@SwanQueenProof @swanqueenproof - Tumblr Blog

The Final Proof

*A lot of people have come up with this theory, but it’s so perfect I had to write it down.

They say you learn the most from your mistakes. Mine came as I was watching “Murder Most Foul” and Charming said this:

I hadn’t really been paying enough attention to realize that he was talking about the sleeping curse that the Evil Queen had placed on him and Snow, so my mind immediately went to: What other curse needs to be broken? Luckily for me there is another curse that needs to be broken. Many of you know this, but it’s the curse that is keeping everyone in Storybrooke.

What we don’t realize is which part of the curse is still active. It’s not the dark aspects of the Dark Curse - that was broken by Emma as was prophesied/dictated by Rumpelstiltskin. No, it’s the other part that the pesky imp created that is trapping everyone here still.

The Savior curse. Think about it. The only reason Emma Swan is the Savior is because Rumplestiltskin made it so. In theory, Emma was no longer supposed to be the Savior after she broke the Dark Curse. Everyone was supposed to go back to where they were from, but that didn’t happen. Which means what? That portion of the curse, that tiny little drop, is a curse all in itself, and it too needs to be broken. When it is, Emma’s fate as the Savior will be broken; she will live.

Now you ask: But Emma was given the Shears of Destiny or whatever to cut herself from her fate and no longer be the Savior and she didn’t take it!

Well, we know how Rumple’s curse works right? A pair of pretty scissors wouldn’t break this curse because only one person has that power: Emma herself.

We’ve come full circle. Once upon a time Adam and Eddy pitched the idea that the curse would take seven years to fully break. Now we’ve reached that point. Once Emma breaks the Savior curse, Rumple’s spell that he placed on her life will break. Her Hero’s Journey will be complete, and she will return to her life in the real world, where no one needs her to protect them.

(I’ll come back to this in a minute)

So we know what needs to happen. Here I take it a step further and answer:

How?

It turns out that we have that answer too:

Ah yes. True Love. Here’s where I know I’ll lose half of you because “Once Upon a Time is obsessed with Captain Swan. Why can’t you see that, you’re blinding yourself, stop perpetuating nonsense, wake up blah blah blah blah.”

Well, I’m going to counter that with: Why is Emma still the Savior then? If Once Upon a Captain Swan is genuinely the entire point of this show, why is Emma still fated to die?

Answer: You can’t break a curse where you’re the Savior of the fairytale characters with one of the said fairytale characters.

Here you respond again with: “Well, Smartypants, you call yourself a Swan Queen shipper, but you’ve just contradicted yourself. You think the Evil Queen can break the curse with Emma? She’s a fairytale character too!”

Well, reader, you are very clever indeed. But shall I provide you with my next exhibit:

While it was super fun to watch, Split Queen was not just done for the optics. It was a setup for endgame. The Evil Queen may be a fairytale character, but Mayor Regina Mills (like Emma and Henry) is a completely original creation of our world. Which means, like Emma, the daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White, she can live a completely normal life outside of the Enchanted Forest.

I was trying to figure out the purpose behind bringing Wish Robin Hood back, and this line really explains it:

The writers are priming us for a much bigger version of this concept. Robin is the first test of the portal system. Will it allow someone who isn’t supposed to be “real” stay in the “real world”? We know Storybrooke, by our standards, isn’t a real place, it’s a refuge for fairytale characters from many realms, so it makes sense that he passes the test in this case, but what about Regina? Will she, a person who isn’t supposed to be real, be allowed to live somewhere like Boston or New York if Storybrooke doesn’t exist. This first trial proves that yes, she will be able to because something about her is connected to our world (that thing is literally the writers themselves). They have Regina grapple with this issue- Why was wish Robin able to come here?- because she’s next, and she needs to know that she’ll be okay when she tries to stay in this world.

If Regina remains unconnected to the Evil Queen, she should be able to help Emma break the curse and remain in this reality. Will it really be True Love’s Kiss that frees Emma from the Savior Curse and sends everyone to where they belong?

I would hope.

I also hope that I’ll find $2000 on the street tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean it’ll happen.

But it’s certainly the most reasonable solution since literally every curse is broken with True Love’s Kiss…

Have you ever wondered why there’s never been a True Love’s Kiss with Emma & her parents or Emma with Hook? Perhaps part of that is because True Love’s Kiss can only work with people who are from the same reality. Since Regina had True Love’s Kiss with Henry, that means she’s a part of his reality. Part of her belongs in our world. Emma has never shared True Love’s Kiss with Hook because he isn’t a part of her reality. He’s still a fairytale character. They can get married, she can choose that life, but that means she will remain tied to her fate as the Savior. She will always be connected to the Fairytale world. She will eventually die for them.

But if somehow, Regina Mills is Emma’s true True Love; if two “real people” who were created in this world- Emma Swan the bail bonds person, and Regina Mills the Mayor- shared True Love’s Kiss (not saying they’ll make it gay like they should) then the entire curse could be broken.

I just don’t see any other way they could go with this. The show has always foreshadowed that Storybrooke isn’t supposed to last.

We know there’s going to be a “reset” for the show…

And we know that Regina is no longer connected to the Evil Queen. Everything is setting up for the fairytale characters to return to their world.

But what happens next?

A good story always comes full circle, but the hero returns home with more knowledge and is in a better place. Odysseus goes on a crazy journey with a bunch of messed up shit but eventually makes it back home. Dorothy wishes she could experience life over the rainbow, but when she does, she learns that there’s no place like home. Harry Potter steps onto Platform 9 ¾ for the first time alone, and in the last book he steps on with a family. So if in the Pilot we see Emma in her lonely Boston apartment, wishing on a star to no longer be alone, it only makes sense that the last time we see her, she’s in her Boston apartment but she isn’t alone- she has a family.

We know Henry will be a part of that family, but it’s safe to assume that Regina will be there too, because of this promise:

Unfortunately all magic comes with a price, and my prediction is that price will be that everyone forgets that any of this ever happened.

I’m grounding this theory in the fact that the last time there was a reset, that happened to half of the parties involved: Emma and Henry

In that scenario, the Dark Curse was destroyed. The Dark Curse’s purpose was to create Storybrooke, so once it was gone, Emma and Henry forgot that Storybrooke ever existed… But everyone in the Enchanted Forest still remembered Emma and Henry because the Savior Curse still existed- they all remembered the Savior. They were able to go back and get her and recreate the bridge between our worlds because Emma was still the Savior. Once the Savior Curse is gone, everything will be wiped out. Everyone will forget that the Savior existed, and why she existed. All the fairytale characters will return to their world where their stories will play out, and all the characters from our world will begin to lead a normal life.

That life for Emma and Regina could very well be together. It’s not guaranteed, but it would certainly explain why the writers have made an effort to keep Emma and Regina apart in Storybrooke while maintaining a certain amount of tension between them- because their story isn’t meant to play out in Storybrooke. It would also explain why it’s not a topic of conversation for any of the writers or actors- it’s a major plot point, and talking about it would be a spoiler. Lastly, Adam Horowitz said himself that they weren’t queerbaiting:

If they’re planning on having Regina be a part of Emma’s new life free from the Savior curse, then technically this isn’t a lie.

But could they make it so that Emma and Regina’s relationship is merely as platonic co-parents in the real world? Of course. But at the end of the day we would still be right: Swan Queen would still technically be endgame, and it’s still a hell of a lot better than Captain Swan.

#swan queen #swanqueen #sq meta #dumb positivity #ouat meta #ouat #once upon a time #anti-cs #anti-oq

So I deliberately left out these parallels between “Heart of Darkness” and the “Cricket Game” from my previous post because the Snowing scenes are not from the Enchanted Forest, and it would have interrupted the flow of the story BUT that does not mean they are not important, so I apologize for the delay.

You would think that we would have considered the fact that Snowing and Swan Queen was the same story when they put Emma and Regina in the same situation as Snow and Charming in “Heart of Darkness. To jog your memory, Snow was accused of killing Kathryn, and Regina was accused of killing Archie. Both were innocent and completely surprised when the accusations were made against them

After both suspects express their surprise, Emma Swan gives them this furrowed-browed look accompanied with a matching head-tilt; a signal that she is analyzing Snow/Regina’s responses and she sees their responses to be genuine. I was quite amazed at Jennifer Morrison’s replication of this subtle move, and I would wager that she studied herself in the “Heart of Darkness” scene before shooting “The Cricket Game” scene.

Later in both episodes, Emma and Charming seek out more information to see what really happened to Kathryn and Archie.

In both situations, their eyes deceive them, as they “witness proof” that Snow/Regina murdered Kathryn/Archie. Charming was fooled by a hypnosis-induced dream and Emma was deceived by a dreamcatcher. Coincidence? LOL! No.

After learning the “truth” Charming and Emma confront Snow and Regina with their evidence. Snow and Regina are not pleased.

And in their own way, both Snow and Regina made their feelings clear.

While it may be a painful story to replicate, this is undoubtedly the same story, and proof that the writers are trying to get us to see that it’s the same story. Plus, they all made up in the end so who cares? Swan Queen is Snowing.

#swan queen #sq meta #dumb positivity #swen #ouat #once upon a tima #ouat meta #snowing #snowing meta

From the beginning we knew that Emma Swan was paralleled to her father Prince Charming, and in the episode, “A Land Without Magic” it was confirmed when Emma fought and defeated Maleficent in her dragon form, while flashbacks showed Charming fighting the same beast.

Much later, in the episode, “Operation Mongoose” Regina is shown wearing Snow White’s bandit outfit during the AU of that episode.

Most members of the Swan Queen fandom have already realized the parallels between Snow/Charming and Emma/Regina, and have been pointing them out for years. But these parallels got me thinking: What if they have been more than just parallels? What if Swan Queen is a reflection of Snowing? What if Swan Queen is the slow-burn version of the Snowing story we were told to in season 1? What if we were told what was going to happen in this entire series by the end of season 1? What if Emma Swan truly is the modern version of Prince Charming and Regina is Snow White? I wouldn’t believe it. Not without proof, so I did a little digging and...

You wanted to see proof? Well, my dears here...it...is.

We begin at the beginning of both our stories. All parties are shocked. The questions Regina and Charming ask are similarly worded. *Note: Emma and Regina’s roles in this scenario are flipped. Regina is the first to speak, like Charming. She is the “royal” and Emma is the “thief”.

In their second meeting, both Emma and Snow have been captured, and only released after they have agreed to help the royal find their jewels (or for Regina it’s Henry). They also both adorably rest their chin on the net/jail cell.

So they venture out in search of the jewels. No party seems to get along with the other. Emma and Regina eventually find Henry, but they lose him many times and seem to always be out looking for him. Their journeys continue, until Snow White kicks Charming in the river and runs off (You could probably pick any time Regina threw Emma under the bus in season one to compare this to). Then, Snow White gets captured by The Evil Queen’s guards, surely she’s done for! In Storybrooke, Emma and Regina are caught in a fire. Regina twists her ankle and can’t walk. This looks like the end of Snow White and Regina, until out of nowhere, Prince Charming and Emma Swan swoop in to save the women. Even though neither Charming nor Emma got along particularly well with their partners in crime (I mean Snow smacked Charming with a rock and literally kicked his ass, and Regina was generally uncool to Emma), and they may have been better off just leaving them to die, they did the right thing because they are oh so noble.

