KAOS Agent

There was a line in "Witch Hunt" when Robin asked where Little John got the crossbow and he said something like the shopkeeper looked rich and we're poor here, which was supposed to be a nod to the steal from the rich, give to the poor Robin Hood lore, but kind of pissed me off because small town storekeepers aren't generally rich and stealing a very expensive crossbow like that would reflect a major loss for the store. Stealing from tyrannical dictators like Prince John who crush the people and whose wealth comes off the backs of the peasants can be justified, stealing from your average Joe who is just trying to make a living is not. Not cool, Merry Men. Robin at least was somewhat down on John for stealing, but largely seemed not to care, so he didn't really come off as highly principled either.

The biggest difference between Hook and Regina's redemption arcs is that Hook actually has regrets. I believe that if he had to do it all over again, he'd choose to do it differently despite that it might mean never meeting his true love. He wouldn't stand there and say that he's done a bunch of terrible things but they brought him to Emma, so yay for my bad actions! He also understands that his actions have caused him to be alone and that they are the reason that no one liked him. It's all about self-awareness and wanting to be a better person for himself, not because Emma or Henry or anyone else tells him to do so. Regina stands there like a sad panda when no one praises her for being a decent person. I'm always terrified she'll flip out if her every little deed is not acknowledged or praised. She's always needing positive reinforcement to do the right thing and going right back to the bad behavior when she isn't lauded. It should be damn embarrassing to have to have people praise you for being a normal human being. Hook doesn't look for credit or expect it and is fairly uncomfortable when he does get it. That's a marked difference between the two of them. Also I think that Regina is mentally ill and Hook's not, so there's that.

Given the massive overexposure of Zelena and her many pointless fairybacks, I'm not at all excited to see that not only is Elsa in nine episodes, but Anna & Kristoff are in at least six as well. That's a lot of episodes for non-regulars especially considering they've got to integrate the Knave into the story and Robin Hood is not a regular either.

See I don't like the idea of Hook trying to impress Snow. She can judge him on his recent actions to help save her family and especially how he treats her daughter or she can suck it. Snow liked Neal because he had some lucky sperm without ever really considering that Emma had repeatedly expressed to her that Neal wasn't a great guy, so I'd rather Snow just deal with the idea that Hook & Emma are a thing and no one go out of their way to impress Snow.

Snow has always leaned towards the depressive, pessimistic side of things, so I've always thought that she dwells so much on the loss, she can't see to focus on what she has in front of her. She keeps trying to change Emma to fit what she wants and needs while David has always just been so happy to have Emma in his life at all. Maybe it's because he got to see who she was as more of a casual acquaintance and was impressed with what he saw of her as Cursed!David, but didn't have relationship expectations like Snow did. So when the curse broke and he realized that the little baby he'd put in the wardrobe and the kick ass independent sheriff were the same person, he was just like "Damn, that awesome woman is my little girl!" He just wants her to do what makes her happy. And he's so good at letting that show without pressuring Emma into feeling like she needs to do something to gain his approval. Their little talk down at the waterfront in "The New Neverland" was just so David. Telling Emma to just give a shot to lunch with Neal so that she doesn't throw something away because of fear. Now obviously, I still think the Charmings had the wrong end of the stick with regards to Neal, but David was giving Emma some pretty good advice without pushing her or making her feel like he would disapprove if she made a different choice from the one he wanted her to make. I love their dynamic so much and it's one of the few bright spots in 3B. And it's fun to go back and watch earlier episodes with them trying to build a relationship when I like David and am not influenced by my negative feelings for Cursed!David. It's also kind of funny because I now have the opposite reaction to watching Mary Margaret interact with Emma in those same scenes.

I rewatched the beginning of "Broken" yesterday and this time I noticed David's reaction to seeing Emma for the first time after the curse broke. Josh Dallas acted the hell out of that scene albeit in a very subtle way. Emma & David in Season 1 had a limited relationship - One in which Emma was not at all impressed by him and he knew it. So I remember watching and being all about the Emma/Mary Margaret reaction and not really caring about David at their first meeting. But watching David's face and reaction was so nice this time around because I saw he was crying and he desperately wanted to just grab his daughter and hug her and knew he couldn't. And now that I like David, Real!David, not Cursed!David, it makes that moment so much more poignant to watch. That episode in general really showed how much better David understands Emma than Snow. He was more willing to back off and let Emma try to process what happened than to push something that very clearly wasn't going to happen. His approach has been way more effective than Snow's even to this date, and it was all set up in Broken.

