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The point is that you shouldn’t ship Anna and Vronsky, or Healthcliff and Catherine — they’re a terrible idea!
Funny you should mention Tolstoy. I just finished watching an adaptation of War and Peace in which Natasha Rostova nearly runs off with Anatole Kuragin, an unscrupulous cad–much like Count Vronsky. Anatole’s pursuit of Natasha is like that of a wolf stalking a lamb. Natasha, who at first rejects him, nearly succumbs after he makes her believe he’d commit suicide due to her rejection of him. Against all caution and good sense, Natasha thinks that this form of control is somehow what “love” means: obsession and possession. If it weren’t for the intervention of Natasha’s loving friends and family, her good name would’ve been ruined.
Tolstoy had a way of using these cautionary tales to warn against the debased part of human nature that mankind is capable of; yet the writers of OUAT do not. Instead, they seem to be suggesting that men like Anatole or Vronsky are somehow to be commended, admired and desired by women. Instead of intervening to help spare Emma from Hook as do Natasha’s friends and family, Emma’s family go along with and indulge Emma’s adolescent behavior. So why are they going to the Underworld to save a man who just tried to kill them all? I used to maintain that it was just the audience’s perception of CS, but after 5×11, it’s the portrayal of the CS dynamic which is so destructive. It’s this back-and-forth is-Hook-reformed-or-not yo-yoing that has me totally fed up.
So why doesn’t this come across for the CS portion of the fandom? Are they just very young viewers raised on Twilight, but not yet exposed to these more complex moral tales?
As you mentioned, these love triangles are nothing new, but what is new is rooting for the lech to end up with the heroine. Does no one recall 3×17 when Hook was literally dressed in black armor? While I loved the new Star Wars, I was disturbed to discover that certain people somehow ship Rey with Kylo Ren, after he tortured her, tried to kill her, and killed his own father. It’s just unfathomable to me.
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy