Dani-Ellie

Yes. As shows get older, the viewership drops as viewers lose interest and/or discover other shows. A heavily serialized show typically has issues picking up a new audience the older it gets. The advent of streaming and binge-watching may help with this eventually but it's easier to pick up a show like SVU in later seasons because each episode is a self-contained story with some overarching stuff. It may take a couple episodes to figure out what's going on and who the characters are but watching the back seasons is not a necessity to follow the story. With a show like Once, it's not like you can just pick it up in the fall without having watched the previous four seasons and expect to follow the story.

I'm not saying that I don't think they pay attention at all but at the same time, the only widespread dissatisfaction I can remember seeing is 4B. Even if some people were dissatisfied with, say, 3B, other people loved it. I loved the Frozen fest in 4A but some of the comments I saw on the Facebook page proved that that wasn't a universal opinion. I fully agree that the writers do seem to nix pretty quickly the ideas that seem to be universally hated but I do think the ebb and flow of satisfaction and dissatisfaction hasn't necessarily been egregious enough to require a complete overhaul. I also fully agree that Once's quality is variable but again, because I've been watching this show for four full seasons now, I've grown to expect that. That's another thing I had to decide whether or not I could live with. I don't know, I guess I just feel like we're at a point where we know the problems the show has. I've found that there is a sense of liberation when I decided that I can't change the show, I can only change my response to it. So I focus on what I like and ignore what I don't. I'm a much happier fangirl that way.

I think all Page 23 is is essentially part of his fanfic. He wrote up a what-if canon divergence thought experiment (which, hee!).

From Curio in the "Mother" thread: But maybe they don't want to turn it around or even think it needs to be turned around? This is my point. After four full seasons, I think we have enough evidence that whether or not I agree with it, what is playing out onscreen every week is the show's vision. I've just gotten to the point that I can't continue to be angry because the show's vision doesn't match mine and I had to decide whether or not I could accept that. If I couldn't, it would have been time for me to let the show go.

Responding in the fandom thread.

I see what you're both saying but on the other hand, this is no different than literally any other resolution for any other ongoing plot this show has had. I've been watching this sucker for four years; I know what to expect by now. It's just one of those things that I've learned to accept. I get that the wish is the show would delve deeper into this stuff and believe me, I wish it, too. but ... four years. I think it's clear by now that the show is never going to have the depth people seem to want it to have. Maybe it's simply a lowering of expectations, but just like Maleficent with Lily, I've learned to accept this show for what it is, not what I wish it could be,

There were actually some beautiful moments in this. First off, Maleficent assuring Lily that she "doesn't mind a little darkness" was really, really sweet. Because of course she wouldn't. :) But really, it was nice to see her not only accepting her daughter for who she is but assuring her that the dark cloud hovering over her would be welcome, too. Because much like Emma, Lily also needs the reassurance that if she lets Maleficent in, she won't take off running in the other direction. The Captain Swan bit by the water was absolutely lovely and the later bit where Emma actually takes Hook's advice and forgives Snow? Made me misty. That was just ... goodness, I thought that my OTP couldn't be any more OTP and then that happened. Like, he was able to get through to her that she was running again and that really wasn't what she wanted, and she respects him and his opinion enough to listen. And when Snow and Emma grasped each other and just held on for dear life, that was it, I lost it. Oh, and Barbara Hershey can come back any time. I always feel like she has a total blast playing Cora. These are the kinds of things that make me believe this show is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. Because there seemed to be a lot of disgust for the idea of Regina forcing the Author to write her happy ending because of free will and how the notion that her happy ending was something someone could just hand her was completely missing the point. And now Regina finally -- finally -- recognizes that she's the one standing in the way of her own happiness this whole time and that she never needed the Author in the first place, and there's still annoyance. The fact that end lesson of Back to the Future is "the future is whatever you make it" doesn't make the entire trilogy pointless. Sometimes the journey is the point. Like, I don't know what else was expected to come out of this plotline.

The whole point of that scene was the shock. None of the characters had the time to react with anything but shock (or glee *cough*Zelena*cough*). And for the record, I didn't get Robin settling at all. He didn't have the time to settle into anything. I got numb more than anything.

