before i started watching season 3 (particularly the second half) i legitimately thought all jeroy had going for them was the same set of scenes i would always see in edits or gifs but noo there are actually SOO MANY LITTLE ONES sprinkled in the show that i never found being heavily referenced (like obviously i do wish they had thought of the ship earlier on in the show like in s2 but there was still jara and considering all the circumstances they were still able to write jeroy so well even if they came in clutch

one of my favorite scenes was when jerome came up to joy and said he likes her hair brushed and that it reminded him of letdown hajskfjdj it’s just soo jerome clarke of him bringing up mara’s dog to joy bc it was their first date AND managing to slip in an actual compliment under the guise of teasing like come awnnnn whipped

idk it just made me feel giddy bc jerome can be an absolute sweetheart while still being his usual devious self. same goes for joy who, after greeting jerome sweetly would go back to teasing him and being sarcastic. like that scene in the stairs when he says “i was thinking” and she replies “oh so thats what that sound was” and after their kiss in the house when she says “please dont say youve come around just to get a compliment on your kissing technique” like it’s just so Them it’s so natural it makes sense whoever thought of this ship came to swoop in and said i will give u the most character development within a limited timeframe

The Big Problems With OUAT’s Writing:

My favorite characters were Rumple, Belle, Emma, and Nealfire. Once Nealfire got killed off though, their characterizations and their relationships, as well as everyone else’s thereafter, went to total shit in canon. Adam and Eddy obviously couldn’t come up with any more than two-and-a-half seasons of organic or satisfying character growth for the original main cast, and it should have ended in 3x11, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure that Damon Lindlelof helped them out with the writing a lot for the first two-and-a-half seasons, which is why the story is at least coherent enough to be enjoyable up to 3x11.

But after 3A, Lindlelof’s plans for the show were butchered, Kitsowitz completely took over the show with Captain Fuckboy, PLOT, and making money their main focuses, so they kept it on air for the next four-and-a-half seasons not knowing what else to do now that they had run out of new story. Thus, it got to the point where it essentially devolved into such badly written crack!fic soap opera on screen by the end of 5A where the writing for everyone’s characterization had become so unbelievably OOC, annoyingly self-contradictory, changeable, hypocritical, illogical, melodramatically problematic, and toxic in favor of the PLOT that I had to quit to preserve my sanity.

I enjoyed reading Rumbelle fanfic moreso than the actual show because it made sense and felt more satisfying, well-written, in-character, and entertaining than the nonsensical toxic garbage the show had devolved into.

After 5A, Eddy Kitsis said in an interview that he thought “good storytelling” was making sure the audience goes “WTF? This makes absolutely no sense! This isn’t fair! This totally contradicts everything that I was shown before, and feels too stupid, too contrived, and too OOC to even believe possible.”

It wasn’t worth getting emotionally or mentally invested in this show or any of the remaining characters as written in canon anymore post 3A because A&E and these writers formula kept becoming more and more of “We’re doing our jobs if we can trick our audience after deliberately teasing them by dangling the carrot of organic growth of character that we’re too lazy to follow through on by yanking it away from them as soon as they start making logical predictions abruptly, cruelly and inorganically with constant twist of ’HOLY SHIT, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED?”

When Eddy basically said that at the end of 5A, I realized I was done with having any hope for this show, and I decided to finally quit watching after 5B because I knew every time something started to seem to make sense and go in a direction of organic growth for the characters, A&E and these writers would deliberately pull the rug out from under them and their audience for trying to get invested in them with some inorganic contrivance that ruined everything in an unfair way that made no sense and never would make any sense in canon from what we were led to believe would happen beforehand on this show by them because that was the whole point: A&E and these writers so often didn’t want you to make sense of their show because they were lazy hacks who didn’t know how to write a cohesive plot or organic character growth/realistic characterization after 3A.

