Morality in Storybrooke / Social Issues: Threads Combined!

[Shanna Marie]

Which brings me to the point of morality, which is that while the show makes a big fuss over how wrong it is to kill somebody no matter how awful they are (Snow killing Cora, Nimue killing Vortigan) because it seems to enjoy the conflict caused by the contrast...that argument completely loses its gravity, first because it's gimmicky and philosophically lazy, and second because it doesn't apply to every life. Only the worst ones, because how interesting the irony and conflict is supposed to be. The props don't matter, not even when those props are people.

For something that was so offhand and seemingly inconsequential to the greater plot (at least, so far), Percival really threw a monkey wrench into this universe's already twisted morality. They established the "heroes don't kill" rule, and even though it was a young and naive Henry saying it, nobody contradicted him. No one said that sometimes heroes have to kill to save another life or clarified that heroes don't use dark magic to kill, no matter the reason for killing. They left it there, along with a whole plot line about Snow's terrible guilt about killing Cora, and they've repeated the "heroes don't kill" line with other characters in other circumstances. I'm not sure where Nimue fits into this -- was it just the killing that sent her down the ultimate dark path, or was it the corruption of the power of the Grail and something to do with the "with great power comes great responsibility" concept, where any bad deed done by someone with that kind of power is the path to darkness?

 

They didn't re-state the "heroes don't kill" line when Emma killed Cruella -- I guess Henry is a little more okay with heroes killing when he's the one being held at gunpoint on the edge of a cliff -- but they were all very worried that this action would be what sent Emma over the edge into turning dark. However, when we get to Percival, they seem to have contradicted everything they've said before. Charming killed him instinctively, and it doesn't seem to have give anyone so much as a moment's pause. Henry isn't shocked and disappointed by his grandpa killing someone. Charming may have acted instinctively when he saw his friends being attacked, but he doesn't seem to be feeling any guilt or shame, even after the revelation that Percival was angry about Regina burning his village. Regina didn't want Percival saying anything where anyone could hear but didn't seem to feel at all bad about what she'd done. She was worried about whether Robin would live, but didn't seem to be feeling any guilt or responsibility about Robin being nearly killed because of her or Percival being killed even though he was the victim. Just an episode or so later, Hook showed more guilt and remorse about having been a bully to Rumple than Regina showed about the fate of her victims from burning a village.

 

I think this is yet another case of them being utterly blind to the can of worms they've opened. If they weren't going to deal with it at all, why have Percival have been a legitimate victim of Regina's? Why not give him some other motive for an attack that caused Robin to be wounded? Or they could have had Charming only disarm and neutralize him, and they could have shown that he was in the dungeon. But as it was, they've contracted just about everything else they've shown, which yet again give the impression that Regina is the black hole that warps all morality in the show around her.

[Curio]

I think this is yet another case of them being utterly blind to the can of worms they've opened. If they weren't going to deal with it at all, why have Percival have been a legitimate victim of Regina's? Why not give him some other motive for an attack that caused Robin to be wounded? Or they could have had Charming only disarm and neutralize him, and they could have shown that he was in the dungeon. But as it was, they've contracted just about everything else they've shown, which yet again give the impression that Regina is the black hole that warps all morality in the show around her.

 

The reason the writers made Percival a legitimate victim of Regina's village burning is because they wanted to directly parallel it to Vortigan burning down Nimue's village a couple episodes later. Except, I have no clue why they'd want to set up this gruesome parallel because it makes Regina look completely unredeemable. (What else is new?) Basically, the show is telling us that both Percival and Nimue were in the wrong for wanting to seek revenge on Regina and Vortigan for burning down their villages and killing numerous innocent lives. What's that, Percival? You want to kill the woman who destroyed your childhood and gleefully smiled as she burned down your village and murdered your family? Well congratulations, you get to be killed off by Charming of all people because he wanted to protect the former mass murderer you were trying to kill in the first place. What's that, Nimue? Vortigan burned down your village and you want to destroy him, too? Well congratulations, killing him means that you officially become the Dark One and will forever be consumed by darkness and live an eternity as a monster. What's that Owen? Oh wait, no one cares about your Season 2 sob story. Let's just kill you off.

[Faemonic]

I forgot about Owen! He and Tamara were terrible for the narrative, but at least he got an interesting backstory.

They didn't re-state the "heroes don't kill" line when Emma killed Cruella -- I guess Henry is a little more okay with heroes killing when he's the one being held at gunpoint on the edge of a cliff -- but they were all very worried that this action would be what sent Emma over the edge into turning dark.

I caught up on this recap of Lily when Regina was talking Emma out of shooting Lily, all like, "If you kill somebody you'll never be able to take it back!" And Emma was like, "I literally killed Cruella yesterday." Riff!Regina's response was, "Shh! She doesn't count!"

 

There it is.

 

*

 

I also watched the stage version of Sweeney Todd with Angela Lansbury as Missus Lovett. That's how a villain becomes interesting. He has good motive for putting down a bad guy, so there's maybe some vicarious thrill of resorting to violence and making things "right", but also because there's a hope for redemption at every turn that he destroys...himself. (Spoilers: Todd didn't lose his family after all, he just didn't recognize them until they became collateral damage in his vengeance murder spree. Ouch!)

Edited November 24, 2015 by Faemonic

[Shanna Marie]

The reason the writers made Percival a legitimate victim of Regina's village burning is because they wanted to directly parallel it to Vortigan burning down Nimue's village a couple episodes later. Except, I have no clue why they'd want to set up this gruesome parallel because it makes Regina look completely unredeemable.

I'm not entirely sure that it's a deliberate or even conscious parallel. No characters are conscious of both things happening. The movies of the village burner are totally different. Vortigan was looking for the Grail, while Regina was having a bad day and wanted to take it out on someone. I wouldn't put it past these writers to have done it unconsciously, writing Vortigan's village slaughter in search of the Grail without realizing that village slaughter is Regina's go-to move that they'd just mentioned a few episodes earlier. It's almost like the village slaughter by Regina is played for laughs -- as I've said before, it's treated as the equivalent of mentioning that she had acne and braces in high school. Now that she's changed, she just wishes people would forget about it and quit bringing it up.

 

If anything, it may have been foreshadowing for the sword causing an unhealable wound and setting up the "life for a life" concept and the introduction of the Furies.

 

If it was deliberate, they haven't done a good job connecting the dots to compare the two incidents, and how gross is it that they're treating the revenge for having your entire village slaughtered around you as a worse crime than actually slaughtering the village?

 

With Nimue, my impression -- and it's possible that I'm stretching and bringing in other elements of the legend -- was that it wasn't so much the actual revenge that was her crime as it was the corrupt use of the Grail power. The greater the power, the greater potential for light and dark, depending on the use. If you have that much power and use it for good, then the good is magnified and it has a purifying effect on your soul. But if you use it for evil, it corrupts. I think it's somewhat similar to the worry about what Emma's potential was, where she was going to have great power, and that could make her a great hero or a terrible villain. Every child has the potential for good or evil, but with Emma's power, the potential heights and depths were so much greater. So if Nimue had never drunk from the Grail and had just gone after Vortigan with a sword, it wouldn't have been the greatest thing ever, but she wouldn't have turned totally dark.

