Dani-Ellie

Methinks she's staying on a certain ship with a certain pirate. *wink wink nudge nudge* But in all honesty, I can totally see her crashing somewhere else for a couple of days while she waits for her anger to die down.

But Emma (presumably) doesn't know that. On a global moral scale, yes, of course Regina's crimes are worse but Emma can't be angry about something that she doesn't even know happened. Emma's anger is coming from the reveal of a secret that happened (at most) 24-48 hours earlier that potentially changed who she is as a person. And the people who she learned to trust most in the world, the people she apparently deluded herself into thinking could never lie to her, are the people who perpetrated this heinous act and then kept it from her since remembering who she was waaaaay back in "Broken." At the end of the day, her parents didn't believe in her. They didn't trust her. They didn't have the faith in her that she could overcome the potential darkness of life and took steps to ensure that she was a "hero." They speak of her goodness and heroic spirit with pride ("you don't have to be embarrassed to say it") but I can see where Emma would be thinking, especially after Ingrid digging into her, that all they care about is that she is a hero. Would they still love her if she was just Emma? This thing that they did is playing into her deepest insecurities because even in the womb, she wasn't enough. It wasn't enough for them that she was going to be born a healthy baby ... they wanted her to be a hero, too. And then they take credit for her accomplishments and tell her that her goodness is because of them and so what they did was worth it! No, Snow, it wasn't. What would have been worth it is ensuring your daughter knows right from wrong and light from darkness. (I do get that this all becomes moot anyway because they didn't get the chance to raise her, but that's also part of my point here. Emma's accomplishments are her own and her parents are diminishing them by saying that she only accomplished those things because they made her that way.) Basically, I think there are two issues here, one meta level and one text level. I don't think Emma's anger at her parents is supposed to be some sort of damning morality speech. She's pissed and she feels betrayed to her core and she's just explaining what the difference is to her, period.

I just want to call out Cruella playing Angry Birds and then getting all annoyed when Henry escaped, mostly because he interrupted her game. Hee! (The negativity is getting to me. I need some positivity, peeps!)

Right, but my point was that she and Regina were enemies from the jump. Regina never said, "You can trust me, it's okay to let me in" while hiding something as big as "we had your darkness removed in utero and gave it to someone else." With all the pushing that Snow and (to a lesser extent) Charming have done to get her to trust them, this reveal is a huge slap in the face to her. She finally trusted them and it turned out they were lying to her, too, from the day they remembered her, just like everyone else in her life. And not only that but just like everyone else in her life, she herself wasn't enough for them. She was apparently so untrustworthy that they felt they had to remove her darkness from her in utero. So yeah, I can see where Emma's thinking is that her parents' betrayal is worse because of the nature of the lie and the nature of the secret, especially coming off a lifetime of being used and betrayed.

See, I don't think everything each character says is supposed to be some meta statement on morality and ethics. I don't think Emma was trying to say anything about the nature of good and evil when she explained why she was more willing to forgive Regina and Hook their grievances. I think she was just trying to explain the difference in the offenses. She was pissed. She felt betrayed. And she is right when she said that Regina and Hook never pretended. When she met both of them, they were enemies to her. They never pushed her to trust them completely while hiding something so big that it affected the very nature of her being. I don't think she was saying Snow and Charming are evil or that Regina and Hook are better than they are. I think she was just saying in terms of the betrayal, Snow's and Charming's is hitting her worse.

I don't think they're saying that. The hero being tempted by the path of darkness is a trope used in pretty much every hero story ever. Every sci-fi/fantasy show I've ever watched has used it to one extent or another. Charmed, Supernatural, The 4400 ... they've all done it. What we have here is a perfect storm for Emma. The hits have been coming and coming, and if you're in a generous mood and feel like tying cohesiveness into the narrative, the hits have been coming and coming since the curse broke. So now she's in a place where the villains are gunning for her with everything they've got, her parents have been lying to her since she found them, her own self-confidence is called into question because how can she be sure that her choices were her own if her parents are telling her they made her good in utero, and this is all on top of everything that's happened since the beginning of the show. Everyone has a breaking point, and we're finally hitting Emma's. Personally, I've been waiting for an epic Emma meltdown since at least the middle of season two. Where the story goes from here remains to be seen, of course, but as of right now, I don't at all feel like Emma is the evilest ever. (I also will say here that I do not read the post-episode interviews with Adam and Eddy because I can't with them. It's much better for my blood pressure if I don't, so.)