The next part of Snowing’s adventure matches Swan Queen scenes from 2x01. When the trolls discover that Snow White is in fact Snow White, they capture her and intend to sell her to the Queen. This is quite similar to when the townspeople realize that Regina is in fact the Evil Queen and they intend to kill her. Of course, no one is laying a hand on Snow White or Regina Mills while Charming and Emma are around.

The townspeople are replaced by Gold and the Wraith who are set on killing Regina. Emma fights bravely against the wraith, and manages to push Regina to safety only to get grabbed by the wraith and pulled into a portal. This is not so different from when Charming fought bravely against the trolls, and managed to get Snow safely away from the bridge, only to get pulled down by a troll from below. Yes, it exactly the same scenario. Yes, you may cry.

Fast forward to the moment in “Queen of Hearts” when Regina has the opportunity to save Emma from the Enchanted Forest or let her die, which would allow her to have Henry all to herself once more. This is the same dilemma that Snow faces when she sees that Charming did not make it to safety: Should she run with the jewels and fairy dust, or should she save Charming?

Of course, both Regina and Snow are also heroes, and they risk everything to save Charming and Emma, who are both grateful and who now see Snow/Regina in a new light.

After all their adventures together, it is time for our heroes to part ways. Though we know that this is not goodbye forever, Snow/Charming/Regina/Emma do not. Even though Snow and Regina believe that they are about to face a life of solitude, without hesitation they provide Charming and Emma with what they need to get a happy ending. For Charming, it is his mother’s engagement ring so he may propose to Kathryn, and for Emma it is new memories of a full life with Henry. Though Snow and Regina believe that Emma and Charming will find happiness, Emma and Charming struggle to have it because...

...they will not be sharing their lives with the people they love. This was the moment Charming fell in love with Snow, which was revealed in “Snow Drifts”.

Charming: “But it wasn’t until I saw my mother’s ring on her finger that I knew in my heart there was no other woman I would ever love.” Snow: “I wish you had told me then. We would have saved so much time.”

So if this scene corresponds with the Swan Queen scene in “Going Home” then we can assume that this is the moment that Emma and Regina fall in love. It would explain why most Swen would say that this is their favorite scene, and why it feels like there should be an “I love you” somewhere in there. The feelings are there, but as Emma would say, it takes them a while to accept their feelings. Since Swan Queen is the modern Snowing, it is okay that they didn’t say anything here because it will happen in its own time.

The couples finally part ways and the scenes ends with Snow/Regina watching as Charming/Emma head off to their presumed “happy ending”.

In the time that Snow/Regina are alone away from the ones they love (for Regina it is Henry and Emma), they find it difficult to keep their minds off them, or escape the fact that they are never going to see them again. As a remedy for their pain, both women find the means to free themselves of their own thoughts. Snow obtains a forgetting potion from Rumplestiltskin, and Regina creates a sleeping curse for herself.

After this Charming sends a message to Snow revealing his love for her, she goes to meet him but is intercepted by King George, who tells her to break Charming’s heart or watch his death. She tells him that she doesn’t love him, and then returns home where she takes the forgetting potion, and becomes a dark version of herself. This is quite literally the only major scene in this early Snowing storyline that I could not find a direct comparison to a Swan Queen that fits the timeline. This is around the time that Robin and Hook came into play and started messing with everything, so I suppose George keeping Snow and Charming apart could be compared to the Beards keeping Swan Queen apart. As for Snow becoming a dark version of herself, this could parallel to Regina struggling with her darkness and keeping it at bay. I think this storyline with Snow was used to show that we all have the potential for darkness. Snow can lose love like Regina lost with Daniel, and become a vengeful person as well. On the flip side, we all have the potential for light, which is what they have been showing with Regina throughout the series.

The next scene realigns the storylines.

Snow, out for vengeance, is going to kill the Evil Queen, but not before Charming stops the arrow headed straight for Regina. Even though Snow did not remember him, Charming was unwilling to let Snow cross the line into darkness, and was prepared to die for that. This is the same as when Emma was unwilling to let Regina be consumed by darkness once more, and did not even question what would happen when she took on the darkness herself. Charming then broke Snow’s curse with true love’s kiss, and she remembered him again, and Swan Queen also did things in season 5.

Unfortunately, after Charming/Emma saved Snow/Regina they were taken away, forcing Snow and Regina to have to save Charming and Emma once again.

And really we are still trying to get Emma Swan back, am I right? She may be back physically, but I think we all know that this is not the same Emma Swan. Emma Swan is locked up somewhere in a jail cell within her own mind, like Charming who is locked in the Evil Queen’s dungeon. Season 5 Emma is a prisoner, and it is up to herself, Regina, Snow, Henry, Archie & everyone else to get her out.

Which finally brings us to season 6…

Theory time

In the final episodes of season 1, Snow White and her band of fairy tale misfits storm the Evil Queen’s castle to defeat her and save Prince Charming.

Using what we have learned so far, the reason the Evil Queen has returned in season 6 is because we have reached that final battle in the story, and in the end, Snow White must face the Evil Queen and take a bite of the poison apple... only in this version Regina is Snow White.

So far canon has continued to follow the storyline. The Evil Queen has targeted Regina (aka Contemporary Snow White)...

Evil Queen: “There was a battle raging inside Regina. And she may have one the fight, but this is a war.”

So if things continue as they have been throughout the series, I’d be worried about Emma…

Also, if you ship CS, I’d be worried about Emma…

...and keep your eyes peeled for apples.

But don’t fret if our contemporary Snow White ends up taking a bite…

Because we all know that Prince Charming wakes her up in the end.

Or in this case Princess Charming.

Now I’m sure even with all this super awesome proof, many of you are still skeptical that Swan Queen will ever get their happy ending. It just doesn’t seem like they will ever find their way to one another! But need I remind you that it took Snowing fooooorever to finally be together. Even when Snow found Charming in the dungeon, and they were reunited, it turned out that Charming’s image was just being projected onto a magic mirror. There was no hope for them. All the forces of the universe were working to keep them apart. But Charming reassured Snow and said to her what I’m going to say to you about Swan Queen dear reader…

#swan queen #swanqueen #dumb positivity #sq meta #ouat meta #once upon a time #ouat #snowing #snowing meta #anti-cs #ouat spoilers #to be safe #swanqueenproof #emma swan #regina mills #snow white #prince charming #evil queen #long post

I’m taking us back to “The Price”. This is a follow up post to @anothershadeofgreen’s meta “The map legend” back from 5x02, where she covered Rumple’s montage. Her analysis was on point at the time, but it didn’t have all the details. Not yet. Now we do.

The montage goes like this…

“As long as the Dark Ones existed, one thing has always held us back: The pull of the family we were so desperate to protect. The friendships that make it impossible to forget who we used to be. The magic that threatens to undo our most evil deeds. And worst of all, the love that refuses to give up on us. You see, no matter how hard we try, we can’t escape the reach of the light.”

Okay so we know now that Emma embraced the darkness to save Hook. So Emma’s darkness is closely associated with Hook, as long as she chases Hook, she is giving in to the darkness. This montage shows us what pulls Emma away from Hook and what she has to turn her back on in order to be with Hook.

“The pull of the family we were so desperate to protect.”

When Emma saved Hook and succumbed to the darkness, she immediately isolated herself from her family. Because her family is a call to the light, her family is what will be a factor in separating herself from Hook. We’ve already seen this. When Hook (the darkness) threatened her family in 5x11, she immediately set out to destroy him, this was a call back to the light. Once she finally killed Hook, Emma was no longer a Dark One, and she embraced her family (the light). This didn’t last, however, as she dragged her family down to the Underworld not five minutes later to go back to Hook, and embrace the darkness again. This is significant because the Underworld is the epitome of darkness, so rather than allow her family to be a source of light, Emma has dragged them into the darkness with her. So no, Emma may not be a Dark One, but she has still succumbed to the darkness, by voluntarily going to the darkest of all realms, to chase after the man who caused her to embrace the darkness in the first place.

“The friendships that make it impossible to forget who we used to be.”

Henry is shown first. While today we would categorize Henry as Emma’s family, this sentence forces us to look back and remember that at the beginning of the show, Emma and Henry weren’t yet “mother and son”, they started out as friends. Henry’s friendship was the most important one in Emma’s life. It was the one that got her out of her dark and lonely life, and brought light and magic into her life. As a Dark One, and in the Underworld Emma is lost because she doesn’t remember who she used to be back in season one. Regina is also briefly shown at the end of this sentence, which connects Henry and Regina as the pair that share the role of reminding Emma who she used to be and bringing her back to the light.

“The magic that threatens to undo our most evil deeds.”

This is where it gets interesting. We all know that the darkest path Emma went down was using the darkness to save Hook. We don’t really associate that with evil, but maybe we should… Hook did kill Merlin and he did threaten everyone Emma loved. Other than allowing that to happen, the worst thing Emma did was control Violet, which is bad, but far less detrimental than the former. Then knowing that Hook was a threat, Emma continued to cover for him and took them all back to Storybrooke where he could potentially pose a threat to her entire family. I don’t like to categorize things as “good” and “evil” especially because Emma seems so emotionally unstable here, but in the context of this show, I think these count as evil deeds. So twice, Emma’s darkest and most evil deeds as a Dark One revolve around saving Hook in order to be with him. The third time comes after Emma is freed from the Dark One curse when she drags her entire family and Robin to the Underworld to once again save Hook. Since this was already proven to be the darkest thing Emma can do, we already know that even though Emma is no longer the Dark One, she is still called to darkness. SO what is the “magic” that will reverse Emma’s darkest and most evil deeds and pull her back to the light? Well, they tell us here. It’s Regina Mills. The magic that could finally stop Emma from constantly crawling back to Hook (again it’s canon that this was Emma’s darkest act) would come from Regina. I’m not going so far as to say that Regina’s True Love Kiss will save Emma from herself or anything like that, because I don’t need to speculate on the type of magic that could be used to save Emma, the evidence that stands is already strong in itself:

It’s canon that Merlin said that of all the paths he foresaw for Emma, her choosing to save Hook was the darkest one.

It’s canon that Emma is still choosing to save Hook.

It’s canon that Regina Mills is shown as “the magic” that threatens to undo Emma Swan’s most evil deeds.

I am simply inviting you to do the math.

Finally, “And worst of all, the love that refuses to give up on us.”

This sentence was meant purely for Rumple and Belle. Hook was put in to throw us off. Obviously, Hook was also the Dark One here, he could not help Emma find the light, and Hook’s love is the reason Emma was pulled to the darkness in the first place, and it is the thing that is keeping her there to this day. Having Hook and Belle next to each other shows a contrast. For Rumple, Belle represents light whereas for Emma, Hook represents darkness.

In conclusion...

“I saved you, now save me” shows that since Emma saved Regina from the darkness, Emma expects Regina to save her from the darkness in return. And even though Emma is no longer the Dark One, she is still drawn to the darkness. You can see it in her eyes, in the way she acts and talks…

...Emma is clearly still overcome by darkness. The longer she tries to save Hook and make things work with him, the more Emma will be taken by darkness, and she needs to be saved from herself before she is fully consumed by it. Her darkest deed has yet to be undone and Regina is still obligated to use her magic to do just that.