 

Though that still brings us back to the "heroes don't kill" thing, where it's apparently bad to kill even if you're getting rid of a threat who would go on to kill more. Unless you're killing someone who tried to kill Regina, and then it's perfectly okay. She's changed, so she can't be held accountable for her past bad deeds, and trying to hold her accountable just makes you evil.

[Mathius]

Honestly, this issue might go all the way back to Hook, who was framed as a villain because he dared to seek revenge on someone who murdered the woman he loved and cut off his hand, and his redemption pretty much started with him dropping the issue, then every time he "relapsed" back into antagonizing Rumple he suffered for it.

 

Regina and Rumple, meanwhile, constantly seek vengeance and get away with it.

Edited November 24, 2015 by Mathius

[Shanna Marie]

Honestly, this issue might go all the way back to Hook, who was framed as a villain because he dared to seek revenge on someone who murdered the woman he loved and cut off his hand, and his redemption pretty much started with him dropping the issue, then every time he "relapsed" back into antagonizing Rumple he suffered for it.

I suppose there's something to be said about the idea that revenge is a surefire path to evil because a vengeance quest generally does more harm to the soul of the person seeking vengeance than it does to the object of the vengeance, or like the old saying goes, it's like drinking poison and hoping it kills the other person. However, in order to paint vengeance as the ultimate pathway to evil, it has to exist in a universe where there's hope of some kind of justice. If there's no justice, then what are you supposed to do about evil? Is it okay to deal with a perpetrator to keep him/her from causing more harm if you don't have any vengeance in your heart? Though I guess there's that "heroes don't kill" thing going on, so even that is out. What we're left with is a really depressing world where evil people can pretty much do anything they want and the good people can't do anything about it without damaging their own goodness. The only hope is for the evil people to miraculously see the light and change their mind or off themselves.

 

I wouldn't say that they've entirely shown that vengeance was okay for Rumple and Regina. They've been pretty clear that Regina's quest for vengeance was what darkened her. Even she admits that, even if she hasn't admitted that she was in the wrong or that her vengeance was misdirected. The creepy thing with Rumple is that they act like he and Hook are on equal footing in their enmity, with Hook "stealing" Rumple's wife being equal to Rumple murdering Milah and maiming Hook for motives. While it's good for Hook's soul that he let it all drop, there's still the fact that there's no justice, and all the good guys keep going to extreme measures to save Rumple when every single time he continues to be a threat.

[YaddaYadda]

I don't know that Hook's villainy was always just restricted to that feud he has/had with Rumple. Some of it is also tied to his pirate days.

[Shanna Marie]

I don't know that Hook's villainy was always just restricted to that feud he has/had with Rumple. Some of it is also tied to his pirate days.

His piracy also came from revenge. It was a desire for revenge that made him turn from being an upright naval officer to a pirate who didn't care about rules anymore. He may or may not have become sidetracked along the way, depending on whether or not he was successful in defeating the king (though I'm guessing not, or he'd have had his "revenge doesn't change anything" epiphany sooner). The desire for revenge was renewed and given new focus with Rumple, but it went back to Liam's death. Revenge was what turned Hook from good to evil in the first place. He himself has identified that as where he made the wrong turn.

 

Which is why the "evil hand" plot was so stupid, when Hook was far worse with the hook than he was with the hand, and when he had the hand before he was darkened by revenge. And why keeping him in pirate mode now that he's supposedly good (well, until the last episode) and keeping him identifying as a pirate seems to be more about the branding and the sexy black leather and guyliner than about anything organic to the character and where he is on his moral journey.

[Faemonic]

On the fandom issues thread:

 

 

Some fans tend to count Regina as a POC when it comes to her being oppressed (I know, WTF, right?) or people being mean to her; I've seen more than one person talk about the show being racist against her since she's a POC. But at the same time they don't count her as a POC when it comes to main-cast representation. I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways.

Upthread of this, I mentioned a controversial idea of passing privileges. *knuckle crack*

 

My approach is influenced by an essay from 1994 about how race is a social construct. Or a societal construct, whatever. You can get evolutionary about it with melanin in the skin becoming the allele-phenotype in regions where people didn't have to worry about vitamin D deficiency for several generations, but if you're going to argue on that platform for race being a physical thing, then everything else about the human body has to fit that taxonomy too. Jared Diamond argues that it doesn't: lactose-tolerance, fingerprinting, and anti-malarial genetics are just as important physical features as skin color or eye shape, but there's no correllation to those with human categories of race. Therefore, race is not biological. What Diamond misses out on is that the social reality of race remains.

 

In the television-viewer world, I've noticed the social reality of race come up with all the hand-wringing about Lancelot being as swarthy as Sinqua Walls and therefore "historically inaccurate" which is a blight indeed upon a show such as Once Upon A Time which is so acclaimed for historical realism. By complete coincidence, there was not nearly as much negative fuss over the casting of Santiago Cabrera, who played Lancelot in Merlin. The latter actor is Latino. When it comes to how much fuss to make about him, though, he's...a white guy with an exotic name, so not much fuss.

 

So...I'd say that passing privilege can sometimes be a thing. It's a controversial idea because allies to the cause of equal representation shouldn't aim to erase somebody's ethnic identity more than respectability politics already demands. If Lana Parilla represents, then she Represents; it's bad form to say or even imply, "But you don't count as colored because you're a light-skinned Latin@" or something, that's rude besides likely to result in a blow to the cause. At the same time, writers can say, "This show isn't racist because our obviously favoritest character in the whole world ever is played by a Latina woman, and we redeemed Regina so she's not a villain anymore." And then stop there. As stated upthread, I liked the nudge-winks to Don Quixote, and the casting of King Xavier's royal family, but until the ethnicity shows enough to position and inform the character...there can't be claims to David and Mary Margaret being racist because they called Regina evil back in season two. Caroline Ford, who played Nimue, has a record up somewhere but I just caught from hearsay saying she is Trinidadian and Chinese in heritage--and statistics with representation count her and Lana as people of color, but I, ahem, could totally see why they would both get passed over on some of those representational studies.

 

It's a fictional world, so the societal constructs of race and ethnicity ought to be there and shown too for it to matter. It doesn't have to mirror ours*, but the entire casting-production team ought to make a decision about it; when they don't, the identity politics of our world as many individuals know it are going to make the decision for them. That's just how the relationship between audience and artwork goes.

 

 

(*For another post one day: Why I Am Okay With An American Playing Mulan. Korean-American. By the by, I'm Asian born and bred, but not the sort of Asian that can step up or speak out if someone from Singapore decides that someone from Taiwan isn't Chinese enough to criticize an American iteration of Mulan. This is likely to happen. I'm ethnically Malay.)

Edited November 25, 2015 by Faemonic

[BaggythePanther]

So...I'd say that passing privilege can sometimes be a thing. It's a controversial idea because allies to the cause of equal representation shouldn't aim to erase somebody's ethnic identity more than respectability politics already demands. If Lana Parilla represents, then she Represents; it's bad form to say or even imply, "But you don't count as colored because you're a light-skinned Latin@" or something, that's rude besides likely to result in a blow to the cause. At the same time, writers can say, "This show isn't racist because our obviously favoritest character in the whole world ever is played by a Latina woman, and we redeemed Regina so she's not a villain anymore." And then stop there.

