woolmintons

She told him to get his shit together and then they could talk. She's asking for his trust and she's not giving it in return. Trusting him would mean believing that he left to do what she asked, not that he left FOREVER and is never coming back. She's apparently immediately jumping to the worst possible conclusion and it's a real disservice to the character and her development over six seasons. I'm also tired of the double standards and the uneven relationship. They write a whooooole scene in the episode not to be named where he has to basically ask permission to see her box o' memories, and then apparently she's just looking through his sea chest where he felt it was safe enough to hide the ring. Emma has said downright ugly things to him before, and fandom's response was "He's a big boy, he can handle it," but when Emma violates him, curses him against his will, and he calls her an orphan, their response is "He's an abusive asshole for what he said to her and deserves to die." They write Hook as noticing if the slightest thing is wrong with Emma, yet the dude looks like he would rather drink bleach than have some of these conversations, and they have Emma completely oblivious to it. We've joked before about Hook disappearing from town and no one noticing, but it's totally true. But apparently I'm filled with ~internalized misogyny~! Emma’s just my ~self-insert~ because my lady parts make my brain go bluuuuuhhhhhhh when Colin’s on screen! Hook's some poor tragic cinnamon roll blob that Emma's just oh so mean to and forced into proposing. How dare she! This is all her fault! If only she hadn't snooped through his things!</s> I'm not saying Kilian Jones deserves better. I would never say that. I'm not saying he's without blame. Emma has every right to be pissed at him for proposing while keeping the secret and for trying to destroy his memories. She has every right to give the ring back. He fucked up. What she doesn't have a right to is to immediately act like he's never coming back when there is evidence right in her fucking hands that he intended to come back and that maybe he was doing as she asked? Instead, I'm thinking Emma, honey, you are a smart woman. You know how important these things are to him. He kept them all of these years, just like you have. Please have more faith in your TRUE LOVE than that. Your relationship should be shaped by your past experiences with HIM; instead you're treating this a though he isn't utterly devoted to you, you followed him to the Underworld and were willing to split your heart with him, and the dude likes to go off and brood and deal with shit on his own. They took the time to put the freaking scene of her looking through his sea chest. It's not just her picking up just Liam's ring because it was on a table. They specifically showed her looking at ALL OF THESE IMPORTANT THINGS AND THEN IGNORING THEM. Snow's job in the narrative is apparently to be contrary at times, maybe she'll point this out to her daughter. If they'd let her have a conversation with Emma, that is. Also, why deal with the main character's relationship before her wedding when we can have a Zelena/Oz centric!

There's an enormous difference between submarining around coastal Maine for a few days to learn about brotherhood and honor and stop hating yourself, general getting-your-shit-together (which Hook was planning on doing AND EMMA TOLD HIM TO DO) and leaving your Gods-Proven True Love 5ever no-looking-back (which Emma seems to believe). Leaving his most treasured possessions back at their house should have been a huge red flag to her. Imagine if they had had a huge fight when her secret came out and she gave every indication that she had left town for good (not that she would leave Henry, but humor me) and Hook walked into their bedroom to see her baby blanket and cigar box o' memories. Would he say "I'm going to shove Emma's most treasured objects, the ones she's literally carried through countless foster homes, the streets, prison and several states, into the shed," or would he take that as a sign that she's coming back when she's ready because she would NEVER leave those things behind for good? Maybe she'll come to that realization on her own. Maybe Henry will bookend the scenes and tell her that. Maybe she'll realize that her abandonment issues are making it seem like she doesn't have faith in them, like his self-loathing made it seem like he didn't have faith in them. Maybe David will wake up and be like "I"m upset that he killed my father, but I'm more upset that he left us. That's not the person I thought he had become." But that would mean Emma got to have a conversation with one of her parents, and, well, you know how they seem to feel about those. :/ Sigh. I'm so very tired of contrived angst.

Carrie Fisher called the conventions "lap dances," didn't she? I feel like it's 100% accurate.