And with that I am done.

*Note I write these posts, but I don’t run this account, so I will not be able to respond to any comments, especially ones about me reading too deep into the story or ones about how Adam and Eddy aren’t this smart, or that the storyline was changed after 5x02. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

#swan queen #dumb positivity #regina mills #emma swan #dark swan #ouat theories #ouat speculation #anti-cs #anti-oq

OperationOUT - Season 3A

3x01 “The Heart of the Truest Believer”

Henry’s Birth

Scene one, season 3, episode one: A clock hangs on the wall of the hospital room in which Emma is giving birth to Henry. Tick Tick Tick. The time changes. It’s 8:15 and Henry is born. Cool coincidence, huh? Henry’s time of birth is the same as the time frozen into Storybrooke’s clock tower.

Sure it would be, if that were actually true.

Given the assumption that nothing ensuing Emma’s car crash is in fact reality, that Once Upon a Time is almost entirely a dream series, we must also scrutinize every minute detail and question whether something we think is true is in fact true.

So what is the likelihood that Henry’s time of birth was the exact same time as the time set on the clock in Storybrooke? Given that there are 720 different times in hours plus minutes that Henry could have been born, so the probability that he was born at 8:15 is 1/720 or roughly 0.014%. Now that’s already low enough without factoring in the probability that his TOB is the same as the clock tower (I majored in English not Math sorry). If you’re like me and would rather hear about dream science than statistics, I’ll present this argument: The time was implanted into Emma’s subconscious since it’s the last time she recalled, so it came up again in this dream flashback.

Here’s a small fraction of the science, “One prominent neurobiological theory of dreaming is the “activation-synthesis hypothesis,” which states that dreams don’t actually mean anything: they are merely electrical brain impulses that pull random thoughts and imagery from our memories. Humans, the theory goes, construct dream stories after they wake up, in a natural attempt to make sense of it all” (Scientific American). That’s what we see here. The audience is awake, so we are trying to make sense of random thoughts and imagery from Emma’s subconscious using the information given to us. However, since all of the information we’ve received post approximately the 20-minute mark of the Pilot has been from a dream, none of that information is reliable. So looking at the birth-scene again, let’s re-evaluate using the knowledge that this is a dream and every image is a piece of a puzzle that is Emma’s subconscious. A) The Clock. We know that the time is from the clock in Storybrooke, and the last time acknowledged aloud in reality. B) The fact that Emma was in prison at the time of her birth. We can assume that this is true, since it is information about her past and that is sparse, and perhaps Emma wouldn’t change her own past. BUT nothing can be certain in the context of the dream. Emma’s imprisonment during the birth may simply be metaphorical for her personal state, that she felt trapped by the burden of choosing to keep her son or giving him up (My personal opinion: Emma’s imprisonment was real, but metaphorical in the context of the larger story). C) The flashing lights. If you missed the clock, then the flickering lights as Henry was born were a telltale sign that this flashback is not exactly real, or that it’s being told within the context of a dream. Surface story allows us to infer that the lights began to flicker due to the magic of either Emma or Henry or both. Though, as it was made clear throughout the series, this is a land without magic, and none of our heroes have been successful using (or should I say summoning, since potions seem to work) magic outside the confines of Storybrooke or fairy tale land. Even further, with the establishment of the dreamworld, we know that Henry’s birth took place in reality, so flickering lights caused by magic are impossible and this was something that was added in by Emma’s subconscious.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-dreaming/

http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/dream.htm

The Portal Theory

So our characters travel through portals a multitude of times throughout the series, so this does not only apply to this episode. The first time Emma falls through a portal (minus the wardrobe) is after she saves Regina and is dragged down by the Wraith. The symbolism with the coma in mind is that Death, which was targeting Regina (a common theme because Regina does not belong in the dream world, and she is presumably trying to get Emma to wake up from the outside, therefore the dream world- and Death by default- attacks her because it wants Emma to stay) pulls Emma further away from waking up by bringing her to the Enchanted Forest, further into the Fairytale, or further into her own mind. If anyone is familiar with Inception, the closest comparison is the concept of “a dream within a dream”.

So when Emma travels to the Enchanted Forest or to Neverland or the Underworld, she is traveling to different levels of her own subconscious. The portals often are or resemble a tornado in whatever form they take - a nod to The Wizard of Oz. This of course makes sense because of the storyline: Girl gets hit in the head. Girl passes out. Girl finds herself in a magical world. Girl wakes up etc. etc. The portals in the ground are also similar to the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland. Now what’s the storyline in that one? Oh right. Girl falls asleep. Girl finds herself in a magical world. Girl wakes up. Luckily, we have Once Upon a Time in Wonderland to confirm that Alice is influential in the structuring of this show, but just to throw in some more proof, both Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz were the only original fairytales shown in the storybook after Emma was knocked out in the Pilot and before the Once fanfiction-fairytales began.

Emma is dreaming.

So now that we finally understand what the portals are and their significance, it’s time to dive into Neverland. Neverland is presumably a middle level of Emma’s mind, deeper than the Enchanted Forest but not as deep as the Underworld, which makes it the perfect place for introspection and a source for interesting conflict between life and death, dark and light, and reality and fantasy.

3x02 “Lost Girl”

Pan & Emma

The theme for this episode is: Stop denying who you really are. Pan gives Emma a map to find Henry, which she can only read when she accepts who she is.

The map presented itself when Emma accepted that she was an orphan, which of course worked because within the dream, this is the one thing she denies the most. She denies it so deeply that she created parents for herself.

With the coma in mind, everything that Emma has established to be truth must be reversed. By accepting magic, accepting that she is the savior, accepting that her parents are Snow White and Prince Charming, Emma was accepting the coma and denying reality. In order for Emma to wake up, she must rediscover herself and deny the world she has come to accept as truth. This is foreshadowing for that moment (whether she will actually wake or whether the writers will just imply that she has been in a coma is up for debate).

The villains in Once generally shatter Emma’s dream, and challenge everything she believes to be true. In this episode, the prominent villains are the Evil Queen and Peter Pan. We know that both villains are merely figments of Emma’s subconscious, so their motives are Emma’s.

The Evil Queen’s mortal enemy is Snow White. The reasons for this are: A) Emma and Henry are drawing from the original tale. B) The Evil Queen is a version of Regina from the real world. She is the villain in the fairy tale because she does not belong there, she is in constant conflict with the fairy tale world because she wants Emma to wake, which means the land would be destroyed.

Snow White is representative of the fairytale world. Unlike Regina, Snow and Charming do not exist in the real world. The only people we are positive exist in real life are the ones Emma saw when Henry brought her Storybrooke before her crash: Henry, Archie, Graham (who may actually be dead) and Regina. Snow and Charming were taken completely by Emma and Henry from the story and given to Emma to act as her parents. Once Emma wakes up, Snow and Charming no longer exist. So Regina is painted as the villain because her role is to take away the family that Emma has created for herself. C) The Evil Queen is Emma. To be more specific, the Evil Queen is the dark, inaccessible part of Emma’s personality or the id. The id is completely driven by wants, desires and impulses. It “knows no judgements of value: no good and no evil, no morality”. The Evil Queen is completely driven by the id; her sole goal is satisfaction by seeking revenge on Snow White. Why? Because she was betrayed and her happiness was stolen. If you follow the creation of Evil Queen, the associations with Emma become clear. Regina was the victim of Snow White who believed she was doing the right thing. Snow White is representative of Emma’s real mother, who Emma knows nothing about but she hopes left her for the same reason she gave Henry up because it was the right thing, but it still left her bitter and resentful. The fact that Cora was the one who crushed Daniel’s heart is symbolic that it was the mother who crushed Regina’s happiness. Emma feels that it was her mother’s fault that she was abandoned. Then, Cora was the one to marry off Regina at a young age, which is symbolic of Emma’s loss of innocence at a young age. The combination of betrayals from Cora and Snow, Regina’s mother and Emma’s pretend mother, who both represent Emma’s real mother, created the Evil Queen who is representative of Emma’s wrath, sorrow and resentment. The result was the creation of Storybrooke, which was Emma’s way to give herself the happy ending, and the parents, that her mother deprived her of.

Snow & Emma

Snow: Maybe who you think you are isn’t who you really are.

Emma: What do you mean?

Snow: Sometimes we think we know ourselves, but we need a push to show us the reality. That boy with the knife… you stopped fighting him. Why?

Emma: ’Cause he was… just a boy.

Snow: No. There was something else. I saw it in your eyes. Why did you stop? (Whispers) Why?

Emma: Because when I looked at his face, I saw me.

Snow: Go on.

Emma: That look in his eyes… (Inhales sharply) The despair. I had it back when I was in the foster system. Just a lost little girl who didn’t matter and didn’t think she ever would. A little girl who cried herself to sleep at night ‘cause… (Voice breaks) she wanted her parents so bad. And could never understand… why they gave her up.

Snow: And then you found us. It was too late.

Emma: It’s just, on this island… I… I don’t feel like… (Sniffles) a hero or a savior. I just feel like what I’ve always been. An orphan.

Snow: Emma.

Emma: What? (Whispers)

Snow: Look. (Gasps)

Emma: What happened?

Snow: You accepted who you are.

As is every conversation in the dream, this is one Emma is having with herself. This one in particular is quite sad as Snow/Emma subtly acknowledges that everything Emma thinks is true is not actually true.

That push is Pan forcing Emma to acknowledge that she is still an orphan because Snow is not actually there; she doesn’t exist. This exchange is heart-wrenching enough when Emma believes she still feels like an orphan because she found her parents too late, but it’s much worse to know that she never really found them.

3x04 “Nasty Habits”

By @swanqueenproof

Rumplestiltskin and Baelfire

As we all know, Pan, Rumple, Neal and Henry are all related by blood in the story, which means they are all interchangeable, and often Henry is reflected in the others. In this episode, young Baelfire represents Henry and his struggles with his father reflect Henry’s struggles with Regina.

Rumplestiltskin: I do trust you, Bae. It’s… It’s others that I can’t. You see, I have many enemies beyond that door. And once you leave, any one of them could hurt you.

Bae: You sure that’s the only reason? Maybe what you’re really worried about is if I leave, I might never come back.

Rumplestiltskin: No, no. I… I… I’m worried about your safety. This is the best place for you. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you.