Race is so complicated it makes my head hurt. But something I've always wondered is, is Regina Latina? I guess this ties into the idea of passing, because I've always been on the fence about it. And if Regina Mills isn't Hispanic while Lana is where does that leave you in terms of representation?

[KingOfHearts]

 

Race is so complicated it makes my head hurt. But something I've always wondered is, is Regina Latina? I guess this ties into the idea of passing, because I've always been on the fence about it. And if Regina Mills isn't Hispanic while Lana is where does that leave you in terms of representation?

They purposely casted a Latino man to play her father. Make of what you will of that.

[Rumsy4]

Lana is Hispanic, not Latina (i.e. from South America). It's difficult to tell how her ethnicity translates into her character Regina Mills. Regina is part-PoC. Hook calls Merida a "Scot" even thought there is no Scotland in the EF. There seem to be people of three different racial types even within a single village in Camelot. So, different racial types exist in the fairy tale realms, but  we haven't seen any evidence of race-based discrimination in the EF, while we have seen the existence of sexist mores.

 

All we have are indications that the producers and writers of ONCE are not good at representation, and it is important to call them out for that. But while it is important in theory not to transfer that consciousness while critiquing the actions of the characters in-universe, that can be hard to practice. For examples, it would be narratively-unsupported to call Regina racist against black people because she enslaved Sidney. (It would be right to call her out for enslaving someone, period). Out if story, it blows my mind the writers just breezed through the real-world implications of a white-passing Regina enslaving an obsequious Sidney, who is later freed by a white woman in the form of Ingrid. 

[pezgirl7]

Not to get off topic, but I'm pretty sure that Latin America doesn't just include South America, so Lana would be Latina along with being Hispanic. I've noticed in the midwest, Hispanic is used more, while in other parts of the country, Latino seems to be preferred.

[HoodlumSheep]

I feel like A&E wrote themselves into a hole for representation. If they stick to strictly the Disney version of characters, the remaining PoC characters they haven't used would only be sticking around for a half season or end up killed, and I don't know if people will ever be pleased or feel better represented with that.

I thought A&E were doing a better job this season. They took advantage of it being Camelot and not having to live up to iconic Disney characters. We got Merlin, Guinevere, Nimue (?), Lancelot returned, and Mulan's even returned for a short while.

But then of course all these characters have suffered through the typical "Once" brand nonsense.

I don't know. I'm horrible at this morality/social issue stuff, even though I try to wrap my brain around everything.

Edited November 25, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[KingOfHearts]

Some might say any representation is good representation, but I don't think Once should be tackling social issues or minorities. The sick moral standards and character treatment tears down personas, it doesn't puff them up. We would be seeing diversity in a negative light, since A&E like to take wholesome things and trade them for gross alternatives. I don't want to see a minority character groveling at Regina's feet, or part of some contrived plot hole, or tacked onto a thoughtless romance. The LGBT introduction with Mulan and Red was ridiculously shoehorned and held no weight whatsoever.

 

Diversity is great, but it's these writers. They have a history of going about it the wrong way. They really did learn nothing from Lost.

Edited November 25, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[KateJones]

Lana Parrilla is of Puerto Rican descent, so yes, she is a Latina.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America

 

[pezgirl7]

I kinda feel like at this point, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't. Most characters they'll introduce now will only be around for a short time. If they cast a white person, they're missing an opportunity at diversity. If they cast a POC, then they're just doing that to make their quota. They had more opportunities in the past, like with Zelena, Robin and Lily. I still don't know why they cast the older Lily with that actress. I didn't think she was that great, so I don't see it as being, Wow she's so good we must have her even though she doesn't really look like the younger version of the character.

[Shanna Marie]

If they cast a POC, then they're just doing that to make their quota.

And then the character will either die, be evil, or vanish after the arc, which will also look bad.

 

So, different racial types exist in the fairy tale realms, but  we haven't seen any evidence of race-based discrimination in the EF, while we have seen the existence of sexist mores.

Regina's grandfather was a king, do it doesn't look like she's from an oppressed minority. Really, the closest we've seen to racial discrimination is the treatment of the dwarfs, who are born to be laborers, with nobody questioning that role, and who have had some racially tinged derogatory remarks made about them (though mostly by Regina).

[Faemonic]

Race is so complicated it makes my head hurt. But something I've always wondered is, is Regina Latina? I guess this ties into the idea of passing, because I've always been on the fence about it. And if Regina Mills isn't Hispanic while Lana is where does that leave you in terms of representation?

Ready for more headache? Okay, let's say that Jared Diamond is right about race not being biological. Race then becomes what people agree to say it is. What sort of people? That's complicated. An individual will be the best authority of who they are, but that also depends on what other people accept them as, but that doesn't mean that just any other person can come up to somebody else and say "you're so-and-so race."

 

Has Lana ever said, "I'm Latina, so..." or "I'm Hispanic"? If yes, that settles it, then. Unless...people in Spain or from Spain for whatever reason say, "She's not one of ours." Or, for whatever reasons, fans in Mexico or from Mexico decide that Chicana and Latina are different pronunciation-spellings of the same concept that they don't worry about it: "She is one of ours." If Hispanic-Latina-Chicana is quibbling according to people of that ethnic triangle, and the terms are interchangeable, then it is; if all people must make the distinction because that is what is respectful, then it is...even if both ideas are put forth in the same space, and we already established that we can't rely on biological taxonomy. Look up the etymology of any word, and you'll find that the usage determines the meaning more than the meaning determines the usage. That's what's happening in this hypothetical. (How's your head?)

 

In-show, writers and casting agents and producers all have the creative license to cast race-blind or to imitate patterns of heritage and markers of ethnicity that people out-of-show would be familiar with. They've tried to do both. It's been messy. So, if Lana is and Regina is not...Yay for casting agents and writers who wouldn't pass over a talented actress because of her heritage.

 

Hook calls Merida a "Scot" even thought there is no Scotland in the EF. 

Son of a...!!!!!

 

So done. Genre of this show is absurdist surrealism. Political interpretations are incidental. I am the egg man, I am the walrus. Good night, everybody!

Edited November 26, 2015 by Faemonic

[HoodlumSheep]

*spoiler warning*

http://freifraufischer.tumblr.com/post/133977646956/once-upon-a-time-people-of-color-screentime-thru

Interesting to see the numbers broken down, I guess. I wish they'd include Lana though.

Edited November 26, 2015 by HoodlumSheep

[kili]

I wish they'd include Lana though.

If they included Lana, that would destroy their case. She has had a lot of air time (not to mention, she's the one that did a lot of that killing and enslaving of minority characters they highlighted and they should probably highlight a lot more of those characters as enslaved because of how she cast her curse which controlled people).

 

If Regina had been the one to kill Merlin, I'm suspecting that this block of fandom would not be planning on being SJWs this weekend. The killer just happened to align with their raison d'être.

[Faemonic]

If they included Lana, that would destroy their case.

That study also excluded Bashful, and until an edit excluded Tiny and Ariel.

 

Passing privilege is coming off a bit as the elephant in the room if they want more actors of color to get jobs in this specific show. What I would aim for is, because this is a show about folklore and fairy tales and all those stories, is greater representation of stories outside the North-Western hemisphere. Instead of having a nudge-wink to Don Quixote, how about actually bring in Don Quixote? Let's have Genji failing to flirt with Mulan. Get Salman Rushdie out of hiding and see if they can do a Haroun and the Sea of Stories spinoff.

