Ok, again, let’s not make it a “defense of ship” thread. I’m trying very hard to spread out the criticism of each ship with the understanding that everyone leaves their shipping preferences at the door. This isn’t about trying to excuse away or justify one ship over the others, nor is it about vilifying one ship over the others. Shippers are experts at doing this as you’ve shown. We can, on the whole, come up with a multitude of “yes, but what you have to understand is that Rumple/Belle/Regina/Robin/Neal/Emma/Hook/Snow/Charming did X it was for Y reason and that’s why I, the shipper, think that this action was totally okay.”
That’s not what this is about. It doesn’t matter what excuses we can come up with; what matters is the actual text of the show (as canon) and what message it’s showing the audience. Is it actually fair or accurate to say that ONCE’s message about love and romance is one that we should hold up as acceptable, right, morally good?
Every single one of these ships has some sort of problem (see post #1). And they are not morally gray problems for the most part because of the very morally black (murder for example) actions being taken by some characters. Even in the case of less morally black actions–Snow and Charming’s possessive love–is still super problematic from certain view points.
At what point do explosive so-called bold storytelling moments begin to overshadow morality and believability?