Killian Jones/Captain Hook: One Handed Pirate With A Drinking Problem

[companionenvy]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

In season one, at least, before they started the "heroes don't kill people" nonsense, Snow and her friends were shown to be rather violent. Snow's not shooting rubber-tipped arrows. There was the remark about Red still having a bit of someone on her chin. The attack on George's castle was pretty intense. Snow herself was a bandit, so she doesn't have a lot of room to talk. She was basically a land pirate.

As I've said before, I so wish the show would have had a conversation between Snow and Hook where the fact that she was also a thief comes up, preferably in the context of a heist episode. In fact, do we ever get an on-screen conversation in which Emma having been a thief comes up? I mean, obviously we can assume Hook knew, after a certain point, but it would have been so much fun to play with these respective characters' histories of piracy/banditry/theft. The closest I can recall was Tallahassee, where there's an obvious parallel between Emma and Neal's real-world crime spree in the past and Emma and Hook stealing the compass in the present, but it isn't something brought up explicitly. But then, I watched the show so quickly on my binge-watch that the rewatch is reminding me of all sorts of things that didn't sink in at first, so maybe I'm forgetting something. Like, did the bug being stolen ever get referenced in a conversation between them or something? 

In a moral sense, though, I don't think Snow's past necessarily deprives her of the right to judge Hook, since with her, the writers do seem to set strict boundaries on Snow's banditry. The attack on David and Abigail is a mistake; otherwise she is only stealing from Regina and her people. Plus, she's essentially been forced into outlawry by the accusation of treason. Similarly, Snow and her allies are killing in the context of a pretty obviously just war, usually in  kill-or-be-killed situations.

I think Hook might be comparable-ish to Snow only if you take the most generous possible interpretation of his behavior, which is that all that really changed in the shift from the Jewel of the Realm to the Jolly Roger was that they weren't acting on the king's authority any longer, and that in effect Hook had given up a blind patriotism - in which things as bad as anything a "pirate" might do were routinely justified by the fact that a ship happened to come from foreign country X rather than my country Y -- for principled, if now unsanctioned warfare against his former king. Which is, in fact, possible. But at the end of that key flashback episode, Hook seems to be doing more than shifting allegiances after finding out the truth about the man he'd been serving; he is, if not abandoning, than at least radically revising his notion of "good form." He still has a code, of course, which is why I don't see him running around mercilessly slaughtering innocents, but part of the pirate image he is adopting is one that, I think, for him allows for a fair bit more violence than he was committing as a member of the navy, regardless of whether this would have been historically accurate for the equivalent period in LWOM history or not. Hook himself, at this period of his life, might have justified this by saying that there was no moral distinction between what he was doing and what someone like Snow and Charming would do in the wars with Regina and George, but I think that would have been his cynicism speaking, and not a valid ethical point. 

In any event, he's enough of an all-around jerk to Rumple that it seems he's already devolved between Good Form and The Crocodile, which - combined with how far he takes his vengeance quest later on, and the stories about at least a few hot-tempered, unjustified kills --just make me think it was unlikely that he was being terribly scrupulous about choosing his targets and keeping his body count to the bare minimum. Scrupulous enough that Milah didn't have to be a sociopath to join and fall in love with him, especially in the context of a world that did accept a higher level of violence, but not OK even by the (non-hypocritical) standards of that world, and certainly way, way worse than bandit Snow.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, companionenvy said:

As I've said before, I so wish the show would have had a conversation between Snow and Hook where the fact that she was also a thief comes up, preferably in the context of a heist episode. In fact, do we ever get an on-screen conversation in which Emma having been a thief comes up? I mean, obviously we can assume Hook knew, after a certain point, but it would have been so much fun to play with these respective characters' histories of piracy/banditry/theft.