Okay, so I just rewatched this episode and while it's awesome and I remember being so excited for Season 2, now I watch it and think on the ashes of those expectations. Anyway, on to the episode. First off, I hate David's hair. Like I forgot how much I hated the really short look, but his hair when he's fighting Rumpel is awful. Not "The Shepherd" awful, but still really bad. We get the the "All magic comes with a price" refrain again in this episode. With this delightful exchange between Rumpel and Regina. Rumpel: I told you, all magic has its price. Regina: Henry shouldn't have to pay it. Rumpel: No, you should. But alas, here we are. Why is it the Henrys in Regina's life are always the ones paying the price and Regina never has to? Answer me that show. That's two dead Henrys in one season. Never go near the woman if your name is Henry or you know someone named Henry or even if you're thinking about your Ford truck. I'm telling you, if it can be traced back to a Henry, you're screwed. Regina's love for Henry was once again proven to be wholly selfish when she explains to Emma that her leaving town wasn't enough and that as long as Emma's around, Henry will never be hers. So the obvious solution to that is to kill Emma. I'm sure that will make Henry love you so much, Regina. Hello crazy! You can't fix thinking like this. I should feel bad about August turning to wood, but I also rewatched the end of "The Stranger" and hate him so much. Who could leave such an adorable baby with that horrible, horrible man? I mean did you see that baby? I wanted to cry for Baby Emma knowing how much her life would suck. And here she is being nice to August after he just left her there all helpless and cooing. Okay, so he was a little boy, but still. Use him for firewood! Did I mention that I hate him? What the hell was Mary Margaret doing wandering around the town after Henry "died"? Why didn't she stick around the hospital to comfort her friend and roommate when she arrived to find her son dead? Who just leaves like that? No one has ever been there for Emma, but Emma called Mary Margaret family and she just left. Mary Margaret is now on my list. Lastly, how far is the town line from Main Street? David left town at a little after 7. Meanwhile, Emma fought a dragon, climbed up an elevator shaft, got to the hospital and broke the curse all before he got to the line. He was kissing Snow on Main Street at 8:15, so like 40 minutes each way? Damn that's a big town.

There were so many interesting stories that should have come out of the set-up of "Going Home" and they threw them all away. We never saw Emma struggle with regaining her memories of her lonely life and giving Henry up for adoption, we never saw the Charmings struggle with losing their child again, hell we never saw Snow show any kind of interest in Emma's life at all, we never saw any struggle to rebuild a kingdom that had been completely destroyed by the curse and as of a few months earlier had been overrun with ogres. We barely even saw the lost year and now they're done with it. Nope, instead because they are tied into a villain for every 11 episode arc, all of that was dropped for a poorly developed Zelena story, random trips to Oz and plot, plot, plot that led nowhere. Season 1 dragged for a bit in the middle, but allowing the plot to breathe helped fill out the characters a lot. I also think that unlike every other seasons' villains, Season 1 had a villain trying to stop the good guy, not the other way around, which helped a lot. It made for a more interesting story because both sides could have wins and set backs without it seeming like all anyone was doing was chasing a MacGuffin and killing time until the finale. They were building a story, but I was never really sure as to when it would all come to a head. Now it's overly predictable because I know when it's going to end and nothing big will happen until then.

I was so happy when they killed off Neal, not because I wanted Neal dead so much, but because they have too many people in the regular cast already and many are getting the shaft - especially when you consider how much time they devote to the villain du jour. Then immediately upon Neal's death, they announce the Knave, a character never before seen on the parent show, as a regular and I just rolled my eyes. Of course, they need a new toy to play with. God forbid they develop the stories of their existing characters. I'm not at all excited about the Knave's arrival on the show. Actually, I'm not really excited about Season 4 in general.

I don't know if there was any clarification regarding the wording of Robin/Regina, though on the show it's never been referred to as True Love only as soul mates, but there was a comment from Adam about how Robin was definitely the guy with the tattoo in the tavern and how we all saw him. This was his response to the idea that perhaps there is another guy with the tattoo and Regina was mistaken about Robin. I remember being annoyed that he didn't leave this exit ramp should the Robin/Regina/Marian thing not pan out like they hope it will. And no, I will never be on board with Roland having a stepmother who was responsible for the loss of his mother in his life for years. Even if I ignore the part where Regina murdered Marian (because Emma's late involvement stopped that from happening), she was still responsible for Roland going through the trauma of losing his mother and not having her around for some very critical formative years. Getting her back now is great, but even if they don't kill her off again (which would be horribly cruel and traumatic for Roland), it's not all's well that ends well. That family was destroyed by Regina and her ending up with Robin in the end is hugely problematic. Even from a "they grew apart" or a "we're different people now" perspective it doesn't work for me because they were separated and these changes occurred due to Regina's reign of terror.