They admitted that they liked whiplashing their audience for using common sense and logic in regards to fans whenever the story and the characters would seem to be potentially headed in a way that would make sense. They considered that “genuis” storytelling with their overinflated egos, rather than just very cruel, mean, lazy, and low bad writing that ultimately destroyed most of their main characters’ credibility and their fans willingness to stay emotionally invested in their canon show that the creators/writers refused to let unfold organically in a way that made consistent sense long term.

Instead, they used a constant series of contrived magical macguffins and twists of “WTF just happened? This makes no damned sense from what was just previously established on screen, and does not at all relate to it! This is unbelievably absurd! The characters would never do or say this shit in real life!”

It destroyed the credibility of most of their characters’ in canon and their fans willingness to stay emotionally invested in their show, and it was insulting, especially when you had showrunners like Eddy Kitsis admitting to the fans “As always with this show, once the audience gets onto what we’re doing, we have to change it.”

When they said “We hope things will be ‘fun’” for the character assassinating, wildly OOC, nonsensical, and melodramatic garbage writing of 6A for Rumbelle with the Morfetus bs twist or in 5A of the Dark Swan arc, they didn’t mean that we would necessarily be legitimately entertained as an audience when they threw in a character destroying inorganic magical contrivance or bizarre twist out of nowhere that forced the characters into weird directions that made no sense from what had been previously established.

Adam and Eddy meant that they would be having fun pissing those of us in their audience off by insulting our intelligence and common sense by constantly giving us inorganic contrivance of OOC characterizations, magical macguffins, and bizarre PLOT twists and contrivances that didn’t consistently, logically, and thus satisfyingly add up with what had been previously established, rather than entertaining us with organic character growth that made satisfactory sense by letting our predictions for characters come true in their sheer laziness to slow down and write organic character development.

There were even hints of this problem before 3B-S7 that I was seeing potential for in 2B. OUAT could have gone strong for longer than two to three ish seasons if A&E and these writers had slowed down from 2B, not gotten obsessed with Hook, not gone to Neverland, and not gotten so obsessed with the next big, bizarre, and contrived magical PLOT twist or macguffin that, oftentimes inorganically forced their characters to 180 regress in ways that made no sense for moments of “HOLY SHIT! WTF JUST HAPPENED?”

I have no problem with characters regressing when it’s done organically, slowly, relatably, and realistically. The problem with OUAT was that they used inorganic contrivances to push them back-and-forth between increasingly bizarre extremes that made no sense, rather than focusing on human or realistic motivations to get them from point A to point C organically. It felt fake, and it felt forced. I know it was fiction, but it felt like lazily badly written fiction when the characters swung back-and-forth by the writers playing God with them on the strings of their asinine PLOT twists inorganically.

It had gotten beyond exhausting trying to invest in a show run by petty hacks who were never going to allow their audience’s common sense and intelligence lead them through an organic path of growth for these characters with the writers dangling the carrot in front of them for a story that actually could make sense, and then abruptly, cruelly, and inorganically yanking it away from them with an absurd twist because they were too lazy to come up with any more ideas for organic character growth after 3A.

Let’s talk about Hook and CS becoming such a main focus on this show, and the romantic male lead/couple.” It’s not that Hook couldn’t have been organically developed into a sympathetic character worthy of redemption in his own right. A&E couldn’t write that, though. He also didn’t fit together with the ensemble main cast in the place of Nealfire as Emma’s main love interest. He and Emma had absolutely no chemistry. Hook’s sudden interest in her was bizarre and creepy.

Then, they killed off Nealfire through absurd means for Hook to take his place in the picture where he didn’t fit in the family circle, so they could have CS. They broke their own rules to bring Rumple back from the dead to turn him into the wildly OOC on-and-off-again “big bad” scapegoat cartoonish villain PLOT twister “foil” to Hook, even after having been given two-and-a-half seasons of the most well-written and well-earned sympathetic reforming anti-villain/tragic hero backstory and redemption arc from S1-3A. They destroyed Emma’s, Belle’s, Snow’s, David’s, and even Henry’s original sympathetic characterizations by obliterating their self-respect, intelligence, self-awareness, and moral integrity, so that they could inorganically force this bullshit narrative of Hook/CS being the “best hero” ever in a world of now meaningless, shallow, and simplistic black versus white hypocritical morality that Nealfire and the common goal of family balanced out with a sense of realism, common sense, organic growth and emotional depth that got lost with his death in favor of contradictory character destroying magical PLOT-twist driven Drama™️ soap opera “hero versus villain” fuckery and Hook/CS.

