Reply To: Confirmed: MRJ/Neal Cassidy In 512 (EW and TVLine)

[Slurpeez]

I’m not so sure this has anything to do with masculinity. The women are very strong on the show. Rumple we know is strong with magic, Charming has his sword fighting abilities, heck even Robin has his bow and arrow. And we’ve seen Belle kick some butt too. But Neal has no fighting skills. And that’s fine. Not all men need to be tough, but I just feel in a world with magic, it would be hard for him to survive because literally everyone other than maybe Henry have some sort of strength they can use. If you were ok with Neal sitting back in the background like an Archie character or a dwarf then fine. But the main players are all very strong. Neal is a strong person in his own way. But the ability to defend and fight I feel he was lacking. For me, he felt out of place in a land with magic in storybrooke.

While having fighting ability might be what popular culture superficially portrays as being strong, the two are not synonymous. Take, for instance, the stereotype of a beefy jock, who though very athletic, doesn’t have very much going on upstairs; his only primary motivation tends to showing how big and powerful he is. By contrast, when I write about strong characters, I mean characters who have complex motivations, rich histories with other characters, and a strong sense of agency. Therefore, a character might be physically weak but end up developing a cunning intellect (e.g. think Tyrion on GoT whose mind is his weapon). Thus, when people like @nevermore bemoan the fact that most of OUAT’s characters (both male and female) are cardboard, what they mean is that the characters have become very flat. Instead of their wishes shaping their environment in ways that are unique to them, the plot controls them. This goes back to @Keb’s earlier point that the characters often seem to act OOC now as they react in ways which previously seemed unfathomable and unrealistic, given previously establish facets of their earlier personalities (which in seasons one through three were much more in tact and intricate). This essay really addresses the issue in a good way, and I think it applies not just to female characters, but also to male ones.