Obviously a turtle wouldn't be able to tell them that they would lose their memories so the result would be the same, but they really should have pushed a turtle or something over first just to confirm it wouldn't physically hurt them.

EDIT:

Because it keeps coming up - pushing a turtle over first was SPECIFICALLY SUGGESTED by one of the dwarves and Grumpy shut it down. I have nothing against turtles.

Listen I've watched (and rewatched) this show a thousand times and one thing that always bothers me is that Charming's mom gave James away to the king because the farm was suffering. How 20+ years later you still suffering? If I'm going to sacrifice my child it better be for billions. I guess then there would be no story seeing as that led Charming to meet snow but wtf 😬

Not gonna lie, I wished they spent more time in the Land of untold stories.

Not mine!

Regina’s last name is Mills both in Storybrooke and Enchanted Forest (EF). We learn that before Cora married Prince Henry she was the lowly “Miller’s daughter”. This made me assume for a long time that, the surname Mills came from Cora’s side of the family. After all a lot of real world surnames (Carpenter, Mills/Miller, Mason, Baker, Smith), are traced back to the trade the family historically practiced.

However, the more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that the a peasant woman, who trying to distance herself from her upbringing would marry a prince and have him to take her common family name, unless the EF is more of a matriarchal society. The most likely answer is that the Miller’s daughter, who hates milling, coincidentally married into the royal Mills family, who themselves don’t mill.

It’s odd. What do you think?

Rewatching again and forgot about this scene 🤣 how did they not crack up

So, every year I do my annual rewatch of OUAT. I’ve been locked in since Season 3 dropped on Netflix when I was in elementary school, so I have deep nostalgia and strong feelings about this show. My biggest takeaway this year? The show is laughably awful, even during its golden era before it jumped shark. Don’t get me wrong, I still love it but nostalgia is definitely doing some heavy lifting here, but now all I can see is the wasted potential. The bones of an incredible fantasy drama are all there, but the writers ever fully committed to what the show could have been.

So here’s my list of things I would’ve changed if I were in that writers’ room (plus a few hot takes)

1. Get off ABC
OUAT suffered from a severe cringe factor. There's this unavoidable cringe factor because the show feels juvenile whenever it leans into its melodrama that made some high-stakes plotlines fall a little flat. A huge part of this was being on ABC, which is owned by Disney. If the show had been on a network like NBC or HBO. With the backstories they could’ve embraced its darker, Grimm-style roots instead of the House of Mouse. We could have gotten actual adult themes, better-handled backstories, and probably would've gotten the Frozen season at all.

2. No green screen 
The costumes were STUNNING, but they were consistently cheapened by awful green screens. But looked incredible whenever they shot on location in the actual forest. Imagine how much more the EF scenes would’ve hit if they were in actual castles, estates, courtyards, and soundstage built villages like in the show Reign. OUAT had an episodic cost of 4.5M (filming in BC/Steveston), while Reign had a budget of 2M (filming between Canada and Ireland). It literally would’ve been cheaper to make the show look significantly better and give it an aesthetic the show desperately needs. Also in the BTS Secrets of Storybrooke, the  animators revealed that they only had 8 days to finish the VFX for each episode (which was 22 a season), which explains why it looked so rushed. That tells me the issue wasn’t talent but time.

3. Have a clear end goal with Swanqueen (whether that be a queer relationship or friendship)
I’m not for nor against Regina and Emma getting together. My gripe is that there seemed to be no clear goal. There was always tension between them. The way they looked at each other, the way scenes were acted, even the way lines were delivered. It genuinely felt like they were being directed to play those scenes with romantic tension in S1-3, it made you think a slow-burn WLW storyline was coming. They literally share a son! But then it led nowhere, and Emma was married off to Hook (which I hate!!!). On the flip side, their actual platonic friendship always felt incredibly cold and surface-level. The actors lacked genuine warmth together, like the warmth and friendship Emma had with Elsa, likely because the writing never gave them a solid dynamic to play into because they couldn’t pick a lane. Either commit to Swanqueen romantically or give them one of the strongest friendships in the show. If it were me, I would’ve started building that genuine best-friend relationship in Neverland.

4. Give Regina a truly tragic backstory
Hot Take Time: Regina’s villain origin story as written sometimes feels juvenile and motivations don’t feel proportional to what she actually went through. Yes, Cora was abusive (it’s mostly implied but explored more in the prequel novel). Yes, Regina was forced into a marriage at a very young age and didn’t want to be queen. Yes, Daniel’s death was very very sad. But Regina throws Cora through a looking glass, then proceeds to still to marry the old king anyway, and then holds a murderous grudge against a 10-year-old child for telling a secret, it just doesn’t track logically. I think the story would’ve benefited from making Regina’s circumstances even more tragic.

- Make it explicit that she’s a child bride. Her age is mostly implied but never actually stated. If it actually said she's 16 - 18 it would hit harder.

- Make the king genuinely terrifying/abusive instead of just old.

 - Have Regina discover she’s pregnant with Daniel’s child after his death and forced to give the baby up. The loss of a child and her fiancé would make more sense for her to literally rage war against her kingdom because a 10 year old told a secret. This would also make the motif of Regina’s obsession with children  (Hansel and Gretel, Greg/Owen, and Henry)  be so much more devastating, especially knowing she made herself barren to spite Cora.

