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KAOS Agent

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Everything posted by KAOS Agent

  1. I think they were trying to squeeze in all the Snow centrics in early 3A due to Ginny Goodwin's pregnancy, but it was ridiculous to have the Lost Girl flashback be about anyone other than Emma. There were so many options to take this story and that they initially wanted Emma's realization to come about with Hook and not her mother is demonstrative of how little they cared about Emma/Snow, which is just mind blowing considering that was one of the best parts of S1.
  2. Because I've been bored, I was trying to come up with my favorite moment for each main character on the show. But something I've realized in thinking about moments I loved is that I can't really come up with many anymore. The later seasons of the show soured me even on the things I used to love. That said, here are some of my favorites: Snow - Using the candle and Regina to kill Cora. Harder paths be damned, this was by far the best Snow White moment (S2) David - Sword fighting the guards with Baby Emma in his arms (S1) Rumpel - Killing himself and Pan with the dagger (S3) Belle - That time she actually kicked Rumpel to the curb and forced him out of town (S4) Zelena - That time she picked apart all of Regina's woe is me complaints and told her "enough with the martyr complex". (S3) Hook - The entirety of the S3 finale. (S3) Emma - Her entire role in Hat Trick. It's one of the few times where Emma is allowed to show her street smarts and she gets the win without it being taken away. (S1) Regina - That time she apologized to everyone and admitted she was wrong. Oh wait... I liked her when she and Rumpel were screwing with each other (but not when they were screwing each other). Henry - When he was totally indifferent to everything because he was a normal kid with happy childhood memories (S3)
  3. They film the entire season at once, they only split the episodes for release. Tom Ellis had an initial agreement to go forward, which means availability was not an issue. I don't see anyone quibbling about scheduling/availability at the moment because no one knows anything about filming going forward. If anything, availability would be more flexible because everything is up in the air at the moment. Projects that were filming and then shutdown will likely be finished once they figure out how to go back to work, but anything beyond that is totally unknown.
  4. There were two reasons for this. One - because they was very little forward planning and a whole lot of shiny toy/wouldn't this be cool? ideas that they quickly tired of or simply didn't know how to resolve and so they got dropped. Two - because they couldn't handle the idea of fans figuring things out. No clues could actually be given because fans might be smart enough to connect the dots and that was not okay with the showrunners. These idiots considered changing Bae/Neal from being Henry's father because fans were speculating that might be the case. Now I personally wouldn't have minded Henry's father being a non-fairy tale related character, but changing an entire plot because fans had pegged it right is just stupid. If they can't handle fans speculating correctly, then they definitely aren't going to drop fun clues for the audience, so all you get is random twists that come out of nowhere. More disturbing though, is that the Neal/Henry/Emma connection could be considered to be easily dismissed by the writers since that was a huge part of the season 2 plot for several of their main characters.
  5. It definitely helps the audience believe something when an established character trait conveniently aids the villain or the heroes. We don't know how often Dru has visions because we are only going to see the ones that are relevant to the story, but the implication is that she has them more than just when the Scoobies are planning something. She's had them for centuries. It could also explain why she managed to be so long lived even though she's fragile and not entirely there mentally. Once never managed to explain the omniscience of its characters and it frequently removed me from the story due to the implausibility of it all.
  6. The foundation guy was the father and was using a foundation account to funnel the payments to the kid's mother. The murderer was aware of all of this and killed the kid to protect the foundation. The IRS didn't discover that the account was fraudulent in their investigation, but if had Ray come forward, everything would have fallen apart.
  7. Lana Parrilla was reported to be in a pilot for a FOX show that I believe has been picked up, but she is not listed in the cast now. She is in some movie with Shia LeBeouf, but nobody is really clear about when it's coming out and they completed filming summer 2018. I do think there is some level of playing to the room about Regina. The people who are at those kind of things are superfans who paid big bucks for the chance to reminisce about a character on a show that's been off the air for well over a year. Not that she isn't totally in love with the character herself, just that it's also what the audience wants.
  8. The thing is that in S1, they largely contained Regina's villainy to revenge on Snow. It was in S2 where she started massacring villages and then later had her crushing the hearts of randoms just because she was sad. They had her claim that all of her victims were collateral damage in her battle against Snow, but that does not work when they have her killing a groom on his wedding day or murdering a jester because he's annoying or taking extreme pleasure in the death and destruction she wrought. She was much more redeemable in S1 having never crossed any of the several moral event horizons she crossed later in the series. Mayor Regina also wasn't overpowered. While she had a huge advantage information-wise, she was on the same level as Emma and everyone else. It made her more relatable and sympathetic as a single woman struggling to keep her adoptive son when his birth mother shows up in town.
