[ SECRET POST #2118 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2118 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 05 pages, 102 secrets from Secret Submission Post #303.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

15. http://i.imgur.com/p53jI.png

[sophiap]

Agreed so much. There seems to be an impulse to sanitize fascinating villains. Worse still, the "Henry should be grateful"/"Snow deserved it" is creepily close to victim blaming.

Villains can have reasons for becoming the way they were, but those reasons don't change the fact that they do some very awful things.

[elaminator]

Yup.

[chromoplast]

But see, Regina is not a villain. Fans are quick to bring up a set list of Regina's crimes. Graham's always on there, as is a (usually) long period of abusing Henry (this didn't happen - he had only received the book recently, so she didn't make him think he was crazy for the 10+ years fans usually bring up). But you can't define characters by list of their crimes, because that's not who they are.

No one feels the need to bring up her good side. And that's what give her this 'clash' between opinions. Take Cora, for example. No one feels the need to bring up a list of her 'crimes', unless that list is to defend Regina's later actions. Why? Because she's 'evil', and that's obvious to the fans.

Regina, though, is in a state of moral ambiguity. There are fans that think she's pure evil, sure, but they are a very small majority of fandom compared to those that could see her going either way. And it's just that; good and evil are not black and white. Snow's done some pretty bad things in her time, for the sake of love - but that's 'fine'; she's the White Princess, the epitome of good.

Regina did almost everything for the sake of love. Her mother killed her 'true love' before forcing her into an unwanted and possibly abusive relationship (this is after abusing her for years herself). That relationship involved a constant reminder of the person she felt took Daniel away (and to be fair, she did, but I'm not about to blame Snow for being manipulated by Cora - she was just a child). But what many people forget is that Regina was just a child too. Older than Snow, but she was young, felt unloved, except by a father that was too weak to stand up for her, and had been abused for years. There was no way her behavior could have been rational.

As for Henry, yes. She did send him to Archie for something that was technically true, and that's not fair. But imagine this; Emma never shows up. Henry never finds her. The curse is never broken, and the hints of the story along the way are never revealed. If nothing was ever revealed, what would that have been like for Henry, in a world only he knows isn't real? If Regina had told him the truth - well, he'd be stuck in a world that isn't real, filled with people that he can't talk to without them thinking he's crazy, and the only person who knows the truth is someone officially referred to as the Evil Queen. And just personally, I think that's worse than a few sessions of therapy.

In the end, from what we've seen of Season 2, Regina DOES want to redeem herself. She's realized, maybe not the severity of her actions, but the extent of them. She 'let herself go', in a way, with no one to keep track of her. And I don't think she'll ever redeem herself fully. She will never be accepted. The only ending I can envision for her is alone, and it's not a happy one. But she will be the one to get Emma and Snow back, I think, and she's still acting for love. Because Henry wants her to get them back, and she loves him more than magic, more than anything. Is she doing the right things now for the wrong reasons? Possibly, but that's the first step to redemption. And Regina wants to redeem herself, for Henry, more than she wants her power or control back.

[(Anonymous)]

Regina is not a villain.

You have got to be trolling, right?



...right?

[got_swagger]

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, then let's bring up the ones that are less morally ambiguous:

-Manipulates a man into killing her husband using a snake that only exists in his home country, ensuring that he will take the blame for the murder when it could have been an accident
-Kills a man for breaking up with her and attempting to look for the heart she took from him
-Steals a curse from a fellow witch, who is later turned into a dragon and encased in a mine because of it
-Frames Mary Margaret for murder when she clearly knows that Mary Margaret is unaware of any past actions against her
-Traps Belle, a woman who is never shown to have any past with Regina, in an asylum without visitors while Rumpelstiltskin is fully aware of her existence but not her location

Yes, Regina's actions in regards to Snow, Henry, and their family are morally dubious. A lot of the other things she's done aren't.

[ionaonie]

I couldn't agree more with all of this. I've been trying to find a way to say exactly this. Thank you.

[saiika_von_maou]

In-depth arguments aside, I think you've missed the point of the secret. From what I see, OP isn't saying Regina is 100% Grade A villain. What OP does seem to be expressing is a distaste for people who bash Henry and Snow for hurting Regina while, at the same time, completely forgiving Regina for the horrible things she's done. Her motivations do not excuse her actions, they just make her a more interesting character.

[helenadax]

Thinking that Henry should be grateful seems bizarre to me. Regina cursed his grandparents and tried to kill his biological mother.