Oh, man, I would have loved to see Hook and Snow teaming up to plot a heist. Or him starting to outline a plot and her correcting him. Though I guess he wouldn't be surprised because he saw Bandit Snow in action during the time travel, so maybe he would have asked for her input. That would also have been fun. Yeah, all the other characters already know, but maybe there would have been guest characters there, too, and Snow can be awfully prim, so him saying something like, "I've always found some sort of diversion to be most effective. Wouldn't you agree, your highness, or do you have any other strategies that you've found to be successful?" could have embarrassed her at least a little bit. I don't recall whether Emma's past ever came up overtly between Emma and Hook.

2 hours ago, companionenvy said:

In a moral sense, though, I don't think Snow's past necessarily deprives her of the right to judge Hook, since with her, the writers do seem to set strict boundaries on Snow's banditry.

True, I can't imagine that Snow was out hurting innocent civilians, and she seems to have done more sneaking around and grabbing things than pulling "stand and deliver" kind of heists. And, to be fair to Snow, she was never the one getting all haughty about Hook having been a pirate. That was David in the annual Captain Charming episode. Still, I think there would have been at least a whiff of hypocrisy for Snow or Emma to cast a lot of shade about illegal activity, just like it's awfully rich that Regina, the person with a tendency to rip out hearts and crush them when she's having a bad day, doesn't like Henry hanging around with Hook because Hook is "prone to violence."

[companionenvy]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Still, I think there would have been at least a whiff of hypocrisy for Snow or Emma to cast a lot of shade about illegal activity,

If they're objecting to activity purely because it is illegal, or to pretty petty wrongs, then yeah. But unlike Regina, both of them actually do have clear moral high ground when it comes to a lot of what Hook's done. Snow less than Emma, when we take eggnapping  into account, but even that was a one-time aberration, not a pattern.

It does bring us back to the question of how justice works in SB. It is kind of cute that the show winds up making Hook Emma's deputy, but I feel like that would actually be a really hard role for him in certain respects, given that he really doesn't have room to judge almost anyone. I guess he, and to a lesser extent, Emma can justify it by regarding it in largely practical terms; they're dealing with active problems that need to be addressed: when Hook was causing trouble in town, Emma arrested him (however briefly and ineffectively)'; now he's on the side of good, so he's the one dealing with these things. But assuming SB justice ever evolves to include anything like ordinary legal penalties, so that people not named King George could experience actual, potentially serious consequences for their crimes, it would be a little much to have Captain Hook arresting you for an assault or robbery that's going to lead to real jail time. 

This is why, in my head-canon, Emma and Hook's job winds up basically being catch-and-release for anything short of murder. Theoretically, magic should give Emma enough options for keeping the peace without needing to resort to hefty prison sentences, except when it comes to crimes by magic users, who are almost impossible to punish effectively anyway. And, obviously, the idea of assigning punishments as justice, rather than as a deterrent, has to go by the wayside in a town hosting so many reformed murderers. 

From what I've seen of S7, I did like the idea of cursed Wish!Hook being a detective, and wouldn't have a problem with him deciding to resume a version of his Rogers identity, though this may be simply because redemption for his long list of sins wasn't as big a focus of his arc.

[Shanna Marie]

12 hours ago, companionenvy said:

It does bring us back to the question of how justice works in SB. It is kind of cute that the show winds up making Hook Emma's deputy, but I feel like that would actually be a really hard role for him in certain respects, given that he really doesn't have room to judge almost anyone. I guess he, and to a lesser extent, Emma can justify it by regarding it in largely practical terms; they're dealing with active problems that need to be addressed: when Hook was causing trouble in town, Emma arrested him (however briefly and ineffectively)'; now he's on the side of good, so he's the one dealing with these things. But assuming SB justice ever evolves to include anything like ordinary legal penalties, so that people not named King George could experience actual, potentially serious consequences for their crimes, it would be a little much to have Captain Hook arresting you for an assault or robbery that's going to lead to real jail time. 