 

Instead, we've got Emma making dreamcatchers when Tiger Lily and Pocahontas aren't even there to have Words about...ugh, nevermind neverland goo goo g'joob.

Edited November 27, 2015 by Faemonic

[KingOfHearts]

 

Instead, we've got Emma making dreamcatchers when Tiger Lily and Pocahontas aren't even there to have Words about...ugh, nevermind neverland goo goo g'joob.

 

Indians probably didn't fit into Neverland because of the setup. It was just a place where children dreamed. But I feel like they could given Tamara or her grandmother the role of Tiger Lily to make it tie in somehow. Anything would have been better than Hong Kong. Maybe they should have given her, you know, an actual reason to hunt magical creatures. But I guess there wasn't time for that between sucking face with Greg and fulfilling the Evil Fiance trope.

Edited November 27, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Passing privilege is coming off a bit as the elephant in the room if they want more actors of color to get jobs in this specific show. What I would aim for is, because this is a show about folklore and fairy tales and all those stories, is greater representation of stories outside the North-Western hemisphere.

A lot of this comes back to sloppy worldbuilding. The core Enchanted Forest world is basically monocultural in a melting pot colorblind way. Skin color seems to be just another aspect of physical appearance, and they all live together in a generic quasi Medieval/Georgian society. Likewise with accents, which seem to just be another variation on voice rather than indicating anything about origin or class. There's no suggestion of people with different skin colors having come from a different place that has its own culture that's been incorporated into that generic European (with mostly North American accents) world. Guinevere grows up in the same village with Arthur, with different skin color and a different accent, and no suggestion that she's foreign (she also miraculously becomes significantly younger than he is in adulthood in spite of being the same age as children, which is an entirely different issue about Hollywood). In spite of the nods to Don Quixote, there doesn't seem to be any indication that Regina's father is from Not!Spain. Was that kingdom the day's walk away from the Enchanted Forest that every other kingdom seems to be?

 

But then when they do a story that actually comes from another culture, suddenly skin color means something. So we get Agrabah on the Wonderland spinoff that's populated by darker-skinned people who are all more or less Indian or Middle-Eastern in appearance. Or we get Mulan, who's clearly Not From Around Here both in appearance and culture. Accent-wise, when they decided to do Brave, we suddenly had Not!Scotland (except Hook referred to Merida as a Scot, when how should he know what that is?). Previously, Malcolm and Rumple's accents didn't seem to mean anything about their origins, but now there's a culture with a similar accent. Is that where they're from?

 

So it gets really tricky to deal with race in this environment, when sometimes it means something but most of the time it doesn't, and yet this show is airing in a world where race does mean something, so we bring our own baggage to it that's affected by the traditional treatment of race by Hollywood. On the one hand, they've opened up iconic roles to a more diverse range of actors than usually play these roles (like Rapunzel and Merlin), but on the other hand, because these are guest roles, they're either villains or victims, which is the standard treatment of people of color in Hollywood.

[Faemonic]

Maybe the best conclusion that people as persnickety as we lot are would be that the race or ethnicity doesn't mean anything, even when it looks like it does (or sounds like it does.) But that really is too bad, then, because it would inform the characters and suspend disbelief so much better if they committed either way. As it stands, it's more like saying, "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" to a Vl'Hurg in that, supposedly, it's offense by complete coincidence.

 

By the same mechanics, the language spoken by absolutely everybody in the Enchanted Forest is perfectly comprehensible to English-speakers in the Land Without Magic. The syllable "Scot" is only incidentally an accurate descriptor for a realm and peoples who so happen to bear a passing resemblance to Land-Without-Magic-medieval-Scotland (as seen by Land-Without-Magic-21st-century-Americans.) Or a fairy version of the TARDIS is translating for everybody. #ItHappenedOffscreen

Edited November 29, 2015 by Faemonic

[Shanna Marie]

By the same mechanics, the language spoken by absolutely everybody in the Enchanted Forest is perfectly comprehensible to English-speakers in the Land Without Magic.

And we've seen Hook writing notes in English, when he doesn't even have the curse memory download. He has fancy old-fashioned handwriting, but he's using our alphabet and writing in English.

 

So, yeah, best not to think about it. Color means nothing. Accent means nothing. They specifically cast for British in Merlin and Arthur, presumably because the King Arthur stuff is so classically British, and yet the Wicked Witch of the West, from a very American story, is British.

[Faemonic]

Commentary on 5.10! I got around to reading A Clockwork Orange and I think it applies in a far subtler way to Darth Jones turning from a growly kicked puppy to a Merlin-killer. For those who haven't read A Clockwork Orange yet, the main character is Alex, a thuggish and probably sociopathic teenager who gets into gang violence. There's a special therapy to make Alex stop. The book lets on how that sort of corrective therapy gets in the way of free will, because it makes a clockwork imitation of what should be organic and alive like an orange (that is, empathy, morality, maturity, ethics...)

 

What I've been wondering lately is how much personal agency/autonomy Alex and Darth Jones deserved. The ideal would be that everybody has equal agency, autonomy, and power all the time. Equality is difficult to quantify without identicality, though. The best answer to that I've heard is that "my rights end where yours begin". We have the same rights, for example, to decide what to do with one's own body, insofar as this doesn't get in the way of somebody else's rights to their body, such as someone preferring not to get their nose broken by someone else's fist. The decision to punch such a one in the face isn't a right to be defended for the nose-breaker's bodily autonomy.

 

But when somebody violates what ought to be mutually-respected boundaries, and it doesn't look like they're going to stop, then it's the perpetrator's rights that are revoked. Imprisonment removes their rights to freedom as compared to others. Even rehabilitation therapies, particularly brutal sensitivity classes, according to A Clockwork Orange, would remove some innate humanity by revoking the right of somebody to be themselves.

 

Personally, I think that's all an inevitable precaution.

 

So...Darth Jones makes a lot of good arguments both for his agency, and against it. Hook had the Do Not Resuscitate order, because he didn't believe that he could resist the darkness. Darth Jones argued for his right to fully informed consent, because Emma had Excalibur that could control him. Was he right that Emma was afraid that he would ask for it? She had it. If he asked, she could decide on a no, and if he whinged that she didn't trust him, she could say that he needs to trust her to wisely use the power she has over him...that she took without his consent anyway.

 

That would be awful for Emma to do, but what she had done instead--hand over Excalibur--then sealed Merlin's fate, and demonstrated that trusting in other people's personal agency is overrated. Darth Jones wasn't being entirely honest about all his thought processes, either.

 

So, one thing I think comes into question is "consent as an active entity" which is that even though Hook was begging for death rather than the plot twist, after the twist, one can't take the word of Darth Jones, because he probably wasn't himself. (Dark One Tethering may have been like a reverse of the Ludovico treatment, that Alex had undergone to make him less violent.)