This conversation closely reflects a conversation that Regina would have with Henry in season one. Since we know that Regina is not really the Evil Queen, we can assume that Regina was just being strict with Henry at that time, but Henry would be correct in the assumption that she was worried that if he left her, he wouldn’t come back. Regina lived with the knowledge that Henry’s birth mother existed somewhere in the world, and at any point in time, she could come try to take away her son. We do not know for sure what Regina’s reaction to Emma was after Henry brought her home, since we’ve been in Emma’s coma for the…years (wow) following, but based upon Emma’s interpretation of season one Regina, which were partially influenced by Henry, partially by her own auditory observations, we can assume that Regina became stricter with Henry and tried to keep him home (which I think any good mother would do after her ten-year-old ran away to Boston, because THAT WAS ACTUALLY REAL! Henry is a crazy kid). Rumple’s love and concern matches Regina’s and Baelfire’s frustration reflects Henry’s, and the fact that both children are struggling with the idea that their single parent is evil matches. Keep in mind that there is a reason that the themes within this show repeat themselves; there is a reason that everyone has lost their parents at some point, that everyone ends up being a thief, or struggles with living behind a mask, or “walls” or living in her/his truth: Because it’s just Emma playing her life over and over on repeat with a new cast every time. Do I think this is clever? Yes. Do I think the writers used this cleverness to make their lives easier when writing the stories for their 10 billion characters? Yes. Do I think Emma gave Regina a male version of herself for a love interest? Hello, honorable thief, has a son whose other parent dies and then comes back to life but not really at all (this makes more sense once you know that Neal has been dead for the entire series that should come later). Yes. Robin is actually Emma but like minus 1000.

To continue with the episode at hand instead of talking about how weird Emma is for pairing Robin with Regina instead of herself when it’s her dream *smh*…

#operationout

Alice in Wonderland

By @swanqueenproof

After Emma hits her head on the steering wheel, the pages of Henry’s book begin to turn and show three images. The first image that is shown is from The Wizard of Oz, the second is from Alice in Wonderland, and the third is of Geppetto and Pinocchio for the story that was created for the show. The change from the traditional stories to the stories that were created for Once Upon a Time signal the transition from reality to the dream world, and that Emma is falling into the story. The two stories chosen to be shown before the transition also hint that this world may not be as real as we believe, as the plotlines of the stories reflect the same situation in which Emma has found herself: The heroines fall into a slumber, and they soon find themselves in a magical land.

Unlike in Once Upon a Time, it is not made clear that Alice has fallen asleep before her adventure begins.

It is implied that the heat and her boredom lulled Alice to sleep, which caused her to dream of following the White Rabbit down its hole and thus traveling to Wonderland.

Alice’s sister becomes important for the Once audience as she, like Regina and Henry, is real and reading a book as Alice sleeps. She makes her appearance again at the end of the story when she wakes Alice from her dream as it turns into a nightmare.

As for Lana Parrilla’s comment about always viewing Emma and Regina as sisters, it is likely a clever nod referencing the parallel between herself and Alice’s sister, which we know has been evident since the Pilot when the story was hinted to be of importance. The parallel also foreshadows that Regina and Henry will be the ones to wake Emma from her coma.

The final pages of Alice in Wonderland show Alice’s sister reflecting about the young girl’s dream, and it is here when it is revealed where Alice derived her dream world, and it turned out to be her surrounding environment.

With the knowledge that the writers referenced Alice in Wonderland, we can safely assume that this is partially how Emma derives the material for her dreams. Like Alice, she takes the sounds of her environment, and the voices of those around her to create her story, but it gets distorted within the dream, and the result is the unexpected, confusing, logically unsound, and random storylines of Once Upon a Time.

Of course the rules of the dream do not only reflect the rules of Wonderland, that would be too easy. As the stories that are referenced throughout the series change, the rules of the Once universe change to match that story. So if the story being covered is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, then the rules of the universe match that story. If they are covering Peter Pan, then suddenly only the rules of Neverland apply.

#operationOUT #swan queen #sisters #dumb positivity

I’d say most of us have major trust issues when it comes to Jane Espenson, and mine just spiked when I read one of her Twitter conversations this morning. Here it is below:

Jane then shifted the focus back to Swan Queen, the inciting incident of this conversation, but what is intriguing is that she actually brought it up after presenting a question about whether or not straight-male writers should write LGBT stories, which AGAIN was not the reason this conversation started! If you combine the two tweets the question is essentially: “Should straight-male writers write LGBT stories? What if it was Swan Queen?” And this is where my trust issues arise. Was she playing devil’s advocate in pointing out that we complain that straight-male writers write LGBT stories, yet we want Swan Queen to be canon? Was she genuinely asking if this person felt SQ shouldn’t be canon because the writers are straight-males? Or does it even matter why she was asking the question because what she did was present a situation where Swan Queen could be written and she asked whether or not LGBT fans would have a problem with it because the writers are straight. Obviously I am writing a post about it in which my mind is spinning out of control, so there is something weird about this whole thing! Why did Jane Even bring the Once writers up in a conversation about Swan Queen? They weren’t a part of the original issue. Why ask if straight-male writers writing about Swan Queen would be fetishizing or pandering if that is not a real concern for her right now? Again, she was the one who took that turn in the conversation. Why say that you took the opinions of a member of Swen into consideration and you’ll use it in crafting your character’s personal stories? Could she have been talking about Red Warrior? Yes. BUT the conversation was about Swan Queen. It started out Swan Queen, it evolved, it turned into a question about writing LGBT stories, she brought it back to Swan Queen, and it ended with her saying she’d use the entire conversation for (presumably since this was a conversation about LGBT issues) the LGBT characters’ backstory. Tell me why she’d end on Red Warrior. I conclude that Jane Espenson just inadvertently admitted that OUAT is writing Swan Queen.

#swan queen #swen #ouat PR #dumb positivity #swanqueen

The Whys

I’ve decided to tackle the “Whys” of the Captain Swan ship, and all of the reasons Emma felt so compelled to keep Hook in her life, no matter what happened to her, or what her family said. There is a reason that this is true:

Of all the paths I foresaw for your daughter, I'm afraid that this was the darkest. - Merlin

And it goes beyond the story we were told on the surface.

I shall begin with this line from head-Rumple, who has given us the most reason to believe that there is more to this season than we think:

Rumple: Sadly, yes. I mean, she's still a Dark One. No matter how ineffectual she may be.

Rumple is implying that Emma still hasn’t fully embraced the darkness, which is interesting since transforming Hook converted her fully to the darkness. This shows that a large part of the darkness is state of mind. At this moment, Emma can still see Rumple which means in this moment she is rejecting the darkness. When Rumple disappears, rather than that being evidence of embracing the light as we assumed, this is a sign that Emma is embracing the darkness. The first time Rumple disappears is when Emma literally embraces Hook, this is a hint to us that embracing Hook is embracing the darkness, because Rumple only disappears when she embraces the darkness. Throughout 5x04 Hook makes it his mission to get rid of Rumple, which is successful not because Emma rejects the darkness as it seemed, but because the opposite is the case. Until 5x07, Rumple is not present within Emma, which she acknowledges to Merlin that this is probably a bad thing because it means that she is embracing the darkness. Rumple returns when Emma is trying to light the Promethean Flame because she can only light the flame if she lets go of the darkness, so in this moment she’s contemplating that. This is another reason why Emma’s explanation for not wanting to let go of the darkness (that she was afraid to take the next step with Hook) makes no sense because Emma was struggling with the flame before Henry showed her the house. In that moment Emma is having an internal conflict separate from Hook, and this why Rumple shows up. He wants to gain an advantage so she doesn’t light the flame.

Emma can say she wants to be free of the darkness all she wants but her words are meaningless because being ready to let go of the darkness is more than just wanting to be rid of the darkness and the power it provides, it is about letting go of one’s internal darkness. Emma is holding onto the darkness to protect herself, and it is not from her future because at this point, she doesn’t know about Hook’s plans. Emma is able to light the flame because something clicked for her in that moment. It’s already been established that it’s not because she confronted her fear of the future. Continuing with the premise of my last post, it seems that the flame was like a lightbulb going off in Emma’s head after her kiss with Hook, which confirmed that she was gay. Once the flame was lit, the scene that followed was Emma saving Hook, which Merlin confirmed was the darkest path she could have taken, so Rumple would not have needed to be present then. But Emma can see him again, why? Look at it like this. Everyone is filled partially with Lightness and partially with Darkness. Usually people are half Light and half Dark so when someone becomes the Dark One, the Darkness spills over that halfway mark and the Dark One takes them quickly, but they are still motivated by good intentions (see Nimue and Rumplestiltskin). Someone like Hook, who was mostly Dark in the first place would be a ruthless and unreasonable Dark One because he is almost completely Dark. This is why Merlin could overcome Arthur’s control, because he had a majority Light influence, so it could overpower that darkness. Emma is unique because she was completely lacking in Darkness after her parents removed it from her. For her it would take much longer to be influenced by the Darkness because becoming the Dark One balanced her out. Since there was not enough Darkness to spill across the halfway mark and overtake Emma, the Dark One has to persuade Emma to choose its side. So Emma can see him when she’s given a choice, and we know he leaves once she chooses the Darkness. In this scenario, Emma just got finished lighting the Promethean Flame and saving Hook. One instance she rejected the darkness, one she embraced it, so Rumple is back because she has a choice to continue down the path after lighting the flame or embracing the darkness once more.

Rumple arrives like “the devil on the shoulder” when one must make a decision and choose good or evil. In this case it is light or dark. Once a choice is made, Rumple disappears.

Since the Darkness has a lesser influence on Emma that makes her an “ineffectual” Dark One.

Emma: Don't listen to him. He's not real. But I am. I'm right here. Look at me.That future you told me not to be afraid of... We can have it. The house in Storybrooke. I'm not afraid anymore. I want it. With you. It's ours. You just have to want it, too.

Keep in mind that Emma needs the life that Killian will provide her; a perfect white-picket fence life like her parents had.

Hook: Aye, love, I do. More than anything. Emma: Killian... look. ( Gasps ) Hook: The demon's gone.

The trick here is that we think that Rumple disappears for them both because they chose the Light, but that is not the case. Killian chose the Light, but Emma chose Darkness, so yes Rumple disappeared but not for the same reasons. We know that saving Killian for their future was Emma’s final step into the Dark, so that pattern must continue. Every time Emma chooses Killian, she is choosing a life that is not true to herself. She is choosing her closet; she is choosing Darkness. The words Emma uses throughout this episode are extremely specific, and they verify this notion that she is using Killian to keep herself in the Darkness.

Emma: We can do this. We can get the darkness out of both of us for good. Hook: How? Emma: By doing what I just did with you. By going to those we love.

#swan queen #sq meta #ouat theories #ouat speculation #dumb positivity

Part I - The Thing You Love Most

Since we know soon some good old curse casting shall be done, @swanqueenproof and @anothershadeofgreen embarked on joint mission #OperationDelusional and we took a look at season one to gather clues. Logical first stop was the second episode, The Thing You Love Most. Let’s see if there’s any hints as to where this rare ingredient may be found this time. We’ll just highlight a few things that curiously have not been sufficiently flailed about. And quite frankly we don’t understand why. We’re not just flailing, we’re pretty much turned on.

Shady ( @anothershadeofgreen ): Where are we at? Emma decided to stay in Storybrooke and the library’s clock started working again, prompting the following comment from Archie to a frustrated Regina.

SQP ( @SwanQueenProof ): ...Sexually frustrated. Hehehe.

Archie: Hey, how ‘bout that? Guess those rusty old innards finally straightened themselves out, huh? Regina: Yes, how about that?

SQP: I’m sorry lemme laugh for a sec… HAHAHAHAHA! But seriously, Archie, did you just imply that Regina’s been impotent over the last 28 years? Rude. But also hilarious. I love the irony in this line too because nothing about Regina in this episode is straight. Teehee.

Shady: So what is it Regina does when rusty old innards finally start working? She makes her way to Miss Swan, of course.