While I am heartily sick of Regina getting way more character development than the heroes, I'd be less so if they didn't also spend so much time giving the Villain of the Half Season so much backstory and spread the love around to other characters. Zelena got three episodes of background and she was in exactly 9 eps (the brief video of Zelena in the finale doesn't count). Meanwhile, David got a quick story about failing his daughter/worry about the new baby and they couldn't even bother to follow through with it in the episode they brought it up in! Maybe they're afraid to give the heroes interesting stories because it would take away from the villains? Like if they show David struggling with something too much (especially with something that one of the villains was responsible for), it makes the villains struggles seem less understandable. Stop with the endless villain stories! I'm over it. They aren't interesting and are becoming incredibly repetitive. Or you know, if you absolutely can't leave the villains alone, let's tie it to an Emma backstory. Like Enchanted Forest Evil Guy was banished/fled to our world a few years ago and Emma had a run in with him in her job as a bounty hunter. We could see Badass!Emma of the past. Or is it too hard to tie something in with a hero because your pet villain Regina would be sidelined?

I've been thinking about how to "fix" the Evil Queen problem I have with a redemption seeking Regina. It's not something they're going to be able to do for me, but I think that something they could do to ameliorate my problems with the continued use of more and more horrible acts by the Evil Queen in the past is to stop having her look like she enjoys it so much. When she seems to be getting off on the acts themselves, it makes me really uncomfortable with the notion of redemption. She becomes a sadist and her enjoyment of inflicting pain on others really strips away the humanity they want me to see underneath the Evil Queen facade. I don't know if it's direction or just how Lana plays it, but they need to stop it. It's not easy to associate that her actions are coming from emotional pain in her past when she's clearly liking what she's doing.

Here's the thing. It is not just Robin/Regina/Marian. There is a very young child involved in this as well. Both cast and showrunners have ignored the Roland issue completely when addressing their comments on the topic. I find this to be serious problem because anything that happens to Marian will heavily affect her son. I know a lot of people hated Hook & Neal discussing who got to "get" Emma first (it's completely and totally Emma's choice, boys), but Hook's motivation for backing off was solely due to Henry. There was an actual acknowledgement that Henry was part of the equation. I can only hope the writers are considering the young boy caught in the middle of their stupid soap opera twist.

Regina's motivations as a character have never been completely sane. I think that is why it's hard for me to buy into a redemption arc for her. She's never been portrayed as all there. She blames a young child for something her mother did and flies completely off the handle down into such a psychotic rage that it's hard to believe the crazy wasn't there all along, it was just buried by her own contentment with life. This idea is backed up by the many situations where when Regina gets her way and ends up with what she wants, she's relatively stable. Take it away and she flips out again. You have to deal with the crazy before I can fully believe that no matter what life throws at her, Regina will stick to behaving like a mentally stable, mature adult. I also need this show to stop pretending that she didn't do or plan to do terrible things to Henry. I have no doubt she loved him, but it's not a healthy love. The plan she had to remove his free will, so that she could make him love only her was truly sick. She never seems to take Henry's feelings into account. How did she think Henry would react when she killed Emma with the apple turnover? Did she really think that after killing all of his family and friends with the failsafe, Henry would be a happy little boy who loved to frolic in the Enchanted Forest? There's never any awareness of his feelings and it just feeds into my belief that the woman is actually mentally ill. Henry is a boy who I believe would have True Love for Regina because he is loving and forgiving and very much in the vein of Snow White. On the other hand, I don't read Regina's love for Henry as pure and true because time after time I've seen her not place his well being and feelings above her own. There has to be an acknowledgement and self-awareness that what she was doing was wrong and not just because she failed or because Henry desperately pleaded with her not to do it. Don't whitewash it or pretend it didn't happen. Address it and show me that she understands why it's not at all acceptable to do that.

The thing is that "Best Romantic Cliffhanger" would get a bunch of fangirls voting for it whereas Might Lose Season Pass is more of a casual fan category which is probably more reflective of general audience feelings. I know I was enjoying the finale and it was working its way back to me feeling better about the show until it became all about Regina again at the end. That said, in a romantic cliffhanger way it was still way better than the stupid Castle cliffhanger, so if I had to choose I'd go with OUAT. Basically, not as sucky a cliffhanger as anything else, but not interesting enough to keep me watching. Incidentally, if you want some interesting numbers use the filters on FF.net for individual characters on Once and look at the story count for them. Since ff.net is not biased in any way towards anything and is simply a repository for all stories everywhere, I found the numbers fascinating. Emma is in thousands more stories than Regina for example. Now obviously, I wouldn't base anything off of these numbers for any reason, but it's still a fun look since it does cross into all fandoms/ships.

