KingOfHearts August 1, 2015 Share August 1, 2015 Good seems to come out of privilege and evil out of hardship. Makes me think of Queen Eva. She used to be a snobby, spoiled princess, then later she became a gracious queen. There has to be some story behind the dramatic change in her demeanor, but the show has no interest in exploring it. Even Snow mentions in 3x18, "That wasn't the woman I knew. Makes me wonder what changed her... I suppose I'll never know," with Regina replying, "We can never know our past completely." It's like the writers are aware they're missing out but would rather cop out with a couple of lines of dialogue. I'm sure we could learn about Belle's mother, or Hook's pre-villain past, or even Emma's bailsbondwoman days, but that's not what's fun. Villains are fun. 2 Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 Makes me think of Queen Eva. She used to be a snobby, spoiled princess, then later she became a gracious queen. There has to be some story behind the dramatic change in her demeanor, but the show has no interest in exploring it. Maybe I'm a horrible person, but I didn't think Eva was all that bad in the flashback. I kind of feel sorry for her. After all, she'd been promised from birth to marry someone she hadn't even met and knew her whole life that she had no choice in the matter, that it was her duty. Then she went to his kingdom to marry him, only to learn that he'd just then decided to marry someone else. She'd had to put her life on hold, but he was jilting her, which meant she wasn't able to do her duty and fulfill what must have felt like her primary purpose in life. Not that he was a great prize -- he was a lot older than she was and, let's face it, kind of a twit -- but it was better than getting thrown back out into the diplomatic marriage market, where there was no telling who she'd end up with, if there was anyone left who wasn't already promised. And then she discovered that this guy was actually being played by the woman, who was pregnant with someone else's child, lying to him about it, and stealing from him to pay off blackmail about it. When she caught the woman red-handed, the woman tried to cast the blame on her and paint her as a spoiled brat for accusing her. It's funny how it was Cora trying to deflect blame who called her a spoiled brat, and somehow the narrative picked that up as an accurate label for Eva. Yeah, she tripped her later, but the woman had tried to steal her would-be husband and then tried to blame her for it. Eva was telling the truth. Maybe she was snippy about it, but I definitely didn't come out of that story thinking she was a terrible person and feeling sorry for Cora. It's Regina all over again, where Cora wronged her and Snow was the one who got blamed. It was Jonathan who wronged Cora, and somehow Eva got blamed for the way things turned out for her. So I don't need a huge explanation for how Eva became a good queen other than that she grew up and was finally in a position of being able to do the duty she'd spent her life waiting for. Age and responsibility can work wonders for maturing and transforming a person. It's interesting that they don't give explanations for the goodness of characters who were good before they went bad. Regina had the same horrible mother who gets blamed for her evil when Regina was a good enough person that she'd rush to the rescue of a child in danger. Zelena was a loving daughter. Hook was a naval officer who was willing to risk his career and disobey his king rather than be a party to genocide. Cora and Rumple are the ones who weren't necessarily "good" before they went bad. Cora was always a selfish social climber, and I guess Rumple was damaged early enough in life that he didn't stand a chance. He wasn't evil before he became the Dark One, but I wouldn't call him particularly good. Maybe "cowardly neutral." 6 Link to comment
KingOfHearts August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 (edited) Maybe I'm a horrible person, but I didn't think Eva was all that bad in the flashback. I kind of feel sorry for her I'd still call her attitude snobby. She had a bad disposition, but she handled things very differently from her older counterpart. You could tell the writing was trying to tell us she was not a nice person in her youth, even if the morality was skewed. There's a stark difference between her in 2x16/3x18 and in 2x15. Her portrayal was completely separate, as understandable as her actions were. The dichotomy represented is very visible, yet the show doesn't bother to explain why it even exists. In my meta opinion, the writers just wanted to give Snow the righteous upbringing while also giving Cora a rivalry with the White family to deepen the Snow vs. Regina roots. They later used it to demonize the heroes. Again, it's the writers who want their cake and to eat it too. My point is that Eva's side of the story was not taken into account nearly as much as Cora's. Her journey from youth to maturity had to be worth watching from a "evil/good is made" standpoint, but the writers are too interested in villains. Edited August 2, 2015 by KingOfHearts 2 Link to comment
Faemonic August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 (edited) I've been thinking about the challenges of writing interesting good people and how audiences these days are primed to hate the "good" people and automatically sympathize with the "bad" people, who get to have more fun while having the sad backstory that explains and excuses their behavior. I think Cora was right about one thing: It's not about good or evil, it's about power. Charles Perrault, one of the most famous writers of fairy tale compilations, tended to add "the moral of the story is..." to each one of them. People don't like to be told what to think. It's like being overpowered, and I think many generations are still pushing back at him. It ought to be self-evident that kindness makes the world a better place, but when a character like Cinderella is portrayed as so kind that she won't stand up for herself when she's being abused, and you're told that you should be the same way... haters gonna hate. We can analyze the story and its effect on both psyche and society, aim for balance or complexity or better philosophical perspective, but for a lot of people there is only the instinctive pushback. So, in a lot of formulaic entertainment media, creators are going to pander to that. The word "good" takes on meanings that are bad: sanctimony, soppiness, self-righteousness and unrealistic standards, or that it's defined by the victors and their syncophants (so it's power, not virtue, that has won out.) The word "bad" takes on meanings that are good: authenticity, strength, pragmatism, defined by an oppressive and simplistic rabble against whom we root for the underdog. And, I like this description I heard about stories being a mysterious, metaphorically chemical reaction that happens when you mix one idea with another. However, because of that nature of stories...it's become impossible to intelligently argue against instinctive pushback. If people want to write, produce, and film a protagonist-centered morality that bends the world around a character who then gets to give lip service to some tragic history that happened to her (and zero to no consequences for the tragic histories that she has made happen to other people), and other people live vicariously in that power fantasy...then I'll tell myself that they probably need to. But the story just isn't for me anymore. But I continue to metameta. This show likes to say that "Evil isn't born, it's made," but although they've never outright come out and said it, they kind of seem to think that good is made, like it just happens.... So in general, there's no real reason for people being good, but entire epic backstories to explain evil. Good seems to come out of privilege and evil out of hardship. If you're good, it's because you had a good, easy life, and if you're bad, it's not your fault because something bad must have happened to you. ... Big-picture evil on a scale that matches the deeds in these stories seems a lot more likely to come out of comfort in the real world. I mentioned feeling that they're just words now. In this show, "good" has meant kindness, mercy, honesty, courage, and soppy sanctimony. "Evil" has meant selfishness, vindictiveness, lies, cowardice, and the mislabeling of the misunderstood (also "monster".) It might be two very clearly different things for other people to persecute you as evil because they have never considered your point of view, as opposed to being persecuted as evil because you haven't considered their point of view (and therefore have done them wrongs and evils.) When you do something evil to other people and refuse to consider their point of view because other people have never considered your point of view, hey, that's probably realistic. But to then say that the moral imperative is to understand the evildoer, and to create a collective unconditional love and mercy (because love and mercy is definitively needed most by those who deserve it the least)... well, one result of that can be that whatever had driven the person to do evil from a place of victimhood is healed, and they commit to redemption now that there's no internal reason (and they see that there was never an external reason, as in their victims didn't deserve it,) for evil. It might seem icky that doing good seems to be on the evildoer's terms, but as personal autonomy is the key, frankly, it is always ultimately going to be on the terms of the person who has done evil. Fortunately, those terms requisitely include understanding that they've done evil/wrong/harm, or else it's insincere and not going to last and then you can't complain because you wouldn't let redemption happen on the evil person's terms. That's just what happens when personal agency isn't considered a factor. Forgiveness is not on the evil person's terms, and part of redemption is seeking forgiveness, but that's a step up from understanding the harm you've done and committing to change. But it's really icky to prioritize the feelings of somebody who has done evil over the feelings of people who have suffered evil, especially if that doesn't heal the evil person but more (the other result of creating an environment of unconditional love and mercy) enables and rewards evil actions. So...I think it all comes down to, who has the power? Can the victims of evil be personally empowered to heal themselves and leave the offense behind them, or must they seek vengeance, or would they "avenge" themselves on people who don't deserve it and are even less empowered? Most of us would like to think that virtue is performative instead of a conserved quantity, but personal empowerment can get injured (see Regina being