On the other hand, there is the "it takes a thief to catch a thief" approach, like where rehabilitated hackers are great for doing cybersecurity, or how Frank Abignale ended up being a major resource for fraud detection and prevention. Former juvenile delinquents often end up becoming cops because of the cops who made a big difference in helping them turn their lives around, and their background helps them deal with troubled teens. I don't think you'd necessarily say that a hacker can't do cybersecurity because he can't judge other hackers. A lot of it comes down to repentance/remorse. The former criminal has to have truly decided that what they were doing before was wrong, and not just because they got caught, and they have to have done whatever serving their debt to society that their society requires. I think that "that their society requires" bit is where Hook has some wiggle room. No, he hasn't really served conventional jail time appropriate to his years of piracy and violence, and he was never tried and sentenced, but then no one in their society seems to have faced any kind of justice. He does recognize that what he did was wrong, and you might be able to look at all of the effort he put into trying to help stop evil as a form of community service. Plus there's the dying thing, which could be said to erase past debts. On the other hand, they had their weird thing of him clinging to remnants of his pirate life, still talking about being a pirate and dressing in a modern equivalent to his pirate attire and using his old pirate attire for formal occasions, even though he's supposedly repudiated his past. I'm still not entirely sure I buy him being a deputy as where I'd see him ending up, but that's the problem with trying to squeeze that into the last 30 seconds or so of that phase of the series rather than having him on any kind of character arc in which he contemplates what he wants to do with his life now. In my headcanon, he lets Rogers take over as deputy (maybe even sheriff, given that he has more law enforcement experience than Hook and Emma combined, if you factor in his fake memories) and finds something else to do with his life that suits him better.

I would think that Hook and Emma would mostly focus on crime prevention -- they wouldn't have to even go so far as to catch and release if their own criminal pasts allow them to figure out when something's about to go down, and they just conveniently show up before anything can happen. Emma could spot someone about to shoplift, give them the eye, and then they never actually end up committing the crime. The plan to rob the bank ends up with the robbers arriving there to find Hook already there and smiling at them after he picked up rumors in the waterfront bars.

Picking up the "save the cat" and character endearment topic from the episode thread ... I would dearly love to know what was going on in the behind-the-scenes stuff relating to this character. As we were discussing, they did a lot to help set up his future redemption. In his introduction episode, while he's a villain and a jerk and we learn that he's working with a present-day villain, we also see that he's brave, capable of selfless self-sacrifice, loves deeply and is loved, and we see him being wronged and being a victim. They set up that he's kind of a kindred spirit with Emma and actually gets her, plus he cheers for her and praises her more than we've seen anyone do since season one Henry, and it's Emma who wrongs him first before he starts actually doing bad things to her and her friends. Then in the midst of him being an antagonist in direct opposition to Emma and her friends, he goes out of his way to save Aurora's heart. He was originally cast as a guest star, but apparently they decided to make him a regular before his first episode aired. Which makes me wonder what the plans were. I would think that from the start they planned some sort of arc that would have him eventually confronting Rumple, so they would have had to hire Colin in a way that made sure he would be available for all the episodes they'd need him for (especially important since he was based in Ireland), which would suggest that the promotion to regular wasn't just about ensuring his availability. Were they initially planning for him to go away somehow after the confrontation with Rumple, but then someone decided they liked him and wanted to keep him, or were they always kind of planning for the character to really become part of the regular cast for the rest of the series, and they just wanted to give him a bit of a trial run before they made that official? He seems written in 2A like they're setting him up for a redemption, which is especially glaring when you consider that they also redeemed Regina but did nothing in her first season to pave the way for a redemption. There are also plenty of other characters/actors who didn't get any kind of onscreen chemistry test before they committed to their role -- Regina and Robin were declared soulmates before the actors or characters ever appeared onscreen together.

