle COMPLETELY led Rumple on. She had plenty of opportunities to make it clear she "didn't want him dead, but didn't want to be with him", yet the whole time everything she did pointed to her having forgiven him and wanting to be with him again. They had reached their goal after all. I think what she did was fine, but when she did it was not. The whole way it was presented was probably to play with the fans' emotions, but that culminated as a thoughtless and cruel act on Belle's part. She sent too many mixed messages. He told her to meet him if she wanted to be with him, and she met with him but only to tell him she DIDN'T. Why didn't she say that before? (Maybe so he'd have something to fight for and would win the battle...? Still.) What she SHOULD have done was sat him down early on and told him about how conflicted she was, so at least he was aware.

On the other side, I suppose there are plenty of circumstances and other things that were going on that made it always a sort of inappropriate time. Okay. I might give you that. But there was something about the wording of her last statement to him. Note she said:

"And now I need to protect my own [heart]." 

That wording really, really throws me off. Rumple had a point. He had become what they'd both worked so hard to get him to be. And if she had worded her last statement ever so slightly differently, even like "and now I need to take the time to heal my own", that would have made total sense and been excusable. He has broken her heart a lot and she'd need time to heal away from him and find herself before she'd be able to participate in a fulfilling relationship.

But no. She says "protect". As though she expects him to break it again. Maybe I'm not remembering the scene completely well, but I'm pretty sure she'd just affirmed that he had changed (for real this time) and that she believed that he was in a place to participate in a fulfilling relationship. Meaning she just kind of contradicted herself. Maybe I'm being petty with details, but the whole scene just put me off because it feels like A&E are simply dragging this whole ordeal with them out in a bad way just to again play with viewers' hearts. Which there isn't anything wrong with playing with emotions, but they've sacrificed what feels like genuity from Belle for the sake of it. That last moment felt so out of character (due to the wording and the implications behind it as detailed above). She'd thrown herself full throttle into helping him become a better person, and now that he is she just... just gives up? Turns away? Doesn't feel it's worth trying again (even though it seems like it would work much more so than it ever has before)?

I love the ideas behind OUAT, but this... I don't know what to think about where this is going.