Souris

I prefer traveling alone -- except for the cost of not splitting hotel rooms, etc.! I like being able to stay however long or not I want to at a place without worrying about whether my companion is bored or aching to stay longer. I can change my mind about what I want to do on a whim. I backpacked around Europe on my own in college, and I like the independence. I actually went on a bus tour for the first time when I visited Ireland, and I discovered that tour groups are definitely not for me. We kept having to leave some interesting place to keep on schedule when I really wanted to stay longer. It was convenient to have all the logistics taken care of, and I didn't have to drive on the opposite side of the road, but the lack of freedom bothered me a lot.

Ooh, a trip to Ireland! I'm so jealous! If you get a chance, I highly recommend visiting the Burren. Such an interesting, unusual, alienesque landscape.

Interview with Scott Michael Foster.

Given the way this show works, I think they still need a definitive TLK. Snowing had a failed TLK and a CPR kiss as well as the classic TLK, and given all the CS/Snowing parallels, CS should then have a TLK at some point. It's just a question of when A&E decide they want to do it. If Emma has to go find Killian to save him, then I think that would be different enough from the Zelena curse, or at least a bit of a different spin. If that's the case, then I could see Will going with her, since he has experience helping a strong woman search for her True Love. :) I agree that they could have the act of True Love being something different than a kiss in this instance and that Emma saying "I love you" would be a lot harder and more meaningful for her than just kissing Hook. Or her telling him that she believed he wouldn't leave her -- that would be a very meaningful leap of faith/trust/love for her.

I would have preferred they recast. It just doesn't seem right to have the Musketeers without Richelieu!

Oh, jeez, they're sticking with that ponderous voiceover theme they used at Comic Con. I was hoping that would never see the light of day again.

In "The Jolly Roger" when Regina was teaching Emma magic and made the bridge collapse.

I thought about this as well. To me, Hook and Emma are the obvious choice for Kai/Gerda, what with the seeming foreshadowing in the finale of him being unsure if Emma would go to the end of the world for him as he would her, and him looking in the mirror in Rumple's vault to reveal the glamour spell was over. It would be a huge leap of faith and love for Emma to know that he's not just leaving her like everybody else, that something bad has happened to him. But given that they took away defeating Zelena with light magic from Emma and gave it to Regina, it would be right up their alley to give the storyline to Regina. In that case, I think it would be Robin in the Kai role. Regina would go after him and Marian wouldn't, thereby proving that Regina's love for him is more pure than Marian's. ::Insert groaning and massive eyeroll.:: There's also the Sidney "Glass" double meaning that could be part of it. And there's a bit of mirror imaging possibly at play here, too -- the troll mirror in the Snow Queen tale makes things appear ugly, while the Evil Queen's mirror traditionally reveals "the fairest of them all." Another mirror: In the Snow Queen tale, Gerda finds Kai on a frozen lake that the Snow Queen calls "The Mirror of Reason." And there's even another mirror that could come into play -- Will and Anastasia reached Wonderland through a mirror that he stole from Maleficent. Mirrors aplenty! Speaking of frozen lakes, remember that Will's sister died in a frozen lake. Maybe it was the Snow Queen's frozen lake. Lots of things possibly at play here. I do wonder why the Snow Queen is apparently targeting Emma. That seems kind of important. (Oh, another thought! Years and years ago, I wrote a short story in which glass served as a metaphor for a character's emotional walls. That story ended with breaking glass, so that's a personal-connection possible title metaphor I thought of. Maybe the title could play into Emma's walls.)

It could be Hook's, if he's representing Kai in Once's version of the Snow Queen tale. My guess is that it's a reference to the sliver of broken mirror that gets in Kai's eye, which distorts beauty and makes him turn cold and cruel. So it'll be a centric for whoever is Once's Kai.

Uhhhh. I'll see if I can figure out how to do that! I had no idea it wasn't on. Clearly I have a lot to figure out there. ETA: OK, I think I managed to do that.

Thank you, I plan to! A previously unemployed friend just got a job offer today, too, after ages of looking, so we're going to really celebrate. And the reason for the name -- I have a cat named Mouse, LOL!

All was normal on the followup mammogram, so YAY! Thanks for the good thoughts, all. In other news, I gave into societal pressure and got a tumblr account. I haven't done much in the way of formatting it, and I don't know how much I'll use it, but I'm oraclecat on there.

Video of Colin and Robert rehearsing wharf scene.

Maybe Will is the Storybrooke character that EM's character is tied to? That would help tie him into the season.

Josh and Sean and Robbie accepted Colin's ALS ice-bucket challenge. Sean and Robbie's is particularly fun.

I just started one!

Here's where to talk about fandom controversies, social issues in relation to OUAT and the like.

Heck, I've seen gay CS fans accused of not being "queer enough" because they don't ship Swan Queen!

I haven't been able to tell from the pre-date pics whether Hook has the bloody knuckles then or not. I suspect that the date ends badly for whatever reason (why the hell is Will there??), then we get the punchout scene, and the dock scene is the next morning.

Hook would have to be absolutely desperate and in a really bad way to go to Rumple for anything. Apart from Emma or Henry being under a terrifying, immediate threat, I'm having a hard time seeing why he would go to Rumple. He certainly knows Rumple's proclivities for contract clauses and magical prices. And he was just reminded of Rumple's ruthlessness when he and Emma were locked in his vault. So I'm still figuring the situation is not of his own choosing. Unless it's one of those situations of the writers making a character do something that makes no damn sense simply for plot and angst.

I never, ever picked up on any romantic or sexual subtext with Emma and Regina. I certainly picked up on it with Aurora/Mulan, and I've certainly picked up on it with other shows, so it's not like it's something I never notice. IMO it's just not deliberately there with Emma/Regina.

Once people take their crackship to the point of harassing the writers and actors over it and trying to force them to make it happen, they've crossed a line.

Apparently Rumple magics up a broom in the scene with Hook. Odd detail. I think this ep is gonna be hella angsty painful.

I had a rather wacky thought. With the reports of Hook having a knife in his hand in the scene when he's sleeping on the wharf, I wonder if maybe he actually tried to drunkenly cut off his hand again, but it wouldn't cut off. There was a roll of bandages on the table, which I initially figured was for the hurt knuckles after punching Will. Since all magic comes with a price, dearie, maybe Rumple is somehow controlling it or there's a catch with it being reattached, and Hook doesn't want to pay it anymore (or never did, if, for example, Henry asked Rumple to give it back and Hook didn't ask for it). Shades of Lindsey's "evil hand" on Angel! CS date set spoilers.

Pic of Colin. More (plus gratuitous tongue action). Rump and Belle.