raised by Cora) and worn down (see Snow White sighing over Johanna's grave and wondering if following principles truly led to good decisions) and that can lead to some decisions that people who weren't there would be sure to tsk-tsk at. And then, what kinds of power? Isn't it easier to learn to be brave if you're surrounded by soldiers who can pick up your slack if you fail, and people who believe in you to be brave because they've set the example? Then virtue has been fueled by wealth and emotional support, see Belle. But apparently reality-warping magic powers aren't transferrable to virtue, see Rumplestiltskin. About people being good for no reason but evil having an epic backstory... I guess the idea might be that good and evil are made, but they must be defined by the opposite. So, Snow White has to be a brat to show that she can be considerate to Johanna. She couldn't just be a normal and boring child, and have Queen Ava give a spiel about not being better than servants that seems to come out of nowhere. Queen Ava seemed to be good for no reason because, I suspect, the writers just weren't interested in having to think up of bratty Ava's redemption story. But they like the redemption stories of everyone else who's evil, possibly so much that they'd never want it to end, so they need to keep regressing (example) Rumple for no discernable reason. The philosophical bedrock over which all these currents of storylines flow is treated like a means to an end, so it might as well not really be there. TL;DR There's complex and then there's confused. Hey, I enjoyed bizarro Enchanted Forest as long as I didn't think too hard about it. Edited August 2, 2015 by Faemonic 3 Link to comment
MaiLuna August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 (edited) Yeah, I guess "good is born" is about right. The villains are justified for being evil by having a tragic backstory, but the heroes aren't congratulated on not becoming evil when also having a horrible past. So it's not a choice apparently. You're just made evil by bad events in your life though some people aren't made evil for their bad events because of reasons. Snow had her mother murdered, her father murdered, her stepmother trying to kill her and her loved ones, her whole kingdom cursed, her daughter taken away, her nanny murdered right in front of her after she did what told to save her life; but when she kills the woman who killed her mom and her nanny and was about to kill her and her whole family, she's villanized for that. The villains are allowed to act evil because of their tragic pasts, but Snow's past is one of the worst and still she's not allowed to act on self-defense. Regina was abused by her mother, and then had her fiance killed by her, which yes, it's horrible. But still she's allowed to try and kill the girl who accidentally and with no bad intention told her mother about her fiance and who really loved Regina. She's also allowed to: enslave people, murder entire villages, send children to their death to curse her stepdaughter, rape a man for 3 decades, curse an entire kingdom, gaslight her son, try to kill her son's mother AND say she hasn't regretted ANY of it. But she's still the victim. I'd buy Regina's redemption if she regretted her actions, apologized and try to make some things right where she can. If at least she had stopped bad actions altogether. Let's remember that Regina worked "too hard" to have her happiness destroyed on S4 by: -Planning to kill Marian -Enslaving Sidney -Stealing Belle's heart -Yelling at Pinocchio and then helping kidnap him -Sleeping with a married man while his wife is in a coma-like state -Trying to erase Zelena and her baby's from existence Hook, for example, hasn't really apologized and shown to regret his actions that much either, but he doesn't feel entitled and victimized, and Belle's not helping him get his happy ending. But even when his crimes were less than Regina's, the Charmings still think he could become evil again just because he was trying to help Ursula, but Regina's completely trusted to go undercover with the 3 QoD. When I think of this, I try to think what goes on A&E's mind and if they really realize what goes on in their show. It's like stopping to murder people it's a great redemption arc. But it's not just A&E, the audience actually buys it, and thinks "poor Regina". I can't even believe the things I've seen on Tumblr: -A post about Gepetto screaming to Regina about her crimes. She needed to be "protected" because people wouldn't forget about her crimes and kept bringing them up. If the worst consequence you have for being a serial killer is someone bringing up your crimes or calling you even like once a month, that's like the best deal you can get. In real life you'd be in prison for life or even executed. But she's still free, alive, and has her biggest victims helping her get her happy ending, and she's being allowed to be the MAYOR of the kingdom/town she cursed and terrorized. But God forbid she should be reminded of the pain she caused. She must have no consequences at all, even if she has no guilt or regret. I'd love to ask these people if they'd help and defend a person who has killed their loved ones and multiple other people and tried to kill them. If they wouldn't want them to go to jail and if they'd let them be a political figure even when they said they didn't regret any of it. An unrepentant serial killer as mayor who has served no time and nobody is even allowed to criticize. Nobody really thinks of that or puts themselves in the place of the victims and on the show most of the time the POV of the victim isn't even shown. -A post about Snow deserving to have lost Emma because she rejected Maleficent's proposal in Unforgiven. At that point we didn't know what Snowing had really done, and the poster thought that just because Snow didn't want to work with someone who had killed 3 people for no good reason that same day; that because Maleficent had asked for help and she refused because she didn't like her evil methods (let's not forget that Snow was still going to try and stop the curse, and if she had succeeded she would've saved Mal and her baby too) it was only karma that she had to give up Emma. And that post had over 500 notes! -Multiple posts about how evil Snowing/Emma/Belle are for getting Rumpel's dagger in case he tries to kill them, because they're taking away his free will. (Don't wear a bulletproof vest because the killer may fail on his intention of shooting you to death!) How they never help him, even though helping him is what caused Emma to become the Dark One. I wouldn't mind Regina's character if she was portrayed as she is: a hypocritical, self-righteous sociopath. It'd be interesting that way. I also hate the fact that Emma and Snow (and the whole town) forgiving Regina should speak well of them but it doesn't. Emma & Snow are so forgiving that they are willing to forgive and help the woman who has tried to kill them several times. But that's not how it's portrayed. It's portrayed like E&S have the OBLIGATION to help Regina. Regina, who is their attempted murderer, can reject their calls for help but her victims can't make her wait to help her. So for a lot of the fandom: -Being a unrepentant serial killer/rapist: it's cool, understandable, interesting (which this could be IMO if just portrayed right), fun, badass. -Being good and making a couple of mistakes after having a much shittier life makes you: boring, a whiner, a hypocrite, stupid. For me it's more badass and interesting and "resilient" to still be good and kind after having a bad life than it is to resort to murder. Being good 97% of the time and making some mistakes makes you a hypocrite but being evil 97% of the time and then stop killing for 3 months at a time makes you a hero. Got it. Great morality for a "family show". But they portray it in a way that most viewers accept it and also the media, because I've never seen an interviewer bringing this up. 4.05 is portrayed as friendship and for some SQ fans as super romantic. But if I crack-shipped SQ, I think I'd like episodes like 3.13 and I'd hate 4.05. It's like if, as a CS shipper, my favorite episode was The Queen is Dead, when Hook shoves Emma against the wall and then Emma knocks him out with a fire extinguisher. So I'd call A&E not "masters of storytelling" but masters of brainwashing. ETA: So in general, there's no real reason for people being good, but entire epic backstories to explain evil. Shanna Marie: It seems, like you point out in your post, except for Archie, it's all about your parents. You have bad parents: you're a villain (Regina, Rumpel, Hook, Cora, Zelena [though Zelena had a good adoptive mother, her biological parents and adoptive dad were bad - same with Regina and Henry. One bad parent will do the job.]. You have good parents: you're a hero. Emma didn't have parents until she was 28 but her biological parents were good. Snow, David and Belle had good parents, that's why they're heroes. Ashley had a bad stepmother but her parents were good until they died. It seems it all comes down to daddy and mommy issues and goodness/evil is genetic. Edited August 2, 2015 by MaiLuna 5 Link to comment
LizaD August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 but the writers are too interested in villains. I think this is the biggest myth they have perpetrated on the audience. The writers aren't interested in writing villains at all, they're interested in writing VICTIMS. That they have a fucked up definition of victim doesn't change that fact. That's the entire reason Woegina is their Mary Sue hand job fantasy. They've emphasized over and over and over again she is the biggest victim to have been victimized. Ever. Hence why they sacrifice characters and light candles at her altar every night. Not once have they truly seen her as a villain. Now I don't know why they don't think Snow, Graham, Belle, Grumpy, Granny etc are victims. It's painfully clear however that they don't see them as victims. Ok they saw Belle as a victim for a nanosecond at the end of 4A but that's exactly why she got her best and emotionally deep scene ever. If they really enjoyed writing villains, Lacey would've been a hit for them. And yet Lacey was as much a cardboard prop as Belle usually is, until she got to wave that victim flag high and proud. If they loved writing villains as much as people think they do, Dark Emma should be their new pet ala Woegina right? But I can't see that happening. She's another one they refuse to stamp the exclusive label of victim on. This also explains the Eva thing. They have no interest in why she became good sure, but they also don't have any interest in why she was "evil" in the first place. That's a villain's backstory waiting to be told and she was the villain of that piece. If she was a victim, she would've gotten a why she became a sad kicked puppy who kicked other sad puppies. Also this is where you can dump the likes of Malcolm, Tamara, Cruella, and Author, in. The pure villains vs the victims. Do you really think A&E were more invested in those 4 vs Woegina, Cora, Maleficent? I've been thinking about the challenges of writing interesting good people and how audiences these days are primed to hate the "good" people and automatically sympathize with the "bad" people, who get to have more fun while having the sad backstory that explains and excuses their behavior. I disagree. I think the general audience, emphasis on general, are primed to root for the Mary Sues and the character whose POV the story is being told from regardless of the morality. Otherwise how do you explain the long enduring success of comic book superheroes?Or something like Buffy? Those aren't anomalies. Yes there are people that root for the bad guy and they are usually loud about it on Twitter but I don't think that's really the general majority sentiment. It just so happens that the Mary Sue and POV Once is told from is Woegina. I have no doubt that if Snow got a million close ups of her crying and snotting every episode, the entire cast of characters was propping her and some character said she was the biggest victim ever every other episode, and all stories were told from her POV, the thought out there would be different. As a footnote, ratings tell me the general audience ain't buying Once's Mary Sue or POV anyway. 6 Link to comment
