Just here for the Captain Swan

But you ship what makes you happy. OUAT/CS fanfiction at fanfiction.net or Ao3

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I guess the side quest for this rewatch is Rumple/Milah/Bae lore.

All this time and I’m still unsure what to do with the scene where teenage Bae is asking if Milah left or died. Rumple says she died but his affect seems like he knows she left, but later when he goes to confront Killian as the DO, he seems surprised to learn that she is dead. Also, the way he says “how’s Milah” reads to me like he knows she ran.

Maybe they were just laying the clues a season early, but it seems to me like Rumple knew on some she wasn’t kidnapped.

Could be that the writers hadn’t ironed out that part yet and just left that door open intentionally.

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Rewatched and realized that the only reason Bae is asking is because a knight was bullying Rumple, telling him that Milah ran away because he was a coward. Could just be the guy messing with him, but I wonder if others in the village saw Milah and Killian hanging out and figured out/saw the truth.

Rumple might have told Bae she was dead initially, then learned later through word of mouth. Hence why when he later confronts Hook, he asks about Milah.

So like running into Killian was as much about getting the truth as vengeance on Killian.

(I’m probably reading wayyyyy too much into it but this is just what my brain does.)

[honeybadgerhook-ouat]

I guess the side quest for this rewatch is Rumple/Milah/Bae lore.

All this time and I’m still unsure what to do with the scene where teenage Bae is asking if Milah left or died. Rumple says she died but his affect seems like he knows she left, but later when he goes to confront Killian as the DO, he seems surprised to learn that she is dead. Also, the way he says “how’s Milah” reads to me like he knows she ran.

Maybe they were just laying the clues a season early, but it seems to me like Rumple knew on some she wasn’t kidnapped.

Could be that the writers hadn’t ironed out that part yet and just left that door open intentionally.

[honeybadgerhook-ouat]

Started rewatching S1 and by the first Snowing scene I’m already pre-mad about the dragon baby thing.

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I’m neither a Milah fan nor a Milah hater but she could have been so much better if she was written as a whole person and not a prop for Hook and Rumple’s feud.

For instance, instead of her verbally abusing him for her being “lashed to a coward” and not being able to travel the world, show how exhausted she is after five odd years of trying to scrape by in a town that won’t buy the wares of a man they see as a coward, but said man refuses to relocate to a place where they might be able to start over.

Joining a pirate crew could have been sheer financial desperation, just so happens she turned out to be good at it.

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Dark Swan was not my favorite arc but it’s been how many years and I’m still not over “I loved you.”

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We had a team building exercise at work where we had to talk about hobbies and things we do outside of work, so I talked about writing, but didn’t say it was fanfiction. Now I have a well meaning supervisor who has been following up repeatedly on how my “book” is going and I really don’t think she’s ready to hear about the OUAT/genderbent Captain Morgan fic I’ve been avoiding updating for almost ten years.

Slight tangent: I know they mean well but it’s a bit of a pet peeve when non-writers try to give me advice about writing. I don’t mean feedback or criticism, I mean they think a book pops out fully formed with no edits in a few hours of concentration at a coffee shop and when I try to correct them it’s some variant of “maybe you should just write short stories for practice.”

M’am, I have a degree in creative writing.

Also. No one is more annoyed than me at my lack of ability to update. Since my brother passed, I’m basically the third parent to my niece and nephew, I don’t think it means a lack of talent.

(Speaking of, the nephew is now coating the living room in bubbles with some kind of bubble gun I didn’t know we owned. *le sigh*)

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Once you look for damask patterns in OUAT, you see them everywhere.

Especially in a Villain’s “lair.”

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If I never write again, it won’t be for lack of ideas, it’ll be because my muse is so ADD that can’t string together one story but keeps hopping from one unfinished story to a completely unrelated story.

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I didn’t care much for the Land of Untold Stories arc but if I had to write for it I’d have added Captain Peter Blood (from Captain Blood) in as a background character for the sole purpose of David talking him up to annoy Killian. (Peter Blood was a medical doctor before he became a pirate, and eventually becomes a governor.)

- “Killian, did you ask Peter for help? I think his ship has a little more firepower, if you need it.”

- “Oh, looking for Peter? I think he picked up a shift at the hospital. Did you ever consider Med school, Killian?”

- “You’re gonna have to ask Peter about that, he was just elected lieutenant mayor so Regina delegated that to his office.”

Edit to add:

- “Captain? Oh, sorry, not you, Killian. I meant Doctor Captain.”

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Personally, I think OUAT splitting up the seasons into half season was a mistake. Obviously I’m not a TV writer so maybe there were forces at play I’m not aware of (I feel like it was a thing other shows started doing at the time) but it feels to me like they just ran out of ideas long before the series ended—at the same time, there was so much that was never explored or properly unpacked that I’d have gladly extended many of the half seasons into full seasons rather than some of the… choices we got in the end

Plot expansion arcs I would have preferred:

- F-king Sleeping Beauty backstory. Also how TF did they get Phillip back?

- show the shadow organization that sent Tamara and Greg. Yeah it was really Pan being Pan, but the way Tamara and Greg talked, it was like there was a whole anti magic Men In Black operation. It might have hit different if we saw more of how they were drawn in and manipulated before the true reveal and subsequent unaliving.

- unpack onscreen literally anything that happened to the main cast/ships in the frozen arc, I’m begging you.

- the Underworld arc could have tied up so many loose ends. Personal preference, but I would have liked resolution between (among?) Neal, Milah, and Killian in the underworld.

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I’m in this weird spot where I’m super nostalgic for early seasons OUAT but actually watching it isn’t hitting the same way. Like I want new episodes but like specifically season 3 extended edition, not a season 8.

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Has anybody found works/fandoms that hit the same as OUAT or am I just gonna have to write something that chases the high of early seasons OUAT?

I desperately need to dissociate into somewhere magical.

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I’ve now had two separate coworkers ask if the photo of me and Colin on my desk is of me and my (deceased) brother and I’m not sure how to feel about this.

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Artemis II withdrawal has me wondering if the Jewel of the Realm/Jolly Roger technically counts as a space craft.

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I’m sick in bed again which means I have time for fandom.

OUAT Plotlines I Hate in No Particular Order

- Snowing sacrificing a baby to purify Emma. (I lied, I hate this one the most.)

- Robin Hood being literally erased from existence.

- Belle literally has to go her whole life and die before Rumple gets rid of the darkness.

- Villains (and Emma) have strict rules to follow if they want to be “heroes” but Snowing can do f**kall and the label still applies.

- Biased, but Hook unaliving daddy charming just to set up pointless tension between Hook and David and make Hook feel insecure about the wedding.

Feel free to add your own.

[honeybadgerhook-ouat]

Do we know how old Emma is when she gets pregnant with Hope? I know Henry is at least 18 which makes her at least 36, but it still feels like years after that.

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One of my supervisors asked me how my book was coming along and the only thing I can think she meant was a fanfic I haven’t updated since 2019 and damn I feel attacked.

Besides, it’s CS’s master violinist son falling for genderbent alchemist Captain Morgan, no one wants that.