Dani-Ellie

Part of the reason I feel Hook's redemption arc has been handled better is that I don't at all get the feeling that he started to change because of Emma. He started to change when he thought he'd killed Rumple and it still left him empty inside. All those centuries of planning and waiting and wanting, and he did it. He got his revenge and it turned out that revenge wasn't what it cracked up to be. It didn't ease his pain and grief, nor did it satisfy him. He realized on his own that all those centuries were essentially wasted. It's a level of self-awareness that Regina has shown time and again that she does not possess. Hook tried to tell her that vengeance is an end. Emma tried to spoon-feed that self-awareness to her down at the water in "Lacey" when she told her that not everyone goes around scheming and plotting. Rumple has tried a couple different times to tell her that vengeance won't satisfy her. And every time she gets a win and it inevitably does not satisfy her, she continually tries for more and more vengeance. And then we have the remorse issue as KingOfHearts and KAOS Agent noted above. I get the feeling that Hook pretty much hates the man he was. Regina, on the other hand, revels in her evilness. That smirk when Tink told them that Greg/Owen was dead was a fantastic reaction ... for a villain. For a character on a redemption track? Not so much. I get that the guy kidnapped her son, but he was only after her in the first place because she tried to kidnap him and separated him from his father. And then when he's finally able to get back into town to find his father, she tells him she killed him. I think I'd be a little upset, too, if I were in Greg/Owen's shoes. Not kidnapping-a-child upset, obviously, but upset. And like I said previously, Regina's "no regrets" speech is the single most damaging thing the writers have done to Regina's redemption arc for me. If she doesn't regret the woman she'd become when she was holding on to darkness, where the hell is her motivation to change? It can't just be for Henry, because Henry's not going to be around her forever. At some point, he's going to meet someone, get married, have kids, have a life of his own. He can't be her moral compass forever; she needs to find her own moral compass, but she can't do that if she regrets nothing she's done. Hook, I believe, has found his inner moral compass again. There's still an edge to him, granted, but I believe that his change was internal first, and it was only after that internal change (and Emma offering him a chance to be a part of something good) that he began truly falling for Emma. We saw how he tried to backslide after he lost Emma and it just didn't take because he'd changed. I would be thrilled to pieces if this coming season premiere is Regina's "Jolly Roger," where she tries to backslide but her heart just isn't in it anymore. That would put her redemption right back on track for me. But if it becomes Regina vs Emma and the Charmings Round 734, I'm going to be even more pissed that we spent pretty much all of 3B fast-tracking redemption and giving her True Love's Kiss and white magic all without a heart because the end result would be that nothing's changed.

I can't get into AUs for much the same reason. I read fanfic to read the further adventures of the characters I know and love. With my own fanfic, I tend to try to write it so that it fits in between the scenes. I like the fics that read as the stuff we just didn't get so see, since so much happens in Offscreensville.

Not to get too off-topic, but how well a single-focus con would do depends largely on the fandom. Creation Entertainment, which ran the Supernatural con I attended in 2011, does Supernatural cons in various areas of the country and in Vancouver (which isn't much of a stretch, since Supernatural films there). They also run cons for The Vampire Diaries, Star Trek, Stargate, and Xena. These cons are typically much more expensive, but they're also much more intimate. I think there were maybe a couple hundred of us in attendance at the SPN con I went to, compared to the few thousand that attend the Comic Con panels.

I completely agree with you, and this point, I fully believe that the writers are completely blind to the fact that rewarding an as-written, non-changed Regina is rewarding villainy. They fully believe she's changed, and it's like, no, no she hasn't. That no regrets speech was the single most damaging thing to Regina's redemption arc, in my eyes, because if there's nothing she regrets, she hasn't changed a single bit. It says to me that if she had to do it all over again, she would make all the same choices because she got something in the end, which, in terms of redemption, is so very problematic that I don't even have the words to describe how problematic it is.

If having Daddy Charming feels is wrong, I don't wanna be right. ;) Daddy Charming makes everything 1000% better.