KingOfHearts August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 The writers aren't interested in writing villains at all, they're interested in writing VICTIMS. Eh, I don't know. If they were interested in victims, they would have shown us more of Emma's crappy childhood or Snow's reactions to being kicked out of her own castle. We would have gotten more of Neal and his feelings about how horrible his dad made his life. There would be some more recognition of Graham, less whitewashing Henry's abuse. Canonizing villains and making heroes look bad is more of their cup of tea. 3 Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 2, 2015 Share August 2, 2015 I think the general audience, emphasis on general, are primed to root for the Mary Sues and the character whose POV the story is being told from regardless of the morality. Otherwise how do you explain the long enduring success of comic book superheroes?Or something like Buffy? Those aren't anomalies. Yes there are people that root for the bad guy and they are usually loud about it on Twitter but I don't think that's really the general majority sentiment. If you expand it to include not just villains but also anti-heroes and the "bad boy" hero, I do think that currently in pop culture, these characters are more likely to be popular than the true, full-on good guys. In fact, if you look at a lot of forums, message boards, etc., the most hated character in an ensemble is generally the "good" or "nice" character. In superheroes, the popular ones now tend to be the darker, more anti-hero types, while there's been discussion about whether Superman is outdated and boring. On Buffy, Faith and Spike were among the more popular characters. I don't know that Buffy herself was ever truly the most popular character on her own show. She certainly got a lot of hate. It's a chicken-and-egg thing, though, because so often the "nice" or "good" characters tend to be badly written, which makes them not as popular, so the writers bother even less. Meanwhile, the "bad" characters seem to be more interesting to the writers, so they invest more of themselves in them, which tends to make them more Mary Sue, which means the audience gets more invested. It is possible for good characters to be popular when they're well written, but that's pretty rare in ensemble shows where there are also "bad" characters. It seems that even if the writers don't identify more with the darker characters, they figure that being good automatically makes a character sympathetic, so they don't bother doing anything to make those characters sympathetic, and then they work extra hard on creating villains and bad characters who are sympathetic. Then there's the fact that hypocrisy is apparently the worst crime of all. It's far worse to be open about your desire to be good and be less than perfect than to be a murderer and own it. But the hypocrisy is a one-way street because it's apparently okay to be bad and whine about what's happened to you without acknowledging what you've done to others. I had a tangential thought pop up when contemplating the villain vs. hero backstories, something that hadn't occurred to me before but that really struck me, probably because of my summer TV viewing habits. I hadn't thought of what a big deal it was that Killian was planning to make a stand about their king ordering them to assist in genocide. Even before his brother was poisoned, he was refusing to obey an order that came directly from the king on the grounds that he would not be a party to genocide, even against their enemies. The reason this struck me is that I've been watching a ton of WWII documentaries this summer (my cable service added channels, and I now have channels with actual history content, unlike the so-called "History" channel), and I guess because these people are dying out and possibly finally willing to talk, there have been a lot more documentaries looking into the ordinary people who perpetrated the Holocaust -- not the masterminds, but the guards, soldiers, etc. who were cogs in the machine, who went along with it and mostly got away with their participation. They've been exploring the mindset and the way it required the cooperation of so many people to make it happen. There were some rare cases of guards who were assigned to the death camps, got one look at what was going on there, and volunteered for the Eastern Front because they heard Russia was lovely in January (in comparison to what they'd have had to do in the camps), but otherwise the general attitude was that they were following orders, even if they hated it, and they didn't feel like they had any other choice. When you think about it in those terms, it's a huge deal that a Royal Navy officer was prepared to defy his commanding officer and refuse an order directly from the king because he didn't sign up to commit genocide. Even if Liam hadn't died, it seems like Lt. Jones's military career would have been over at that point because how could he have gone on fighting for that king? And how would the king have handled him refusing to carry out that mission? It also kind of makes you wonder what Liam would have done. I got the impression that once he learned (the hard way) that the plant was poison he didn't go along with collecting it, so I guess Killian wouldn't have had to mutiny against his brother, but would Liam have turned pirate, too? Then we have the weirdness that being horrified at being ordered to commit genocide is part of a "villain" backstory. Yeah, there was also the rage and grief over Liam that probably made things worse, but Killian was already at the "oh hell no" stage about the king even before Liam died. We don't know exactly what he was like as a pirate before Milah was killed and he went really bad, but he was a real jerk to Rumple and ran away with another man's wife, so he wasn't exactly a paragon of virtue. I suppose it's a case of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Hook himself has admitted that he made the wrong choices. I don't think he regrets rebelling against the king, but perhaps knows he could have done something more positive with that impulse than becoming a pirate. 6 Link to comment
LizaD August 3, 2015 Share August 3, 2015 (edited) Eh, I don't know. If they were interested in victims, they would have shown us more of Emma's crappy childhood or Snow's reactions to being kicked out of her own castle. We would have gotten more of Neal and his feelings about how horrible his dad made his life. There would be some more recognition of Graham, less whitewashing Henry's abuse. Canonizing villains and making heroes look bad is more of their cup of tea.I explained that already in the very next paragraph. They don't see any of those people as victims. It's an exclusive club. Graham was Woegina's cutesy romcom relationship straight from Lana's and A&E's mouths. Remember "sexy, fun and flirty?" What about those adjectives says Graham is a victim? Snow and her momma were life destroyers and you think they deserve to live happily in a castle? Emma has to pay for the sins of her parents and look Lily had it a million times worse than her so what's the big deal. She just needs to stop being a cold bitch and pushing people away. It's all her own fault. Henry was a brat that started the whole mess by fetching Emma eve though she loved him so damn much. What else does the kid want? Neal at least got 3 or so confrontations with Rump calling him out for being a shitty dad. And Rump apologized and accepted that as the truth. Did they spend endless screentime devoted to that? Nope but he got his say, Rump tried to atone and it was accepted as the truth onscreen. I mean Belle only got one scene to call out Rump too. But at least she got it. The rest don't get that courtesy cause they're not victims. Remember when Snow bitchslapped Gepetto for the wardrobe debacle and that was a dark heart move? Snow's not a victim. That's all "canon" or quotes from the show people. Rump is the only one they've straddled the villain-victim line. But as soon as Rump's big sob story was gone in the form of Neal, they completely stopped trying to write his villain side too. The fact that he spent all of 4A saying the same 2 lines about a hat and cleaving himself from the dagger to 1 character, says they're invested in writing villains? What about Rump spending all of 4B as a nonplayer even though it was supposedly his plan, says they like to write villainy or for villains? Contrast 4B to S1. It both had to do with Rump manipulating Emma for his end goal and yet we only saw that in S1. He had zero interaction with Emma and no direct active move of his put Emma or anyone to where they needed to be in 4B. They've turned his villain into a completely passive character. He was laid out like Belle for heaven sakes, for the big finale scene.That just says to me they're not interested in writing villains. Villains are by nature active characters, not passive. They're no more interested in Rump than Snow, Hook or Emma at this point. They had Ursula and couldn't be bothered to give her a legit villain story. Why didn't they freaking write for her if they loved villains so much. You know who got the most in 4B of the QoD? Maleficent the big ol victim of Snowing. Now what did they spend more time on-Maleficent's villainy or victimhood? For the rest, the villain-victim thing is entirely mutually exclusive. That's why we get stuff like the lasagna debacle of S2 where Woegina was made out to be the great big victim, without acknowledging her villainy towards those same people. Or why Eva got called out as wrong and evil by everyone without balancing it out that Cora trying to pass off her kid as someone else's fiance and then ditching that kid was wrong too. Even Hook got on the bandwagon and called out Eva. Hook of all people! Or when Grumpy placed all the chaos on Snowing's heads. That says to me there is no true interest in villains or villainy. There's only victims to be had. And the evil Snow family who aren't villains but just as bad. Edited August 3, 2015 by LizaD 1 Link to comment