Regina: Did you know the honeycrisp tree is the most vigorous and hardy of all apple trees? It can survive temperatures as low as forty below and keep growing. It can weather any storm. I have one that I’ve tended to since I was a little girl. And to this day, I have yet to taste anything more delicious than the fruit it offers. (She extends an apple to Emma)

Emma: (Taking the apple) Thanks.

Regina: I’m sure you’ll enjoy them on your drive home. Emma: Actually, I’m gonna stay for a while. Regina: I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. Henry has enough issues, he doesn’t need you confusing him. Emma: All due respect, Madam Mayor, the fact that you have now threatened me twice in the last twelve hours makes me wanna stay more. Regina: Since when were apples a threat? Emma: I can read between the lines. Sorry, I just wanna make sure Henry’s okay. Regina: He’s fine, dear. Any problems he has are being taken care of. Emma: What does that mean? Regina: It means I have him in therapy. It’s all under control. Take my advice, Miss Swan, only one of us knows what’s best for Henry. Emma: Yeah, I’m starting to think you’re right about that. Regina: It’s time for you to go. Emma: Or what? Regina: (Takes a step toward Emma) Don’t underestimate me, Miss Swan. You have no idea what I’m capable of.

Shady: The thing here is, if Emma can read between the lines and recognize the threat, it’s because she understands that Regina is using a metaphor. Regina just compared herself to a strong tree to let Emma know she shouldn’t mess with her. So if Emma understood that part of the message, then she can’t have missed the part where Regina offers her a delicious fruit from her tree. You know, that tree she just compared herself to. It’s not subtle. Nor is the fact that Emma isn’t wearing any pants in that scene. Coincidence, of course.

SQP: We all know that trees are like the most sexual literary symbols in the world, right? The trunk is masculine representing the phallus and the fruit is feminine representing the womb. So basically Regina is bragging about her sexual prowess. “Vigorous and hardy”? Okay, so your tree is energetic, forceful, and capable enduring fatigue?

Hint: She’s actually talking about her dick. Damn, bae you so little but you be really giving that pipe. Don’t believe me? Okay, next sentence. “It can survive temperatures as low as forty below and keep growing.” Since tree = dick (That’s just literature. Look it up)

If a man said these lines, we’d all be like OH SHIT HE’S A GROWER! Fuck, Regina. Could you have found a more direct way to put it... Other than,“My stroke game be on point”? Though that is essentially what she said... Keep in mind two dudes wrote this, and probably couldn’t think up better sex metaphors that applied more to women. But, then again, who says the girl DOESN’T have a dick? I mean, you don’t know what she keeps in her drawers, shoot.

Next sentence! “It can weather any storm.” = I can handle anything you bring, which is going to be a lot since imma make your pussy rain. Storm/rain is a metaphor for cum. Go ask your English teacher. I didn’t write this shit!

Last one for me, “And to this day, I have yet to taste anything more delicious than the fruit it offers.” I mean… I’m usually proud when I like how I taste, but I don’t usually knock on women’s doors and tell them about it, but then again, I’m not Regina Mills. (Fyi. This is the only time the dick metaphor is used in the episode. From here on out the tree is just representative of Regina and her sexuality is more about the fruit. It seems that they gave Regina these lines to show us that heteronormativity has groomed the audience from thinking that these very obvious sexual metaphors are irrelevant because it’s a woman voicing them. Well played A&E.)

Shady: After Emma rather enthusiastically accepts the fruit offered to her by someone she was recently told is in fact the Evil Queen and who has just threatened her - we get it Emma, we do - she ends up at Granny’s. She’s about to take a bite when she’s interrupted because someone got her hot cocoa. She thinks it’s Graham hitting on her, but it turns out to be Henry. Henry who eventually ends up throwing away the fruit right before Emma is finally about to dig in. Oh Henry.

SQP: Cockblocking bastard… Anyway, I’d like to have my good ol’ 50s family explain this one!

Little Johnny: Pa, are you telling me that Emma didn’t eat Regina’s fruit (*cough* pussy *cough*) because her family prevented her? Now where have I heard that before? *Taps chin pensively* Gee Pa, was it when she said she didn’t want to let go of the darkness so she could continue protecting her family?

Pa: Good job, Johnny! See Emma is what we call a homosexual. She wants to eat Regina’s fruit, but she’s in what we call a “closet”, which is symbolized by the darkness. She wants to hold on to her dark closet because she thinks being a homosexual will make her family fall apart. This interaction with Henry reinforces the belief within Emma that her family doesn’t want her to eat Regina’s fruit.

Little Johnny: Wow, it sure does look like they’ve been planning this lesbian shit for a while now.

Pa: It certainly looks that way, Johnny.

Little Johnny: Ha ha ha!

Pa: Ha ha ha!

End scene.

#swan queen #dumb positivity #sq meta #ouat meta #ouat theories #swen #operation delusional #ouat speculation #swanqueen

Let’s take a closer look at the Well Scene...

Regina: Need a light?

So significant. Regina is actually the reason Emma's able to light the spark. She’s also offering light to Emma’s darkness. And she's the light of Emma's life.

Emma: Regina

Let's play a game called let's count the number of times Emma says "Regina" in this conversation. One.

Regina: I thought you could use a friend.

The first of many reference to the most significant themes for Swan Queen from throughout the series. This is from “Breaking Glass”; their relationship has finally evolved into a friendship. This is big for Regina, since she has never been one to have friends, so we already know that Emma is really important to her.

Emma: He's playing with me. He said I can't light it because I'm not ready to let go of the darkness.

The darkness itself is complex. There are many characteristics to it beyond power, and evil. Regina and Emma have often been associated with Yin and Yang, which are associated with dark and light. So if dark magic is Yin, then it shares the same characteristics, one of which is internalization, which plays a large role in what is happening to Emma now (her “walls”).

Regina: Are you?

Emma: Regina.

Two. Emma believes she has done everything to let go of the darkness; she resisted the power, she turned her back on evil, what more is there? The internalization of her feelings.

Hey. No one knows the lure of the darkness better than I do.

Yes Regina is talking about dark magic BUT she’s going beyond the power and is speaking on the nature of darkness. It allows one to suppress their feelings; avoid the real issue. For Regina the darkness lead her to suppress her feelings about her mother, about killing her father, about losing Daniel, about having to marry Leopold, and targeting all of her emotional energy on destroying Snow White.

You can lie to your parents, you can lie to yourself.

This is where the GA should have been like "What the fuck are you talking about, lady? What does this have anything to do with anything?" And Swen should have been like "Oh shit!" Because what is she lying to her parents about? Not moving in with Hook? Commitment issues? I'm pretty sure they already know about her commitment issues. What's she lying about to herself? Again. She knows she has commitment issues. She's admitted this in the past. She's not lying about that! The conversation with Hook explains none of this because she doesn't say anything we all don't already know. Regina's talking about Emma's repressed feelings.

But you can't lie to me.

Throwback to "Witch Hunt"! Regina always knows when Emma is lying. Have you noticed how their lines have switched? Yeah I love it too.

Emma: I don't know.

Internalization.

Regina: Feels good, doesn't it? Indulging every impulse, wielding great power, doing whatever you want.

Look a the sorrow on Lana Parrilla’s face when she says “doing whatever you want”, listen to her voice crack at the end of the sentence, observe carefully and you’ll see that there’s a tear building in Regina’s eye. Notice Emma cannot look at her this entire time. They are longing for each other. What they want is to be together. And they can’t. Also, don’t picture Regina saying this to Emma while lying on top of her. Nope. This line wouldn’t work just as well in that situation at all.

But the point is that Regina knows that the darkness has clarified Emma’s feelings for her but Emma is internalizing those feelings, which is keeping her in the darkness. If she externalized them then she’d be overcoming the darkness because externalization is a characteristic of yang/light. Emma is internalizing her homosexuality in general, which she thinks is the right thing to do because she associates homosexuality with darkness, and this could explain why she doesn’t know why the darkness still clings to her. She believes that by rejecting her homosexuality she is rejecting that part of the darkness, when the reality is that internalizing and repressing that part of herself is what keeps her in the darkness.

Regina does not know for sure what Emma is internalizing. I assume Regina thinks it’s Emma’s feelings for her because this is how she feels, which is a factor but not the whole picture. I think Regina believes it is more about the desire and the compulsion to act on that desire that keeps Emma in the darkness, rather than homosexuality itself. We know from Dragon Queen that Regina is more sexually fluid and most likely does not associate homosexuality with darkness. So perhaps Regina believes that Emma is indulging the idea of them together, as she is, which is technically wrong because they are both in relationships, and adultery is wrong. If Regina’s concern is more about desire or lust or adultery rather than homosexuality as Emma thinks, then her response to the next line makes a lot more sense...

Emma: Yes. Yes, it does. Is that wrong?

It feels good to indulge your impulses and do whatever you want. Emma interprets that as indulging her impulse to have feelings for Regina, and to be gay.

Regina: (Sighs) Of course it is. But it's also human.

Regina is answering, keeping in mind her own desires, not Emma’s homosexuality. The word “it” makes it ambiguous as to what they are talking about, but this line seems to confirm that it’s about two different factors of the same issue. Regina is talking about adulterous nature of acting on her feelings. Emma is thinking about the gay aspect of her feelings. Both are human, but Regina doesn’t know what Emma’s thinking or that she’s thinking about her homosexuality, and if she did, she probably wouldn’t say it’s wrong (or maybe she might who knows). Believing that Regina would feel that homosexuality is wrong is probably difficult for Emma, and it may be part of the reason why she’s so resistent to say it later on in the conversation.

Look, I know you, Emma. It took a long time, but I really know you.

How many times do Emma and Regina have to say “I know you” until we equate that with “I like u a lot. will u pls b my gf? Circle y or n.” The reason this line keeps coming back is because of this line Emma said in 3x14 “The Tower” (The facing your fears episode. Ah how the themes make their way back around): “As usual, he wasn't who he said he was, and I got my heart broken.” The same thing is happening with Hook. After he becomes the Dark One, she discovers that he is not the person that she thought he was.She thought he’d be able to resist the darkness. He can’t. She didn’t know him. She never truly knows any of the people she dates. But the writers make an effort to make sure that we know that both of them know that they truly know each other. It’s obnoxious at this point.

And you're not as weak as I once was,

Regina is complimenting Emma’s strength (mixed with self-deprecation, but this is Regina we’re talking about. Self-esteem isn’t one of her strong suits). It’s clear that Regina has thought about how strong Emma is in the past, and now she is voicing her admiration. This is not the first time Regina has done this but it has not been often that Regina has complimented Emma without lacing it with sarcasm. And we can see from her facial expressions, when Emma does magic throughout the show, that Regina finds Emma’s strength highly attractive.

so if you're clinging to the darkness, you have good reason, and it's beyond temptation, so what is it?

This is implication that what keeps one in the darkness is not just the draw of the power. Another part of darkness is internalization. The last step for Emma is releasing her repressed feelings.

Emma: I don't know.

There it is again. She’s internalizing.

Regina: There's a difference between not knowing something and not wanting to admit it. Those walls you put up, Emma, it's time they come down.

Emma: What are you doing?