I sometimes got the feeling that A&E resented Hook, that he wasn't the character they would have chosen to break out, but they were forced to keep him around and give him a prominent role because someone at the network was a fan. In 2B and 3A it seemed that they were setting up a triangle with him and Neal, and then quite abruptly Neal was out of the way but also turned into some kind of saint. It's like the writers kept trying to do one thing and then someone intervened. When Hook gets a major role in a storyline, it's like a grudging "okay, we'll give him a story" and then they sideline him as soon as possible (see 5B -- the network even promoted that with an image of Hook, but after using him as the excuse to go to the Underworld, he doesn't do all that much).

[profdanglais]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I sometimes got the feeling that A&E resented Hook, that he wasn't the character they would have chosen to break out, but they were forced to keep him around and give him a prominent role because someone at the network was a fan.

I agree completely with this. What was initially shown about Hook and then what was eventually told is so jarring, it has to be deliberate, because if they had been concerned about keeping the character consistent a lot of S5 and S6 would have been impossible. We see that he's capable of giving and receiving deep love, with Milah and with Liam, we see that he's courageous and can be selfless, we see that his crew is loyal and follow him even into piracy, so we know he's a strong leader. He speaks multiple languages, knows how to dance, and has copperplate handwriting, all of which shows he's educated. He can sail a ship all on his own, outrun a curse, navigate himself from Maine to New York with who even knows what kind of map even though he's literally just arrived in the land, so we're shown he's intelligent and skilled. But then we're told that he's a useless fuckup who disappointed his brother and who was raised in slavery and is borderline alcoholic (even though we're shown him drinking a fair amount he's never out of control) and it just doesn't mesh. It's like someone said "Why does everyone love this villain who's not either of the villains we told them to love, someone's gotta put this SOB in his place!" and then they made up a bunch of egregious crap to tear him down. 

As for how bad he was as a pirate, there's been so much discussion about that and I just think we'll never know. I personally think that a lot would have been different for a young Killian Jones in a world with some species of justice system. He could have led a grassroots campaign to overthrow the leader who wanted him to collect Dreamshade, he could have testified against Rumpelstiltskin for Milah's murder, he could have been taken into care when his father left instead of growing up amongst rough, violent men in a rough, violent environment. A lot of the decisions he makes are made in response to circumstances over which he has little or no control, that sort of thing would magnify anyone's bad qualities. Hook is impulsive and quick to anger, but honestly so am I. So are a lot of people. If he'd grown up in a less violent world where it wasn't kill or be killed, you can easily see how he could have turned out differently. This, for me, is where he's different from Regina and Rumpel who had more agency in their decisions and their descent into darkness. 

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, profdanglais said:

I agree completely with this. What was initially shown about Hook and then what was eventually told is so jarring, it has to be deliberate, because if they had been concerned about keeping the character consistent a lot of S5 and S6 would have been impossible. We see that he's capable of giving and receiving deep love, with Milah and with Liam, we see that he's courageous and can be selfless, we see that his crew is loyal and follow him even into piracy, so we know he's a strong leader. He speaks multiple languages, knows how to dance, and has copperplate handwriting, all of which shows he's educated. He can sail a ship all on his own, outrun a curse, navigate himself from Maine to New York with who even knows what kind of map even though he's literally just arrived in the land, so we're shown he's intelligent and skilled. But then we're told that he's a useless fuckup who disappointed his brother and who was raised in slavery and is borderline alcoholic (even though we're shown him drinking a fair amount he's never out of control) and it just doesn't mesh.

Although there was some character assassination that really didn't fit (like the murder of David's father -- at least, the circumstances and reasons given for it), some of the backstory developed later could still have worked. Not necessarily the useless drunk part, but the slavery might have fit if they'd used teen actors for the flashbacks. If Killian had been 14-15 or so when he got into the navy, then it would have made sense that he became educated and cultured. It was just weird when he looked the same age as when we saw him already advanced pretty well in the navy, so did he do all that in a couple of years?