Why not? It's half-moon shaped. People in this world string far odder things on chains to wear as jewelry. I can buy someone thinking it was a pendant and stringing it for her.

I think the pendant itself is a talon or maybe a scale, since the Apprentice told her it wasn't a stone. The egg was textured so it could have been on the shell. Or maybe it's even a piece of the shell itself.

There are schools of philosophy that do have fate/destiny/what have you and free will co-existing (typically the ones that wanted to keep the Christian God in the picture while still allowing for humanity to make their own choices). It's a balancing act, where people make their own choices but some of the big events are going to happen in one way or another. They actually addressed this when Emma was upset about Lily not even being her friend by choice and Regina saying, "You think it was a coincidence that I just so happened to adopt the savior's son?" Sometimes the universe intervenes to set certain things in motion but that doesn't mean everything is predetermined, nor does it mean that there is no free will. People may not like it and yes, it does open up questions of where free will ends and fate begins but it's not like the writers are pulling this stuff out of their asses.

Characters are allowed to be wrong, because the characters also see the circumstances through their own biases. We know Snow and Charming aren't monsters. Of all the characters on the show, they're probably the least monster-ish. I don't see why Lily blaming Snow and Charming is any kind of moral indictment of Snow and Charming because of course she would. In the words of Cruella, it's easier to blame someone else than your own bad decisions. Same thing with the Apprentice talking to Lily. He did that to assuage his own guilt. He even said that he wasn't supposed to be telling her what he was telling her. He took responsibility for what happened to her while also trying to give her a bit of encouragement that she wasn't some kind of loser who just can't do anything right and that there was a reason for her seeming bad luck. Had she taken it a different way, it would have been an empowering thing for her to fight against the darkness rather than succumb to it. This again goes back to what I was saying last week about every word out of every character's mouth not having to be a big meta statement on morality and ethics. Sometimes dialogue is for that purpose but sometimes it's to show the character's mindset or to provide context for setting and further dialogue.

I fully agree with this. However, we're also applying adult worldviews to a situation that happened with two very messed-up teenagers. I don't think Emma thinks that if she'd stuck with Lily, Lily would have turned her life around. I actually envision nothing but bad things happening in both girls' lives if they'd continued on the path they were on together. What I do think she thinks, looking back on the same situation as an adult, is that maybe if she'd tried to understand where Lily was coming from, she could have gotten her better help than just leaving her on her own. I don't Emma thinks she could have "fixed" Lily. I do think she feels guilt and regret for essentially doing to Lily what everyone else had done to her. I'm not arguing whether what I think Emma thinks is wrong or right. All I'm trying to offer is what I think her viewpoint is.

It is different, though, because a bulk of this happened when Emma and Lily were kids. There's a wisdom that comes with maturity, and I can buy an adult Emma looking back on her time with Lily and finally recognizing that Lily was just as lost as she was. Emma spent her life lonely and alone, wishing someone had reached out to her, so I can see her wishing she had taken the chance to reach out to someone else when she had it. We've all done things as kids we're not proud of. I was a typically bossy oldest child and could be mean to my brother and sister. I've had a few people I grew up with reach out to me on Facebook to apologize for making fun of me, and it's like, guys, we were kids. No harm, no foul. But growing up and realizing you've caused someone pain is a hard thing to deal with (even if it was done in the name of protecting yourself). Emma wants to help Lily now because she didn't help her then. It's her way of righting a perceived wrong, whether or not it actually is a wrong in the grand scheme of things. I can't apply the adult moral issues inherent in the Snow/Regina stuff to the Emma/Lily stuff because the parties were at fundamentally different points in their moral and emotional development.

