A Thread for All Seasons: This Story Is Over, But Still Goes On.

[Camera One]

In Season 1, it was easy what people could look forward to - Emma believing, all the Cursed characters remembering, the Charming family reuniting, and the villains getting their comeuppance.  The first three of those were checked off and dismissed almost instantaneously.  In 2A, they created a scenario where people could look forward to Emma and Snow coming home. 

With 2B, it became less clear what there was to look forward to, especially when the show didn't seem that interested in showing Emma, Snow, Charming and Henry being together as a family.  They seemed to have mostly skipped Emma and her father getting to know each other.  They never showed Snow and Charming processing what they went through and lost.  They didn't have much of Emma interacting with Henry, now that she believed.  Now that they were back in Storybrooke, Emma and Snow were no longer having regular conversations.  Henry and Charming no longer had scenes together.  I don't remember a heart-to-heart between Henry and Snow after she remembered her identity in 2B.  Yet A&E kept saying this show was about family.

Instead, they had "The Cricket Game" where Snowing were wrong to falsely accuse Regina.  Then a Rumbelle episode.  Then filler with Dr. Whale and a crisis with the stranger.  Then Emma left town for two episodes.  And then began the arc where Snow became just as bad as Regina for killing Cora.   As companionenvy said, for a show about hope, it sure became hopeless with no fun or rewarding payoff.  I can imagine a viewer might wonder what this show was even about anymore.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Camera One

[profdanglais]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

I think Dark Swan could actually have been a great idea

There needed to be more focus on how Emma, the goodest good to ever good who'd had all her darkness removed via eggnapping, dealt with suddenly having dark impulses. Really, she should have been able to handle the darkness in a more balanced way than most Dark Ones since she didn't have any darkness to begin with. She could have struggled with making good decisions despite the new influence of the darkness, which would raise interesting questions about morality in challenging circumstances, etc etc. It could have been interesting. 

Also, her magic was supposed to be pure light, so becoming the DO wouldn't necessarily mean that she was using dark magic, just that her natural light magic would have a bit of dark in it, which could also have been interesting. Instead, the whole thing was a muddle with no clear underlying rules or sense. Clippy!Rumple was another mistake, I think, another example of them wanting to use their shiny toy Robert Carlyle when the narrative would have worked better without him. 

[scarynikki12]

41 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

I think Dark Swan could actually have been a great idea - and even as it was, there were elements of it I liked a lot -- except for the writers turning it into an Emma-shaming angst-fest. Pretty much everyone treats her like she's a rabid dog even when she seems to be under control, her parents give up on her in an inexcusably short time, Regina thinks it's fun to control her with the dagger, she's barred from using her magic - which had been previously established as an essential part of her that she shouldn't have to hide -- and circumstances play out so that she's forced into a wrenching choice in which the "right" decision is letting Hook die. When she, quite understandably, can't do that, the narrative punishes her severely for it, and in the end, the closest we get to a heroic conclusion to the arc is the even angstier turn where she has to kill Dark Hook. Especially given that this is a character whose past includes so much pain and isolation, it simply isn't enjoyable to watch.

Agreed.  Dark Swan was an excellent idea that ultimately failed because these fools never wanted to actually follow through on what they set up.  They set up the arc with Emma walking into Granny's to reveal that the group tried, and failed, to save her from giving into the evil that was now inside her.  She singled out Snow during this reveal, leading the audience to believe that Snow in particular had done something.  I remember a bunch of us theorizing that Snow's deed was the last straw and that it probably wasn't done out of malice.  Snow tries to do what she thinks is best and sometimes bad things happen as a result.  At this point in the series Emma's relationships with her parents was being ignored over and over in favor of each party's relationships with others.  It would have made a lot of sense for Dark Swan to not let this go as easily as Regular Emma did, and to let the seemingly little slights fester until it came to a head.  The memory wipe should have been Dark Swan's doing and the arc should have been treated as a mystery, with the audience and main cast learning together the details that led to Emma becoming Dark Swan.  The finale also should have been a juxtaposition between Emma giving in because of whatever Snow did and Emma coming back because of something Snow does. 

What makes the failure of the arc even worse is that it had a ton of stuff that could have stayed if they'd done something like this.  Emma not being able to sleep, getting taunted by the ghosts of the previous Dark Ones, Regina controlling her with the dagger, using both dark and light magic together, her love for Hook keeping the evil at bay and then a threat to his life* making her lose control, and even the truth about Camelot (though the characters would actually have to find out about it), are all things that can still happen with an overall adjustment to the story.  Merida wasn't needed at all and Nimue should only have been a ghost rather than a tangible threat.  The less said about Dark Hook the better.

*I honestly don't know what the best option for the last straw would be but I can see Hook getting poisoned like we saw, Merlin not being around (maybe he's off fixing the Camelot bullshit), Emma being unable to save him (I also think it's bullshit that evil magic can be used to heal people AND that healing someone can make a person more evil.  Healing should be something that only good magic users can do and Emma being unable to heal Hook would be another cue that she's that much closer to Dark Swan), Regina can't or is also unavailable (knocked out, helping Merlin under the guise of being The Savior, screwing Robin in a cemetery), and everyone is too far to go for help and be back in time.  So Snow goes to Emma and tells her she needs to say goodbye to Hook.  Emma's freaking out and can't bring herself to do it, Hook's fading fast, and Snow tries for tough love and yells at her that she has to because Hook's going to die.  Suddenly Merlin appears and saves Hook just in time.  Oh, and I'd have a running thread be that Snow isn't wild about Emma and Hook.  She still doesn't trust him, she thinks it's too soon after Neal's death, she sees that their feelings are real and it scares the hell out of her, or something but Snow is not on board with the relationship, makes her feelings known, and maybe tries to get them to put it on pause until Emma's no longer the Dark One.  So, when Snow does something regarding the relationship that's actually kind, like telling Emma she needs to say goodbye to Hook before he dies, it can be interpreted as Snow taking advantage of the moment.  Merlin saving Hook just reinforces this view and Emma's so angry that she takes that final step and becomes Dark Swan.  I don't think this is a good theory but it's all I've got.  As for Snow's deed to bring Emma back, maybe she finally gets to know Killian in real time and then, when his life is again threatened, she gets Blue to save him?  Which Dark Swan witnesses and transforms back into Emma? 