But what really made me wonder was the way that most of his story arcs just sort of fizzled, especially starting in season four -- the stolen heart thing ended up with him not doing much and with little aftereffects, or the whole journey to the Underworld to save Hook (with him even being the promo image) turning out to be more about Regina reconciling with her mother and the fact that Hook died and came back to life was completely forgotten. It's like the writers pitched the arc plot to the network or got input on the arc plot from the network, then they went and did what they wanted to do in the first place. It really shows up in the relationship between Hook and Emma, where every big moment between them is immediately followed by something as big or bigger happening with Emma and Regina, and most of the relationship development after the season three finale happens offscreen. It's like the network wanted it to happen, so they couldn't really break them up or kill off Hook for good, but they did as little as they thought they could get away with. I even kind of felt like they wanted the triangle between Hook, Neal, and Emma was originally planned to go to Neal, but the network saw the buzz and intervened, so Neal was killed off right after Hook vowed to step out of the way and give him a shot, but then Neal was turned into a great saint and hero after his death. It's like the writers were forced to get rid of Neal and rebelled by trying to make him look better than Hook in the aftermath.

On the other hand, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between malice and incompetence. Regina was clearly their favorite (queen of the universe!), and the writing for her was worse than it was for Hook. She got a lot of screen time, but her character got shortchanged, and the way they wrote Hook actually made Regina look worse. I don't think her lack of true redemption would have been as glaring if we hadn't had Hook right there, talking about the futility of revenge and remorse for his past deeds, or him talking about not deserving a happy ending while she's expecting the rules of the universe to be rewritten to give her a happy ending. I really don't think they wrote like that on purpose. But I do get the sense that there was someone above them pushing for Hook and especially Emma and Hook and they were somewhat less than enthusiastic or even resentful about that.

[companionenvy]

22 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

He does recognize that what he did was wrong, and you might be able to look at all of the effort he put into trying to help stop evil as a form of community service. Plus there's the dying thing, which could be said to erase past debts. On the other hand, they had their weird thing of him clinging to remnants of his pirate life, still talking about being a pirate and dressing in a modern equivalent to his pirate attire and using his old pirate attire for formal occasions, even though he's supposedly repudiated his past.

This may be more my head-canon than anything else, but I think while Hook is extremely remorseful about his past life, I'm not sure that he is terribly ashamed of the piracy per se. Like, I think he gets that, in the context of SB, it would be a shitty thing to do to, say, rob Granny's, and probably realizes intellectually that even in the EF, it wasn't acceptable to steal, but I don't think he's too broken up over it, to the extent that he doesn't feel the need to totally abandon the pirate look. Maybe he wishes he had been more judicious in choosing his targets, assuming he wasn't, but I just don't see him as someone who is feeling too many pangs of conscience about looting from a king or rich man's coffers. It is notable that he does go back to piracy in the year between 3A and 3B, and while that may be a step back for his redemption, I don't see it as a total reversion; I'd be surprised if he was being particularly violent or ruthless in that year, even if he was still stealing from other ships. That's I think, where I have a problem with him as deputy, assuming people are actually getting punished. When it comes to things like murder, than yeah, I think that Hook is well and truly ashamed of that part of his past, and wouldn't feel any compunction about putting away a killer, even if circumstances turned out in such a way that he himself never really had to answer for his crimes - crimes that took place in a very different context and a very different world. But I just can't imagine him feeling all that good about locking up a run of the mill thief, unless we're assuming a very liberal criminal justice system. Which I think we probably can. It at least has to be a lot more liberal than the system that supposedly sent a homeless 17 year old to an actual prison for 11 months for wearing a stolen watch, and then forced her to give birth while chained to the bed...

 

19 hours ago, profdanglais said:

A lot of the decisions he makes are made in response to circumstances over which he has little or no control, that sort of thing would magnify anyone's bad qualities. Hook is impulsive and quick to anger, but honestly so am I. So are a lot of people. If he'd grown up in a less violent world where it wasn't kill or be killed, you can easily see how he could have turned out differently. This, for me, is where he's different from Regina and Rumpel who had more agency in their decisions and their descent into darkness. 