ALL OF THIS. (Apologies for the following essay) I want to be naive and believe that they're contrasting their "redemption arcs" SO MUCH on purpose. It's just TOO MUCH of a difference in the way they're handled that it has to be deliberate. That they show us Hook killing a nameless, completely innocent person, then give them a name, and have their victim's loved ones (or the victim themselves) face their murderer, and that they're going to spend multiple episodes dealing with his guilt, remorse, and DAVID AND EMMA'S FEELINGS ABOUT IT. I still can't say with any sort of certainty that Robin knew that Regina killed Marian. Regina's first responses were to victim blame (Maybe she deserved it!), insult her (She can't possibly be expected to remember all of the pathetic vanilla peasants she slaughtered), plan to murder her again, and then act like she was the biggest victim in the situation instead of, you know, Robin, Roland, or Marian herself? Marian never got to call Regina out on her murdering an innocent, and even before they pulled the Zarian reveal out of their asses they never focused on the real victim, just had Robin BASICALLY CONFESS HIS LOVE TO REGINA NEXT TO MARIAN'S FROZEN BODY AND THEN GIVE US TWO ROUNDS OF CRYPT SEX??? Like, we never learned the groom's name, we never saw his widow face Regina, and we'll never see or hear anything about either of them ever again as some reminder to Regina of the things she's done and needs to atone for. If Hook tried to place some blame on Robert, that none of what David learned changed the fact that he was a drunk and a shitty father for the first 5.99 years of David's life or that he deserved to die because he sold his own kid to the Dark One, he would 100% deserve to be hit by a car again and then kicked in the nuts by every member of the Charming family. Not to mention, the only thing I'm sure about is that we're not going to get a "Breaking Glass" type Captain Charming episode where David's running after Hook in the woods at night begging him to marry his daughter. That's how absurd the REC is. We just had an episode where Regina had to act like the Evil Queen again, and had NO problem doing so. No problem murdering the Wish!Charmings or victim blaming/threatening/forcing/terrorizing Emma into remembering. She slipped into it so quickly. That she wouldn't physically hurt Henry, but so easily emotionally hurt him, which is exactly what we've seen The Evil Queen do with the dragon episode, or saw Regina do it all throughout seasons 1 and 2? Then we almost immediately have an episode with Hook having to lie to and steal from his True Love and he's outright telling David he doesn't want to do it? That Regina can so easily give those hearts back, and somewhat atone for taking them in the first place, but brushed them off as no big deal? Regina's "so redeemed" that she is just always using a combination of light and dark magic!!! but Killian Jones is always going to be haunted by his past and forever be on the path to redemption? It would drive me insane if I didn't (probably naively) believe that they're doing this on purpose. I choose to have hope that they're doing this on purpose. So on one hand, I 100% hate that they went there. That it doesn't mesh very well with what we've seen of Hook and other people he's hurt or the fact that, as others have said, they had to handwave so many details in order for it to happen in the first place. On the other hand, my second favorite character is going through an actual redemption arc, that's also the best on the show IMO, so I'll take what I can get. I would rather have repetitive victim-remorse-atone/atone attempt than victim-pity party-victim dies without anyone knowing the truth-more pity party/victim coddles abuser or victim-no fucks given-remurder-field in which I plant my fucks is still barren. Also, this probably means we'll get more meaty emotional scenes between Colin and Josh, and I'm ALWAYS here for that. Josh was so, so great in this episode.

I'm starting to believe there's a Great August Retcon, in addition to the Saintification of Nealfire and Regina Exception Clause. A&E, above all the other writers, try to act like they didn't have August collude with Emma's statutory rapist to send her to prison and completely destroy her. And after he stole her money and bought a motorcycle with it, she lived in her car for the next 9 years, like, you know, still on the streets? Saying you knew she didn't belong on the streets doesn't really mesh with your subsequent actions, dude. Emma, you can forgive people for what they did. You can forgive Neal, you can forgive August, you can forgive Regina, but it doesn't mean you have to forever act like they never cause you all of this pain in the first place. I don't blame baby Pinocchio for leaving her at the orphanage. He was seven. It was too much to ask of a seven-year-old. I also think he was helpful as a teenager; his advice lead Emma to turning herself in. But I do blame adult August for what he did to her. "He was my friend!" Emma, honey, he only tried to get you to break the curse because he was turning to wood. I like Sean, but I do not give a single fuck about Outlaw Queen. They didn't give a shit about his character before, they're not going to give a shit about him now outside of how it will affect Regina. My biggest wish for the upcoming OQ storyline is that they could have had Robin react like a normal person to Regina - like... you killed my wife! You're a mass murderer! You live a life of luxury, I help the poor! But I'm guessing they're not going there. Sigh. On the completely opposite side of the spectrum, FUCK YES to Emma for picking her own name, FUCK YES to getting shit done in the Wish!Realm, and FUCK YES to kicking Gideon's ass to the curb with her Syrio Forel moment. That's my girl. And Charming blaming himself for bringing Gideon? At least some people on this show have self-awareness and take responsibility. Also, are we making of list of REC moments? Regina causes them to miss the portal, Emma isn't allowed to say anything about it. Robin's possibly real, even though she murdered people in this realm and constantly went on about how no one was real. Only two people in the wardrobe, a HUGE part of the ONCE mythology, unless of course Regina can bring Robin. I'm probably missing a bunch but my eyes literally glazed over for a good chunk of the OQ scenes. Poor Belle. At least when Snow wakes up next time she can talk to her about what it's like to meet your 28-year-old adult baby-child. That was an oddly specific age, too? Like in 28 years there will be a savior specific?