The thing is, though, if you want to read into a storyline seed that was planted in "The Snow Queen," this is more than just Snow and Charming doing a horrible thing and lying to Emma about it. This is about Snow and Charming not trusting their own child to grow into a good person before she was even born. "How many times have you felt more like a savior than their daughter?" From Emma's perspective, Emma was still in the womb and not only were they trying to ensure she became a hero but they also screwed over someone else's child to do it. And then they preached to her goodness and light and virtue while all the while hiding the fact that they, too, had done something terrible. Emma has massive self-esteem issues and now she doesn't even know whether the choices she'd made her entire life have been her own. (I believe they were but I can completely understand Emma questioning it.) Not only that but how long has it been since they told her? I'm willing to bet it's been a day or two at most. She's finally let these people in, trusting them completely, and then she finds out not only have they been keeping something from her since she met them but also that from the womb, she herself wasn't good enough for them because they had to do something to her in utero to make her turn out the way they wanted. (And I fully understand that Snow and Charming were in a more complicated situation than I've laid out above and that they were trying to protect Emma. I'm just saying, from Emma's perspective, considering her lifelong abandonment issues and how she was never enough for anyone while she was growing up, what Snow and Charming did has 1) gotta sting, and 2) bring up all these issues for her.)

See, the dogs still weirded me out because I'm afraid of dogs. Any dog running after me and barking, no matter how typically cute and cuddly, is pretty much my worst nightmare. I was cringing for the Jared and the actress playing Wee Cruella, even though the dog chases were clearly controlled and safe, because holy shit a dog was chasing them.

So, okay, this is totally Once's take on The Bad Seed/Psycho/insert psychological thriller here, and I freakin' loved it. Like, yes, please let Cruella De Vil Hand That Rocks the Cradle this place up! I don't even care that Emma killed her. Because of course she did. The psycho villain dying at the end and at the hands of the hero is how these things play out. Emma is Annabella Sciorra and Cruella is Rebecca DeMornay and hell yes she gets tossed off a cliff/out the window at the end of it. Because what the hell do you expect, Cruella, when you kidnap and threaten to kill the son of two of the most powerful magic users in town? Did you not think they'd come after you? You had a freaking GUN on him? Did you not think they would do whatever it took to save his life? Jeebus. And oh my goodness, my poor Emma, I just want to hug her. She's so angry and she's so shaken to her core. (Although I did snicker when she told Regina to back off since Regina held a grudge for half her life over a ten-year-old telling a secret. Heh!) I'm sure I'll have more once my heart stops pounding a mile a minute. ;)

I don't know about that. What's so hard about finding a little blonde kid to hire for a couple flashbacks for one episode? They cast three little girls for one scene to be Wee Ingrid, Wee Helga, and Wee Gerda. I didn't need for the flashbacks to be a huge, in-depth look into Emma's past, but when your main present day story is how a character still feels like an orphan, I do think it's prudent to show the character being an orphan. This is a television show. It's supposed to show me, not tell me. That may be all well and good for some of the audience, but as an Emma fan, I frankly think it sucks that we're at the last three-quarters of season four, and we still don't know a hell of a lot about Emma's past. The flashbacks could show us stuff we don't already know if they would give them to us. Was it all bad or were there actually nice families that she had to leave for one reason or another? Because having good times taken away from her is just as important to Emma's development as having all bad times. We know she ran away from Ingrid but were there other families where she thought these people might be her forever home only to have that hope ripped from her? Was there a special teacher who ever tried to reach her, like Mary Margaret Blanchard with Henry? And as an Emma fan, I think it sucks that in eighty-something episodes, we've had five episodes that had any Emma flashbacks at all (and two of those episodes had a single flashback each). It's a character balancing problem for me. "Lost Girl" was just a wasted opportunity. It gave us round eleventy-seven of Regina vs. Snow when it could have fleshed out the present-day issues they wrote their character facing.