Regina: Helping you break the walls.

You. This is not about controlling Emma, this is pushing her to do what she needs to do to help herself. She wants Emma to break down her own walls. As opposed to “I liked your walls. I liked to be the one to break them down.” This is about Emma.

As your friend, I command you, Dark One, tell me, why are you so afraid to give up the darkness?

Holding on to the darkness is equivalent to holding up her walls, or maintaining this state of internalization, so why is she holding on to that? Also she repeats “friend”, which I feel is for both of them. She wants to let Emma know that she’s doing this because she cares, but also for herself as a reminder that that’s all they are: friends. Nothing more, so she can maintain her composure.

Emma: Once I let it go, I won't be able to protect my family.

Let it go! Let it go!

Remember that whole Frozen arc about Emma letting go of her fear of her magic? Remember how that was a big gay metaphor? Well they brought it back. I don’t joke when I say that they are bringing back every significant concept to Swan Queen in this conversation. Emma needs to “Let it go”, but she’s afraid that once she lets go of her fear of being gay that she won’t be able to protect her family. Because she had magic before. She isn’t like Rumple who needed the magic to protect Baelfire. This is not about protecting her family from outside forces, this is about protecting her family from herself. She’s convinced that being gay will destroy her family. If we use the Frozen storyline as foreshadowing for the gay storyline, then it becomes clear; like with her magic Emma thinks that being gay will hurt everyone she loves. We’ve already started to see some of the parallels. Henry wants to believe in Emma in both the Frozen arc and in 5x05, Emma makes a mistake in trying to protect him and hurts him, but he still believes in her after the fact. I will guess that Snow and Charming will struggle with Emma coming out, as they did with her magic, but eventually they will come to embrace it as a part of who she is. In the Frozen arc, Regina was the only adult, other than Elsa, who truly advocated for Emma to hold on to her magic (Hook said he did but he was kind of busy being Rumple’s puppet). Elsa helps Emma come to terms with her magic, but I think Elsa was meant to symbolize Regina (as another sorceress who struggled because people misunderstood her), because if they had Regina in Elsa’s place, it would have been too gay too quickly. This time around it was Regina who didn’t stop believing in Emma from the beginning as the Dark One, and it was Regina who made Emma confront who she truly was in this scene. Once you look at it this way, it is clear that Emma is telling the truth.

Another bonus to this response is that it has nothing to do with what she told Hook. How does letting go of the darkness and starting a future with your boyfriend put your family at risk? Why would you need to protect them from that? It’s too weird.

Regina: That's another wall, Emma. Now... the truth.

Regina got the truth, she just didn’t interpret the truth, or the truth was too vague. She wants to hear Emma voice exactly what she thinks she’s thinking: That Emma has feelings for her because she needs to know that she is not the only one. This is what makes this scene selfish on Regina’s part because she already knows (or think she knows) what is holding Emma back, but she needs to hear it so she knows for sure that there’s a chance for them.

Emma: It is. Regina, please.

Three. Emma can’t lie when the dagger is used on her; she isn’t Merlin, which means this isn’t a lie and the last answer was not a lie. Regina just doesn’t understand what Emma is talking about.

Regina: No, it's not. You just have to be brave enough to knock down all those walls you're hiding behind. The dagger can make you look, but you... you have to choose to see. Now come on. Come on, Emma. See. Tell me what you're really afraid of!

You know how we have that whole Brave storyline, but no one can figure out why it’s relevant? Well ta-da!:

“Our fate lives within us. You only have to be brave enough to see it.” - Princess Merida Brave

This is about Emma taking back her life. Regina is saying that she does not have to allow fear to drive her fate, that she can take control of her own fate by seeing her fears and not allowing them to limit her. Regina thinks the last wall Emma needs to break is admitting her feelings, but for Emma it’s admitting she’s gay in general (Loving Regina falls under the umbrella, since it was the most likely reason she figured it out). Emma is conflicted because she knows her fear is losing her family because she’s gay, yet because she associates homosexuality with darkness she thinks that admitting it will drive her further into the darkness. For Emma it’s a Catch 22, even though it isn’t.

Also, “Come on”. Perhaps the writers included this because the phrase sounds so similar to “Come out” and they want us to naturally make that association.

Charming: Regina, what are you doing?

This interruption is actually important because it is the three people that would keep Emma from coming out, and they are the ones who prevent her walls from coming down in this moment. Snowing represent the family Emma fears will reject her and Hook represents the future that will keep her from being gay (obviously that isn’t how it works, but this is Emma’s irrational mind).

Regina: I'm getting answers.

Hook: By controlling her? That's enough. ( Scoffs ) Are you alright?

Here again. Con. Hook is depicted as the one who saves Emma, when in fact Regina has already made Emma see what she needed to see in order to light the spark. Swen was sad because the kiss seemed to light the spark after Emma said that her fear was that by letting go of the darkness, she would have to start her future with Hook. We already determined that this is not true because this would not put her family at risk and Emma is clinging to the darkness to protect her family. While the kiss did light the spark, it was not because of the reason she gave, it was because it confirmed what she was thinking in that moment, what Regina made her confront: That she is gay.

What she realized while kissing Hook was that she could perfectly well be gay without coming out and that she could continue to pretend. That being it didn't mean she had to ‘hurt’ her family. She just had to admit it to herself and continue to play the part. So that's why a promise of a future lit the flame. She'd admitted the gayness to herself, but she realized nothing had to change if she didn’t want it to and her family could remain protected from knowing who she really is.

Snow: You really think you're helping her by being cruel?

I wasn't cruel. I've been cruel.

We’re meant to think about only her past cruelty, but this is about her cruelty toward Emma. Regina has shown that she has feelings for Emma in this scene without actually saying so, and she assumes that Emma has feelings for her too. The cruelty she is referring to has to do with Regina not voicing her feelings for Emma sooner, and forcing Emma to watch her be with someone else.

And trust me, you'd know it. I was getting to the truth. It's not my fault that it's painful.

Regina says this as if she is feeling this same pain.

I wasn’t going to do this, but I also decided to tackle the part of the script that made Swen lose all the faith they gained in the Well Scene, and explain how it did not actually hurt us. If this scene did anything, it further solidified our argument.

Emma: I don't care what happens to me.

David: Emma, wait.

Mary Margret: Please. Listen, you can't.

Regina: Emma, your parents are right.

Emma: If you could've saved Daniel or Robin... Look how far you were willing to go, how far you pushed me to save him! ( Voice breaking ) I'm not gonna lose Killian. I won't let anyone stop me.

Here again we see the people who want to help Emma and keep her in the light and the person who hinders Emma. I’m not blaming Hook at all for this one, but it is the promise of a safe, heterosexual future with Hook that forces Emma to take that final step into the dark. Even in this moment, Emma turns all the attention on Regina. If Regina could, she would save Daniel and Robin and always choose them, never Emma. Emma can’t be left alone to watch Regina have her happy ending with someone else. Basically this line says: “You have your happy ending, and it’s not with me...so I have to make one for me”.

Hook: I'm not as strong as you are... or Merlin. I'm weak. The things I've done... I've done. I've succumbed to darkness before in my life. And it took centuries to push it away. I don't know if I can do it again.

Emma: But our future...

Hook: I'll just be happy knowing that... that you have one.

Emma: That's not enough for me!

In the end, I have to applaud Hook. He made the right decision, but Emma was convinced that she had to have the future he promised them, not because she loved him, if she loved him, she would have let him go, but because she loved the idea. It wasn’t enough for her to know that he died loving her, and knowing that she would have a future. She needed their future, the life he could give her, a “normal” heterosexual life. His love was not enough, and she did not love him enough to give him happiness....

Let me reiterate.

He said, “I'll just be happy knowing that... that you have one.” She destroyed that wish. SHE DESTROYED HIS HAPPINESS. As opposed to…

“You’ve worked too hard to have your happiness destroyed.”

Are we still sure they screwed us over?

Disclaimer: "Sup. I don't have a tumblr, and I don't put these up myself, but I do write them and would love to talk theory with y'all! So if you want to do that, go to my Twitter page @SwanQueenProof and hit me up. Aight bet."

#ouat speculation #swan queen #swen #dumb positivity #sq meta #swanqueen

Why I’m Team Nimue

I have found that the only way I can enjoy this season is to root for the bad guys (Except for Arthur, that dude is just fucked up, and now he’s enslaved Merlin. No. Slavery is wayyyy too far. That’s fucked up). Other than that, I’m on team Emma, team Zelena and team Nimue. Why? Because none of them are actually bad guys they’re just misunderstood by the “heroes”. Zelena is just insane and looking for love, Emma is definitely doing some low-key heroic shit in Dark One form, and Nimue… actually let’s talk about her.

Nimue is highly underrated and demonized in 5x07, and Merlin is painted as the righteous hero. Now this is just not fair because Nimue’s had admirable traits and Merlin made a lot of mistakes. Not enough blame is placed on Merlin, and he’s the source of all the problems.

If Merlin did not prevent Nimue from drinking from the grail in the first place, she may not have killed Vortigan. Merlin changed the Gods' will by transforming the Grail into a Sword for his own selfish desire, and created a weapon that could be used against him. He did not save Nimue when he had the chance because he believed nothing was worth going dark...Even his true love? (I'm sorry but Emma was far more heroic by accepting the darkness to save Regina). Merlin had three choices when Nimue was under threat from Vortigan: 1) Kill him and accept the Darkness 2) Hand over the sword and accept death, but allow Nimue to live 3) Do nothing, keep the power, live and watch the woman he loved die. He chose the third option. Merlin said was willing to give up his power and die to live a whole life with the woman he loved, but he was unwilling to make a greater sacrifice when it counted. He was selfish. Fortunately, Nimue drank from the Grail, so she didn’t die because of Merlin’s inaction, and she took charge where did not. Nimue saved Merlin's life from Vortigan after the fool dropped the sword and allowed the evil dude to grab it. Then Nimue killed him. That scene was painted like she was the one acting selfishly, but truly had she let him live, he would have definitely taken the sword again and still killed Merlin. Nimue did what was necessary...for the one she loved (just like Emma). After the sword was created, Merlin’s life was at risk. Nimue did everything from that point on to protect Merlin. By splitting the sword, she saved Merlin’s life from others like Vortigan who were bound to threaten him in the future. She did not kill him when she could have, instead, she put him in a tree, which I'm pretty sure protected him from hundreds of Dark Ones who would have tried to kill him until one came along to fix the mess he created. So really, the girl is highly misunderstood.

Nimue always had the intention of using her darkness to protect people from the beginning. Emma and Merlin have determined that this is possible:

Emma: Is it possible for someone to have the darkness but use it for good, use it to protect people?

Merlin: ...Someday perhaps.