 

Another thing that comes into question is the focus on the principle of the thing. Telling Darth Jones to "Wait!" instead of walk away in a huff was principally bad because it was a violation of his consent, but the measure of how bad it is should also be considered. Emma wasn't forcing him to watch a loved one die or get on his knees. She wasn't even forcing him to spill his deepest darkest secrets, like Regina had at the well. My headcanon goes that she just didn't want him to have time to himself and stew in anger at her, probably because she felt needy, and she just so happened to have the means to prioritize her needs over his boundaries. Make no mistake, that's a messed-up emotional dynamic, especially when everything Darth Jones spews just hurts her worse and convinces her to make bad choices but she still can't/won't let him leave. Aside from this being the Dark Duo now, I think "needs versus boundaries" is a common conflict in a lot of relationships, the effects of which can range from merely uncomfortable to outright traumatic.

 

Maybe, too, the principle of personal agency becomes a measure of personal empowerment. How is Darth Jones supposed to fight the darkness that Hook didn't believe he could, if Emma doesn't believe in him enough to let him have Excalibur? How about that Emma believes in Hook and what he said, so Darth Jones can take that belief, and find comfort that Emma can stop him so long as she's the mistress of Excalibur, and use that to fight the internal battles. If he doesn't need Excalibur to fight the darkness*, then maybe it's not a symbol of personal agency but of the interpersonal boundary. (*except maybe to fall on it as a gesture of classical honor-suicide, which Hook maybe would have done but Darth Jones didn't, and the hope/darkness significance of that act is definitely open to interpretation, and probably can-contained and wormy because that hypothetical involves suicide; I should have just stuck with a comparison of Rumpel struggling to let Belle have the dagger, versus Darth Jones letting Emma have it because she took it--Rumbelle was probably healthier.)

 

For once, I think the magic system being a mess actually makes it a better illustration of the points of contention, which usually are a mess to figure out in life. One person's cajoling is another person's coercion. Favors can become obligations. Returning to A Clockwork Orange, a merciful rehabilitative justice becomes a fate worse than execution.

 

On the other hand, there's Zelena, who's so far closer to Alex than Darth Jones is. I like Zelena as a character, but Dark Swan's plan for premeditated murder sounded like a good and fair one to me. Zelena had already demonstrated that she would murder, kidnap, and rape people. Anyone in-world should want her gone. Just like Alex in A Clockwork Orange (the twenty-one chapter version, with an ending that didn't make it to the Kubric movie version because American publishers cut the redemption out) Zelena is redeemed by parenthood, so, that's supposed to be the Hope.

 

I was about to say something about Darth Jones actually being interesting because he doesn't seem to fit the Clockwork Orange philosophy of humanity except in the aspect that Hook recognized his own "clockwork"--that if he became the Dark One, then he would go dark all the way, right away. But that very recognition was supposed to be what frees a person to become better than their circumstances and realize their free will. Maddened by darkness, Darth Jones is actually more confoundingly organic, but what that means I haven't developed enough yet and this post is long enough.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Faemonic

[Amerilla]

From the Continuity thread:

 

Does the fact that she's making essentially the same choice to pull Hook out of death that backfired so spectacularly in this arc not raise the eyebrows of her loved ones?

 

 

 

That's why I don't really get the way they handled his death. They could have done it in a lot of ways that would have suggested that he wasn't dead-dead and therefore a somewhat living person was trapped in the Underworld where he couldn't survive for long and therefore needed to be rescued. He could have also been sucked into the sword. He could have been sucked into the lake portal. He could have vanished so there was no body. They could have used Merida's Hotline to the Afterlife Ale to find out where he was. But they went with the very mundane, real-world detail of showing his body on a gurney with his face being covered by a sheet.

 

Exactly. Him being really most sincerely dead really pushes the ethical line of what Emma's doing. As much as I might empathize with Emma on an emotional level, Hook died, and he deserves the right to have his soul move on to whatever comes next. That should be his journey. She shouldn't decide that for him because she can't let go.

 

Regina couldn't let Daniel go and in the end, she pulled him back only to "live" for a few minutes in terrible agony. Rumpel stopped Neal from dying for a while, but they both suffered and Neal ended up dying anyway. Everyone suffered from Regina and Rumpel's inability to accept that those they loved were gone for good.

 

That's not what going to happen here, most likely, but I'm having a hard time seeing it as "romantic." 

Edited December 8, 2015 by Amerilla

[Serena]

Yeah, but on the other hand, Neal brought Rumple back from the dead and he's alive now, with none of the consequences (Neal died - excuse me, was killed by Zelena - but Rumple is fine). Maleficient was dead and she was brought back. David was dead and he was brought back. For every Daniel and Neal and Graham who are super 100% dead, there is an equivalent example of someone being brought back.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Serena

[Delphi]

Taking answer to Magic thread.

[Amerilla]

Technically, as magical beings, neither Rumpel nor Maleficent "died" in the traditional sense. They were both resurrected from transmuted forms. And I think we say at this point that no good has come out of Rumpel being brought back, that it had vast consequences for the town as a whole. Maleficent's resurrection didn't amount to much one way or the other...but that pretty much sums up 4b.

 

You could throw August in there, too. The puppet-turned-boy-turned-man-turned-woodenman-turned-child-turned-man.

 

Snowing is the only successful model here, and mostly because the writers don't really care enough about the characters to show if there was any fallout from the act. And I remember at the time, we were questioning if Snow had done right by Charming, who had made a legit sacrifice to save those he loved. That's the model they'll likely follow here, where they'll get Hook back on his feet and it'll never be mentioned again. 

Edited December 8, 2015 by Amerilla

[YaddaYadda]

I'm pretty sure this will go beyond heart splitting. That's just not enough.

 

We know how they can get into the Underworld, but how does one leave it? I'm thinking Hades will have to release Hook.

 

This show is fucked up so many levels!

[Curio]

Him being really most sincerely dead really pushes the ethical line of what Emma's doing. As much as I might empathize with Emma on an emotional level, Hook died, and he deserves the right to have his soul move on to whatever comes next. That should be his journey. She shouldn't decide that for him because she can't let go.

 

I think we're supposed to see it as morally grey, but Emma was also royally screwed by Rumple, too. It wasn't just Hook who got fooled by Rumple, Emma also thought she was killing her boyfriend for a larger cause. Imagine how pissed off Emma is right now knowing she ran a sword through the love of her life only for him to die and have that power go into Rumplestiltskin. Yes, Hook dying also meant Emma was able to get rid of her own darkness, but I think Emma feels partially responsible again for the shitty way Hook died. The first time Hook dies, it's because he's trying to save Emma's family in Camelot, and Emma taking on the darkness in Season 4 all led them to that position. Then, Emma has to run Hook through with Excalibur because, again, she made him a Dark One. I think she feels extremely guilty about everything and is finally saying enough is enough, I'm the Savior, I need to set things right and give both of us (Hook and Emma) a happy ending.