No, that's not at all what they're saying. The Apprentice told her that everything would be harder for her, not that her actions are all excusable. And Lily herself said she kept making what she thought were better choices only to have them blow up in her face. I interpreted as this: Lily still makes her own choices but because of her double-dose of darkness, she can't always see ahead of time the negative consequences of her choices. They're not saying she's destined to make bad decisions and none of it is her fault. She still owns her decisions, they just don't turn out the way she thinks they're going to. That's not at all what they said, either. I didn't at all read it like that. Emma's life was not sunshine and puppies. Everyone knows this. Never once was it stated on the show that Emma's life got better after meeting Lily. In fact, it was shown that each of the times the girls met up, Lily's darkness dragged Emma down with her. Emma was pissed off, trying to protect her family, and feeling guilty about killing Cruella. Regina: Your parents need a hero, not a murderer. Emma: I'm already a murderer. She's in a dark place from having just taken another human life, as well she should be. No matter how justified Emma was in killing Cruella, she still took a human life. That's still something that typically messes with people's emotions. Look, if they really wanted to play the Lily sympathy card, they wouldn't have written Lily fucking Emma over with a new foster family. They would have had, say, Emma fucking Lily over somehow. The fact that they wrote a story where this girl comes in and messes up the protagonist's happiness is not an accident. What they wrote is a story of these two messed-up kids who completely misunderstand each other on a fundamental level. Lily can't stand her family and relishes the freedom of being a runaway orphan. Emma would give anything to have a family and to stop being a runaway orphan. Neither one of them can understand how the other can be unhappy with what they have. I don't think we were supposed to root for their friendship but I do think we were supposed to see why Lily would think stealing the money from the family and getting Emma kicked out was a good thing: because that's what Lily wants herself. She just couldn't see that Emma actually wanted to be there and her meddling would be met with anger rather than gratitude. Again, she made a choice, and it blew up in her face.

The thing is, though, I think it's not even inadequately set up, just not entirely tied together. This is where I think Once benefits from marathoning it versus watching week to week. Because if you think about Emma's story from the start of the show we have her: being dragged into town by her kid, finding a friend, becoming deputy, finding Graham, losing Graham before anything could even get off the ground, becoming sheriff, having her friend set up for murder by her kid's adoptive mother, finding out fairy tales are real, fighting a dragon, finding her parents, getting sent to the Enchanted Forest, fighting Cora, finding Hook, making friends with a giant, figuring out a way back to Storybrooke, having Regina try to kill her for half a season, finding Neal, losing Neal, losing Henry to Neverland, going to Neverland, facing being an orphan, trying to find Henry while dealing with Pan's mind games, finding Neal again, saving Henry, losing everything due to the reversal of Pan's curse, losing an 8-month long relationship that ended in a proposal, going back to Storybrooke, dealing with Zelena, losing Neal again, dealing with her magic, the birth of her baby brother, her time travel adventure with Hook, finding home, almost dying in an ice cave, trying to figure out her relationship with Hook, dealing with her past in the form of Ingrid, having her magic go haywire, potentially almost losing everyone due to Shattered Sight, almost losing Hook, dealing with the Chernabog, feeling like her internal lie detector is going haywire, discovering she was right and that her parents have been lying to her ever since they remembered her and that they screwed over another child in her name, and now tracking down and killing yet another person who tried to kidnap her kid. And that's just off the top of my head. Holy. Shit. Girl needs a meltdown, and she needs one like three seasons ago. What struck me so much about this past episode wasn't the red eyeliner, it was before that in loft when everyone was discussing the whole Henry business, Emma just looked so tired. I just wanted to tuck her into bed and put soft music on for her until she fell asleep. This isn't out of nowhere; we've hit Emma's breaking point. I do think it would help to tie some of these threads together in dialogue so that it doesn't feel like it's out of nowhere, but I do think the threads are there. They're just not connected properly.

The difference that it made is in Emma's mindset. Right now, she can't trust that her choices have been her own. The one thing she's always been proud of is that she'd pulled herself up by her bootstraps and made lemonade out of the lemons life handed her. That she is who she is because she wants to be. And now that's all in question with Snow and Charming telling her they did something to her in utero that changed the very nature of her being. Right now, Emma is questioning if she ever had any free will at all. Any descent into darkness is not a walk off a cliff. It's a slide. It's multiple things, and the person's reaction to multiple things. Killing Cruella did not make Emma evil, and I don't think the show is saying that. What I do think they're saying is that Emma is on a dangerous path right now, one that could lead to the darkness everyone fears. It's a whole bunch of things, a perfect storm that's been brewing for a while now (like I said in another thread, I've been waiting for an epic Emma meltdown since at least the middle of season two), and calling into question Emma's very identity is central to her crisis of faith.