Good! I kid ... sort of. My problem is that without remorse, there's no empathy. Without empathy, there's no reason to not resort to the same tactics to get what she wants. Without that reason, there's no growth, and without growth, there's no redemption. And that's fine if they wanted to keep her the Evil Queen all the way up through the final moments but they clearly do not. Redemption for me requires a change in one's behavior not to get what one wants but based upon a recognition that one was a horrible, horrible person. I need to see a change to believe it, essentially. I need to see a true, base change based upon the realization that her previous actions were wrong and horrible and all kinds of not okay. As to Regina not allowing herself to feel remorse because it would destroy her? Well, maybe she shouldn't have been evil, then. She destroyed lives. There's not even been a token apology to any of the Charmings about destroying their lives. She's only apologized to Henry, which I believed, and to Belle, but only because Belle refused to help her otherwise so I don't exactly count that. Why should she get to skate by on an "Oops, I won't do it again, I promise!"? Basically, I have zero sympathy for her, and the harder they try to shove "but she's changed!" down my throat without allowing the character to actually change, the more I'm going to call bullshit.

Exactly. If we're doing this, I want to emerge out of it a Regina who's finally put on her big girl pants and accepted some responsibility for her own actions and gained some actual self-awareness that sticks. And maybe some actual remorse so I can start believing this redemption story they're trying so hard to sell us.

Ugh, please no. Even if that turns out to be the case (which I will hate with a passion unlike anything I've hated before), it's still missing the point. So it turns out "Marian" was imposter. So what? Regina wouldn't have known the imposter was an imposter. She still would have imprisoned and potentially executed (though I fully believe Regina would have executed Marian had Emma not freed her) a woman whose only supposed crime was not helping Regina with her vendetta. It still means Regina's a nasty piece of work and should not be anywhere near Robin and Roland. Marian isn't the big problem/issue in this equation for me. Regina is. And if Robin even entertained the notion that Regina had ordered his wife and the mother of his son executed, I don't really want to see that dealt with as, "Oh, she wasn't Marian anyway, no harm, no foul."

I agree. David's heart was pulling toward one direction and his head was pulling toward another. He knew on some base level that he didn't belong with Kathryn, and he felt it in his bones that he belonged with Mary Margaret. But everyone was telling him he loved Kathryn and he was married to Kathryn. His feelings for Mary Margaret weren't Kathryn's fault and if she was standing by him, I think he felt he owed it to her to try to make it work. Basically, I think the wishy-washiness was more him trying to protect everyone involved; it just all blew up in his face before he could really do anything about it.

Oh, I completely agree that it's not just Swan Queen, but that's part of my problem. I don't understand how any of these people can truly consider themselves fans when they're so disrespectful to the actors playing the characters they supposedly love. And I don't understand how these people also have so little respect for their fellow fans that they, no matter the ship they're representing, continue to do this every single time the actors appear anywhere. That disrespect is even worse when it's a con because that one con may be the only one some of the other fans in that room will ever go to. Yeah, the con organizers and the actors work to make it fun, but the fans have to work to make it fun, too. Causing drama like this, especially by asking baiting questions they already know the answer to and they know they're not going to like, is so ... rude and unnecessary. But then again, what do I expect from people who think it's okay to sling internet hate at the actors? That's also rude and unnecessary. I just can't imagine anyone saying the hateful things that get tossed around over Twitter/Facebook/whatever to the person's face. There's a reason the saying, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" exists. I'm not saying they have to agree with everything an actor says, but a respectful rebuttal tends to go a lot further than a hate-filled rant. Drama like this is why people leave fandom, and why actors pull away from social media, which, again, is ruining it for the rest of us.

Right. To put it in Back to the Future terms, it's like when Doc and Marty had to go back to 1955 to stop Biff from owning all of Hill Valley in the second movie. If they went to 2015 from the crazy-ass 1985 they were in, it would have been the future of the crazy-ass timeline, not the 2015 they'd just returned from. For everyone else in Hill Valley, crazy-ass 1985 was the norm, the natural progression of events. It was only crazy-ass to Doc and Marty because they knew how things had turned out without Biff's meddling. Doc even describes it as such: "Alternate to you, me, and Einstein, but reality for everyone else." Marian coming forward is, basically, crazy-ass 1985 (in a physics sense, not a moral sense). It's reality now, because the original timeline doesn't exist anymore.