But Merlin refused to see that, because he didn’t want to accept Nimue’s darkness, period. He didn’t see the good motives behind the bad deed. He was so quick to deny her as the woman he loved, even though I guarantee that she hadn't changed much in those 30 seconds. Yes, she had just killed someone (for him), but had Merlin stood by her side and worked with her to figure out how to control the darkness and use it for good, then Nimue probably would not have gone further down that path, or at least come back from it if she had. If you watch Nimue’s face after she kills Vortigan, there is pain and remorse there. She was not completely gone. As we know, “Evil isn’t born, it’s made,” just because Nimue’s skin was green doesn’t mean her soul is automatically evil. I am not convinced that killing Vortigan is what turned Nimue evil (Why can Snow, and Emma kill someone, yet they’re not considered evil? Nope I don’t buy it). Despite, the evil thing she did, it was for a good reason. She could have come back from that (“There is nothing you can’t come back from”). What changed Nimue were the events that followed. Merlin abandoned her in her time of need. She turned dark after saving his life and he left her. She lost love; a motivation to figure out how to use her powers for good. He left her alone with her darkness, and pain and regret, and as we know, "Not having someone is the worst curse imaginable". Without any hope to hold on to, Nimue succumbed fully, and became the evil version of herself that we see in Emma’s head.

Emma's story is a re-write of history. Obviously Merlin's tactic of denouncing the darkness at all costs did not work, and by doing so he manifested his greatest fear. He didn't even give Nimue the chance to try to use her power for good, he said that if she turned dark,

"You will commit atrocities that you can't even imagine."

Now we know that isn't necessarily true, since he says to Emma later that the darkness can be used for good, Nimue didn’t have to commit atrocities (And Merlin didn’t know anything for sure with her anyway, because he couldn’t see her future, which was far too Twilight for me, but whatever). He continues to try to keep her magic from turning dark, which I suppose is fine but...

"I need you to be the woman that I know. I cannot bear to watch you become this."

This is where Merlin's selfishness comes back into play. Is she not already this person with these dark feelings trapped inside of her? He doesn't make this about her and her choice to stay in the light, he makes it about him and his inability to love someone consumed by darkness. Selfish. And it sounds familiar...

"Nimue, if you do this, then we've lost everything."

I don't think Nimue was ever not going to crush the heart (because she was able to drink from the Grail, which means she was also chosen. I think there was always supposed to be a Dark One, no matter what, to counteract Merlin's light magic. Merlin should have been the one to take on the darkness because a hero would have sacrificed himself for the one he loved but anyhoo… The writers wanted to have a reference to Adam and Eve/Original Sin, which is annoyingly patriarchal but again, whatever). Anyway Nimue was always going to be the Dark One, and when she was holding the heart, she knew this. Then, on top of that, Merlin told her she was going to lose their relationship. So of course she was like, "So if I don't crush his heart, this dude is going to kill you, but if I do you're leaving me anyway? Well, fuck you, buddy, but here I'll save your life anyway," and crushed the heart like she was going to do the whole time. Because really, "I'm giving up on you, if you don't do what I want," is a shitty thing to say to someone who is about to make a really difficult decision.

"The creature over there, is the first Dark One, not the woman I loved."

I hate this line. I really hope I'm not supposed to accept this line. I really hope we're meant to find fault in this line because actually, Merlin, she is exactly the woman you loved. She is the woman who always had ambition to use power to protect people, kind of like you, no? She just went about it in a different way, a dark way, yes, but we've seen in this show that darkness is often a necessity in a greater battle for good. For example, when Regina used a Lost Boy's heart to contact Henry or when Snow and Charming enacted the dark curse, or when Rumple saved all the children from dying in the Ogres War. She wanted to do the same, and she did, but what always happened to our heroes when they lost love? They slipped further into darkness. Regina was her darkest after she lost Daniel, her mother and her father. In Storybrooke, Cora easily brought Regina back to darkness after Henry and Emma stopped believing in her (The Cricket Game). Snow killed Cora out of fear that she’d lose her family, and Rumple’s darkest days came after he lost Baelfire. By abandoning Nimue, Merlin made her journey that much harder, and it became that much easier for the darkness to consume her.

Emma's story will be about traveling the road not taken. Merlin denounced the darkness completely, and even planned to destroy it, which failed, and pushed Nimue further into the darkness. Now he plans to reunite Excalibur to wipe out the darkness forever...which will also fail. So what now? What is the road not taken? Well, it was Nimue’s original plan. Emma will embrace the Darkness...but use it for good. But she’ll need what Nimue didn’t have: People who will embrace and love her, darkness or no darkness.

That doesn’t include the person who literally sounds just like Merlin when he speaks to the Dark One.

Hook: "This isn't you"

Hook: "That you isn't here!"

Emma is probably like, "Nope that tactic was tried annnnd failed. I don't wanna listen to people who have no hope for me as the Dark One."

The people who see that the same Emma they know is still with them, are the people who will help her on her journey to change the objective of the Dark One from a path of evil to a path of good. Those people sound like this...

Regina: "The good you is still in there."

Regina: "There's nothing you can't come back from if you just tell us."

Henry: "But Emma is still in there somewhere."

David: “The darkness is in my daughter, so every choice I make is for the good of my family.”

Theory time! I’m hoping Excalibur will either be destroyed or turned back into a cup because obviously it has only caused problems for everyone. Once Excalibur is gone, the cycle of the Dark Ones will end with Emma. After that, there are two options for the show to take: 1) Emma will remain the Dark One, untethered from the dagger forever. She will always have the dark magic inside of her, but she’s the one who will be able to use it for good. This seems likely because she already had a space within her for darkness to go, and she’s the savior, so it’d make sense that she would learn to keep the darkness at bay, but still have it to protect everyone. Or 2) The role of the Dark One will return to Nimue who will be untethered from the dagger forever. I like this option because then Nimue will have to journey back from evil and work to rediscover why she wanted the power in the first place, and Merlin will have to realize his fault and learn that the woman he loves is still there even as the Dark One. Together, Nimue and Merlin could be like the protectors of the realms, one working with the light magic, the other working with the dark, which I think was the intention of the gods from the beginning.

My other theory is Swan Queen all the way: Option 1 happens, so Emma keeps the dark magic, and Merlin decides that his time as the sorcerer has passed because he either wants to die and be with Nimue. Or Nimue is actually still alive, but no longer the Dark One, and Merlin wants to finally live his full life with her (I say that they’ll live because if they kill these two black characters I will flip my shit). So the only way Merlin could do this, would be by passing the power on to another. I would think that the Grail would be needed for this, since that’s how Merlin and Nimue got their powers in the first place, which is why the sword should be turned back into a cup. The next Merlin would be Regina. Why? Because she’s Emma’s equal and opposite. Emma went from blank slate, to wielding light magic, and then was given the darkest magic. Regina would go from blank slate, to wielding dark magic, and then would be given the lightest magic. They would each have an equal balance of both light and dark magic. I like this theory because a) Swan Queen but also b) Nimue and Merlin were equals, neither had magic before they got it. Emma and Regina would be the same, in that, they both had magic before. It’d make more sense to have endgame be Emma and Regina with the power, rather than Emma and someone else who didn’t have magic, because Emma would always be the stronger sorcerer. It makes sense why it shouldn’t be Merlin and Emma as the Dark One in the end because Emma IS more powerful than him. The removal of the Dark One completely, doesn’t make sense either because then there’d be no one to balance out Merlin. Merlin would know that if he was to pass on his power, it would need them to be someone with magic to balance out Emma. That’s why Regina would be his choice. Though I’d be really happy to see Merlin and Nimue as Light One and Dark One in the end, Swan Queen solves a problem that Nimue and Merlin had: Merlin was too strongly tied to the light that it created problems, and Nimue too easily slipped into the darkness and that also created problems. If it was Emma and Regina, rather than Nimue and Merlin in possession of the power, Emma’s light magic could balance the Dark One’s power, and Regina’s dark magic could balance Merlin’s “Light One” power, neither could be swayed too greatly by either force, and the power of each could be controlled. Yin and Yang. (I was inspired by @anothershadeofgreen).

Of course this theory could all blow up on Sunday if the Two Hour Lesbian Adventure Special airs, and the lgbt couple is Red Warrior and not Swan Queen, but that does not stop me from dreaming for another week! Because come on, Swan Queen is the only thing about this show that makes sense. It is the only thing about this show that ties together all the madness. Seriously, if it comes to that moment, and we learn that they are giving us a token gay couple like Red Warrior, I say burn the shit down (metaphorically of course). Baiting us this hard for Swan Queen and then giving us a couple that will only be around for a few episodes here and there IF even that, is unacceptable and insulting. If it gets to that point, use your voice, make your outrage known. Fill up Adam’s mentions of Twitter, boycott the show, write blog posts about the damage of queer baiting. Do what you feel you gotta do to make it known that marginalizing an already marginalized group is not okay, and that queer baiting to this level is unnecessary. BUT they still have six days. We still have six days to hope. In my eyes, the only “seeds” that have been planted for a queer couple so far this season were for Swan Queen… because it’s endgame.

#ouat speculation #swan queen #swen #dumb positivity #nimlin #Nimue #ouatmerlin

Recognize the Con...

…because Adam and Eddie have been conning us for a while now, and season 5 is seriously starting to show it.

A couple of lovely gentlemen, by the names of Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, gave me a great idea when they said they started planning the Dark Swan arc around the end of season 3. Assuming that Swan Queen is the lgbt couple that we’re preparing to see in 5B, wouldn’t they have started planning how to make Swan Queen canon around the same time? I’m talking beyond the stolen glances, sexual tension and questionable subtext that we got in seasons 1 and 2. I’m talking about their plan to get Emma and Regina together for real. I’m talking the road to endgame. (After watching 5x04 I don’t feel afraid to say that it’s happening).

I don’t know about anyone else, but I see the entire series as two parts: Pre-3B and Post-3B. If feel that there was a tone shift after 3x11, and the show has never truly been the same since. I have no evidence to this, but it almost feels like they ended 3A just in case the show had to end after 3B, or at least by season 4. It seems to me that 3B could have steered the show in two different routes: The show’s conclusion, or a new arc. Obviously, we are in a new arc, so the conclusion was put off for now. But this makes season 3 very important, especially for Swan Queen.

3A gave us Neverland. If the writers seriously started putting Swan Queen into consideration, this is where they did it. Again, I know subtext was heavy before this, but I’m talking about plans for endgame. Everything else before that were hints, not setup to canon. Pre-Neverland, I don’t think they had a plan on how to get Emma and Regina together. By the time they were done with 3A, I’m guessing that they had 2 options planned for the leading ladies. I simply say this because 3A gave us so many canon Swan Queen moments.

3A Breakdown

Regina was juxtaposed against Neal and Hook as a love interest for Emma. Around the end of season 2 we were clued in that Regina may have been jealous of Neal, and in Neverland she had her famous “boyfriend” line when talking about Hook. Jealousy.

3x07- When Emma needs to trap Pan’s shadow in the coconut, both Hook and Neal fight over the lighter. We know that they’re actually fighting over Emma’s affections, and when Emma lights the candle herself, Neal asks, “How did you do that?” and Emma says, “Regina.” Emma included Regina in the fight to light the candle, or the fight to win her affections, and in the end she chose her, or the method Regina gave her. It is significant that Emma was able to light the candle herself because it shows that Emma wants to be self-sufficient. She doesn’t need other people doing things for her. Hook and Neal were both trying to show off their chivalry and do something for Emma, when she could have done it herself all along. Regina empowered Emma to get it done herself, and Emma appreciated that, which is why she gave Regina credit. Theme to follow: Regina empowers Emma. Hook diminishes her power.