I expected fat shaming and alcoholism cracks from Regina, but from Hook's own true love? Oh, I'm sorry, Hook's own true roommate? Yikes.

Except according to Beverly's tweet, Colin WAS at the premiere party. She's wearing the same shirt in all of those BTS photos (and looks like she was having a great time!)

This was literally a two hour Regina pity party.

The metal lights behind the blonde woman are the same as the metal lights next to Merlin (I wasn't referring to the candles in the vault, sorry). (This cap from the Hurray! The fairies are free! Party) So he recorded the message while at Granny's ~6 weeks ago, not from before he was turned into a tree.

Emma's wearing a ring on a necklace in both the promo video (18 seconds) and her promo picture!

I, too, thought the message was old, but if you look to Merlin's right in his message, you can make out the lights from the "order up"/grill window at Granny's, so it has to be from now.

"Regina worked too hard for her happy ending" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA

The video footage of Lily's Tom Thumb robbery actually has the words “Pawtucket Mini-Mart and Deli” in the corner, when they’re in Minnesota, not Rhode Island. And in “Heart of Gold,” the actual filming date (24 Dec 2014) was on the top of Rumple's heart monitor in the hospital.

What the hell was this episode? Fairybacks, Ozbacks, flashbacks to 9 weeks ago, five minutes of current timeline and clips from both 3x21/22 and 4x11 all in the same episode? When have they ever had clips from previous episodes like that? They spent like five episodes building up Snowing’s secret, then had Emma learn about it off screen, and now spent less than two minutes of the subsequent episode dealing with the fallout, and instead spent 75% of it focused on a secondary character that has acted as a plot device for Regina. That’s infuriating to me as an Emma fan. If you’re hyping this secret, and hyping Emma feeling betrayed and devastated, and hyping Emma possibly going dark because of this secret, you need to spend more than two minutes on it in the immediate aftermath. Emma, we love you, we made a mistake, we’ve changed, but we really can’t talk about it now because this is a Robin Hood/Rumple centric. Some other things: Poor Marian. Poor, poor, poor Marian. I think the entire Marian storyline has been so incredibly poorly handled. And they somehow managed to avoid the enormous elephant in the room- that Regina murdered Marian. We’ve gone 17 episodes and I’m still not positive if Robin knows that Regina murdered Marian. My mind went to the Rolly Joger when Rumple said that the quill could only be made of Enchanted Wood. And Regina’s had Robin’s phone number this whole time? She gave him keys to Neal’s apartment? Why would she ask Emma to find him then? Does no one look over this crap before it goes into production? Did I answer my own question by including the word “crap” in it? I know she’s not appealing to everyone, but I enjoy Zelena because she’s batshit crazy and the narrative treats her as such. And I think Bex is good at crazy eyes and creepy closeness. Honestly, since this was co-written by the guy who co-wrote “Breaking Glass” and “Shattered Sight,” I was preparing for the worst, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. Possibly because Emma and Regina shared zero screen time. They’ve consistently had Regina not give a shit about Emma’s feelings or even really be involved/present when Emma has any sort of big emotional storyline that don’t directly involve Henry (“Manhattan,” Neal’s death, her “Lost Girl” confession, Echo Cave, Walsh’s betrayal, Neal’s second death, wanting to run back to NY, her recognition and acceptance of home, her almost freezing to death, her magic freakout, etc.) and I was kind of wondering if they were going to throw that out the window to have Regina comforting her as part of their new ~friendship~. But they didn’t! Who knows how they’ll handle it in the next few episodes, though.

During the “Secrets of Storybrooke” special they showed this scene as B-Roll: And it didn’t make it into the episode. Maybe showing exactly how he went through a door to Oz?