Ugh. And what's awful is that more and more I'm getting the feeling that this one small yet extremely vocal group of the fandom is ruining it for the rest of us. You can't tell me the actors enjoy these shitstorms. I'm sure meeting with the fans is rewarding in its own way but if I were in their shoes, I would have this feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach every time I went to one of these things. Because it happens at every single con and then the cons become more about the drama than, you know, having fun. Cons are so much fun (at least the Supernatural one that I went to was), but drama like that just casts a pall over everything. It's all just so unnecessary.

Oh, absolutely, which in and of itself is ridiculous. No one should be subjected to it, but Jared definitely should not be subjected to it. Oh, neat! Haha, I've always said that subtext has to practically be text for me to see it. ;) Exactly. I know it sucks when your ship doesn't pan out but ... them's the breaks when your ship is non-canon. These people need to listen to what they're being told over and over again, suck it up, and deal with it. That doesn't mean the shippers have to stop shipping. By all means, if SQ is their cup of tea, they should read and write and make manips and gifs to their hearts' content. But constantly asking if it's going to happen and what if it did happen and wouldn't that be wonderful and then flying off the handle when the answer is consistently no isn't going to make it happen.

Oh, ffs. Isn't one of the definitions of crazy doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result? Why do these fans continue to ask these questions when they know they're not going to like the answer? The party line from the start of this show has been a delicately delivered, "Swan Queen ain't happenin', guys." And yet, these questions get asked every con and every con there's a shitstorm when they're again delicately told, "Swan Queen ain't happenin', guys." You can tell even in that video that poor Lana is tired of it, and I'm sure everyone else is, too. Non-canon shipping and hunting for subtext can be fun. I remember my mom and I watching rerun episodes of Law & Order and joking about how Jack McCoy and Claire Kincaid were totally doing it. Every time they got into a disagreement, my mom would be all, "Uh oh, he's sleeping on the couch tonight." And on some level, yeah, we were seeing enough subtext to even have the idea but for the most part, we were joking. So, yeah, non-canon shipping can be fun ... as long as you remember that it's non-canon. And now some of them are expecting Jen to address comments that she didn't make and she wasn't even around to hear? I don't get it, I really don't. As Lana said, the actors don't write the show. They just play what they're given. And not that I'm wishing that hate on the writers, because the hate is ridiculous and shouldn't be directed anywhere, but they're getting mad at two people for a direction the story's not taking when those two people have no real control over the direction the story takes. Hey, the misplaced anger is kinda like Regina! :P

Exactly, but that's part and parcel of the problem. I hate to tell you, writers, but Regina is the Evil Queen. She doesn't even have the benefit of having some sort of "we are both" explanation worked into her personality because she was never both. She was aware the whole damn time and she never had a cursed personality. Trying to force some sort of difference between the two characters doesn't work because within the story as they've constructed it, they aren't two separate characters. Maybe they regret that but this isn't like the planning stages of a novel where the author can just remove the offending section and pretend it never existed. The things Regina has done as the Evil Queen are canon. We can point to scene X of episode Y and say, "Look! Right here is when she did Evil Deed Z!" The way to put all that behind everyone and give Regina what they so very clearly want to give her is to deal with it, not pretend it never happened.

It is my pipe dream that Regina actually answers for the shit she's done. And I mean by way of the other characters being able to dish the snark she dishes out on a regular basis without having to worry about her evilness's feelings. Like, Emma, it's totally okay to call Regina out on burning your mother at the stake for a mistake she made when she was a kid Henry's age. And Snow, the fact you survived said burning at the stake because of your own ingenuity does not negate the fact that this woman totally burned you at the stake. Marian, it's totally okay to give Regina all kinds of shit for putting you on Enchanted Forest Death Row when your only crime was protecting someone else, and Robin, it's totally okay for you to be pissed at the woman who stole your wife and your son's mother from the both of you. Henry, it's totally okay to have conflicted feelings about Regina, as she did raise you but her gaslighting and other abuses of you are not okay. Charming, it's totally okay for you to give Regina all kinds of shit for sending her royal guards in to kill your newborn daughter and forcing you to miss her entire life up to this point. And it goes on and on. Part of a really good, deserved redemption story is remorse on the part of the character needing redemption. If Regina truly regrets nothing, there's absolutely no growth. If she truly regrets nothing, what's to stop her from doing any of it again? Handing every happy ending to her on a silver platter while expecting the other characters to either lump it or actively encourage it is rewarding villainy. That is not the kind of story I watch for, and, when this show started, that is not the kind of story we were given. I wanted to see the Evil Queen defeated, not handed everything she wants. "Good always wins" was a mantra for this show for a while, and now it feels like evil is the only thing that truly wins, because Regina's getting everything just by making token attempts to change when deep down, she's the same woman she's always been.