No wonder they lost more and more viewers as every season passed...Getting emotionally invested was no fun when the writers deliberately pulled the rug out from underneath your favorite characters whenever things started to seem making sense by totally ruining it with some bizarre magical contrivance or characterization that doesn’t add up to what we were shown before, and your logical predictions for stories that made organic and consistent sense for character growth were mocked by these writers because they refused to slow down and develop the characters after S1-3A. You were punished for being smart and using common sense, and that’s why most of these main characters’ credibility and integrity got completely destroyed in one way or another by this very lazy, petty and unfair bad writing technique of theirs that made them mostly feel like pod!people after just the first two-and-a-half seasons of the series.

tldr; You could only suspend your disbelief by turning off your brain to disregard the bullshit writing choices on OUAT and just blindly enjoy the show by getting invested in the characters for so long as written in canon without asking any questions before the writing became too infuriatingly repetitive, too contrived, too OOC, too character assassinating, and too stupid to believe. Also, Captain Fuckboy ruined the show after 3A, and he should have died and stayed dead back in early S2. It could have been different if A&E were good writers who could come up with organic character growth, and not shoehorned him in as Emma’s love interest in a way that ruined the whole show’s dynamic and sense of emotional depth by replacing Nealfire with him.

Nealfire’s death was the metaphorical death of the show’s canon, though. My personal headcanon was that the real show ended with “Going Home” (3x11) because that’s the last time there was any sort of compelling, consistent, organic, realistic, or relatable characterization or growth. After that, it all went to hell (literally), and I had to finally quit watching after S5 to preserve my sanity before anything got any worse, and on this show, it only would because A&E and these writers never learned.

A&E didn’t trust or respect their audience, so after awhile it felt like why should I respect their shitshow’s canon if it doesn’t make any consistent or well-developed sense, and they don’t care that it doesn’t themselves anymore either?

I figured I'd send this as an ask, because I think you could write a novel or two with this: I mean obviously assuming they all survive this and whatnot, how do you see Callen moving forward? Do you see this as say him building the walls so far back up that he doesn't let anyone in again? Or do you see something else? And lastly, do you think the outcome of the ATF IA thing will relate back to his wall building. How's Arkady going to handle things if Callen's testimony ruins Anna's career.

I’ve been mulling this over for a week and trying to organize my thoughts and make them more concise, but I’ll just start writing and hope that I stop at some point.

(This went long, obviously. Sorry, mobile users!)

1.”How do you see Callen moving forward? Do you see this as say him building the walls so far back up that he doesn't let anyone in again? Or do you see something else?”

I think that really all depends on how things go, exactly, following the finale.  There are certain narrative notes/arcs they may want to utilize the accident for, and, depending on which ones they choose, that would determine how everyone does following the incident.  If they callback to the fight Hetty and Mosley were having over Callen and his plot with Mosley this season, then he’d probably be at least one of the ones seriously injured.  (We’ll call this Scenario 1.)

If they focus on his desperation to keep the team together, then things would probably go differently -- still a few different ways. The only real personal stakes ever for G are his team; they’re his family.  It often seems like the job is all he has, but that’s not really it.  He’s always up for getting fired, and -- this is where I could go on about his self-destructive and risk-seeking behavior masquerading as performative cockiness -- often threatens to quit.  That tells you how low the stakes are when it comes to his job.  Someone in danger or his team/family even just potentially being in danger are the only times the stakes are high for him.  Again, there are different scenarios to use with this dramatically -- and I’m sure they’ll go with something we didn’t see coming.  