No comment, just ITA.

 

23 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I sometimes got the feeling that A&E resented Hook, that he wasn't the character they would have chosen to break out, but they were forced to keep him around and give him a prominent role because someone at the network was a fan.

I don't agree with this, except to the extent that they sometimes resented that he forced them to take time away from Regina, hence things like ignoring CS scenes in favor of furthering the Emma/Regina friendship. But my read on it is that they simply aren't interested at all in representing the growth of happy, loving relationships, period. Hook - and especially, Hook/Emma gets shafted, mostly, for the same reason Charming family , the Snowing marriage, and Emma's relationship with Henry fall by the wayside; that would all be boring "washing dishes" moments that the writers scoffed at.

Basically, I think if you analyze Hook's role compared to most other characters, and allow for the writers' Regina-goggles,  he doesn't do too badly. If anything, he does way, way better than Emma in S5, where he sacrifices himself to stop the darkness and winds up earning his own way out of the UW. I just don't think S5 happens as it does if the writers were only grudgingly keeping Hook around. Sure, the writers sometimes dropped his plots, or gave him randomly character-assassinating backstory, or did things like treat s6 wish-verse Hook as a total joke, but that happens to almost all the characters; these were the same writers that treated wish-verse Snowing's deaths as a joke, and turned wish-Emma into a useless damsel in distress who needed a Regina to whip her into shape. 

It also seems really obvious that they were both setting him up for some redemption in S2, and also setting up a possible relationship with Emma. What I suspect was less certain was whether or not CS was endgame. If the character, or the pairing, had been less successful, they might have given him a redemptive death, probably at some point during S3. 

[Shanna Marie]

8 hours ago, companionenvy said:

This may be more my head-canon than anything else, but I think while Hook is extremely remorseful about his past life, I'm not sure that he is terribly ashamed of the piracy per se. Like, I think he gets that, in the context of SB, it would be a shitty thing to do to, say, rob Granny's, and probably realizes intellectually that even in the EF, it wasn't acceptable to steal, but I don't think he's too broken up over it, to the extent that he doesn't feel the need to totally abandon the pirate look. Maybe he wishes he had been more judicious in choosing his targets, assuming he wasn't, but I just don't see him as someone who is feeling too many pangs of conscience about looting from a king or rich man's coffers.

While he doesn't talk about his regrets about having stolen in the past the way he talks about murders or revenge, it was being "a selfish pirate" that Rumple used to mess with his head about returning his hand, and he eventually made a deal with Rumple to get rid of the hand again so he wouldn't turn back into the man he used to be. The only period of his life in which being a pirate with a left hand would apply was his time between Liam's death and Milah's death, when he was an ordinary pirate trying to avenge Liam's death by fighting against the king and doing whatever piracy he was up to at that time. Granted, it was the impulsive violence that disturbed him, but it's not as though he'd suddenly be looting and pillaging with his left hand while in Storybrooke. Of course, this plot made no sense because all indications are that he was far worse with the hook than with the hand, so if anything was "cursed" or a bad influence, it should have been the hook, and giving up the hook and going back to the hand should have been redemptive, putting the "Hook" identity behind him and going back to the man he was before he got all twisted by revenge. But still, he does seem to have regretted his time as a pirate in some way.

His redemption does seem to have gone in phases -- first he realized that revenge was a waste, so he gave that up. Then, during the Missing Year he tried to get back into piracy, only to find that his heart wasn't in it and he couldn't really get into it (though there didn't seem to be any guilt about stealing, just that it wasn't the thrill it used to be). I don't think there was a reference to him stealing after that, unless it was part of something he did toward the greater good. And then during the hand incident, he realized that he didn't want to be violent anymore.