 

I'm also curious whether or not Emma would have gone to the Underworld even without the knowledge of Rumple's trickery. She looked utterly drained lying on that couch, but I think she was also contemplating a lot of things, and the fact that she was holding Liam's ring might have been a clue that she was contemplating her options about a rescue mission. Or it could have just been Emma moping and remembering her lost love. But Rumple telling Emma about being a Dark One might have been that extra push she needed to give her the green light to tell everyone about her plan. Kind of like when a country knows it wants to go to war, but they're just waiting for that one bad incident to pop up and blame it on another country instigating a fight, so that they can get everyone else back home on board with the plan.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Curio

[Shanna Marie]

The morality on this show has always been screwy, but they seem to have hit nihilistic levels here. One thing that got me started thinking was an exhibit of Nativity scenes I visited over the weekend. One was from Liberia and made out of spent AK-47 shell casings from their recent civil wars. An artist has started collecting these cases and working them into Nativity scenes to sell to raise money for people displaced by the civil wars, in a real "swords into plowshares" thing. But that made me realize just how gross it is that on this show, Merlin took the Holy Grail -- and even if it doesn't have the spiritual connotations of the Christian versions of Arthurian mythology, it was supposedly so holy that committing evil acts with its power turned someone into the Darkest Dark Ever -- and turned it into a sword, a weapon, and this wasn't considered to be a dark, evil act. Worse, it's a sword that causes automatically fatal wounds, regardless of who's wielding it or who is being cut, so that it was used by a villain using it for selfish purposes to kill an unarmed (unless you count the hook) man who was intervening to save the lives of others. Supposedly, this sword can only be drawn by a true hero, but then after that apparently any creep can use it, with no ill consequences for being unworthy or using it for evil purposes.

 

Then we have the fact that the worst things happen to good people who are doing good things. It's one thing when bad people do bad things to good people, but this was just bad things happening as a consequence of them doing good things. Emma sacrifices herself by taking on the Darkness in order to save everyone else, and she gets psychologically tortured, isn't trusted by most of the people she cares about and has to lose the man she loves. I suppose you could count Hook's loss as the result of Arthur's evil action, but it all was still a consequence of Emma's sacrifice. Then even though Emma managed to be the Dark One without doing anything truly evil, and even the bad things were done with good intentions without meaning to be cruel, she gets criticized by her family for not being trusting enough while she was the Dark One. Worst of all, this storyline comes right on the heels of a year-long arc about how horribly unfair it was that Regina wasn't getting her happy ending after she stopped killing people. A mass murderer who murdered family members and otherwise ruined the lives of most of the other characters got more sympathy when things appeared not to work out for her and her new boyfriend than Emma got for her struggles with the Darkness that she took on as a sacrifice to save everyone else.

 

And then there are the really warped, mixed messages they've sent about revenge. So, revenge is so awful that killing someone who slaughtered multiple villages is enough to turn someone into the worst evil ever. Trying to get revenge on someone who burned your village is so bad that you deserve to get killed by someone who takes a firm "heroes don't kill" stance, and no one so much as bats an eye. But devoting your life to getting revenge on someone whose actions, manipulated by someone you acknowledge to be a master manipulator, may or may not have led to something bad is apparently just sort of naughty, with no consequences, no regrets, no remorse, no apologies. Merida can be on her way to getting revenge on Arthur for killing her father in battle, and yet she's still enough of a hero to teach Rumple how to hero.

 

So, what did we learn this season on Once Upon a Time, boys and girls? Don't try to do anything good because you'll get royally screwed over and have to live with terrible consequences. Turning holy items into weapons is a really good plan, especially when you're doing so in order to be able to grow old with your girlfriend. The worst evil you can do is not trust people and ask for their help. The worse someone has treated you, the worse it is for you to want revenge.

[october]

Exactly. Him being really most sincerely dead really pushes the ethical line of what Emma's doing. As much as I might empathize with Emma on an emotional level, Hook died, and he deserves the right to have his soul move on to whatever comes next. That should be his journey. She shouldn't decide that for him because she can't let go.

This is probably wishful thinking on my part, but maybe this arc will feature Emma asking Killian if he wanted to come back with her; no tricks, no lies. Just her asking him if he wanted out of there. As low an opinion as I have of this show sometimes, I don't see her throwing him over her shoulder and dragging him out of the underworld. He probably has to commit to leaving alongside her for any of this to work. Considering the fallout of her making him a DO and the way he reacted, I just don't see Killian leaving the underworld against his will.

Edited December 8, 2015 by october

[KAOS Agent]

Rumpel also told them all that the Underworld was a torturous hell. I'm not sure that's fully the case, but if Emma believes Hook is suffering the torture of the damned after sacrificing himself for her and her family, I could see why she'd feel it was right to save him from that fate - especially after the Rumpel betrayal. He certainly has a choice about leaving. She wouldn't drag him kicking and screaming back to the land of the living, but I think it's less morally grey for Emma to go and offer him a chance to get out and not suffer the way Rumpel described.

Edited December 9, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[Rumsy4]

So, do all dead people end up in a place of torture for all eternity? That seems a pretty bleak future to look forward to, hero or villain. Or is the suffering dependant on the good vs bad, like karma or something?

[Mari]

In Greek mythology, or in the Onceverse?

[Rumsy4]

In ONCE-verse. A&E said they would be "borrowing" elements from Gr mythology and adding their own twist. As a DO, Rumple's own experience was likely not pleasant, but nothing Rumple said about the UW was positive. In a Show which harps on good and evil, it seems weird that all dead people go to this bleak and thankless place.

[Camera One]

And everyone is probably treated the same, from megavillains to Joe and Jane from the street.

[Shanna Marie]

if Emma believes Hook is suffering the torture of the damned after sacrificing himself for her and her family, I could see why she'd feel it was right to save him from that fate - especially after the Rumpel betrayal.

Well, considering that supposedly Robin's life was forfeit because Emma as the Dark One used her power to save his life, and then the rest of the gang got around that by playing Guardians of the Galaxy so no one had to pay any price at all even though Robin was wounded as a consequence of Regina's past bad deeds, then the rest of the gang pretty much owes it to Hook to do something after he sacrificed to save them and cured Emma of being the Dark One, and was betrayed by Rumple.

 

He certainly has a choice about leaving. She wouldn't drag him kicking and screaming back to the land of the living, but I think it's less morally grey for Emma to go and offer him a chance to get out and not suffer the way Rumpel described.

Yeah, Rumple made it sound pretty bad, and Hook would likely be in a similar state, since both of them ended up there as a result of a sacrifice after being evil a long time. I don't think Hook is quite as bad as Rumple. His redemption has been a lot more sincere, and Rumple's sacrifice had an edge of revenge to it, while Hook was rejecting the concept of revenge in his, but still, Hook was a very bad boy in the past, so unless we're dealing with a Protestant Christian worldview where sincere repentance and a truly changed heart wipe the slate clean, I really don't think we're dealing with a Buffyesque situation of "you jerks dragged me out of heaven, where I was at peace." Unless he's mired so deep in PTSD guilt that he prefers to wallow in suffering, I don't think he'll object much to the chance to get out. The main issue will be whether he's willing to accept Emma's offer of heart splitting, soul splitting, or whatever. But there we have conflicting agency -- she has the right to decide what she wants to do with her body, but he has the right not to accept her sacrifice. In non-magical terms, it's like whether one person is obligated to accept a kidney donated by another person when that person is willing to donate it rather than lose a loved one.

[Faemonic]

I don't think Hook is quite as bad as Rumple. His redemption has been a lot more sincere,

Hmm...being characters, I suppose that their inner worlds are only as sincere as we can project. I think Rumple's speech at Nealfire's grave was sincere, but Rumple's 1. more of a victim of his own character than a beneficiary, and 2. the show's writing doesn't let on his real internal struggles, like my headcanon that Rumple's post-traumatically stressed from Zelena only came up in a throwaway line, and the rest of the canon has been showing him as smug but that makes no sense. So my headcanon-maker will filter the smugness out.

