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Absolutely. I think the subtext is definitely there — there’s a lot about SQ that seems to follow the genre conventions of early 1990s films that had at their heart a really close, somewhat ambiguous bond between two women. So something like Thelma and Louise and Fried Green Tomatoes really come to mind. I think the difference is that both of those films were really explicit commentaries about patriarchy, violence against women (domestic or otherwise), and gender/social norms. So insofar as that genre of portrayal of a close female bond is SQ’s aesthetic predecessor, SQ is in some ways more regressive. Primarily because OUAT seems to normalize the emotional and physical violence that FGT and T&L were explicitly critiquing (for example, by “promoting” CS, both on-screen and off screen).
I get what you’re saying, but I do wonder still. Certainly, the actors are told to promote the heck out of the CS romance, and it also does seem to normalize violence towards women when the writers don’t comment on Hook’s agressive, seedy behavior. But they also never really explained why Hook’s cursed lips robbed Emma of the very thing that made her so special. They also didn’t comment on why dark-one Emma’s hand turned golden when she tried kissing Hook to break her curse. Why didn’t her curse break when she kissed him if they have true love? If you let the script speak for itself, it’s because Emma and Hook really don’t share true love. Why don’t the writers or actors ever say anything about all of Emma’s failed TLKs with Hook? Could it also be because A&E are misdirecting everyone so that SQ seems more like a surprise? A SQ fan wrote it better than I could. I’m not saying I’m fully on board in thinking that it’ll happen, but I certainly wouldn’t mind if it did either. I think I’d cheer for it. Also, when I think about the overwhelming amount of subtext, it really doesn’t just seem like subtext to me anymore; it seems more like foreshadowing.
"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