YaddaYadda August 3, 2015 Share August 3, 2015 God what I wouldn't give for an "Amends" episode for Regina. Let her experience the visions and be reminded of the pain & suffering of those she murdered. But even with this, do you honestly think they will allow that to happen. Even with Regina being haunted by the screams of terror and tears of agony, they'll show her resisting, much like she did when she was tied to the tree of regrets or remorse or whatever that thing was called back in Neverland. She regrets nothing because it got her Henry. Technically, casting the curse is what got her Henry. Killing her father got her Henry. Everything else she did, slaughtering a whole village, raping Graham, murdering that groom on his wedding day got her nothing but the satisfaction of being cruel and feeling powerful. 2 Link to comment
Camera One August 3, 2015 Share August 3, 2015 (edited) What's bizarre is how they handle those old crimes when comparing Hook and Regina. With Hook, he has a flashback about Ursula (4B), or Ariel (3B), who he wronged in the past, and then he has to face them in the present where he makes a different choice. That makes it seem like the writers know how to write redemption. A&E love Regina so much, but what exactly was the point of showing her murdering that groom? Wouldn't it have been enough to have her stopping their wedding and having the guests scurrying for cover? They never had her face the groom's surviving relatives. The whole message of that episode was she spared Zelena because she realized Cora was right about her being in the way of her own happiness, so how does killing the groom add to this purpose? Why should we want her to achieve her own happiness when she destroyed a bunch of innocent people's happiness in the flashback? Are we supposed to applaud Regina sparing a murderer (Zelena) at the end because she finally listened to the advice of another murderer (Cora), in light of the murder we saw her commit at the very beginning of the episode? Edited August 3, 2015 by Camera One 6 Link to comment
KAOS Agent August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 I still think it's amusing that they were referring to Hook's stealing Ursula's voice as the worst thing ever in press interviews. What kind of scale are they working on? If Hook's stealing a voice is the worst thing ever, where does Regina crushing an innocent groom's heart fall? The funny thing about stealing the voice is that while it was a terrible thing to do, Ursula's voice was being used to lure ships into the rocks killing everyone aboard. Taking her voice away ensured that her father would not be able to kill any more men by using her that way. Still a dick move by Hook, but it could be said that he saved lives. 9 Link to comment
Mari August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 (edited) True. Even Maleficent did more evil things than steal Ursula's voice in the "Maleficent's a victim of the Charmings." episode. How is stealing Ursula's voice evil, evil, evil, but torching villagers to give your nest that authentic bar-b-que smell the act of a victim? It's absolutely bizarre the truly hideous, violent things they have their victim/villains do as throwaway actions that are completely overlooked. Edited August 4, 2015 by Mari 5 Link to comment
YaddaYadda August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 The other thing is that Ursula ended up being both her father's and Hook's victim. He was very sincere in wanting to help her. He was very kind to her and understanding until her father showed up. And even then, he was completely honest about what her father was up to, about stealing the voice. He didn't set out to screw her over until he felt his chance at vengeance was being taken from him. And of course, when it came to that, Hook lost his mind, became a complete asshole, used the daughter to hurt the father. Hook is completely overrated as a villain or at least his level of villainy is no where near the things we have seen from others. 1 Link to comment
mjgchick August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 Hook's villainy is like a high school jock whose girlfriend/parent/teacher pissed him off so he hurts who ever is closest to the person who is hurting him. Just look at Belle and Ursula2.0. Also the way he would use his innuendo's just to piss people off gave me Logan Echoll's vibe. He just wanted to get a rise out of people. I still think it's amusing that they were referring to Hook's stealing Ursula's voice as the worst thing ever in press interviews. Emma thought he broke her heart but no it was her voice which I guess is still terrible when you think of real life situations where your voice is taken away from you but it's not like she couldn't talk lol 2 Link to comment
Camera One August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 (edited) Singing was the one thing Ursula loved most, the only thing left of her mother's, not to mention Ursula was still a young girl, so I do think it was pretty bad. The ridiculous thing is the amount of time spent on shaming certain characters on this show being completely disproportionate to the severity of the transgression. Like they devoted an entire episode to Hook's bad act, while Regina killing a groom on wedding day was never mentioned again. How many episodes did they spend tsk-tsking Snowing for the egg babynapping, while village burning Maleficent could get off giving some sanctimonious lecture about how they didn't deserve forgiveness? No one pointed out maybe it was just desserts for depriving Stefan and Leah of 16 years with their daughter. I guess we should be lucky they couldn't get Sarah Bolger for another episode, or they'd have written Aurora telling Snow they were just as bad as Maleficent, LOL. Edited August 4, 2015 by Camera One 5 Link to comment
formerlyfreedom August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 Folks. We're seriously astray in here. Let's take a time out for a little bit. Thanks. 1 Link to comment
yeswedo August 4, 2015 Share August 4, 2015 Hey folks, the Nazi comparisons are going a bit too far for a fictional show. We've hidden several posts in that vein, please feel free to repost your thoughts using a different analogy. Contact one of the mods (@aquarian1, @MostlyC, @stacey, @yeswedo) with any questions. Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 10, 2015 Share August 10, 2015 So, over the weekend, this happened in Houston. Yet another case of a man flipping out in revenge when his significant other leaves him for another man and murdering the woman and her new man (and in this case, her children). Which makes it even more intensely uncomfortable to watch Rumple and Belle and to in any way cheer for this relationship, given that we have a man who murdered his wife for leaving him for another man, maimed the man, and continues to consider this man his worst enemy for "stealing" his wife, and he not only is entirely unrepentant, he's still gloating about it and enjoying the pain he caused the man his wife left him for. How are we supposed to feel like Rumple and Belle should be together and he should get a happy ending? I know they like to play the "it's fantasy" card to excuse stuff like this, but this isn't like a man being magically controlled by his heart to be forced into the bed of a beautiful woman or a man being magically tricked into sleeping with a woman when he thinks she's his wife but she's actually his wife's murderer. That kind of thing doesn't happen in the real world, and the real-world analogues aren't exact (not that these things don't also make me uncomfortable, but the "it's fantasy" thing can be sort of made to apply). But this situation isn't fantasy. It's something that happens in the real world, and it's a serious issue, so it's really sketchy that they brush it aside so easily and act like it's no big deal and has no bearing on Rumple's future relationships. Then again, they also made quips about how dead Will would likely be for dating Belle -- something even she didn't disagree with. Which means we have a "heroine" who loves a man she knows murdered his previous wife for leaving him and who knows that he'd probably kill any other man she associated with, and she still wants to be with him. 1 Link to comment
Amerilla August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 They do fall back to much on "fantasy" as an excuse for the way the portray villain/non-villain relationships, but at a certain point, to apply real-world standards would be so limiting, you wouldn't have any path to humanity for any of the main villains, and you end up with bad-guy cast of Zelenas. It's certainly not confined to Rumbelle. Hook, as introduced in S2, was exceptionally violent towards women. Belle, Aurora, Team Princess as a whole, Regina...meancing, beating, shooting, heart-ripping, electrocuting. And Emma knows about all of this. If you apply the real-world metric, there is no way Emma Swan - a woman whose job as both bondsperson and sheriff is focused on holding people accountable for their actions, a woman with a teenage son to raise to healthy manhood in an already whacked environment - would take as her significant other a man who she knows is fully capable of violence against people who are chained up, strapped down, cornered, backs turned, vulnerable, and not particularly apologetic about have done any of it. To compensate, the writers had to make her aggressively, assertively not care. The past it the past and she doesn't care about the past. So it becomes a non-issue. That's the pattern. Robin doesn't care about Regina's past; it's something to, at worst, be reframed into something less odious. Belle has to ingore pretty much everything, until the plot spontaneously requires her not to. The problem, of course, is that because so much of Rumpel and Regina and Hook's past lives are off-limits to their various mates, there's nothing to talk about, and very little sense