So I think the message of Once, in particular to love and romance, is about hope. You can overcome your past and find love and happiness. Your past doesn’t have to define you.
I really, really like this.
And I think POM’s statement is theoretically good, however, problematic to the workings of ONCE
There are a few problems:
1) your past will always define you. It’s what makes you, you. You can redeem yourself, yes, but you are always going to carry your past with you and be burdened by it, at least if we are playing the rules of reality. Regina will always have the Evil Queen inside her, Rumple will always feel the power of the Dark One and magic, Hook will always have part of his pirate persona. Snow White will always be a bandit, and David will always be a farmer. Emma will be an orphan. Issues like this, especially like abandonment, DO NOT vanish over the course of one day or even one year. They are deeply entrenched in your personality and how you see the world. Some people never get over them. Some people carry them with them wherever they go. Personalities are not hats, you cannot change one at will. To quote my all time favorite series of books: ” “There are ghosts everywhere. We carry them with us wherever we go.”
2) I also think the idea that you can overcome your past is complicated when it comes to the HOW. ONCE would have us believe that there is no work involved; your “issues” are swept aside simply by love. Whatever deity you might pray to, when you seek its forgiveness, you must first ASK for it. And if you are of a particular faith, you may have to work for it. Just because you’ve fallen in love, doesn’t mean your past is erased. It doesn’t mean that you don’t owe your victims recompense. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to stand before the universe and say, “I have erred.” Regina and Rumple have never apologized, for a start, to the town of Storybrooke. The every day peasants who’s lives were so rudely uprooted for 28 years. Some can say, “well they both saved SB too,” and that’s true. But they haven’t acknowledged that they’re the reason SB exists in the first place and they haven’t regretted or at least recognized that their actions HURT a great many people.
Now, after having watched the season three finale, is she a character deserving of love after having stolen it and happy endings from other people? Is Rumple deserving of Belle’s love after he lied to about the kris dagger and for the most, seemed to have reverted back to old habits?
The idea who deserves love is really subjective. This is my own personal view so take it as such: no one “deserves” love outside of the love a parent has for a child. That always needs to be a given. But other than that, no. Love must be earned. And if it turns out that Regina and Rumple don’t get their happy endings because they have done HORRIBLE things to people and those people are not willing to love or forgive them, then that’s the breaks, kids. You are not owed loved just because you’ve ‘seen the light.”