I also think that Emma should have either killed Merlin or kept him hidden in town.  If she killed him then I think it could have been done in service to the spell that takes them back to Storybrooke.  It doesn't have to be Regina's Curse, but one Emma created and she sacrifices Merlin's heart to give her the magic boost she needs.  Or, if she'd kept him hidden in town (leading everyone to think that she killed him), maybe it's to use his magic to remain Dark Swan?  The flashbacks show Emma slowly becoming Dark Swan and the real time story could be Dark Swan slowly becoming Emma again.  I don't know, maybe something about the magic from the True Love's Kiss she shared with Henry still lingers and she inadvertently taps into it (and only she can since she was one of the two involved) and it slowly erodes the Dark One magic.  Her love for Hook, Henry, her parents, and the town add to it and that's where her struggle comes from.  Merlin's not evil but maybe siphoning his magic would qualify and that's how she keeps her good magic and Regular Emma at bay. 

I have no idea how any of this would set up a trip to the Underworld (since Dark Swan was Emma's journey there and back), but that kind of thing could have waited until the 5B premiere. 

[companionenvy]

52 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

There needed to be more focus on how Emma, the goodest good to ever good who'd had all her darkness removed via eggnapping, dealt with suddenly having dark impulses. Really, she should have been able to handle the darkness in a more balanced way than most Dark Ones since she didn't have any darkness to begin wi

Is that true? I used to believe that, but then someone on the boards reminded me that Emma was going to have zero potential for darkness only provided that Snow and Charming were careful to raise her right - otherwise, it was going to come back. That's why Snowing were still worried that she could go dark in 4B, in spite of what they had done to Lily. 

The question of what Dark Emma should have been like is an interesting one. To give the show credit, I do think that there's some character logic to the differences in the way the darkness affected, respectively, Rumple, Hook, and Emma. Rumple had spent his life feeling powerless, so he becomes a murderous bully. Hook is vengeful and prone to anger, so he returns to an over-the-top vengeance scheme when he feels betrayed by Emma. And Emma is, cosmic propensities aside, as pretty fundamentally good person, but one with a tendency to close herself off defensively from others. Consequently, Dark Emma succumbs to a cold, calculating detachment rather than to real evil. The problem, IIRC, is that this is only true of SB Emma, not Camelot Emma, so I'm not sure how coherent it winds up being.

In the end, I would have liked it if the darkness had brought out legitimate anger that Emma has been suppressing - mostly, against her parents and Regina. So, rather than lashing out at Snow for failing her in Camelot, from the beginning, she's lashing out at Snow for things like the eggnapping and being so freaked out by her magic during the Frozen arc, or (fairly or not )for not taking the time to actually develop a relationship with her since "replacing" her with Neal. She would have to find a way to actually deal with these real issues in a healthy way lest the darkness take hold.

I did like the twist that it was an act of love that ultimately let the darkness take over. I would have preferred it, however, if the narrative hadn't, as per usual, so severely punished Emma for it; imagine a version of the story in which she is able to save the day in the end precisely because she succumbed to the darkness out of love rather than hatred, permitting her to wield its power as light rather than dark magic. This could be presented as powerful enough to turn Hook back to goodness before he dies, but not to avoid having to kill him entirely, leaving the UW arc intact. Hook would still ultimately sacrifice himself, but Emma would have had a much more active role up to that point - one that would have, crucially, had Emma herself being the one who really overcomes her darkness. 

[Camera One]

I have mixed feelings about whether Dark Swan had potential or not.  I still think that at the end of the day, it was just an easy way for them to use the character of Emma, who they considered boring to write for since she was so good.  After they had "used" that card, all that was left for them to do with her in Season 6 was to accept lying down to die.  I am glad they did not have Dark Swan do any real murders.  

Looking back, it feels even more pointless since they used the arc to pass the Dark One-ness around like a hot potato, and it ultimately went right back to Rumple, even though they were trying to squeeze blood from a rock with Dark One Rumple storylines by that point.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

For all their talk of hope, I suspect that the showrunners were always interested in the darker aspects of the show. The first season they were held back from going too bleak (killing off David was immediately shut down by the network), but once given free rein, they just kept going darker and darker. Some of this came from their need to tarnish the heroes and constantly punish them for comparatively small and/or completely reasonable actions in an attempt to paint their heinous villains as victims. The rest of it came from them finding more positive characters boring and wanting to be subversive or edgy. The problem is that they sold the audience on the show with S1, which was at times dark and intense, but always had a light at the end of the tunnel. Emma was having small wins and people's lives were improving. There was also still a fun aspect to the show with the fairy tale mashups. 

S2 completely lost its way. The show very clearly didn't know what it was or wanted to be and it resulted in a bunch of random plots and dropped a lot of the things that drew people to the show in S1. Emma was almost completely sidelined in 2B. Her relationship with her parents was pretty superficial. Snow became a suicidal sad sack while David wanted to leave Storybrooke (and Emma) to go have more adventures in the Enchanted Forest. If you were interested in the Charming family, 2B would have turned you off. Rumbelle was a disaster. Rumpel/Bae was also largely ignored in favor of Emma/Neal/Tamara ridiculous angst. Regina's redemption arc in 2A was flipped as she joined up with Cora and plotted to murder everyone. 

It seems fairly obvious that someone stepped in for S3. Greg/Tamara were quickly killed off and everyone was placed on an island with a very clear goal. It was much more in line with S1 in terms of fighting one villain and sort of tried to redevelop some of the relationships that had been neglected in S2. It's telling that the Snow/Emma conversation in "Lost Girl" was originally Hook/Emma. To me that says someone outside of the writers room sent strong notes back on the script and required the change.

4A featured Frozen, which while not totally enjoyable to everyone, was actually a fairly coherent story with a positive message about accepting yourself and the love of family. Unfortunately, once the Frozen part was done, the network stepped aside and Adam and Eddy led into 4B with "Heroes and Villains". That was really where the show spiraled into unrelenting depression and darkness. All of the fun was gone. The showrunners were writing the show that they wanted at that point and that's fine for them, but since it wasn't the show that was initially given to the audience, viewers started dropping the show. There's only so much an audience can take.

[Camera One]

I agree they wanted to go dark, yet they never wanted to go into the consequences of that darkness.  They wanted a show where anyone could die because that was edgy, but expected the audience to shrug and not care about all the dead redshirts while they shed a tear for the crocodile tears of the complex villain.  They kept saying the show was dark but never bleak.  It was dark because innocent people died but not bleak because these victims were forgotten about almost immediately and we never saw the lasting consequences of these lost lives.  We saw Gothel murder an entire room of people.  Are we supposed to be so desensitized by violence that we would ignore the enormity of that atrocity and instead be impressed by the origin story of the World Without Magic or swoon at the prospect of Henry and Jacinda kissing?