Hook was a very bad boy in the past, so unless we're dealing with a Protestant Christian worldview where sincere repentance and a truly changed heart wipe the slate clean, I really don't think we're dealing with a Buffyesque situation of "you jerks dragged me out of heaven, where I was at peace."

The mid-season finale was essentially season 2 of Buffy compressed into two episodes, though. I think it would be amusing if Hook got sorted into the fields of Elysium and was having beers with Edgar and Barnaby, and every came in to rescue him, and it's awkward because he had like a reincarnation scheduled.

 

Although reincarnation might not feature if he's a devotee of Aslan.

[jhlipton]

Hmm...being characters, I suppose that their inner worlds are only as sincere as we can project. I think Rumple's speech at Nealfire's grave was sincere, but Rumple's 1. more of a victim of his own character than a beneficiary, and 2. the show's writing doesn't let on his real internal struggles, like my headcanon that Rumple's post-traumatically stressed from Zelena only came up in a throwaway line, and the rest of the canon has been showing him as smug but that makes no sense. So my headcanon-maker will filter the smugness out.

 

 

The mid-season finale was essentially season 2 of Buffy compressed into two episodes, though. I think it would be amusing if Hook got sorted into the fields of Elysium and was having beers with Edgar and Barnaby, and every came in to rescue him, and it's awkward because he had like a reincarnation scheduled.

 

Although reincarnation might not feature if he's a devotee of Aslan.

 

I'm not sure that These Writers know about the Elysian Fields -- their knowledge of myths and legends doesn't go very deep from wast I've seen.  They will most likely go the Theseus route (Hook will have to leave some part of him behind) or the Orpheus and Eurydice route ("a voice inside my head said don't look back") -- but then they'd need a Red Shirt to leave behind (Nimue, maybe, or is she through?) 

[KingOfHearts]

Didn't Ingrid go to some form of Elysian Fields?

[Faemonic]

Here's a Social Issue that is NOT also an issue of Morality: Some interesting discussion going on in the Belle thread about her awful characterization versus writing, and I mentioned something in the fandom issues thread about how I was puzzled by some fans' insistence that they'll love the characters no matter how bad the writing was...but but but is not character defined by the professional script?? The actors do a lot, and have done a lot, but with some lines it's just that nobody in the universe can even [ sentence left intentionally incomplete. ]

I wonder if that just means that these ex-fans have a really, really, really shiny headcanon that (to them, anyway) dissolves the show into a blaze of sets and props and monkeys-at-their-typewriters, and the deified spirit of their one favorite character stands over the ruins with the wind machine blowing their hair.

I ain't knockin' it, I've even got one of my own: PTSD Rumpelstiltskin. Makes too much sense to let go of him, even though he's never in the show. I've got a much more elaborate one about Hook and his crew. There's a meta writer out there that really wants Emma to already be pregnant, not hopes that it would happen, but insisting that it is actually happening all along.

And I'm actually really happy about the #SwanQueenBelongsToSwen hashtag because that pairing works so much better to me in fanfiction, especially Alterative Universe Fanfics where Regina didn't orphan Emma. So since they're AU might as well search-replace names and publish original fiction. And I would read all the things of that.

I have a lot of thoughts about how much exactly is up to audience interpretation. I mean, there's the literary theories about the Death Of The Author (groundbreaking essay by Roland Barthes about literary interpretation) balanced against all the collective emotional convictions about...well, Swan Queen as canon, for one example, I was against if only because it showed all these people already settling for less than explicit and refusing to recognize how this show will always handle lesbian relationships with kid gloves and shame even to unambiguous pronouning (Mulan wasn't a distraction from your precious OTP, Swen, she was a warning.) Ally and Lisa are canon. Willow and Tara are canon. Unfortunately, Willow and Kennedy were also canon. Carmilla and Lauren is canon (in the vlog version.) The Moth Diaries--cast includes Sarah Bolger, who plays Aurora in OUAT--is confusing my meta because all the behind-the-scenes interviews have people referring to "intense friendships" when the movie has onscreen girls rubbing against each other in bed and one of them is buck naked, like you don't need to be totally naked for a vampire attack, or totally naked to have an "intense friendship". So, it's not that I never get confused.

And it's definitely not that this show never gets confused. Lana said that she plays her half of the Emma-Regina dynamic as though they're "sisters and friends"; even that was happening onscreen less than my PTSD Rumpel, even less than my Captain Charming Hood broT3, and even less than JMo's Captain Swan Thief meta about how Emma is caught between two guys..."who respect each other". When exactly did that bro-to-dude respecting ever happen?? I want it. That is my headcanon now. Because it wasn't onscreen.

Anybody else got a supershiny character headcanon that defies This Show?

How did you form it, and what is it in the show or the fandom that works against you on this?

[Camera One]

Some interesting discussion going on in the Belle thread about her awful characterization versus writing, and I mentioned something in the fandom issues thread about how I was puzzled by some fans' insistence that they'll love the characters no matter how bad the writing was...but but but is not character defined by the professional script?? The actors do a lot, and have done a lot, but with some lines it's just that nobody in the universe can even [ sentence left intentionally incomplete.

 

I can understand how viewers can still like a character despite atrocious writing.  They like the character as it existed in Season 1 and how the actor plays the character. In a long-running TV series, a character which is awesome in the first season can go a long way, despite the "professional script" systematically destroying the character in subsequent seasons.  This doesn't even require much headcanon... more awareness that plot is driving character.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Camera One

[daxx]

I do have a headcanon that I can't live without but it's not about a character exactly. Mine is that when Hook says the Jolly Roger is enchanted he really means it, how else would a single person be able to sail a tall ship even a smallish one like The Lady Washington.

I think it does as it is bid by its captain just like Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge in The Pirates of the Caribbean.

I also think his flask is enchanted so he never runs out of rum.

A smart pirate would also enchant his coat with extra large pockets like Hermione's purse to keep treasure.

So yeah, I have lots of headcanons, nothing that screws with canon on characterization though.

[Serena]

Yes, I completely understand loving a character even with awful writing. From what I've observed, there are two possibilities: a character that was awesome in the first seasons, then the writing went south and so did the character (I liked Belle in Skin Deep, though not enough to become a fan for life). The second option would be something like Ward from SHIELD (which I don't really follow, but I've seen episodes here and there) who was revealed to be evil in a Big Twist, but his fans from before the reveal insist on seeing him as good. So even if the writing isn't bad per se, some viewers remain fans (and not in a "What a good villain" view, but still seeing him as good and misunderstood) because they don't accept the subsequent characterization.

[Shanna Marie]

I think this series also has the issue that most of its characters aren't original characters. They all come from other stories, and there are often multiple versions and interpretations of those stories, so the Once versions have a lot of baggage behind them.

 

So the Once Upon a Time Belle isn't just the Belle we see on the screen (who seems to be a different person in just about every episode, depending on what the plot needs). She's also the Beauty and the Beast Belle from the Disney movie, and from the Broadway show, and she has her roots in all the various tellings of the fairy tale.

 

I think that makes it possible to have a shiny headcanon of the character that's actually not inaccurate even if it has nothing to do with the actual writing on this series.

