tomeandflickcorner:

It suddenly dawned on me how Emma was always so desperate for friendships, she seems incapable of recognizing her habit of maintaining toxic friendships.

And no, I’m not just talking about her so-called friendship with Regina, which frequently included Regina belittling and talking down to Emma, low-key insulting her for her eating habits or the time she spent in jail (which, by the way, was a direct result of Regina’s actions forcing Emma’s parents to send her away in order to save her life- because Regina was clearly plotting to murder Baby Emma while her curse cloud was spreading across the Enchanted Forest).  That or Regina blaming Emma for saving a woman she murdered in the original timeline and making Emma feel like she should apologize for that. (Among other things.)

I’m also thinking about how Emma referred to Lily as her first real friend.  Even though that ‘friendship’ was horribly one-sided, and it largely consisted of how Emma could help Lily, with Lily never showing any real concern for Emma and what she wanted.  (Such as how Lily didn’t even seem to care when she cost Emma her chances with the ‘GORP’ family.)

Or how Emma considered August to have been her friend, too.  Even though he was barely there for her when she was growing up alone and feeling unloved and unwanted.  When he had the chance to offer her a bit of hope by telling her that she did have loving parents out there and that they hadn’t wanted to give her up when he swung by as a teenager, he just told her his interpretation of an old bedtime story.  Not to mention how it was his idea to set Emma up to go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit.  And then kept the money Neal had wanted him to give her.  Sure, August did the right thing in the end by trying to warn everyone about Tamara, but whether or not that was enough to make up for everything else is debatable. 

It’s such a shame that the show rarely gave Emma a chance to spend time with the people she actually had formed healthy friendships with.  People like Ashley and Elsa.  Because those two were probably Emma’s first real friends.  (Not including Mary Margret, who turned out to be her mother, and Killian Jones, who remains the closest person in Emma’s life.)