Edited September 9, 2018 by Camera One

[scarynikki12]

I don't know why but I thought of a different way for Emma to become Dark Swan.  Push the threat to Robin's life back and make it be what lets Dark Swan take over.  If the show thinks that any magic used by the Dark One is evil, even if it helps and heals, then fine.  Emma's been fighting off the evil the entire time they're in Camelot but it's still slowly taking over.  Especially after she uses magic.  She can feel that she moves closer to Dark Swan every time so she tells the group because they need to know they can't depend on her for magical help and she trusts they won't ask her.  They have Regina for magic and Emma can help in other ways.  Everyone agrees and Emma stops using magic for a few episodes.  Then Robin gets hit with a nasty spell and it's one Regina can't fix.  So she immediately asks Emma to fix him.  Emma stands her ground and refuses, reminding Regina that it moves her closer to going full Dark One but Regina doesn't care.  Since the Charmings and Henry care more about Regina than Emma they beg Emma to help.  Emma still refuses to use magic but offers to ride back to the castle and find Merlin.  Regina's freaking out because there isn't time and Emma's having a harder time maintaining control with four voices coming at her (Hook is elsewhere otherwise he'd have Emma's back).  There can be some lines about "you promised you wouldn't ask me to use magic!", "we know but Robin will die!", etc, to make it clear that Emma's feeling betrayed and the four don't care.  Emma still holding off Dark Swan, though barely, when Regina gets fed up with asking, grabs the dagger from Emma's satchel, and commands her to heal Robin.  Emma does and that final use of magic plus the betrayal of her loved ones plus being controlled causes Dark Swan to emerge. 

The entire point of the hero taking a trip to the underworld is for them to learn truths.  Emma did learn some things in the Camelot flashbacks, so that part of the story wasn't wasted, but they weren't applied.  She didn't apply her realization that she's not nothing as she continued to be on Team Regina and never confronted Henry or her parents about treating her as a tool rather than a person.  I bet these fools in charge never actually read an epic story because the writers aren't subtle about this part of the journey.  The hero is flat out told what they have to do and they either follow that advice (Odysseus returning home in secret to dispose of the suitors, Aeneas continuing his quest to found what would become Rome) or they don't (Orpheus looking behind him before he and Eurydice have left the underworld) but there's no ambiguity.  The point of Emma's time as Dark Swan should have been that she's not nothing and that she'll no longer accept being treated as such.  Instead it was about getting Rump his powers back and everyone shitting on Emma.  Yet again it was such a waste.

[companionenvy]

31 minutes ago, scarynikki12 said:

he point of Emma's time as Dark Swan should have been that she's not nothing and that she'll no longer accept being treated as such. 

Seconded so hard. Emma telling Nimue that she was never nothing might be my favorite moment of the entire arc, and the show completely undermined it at every turn. 

I mean, I guess Emma isn't nothing, but she's certainly not a person who is ever allowed to exercise any kind of agency without being told how wrong she was and it coming back to punish her. No wonder her final victory happens because she  decides laying down and dying is the correct course of action. Whether it is killing Cruella, rejecting Lily as a kid, or saving Hook, from 4B on, as far as I recall, Emma's active choices to assert herself and her desires are always framed as negatives, while she is given rewards for suppressing her desires in suicidal or near-suicidal ways: even before the finale of season 6, we have Emma taking on the Darkness to save Regina because somehow Regina's development counts more than Emma''s right to happiness.

I like the end of the Underworld arc a lot for Hook's story, but it really sucks for Emma in the context of the rest of the season. Everyone coming to the Underworld with Emma was supposed to be an acknowledgment that her family really hadn't supported her enough during 5A and was making up for it. It was also, seemingly, a validation of an admittedly selfish impulse on Emma's part, a moment where she decides she's not accepting that she has to risk it all for everyone's happiness except for her own. It is still excessively dumb that all of these people willingly leave their infants and bring along their 13-year old son and grandson on a jaunt to hell to save Emma's ex-villain boyfriend, but at least it is dumbness in the service of Emma, and the show's heart is in the right place with it. But then that's effectively destroyed by having Emma fail to save Hook- which would have been fine if she had had either a more central role in saving the day in 5A (her killing Hook at his request is primarily Hook's heroism, not hers) or in defeating Hades. Instead, she's again largely sidelined in the battle against Hades because she is too upset to be trusted. So much for her family having her back. 

It is funny. For all the claims - ones I myself have made at times -- that Hook winds up being neutered to the point where he's reduced to Emma's lapdog, in season 5, he is way, way more of a hero than Emma in both halves of the season. 

[Camera One]

I loved the moment in 5A where Emma tells Nimue that she isn't nothing, but I'm not sure what the larger character purpose of the Dark Swan arc was for Emma herself, except to make her realize how much she loved and needed Hook in her life.

With Emma and her family, time and time again, the Writers made a deliberate choice to avoid going down that kitchen sinkhole.  In 2B, they distracted Emma from "Manhattan" onwards.  In 3A, she was mired in the triangle.  In 3B-6B, almost all her emotional scenes were as Hook's love interest and the reason for Hook's redemption.  Heck, in 3B, she realized Storybrooke was home... through an adventure with Hook.  4A was probably the exception where she accepted her magical abilities... with the help of Elsa.  

I suppose at the end of the day, the Writers' arcs for Emma were to stop fighting and to just give in.  Even in Season 1, Emma needed to stop fighting the weirdness and to surrender to the idea that fairy tales were real.  By 3B, her entire purpose seemed to be to stop fighting her instinctual walls and accept that Hook loved her and wanted her.  In Season 4, she had to stop fighting her new magical abilities and accept that she now had them.  In Season 6, she was supposed to stop fighting entirely and accept that she was fated to die.  Even though she was the main protagonist (on paper, at least), the character seemed to be constantly asked to be passive.  

Edited September 9, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

I agree they wanted to go dark, yet they never wanted to go into the consequences of that darkness.  They wanted a show where anyone could die because that was edgy, but expected the audience to shrug and not care about all the dead redshirts while they shed a tear for the crocodile tears of the complex villain.  They kept saying the show was dark but never bleak.  It was dark because innocent people died but not bleak because these victims were forgotten about almost immediately and we never saw the lasting consequences of these lost lives. 