of why Emma and Belle and Robin - three pretty nice folks who could all do way better - would be with these folks, and to various degrees, they become tarnished by association. Rumbelle is a very old writing problem. At the risk of dating myself, I was huge fan of Guiding Light back in the '90s, and my favorite characters were Roger Thorpe and his ex-wife, Holly. Their relationship in it's first pass was marked by violence: Roger raped her while they were married, later stalked and kidnapped her, and was "killed" in the process. When they reemerged in the '90s, they embarked on an amazing relationship - not romance, but sort of a deep-dive into the pain they had caused each other, the deep bond of love that still remained between them, and it was glorious to watch for many years. But at the same time, it was icky, because this WAS a rapist, and they had to obliquely minimize the gravity of that by having him apologize repeated for "hurting" her, when rape goes so far beyond "hurting" someone. In the end, it was a fictional tool to explore the inner workings of these two characters as individuals and as a couple, and on that level, it worked. I tend to think of Rumbelle the same way - not as a "real" couple working through real problems where something like killing Wife #1 is a would be an issue. It's simply using Belle as a proxy for Rumpel's faded humanity, to give him some depth and a compassionate being for him to talk to about feelings. I wish they would back that up with some insight into Belle's inner character, but if wishes were horses.... They have taken some pains to make sure that Belle is not endangered or menaced by Rumpel - even in S4, when Rumpel was engaging in "soft" abuse like freezing her or putting her into sleep, at the end of the day, she was still more powerful than he was, ending up with the dagger and banishing him in 4a, showing her willing to move on in 4b even though she still loves him. They haven't gotten her pregnant and dependent, even where that would have made narrative sense; they haven't made him angry or vengeful towards her even after she banishes him and takes away his power. So they are aware of some of the potholes they could fall into. At the end of the day, Belle is going to be the one to kill Rumpel or to redeem him, but I don't believe it will ever go the other way around. Link to comment
KAOS Agent August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 (edited) Not to defend Hook's actions in S2, but I think he unfairly gets a misogynist label. Because while his actions were against women, the only people he was associating with were women. We only saw him with Belle, Regina, Cora, Team Princess, etc. He would have acted terribly against any man who stood in the way of his goal of revenge too, but there weren't any men to get in his way except Claude and we saw what happened to Claude. They have taken some pains to make sure that Belle is not endangered or menaced by Rumpel - even in S4, when Rumpel was engaging in "soft" abuse like freezing her or putting her into sleep, at the end of the day, she was still more powerful than he was, ending up with the dagger and banishing him in 4a, showing her willing to move on in 4b even though she still loves him. And I would strongly disagree about him not menacing her in S4. He threatened the guy she was going out with, lied to her, spied on her and stalked her. He even took on the guise of someone else and used it question her about her feelings and then touch her. He also stole back the dagger removing her one defense against him. She said out loud that she was frightened of him. Who wouldn't be frightened knowing what he did to the last wife who left him? Belle was not empowered in 4B, she was scared. That she seemed to go back to him after all of this is disturbing. The angry ex is often used for drama on shows, but it's rarely portrayed as "True Love" romantic which is a line Once seems to be trying to skate on. There were scenes that were supposed to be romantic and were considered as such by Rumbellers that made me cringe. Stalking your scared ex is creepy. It happens in real life and it's not acceptable. I don't care how much you love the other person, if they tell you to get out and stay out, you do it. You have no claim on that person and no right to insert yourself into their life if you don't want it. The show in some way romanticising it is troubling because of course Belle is going to go back and admit she loves him. What's the message there? That stalking is okay if you really love the other person and it will totally make them love you back even though they claim you're scaring them? Edited August 11, 2015 by KAOS Agent 8 Link to comment
Amerilla August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 (edited) Not to defend Hook's actions in S2, but I think he unfairly gets a misogynist label. Because while his actions were against women, the only people he was associating with were women. To me, it's not a matter of Hook being misogynist; Hook, like most of the characters, is whatever they need him to be in the moment. In S2, they needed him to be credibly menacing and driven to seem like a legit threat to Rumpel. S2 was notable in the uptick in how the show framed violence. In S1, Regina and Rumpel and Cora did some bad shit, but they really amped it up in S2, where you have unapologetic massacres, spousal murder, shooting, stabbing, electrocuting...it was much more in-your-face, and at the same time, you're still being encouraged to think of them as people who only need love to be redeemed. For whatever reason, the show - writers, directors, set designers, actors - framed Hook's violence towards women in a very aggressive way. With men, it was almost clinical: he stabs Claude, and Claude is no more; he waves his hook in Archie's face and threatens him, but don't really see him hurt Archie. Belle, on the other hand, isn't just in a cell, she's chained to a wall in a cell. Regina isn't just tortured, she's rendered magicless, strapped down, and tortured. The forum takes Belle to task for not instantly believing Hook when he tells her Rumpel killed Milah, but she learns this in a scene where he has her pinned against a wall with a gun under her chin, breathing heavily into her face - a framing that's less "gee, I should really investigate this wife-murder stuff" than "he's either going to rape me and kill, or kill me and rape me." With Belle and Aurora, he first presents himself as an ally - an handsome pirate who just wants to help you if just give a little information - then pivots to heart-ripping and face-slapping. At the same time, the show clearly wanted us to see Hook as redeemable and desirable. The show makes decisions, and then they have to figure out what to do when them later on. They had to create a meaninful conflict between Hook and Rumpel. They could have written Rumpel killing Milah not as an agressive act, but as something more incidental - Milah jumps in front of Hook at the last moment to save him and gets whammed - and accomplished the same exact thing as outright murder, with much less potential relevance to Rumpel's relationship with Belle. They just didn't care. Milah as a person or a woman is irrelevant to the writers. Her death was just a catalyst for that particular story. It has nothing to do with Belle, and they don't even pretend that it does. And in a sense, it doesn't. Past violence in one instance is not an indicator of violence in the current instances. Hook isn't going to start beating on Emma because he beat other women in the past. Rumpel isn't going to rip Belle's heart out and kill her for leaving him and taking up with another man - in fact, they reversed the story in 4b, when he returns her heart to her and wishes her and Will godspeed. Edited August 11, 2015 by Amerilla 2 Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 Domestic violence and violence are two very different issues, like comparing apples to Brussels sprouts, so it really doesn't work to compare Rumple's past (and present) behavior and how that affects his relationship with Belle to Hook's past behavior and how it affects his relationship with Emma. Domestic violence -- or, to expand it somewhat, domestic abuse -- is about a person treating a romantic partner like personal property rather than as a person and using violence or other means to control that person. It's Rumple murdering his wife for leaving him and maiming the man he considers "stole" his wife, and considering that the man who "stole" his wife wronged him, personally, to the point that he still feels like the victim. It's keeping from Belle the fact that her father is alive and looking for her and discarding her posters looking for her father to keep her away from her family and in his possession. It's putting Belle under sleeping spells so he can do things behind her back that he knows she'd disapprove of and making plans about her life without giving her any say in the matter, like planning to kill all her friends while she's asleep and then take her to a different place and lie to her about what happened when she wakes up. It's pretending to be other people so he can deceive her or get information out of her. It's acting in such a way that she fears for the life of anyone else she might date. He remains unrepentant about any of this. He's still gloating about murdering his wife. And yet the show seems to be portraying this relationship as "true love," and isn't portraying Belle as being deluded or in the wrong when she keeps insisting that he's good and keeps going back to him. Hook's violence against women in season two was not domestic violence. He was not in a relationship with these women. He wasn't trying to control them to keep them in a relationship with him. They were his enemies, and I don't think being a woman gives you a pass when it comes to being an enemy. Team Princess took him prisoner, disarmed him, kept his hook from him, tied him up, threatened to kill him and threatened to leave him for the ogres before he committed any violence against them. Emma betrayed him, going against the agreement they made, and chained him up at the top of the beanstalk before he committed any violence against her -- in fact, after he'd taken some big physical risks for her. If they struck first, is he not allowed to retaliate just because they're female? Regina took his hook and was menacing him with it, and also had a power advantage over him with magic. He was sent as an assassin against Cora, but she had him entirely in her power and was the one committing violence against him. His actions against Belle were much less excusable because in the prison she was helpless, but she was defending and refusing to betray the Dark One, which put her in the category of enemy (though he did initiate the violence against her that time). In Storybrooke, she entered his ship/home with a weapon. In a lot of states, he would have been within his rights to shoot her (though there would have been trouble about the psychiatrist tied up in the hold). Within a relationship, he's never shown any sign of trying to control a woman emotionally or physically. You can call him violent and you can criticize his hot temper, but you can't compare his violent acts to the way Rumple treats Belle because they're in a totally different category. Hook was violent against his enemies, while Rumple is violent and controlling toward the people he claims to love. 10 Link to comment
