melody :3

“have another drink, you know it always helps you think” ~pan to og hook, s3

Tilly: And I’m not?

vs.

Henry: I’ve done stupid things too.

Ivy: Oh, so now I’m stupid?

we don’t actually see him do a lot of outright evil stuff*, we can’t really estimate a number of victims easily bc we have no way to know how many lost boys there are at a time and how long an average lost boy stays on neverland. we have no way of knowing if hes had 1000 lost boys and they all die fast or like 40 and he only gets new ones very very rarely (both are unlikely obviously but you get my point).

we don’t know how far he goes- is he always cruel to wendy? was she in the cage the whole time or just while henry was there, so she’d stay out of the way?

we don’t know how he interacts with lost boys- he’s a leader, that much is clear, but that’s all we know. the way he acted around them when henry was there isn’t an indication of anything bc we don’t know how much they know, but presumably enough that they’d go along with an act?

its so easy in fics to pick one side and lean into the possibilities of good or bad instead of trying to walk the line like canon- bc frankly in canon i think he’s not even that evil, just deeply selfish and hedonistic. i mean in the flashback with hook’s brother, he was very chaotic neutral

…

but its also easy to lean into the “darker” interpretation- he kidnapped all the lost boys and ripped them away from their families, he didn’t let them leave no matter how much they wanted to, didn’t value the lives of his allies any more than his enemies, maybe he even was responsible for having rufio killed just so felix would stay more loyal, maybe he abused wendy more than just keeping her caged, abandoned rumple exclusively for power, etc etc. there is so many things you can tack onto him that would be very possible and plausible within the confines of canon

bc like a list of contradictory things that are stated/shown in canon: (off the top of my memory lol)

lost boys stayed loyal years after pan's death/we have multiple lost boys who weren’t willing to betray pan even for their own benefit

lost boys who wanted to go home, weren’t allowed. according to wendy, a lot of them cried at night bc they wanted to leave and the "shadow" didn’t let them leave -> was the shadow acting under pan's orders? most likely. but she explicitly said it was the shadow, not pan for some reason

he always said again and again that he never loved rumple and tries to rationalize and justify abandoning rumple, also claimed he never cared abt rumple

he also clearly was close to tears when he let the shadow take rumple away and kept the little doll over centuries, he kept track of rumple's life enough to know abt baelfire, rumple being the dark one, henry, the dark curse, even henry's other family (like emma and regina and snow etc). (note tho- some of the henry-related info could fall under him searching for the truest believer, but like it still means he's been watching since he knew abt the curse and stuff) (fiona, as a comparison, didn’t even know rumple's name when she was summoned in that one flashback)

he essentially kinda stole the magic bean from rumple (yes, rumple did go through too, but malcolm decided where they'd go and then rumple was taken back to the enchanted forest by the shadow anyway)

he found a loving, stable, safe replacement home for rumple before abandoning him the first time (bare minimum ik, but more than characters like brennan or cora did)

he killed felix like it was a casual thing, showing no remorse of any kind

he kinda helped killian and liam without actually taking anything for it; he did it in a shitty way obvious, but he did technically warn them not to leave the island and that dreamshade is poison. both times they just didn’t listen

he treated baelfire badly enough to get the title of the most evil person he ver knew (neal said that in the flashbacks w mulan and robin hood iirc)

he also taught neal some genuinely useful things, like survival and the "never break in somewhere unless you know the way out" thing, which neal also taught emma lol

he kept wendy in a cage for an undisclosed amount of time and kept her as a hostage

the specifics of what they did (if we disregard the scale/the sheer difference in numbers) then pan and fiona did very very similar things tbh- he just admitted to himself that it was evil and that it was cruel and fiona is lying to rumple and to herself to act like the end goal was still to be with him.

but the thing is- fiona, when she was banished to the dark realm, clearly had a bit of access to other realms bc that’s how she stole kids, but she didn’t ever keep track of rumple in anyway- even tho i'm sure it would have been possible. and then pan, who never pretended like he wanted rumple back, did actually keep track of rumple very well- so much so that he knew about baelfire, (iirc he also knew abt milah), he knew about henry, he knew about the entire other side of henry's family (emma, snow, david, etc?? teh curse?!?). pan who claims to have always hated rumple showed more care in his actions than fiona who claimed to have always loved rumple. fiona didn’t even keep track enough to know rumple's NAME centuries later.

(by all means, according to what little fiona knew about rumple, she probably didn’t even know he was still alive)

everything he did in the show was to become immortal and then later to get revived??? this is probably the LEAST canonically suicidal character i know!!