This is also use for many Anti Neal persons, that OUAT is a story about fairy tales
People who think OUAT is about fairy tales literally do not understand the concept of this show. It’s about fairy tales that are existing in OUR WORLD. Meaning, the mythic has merged with the real and it’s about navigating the waters of both those realms. You cannot remove the human from the fantastical. This is why ONCE worked so well in S1. The EF was the fantasy world but there were “real” qualities to it: the father searching for his son, the evil queen who was really heartbroken over loosing her lost love, the girl who felt trapped by the patriarchy. Conversely SB was the “real” but has elements of fantasy. So yes, there was adultery and murder and politics and power plays, but there was also a dragon in the basement of the library and an evil curse that kept inhabitants frozen. The worlds meshed.