Camera One August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 (edited) Team Princess took him prisoner, disarmed him, kept his hook from him, tied him up, threatened to kill him and threatened to leave him for the ogres before he committed any violence against them. He was a villain working for megavillain Cora. I think that was a situation where we actually got to see the heroes give what a villain deserved without them having to feel bad about it. Refreshing compared to how they framed Snow killing Cora, or Emma pushing Cruella off a cliff. I'm glad that at least in-show, Hook isn't getting the heavy-handed revisionist take the way Regina, Rumple, and most of the villains get. Edited August 11, 2015 by Camera One Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 He was a villain working for megavillain Cora. Didn't they already have him tied up before he finally told the truth? They were right about him, but they didn't know it yet. I'm not saying they were wrong to have done that, but from his perspective, that made them enemies, and the point remains that violence against enemies who consider you to be an enemy where there's no expectation of mutual trust is very different from violence against someone you supposedly love who loves you and should be able to trust you. With the enmity between heroes and villains, it's possible to move past it because allegiances change and people change and grow. Hook realized he was in the wrong and switched sides so that he was no longer an enemy and has shown no sign since then of violence against Emma. Caring about her was a big part of him stopping being violent. He shows his love for her by being supportive and caring. With Rumple (and with domestic abuse in general), the violence and abuse are their expression of what they believe to be love. He shows his love by being controlling. But for me, the part that bothers me isn't Rumple's actions -- he's a villain and the show doesn't even try to whitewash that. It's Belle's reaction to his actions that makes me very uncomfortable. She keeps coming back to a relationship with someone she knows murdered his previous wife for leaving him, who believes his wife was stolen from him and that he's the victim in all that, who she's watched torture people for fun, who's lied to her and deceived her repeatedly, who even made her out to be the bad guy for not believing him when he was deceiving her, and who she fears might kill any other man she might be interested in. In the real world, someone in that kind of relationship with that kind of history is probably going to end up being murdered by her lover, either for leaving him or because he's paranoid that she will and he wants to get in a preemptive strike. But in this show, they act like she's right for having faith in him and this is a sign of true love in a deeply romantic relationship. That has absolutely nothing to do with Hook, so I'm not sure why he was even brought up here. 4 Link to comment
yeswedo August 11, 2015 Share August 11, 2015 There has been a lot of overlap between the Social Issues and Morality threads so we've decided to combine them. We're looking for suggestions for a new title. Please add yours to the thread or like someone else's suggestion to show your support. A few of the recent comparisons to real life events are getting too close to political / news discussions which are generally avoided here at PTV. Consider going further back in history - Elizabethan England, Ancient Rome and Greece- the possibilities are endless! PM the mods with any questions or feedback. Link to comment
KAOS Agent August 12, 2015 Share August 12, 2015 I think if you get too stuck on what happened in the past with regards to any of the villains having a happy, healthy relationship with a hero, you're going to be disappointed and upset. I am not at all happy with things being whitewashed, but I think you just have to take the "it happened in the past and I don't care" and deal with it with regards to why someone would be in a relationship with a villain. That's the way the show rolls. Mass murder shouldn't ever be called a mistake and it's particularly horrifying that Regina murdered Marian and Robin is cool with that or something (When you murdered my wife and mother of my child, it was a mistake, Regina! Besides, Emma fixed it so that it was Zelena who killed her this last time. Come back to bed.) but I don't even try to understand Outlaw Queen, so we'll just ignore them. By removing the pasts of the villains and only exploring their actions in their current relationships, the domestic violence angle of Rumbelle still shines through. If we look at Captain Swan, we see Hook treating Emma exactly as one should a romantic partner. He's supportive, helpful and presumably Emma enjoys his company. That's why they're together. He makes her happy. The relationship is a healthy example of how things should work. If I had a boyfriend that treated me like Hook does Emma, it would be great. I say this even though I would never choose to date someone who had a past like Hook's, but the relationship as shown onscreen is a healthy one. It gives a positive message. If we look at Rumbelle, we see a controlling, lying, manipulative stalker who has made his True Love fear him and tried to kill her friends & family on multiple occasions. All of this has occurred while they were in their relationship. He treats her like chattel, makes decisions for her, lies to her and makes her feel like crap. He even brainwashed her into his fantasy wife in the AU. And yet, she continues to go back to him because she loves him so much (even the dark parts), he loves her and he can change. It's basically all the reasons abuse victims give when they go back to their abuser. It's incredibly unhealthy. The best thing that ever happened to the relationship was Belle kicking Rumpel out of town for good. The problem is that after everything, she took him back. Who cares if he makes a sweet apology? I don't care that he returned her heart. If a guy hurts you, you walk away immediately. You don't take a slap and then go back to the guy when he brings you flowers making promises that he isn't going to keep. Rumpel has demonstrated over and over and over and over again that he will continue to treat Belle the way he always has. You'll note that even though he returned the heart and wished Will & Belle well, it ultimately meant nothing because the next day he wrote a story where Belle was once again his. No matter how sweet a gesture or how seemingly sincere an apology is, once your partner has sunk to the depths that Rumpel has, you leave and don't look back. It may be painful, but that kind of love is messed up. I know this show is about hope and love, but going back to someone who treats you like shit hoping it will get better is a terrible message. And unfortunately, it's also all too real. In a real scenario, Belle would end up seriously injured or dead, but because it's Disney and they wouldn't allow that to happen to Belle, the story will most likely end up with them living happily ever which just makes their relationship a fucked up fairy tale where bad behavior is rewarded. 9 Link to comment
october August 12, 2015 Share August 12, 2015 (edited) To compensate, the writers had to make her aggressively, assertively not care. The past it the past and she doesn't care about the past. So it becomes a non-issue. While I have serious issues with the way this show handles villains and redemption, I disagree that Emma doesn't care about Hook's past. I think one of the things that separates her from Robin and Belle on this score is that Emma wasn't interested in pursuing a relationship with Hook until he'd established a pattern of decent behaviour, shown her and others compassion, and given her good reason to trust him. Even then their relationship is a work in progress. When he lied about not remembering Ursula for example she called him out and he accepted that she was right. She chose not the push the issue but she wasn't going to pretend that he doesn't have a few dozen (hundreds?) of skeletons in his closet either. She set a boundary for their relationship and so far Hook has stuck to it. He's since been open with her about his fears and struggles when it comes to his attempts to better himself. Then there's the matter of Operation Mongoose and him being the only one of the three 'ex-villains' to not want the author to write them a guarenteed happy ending. Hook has not only changed, but he's taken responsibility for his own redemption and that counts for a lot. Emma is someone who had to set her own life back on track at one point and, while her crimes were nowhere near as serious as Hook's, I can at least understand why she admires the progress he's made. I really can't say these things for the other two couples. Rumbelle's issues have been outlined well above so I won't go over them. OutlawQueen is a mess. For all her bravado Regina needed her hand held and for people to drop what they're doing at a moment's notice to help her get her bespoke happy ending, and she takes no responsibility for her own slip into darkness at the start of S4. Robin doesn't take Regina's crimes seriously (bold and audacious? ugh) and barely blinked when he found out she'd killed his wife and the mother of his child. He also didn't have issue with her almost writing his unborn child out of the picture. There is no accountability here and no foundation for trust and honesty. Edited August 12, 2015 by october 9 Link to comment
YaddaYadda August 12, 2015 Share August 12, 2015 That deleted scene between Regina and Rumple, he says he owns Belle. And I know he's sort of evolved since then, but please, stop saying you own her in the flashbacks. 3 Link to comment