  9. I suspect that the Cinderella story was supposed to play out across the full season with the other threads being woven in as the season went on. They had to course correct early in the season when their new main storyline was not well received. With ratings falling even further they knew they didn't need to set up for a S8 and jumped to a poorly thought out new big bad. You'll notice that they quit caring about the Henry/Jacinda/Lucy stuff. The originals (Regina, Rumpel and Hook) got more focus, they brought back Zelena and gave Alice, one of the few new characters to enjoy popularity, a larger role in the story.
  10. Funny story, there's an answer to this. Here's a fun dialogue between Regina and Wish!Robin from 6.12: She's changed, y'all! I mean all those poor people are wandering around heartless not being able to fully feel emotion, but why bother to give them back? They're Regina's enemies. They obviously don't deserve them. It's not like half of her perceived enemies have been shown to be innocent people.
  11. I believe Graham was originally intended to be Sherlock Holmes.
  12. Did we know at that point that she had the vault full of hearts or did that happen later after we got the Cora backstory? I suspect the vault in Storybrooke was something they came up with once they made Cora the Queen of Hearts and even though it was part of an actual plan (Hershey voiced the queen in Hat Trick) that was something they were keeping under wraps until S2. I also think the heart thing wasn't fully thought out at that point. They showed her control Graham with the heart in S2, but I'm not sure they planned for the control thing to work in S1. She could kill him, but maybe not use the magic in magic-less Storybrooke. Otherwise, why wouldn't she just use Graham's heart to order him around in S1? She didn't want him hiring Emma, so why not just grab the heart and stop him? She was freaked that he was remembering. How hard would it have been to order him to forget everything? It's really easy to pull the story apart given what they showed us happened later, but looking at S1 in a bubble, I think you have to assume that there was no magic in Storybrooke and she had no magic ability. That's why she had to use Daniel's magical picture to get the poisoned apple.
  13. They are ideas guys. Everything is wouldn't it be cool if... with them. I think that there were some fantastic ideas that the show put out there, but without anyone supervising the follow through, they often ended up falling flat. When there's a pattern of no payoff, the idea of getting invested isn't appealing. It's telling that the most cohesive stories were the ones that had outside management. They may not have been everyone's cup of tea, but they usually made some sense. In S1, you had both the network and outside advisors like Damon Lindelof providing some guidance. In S3, the network stepped in again after the ratings disaster of S2. For S4A they literally had Disney's Chief Creative Officer on set to make sure they didn't damage the billion dollar Frozen franchise. After that I think the network quit caring. The quality from 4B on is pretty dismal. Things can get a bit echo chamber-y on this forum, so I found it interesting that the posters on Once's subreddit were also in agreement on this same topic.
  14. Which is where Regina's long term actions become less understandable. Rumpelstiltskin was the Dark One. He was the living embodiment of evil and even he was taken aback by some of Regina's actions. When the Dark One is questioning your life choices, it might be time to reassess.
  15. I don't think many would argue that Regina's irrational response makes sense in a twisted way. It was an interesting way to make Snow pretty blameless and still fully responsible in Regina's mind. I looked at the TWoP archive from this episode, which gave the immediate episode reaction, and most agree with your sentiments. The issue is that the responses in this thread are all from at least two years after the episode aired, such that her backstory has been much more fleshed out and all of Regina's actions after this event occurred are being evaluated based on this inciting event. That said, there are still a lot of evil actions that had been depicted in S1 to evaluate and question how the Young!Regina pictured here turned to full fledged psychopathy. Irrational hatred and need for vengeance on Snow make sense, but we've seen her send little children to their deaths, murder her own father, gleefully enslave, rape and murder Graham, arrange to have her friend Kathryn murdered, and curse an entire kingdom. And yet she feels not a twinge of guilt. She shows little emotion at all except when she's hurting people. Then she's reveling in it. The murder of Daniel does not explain her utter joy at torturing people not related in any way to Snow. If she were simply coldly going about getting the ingredients for her vengeance, I could see it - especially when combined with other events in the story. But she just flat out gets off on hurting others and that isn't something that would come out of Daniel's death.
  16. Nope. For someone who didn't believe magic existed a couple of hours earlier, she has zero reaction to the magical things in front of her. And she knows exactly what the wand is. From 1.04: Cinderella: Who are you? Godmother: I’m your fairy godmother. And I’m here to change your life, Cinderella. Cinderella: But, my stepmother told me that I couldn’t go. She forbade me to leave. Godmother: Your stepmother doesn’t have this. This wand has the power to take you to your ball, to your prince, and to- (The fairy godmother suddenly disintegrates, dropping her wand. Rumpelstiltskin appears and picks it up.) Cinderella: What… What did you do? Rumpelstiltskin: Now, now. I got what I wanted. There’s no need to be frightened. Cinderella: No need? You just killed my fairy godmother. She was trying to help me. Rumpelstiltskin: Was she? Do you know what this is? (Rumpelstiltskin holds up the wand.) Cinderella: Pure magic.