[(Anonymous)]

Preach it!

[(Anonymous)]

Flawless post, and I say this as a Regina/EQ fan.

[(Anonymous)]

No, no, NO. You CANNOT use "prevented him from seeing his birth mother" against Regina. Emma gave Henry up for adoption. Although I don't think it was specified, it is certainly indicated that it was a closed adoption as Emma wanted nothing to do with Henry until she found out he was in trouble. Regina had no obligation whatsoever to let Henry see Emma.

Regina may be a bad person, but she was in every right to keep Emma away and warn her off Henry because she's his mother, not Emma. And that is the most troubling thing about the show to me: its inability to distinguish between helping a child because he came to you and helping a child because he is your biological son raised by another woman.

[(Anonymous)]

THANK YOU.

The show is so fucking awful with adoption that this needs to be driven home again and again. Henry is Regina's son, Emma gave away her right to parent him when she put him up for adoption.

[ionaonie]

God, yes this. 10,000 times this.

Every time I think about the representation of adoption in ouat I go all ragey.

It's so messed up it's not even funny.

[(Anonymous)]

Normally I would agree completely. However, Emma wanted to return Henry to Regina, it was only after Emma asked Regina 'do you love him?' and detected the lie that Emma chose to stay. Regina cannot love as she once did, that was the price of the curse. Henry can tell the difference. He knew that something was not right. Retinas first nesting is to posses, no matter the cost to Henry's emotional well being. The fact that she is trying to move beyond that tells me that as the curse weakens, so does the price return to Regina. However, even with the capacity to love, Regina was capable of ripping her father's heart out of his chest. She kidnapped a father, told his children that he had abandoned them, sent them into a proverbial pit of snakes then tried to adopt them.

I don't think Regina has been sound of mind since Daniel's death. She is not at present a fit mother to anyone.

That being said, the last episode broke my heart when Henry tricked Regina with a promise of having lunch together. She looked so happy but now she knows it was all a ploy, that the only person she is close to loving doesn't care even when she is really, really trying to regain her humanity and do the right thing for the child she raised.

[(Anonymous)]

So do you feel the same way about the fandom's treatment of Rumpelstiltskin? Because honestly, there's a ton of over-apologetic fans for both teams.

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, Rumpelstiltskin is pretty clearly portrayed as morally ambiguous, a coward who turned evil to save someone he loved and got a hint of humanity back when he met Belle. Regina is more someone the average fan has to TRY to find good to see her as truly morally ambiguous.

[(Anonymous)]

I wish people would realize that you can like a villain and even find them sympathetic and still acknowledge their faults. There's such a tendency to write-off the bad shit that characters like this have done, or to just out and out woobify them. Frustrating.

[(Anonymous)]

I think it's in response to people who think you must be condoning their actions, so some fans try to write it off. People need to stop freaking out about people liking villains in a way you don't approve of.

[(Anonymous)]

But I cannot fucking stand the segment of Regina fans who say stuff like "Henry should be grateful" or "Snow deserved it." Really? Really now?

Yes this, thank you. I get so irritated at the Henry hate in defense of Regina. I'm not particularly a fan of Henry, or of child characters in general, but this idea that she's done nothing but treat him well and so his attitude is somehow ungrateful and indefensible just....argghhh.

I like Regina. She's one of the most interesting characters on the show to me. But I wish her fans would stop trying to woobify her and hating on everyone who legitimately has problems with all the really bad stuff she's done.

[saiika_von_maou]

I feel like I should be rolling my eyes, because these secrets are becoming so frequent...but I just love seeing this opinion expressed, so I'll be happy instead. <3

[(Anonymous)]

*shakes head*

You are wrong.

[juiceboxhero]

I feel the same way. I hate how most people in fandom seem to think they can only like a character if they're "good", to the point where they'll start making excuses for them!

[(Anonymous)]

Killing her father is the biggie, for me. Most of the other stuff is the kind of gleeful-evil stuff you can at least love to hate her for, and you can understand where she's coming from - she hates someone and she has the power to hurt them, and cackle/smirk while she does so, so why not?

But the point she was at of hating Snow so intensely that Snow was the most important person in her life, more important than the only person Regina still loved - her own *father* - and she was willing to kill him, not to make her own life *better*, but to make everyone else's *worse*...that was when she stepped off the scale of relatability for me. I don't hate her, and I think she's a good villain character, but not in any sense of being able to understand where she's coming from.