My issue with the flashbacks in "Lost Girl" wasn't so much with the flashbacks in and of themselves. It was the placement of those flashbacks within that particular episode. Like myril said above, if we're going to get a present day story about how Emma still feels like the orphan she grew up as, shouldn't we have actually seen Emma growing up as an orphan so we would have an idea where she was coming from? I'm not saying I needed half an episode's worth of Wee Emma's abuse and neglect (because holy crap, that would be a bit heavy for 8pm on a Sunday) but throw us a bone, here, writers. If you want the audience to understand where a character's issues are coming from, you need to show us those issues. I do think Jennifer Morrison does an exceptional job of infusing Emma's interactions in the present with those lonely, awful childhood memories that Emma would have but for me, that's a case of the actor elevating the material, not the material succeeding on its own merits. I get that they were trying to parallel Snow's journey of self-discovery with Emma's, and in a different episode, I would have really enjoyed that. But this was the second episode of season freakin' three, and it was the first time we were really delving into Emma's issues beyond just motivation for her present mindset. I was really kind of expecting to see some of the "this is why she is the way she is" stuff we've seen with all the other characters. I don't know why the writers seem to be so allergic to showing Emma's past. As we've seen, it doesn't have to be super-long or super-heavy. I thought that flashback at the top of "Snow Drifts" was very effective, and all it was was Wee Emma standing there with tears in her eyes, watching some other little girl drive away with new parents, presumably to her happy ending. So in "Lost Girl," why not show a little blonde kid sitting by herself at lunch because she's the new girl, or wistfully watching a family playing together at a park? There are ways to get the point across without veering into SVU territory. I just dun get it.

Oh, Colin, why must you be married to someone who isn't me? ;)

There is a David [My Last Name] somewhere in the world who mistakenly uses my Comcast email address for his personal business. My email address is d[lastname]@comcast ... best I can figure is his address has a number or two appended and he leaves out the number(s). I've gotten emails from his attorney about his divorce proceedings, invitations to parties and fundraisers by his friends, Redbox receipts, and free control of his student account at whatever school he registered for classes. If I were a less honest person, I could have gone in and completely messed up his class schedule. :P (I got in touch with the school and had them take my email address off the account instead.) With what I already know about this man, he's just lucky he's using the email address of someone who doesn't have the slightest clue how to pull off identity theft. So yeah. Sometimes it is an honest mistake (or a whole bunch of honest mistakes).

This can be done well. In Harper's Island, for instance, none of the actors knew who the killer was, including the person playing the killer. The killer was eventually told, oh btw, you're the killer ... while filming episode 8 of 13. A couple of the actors did ask early on if they were the killer but they were all told no, even the person playing the killer. There was obviously some coaching involved after the actor was told so that the audience wouldn't feel cheated when looking back on the episodes before the reveal and so that the audience wouldn't pick up on a change in the performance.The directors and the actor worked closely (and discreetly) to film different takes with subtle differences in performance so that the producers would get what they wanted out of it. It all actually ended up being super creepy because all that sincere stuff that was played beforehand ended up coming across as the mask the character wore to pass in polite society. That said, it takes an experienced group of people to pull something like that off. I have no doubt that this cast is capable of playing things close to the vest like that; it's the other side of the equation that I'm not sure has the experience.

But they haven't laid out any rules yet for this particular plotline. We know there were a whole bunch of Authors and we know this one guy went rogue. August stated that every other Author since time began did his or her job to the letter and simply recorded events. As Adam said, the story is still ongoing. If this were three seasons from now and all of a sudden, oh oops, the Author changed something else we were led to believe he didn't, then okay. But to me, the rules aren't arbitrary yet simply because we don't have all the information yet. It's like saying a certain character in a murder mystery book can't possibly be the killer when you're only halfway through it and there are plot points still coming down the pipeline.

In this instance, Adam has a point. August's exact line: "Many have had this sacred job, great women and men who took on the responsibility with the gravity that it deserved, until this last one. He started to manipulate rather than record. He did something, I don’t know exactly what, but something that pushed them over the edge." Not once in that bit of exposition did the show say that all the characters' actions were not their own. They talked about this one instance with the Apprentice but they did not talk about anything beyond that at all. Yes, it's open-ended as of right now what exactly the Author manipulated, whether it was that one instance or whether he had his fingers in things awhile before he was caught, but the story is also not over yet. Adam was shutting down the poster's original point that "the characters have no control & therefore responsibility for their choices? The book made them do it?" because that's not what the show said.