 

Adding to this because I had thoughts the moment I clicked on "post" -- with this show, in some cases, they're not just drawing on universal archetype versions of the characters and putting their own spins on them (though they are with some of them). They're basing the characters on very specific interpretations of characters, right down to the iconography associated with them, and that seems to be strongest with Belle. She's not just a heroine in a Beauty and the Beast kind of story, she's the Belle from the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie, wearing the iconic costumes (the gold ballgown, the blue dress with apron), the iconic hairstyle, the fondness for libraries and books, the chipped teacup. They even give lip service to traits from that Belle, like the longing for adventure, even if they seem contradictory to the way this Belle actually behaves. So when fans say they love the character but hate the writing for her, the character they love may be this other character she's supposedly portraying, even if the writing in this show has nothing to do with their love. Movie Belle was like the patron saint of nerdy, bookish fangirls. In the early 2000s, I think half the female LiveJournal icons had something to do with Belle. She came with her own fan club who adores her as a person and her relationship with her Beast.

 

That's different from, say, Snow, her stepmother, and her prince. These are pre-existing characters, but they're mostly new characters built on the archetypal fairy tale bones. There's the occasional Easter egg relating to the Disney version, like an iconic costume in one scene, and they did hit the major beats of the fairy tale, though in very different ways, but I don't know that you'd have a lot of loyalty to these characters on this show based on your feelings for them from the fairy tale or Disney movie. They have different interests, motivations, and backgrounds.

 

And then the opposite of that would be someone like Hook, who isn't a fairy tale archetype but rather a specific character in a relatively (compared to fairy tales) recent novel. He's been given some different interpretations as the novel has been dramatized, but he's mostly been about the same character until very, very recently (once copyright issues were worked out and people had more room to play with him). And yet the show Hook has very little in common with book Hook, aside from piracy, a missing hand, a hot temper, and pretty blue eyes. He's got a totally different background, looks different, is much younger, has different motivations and goals, and has a very different outcome. They basically slapped a familiar name onto a new character. Because he's so different, I don't know that Hook had legions of pre-existing fans who were predisposed to love the character, regardless of how he was written. I know in my case I was more like, "Ugh, Hook," when they announced him, then, "oh, this is different," when he actually showed up.

Edited January 6, 2016 by Shanna Marie

[Faemonic]

I have lots of headcanons, nothing that screws with canon on characterization though.

My wall of text about a possible OUaT magic system could use a canon update in light of the origin of Dark Magic

and maybe in 5B's exploration of the Olympians

. But ooh, I also like the idea that Captain Jones might have had an episode like "The Doctor's Wife" (from Doctor Who, I think it was the first episode written by Neil Gaiman) where the Jewel of the Realm becomes a person and then goes back to being a ship. I liked Hook for being one of the distinctly non-magical characters in the whole cast, because even Snowing has Kissing superpowers, but in an enchanted realm with magic everywhere of course a pirate would be a magpie of magic.

Yes, I completely understand loving a character even with awful writing. From what I've observed, there are two possibilities: a character that was awesome in the first seasons, then the writing went south and so did the character (I liked Belle in Skin Deep, though not enough to become a fan for life).

I liked Skin Deep. Belle's return to Rumpel at the end of S1 was what I looked forward to seeing develop in S2. But then she ran away and comes back all, "Don't you see? That you're a monster is precisely the reason I've got to stay." And I was raring to abandon ship right then and there, because that's not Skin Deep Belle, that's Cora disguised as Belle even though I know that Cora is also busy in Coradome being disguised as Cora. I could almost buy the burger date, but then Rumpel jokes about condiments being magic and I'm like, "Dude, don't even joke, that's a substance abuse metaphor and you have a problem go see Archie about it." Maybe that's because I had someone in my life at the time with a substance abuse problem that bled into an emotional abuse problem that included joking about the substance abuse, but I couldn't take that. Aaaand then the conversation we never got to hear about how exactly Belle processed Milah's death, which just maybe might have been an important conversation to let us audience members in on, but as it was, nail in the coffin.

even if the writing isn't bad per se, some viewers remain fans (...) because they don't accept the subsequent characterization.

A skill I've yet to learn. I don't doubt that can happen, though, so that's interesting.

Once Upon a Time Belle isn't just the Belle we see on the screen (who seems to be a different person in just about every episode, depending on what the plot needs). She's also the Beauty and the Beast Belle from the Disney movie, and from the Broadway show, and she has her roots in all the various tellings of the fairy tale.

I think that makes it possible to have a shiny headcanon of the character that's actually not inaccurate even if it has nothing to do with the actual writing on this series.

They're basing the characters on very specific interpretations of characters, right down to the iconography associated with them, and that seems to be strongest with Belle. She's not just a heroine in a Beauty and the Beast kind of story, she's the Belle from the Disney Beauty and the Beast movie, wearing the iconic costumes (the gold ballgown, the blue dress with apron), the iconic hairstyle, the fondness for libraries and books, the chipped teacup. They even give lip service to traits from that Belle, like the longing for adventure, even if they seem contradictory to the way this Belle actually behaves. So when fans say they love the character but hate the writing for her, the character they love may be this other character she's supposedly portraying, even if the writing in this show has nothing to do with their love. Movie Belle was like the patron saint of nerdy, bookish fangirls. In the early 2000s, I think half the female LiveJournal icons had something to do with Belle. She came with her own fan club who adores her as a person and her relationship with her Beast.

Well put! That makes it all the more of a missed opportunity that there isn't that headstrongness under all the Disney!Belle iconography.

Because he's so different, I don't know that Hook had legions of pre-existing fans who were predisposed to love the character, regardless of how he was written. I know in my case I was more like, "Ugh, Hook," when they announced him, then, "oh, this is different," when he actually showed up.

Certainly not as vast a fanbase as Belle had in pop culture. I adored Peter Pan the book version (never watched or read the stageplay), and there are some passages that make the pirates out as interesting villains (book!Smee, for instance, was supposedly so genial that he could stab someone to death without offense; Captain James Hook "had the touch of the feminine about him, which granted him intuitions" that I thought was interesting as a character feature if it wasn't just the author's Edwardian-era sexism, and there was some nudge-wink crossover with Treasure Island that left me so confused about why OUaT went with Blackbeard--Long John Silver was right there! In the canon! Right there!) but they were actually the least interesting part of the whole story in my initial opinion. (And in the opinion I still have.) But the bits that came through and stuck despite my skimming the text became something I expected to see in OUaT's Captain Hook.

About Colin O'Donoghue's Hook being younger than Dustin Hoffman's Hook, I thought that fit. Most iterations of Peter Pan are told from the point of view of kids, young enough to possibly regard somebody 20 years old with all the awe reserved for an ancient font of arcane wisdom, for they have passed the gates of pubescence, and have reigned over their lives for literal plural decades. Or maybe that's just how I remember thinking of 20-year-olds and up when I was a kid. OUaT takes the point of view of the parents and grandparents.

I could go on and on about Barrie!Hook, Disney!Hook and Killian Jones, but there's a better essay out there that sums it up that I can't find right now, and it's not this one; it included Jason Isaacs, who rocks the perms.

I was also an avid fan of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, from that I'd say that Jefferson is probably the most original and detached while still keeping the iconography.