Possible Scenario 2A: He’s the first to wake up and seems to be the most “okay.”  It looks really bad, and this is his worst nightmare come to life: his team is dead, or so he thinks at first and is in shock.  This leaves a very serious impression on him as the season progresses.  I’m waiting on a blow up with Sam when they get back if he gets even more injured -- and even he doesn’t.  G knows Sam is Sam -- he had to go, it’s who is, and it didn’t pay to argue with him too much, but you know G’s going to beat himself up for letting him go.  We could actually see a flashback to the beginning of S5, when G felt the Sidorov/torture stuff was his fault.  (He also blamed himself for Kensi’s getting kidnapped in S2.)  He’s the one who agreed to help Mosley, and who didn’t want to get anyone else involved, really.  He’s the team leader, and he’s going to feel like he let everyone go despite knowing they should have taken more time to get stuff sorted -- even though none of them were going to stay behind, regardless of what orders he gave.  None of them saw anything about leaving or not as a choice. Still, we may see that Callen return.  That’s a long way to say I see some potential tension, even just temporarily, with Sam -- especially after Michelle’s death -- something I would have liked to have seen explored more as having an impact on characters on not just serving as a plot/catalyst for things with discussions about Michelle not her death’s impact on a relationship and not just passing mentions.  I still get frustrated that more people seemed concerned and asking G questions about the whole Anna situation rather than 1. his dad’s being handed over for torture/death and 2. how important Michelle, as a person and honorary family member, were to him.  

Still on Scenario 2A, sorry, got sidetracked: The “team appearing dead” or even just one member looking that way plus S5 guilt was relevant to where I was going, I promise.  I’ll move on to 2B shortly.  Losing them -- any of them -- is his worst fear.  The possibility of it looking very real would haunt him and set the stage for a full or even partial return of...Janvier.  Even if he doesn’t come back in full, if he just mildly starts screwing with G or hints at being a threat, it could throw him over the edge or send him spiraling into full-on paranoia.  Maybe Janvier sends a letter addressed to Grisha sending him condolences on the “loss” of his father and/or asking if he can be his plus one to Kensi and Deeks’s wedding (with the date, once they pick it) since he and Anna seem to be on the outs.  

Scenarios 2B & 2C -- not necessarily wholly separate from 2A: G is the driving force, with some help from Kensi, in getting, in getting the team to safety.  I was thinking he might serve as a distraction, and I read a fic recently and some other thoughts that suggest I’m not alone in this, as one possible method.  Spencer Williams will want answers for his son’s whereabouts when he realizes he’s gone, and I’m sure G can withstand some interrogation with cockiness.  Plus, like father, like son.  We also know that Spencer’s seen G’s face before when he was undercover.  (He’s also seen Kensi’s.)  Again, G coming face-to-face with Spencer and covering up for why his son’s missing and continuing to help Mosley would tie back to their arc this season while complementing that of his dad’s.  The other way is that G could be the one who recruits Max for help, again, because they did focus on the relationship between those two specifically.  I really do think Hidoko is alive, and she’ll help out.  There’s something very odd about how she “left.”  

Again, whichever direction they go in would help determine, potentially, how Callen comes away from all this.  I think he’s been relatively passive with Sam’s distancing himself from everything, which is in character for him.  His style of caring isn’t pushy, for lacking of a better word, and it’s probably a combination of how he likes to be treated so he assumes others are the same way (see also: leaving Anna alone following the investigation) and that he grew up with no good modeling of caring/support during his formative years.  Even the people who did watch over him out of caring/obligation, as he later found out, did so at a distance.  In order to get through someone else’s wall, you have to let yours down, at least a little, as well.  There’s a certain level of vulnerability and trust in letting someone see how much you care for them, and that’s why he can build these fake relationships as false personas but not as himself.  He often wants to help, he  just doesn’t know how.  So he uses the only skills/things he does know: smart ass remarks and turning something into a mission/op, which he has excellent strategy skills for.