This is one of the many cases of them wanting to have their cake and eat it too, where they had mutually exclusive things going on. So, Regina was the biggest victim who ever victimed and can never catch a break but she's also the super sassy and deliciously evil super-powerful queen. Rumple is the sad-eyed Beast who is difficult to love but who has a good heart and also the sadistic schemer always seeking more power. Snow is pure goodness and light who is kind to everyone and always has hope but was also a terrible brat who deserved all her misfortune and is a pessimist who takes drastic actions because she expects the worst. Emma needs to believe in herself and in her magic and drop her walls to accept the love of others, but she also needs to sacrifice her own desires for the greater good even if that sacrifice makes her lose someone she loves and isolates her from others. The show is a fun fairytale show with a positive message about hope but it's also trying to be grim and gritty, with shades of gray (for the villains -- they're allowed to become gray by having a bit of good, but the heroes aren't allowed to be even the slightest bit gray or else they're worse than the villains) and no guarantee for anyone that things will work out.

I think pulling off the Dark Swan story in a way that was worthwhile but also palatable would be a very difficult trick. You can't make Emma do anything too bad without ruining the character. It's not like, say, Angel, where the bad past and the potential for darkness was always part of his character and it took time (and getting his own show) before he truly got to be considered a hero. Emma was the Savior with light magic who had all her inherent darkness sucked out of her before birth. You don't want to take her past the point of no return and make her do anything the audience couldn't live with or that would make it hard for the character to live with herself. I think they even went too far with Hook, with him having come from a villain background and already having done horrible things, because he'd worked so hard to turn around and you would have expected him to have some trauma in the aftermath based on what he did while the Dark One (and one episode of learning that his brother wasn't perfect shouldn't have been enough to fix the kind of trauma he should have had). On the other hand, if she doesn't do anything appreciably different as Dark One, then what's the point? Does she learn anything about herself or the world from this experience? About the only thing that she did as Dark One that she couldn't have done as her ordinary self was save Hook's life by turning him into a Dark One.

And then there's the issue that it was all basically psychological torture as reward for doing a good thing. She was saving the town from the Darkness (and I think that saving Regina was really saving the town/world, because she'd have been awful as a Dark One), so she got to struggle with the Darkness, be criticized, and controlled, and the one time there were any perks to being a Savior instead of being constantly on duty, they went to Regina, who was posing as Savior at the time. Then to top it off, somehow, saving a life is considered a bad thing and a step toward darkness, so she saves Robin's life and starts getting the scaly, sparkly skin, and saving Hook's life turns her into full-on Dark One. Seriously, saving lives is a step toward darkness!

It would have taken far better writers than this show had to pull off turning the heroine into the repository of Darkness and make it work. These writers would have been better off passing on that idea.

[KingOfHearts]

7 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think pulling off the Dark Swan story in a way that was worthwhile but also palatable would be a very difficult trick.

With Dark Swan, it was a lose-lose situation. If Emma never does anything evil, she's not much of a Dark Swan. But if she does something evil, it's a case of bringing down a character for the sake of plot and by extension, giving Rumple an excuse. ("Dark Ones only do evil things because they're Dark Ones") Nobody wanted to see Emma as a villain. I'm cool with all the temptation stuff and inner conflict in the 5A flashbacks, but it's when she's in full dark leather in Storybrooke that it makes so little sense. 

[Camera One]

And it resulted in the worst waste of time arc ever - Rumple of The Purest Heart who must learn to be Brave, which is reversed in a millisecond at the end of the half-season.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

I mentioned this on another thread a while back, but I believe one way of improving 5A would have been to replace Head!Rumple as the devil on Emma's shoulder with non-DO Rumple - who, rather than an over-the-top snivelling coward, should have more or less retained his personality as it had developed over centuries; unlike Imp Rumple, especially in the early days, Gold actually seems to have pretty well integrated the Darkness, and it takes a lot away from the character to make him undergo that radical a shift. How can I really invest in Rumple if the core of his being can be explained away by a curse?

In any case, I would have loved seeing non-DO Rumple as Emma's sketchy dark magic teacher - the kicker being that he would actually, be encouraging her to use her powers for good, being more the Machiavellian figure he had been (in the present day, at least) through 3B than the evil cartoon he became in Season 4. Up to a point, Emma "embracing the darkness" would have wound up being Emma learning the difference between navigating moral complexity and crossing the moral event horizon, at least until the moment where she willingly took on the risk of losing herself/losing control in order to save Hook.

Although, given that this was something the writers clearly had no idea of how to do or represent, Shanna is right that Dark Swan was almost certainly doomed from the start. 

[KingOfHearts]

5A cheapens the entire Dark One concept because it's supposed to be about desperate souls taking power to travel the road to hell paved with good intentions. Rumple and Nimue did selfish things and tried justifying themselves with what seemed innocent on the surface. Rumple wanted to protect Bae and save the children from the Ogre Wars. Nimue wanted to live forever to be with Merlin. But their goals were tarnished by vengeance, much like how the powers of the Holy Grail were contaminated. A cup giving life became a sword that promised death. It doesn't work for Emma because she didn't take on the DO darkness out of desperation and she didn't become mad with power. Hook was forced into it. It's more contrived and less fluid because the themes are not consistent. If Emma had taken the powers to save a life but took unnecessary vengeance on baddies, then started liking the power, that would be different. If Hook voluntarily took the power from Emma and went on his own revenge streak, that would be too. But as it stands, 5A mostly threw characters into random afflictions using artificial means. Emma and Hook struggled with the darkness because of the DO curse, not because of their own demons. Remove the curse and they're the same. Rumple and Nimue, on the other hand, were corrupted from the start and the darkness only enabled what was already there.

[Camera One]

I don't understand why The Apprentice died after the Darkness went into him.  

Are there no successors to the jobs of The Sorcerer and The Apprentice?

This is making me itch for a requel to this show.  I wonder what happened to Wish Merlin and Wish Apprentice.

Edited September 9, 2018 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

17 minutes ago, Camera One said:

This is making me itch for a requel to this show.  I wonder what happened to Wish Merlin and Wish Apprentice.

Wish Merlin is forever stuck as a tree because Emma never came back to free him. Shortly after the finale, the Wish Apprentice went into a catatonic state because his brain got overloaded with all the timelines in Henry's story.

Edited September 9, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

That brings up some things that our heroes would need to do now that all the realms are combined.  Emma would need to free Wish Merlin from the tree, unfreeze Wish Arendelle from eternal winter, defeat Wish Underworld Hades, find Wish Lily who's in... Wish World Without Magic?, not to mention catch and neutralize Wish Cora and Wish Black Fairy.