I've found that people with "boring" names tend to give their kids unique and special names because they hated being just boring old John or whatever. People who grew up with a more unusual name or one with a different spelling often give their kids more "normal" names because they've spent their lives having to explain how to pronounce or spell their names constantly and it's a pain in the ass they don't want to put on their child. Josh and Anna had the ability to use M and be cutesy without messing with their kids' names too much. Then they went and named their daughter Mackynzie. She's going to love having to spell that out all the time.

I'm hopeful that these are just the actors' current opinions on things. I highly doubt they've seen the script for the premiere yet, so I'm going with their thoughts are personal headcanon. Lana is just all over the place with Regina which is amusing since it's pretty much exactly how the writers have made her. She's got a pure heart, she loves Henry, she's going to go evil, oh wait, she's got light magic now her entire being is changed, she's got fireballs to take on Elsa (whatever happened to heroes don't kill, Regina?), she doesn't care that she killed Marian, her heart is filled with love. I mean, what? If nothing else, Regina should be horrified that she stripped that beautiful child of his mother and caused Robin years of pain. It shows no growth that she's still selfish Regina never considering the consequences of her actions. I do think she's right in that they'll have something external done to Regina to make her go evil again. That way they won't have to give up the Evil Queen persona but it won't be her fault at all when she kills, curses, terrorizes, etc. a ton of innocent people. In fact, fighting the evilness inside her will make her even more white magical and heroic. True Love's Kiss from Robin will break the evil curse and Marian can just go off and find another man.

Who planned these debate topics? Debate: The Villains…The True Heroes? It would be so delightful to pay a couple hundred euros to attend this con only for it to make me want to kill myself at the idiocy of the fandom.

At least in Season 1, some of the filler episodes delivered Emma giving happy endings to still cursed characters. Hansel & Gretel were reunited with their father, Cinderella got back with her boyfriend and kept her baby, etc. The overarching plot was what kept me really interested, but the happy endings being found in a Land without Magic was really nice to see. They were also able to use these as character moments for Emma back when she actually got reasonably paced development. That was also back when Emma was still the Saviour and the heroes were allowed the occasional win. I think part of what worked with this dynamic is that while Regina was winning on the big issues, Emma was slowly eating away at the edges of the curse, acting as the Saviour without even knowing it. In Season 3, the "heroes" had exactly one win in 22 episodes. Emma captured the shadow that allowed them to leave Neverland. That's it. That's a glaring issue with the last season. This was made even more obvious when Hook tells Emma she defeated Pan (no, that was Rumpel) and she defeated the Wicked Witch (no, that was Regina) and she broke the curse (she broke the first one, but again this time around that was Regina). Do the writers even recognize how ridiculous it was to have Hook say that? What did Emma or any of the heroes do in 3B? Emma may as well have stayed in NYC. Catering to the redemption arcs of their villains has sidelined the heroes to an extent where I wonder why they even bother to have them on screen. My plea to them for next season is to please, please, please let the heroes actually contribute. Maybe they could have a villain who is difficult to defeat, but everyone (and this includes Regina & Rumpel) makes a solid plan and they spend the next several episodes putting it into action. Everyone contributes, everyone wins. And please never again remove the powers of one character, so that you can raise another character above everyone else. It's not cool and it's extremely cheap storytelling.