Actionmage August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 How about this for a new thread name-- Eating The Gingerbread House: Morality and Social Issues ? ITA that the morality the show is backing as correct is fucked up. ITA that the villains are portrayed as having hard times and bad things happen to them, so that's why we need to indulge their Id at every moment. Meanwhile, the "boring", "stuck-up", "self-righteous" heroes are blamed for everything under the sun, even if they didn't do what they are accused of doing! The Show then tells the family audience that the heroes are Evul for protecting family/ town/ strangers or for even denying that they performed whatever the villains are claiming they did. Granted, I don't want this to become a fairy tale version of Law & Order, but I am told, not asked, by the show to feel more for the murderers than the people they have attempted to murder for decades. I could let some of what frustrates me be handwaved, but after four seasons of "No, really, Snow is the worst human on any planet in any galaxy, in any universe. Srsly."? I am not sure if I will watch the even half of the season. I am unsure how Dark Swan is gonna play and it has me wary. If we go by what has been done previously, it will be a trainwreck. 4 Link to comment
Camera One August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 (edited) Morality & Social Issues: Being Honest Is Worse Than Murder Morality & Social Issues: It's Not Easy Being a Monster Morality & Social Issues: Killers Have Feelings Too Morality & Social Issues: It's Snow's Fault Edited August 14, 2015 by Camera One 4 Link to comment
YaddaYadda August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 Morality & Social issues: Some villains are just the bestest Link to comment
KingOfHearts August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 Morality and Social Issues: Because Um... Magic, That's Why. Link to comment
Serena August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 (edited) Morality & Social issues: It's Not Rape If She Did It With Magic Morality & Social issues: How Has Snow White's Family Ruined Your Life Today? Morality & Social issues: Sending Pregnant Teenagers To Jail Is For Their Own Good Morality & Social issues: It Can't Be Wrong If Pinocchio Told You To Do It Edited August 14, 2015 by Serena 2 Link to comment
pezgirl7 August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 Morality & Social issues: How Has Snow White's Family Ruined Your Life Today? Hah, I vote for that one! 4 Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 14, 2015 Share August 14, 2015 I say this even though I would never choose to date someone who had a past like Hook's, but the relationship as shown onscreen is a healthy one. I've been thinking about this while rewatching season 2, and I think that if someone who grew up in the US or other first-world kind of place had Hook's kind of past, that would definitely be bad news because it would mean a choice to go against the dominant culture when he should have known better. But Hook's closer to being from the equivalent of a lawless third-world country where the justice system doesn't work and you have to do whatever it takes to protect yourself or get your own kind of justice. That has its own kinds of problems (I live in a largely immigrant neighborhood, and there's definitely some adjustments that can affect relationships with people from a different background), but I guess the test there is how well he changes his ways to fit into a different culture once he realizes it's not every man for himself. Not that Storybrooke is any kind of example of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. This is a town where mass murderers not only walk the streets freely but hold positions of authority, and people get very different treatment by the legal system based on their connections to the ruling cabal (Regina plus the Charmings -- but they're family!) or their power, so Emma can't exactly blame Hook for taking matters into his own hand rather than relying on the justice system, either in his own world or in Storybrooke. In fact, this shows up after the shooting/car accident. Both Hook and Rumple are guilty of assault with a deadly weapon, Hook for shooting Belle and Rumple for attacking Hook. Emma and David might not know about Rumple beating Hook almost to death on the Jolly Roger, but they witnessed Rumple kicking an injured Hook in the face and then going after him with some kind of weapon (I'm not sure if it was his cane or a sword -- it was long and shiny and Rumple held it against his neck) to the point that David had to pull him off. Rumple walked free and Hook ended up handcuffed to a hospital bed, and Emma even taunted Hook with the fact that Hook was injured, helpless, and handcuffed while Rumple was walking free and powerful. Then add to that the fact that these people used dark magic to save the life of the Dark One by taking another life, and they don't have a lot of moral ground to stand on with Hook. Him giving up on getting vengeance against Rumple meant just letting it go entirely because he's never going to get any justice. Rumple hasn't even seen any consequences, since Belle's alter ego was an even better match for Rumple (all the darkness loving, none of the nagging) and she got her memory back, Rumple's life was saved from Hook's vengeance, Rumple's son didn't seem to care what his father did to his mother, and Belle didn't care what he did to his ex wife. But then I think that the good Hook has done has to be weighed against his past. How many "good" people without his track record of evil does Emma know who would put themselves and their ship on the line to return to a hellhole he escaped from for the sake of her son, who've saved her father's life, who would give up everything they owned to reach her and return her to her family, and who would jump into a time portal for her sake? And then there's the little stuff, like looking after Henry, helping Henry know about and remember his father, and helping her reconcile with her parents. I don't think one good deed totally wipes the past clean, but a recent pattern of good deeds with bad deeds being mostly in the past has to count for something. If I were in such extreme circumstances that deeds like that were possible, I might consider him the way he is now, even with his past. The eyeliner would have to go, though. Sorry. I have to draw the line somewhere, and I can't deal with a man who wears more makeup than I do. :-) 4 Link to comment
KingOfHearts August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 (edited) No, really, Snow is the worst human on any planet in any galaxy, in any universe. Srsly. The show loves to "break the paradigm" with making Snow, the purest of the pure, evil. A&E seem to find that concept so groundbreaking and edgy. I'm all for saying Snow is imperfect just like everyone else, and I believe Bandit Snow and S1 Mary Margaret both achieved that excellently. They didn't need to convince us that she's capable of great sin, but that she struggles with choices and relationships just like us. The demonizing began in S2 when she killed Cora. We all know that it was written to make Snow look dark and totes evilz. It was the character assassination that continues to ripple going into S5. Since then it's been, "OMG! She cast the Dark Curse! She was snarky under Shattered Sight! She eggnapped Maleficent's daughter! She lied to Emma! She threatened Ursula and Cruella! She's the Evil Queen in the AU!" It's funny how Snow can cover-up a part of her past she's ashamed of and Emma doesn't talk to her for several episodes, yet Regina plots murder and Emma wants to be her bestie. At times I can't stand Snow, but geez. Such biased writing. Edited August 15, 2015 by KingOfHearts 7 Link to comment
Dianthus August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 Ok, I'm a little late to this convo, but I'd just like to state, for the record, how f*cking tired I am of this Killian's the Worst/Emma would Never bullshit! What round is this anyway? I swear I've lost count. Can we please move beyond it already? As for Spike and Faith on BtVS/AtS, they were indeed popular characters, but they both hit rock bottom at some point, faced a choice to be better people, and put in the work it took to make amends. Hell, Faith was literally beating herself up over her self-loathing (after switching bodies with Buffy) and Spike undertook a (Bargain Basement) Hero's Journey. Think about it: a long journey, going underground, facing a series of trials meant to test his resolve, thus ultimately winning a boon. That's part of the reason why I utterly reject comparisons between him and either of the Rs. Was his body count higher than Hook's? Sure, but unlike the Rs, and very much like Hook (IMO), he faced up to what he'd done and changed his ways. 2 Link to comment
Delphi August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 I'm sorry, so after Hook shot Belle and caused her to literally have an identity crisis why would anyone feel the moral need to even attempt to arrest Rumple for attacking Hook. They stopped him from killing him, but I think that's good enough. Seriously. You come on to a scene where you see this crazed criminal who you've seen literally trying to murder people before and see he's just shot a young woman recently released from a hospital ward and you'd what? Take the criminals side? 2 Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 You come on to a scene where you see this crazed criminal who you've seen literally trying to murder people before and see he's just shot a young woman recently released from a hospital ward and you'd what? Take the criminals side? No, you treat them equally. The police witnessed an assault with a deadly weapon and saw the aftermath of another assault with a deadly weapon. Both suspects should have been arrested and then the situation sorted out. Then they might have found that Rumple had just recently assaulted Hook on his own ship. Emma also knew that Rumple had severely wronged Hook in the past. There was lots of wrong to go around, and if Hook was arrested, Rumple should have been, as well. How is Rumple attacking Hook for shooting Belle any different from Hook trying to attack Rumple for killing Milah? Not arresting Rumple while arresting Hook and then taunting Hook with the fact that he was helpless while Rumple was free and could hurt him was not an act of justice by the sheriff. If that's the way the sheriff acts, then she doesn't have a lot of ground for telling anyone that personal vengeance isn't the way to go and that law and order are the right way. What it boils down to is that they're powerless against Rumple because he's so powerful and they can't hold him, which was the problem for Hook in the first place, that when you're wronged by the Dark One, you have no recourse. 9 Link to comment