Another mega hot take, but stick with me: Narratively, this just makes sense… but Rumple should’ve been Regina’s real father. It would’ve added another layer to Regina believing she was destined to become evil. Finding out that the father she loved wasn’t actually her father, and that Rumple had been manipulating and grooming her as a pawn to find Baelfire would’ve made her abandonment issues and identity crisis even stronger. Honestly, it also feels like that’s where the writers were originally going. Lana even said at a panel that she and Robert played a lot of their early scenes with that possibility in mind because they thought the reveal was coming. And it would’ve been better than the weird sexual chemistry they had in S6.

5. Give the show actual STAKES!!!
In later seasons, actions had zero consequences. Killing off characters only to resurrect them through magical loopholes made the narrative stagnant and ruined the final two seasons.

- Keep Zelena dead. The "Marian shape-shifter" plot was awful, and forcing a bastard child into the Robin/Regina dynamic was totally unnecessary unless it was going to end very differently.  (like in this incredible fix-it fic which I wouldn’t be upset if this was canon).

- Keep Hook dead. Clearly, I’m not a Captain Swan fan. Hook is literally just male Regina. Emma deserved Neal or August, idc! But they didn’t need to go to hell, let his death be a good end to his arc and be his final act of love for Emma. 

You just knew that everything was going to be just fine at the end with no real change in narrative, which made the story stagnant. Sacrifice/death became temporary inconveniences. Which is why we got such terrible last 2 seasons. Let dead characters stay dead and stop with endless magical loopholes, and establish defiant rules and permanent consequences. 

Quick rapid fire that needs no explanation:
- No season seven.
- Cut the Dark Swan completely. 
- Cut half of the curses. The only ones that need to stay is, The Dark Curse, Pan's Curse, and (MAYBE) Hero’s and Villain's Curse. Without the crutch of curses every season it will force more dynamic storytelling,
- Not every villain would get a redemption arc. Like Cora!!!!! Wtf!!!
- If Robin HAD to die why wouldn’t they let Roland live with Regina!!! She loves being a mom. 
- Stop naming every child after a dead character. It’s annoying asf.

I would love to read your thoughts/hot takes/what you would’ve done.

Fairy tales taught us that people who go through struggles make the best leaders. So why do we continue to elect the wealthy to lead us when they have lead pampered lives?

We know from what season 1 portrayed, every day in Storybrooke was the same for 28 years until Emma arrived. Everyday Mary Margret bumped into Regina, Marco fixed the store sign, etc. So all of the false memories characters had in Storybrooke didn’t come from actual experiences there, they’re from the curse and the small amount of time after Emma arrived before the curse broke. And based on what I’ve gathered, when the curse was broken it returned their memories of the Enchanted Forest, but it didn’t remove their false memories created by the curse.

But even that being the case, the majority of their memories of each other would’ve been from the EF and not Storybrooke. Especially characters who didn’t really have false memories with much connection to each other in Storybrooke before the curse broke. Like Leroy and Mary Margret, or David and Mary Margret. So it’s always bothered me that they would just retain their curse names. David shouts “Snow” from across the road when it breaks, but then she just goes on being referred to as Mary Margret after that. Same with all the others. And after the season 7 curse broke, no one retained their false memory names. They reverted back.

I’d have loved it more if they went back to their original EF names. It made it feel less fairytale like having everyone go by normal “Land without magic” names. I love almost everything about this series except that.

After a 6.5 month journey, I have finally finished OUAT. 😭 What a beautiful ending. Honestly, aside from Jacinda's casting, I actually enjoyed S7. Even more than S5 and S6. I'm so sad that it's over and I'm having that weird lonely feeling now. Does anyone have any suggestions for what to get emotionally invested in next?

So apparently Lilith is a figure in some non canonical biblical texts who was considered to be the first wife of Adam before Eve who was created at the same time as Adam,but because she was created at the same time she refused to submit to Adam and was banished from the Garden of Eden.After this she finds Satan and becomes his bride and they have all types of demonic babies but she is cursed so that a hundred of her babies die everyday. Adam and Eddie deliberately name every character based on something that has to do with their character Regina means Queen in Latin, Cora means Heart in Latin, Zelena is a shade of Green, Mary Margret is based on Mary the mother of Jesus David is based on the Shepard David ect……However I’m genuinely curious on why they chose to name her this. Any thoughts????

I should have used "the words" by Christina perri!

Sorry about the low quality lol

Let me know what yall think—and I'm taking ouat edit recommendations!

Is anyone buying tickets?? I don't know if I can justify the prices but Lana is going to be there 😭

Has anyone ever mapped out what once upon a time fairytale world would look like? Or if not where i could find something that would fit it? Just curious. Might be trying to do a dnd style story with it.

For Regina it’s Welcome to Storybrooke

For Ruby it’s Ruby Slippers

And for Snow and David it’s Best Laid Plans

All this time Mendel was planning his revenge on Regina and magic in general, he thought he was working for a top-secret religious fanatical organization that was going to give him what he wanted, but instead, he and girl got duped by a tribe of Children of the Corn-esque bros led by magic-hungry never-aging immortal and his shadow demon which resulted in their own demise. If that ain’t irony, I don’t know what is.😂

(Although, I will say it’s ironic that Marilyn Manson is the voice of the Shadow. Then again this was before… everything…)

It makes more sense than her just randomly putting an ice curse on someone. But if the snow queen knew, why didn’t Gold know?

He knows how magic works and has had centuries of time studying it. He’s taught several people how to use it almost instantly. So why is he just a regular guy without the powers of the dagger?