Time is very relative. When you're busy, sometimes time seems to fly by, and when you're bored, time seems to drag. Or how, if you typically work Monday through Friday, having a Monday holiday throws off your whole week. There was an exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston where you hit a button and you were supposed to hit it again when you thought one minute had passed. My friend hit it after 30-something seconds and I hit it after 40-something seconds, the whole point being that time is very difficult to judge unless you have standardized equipment like calendars and clocks and stopwatches and hourglasses to help you judge it. I don't think they're saying there's no concept of time, just that time passes and people in those lands don't really keep track of it, much like Storybrooke under the curse. There were days and weeks and months and years but because of the time loop aspect of the curse, no one but Regina noticed that twenty-eight years had gone by.

My favorite song of 2015 will probably end up being Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance." It's a total 80s throwback and I can't get enough of it.

Because different people watch for different reasons. Different people enjoy different characters, different storylines, different ideas. For me, though this isn't the strongest half season ever, it's not the absolute worst, either. I still find things I enjoy and I'm still interested in where this is all going.

But again, that's your opinion. I personally loved everything have to do with the Frozen arc back in the fall, and in this arc, I like that they resisted the urge to make the Author a singular guy who's been writing a cosmic story since the beginning of time. I'm interested in Emma going darkside because yes please give me the angst. It's a plot that every hero story ever has done and I don't know why it's such a bad thing here. And if you hate it, that's fine. But like I said, it just feels like a piling on, to the point where the little things are being picked apart and criticized way beyond what seems necessary. Something that's clearly a joke or clearly just a character letting off steam is getting picked apart word by word. But at a certain point, I do think the snark becomes mean-spirited. When it's like "nobody picks on my little brother but me," it's fine. But there is a line that gets crossed and the snark is no longer fun. It's hard to feel like you're the only one actually still enjoying something.

From Curio in the "Sympathy for the De Vil" thread: I agree that there is legitimate criticism to be had but between here and Tumblr, it's getting to the point that there is nothing positive anymore. It's all nitpicking and this sucks and that's horrible and there's anger over the storylines before they even happen (from spoilers). I can't tell you how much anger I've seen on Tumblr about this line or that line in a sneak peek, and then it airs and I'm all, "THIS is what launched a thousand blog posts? Seriously?" It just feels like people have decided that they hate Plot Line X and rather than just ignore Plot Line X, they flip their lids over everything even remotely related to Plot Line X, no matter how innocuous it is in actuality. I don't understand the point of hate-watching. Life is too short for that shit. If there is truly nothing redeeming about something anymore and there is more to dislike than there is to like, it's okay to stop. You don't have to finish every book you start reading, it's okay to stop a movie a quarter of the way into it if you don't care, and it's okay to let a show go that's changed too much for you. I just feel like any positive comments are getting lost in a sea of doom and gloom, and frankly, it's starting to not be fun for me. Sometimes people just want to be entertained. As much as I'm a rabid fangirl with the discussing and fanfic and gifsets, I'm also pretty easy to please. Just entertain me for the hour a week I watch you. If you no longer entertain me -- if there starts to be more that I don't like than I do -- I'll let you go.

Responding in the fandom thread.

See, this is the kind of thing where criticism starts to feel like a piling on for me. They didn't make a huge deal out of it. There was one scene with Rumple and Regina about Regina's role in turning Emma. Yes, it ended an episode but it was one scene. The next episode, Regina handles it, and she handles it in such a way that she's essentially tied Rumple's hands so he has no choice but to move on to Plan B. And yet, if they'd dragged it out, I bet you dollars to doughnuts there would be a lot of "fan service/queer baiting/Swan Queen angst" complaints. It really is like this show just can't win sometimes.

That was the reason Regina used Belle: to end run around Gold's ultimatum. He told her he'd have Zelena kill Robin unless she helped. She told him she'd kill Belle if he had Zelena kill Robin. Since they're now even, his threat is essentially meaningless.