Rumsy4 August 15, 2015 Author Share August 15, 2015 (edited) If that's the way the sheriff acts, then she doesn't have a lot of ground for telling anyone that personal vengeance isn't the way to go and that law and order are the right way. I know some people get annoyed when this is brought up, but Emma threw Will Scarlet in jail for ruining her date and fed him a half-eaten pop-tart. I know the scene was meant to be funny, but it typifies that justice in Storybrooke is a joke. Power-differentials and nepotism play a huge role in determining punishments in Storybrooke. From a writing perspective, when every main character has apparently wronged someone or the other, there are only two recourses--throw everyone in jail and have a prison show, or let them roam free and fudge the scales of justice with some slop about forgiveness and hope. Edited August 15, 2015 by Rumsy4 6 Link to comment
Amerilla August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 . I know the scene was meant to be funny, but it typifies that justice in Storybrooke is a joke. Power-differentials and nepotism play a huge role in determining punishments in Storybrooke. I wish they'd just quit the "sheriff" bulls**t after S1. There it served a narrative purpose of driving conflict between Emma and Regina and magic wasn't an issue. By the time Captain-freaking-Hook shoots Belle and Rumpel-freaking-stiltskin throws a fireball at him, it just gets stupid. At best, it ends up creating moral "wuuuuuuts?" that could be avoided. At worst, it makes Emma look capricious or inept. 3 Link to comment
Camera One August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 (edited) The whole jailing Will situation was ridiculous and a clumsy setup to use him for another C Plot in the following episode. Once they introduced magic to Storybrooke, the whole Sheriff role and having a single jail cell didn't work anymore. However, Emma handcuffing Hook back in Season 2 after he shot Belle was warranted and made sense, regardless of what happened to Rumple. The show continuously provides excuses and justification for Woegina and Wumple's bad behavior and I would find Hook equally annoying if in the show, they provided a similar Captain Wook treatment and pursued the message that Emma was morally anywhere near the level of Hook in Season 2, when he was in clear villain territory. Thank goodness they haven't gone back and done that, or I would never have warmed to Hook. I think Hook himself would agree he deserved everything he got from Emma and the other Princesses in Season 2, if not more. The nature of this show requires that Rumple, Regina and Hook not only walk free but are fully integrated into the heroes' family and working relationship, in order to keep them palatable as regulars. With Hook, this has worked because he has become a better person, showing remorse with both words and deeds. Short of this, villains can only be allowed to walk free if villains are too powerful for the heroes to defeat so heroes reluctantly work with them due to aligned goals. For awhile, they used this strategy with Rumple and it worked alright. But this ceases to be believable if the villain continuously screws them over again and again, which has occurred throughout Season 4 with Rumple, for example. Or if forgiveness is not earned like with Regina. A&E has in some ways been smart about this, by "rebooting" Rumple and having him lose the Dark One Curse and become an ordinary man as Season 5 begins, even though they pretty much destroyed any credibility the character had left in Season 4. But this could also be an easy way out for the writers to sweep everything under the rug and avoid dealing with any fallout. Meanwhile, equalizing Rumple and Emma on a moral scale, just like they've gradually but systematically done for Regina and Snow through the four seasons (whereby now Snow has also casted the Dark Curse, killed someone's parent, committed adultery, lied to her child, and separated a mother from their beloved baby depriving them of a happy childhood). Edited August 15, 2015 by Camera One 6 Link to comment
Panopticon August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 I know some people get annoyed when this is brought up, but Emma threw Will Scarlet in jail for ruining her date and fed him a half-eaten pop-tart. I know the scene was meant to be funny, but it typifies that justice in Storybrooke is a joke. Power-differentials and nepotism play a huge role in determining punishments in Storybrooke. Is it really general consensus that that's why Emma threw Will in jail? He was only able to interrupt her date in the first place because he'd run away from her while she was investigating his little theft habit. I know she said that he was in jail for crashing her date, but that always struck me as something she said to point out to the assembled group (especially Hook) that she was valuing her free time, and her pirate, the way everyone who cares about her periodically pesters her to do. I always assumed that everyone present-- Emma, Hook, Will, and the rest-- knew that she hadn't actually thrown him in the cell over the incident in the restaurant. Will had just given her a string of smartass non-answers about where he'd been, why his face was bruised, and why he buried himself in a copy of Alice in Wonderland. So she gave him a smartass non-answer in turn. 2 Link to comment
Shanna Marie August 15, 2015 Share August 15, 2015 However, Emma handcuffing Hook back in Season 2 after he shot Belle was warranted and made sense, regardless of what happened to Rumple. I have no problems with that. Hook deserved to be arrested. I can even get why Emma didn't even try to arrest Rumple, given that he'd magically poof himself out of the cell about ten seconds later. It would have been a waste of time. My issue is with the fact that not only are they not doing anything about Rumple, but they act like there's not any reason to do anything. It's often as though they aren't bothering to notice what he's done. In this case, it was Emma taunting Hook about being handcuffed and Rumple walking free, as though Hook was the only one who'd done anything wrong when Emma had seen Rumple attack Hook and knew something about their history (and surely the doctors would have noticed that not all of Hook's injuries came from the car crash, so shouldn't the sheriff have been asking him questions about that?). Or later, there's moving heaven and earth and resorting to dark magic to save Rumple. Rumple is a bad guy. He's wronged just about everyone in town, as we saw in the episode when he thought Belle was missing and he had to get David's help to search for her because no one would talk to him since everyone in town had suffered at his hands. He's the one who spurred Regina to cast the curse. He enjoys being cruel. But whenever he's in trouble, they react to it as though he was one of the good guys, and anyone who harms or wrongs him -- even in retaliation for something he's done to them -- is treated like a villain. But they do need to give up on the pretense of justice or law and order, unless they're willing to do one-off procedural episodes in which the sheriffs actually fight crime. Even if Emma was quipping about Will being in jail for interrupting her date, he still did more time for petty theft and drunk and disorderly than others have done for murder. 3 Link to comment
KAOS Agent August 16, 2015 Share August 16, 2015 Will was in jail sleeping off a drunk after he'd been found passed out in the library he'd broken into and defaced property within. He'd also stolen cash from the register at the ice cream shop. Will was not in jail because he'd crashed her date. She was being a smart ass about it, but we'd seen the crimes he was in for on screen and the writers assumed (wrongly I guess) that people understand that. One of the things they need to address in show is why it's okay to lock up people like Hook & Will when others who've committed greater crimes are free to wander the streets. I actually do think it's law enforcement's job to lock up the petty criminals that live in Storybrooke. Not everyone is an evil mustache twirling villain threatening the evil to end all evils. They still should be stopped and there needs to be justice. You could even give them leeway with not locking up Regina & Rumpel because they had no ability to do so. However, now they've got Zelena locked up and apparently powerless, so there is a restraint. Why is Zelena being punished while Regina wanders around free? Just last season we saw her enslave a man, plot murder, assault Lily and abuse Belle's trust by using her heart in a manner that was totally unacceptable. Why didn't anyone cuff Rumpel when he's casually eating lunch in the diner with Isaac? This does not compute and makes a mockery of the entire idea of justice in Storybrooke. 3 Link to comment
Dianthus August 16, 2015 Share August 16, 2015 (edited) I don't know as I'd say Emma was "taunting" Hook in that hospital scene. I don't recall any sort of neener-neener quality in what she was saying. It seemed more like she was just laying it out for him. I don't think she was entirely unsympathetic to his situation. Edited August 16, 2015 by Dianthus 1 Link to comment
Rumsy4 August 16, 2015 Author Share August 16, 2015 (edited) Will was in jail sleeping off a drunk after he'd been found passed out in the library he'd broken into and defaced property within. He'd also stolen cash from the register at the ice cream shop. Will was not in jail because he'd crashed her date. She was being a smart ass about it, but we'd seen the crimes he was in for on screen and the writers assumed (wrongly I guess) that people understand that. I understood it alright. What I said was that the writers meant the scene as a joke, but it typifies that the justice system in Sb IS a joke. Edited August 16, 2015 by Rumsy4 1 Link to comment
october August 16, 2015 Share August 16, 2015 (edited) Why didn't anyone cuff Rumpel when he's casually eating lunch in the diner with Isaac? This does not compute and makes a mockery of the entire idea of justice in Storybrooke. The characters have become increasingly reactive when dealing with potential threats to the point of absurdity. At the end of the S4 finale, for example, they were enjoying a party at Granny's while Rumple (the man who'd almost destroyed life as they knew it) was passed out on the floor of his shop. They only went to check on him when Belle ran in to tell them about his heart failing and the possible consequences of that. Edited August 16, 2015 by october 2 Link to comment
YaddaYadda August 16, 2015 Share August 16, 2015 (edited) if jail can't hold these people, just push them over the town line. They'd have no magic, they can't do much without it. And if they mess up, then there's a whole justice system to deal with them. Of course, given that they're all white, the cops will likely smile at them and bid them good day before they arrest someone who has a joint. Edited August 16, 2015 by YaddaYadda 3 Link to comment
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