  17. Regina stormed into Snow's wedding and made a very public demonstration of magic and a proclamation of future plans. That entire throne room was full of people including, one would assume, people from other kingdoms. It's not a secret at all. The Evil Queen's threat would have reverberated throughout the lands. Cinderella's ball occurred after that wedding. It's ridiculous to have Cinderella say that magic does not exist.
  18. Wasn't there an episode where Cinderella was totally disbelieving in magic? And by that time we knew that her kingdom and Snow's were really close (Snow & David attended that ball the same day she commented how magic didn't exist), so how could she have missed the crazy magic wielding Evil Queen in the kingdom next door? At the very least, her kingdom should have been flooded with refugees fleeing the carnage and everyone should have been fearful about Regina getting ideas and invading their lands as well. None of it works if you put even the slightest thought into it.
  19. There was an excellent fan fic that detailed the lives of the random citizens in Storybrooke that took into account the details we were given about society on the show. One of the recurring characters (each chapter was about a different person) was Regina's assistant in the mayor's office and her reactions to in story events were always enjoyable. The show did introduce numerous storylines about civic responsibility. There was the sheriff's election in S1. Regina had city council meetings and there was something about Henry's castle being torn down as part of her mayoral push for something better (remember guys, Regina is the best. mother. ever.) There was some kind of attempt to show a melding of the two worlds in 2.02, but they never really took it any further than that. Snow took over the mayor role and held listening sessions or something. Then Snow was hauled out of her home days after giving birth to fix the electric plant because somehow that's the mayor's job - maternity leave be damned. They did make the running of Storybrooke a part of the show when it suited them.
  20. I was watching "Broken" last night and it reminded of how badly this show always fell down the real emotional consequences of things. Emma was absolutely right when she told her mother that they sent her away to save everyone. What was done was not necessarily in Emma's best interests. Yes, she would have been murdered then, so by that point it was necessary, but Snowing had plenty of other options that they never explored because they could always fall back on Emma being the Saviour. That they doubled down on this in "Awake" and explicitly had Snowing slam the door on their daughter while acknowledging that they were sacrificing her happiness for others burns me up. At least in "Broken" Emma was allowed to have feelings about it. By the time S6 rolled around, Emma was expected to not even have a reaction. They wrote a story that should have been extremely emotionally charged and then just shrugged it all off like it meant nothing. How boring.
  21. I don't know if the storyline is enough to interest me, but they'd definitely need a better cast. At the very least, they'd need to bring in a slice of bread to generate some chemistry for Jacinda.
  22. I think they thought the same way that Lana Parrilla did about it. In one interview, she referred to Regina's relationship with Graham as fun and flirty, while Jamie Dornan in interviews for the same episode referred to it as sad and horrific. The showrunners were clearly pushing Parrilla's interpretation. I do think they go with the she's hot, so who wouldn't be happy to hit that? mentality, while Dornan was very obviously aware that his character would not have been cool with being a sex slave just because his mistress was hot. Jane Espenson was the only writer on the show to ever acknowledge that it was rape. Keep in mind that these are the same writers who thought everyone would be super fine with Regina and Robin getting it on in the crypt while his wife lay in a cursed sleep not far away. True Love y'all. I think that they have trouble separating fantasy (thoughts and dreams) from fantasy (fiction). A fantasy show is a story and it has things like magic and curses and crazy worlds, but the people who inhabit those worlds aren't free from emotion or feelings. Cheating on your spouse in a fantasy world that still has things like marriage vows isn't any different than doing it in the real world. There is no absolution in it being a fantasy. Sometimes the method of an action is different because of the fantastic aspects, but it still results in the same feelings and emotions for those being subjected to it. In our world we can't pull out someone's heart and control them into having sex with us, but we could roofie them into submission. Or we could simply tie them down and forcibly commit rape. The psychological effects on the victim will still be the same afterwards. Poor Graham had it worse in the Enchanted Forest in that he knew what was happening, hated it and still was magically compelled to do it. In Storybrooke, he felt wrong about it, but at least he didn't know why. And he did finally say no when Emma's appearance allowed the curse to diminish some of its effects on him and he was able to break free a bit. That they had Regina kill him after he rejected her made it about 80 million times worse because again, this is not an action that is unique to a fantasy world, but something that happens all the time in the real world. Just because she could do it by squeezing his heart instead of stabbing him through the heart with a knife does not somehow make it less real.
  23. I'm still confused why they didn't just all leave and go back to Storybrooke instead of some convoluted curse casting. It's not like world travel is that hard since Emma, Hook and Regina all popped over pretty easily when Henry sent his message. I get that they have this whole heart curse thing, but it not working in Seattle only because they can't remember that they are cursed makes zero sense to me. If I have cancer and then suddenly get amnesia, me not remembering I have cancer isn't going to stop its progression.
  24. I think the Coradome wasn't that big. They did specify that all those refugees under the dome were living on an island because it was safe from the ogres who had taken over everywhere else.
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