There is the issue that they seem to have taken the same approach to "piracy" as in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, where they don't really get into what pirates actually do and instead act like being a pirate is more of a lifestyle or culture -- it's like being a hippy or a goth, something you identify with that has something to do with what you wear and who you hang out with, maybe something you believe in, like not answering to any king, making your own rules, and living free. The only flashbacks showing Hook doing actual piracy were the land pirate stagecoach heist and stealing the king's money in the incident in which David's father died. We never saw them doing actual pirate things on ships (possibly for budgetary reasons because they'd need the set for another ship so the Jolly Roger pirates could board that ship, and then they'd need stuntmen if there was going to be a fight).

[Camera One]

11 hours ago, companionenvy said:

But my read on it is that they simply aren't interested at all in representing the growth of happy, loving relationships, period. Hook - and especially, Hook/Emma gets shafted, mostly, for the same reason Charming family , the Snowing marriage, and Emma's relationship with Henry fall by the wayside; that would all be boring "washing dishes" moments that the writers scoffed at.

Basically, I think if you analyze Hook's role compared to most other characters, and allow for the writers' Regina-goggles,  he doesn't do too badly.

Yes.  To me, Hook was easily A&E's third favorite character, behind Regina and Rumple.  Putting the character through so much was a gift to the actor and to the character, since Hook was given multiple chances to play redemption, regret and sacrifice, and an arc with a relatively linear path of growth through the series.  The character was generally written in such a way that the viewer would sympathize with him and/or root for him.  They brought him back in Season 7 and took the effort to develop a story that was even meatier than what Regina or Rumple got.  The amount of significant screentime he had (with actual meaningful emotional material) dwarfed the screentime that even Emma had, much less Snow, Charming, Neal, Robin Hood, Belle or Young Henry, if we go through the other regulars on the show (each of those were examples of how a character was treated if A&E didn't care). 

[KingOfHearts]

There was a short live message from Colin on the OUAT Facebook page just saying how much he enjoyed being on the show. Apparently only 40 people watched.

Edited November 11, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Kktjones]

3 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

There was a short live message from Colin on the OUAT Facebook page just saying how much he enjoyed being on the show. Apparently only 40 people watched.

Colin retweeted it on Twitter and it already has 35K views :). There are videos from Sean Maguire, Emilie (Belle) and Lee (Grumpy) up on the Once twitter account as well. 

[legaleagle53]

18 hours ago, Kktjones said:

Colin retweeted it on Twitter and it already has 35K views :). There are videos from Sean Maguire, Emilie (Belle) and Lee (Grumpy) up on the Once twitter account as well. 

It's fascinating getting to hear Colin, Sean, and Emilie speak in their native accents -- and Sean's video was especially funny when Colin crept up behind him while Sean was talking about working with everyone (including Colin!).

[Writing Wrongs]

Unpopular Opinion:

After a series re-watch, I really don't care for Hook. From the moment he shows up onscreen, I can't stand his smarmy, sleazy innuendos and all I could think was "Emma marries this asshole."

Admittedly, he gets better as the show goes on and he is easy on they eyes but I have a hard time getting passed my initial feelings.

I much prefer Wish Hook from Season 7.

[daxx]

When I see him being smarmy all I see is a hurt man throwing up a wall and using sexuality to disarm Emma and protect himself. I think that is why the innuendos scale back a lot as he opens up and becomes more genuine. He wasn’t that way with Milah or Emma in the past so this head canon tracks with his history.

He was relatively open and decent on the beanstalk but once she left him up there the smarminess dialed way up.

[Shanna Marie]

I wasn't sure quite where to post this, as it's about outside material but not really "other fairy tales," so since it's strictly pertaining to Hook, I thought I'd post it here.

I recently found a really interesting book in the library called The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson. An economist who's always been interested in pirates gets into how piracy worked, using economic principles to explain it (and, at the same time, uses piracy as illustrations of economic principles). "The invisible hook" is a play on Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of economics.

