Mary Margaret Blanchard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_fairest) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
farfar_aways2012-04-22 12:39 am
the_fairest) wrote in farfar_aways2012-04-22 12:39 am
The nature of True Love (posted for Miss Ashie)
Love, true love, is magic. Not just any magic. The most powerful magic of all. It creates happiness.
- Regina
No potion can bring back True Love. Love is the most powerful magic of all...If you can bottle Love, you can do anything.
- Rumplestiltskin
All curses can be broken. Have you tried True Love's Kiss?
- “James”
True Love is a powerful piece of magic in the show, with few limits (it can't seem to bring back the dead; but unlike fairy tales, True Love's Kiss seems good for repeat usage on the curse-breaking front), but I was thinking it might be worth us all hashing out a theory as to its nature, or questions about it that canon may yet answer (or already answered, but haven't pulled together yet). I have my own theory, which I'll go into in the comments, but a) it's just mine and b) it's not exactly comprehensive.
So, what do you guys think True Love is? Pure magic? 'Normal' love that has an added magic whoomph to it (either due to the nature of romantic love in FTL, or because magic is attracted to the emotion?) Destiny? Soulmates? Can you have more than one, if love fades or is lost? What does losing your True Love mean as opposed to just the broken heart of 'normal' love. Does True Love feel different from 'just love'?
Any and all other questions that we can theorise about?
:D?
The Quote/Conversation This Always Makes Me Think Of
Snow White: Extreme sounds like an understatement.
Rumpelstiltskin: Don't doubt yourself now, deary. Love makes us sick. Haunts our dreams. Destroys our days. Love has killed more than any disease.
no subject
Magic in general seems to be this force of nature, one that can be controlled by spells and power, but one that needs a price that it will take itself if thwarted (see Thomas being taken in payment for Ella not handing over her child); True Love, widely regarded as Magic's most potent form, seems to be on the same nature.
True Love seems to be the same as Romantic Love, with added soulmate kick. Of course, if Romantic Love is magic, does this mean that other forms of love are also magic? The love of friends, for one's lord or lady, for a child or a parent? If so - and I'm not sure why not - why is romantic love the most powerful? Hrm *pokes canon*
(Theory mentioned here for Gabby's amusement: Magic feeds off energy, Romantic Love creates a lot of energy and is self-replenishing. Thus, Magic could be a parasite that goes 'NOM NOM NOM FEELS' and tries to arrange things so that people stay together to make lots of energy.
This theory is in no way serious, but it entertains me, because I am warped. :D?)
Anyway, so, if True Love is functionally soulmates, the magic does seem to actually weigh up who is a good match for whom, which to me makes me think that Magic is almost self-aware (also, actually, see the Curse, which seems to adapt to changes to make everyone miserable).
RIGHT. SO. SOULMATES.
GRAND THEORY IS: True Love is romantic life attached by magic, which turns it into soulmates (for whatever reason). Thus these people are drawn together, despite differences and obstacles. And when it is thwarted, the emotional pain is intense, and compounded by the magical and soulmate aspect. Almost like a compass in them, which used to point towards the other half (or other third, or whatever, because I fail to see why everyone should be monogamous); when that person isn't there, due to death or break up or distance, that little compass is almost spinning wildly, adding that frantic edge to separated lovers we see in canon.
I suspect that this 'spinning compass' for want of a better term, can slow down in some people, can calm down and then maybe end up pointing towards someone else - Love can be broken, after all, and Love can grow. But in other people, it's just going to keep spinning and spinning and the emptiness eats away at them (like Regina at the loss of Daniel, like Rumple's comments on the loss of Belle, and that empty desperation that MM feels that she keeps trying to fill before David wakes up).
And that's some of my ideas! The ones I can put into words, anyway; I'm all hazy, and my mind just thinks up different questions. Like - if True Love is such a genuinely powerful force, why can people in it lie about not? Why do people not believe in it? Was it more common in the past, and the magic went away and is now coming back? Is it considered folklore by the noble elite as they increasingly move to a culture of political alliances sealed by the marriage of their children, or...???
COME ON, CANON, SOME MORE GROUND RULES ON IT, PLEASE.
no subject
But, you know, they kissed before the whole wolf thing came up and she still ate him, and I don't see why an inherited curse would function on any different of rules than Rumpel's (or the Storybrooke curse, given that the show went for that angle with Emma and Graham).
no subject
no subject
At the first kiss, the one where Emma is freaking out and he grabs her, Graham only gets flashes of memories that suddenly assail him in absolutely no order or coherency, which I think does have to with Emma being the Savior and the one who can break the curse.
BUT.
I think it's EVEN MORE TELLING that in the kiss she initiates (once again Emma making the choice, like with the staying at Granny's, like with putting on the badge) this is an even bigger importance. I think her choice, her instigation, her doing this, is why the second time, we don't get flashes and new misplaced memories.
We get Graham saying he remembers everything. Everything-everything.
Though I'm not sure how my opinion sits one way or the other on whether it is True Love's kiss. I'm not knocking it, I'm just not sure how True Love's kiss works on the Storybrooke side yet at all.
no subject
MM's saving David by the troll bridge seems to suggest that True Love's kiss still works in SB -- it brings him back from the brink of death (sure, it starts out as CPR, but really crappy CPR that quickly devolves into just a kiss). I suppose it could be argued that True Love is an inherent magic, not something learned or cursed or blessed like through Rumpelstiltskin's potions or fairy dust.
no subject
Because it works for David (though he's unconscious, from nothing more than falling down in a river >_>), and Snow (twice; both semi-dead/semi-asleep from a curse and semi-psychotic from the Forgetting Potion).
Rumpelstiltskin's work, if only half-way (which I think has to do with lack of choice and not choosing on his part, again). We know it didn't work for Fredrick (from Abigail saying she kissed the gold statue 'Until [her] lips bled,' though I may wonder if this has to do with it being Midas's curse and just a bi-product of such curse on Fredrick being a difference).
People we're uncertain it didn't work or didn't have enough whatever it is for it: Graham (who's kind of dead), Daniel (who's also kind of dead), Red (whose curse, like Fredrick's, doesn't react to being kissed)
So, if we only have three(/four) people who've ever been near the events of a real True Love's Kiss, how many people in The Enchanted Kingdom even actually know about it? How many people truly believe it in? And when and how are the parameters set for True Love's kiss for it actually working, too?
Or if it is. I need to know if Graham and Emma count now. Writers, tell us!
no subject
no subject
no subject
So clearly, it only works if at least one person, preferably both from my understanding (but again, Emma and Graham), knows who they really are.