[KingOfHearts]

4 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That brings up some things that our heroes would need to do now that all the realms are combined.  Emma would need to free Wish Merlin from the tree, unfreeze Wish Arendelle from eternal winter, defeat Wish Underworld Hades, find Wish Lily who's in... Wish World Without Magic?, not to mention catch and neutralize Wish Cora and Wish Black Fairy.

Wish Cora is an interesting point. I guess she's still in Wish Wonderland, unless Wish Rumple killed her already.

[Rumsy4]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

I loved the moment in 5A where Emma tells Nimue that she isn't nothing, but I'm not sure what the larger character purpose of the Dark Swan arc was for Emma herself, except to make her realize how much she loved and needed Hook in her life.

I think that was important. She'd been taking Hook for granted in Season 3 and sort of treating him like crap in 3B. The Dark Swan/Underworld arc showed that she was as much into the relationship as he was. Otherwise it felt like he was way more committed than she was. Snowing's whole arc was about them putting each other first (except when Snow rolls over and lets Regina kick her), but nobody complains about that.

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

Even though she was the main protagonist (on paper, at least), the character seemed to be constantly asked to be passive.  

I don't get why they gave Emma great lines like her S1 "no fairy godmothers" speech and the "I'm not nothing" speech, and then turned her into a passive and ineffectual standby for most of the show.

[daxx]

18 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I don't get why they gave Emma great lines like her S1 "no fairy godmothers" speech and the "I'm not nothing" speech, and then turned her into a passive and ineffectual standby for most of the show.

Just can’t have it all you know, they would have had to shortchange Regina after all. ?

Edited September 10, 2018 by daxx

[Camera One]

21 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I don't get why they gave Emma great lines like her S1 "no fairy godmothers" speech and the "I'm not nothing" speech, and then turned her into a passive and ineffectual standby for most of the show.

Those quotes were unfinished.

"Ashley, there are no fairy godmothers in this world.  Just wait for the contrivance fairy."

"I'm not nothing.  I'm a pawn!"

[Shanna Marie]

On 9/9/2018 at 8:45 PM, Rumsy4 said:

I don't get why they gave Emma great lines like her S1 "no fairy godmothers" speech and the "I'm not nothing" speech, and then turned her into a passive and ineffectual standby for most of the show.

That's another one of their mutually exclusive things, where they have two things that can't both be true happen. Since they do that so often, with just about every character and their themes in the show itself, that suggests that they're unfocused and had poor development of their characters and story.

As for the Dark Swan thing, my guess is that they had no idea where they were going to go with it when they did that cliffhanger at the end of season 4. It was strictly a Shocking!Twist ending, with maybe a bit of congratulating themselves for being brilliant writers, since all the mentions of Emma's potential darkness could be seen as foreshadowing (even though none of that actually came into play). I'm not entirely sure they even knew where they were going with it or what really happened when they wrote the season 5 opener with the Shocking! ending of black-clad Dark Swan saying they failed her. The story of what really happened didn't fit that at all, nor did most of Emma's actions in the first couple of episodes -- like with her pushing Hook to accept her the way she is and her acting hurt that he didn't. That didn't fit with him being the Dark One and her doing all this to protect and save him. Maybe some of the pushing him to accept her could have been read as her testing to make sure the memory spell was working, but then why would she be hurt and disappointed even when he wasn't there? I've wondered if Colin figuring out early on that Hook was a Dark One was really a case of "isn't he clever" or if maybe it was a case of Hey, yeah, that's what we can do! "Good guess, Colin. You figured it out."

Turning Hook into a Dark One was less risky than it was with Emma, so they had room to work, but I'm not sure I agree with their characterization. He's got experience with fighting off darkness. He's got all those coping strategies -- as we saw with him coaching Emma through 4B and then again when she was Dark One and he was able to keep her from slipping. Would he really have caved that quickly and gone that far? You'd think he'd have recognized every bit of temptation or misdirection Nimue threw his way because it would have been the kinds of things he used to tell himself. Really, a truly reformed villain would be the safest place to store Darkness because he'd be good enough not to want to use it and he'd be the best at knowing how to fight off Darkness. A really good person who doesn't have some kind of supernatural benefit (like a fetal darkectomy, not that this ended up coming into play) would have no defenses against that kind of externally imposed Darkness because she'd never had to resist urges that evil. It's like the kids from really religious families who go to religious private schools and then get to college and go wild because they've never had to resist temptation before and don't know how.

[Camera One]

12 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'm not entirely sure they even knew where they were going with it or what really happened when they wrote the season 5 opener with the Shocking! ending of black-clad Dark Swan saying they failed her. The story of what really happened didn't fit that at all, nor did most of Emma's actions in the first couple of episodes -- like with her pushing Hook to accept her the way she is and her acting hurt that he didn't. That didn't fit with him being the Dark One and her doing all this to protect and save him. Maybe some of the pushing him to accept her could have been read as her testing to make sure the memory spell was working, but then why would she be hurt and disappointed even when he wasn't there?

I was watching some of the early Dark Swan scenes, and I agree it doesn't seem to fit the actual explanation revealed later.  If they did know the basic end-game (that all along, Emma was trying to hide the secret that Hook was a Dark One too), they thought it would be okay to start with a bunch of mis-directs, with the assumption very few people go back and rewatch to see if it makes sense in retrospect.  For example, the scene where Dark Swan brings Hook over to her new house and he kisses her and then he storm out and Dark Swan smiles evilly to herself.  Why would she do that?  

[KingOfHearts]

Was it ever explained why a TLK couldn't cure Emma of the DO curse? I can understand why it wouldn't work in Storybrooke, but why not in Camelot? Why didn't Emma and Hook try it shortly after they were both Dark Ones? 

[Camera One]

Similar question.  Have they explained why Rumbelle didn't TLK to get rid of the DO Curse, or why Belle didn't at least bring this up with Rump?  

[KAOS Agent]

Rumpel didn't want to get rid of the curse, so True Love's Kiss wouldn't work or something like that.

Going back to Dark Emma, something that seriously upsets me about that arc is that she succeeded in fighting off the Darkness and did it in an extremely self-empowering way. A woman whose entire life was steeped in loneliness and lovelessness and a total lack of self-worth resisted temptation by realizing that she was worth something and she sure as hell didn't need the Darkness to have value. This should have been the climax of the arc for her. The Darkness for her should have ended there. Instead, they immediately minimized this moment by having her go dark for completely different reasons (and I'm still unclear why saving a life is evil).