3x09- The focus was the Swan-Mills family. The flashback story was about Henry’s adoption, and Neverland was focused on Emma and Regina working together to bring Henry back.This episode was about setting them up as a unit, so when we see the three of them together, we see a family. If 3B was setting up for conclusion rather than a new arc, then I imagine this would have been expanded upon, but it was left alone. If they weren’t planning on tying this loose end together later, then what was the purpose behind setting it up? Why make Emma and Regina work together, why not make the entire episode about Regina’s journey to bring back Henry, and have Emma figure something out with Hook? Because they needed to work together to reunite their family. This episode was foreshadowing what is to come, that Emma, Regina and Henry belong together.

3x11- The romantic goodbye. And yes, we’re meant to see Emma's goodbye to Regina as romantic. This is partially because it was juxtaposed against Neal's and Hook's goodbyes, who we were supposed to see as Emma’s romantic interests. Once again Regina is put in the same category as the boys (not a coincidence). The order in which they said goodbye matters as well: Neal, Hook, Regina. I have a theory that they are showing us Emma's relationships in the order in which they will happen. I can't help but also feel like they are representative of Emma's past, present and future.

We know that Neal is a symbol for Emma’s past and her past happiness, which is why he had to die. Emma is a dynamic character, so she can’t go back, and throughout season 3 we are seeing Emma letting go of Neal. This is symbolic of her letting go of her old self, and her old life. Neal is how we are introduced to the concept of “Tallahassee” (though, Regina is the first to bring it up, which hints that she’s going play a big part in it). One of the last things Neal says to Emma is to go find Tallahassee, which is indicative of finding her future and future happiness. That is a hint to the audience that this is part of Emma’s journey from here on out, and we should be watching for it. Emma’s interests in making dreamcatchers as the Dark One is a big nod to that. As the Dark One, I assume Emma’s desires become obsessive (just as Rumple’s desire to find Neal was obsessive), so we can wager that she’s obsessed with finding Tallahassee, which would mean she has not found it yet. If Emma believed she had found it with Hook, they would have already made it clear.

Hook is representative of Emma’s present. She just let go of her past, and who she thought she was, so now she’s on a journey to figure out who she is again. I think Hook is like Emma’s distraction for figuring out who she truly is and transitioning fully into that person. I’ll get more into that later (also part of the reason why I think Hook has to die).

Regina is Emma’s future. We know this because Regina told us.

Emma: What will happen to us?

Regina: I don't know.

The wording of this is purposefully vague. We know, or we think we know Emma’s talking about she and Henry, but “us” could easily be interpreted as Emma and Regina. At this point, I think this is a nod from the writers that they aren’t sure what’s going to happen to Regina and Emma yet.

Emma: Doesn't sound like much of a happy ending.

Regina: (Chuckles) It's not. But I can give you one.

Regina is telling Emma and the audience that she can give her a happy ending. This wording is purposeful. There are so many ways Regina could have said that Emma and Henry would be happy in New York, that didn’t include the words, “I can give you one.” This line goes deeper than just giving Emma a happy ending in New York. This is foreshadowing. We know that New York was not the end for Emma either, so really Regina still owes Emma a gift.

Emma: You can preserve our memories?

Regina: No, I can... do what I did to everyone else in this town. And give you new ones.

Again. More vague wording that can be interpreted in multiple ways. This is another hint that Regina is Emma’s future. To whom do you usually say something like, “I can give you new memories”? Someone you plan to share a future with. The act of Emma losing her memories is representative of letting go of the past and moving on with her life (recurring theme), which she is able to do thanks to Regina. That was no accident, and it went incomplete, so again, I think the job will be completed later. The way Emma moved on with her life was also a cheat. This is why she had to regain her memories, so she could move on from her past and earn her happiness the right way. But again, reversing Emma’s life in New York technically makes Regina’s promises unfulfilled.

Emma: You cursed them and they were miserable.

Regina: They didn't have to be. (Grasps Emma's hands) My gift to you is good memories, good life for you and— (She turns to look at Henry. He comes to her side.) —Henry. You'll have never given him up. (Tearfully) You'll have always been together.

Emma: You would do that?

Regina: When I stop Pan's curse and you cross that town line, you will have the life you always wanted.

Emma: But it won't be real.

I think we get the idea. Emma’s line, “But it won’t be real,” strikes me though, because it allows us to see what Emma sees, that what she has now is real happiness. She doesn’t crave just any happiness, she wants a real one with her family, which Regina is now a part of. It’s an acknowledgment that what she, Regina and Henry have is real. Basically they said Swan-Mills family is real, and Swan Queen is real. In 5x04 Guinevere also said something about wanting something “real” and if she couldn’t have that she was going to follow her heart. I’m assuming they referenced this episode as well as 4x22 when paralleling Emma/Regina and Guinevere/Lancelot.

So they left us there, mourning as we watched as Regina watched her family drive away from her. They wanted to make it clear that they were splitting up a family, so from there the goal was getting back together. The question was, how long was it going to take to reunite them? Seeing as how we are in season 5, I’m guessing they took the long route. (Think about it. How many Swan-Mills moments have we had since 3x11? Very few, and I don’t think there are any where it’s just the three of them alone (and united) We’re still watching their journey to be reunited).

3x13 "Witch Hunt" (Or as I call it, “the con” episode. Emma’s words.) If Swen was looking for an important episode back when this half of the season aired, it was this one. This was the first episode that Regina and Emma saw each other since they parted at the town line. This meeting would say a lot about how they were going to approach Swan Queen from here on out. So what’s the first task they give Emma and Regina? They organize a con. Emma and Regina come up with a ruse to keep the town from thinking that they're working together. It’s the first time Emma and Regina are back together since their extremely romantic goodbye and they're tricking people from thinking they're together? What if this is a metaphor that the writers set up? It seems like it. The townspeople symbolize the audience patiently waiting to see what happens between these two, and Emma and Regina symbolize the writers toying with the story. What happens in front of the audience, is that Emma and Regina have a lot of distance between each other and they are in conflict. This is the image we keep getting with Swan Queen; there is something always between them, either distance or conflict or both. This is just the show, we are meant to believe the story in front of us so that we buy into their con. While it may appear they are divided, the reality is that they are working together. The con is that we don’t think Swan Queen will happen because they give us reasons to believe that, but underneath the surface, Swan Queen is there and it is the reality. That’s why we get super romantic subtextual gaze back in the mayor’s office because we were supposed to see it. They needed to juxtapose the image of the lie that the townspeople got, with an image of reality. They could have gone with one where Emma and Regina are unromantically working on a task to solve a problem, and that would give us a reality where they are just working toward a common goal. Instead, we get a romantic zoom because this is the reality, that this is a romance story. This interaction is the first in the episode where Emma and Regina are talking about themselves and their dynamic. They weren’t talking about Henry or curses, it was about them, so it was purposeful that the scene came off romantic because this is a romance, they have romantic feelings toward each other.

When you watch episodes from here, what you often get between Emma and Regina is conflict and distance, and then you get a romantic exchange between the two. That’s why it’s so frustrating for Swen to watch because we keep getting reasons why Emma and Regina can’t be together, and then we get a great, romantic scene. Like 5x02, if you watch the surface story, all you see is OQ and CS, but then you get great SQ moments like Emma’s reaction to Regina and Robin’s kiss. It’s frustrating because they’re conning us. It’s like they’re playing follow the lady, to use a Once reference. They use this strategy with all the other storylines, why wouldn’t they use it for their romance ones? They are showing us one thing and saying something else. We are given that Robin Hood is Regina’s soulmate, and we are supposed to believe that, but we aren’t getting development to back up the claim. We are given that Hook loves Emma and she grows to love him as well. But we are shown that Emma has been in love with people who are not what they seem. Twice. Neal and Walsh. Emma told both men that she loved them, and with Neal she had true love, so it’s understandable that Emma would be in love with Hook. Though neither of those relationships lasted because the men revealed their true selves (Emma actually mentioned that this was a recurring theme for her). If the pattern continues then we should see the same happen with Hook. The rule of three is a common writing principle, and I think it’s being used here. It states that things that come in three are more satisfying and effective when trying to make a point. So if the point was that Emma had to learn more about people before giving her love to them, then it explains the three men. I always wondered why Walsh was necessary, but looking at it this way that they needed a third relationship for Emma in order to prove their point, his presence makes a lot more sense. If you see the parallel between Hook, and Arthur, then this is exactly what is happening. Guinevere did grow to love Arthur, but in the end he turned out to be someone else, so that love faded and she fell in love with another. I’m sure you all saw the Lancelot/Regina parallel with the Dark magic, so I won’t even go there. I’ll just say: Intentional.

Neal resurrects the Dark One in this episode. This might come back later. (Be warned we’re about to head into some highly theoretical territory) I was pretty convinced that Emma was going to die at the end of this season, and with confirmation that 5x11 is called “Swan Song” it seems even more plausible. If Emma were to die, I think she’d do it voluntarily as Rumplestiltskin did in 3x11. I was always so confused as to why they gave Regina the task of killing Emma, because then she would become the next Dark One, so having Emma off herself would solve this problem. The issue is, of course, as we saw with Rumplestiltskin, since the darkness still exists in Rumple, he cannot truly die by killing himself, which is why Neal could bring him back. Magic is like the Law of Conservation of Energy, it cannot be created or destroyed, but it can change form and transfer between objects. So there is no way to destroy the darkness in Emma, the only way they can save her is to transfer it somewhere else. So if Emma kills herself in 5x11, I think Regina would resurrect her. The price of doing so is a life, so if Regina is alive right now, it’s on borrowed time. This would explain why she is destined to go to the Underworld, but I don’t think she’d stay there. If you haven’t done so yet, I suggest you read AnotherShade’s meta about Regina being the Light One. Think about it. Excalibur has both dark and light in it, so I’m guessing that it was forged from dark and light magic. When the sword was split, the dark magic was tethered to a person, so it’s only reasonable to assume that the light magic was as well. I’m not going to explain how, or into full detail why Regina is the Light One here other than to say that Cora and Zelena are not Regina’s mother and sister (There’s been no actual proof that they are, and Zelena needed Regina’s blood to break her blood locks. It doesn’t look like they are blood relatives). This means Regina came from somewhere else, where she became the Light One through her lineage. This is why Regina’s inability to have children is important because she can’t pass on the magic, which means the light magic from Excalibur will still be in her when she dies. So, ding ding ding, Regina is like the Dark One in that, she cannot die until the magic is removed from her, which is why it’d be okay for her to bring Emma back. When this all happens is another question. Does Emma die in Camelot, and Regina brought her back there? Or will Emma die in Storybrooke, and Regina resurrects her in the beginning of 5B? Resurrection seems like the only plausible explanation to me that gives a good reason why Emma is still alive as the Dark One in 5B and why we are introduced to the Underworld. Someone traded their life for Emma, and if she is in fact the Light One, Regina is the only candidate who could have survived it. I just keep imagining Regina coming back to life wearing all white like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. “Regina...Yes. That is what they used to call me. Regina the Evil Queen. I’m Regina the Light One.” I’m a nerd, sue me.

#swan queen #ouat speculation #dumb positivity #swen #anti-cs #anti-oq #ouat spoilers

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