Anyway, it made me think of the discussion we had a while ago (I think around the time we learned about his trophies) about how we hadn't seen Hook doing much onscreen killing and whether he was more like the Dread Pirate Roberts and functioned purely by reputation. It seems that in reality, that wouldn't have been that unlikely. While pirates did do a lot of stealing and some killing and torture, in general their reputations were wildly exaggerated. There's no evidence that the real Blackbeard actually ever killed anyone before his final showdown, for instance. A lot of it was hype. They did let people they captured go so they could tell others how fierce the pirates were. They'd talk up their own exploits in public or tell their captives tall tales about what they'd done and encourage them to tell others. It was all marketing. If everyone feared what these pirates would do, they were less likely to put up a fight and just surrender, and that made things easier on the pirates. They didn't want to have to fight, not only because of the physical risk, but because compensation for wounds suffered in battle came out of the prize before it was divided among the crew.

That makes the killing of David's father even less likely. A pirate would have wanted a survivor to spread the story of what he'd done. He wouldn't have killed a witness to keep him from talking. It would be a reputation enhancer that he'd stolen money from the king's own men, especially since Hook could easily get away to a place where the king couldn't reach him. They really should have had Hook kill him for selling his son, which would have made things more emotionally complicated. Or, as I found myself thinking during the episode, we'd learn that David's father had ended up on Hook's crew because he realized his family was safest if George thought he was dead. It would turn out that he'd been in Storybrooke all along but didn't realize that the guy married to the princess was his son. Hook would at the same time be the guy who saved David's father's life and also the guy who took him away from David.

Another thing they got wrong was that a pirate crew was a democracy, with the captain elected by the crew, who could vote him out of office if they didn't like his leadership. Hook was pretty autocratic and all "my ship," which would not have gone over well with a pirate crew. Maybe with his original crew they were still functioning like the navy, but as he took on actual pirates, they wouldn't have had much patience for his attitude.

A potential story they could have used but didn't: Apparently, when pirates did indulge in a bit of torture, one of the likely targets was abusive merchant ship captains. Merchant captains tended to be pretty awful, cheating and abusing their crews (so pirates didn't have to work hard to recruit, since they shared their income equally and could vote out a captain who treated them badly). If they captured a merchant ship and the crew said their captain was abusive, the pirates would entertain themselves with a spot of torture. So many of them were former merchant sailors who'd been treated badly, and sometimes they even got to run into their old captains. That could have made for an interesting flashback, showing Hook and his crew capturing a ship, and Hook's anger being set off by the way that captain treated his crew, reminding him of the captain he and his brother were sold to.

[daxx]

I yielded to temptation and bought a prop. A rubber stunt Hook. Too much money but I knew I’d regret not getting it from the auction house. Once they are in private collections it’s harder to get them. 
Trying to figure the best way to display it. In a shadow box with a picture of Hook behind it?  Then fasten the certificate of authenticity to the back?
What picture? I’m thinking a screen shot from the crocodile when he’s leaving for Neverland, the first time he wears the hook.

thoughts? 

[Shanna Marie]

23 hours ago, daxx said:

I yielded to temptation and bought a prop. A rubber stunt Hook. Too much money but I knew I’d regret not getting it from the auction house. Once they are in private collections it’s harder to get them. 

For a moment, I thought you meant an actual Hook, like a life-sized dummy they used for things like when he's thrown overboard, and I was trying to imagine how big that shadowbox would be. Then I saw the context and realized it was the hook he wore. Whew.

Though a life-sized Hook dummy would be kind of interesting to have.

On 8/3/2020 at 6:52 PM, daxx said:

What picture? I’m thinking a screen shot from the crocodile when he’s leaving for Neverland, the first time he wears the hook.

That's probably the most apt, when he's putting on the hook for the first time. Or if you want to go sweeter with it, there's when they're walking to Camelot, and Emma is holding his hook, when when she holds his hook when they're dancing at the ball. For a darker bit, there's when he stabs Rumple with the poisoned hook.

[daxx]

So cool! 

[daxx]

Decided to go with my first instinct on the picture.