If they needed the Darkness plot to continue, then they needed to find a different way to go about it. Maybe the Darkness flees Emma after she resists and enters a more vulnerable host like Hook. You could still have Emma pretending to be the Dark One in Storybrooke as a cover for Hook without minimizing the incredibly awesome moment where Emma realizes that she has tons of value.

[Camera One]

7 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

If they needed the Darkness plot to continue, then they needed to find a different way to go about it. Maybe the Darkness flees Emma after she resists and enters a more vulnerable host like Hook. You could still have Emma pretending to be the Dark One in Storybrooke as a cover for Hook without minimizing the incredibly awesome moment where Emma realizes that she has tons of value.

I really like this idea.  It was clear that Emma was doing a great job of resisting the Darkness in 5A.  

For sure Rumple wouldn't want to give up the Dark One-ness, but it astounds me that Belle didn't persistently ask him to.

Edited September 11, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

For sure Rumple wouldn't want to give up the Dark One-ness, but it astounds me that Belle didn't persistently ask him to.

Because apparently she secretly craved the darkness and loved his psychopathic side.

[Shanna Marie]

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Was it ever explained why a TLK couldn't cure Emma of the DO curse? I can understand why it wouldn't work in Storybrooke, but why not in Camelot? Why didn't Emma and Hook try it shortly after they were both Dark Ones? 

The reason it didn't work in Storybrooke doesn't actually make much sense, given what was really going on. Belle said it was because Emma didn't see it as a curse. But at that time, supposedly Emma was desperately working on a way to save herself and Hook, so you'd think she'd have been open to the TLK working, and Hook didn't remember and was desperately trying to save Emma. You'd think that Emma desperately wanting to break the curse on Hook and Hook desperately wanting to break the curse on Emma would have amounted to something.

But what really doesn't make sense is that the TLK didn't work when it was just Emma as the Dark One, when she was resisting the Darkness with all her might. After that whole romantic horse ride and then the kissing in the flowers, you'd think that would have been enough for a magical TLK that would have solved everything. Emma was fighting off the darkness with love, and Hook was using love to help her. And shouldn't a TLK solved the unhealable wound problem?

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

Have they explained why Rumbelle didn't TLK to get rid of the DO Curse, or why Belle didn't at least bring this up with Rump?  

Yeah, that should have been an early sign that he wasn't as reformed as he claimed, when their wedding kiss didn't get rid of the curse. He'd supposedly given her the dagger, putting trust in her and no longer clinging to his own power. If it was true love and he'd really changed, you'd think the wedding kiss would have worked as a TLK, and when it didn't, she should have been very suspicious. If he'd been smart, he'd have faked that. It's not as though he was going to be sparkly in Storybrooke, either way. Just fake his limp and don't do magic in front of her (other than a bit of magic to fake the effect of a TLK), and he's given himself a perfect alibi for any magical hijinks. With her supposedly having the dagger, he still had free will unless she gave him a specific order, and he still had magic.

And after season 6, when he was desperately looking for a way to get out of it, you'd think the TLK would have worked, and the fact that it didn't should have made her doubt his sincerity.

It's funny how powerful a TLK is when they need it to be -- people who've never actually met when both of them were conscious or who have had one shallow conversation can somehow break any curse -- but when that would make things too easy, a long-term, established couple can't do it, and a couple who've made multiple sacrifices for each other and who are supporting each other through the power of their love can't do it.

[KingOfHearts]

5 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

10 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

 

The reason it didn't work in Storybrooke doesn't actually make much sense, given what was really going on. Belle said it was because Emma didn't see it as a curse. But at that time, supposedly Emma was desperately working on a way to save herself and Hook, so you'd think she'd have been open to the TLK working, and Hook didn't remember and was desperately trying to save Emma. You'd think that Emma desperately wanting to break the curse on Hook and Hook desperately wanting to break the curse on Emma would have amounted to something.

But what really doesn't make sense is that the TLK didn't work when it was just Emma as the Dark One, when she was resisting the Darkness with all her might. After that whole romantic horse ride and then the kissing in the flowers, you'd think that would have been enough for a magical TLK that would have solved everything. Emma was fighting off the darkness with love, and Hook was using love to help her. And shouldn't a TLK solved the unhealable wound problem?

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

Have they explained why Rumbelle didn't TLK to get rid of the DO Curse, or why Belle didn't at least bring this up with Rump?  

Yeah, that should have been an early sign that he wasn't as reformed as he claimed, when their wedding kiss didn't get rid of the curse. He'd supposedly given her the dagger, putting trust in her and no longer clinging to his own power. If it was true love and he'd really changed, you'd think the wedding kiss would have worked as a TLK, and when it didn't, she should have been very suspicious. If he'd been smart, he'd have faked that. It's not as though he was going to be sparkly in Storybrooke, either way. Just fake his limp and don't do magic in front of her (other than a bit of magic to fake the effect of a TLK), and he's given himself a perfect alibi for any magical hijinks. With her supposedly having the dagger, he still had free will unless she gave him a specific order, and he still had magic.

And after season 6, when he was desperately looking for a way to get out of it, you'd think the TLK would have worked, and the fact that it didn't should have made her doubt his sincerity.

It's funny how powerful a TLK is when they need it to be -- people who've never actually met when both of them were conscious or who have had one shallow conversation can somehow break any curse -- but when that would make things too easy, a long-term, established couple can't do it, and a couple who've made multiple sacrifices for each other and who are supporting each other through the power of their love can't do it.

Quotes don't work well on my phone. Didn't mean to do the whole post.

I think the TLK didn't work in Storybrooke because Emma wanted to still be the Dark One so she could use Zelena as a vessel in her master plan.

[Camera One]

All those incidents make me question the original claim in "Skin Deep" that a TLK could truly break the DO Curse.  The person who said it was Regina, who could have been wrong.  Yes, we saw a little bit of the sparkle go away but does that mean the entire Curse could have broken?  The 4B finale and 5A made the DO Curse seem much more complicated, since the Darkness has to go somewhere.  So if Rumbelle's TLK had truly worked in "Skin Deep" (or at the Rumbelle wedding), would the giant black blob have emerged?  In 5A, Emma was basically containing it as they waited for Merlin to help.

[Shanna Marie]

24 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I think the TLK didn't work in Storybrooke because Emma wanted to still be the Dark One so she could use Zelena as a vessel in her master plan.