At Christmas, he commented on how he felt everyone was avoiding him.  I think that was more loaded than just a reference to Sam and Finn.  (I can only theorize and headcanon, though, to account for the lack of mentions for his bio!fam and Anna.)  As Hetty noted last season, his walls were starting to come down, but it seems like he’s now facing walls from other people -- which could cause some regression.

2. And lastly, do you think the outcome of the ATF IA thing will relate back to his wall building. How's Arkady going to handle things if Callen's testimony ruins Anna's career.  

See? About 1200 words in, and I’m just getting to this second part.  Oops. I’ll answer the end first.  I would have preferred Anna’s being Arkady’s niece he was close to for that very reason.  I think they’re friends, and it never really boded well that he’d date his friend’s daughter.  I don’t think he sees Arkady as a friend, outwardly, but we all know he doth protest too much. Until the retcon in “Rage,” (Rageret? Ragecon?) Arkady really was the longest relationship G ever had.  At the same time, I think Arkady’s feelings for G are even stronger than he lets on -- similar to how G is.  Arkady’s probably known G for a long time, or even just known of him, and has a more uncle-y affection for him.  I could see that he cares about Anna and he cares about G, and they’re two of the most important people in the world to him from a paternalistic standpoint, and he just wants them to be happy. That being said, of course there could be some strain on the relationship.

As with the ATF thing, I touched on that above, a little, I think.  I do think if the relationship with Anna ends, that’s 2/2 that didn’t work out well. I could easily see G making jokes about just giving up and joining a monastery.  That being said, the whole ATF thing confused me on several fronts.  I’m not sure how G could either save or sink Anna’s career.  There’s no way to actually lie about a weapon that wasn’t there unless he says he threw the gun away, which ???? Anna also seems to have made peace with things, so I’m sure she gave a statement saying exactly what happened.  I get that G wants to help, and isn’t always great at knowing what to do (see above), but I see no way for this to actually be a decision he has to make.  There is understandable hesitation as we saw in his testimony, and that’s the drama in it -- he knows what will happen, but does he really have a choice?  (If they make him lie, I’ll be pretty frustrated because there’s no logical way, whatsoever, that a lie could save anything.  He’s also already given a statement earlier.)  

I know others have drawn very clever parallels to Anna/Kensi and careers, but this arc/plot still leaves me confused, if I’m being honest.  They’re playing it for drama and relationship strain, but it’s not inherently a situation that brings it.  I feel like Anna still could have made the comment about her career not being everything to her, but that it was where she was now -- and that sort of solidifies that she and G take, at the very least, a break because the distance is getting difficult.  

She’s a rookie and has to prioritize the job, and maybe she is trying to figure out who she really is -- since she left a steady job and was more freelance, in so many words, for years.  She avoided stability, and now she has to figure out where she wants to go.  That’s where she is right now, as she’s still young.  This would contrast with G, who, as he told Sam, was more than happy with the status quo.  He’s not someone who thinks about his future, and never really has.  He’s not a big plan kind of guy.  Anna hasn’t been a big plan kind of girl, and that’s how they connected, but she’s also never stopped to try and figure out if she will always want to be that person.  They could have parted ways for that alone, and it still would have had some effect.  You could have had dramatic scenes, such as her being distant because she was busy with her job, and then she finds out that G never told her about the situation with his dad or his sister.  She’s already mentioned to Sam how Callen’s walls go up and down, and she has a hard time figuring him out at times.  With the job she pulls away, unintentionally, and he doesn’t pull her back when he needs her or reach out.  She starts to realize that maybe this is just not the right time for the relationship.  

Or, they could have gone some other route. Maybe they will.  I just think there was more drama to get out of the situation with his dad and Alex, who, I know had other commitments but could still get a mention, than with this arc.  Just my humble opinion. 

As this is coming in at about 2,000 words, I think I’ll cut myself off.

Sorry it went so long! And sorry it took so long! 

Thank you, as always, for asking!