I think one of the more disappointing aspects of Season 3 for me was the poor use/complete lack of world building. In a fantasy story oftentimes the land/environment is almost a character all on its own. In 3A, they had Neverland and used it fairly effectively. The constant night, the endless jungle with deadly plants, the cries of children, the strange magic. All of it gave off a creepy vibe and I could see how the dark atmosphere could be eating away at the Nevengers. It was a positive step for the writers that they put this new fairytale land to good use as a challenge for everyone. In 3B, we returned to Storybrooke which was most welcome and fine, but at some point in time, Storybrooke lost its uniqueness. In some ways, I think the renewed curse having lost its previously existing rules erased what made Storybrooke an interesting place. Suddenly, there were new people but they didn't have fake memories and the town line issue didn't seem to be a problem except for flying monkeys (and I fail to see why they couldn't all climb in a bus or something and bust through those monkeys). They chose not to explain what the hell was up with the new rules for Storybrooke. Did Robin and his Merry Men get a World without Magic download? Can outsiders still find the town? Why is there magic in town when there wasn't with the first curse? Now that Zelena's gone can everyone get the hell of Dodge? I don't know any of this and it's a failing on the part of the writers that this is still unknown because yes, Storybrooke is a "character" and it got no development at all. Also in 3B, we went to Oz and I am so highly disappointed in the waste of what could have been a really interesting place. Zelena may as well have been any old witch from any realm because other than making her green and really stretching on the whole heart, brain & courage thing, they did nothing to make her represent Oz. Glinda was an idiot, Dorothy may as well have not been there, there was zero explanation on why Zelena's father was so wary of magic in world run by "good" witches and they killed off the Wizard in the first episode. Oz never became the developed world that it should have been, it was just a land with a green city. What a waste of a potentially great new "character". And lastly, we have the Enchanted Forest. You know the previously desolate, completely destroyed world that was overrun with ogres. Our intrepid heroes ought to have had all kinds of challenges rebuilding and organizing things upon their return to this world. What did we get instead? Nothing. The ogres were gone, apparently everyone can live in the Queen's castle and an entire society was able to reform with no difficulty. It's ridiculous and yet another handwave of the negative effects of the original Dark Curse. You'd think the writers could have made at least one of these places interesting in 3B. I guess it's just more "characters" that got screwed over by the writers' obvious character bias.

Considering this show's need to throw the heroes under the bus to put them in the wrong somehow and more on the villains' level, I'm surprised that they don't allow them to kill people. Then Regina could throw that in their faces whenever she's in her crazy world where self-awareness doesn't exist and she's just a queen, they're the ones who made her "evil". How many Black Knights are there out there with families and friends who miss them because Charming took it upon himself to defend his family and not to let them kill him or Snow or Baby Emma? The nerve of that man!

Rewatching Season 1 of this show gives me whiplash because Regina was really truly horrible and the more I'm reminded of the things she did, both in Storybrooke and in the Enchanted Forest, the less the Regina redemption arc works for me. It is highly disturbing to see them just gloss over the lives she destroyed because she's good now. It's not even that I can't see her become redeemed, but damn does she need to experience some justice for her actions. And this sort of whitewashing/ignoring of crimes has bled into the actor's comments. Lana laughed about how Regina had murdered Marian, but she was just a random peasant to her and unimportant. It's not like she knew or cared about Peasant #198. Ha ha. Yeah, that's just hysterical. I know she doesn't mean for it to come off the way it does, but her attitude there reflects how the show has chosen to address or rather not address Regina's actions against people who are not really associated with the Charmings. The use of Henry to cover for Regina is also particularly egregious. The kid who believes in heroes and good always winning turns around and tells his mom he was sorry and shouldn't have ever gotten Emma. Ignoring what that says about Henry's relationship with Emma, the Charmings and Neal, yeah, it would have been so great to leave an entire town of innocent people cursed and miserable just because it made Regina sad to have to face the consequences of her actions. That was the start of them going too far with the Regina whitewash. Once the heroes start ignoring the damage done to the randoms in favor of propping Regina, you've got problems. I'd also say that the Evil Queen persona is what attracts a lot of fans. Now that she's white magic and true love and puppies and rainbows and the New!Improved!Saviour, where can they go? If she regresses, then 3B is even more of a farce than it already was. If she doesn't, then she's boring as hell. And they can't keep going back to the Evil Queen of the past well because the more evil deeds she commits in the past, the harder it is to overcome my revulsion at her getting a happy ending while hundreds of innocent people who were collateral damage in her revenge quest are rotting in their graves. There really is nowhere to go with Regina.

I think it would have been an awesome twist the knife moment if Zelena had shown up at Snow's apartment with the mobile. I was so sick of the fawning Zelena and Snow's stupidity, but that would have been a truly heinous move for Zelena to make. Stuff like that would have made her a better villain - even if I'd have to handwave how Zelena would know that was supposed to be Emma's.

I have serious problems with Rumpel's pawn shop and the fact that Belle was actively selling stuff out of it in 3B. What the hell? Those are stolen goods and Belle knows it. It would be a tiny step towards redemption, a show of good faith if you will, if Rumpel would have an open house and allow people to come in a claim their goods free of charge.

Can someone please confirm to me that it is in fact mid-June? The amount of snow currently building up on my deck has led to some confusion on my part. Maybe Elsa has ditched Storybrooke and come to my house? My garden is most unhappy about this turn of events . On a positive note, while I couldn't take a walk earlier due to rain, I have much less of a problem walking in the snow.