But a TLK might have meant she didn't need a master plan. Unless, I guess, she thought the kiss would break her curse but not Hook's, for reasons. But, unlike Rumple, Emma had power whether or not she was a Dark One, so she still could have helped Hook without being a Dark One (though maybe she wouldn't have been able to be as ruthless as she wanted to be when she was a Dark One).

I suppose we could say that it was actually Hook who was stopping the TLK from working in Storybrooke, since deep down inside, his inner, forgotten Dark One wouldn't have wanted it to work. But that's not the way Emma was acting. She acted hurt that he would have wanted to change her.

Though, in general, the whole Dark One act once she got back to Storybrooke was a bad plan. Since she was capable of looking and acting "normal," it would have been smarter for her to pretend that they saved her, and that way they wouldn't have been suspicious of what she was up to. Hook wouldn't have been digging around and frantic with worry about her (though that might have meant he noticed he wasn't sleeping, I guess, if he had no reason to be restless). But the appearance of Dark Swan was a big Shocking!Twist that a totally normal Emma wouldn't have been. I think a cured-seeming Emma might have still been intriguing, or they could have had her act cured, then do something Dark One-like when she was alone, for the Shocking!Twist. Anything but wearing a flashing button saying "Ask me about my Darkness!" when she's trying to be covert about what really happened and what she's up to.

5 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The 4B finale and 5A made the DO Curse seem much more complicated, since the Darkness has to go somewhere.  So if Rumbelle's TLK had truly worked in "Skin Deep" (or at the Rumbelle wedding), would the giant black blob have emerged?

Or would it have just gone away? There was no giant black blob when Rumple died at the end of the series (though if they'd got a season 8, that might have been the cliffhanger).

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But a TLK might have meant she didn't need a master plan. Unless, I guess, she thought the kiss would break her curse but not Hook's, for reasons. But, unlike Rumple, Emma had power whether or not she was a Dark One, so she still could have helped Hook without being a Dark One (though maybe she wouldn't have been able to be as ruthless as she wanted to be when she was a Dark One).

Maybe she was afraid it would return his memories? I don't know. I can't defend A&E's writing.

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

Yes, we saw a little bit of the sparkle go away but does that mean the entire Curse could have broken? 

That's what was being implied. If the idea the Dark One curse could be removed with True Love's Kiss, that should've come back into play later. It didn't have to be Rumpbelle, but it could've been Captain Swan or Merlin/Nimue. It's also odd that "totally reformed" Rumple in S7, who was prepared to sacrifice the Dagger to the Guardian, didn't TLK Belle. If he didn't want to be the DO any more, what was preventing him? 

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

If he didn't want to be the DO any more, what was preventing him? 

Plot.

The real problem is that they made up the mythology about the Dark One as they went, based on what they needed for the plot of each episode, and sometimes that got in the way of the plot they needed for a later episode. They were going for something grand and romantic with "Skin Deep," so we had to have a hint that they had magical True Love, and that meant that they established that the Dark One curse could be broken with a True Love's Kiss. That became a problem later when they wanted to keep Belle and Rumple together but they also wanted to keep him the Dark One, and that meant they were married without TLK working. You'd think that would have been a huge red flag for Belle, but she stuck around. Then later, when he was supposedly totally reformed and they were actively seeking a way to get him out of being the Dark One so they could grow old together, they couldn't do a TLK because they needed an excuse to keep him around another season. It's a little weird that it was a friendship "true love" with Whook that allowed Rumple to die rather than true love with his wife.

And we had a similar problem with Hook and Emma. They'd established that a TLK could break the curse and even referred to that, but it would have ended the season way too early and would have ruined the whole "what really happened in Camelot" mystery if the kiss in the flowers had broken the curse. Then they could have just gone back home and everything would have been okay, so there would have been no Dark Swan in Storybrooke. And, as I mentioned, I suspect they came up with the Dark Swan ending of the premiere before they actually knew what was going on, so they were stuck with it.

[Camera One]

54 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

The real problem is that they made up the mythology about the Dark One as they went, based on what they needed for the plot of each episode, and sometimes that got in the way of the plot they needed for a later episode.

 

I think that hit the nail on the head, and it's the reason why this show is such a convoluted mess.  They made up mythology and even backstory as they went based on current needs instead of the bigger picture.  The Book/Author, the origins of the Curse, the Savior, True Love Kisses, Darkness... the list went on and on.  They didn't even care about contradicting what they did/said previously.  

[KingOfHearts]

I was considering writing a fanfic about Hope (the CS Baby) as a teenager/adult, but I quickly realized how impossible that would be to do convincingly. How many Henry's are there? Are there two Robyn's? One an infant, and one an adult? You'd have to account for all the crazy age gaps and the realms being merged together. It makes my head spin wondering who is in Hope's age group and how many clones exist of everyone. It's so complicated that writing any sort of sequel would take a tremendous amount of planning and twisting things into pretzels just to get anything logically comprehensible in a palatable form.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

How many Henry's are there? Are there two Robyn's? One an infant, and one an adult? You'd have to account for all the crazy age gaps and the realms being merged together. It makes my head spin wondering who is in Hope's age group and how many clones exist of everyone. It's so complicated that writing any sort of sequel would take a tremendous amount of planning and twisting things into pretzels just to get anything logically comprehensible in a palatable form.

Hello,

This is your resident master storytellers Adam and Eddy.  We won't clarify any of your questions because our job is to fire up your imagination and let you fill in the blanks (or void).  Here's our suggestion - just write first and come up with the explanations later (or never)!

Hope that helps,

A&E

Edited September 14, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

6 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I was considering writing a fanfic about Hope (the CS Baby) as a teenager/adult, but I quickly realized how impossible that would be to do convincingly.

The joy of fanfic is that we can ignore canon details that are inconvenient. ;-) It’s called a Canon Divergence fic. 

I’m just pretending the last ten minutes of the show did not happen. The future people just sealed themselves off in a separate realm until ten years were gone and then returned to Storybrooke (to visit only). 

Edited September 14, 2018 by Rumsy4

[companionenvy]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I was considering writing a fanfic about Hope (the CS Baby) as a teenager/adult, but I quickly realized how impossible that would be to do convincingly. How many Henry's are there? Are there two Robyn's? One an infant, and one an adult? You'd have to account for all the crazy age gaps and the realms being merged together. It makes my head spin wondering who is in Hope's age group and how many clones exist of everyone. It's so complicated that writing any sort of sequel would take a tremendous amount of planning and twisting things into pretzels just to get anything logically comprehensible in a palatable form.