The same way that Marian did? Magic can work on other magic users. If Zelena wasn't expecting Ingrid to freeze-spell-whammy the ice cream, why would she have thought to magically protect herself? I actually think it's kinda funny that Zelena came up with this whacky, convoluted plan only to almost get frozen by Ingrid like, 24 hours after her arrival back in the present. Heh.

I'm reasonably sure Emma is going to forgive her parents, too. Right now that pain and anger are fresh. Last night's confrontation happened at most a couple hours after they told her the truth. I actually liked seeing her speak her mind rather than tamping all that down and compartmentalizing it. I'm also reasonably sure she does have free will. After the whole thing went down with the egg baby, The Apprentice told Snow and Charming that it was their task to guide Emma to keep her on the light path. She may have been all sweetness and light to begin with due to in utero magic, but that didn't mean she couldn't become corrupted later on down the line.

That's kinda what I had to do with Charmed. (Not that Charmed was ever really a great show to begin with but I loved it anyway.) Seasons 1 through 3 are Charmed, and 4 through 8 are like, Charmed 2.0. I liked Paige but them killing Prue upset me a lot.

Because it needs to be said every time he pops up: Roland is the cutest little child on television right now. Y'know, I didn't hate the Zelena/Marian twist. I feel bad for poor Marian (because what is it with the Mills women and killing poor Marian?!), of course, but I do like that the switch happened after Emma rescued her. So Regina still imprisoned and was set to execute the real Marian. I'm impressed. I thought for sure if they were going to do this thing, they would have had Zelena somehow get to the past earlier in the timeline and make it so that Zelena was Marian from the jump, thereby removing all of Regina's culpability. (Not that her culpability has ever been addressed to begin with, really, but still!) Also, Zelena can totally stay. Rebecca Mader always looks like she's having so much fun that I end up grinning like an idiot. Just keep her away from Hook and Emma (though she can continue to let her Captain Swan shipper flag fly ... hee!). And because it needs to be said: way to go, Emma. That scene was like five seconds long but I loved seeing her actually speak her mind instead of burying it. Yay character growth. :)

Thank you all! She seems to be settling in with me fairly well. She's exploring and not hiding, at any rate! :) Ugh, Shanna Marie, that stinks. I managed to go the whole winter without getting sick and then I got a cold at the beginning of March that morphed into a sinus infection. It was like a winter's worth of sickness right as winter was ending, heh.

Thank you, guys! Gracie's home and adjusting nicely. She's seven weeks old today. I've had her all of two hours and I already adore her.

Thank you, guys! I will definitely post a picture when she comes home.

My issue with the writing of Regina's redemption arc is that the writers seem to want to have it both ways. They want Regina to be someone you can root for but they also want her to be the despicable Evil Queen. So yes, they do write her making progress on her redemption track but then she suffers a blow and it's not a reasonable backslide, it's a complete reversal. And yes, they do have her making progress again after that reversal but at this point, I can't trust how permanent this new progress is. Maybe it is permanent but the next blow she suffers, maybe it'll all be gone again. So for me, it's not so much that Regina hasn't made the proper progress, it's that she makes the proper progress but the second anything threatens that progress, it's oops, take-backsies. It also doesn't help, as far as I'm concerned, that we've seen so. much. of what she'd done as the Evil Queen. We've seen a field of bodies from a village massacre and the pile of bones from the children she sent to their death and a cold-hearted murder of a king and driving the true heir to the throne out of her home, along with all the times she attempted to take Snow's life. We saw her gleefully mocking and laughing at Marian's pleas for help and mercy, we saw her send her guards in to kill baby Emma, we saw her kill her own father in the name of vengeance, we saw her keeping Belle and Sidney prisoner, we saw her gaslighting her own son, we saw her intentionally allow Henry to overhear Emma say something that would hurt him solely to win a point over Emma, and we saw taking Graham's heart, keeping him her puppet for 30-ish years, and then killing him. (And that's just off the top of my head!) That's an awful lot to make up for, and no, the constant pendulum swing of a redemption arc they've written isn't enough for me because I don't feel like she has any idea just how far-reaching her damage was. ("Can we drop the e-word?" Well, maybe if you hadn't just been plotting to kill a woman like two months ago, Regina, they could.)

You guys! If all goes according to plan, I will have a new little kitten on Sunday. :) I still miss my little Cinnamon like crazy but I'm very excited about welcoming Gracie. (Yeah, I've totally already named her. :D)