Exactly. My thinking was that it was going to be one of her "makes it work in the clutch" things. There was precedent for it; she jumpstarted Regina's magic way back in "Broken" without meaning to. If not, it could have at least been a panicked "I've got to be able to do something because I can't lose him" kind of thing.

I still think the biggest missed opportunity in the whole dreamshade business was not having Emma cure her father from the poison with her magic. Like, no lie, I was 100% convinced that was going to be the solution. But that would have required 1) Emma and Charming to share more than two minutes of quality screentime, and 2) Charming family bonding, and apparently we couldn't have that. Even better would have been if she'd just done it without even trying to.

Same here. I know the Marian opinion is definitely unpopular within the fandom at large, but dude, Emma reunited a family. Who gives a shit if that makes Regina sad? Certainly not me. ;) And I'm not sure how unpopular this is within the fandom at large, but I really, really liked the decision to kill off Neal. I mean, yeah, I didn't like Neal, but that's not even the reason. I really didn't like seeing Rumple rewarded for his behavior. He destroyed just as many if not more lives than Regina. It sucks for Neal and it sucks for the idealistic little boy Bae was, but I really liked the irony of Rumple plotting for centuries and doing all of this to get his son back only for the son to die in the end.

Haha, I'm telling you! It's like there's a summer beard epidemic in Hollywood. ;)

I find it so funny that so many guys who work clean-shaven on a show grow beards during hiatus. It's almost like they want to get as much facial hair time in as they can before they're made to shave again.

From the villains thread: This is my exact problem with Regina's redemption arc as executed. This notion that it's all just water under the bridge and "but she's changed now and that's all that should matter." No, no it's not. Tell that to Snow and Charming, who missed their firstborn's entire life. Tell that to Emma, who spent the first 28 years of her life alone. Tell that to Snow, who now has to live the rest of her life without her father. Tell that to all those families who lost the children Regina sent into the Blind Witch's house. And so on and so on. Regina's actions destroyed lives. Innocent lives, and those lives matter. And the funny thing is, I'm not opposed to redeeming Regina. The problem is, I need to be shown why I should care about her redemption, and when she doesn't care about or even address the lives she destroyed, I find it hard to care about her. There's obviously no way she can ever make up for the evil she's done, in a realistic sense, but treating her atrocities as the atrocities they were and treating her victims with the respect they deserve would go a long way. A little remorse on Regina's part and attempt an apology from her would go a very long way. Because I'm sorry but she victimized people and the notion that those victims are just supposed to suck it up because "she's changed now" is, frankly, disgusting, to me.

Responding in the all-seasons thread.

I actually would love that, not only on the comeuppance side of things (yes, show, villains should get some kind of comeuppance, imagine that) but a lot of the fun of Season One Storybrooke for me was watching the Evil Queen have to play by this world's rules. She couldn't just open up a can of magical whoopass on her enemies so she actually had to think and work for it. It was fun. Magic can be fun, too, but it ends up being one of those rock and a hard place kind of deals. When your villains are super-powerful and can magic their way out of anything, it's both boring and frustrating. Boring because there's no tension; of course they're going to win if they can just poof their enemies into a snail or whatnot. Frustrating because if the power is so unbalanced, why bother even hoping for the good guys to win? Either the good guys are just going to keep on losing or the bad guys have to be stupid and not turn them into snails at every juncture. I fully believe that Emma is going to be a force to be reckoned with once she develops her magic, but she's not there yet, and even then, she's one person. So yeah, take away Rumple's and Regina's magic for a bit. Make them have to work for it. Give them a lesson in humility; make them have to rely on the good guys for a change. (Ooh, the fanfic just writes itself ...)

That was pretty much my only problem with "Lost Girl." Don't get me wrong, I like when they parallel Emma's journey with her parents' (because aww), but if ever there was an episode ripe for Wee Emma backstory, it was that one.