Weirdly, as the issues seem at first unrelated, I think this is of a piece with the problem of the show's wonky morality. In both cases, the writers have the germ of a reasonable idea - people do exist in shades of grey; sometimes, in certain genres, it is better to fudge or handwave  some logistical details in the service of the larger story. The problem is that they have zero sense of proportion. Shades of grey is fine, but you have to have some consideration for what lines a given character will and will not cross, and what lines that character should and shouldn't be able to cross if you want to keep them redeemable; you also can't pretend that character A's negative actions are meaningfully equivalent to character B's negative actions unless they actually are.

Similarly, it is OK, at least in my opinion, if the rules of magic are occasionally wonky, or if the timelines aren't 100% consistent. That's within the realm of what I accept in a genre show with a lot of balls in the air. So, A&E's contention that fans shouldn't sweat the details has some merit to it. But that doesn't give you carte blanche to have major plotlines that make no sense on even the most cursory level. Ignoring that Henry's motorcycle is still running after years in the EF, or even that adult Henry's meeting with pregnant Emma seems to suggest that she and Hook waited an improbably long time before having a kid? I can do that. Ignoring that multiple time lines seem to have merged with zero consequences, meaning that older and younger versions of the same characters are coexisting, in addition to any number of clones? Especially when it is unclear how the future characters can possibly come to exist now that they've altered their pasts so fundamentally? Nope, not going to do it. 

At the end of the day, what unites the two issues may simply boil down to lazy writing. Writing my own first long fic gave me a certain amount of appreciation for what writers go through, but ultimately, it also reinforced how egregious the writing for this show really was. On one hand, there were points where I realized I had to cut a certain amount of plot exposition in order to keep a scene from getting unwieldy and maintain emotional integrity, which meant readers weren't necessarily going to get every detail about how a certain plan was put into execution. Sometimes, I didn't even figure out all those details myself - i.e, having established that Hook is an accomplished thief, I have him going on regular supply runs for more or less ordinary items without feeling the need to explain or figure out exactly how he is pulling off his robberies. Even here, however, I was mindful of the need to create some limits; there are things I realized I couldn't have Hook plausibly do unless I was going to give some sense of how he managed it. 

But what struck me as I was writing was how often I made changes - big and small -- to account for character logic.  I'd be writing a line for character X, and suddenly realize that if character Y was supposed to be in the room at the time, she was going to have to have a reaction to that comment, so I either needed to address that or figure out how to remove Y from the scene. Or, to use a small example, I had to be very aware of when characters should be calling Hook ""Hook" and when they should be calling him "Killian"; it was important to me that Emma should definitively switch over to the latter at a certain point, but if they're interacting with a character who knew him for years as "Hook," that's what the character would logically be calling him, even if the character now knows his actual name - and if the character decides to call him "Killian," that's a conscious choice that needs to be acknowledged as significant. This occurred to me as I was watching "The Cricket Game," where David, to me inexplicably, calls Snow "Mary Margaret" during the welcome home party - in the context of the two of them always finding each other, no less. After dealing with similar issues in my fic, that's just an inexcusable level of sloppiness. 

[Mitch]

On 9/9/2018 at 12:52 AM, KAOS Agent said:

For all their talk of hope, I suspect that the showrunners were always interested in the darker aspects of the show. The first season they were held back from going too bleak (killing off David was immediately shut down by the network), but once given free rein, they just kept going darker and darker

I actually think S1 was "darker" then all the rest of the seasons. People were trapped in a town, and (suggested in S1 but never followed up on) had their families and loves ripped away from them, as they lost free will. Even the villains were not happy...both Gold and Regina were more conflicted and not cackling villains. The relationship between Regina and Henry was contentious with Regina trying to be what she felt was a good mother, and failing miserably, and Henry going back and forth between trying to love the woman who raised him but just not being able to. Emma and Henry were more "friends" then mother and son and you could see that Emma tried to distant herself from Herny's hero worship. At the time you could actually feel for Regina despite her being a villian..if the curse breaks she looses everything..(so we think) etc.

I think you hit on the word as the rest of the seasons' while becoming more shallow and cartoony ("Hope will save us!" "We also rescue family") it also became bleaker...villains are one dimensional, cacking away but turn on a dime into "good" Good is considered "evil" if good actually steps up to a challenge then letting "Hope" take charge. Side characters are killed off at random, some of them iconic...Aunt Em..Rumps first wife...the Scarecrow trembling in fear from the silliest wicked witch ever...(Zelena) to have his brains removed and they arent returned..the tin man turned into a statue or whatever...  Strength, brains, strong wills and bravery dont win the day...a magical instrument will...magic is always more powerful but DARK magic is much more powerful then White magic...(i.e Glinda and Blue) an Author can control people when prophecies dont (who needs a curse...in Once NO ONE has free will...) there are three kinds of people in the world.."heroes, villains and extras who are killed or turned into animals and no one gives a shit....people with real axes to grind and considered disposable and wrong...(the guy in Camelot who naturally tried to kill Regina for revenge...) and the worst...villains like Regina and Rump don't need remorse or apologies to become accepted...as long as they are main characters..

Dark actually has a view point and needs brightness to balance it ....bleak has no moral backbone because the morals are made up...

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I was considering writing a fanfic about Hope (the CS Baby) as a teenager/adult, but I quickly realized how impossible that would be to do convincingly.

One challenge is that no matter what age you decide she should be compared to everyone else, you'll be wrong, depending on which bit of canon you choose. Was she only conceived after Henry left town and aged into another actor, so that she's born when Snowflake is a teenager and Robyn is at the very least a pre-teen and she's barely older than Lucy? Or was she born while Henry was still a teenager, before he left town, so she's only a few years younger than Robyn and Snowflake?

Of course, the real issue is that the whole timeline is going to collapse anyway. During the season 3 time travel, it was critical that people weren't aware of their futures, or else things would go horribly wrong. Now, the futures are living alongside them. How will it affect Henry's future if he knows he has to go travel the realms and meet Cinderella because otherwise the curse won't be cast and he won't be sent back in time, then taken to the Wish Realm, and then the Realms smushed together to create the present that he comes from? Will Henry even want to leave Storybrooke now, when there's so much going on and when he already has a baby sister? What happens if he doesn't?

1 hour ago, Mitch said:

Dark actually has a view point and needs brightness to balance it ....bleak has no moral backbone because the morals are made up...

A lot of the problem is that they don't have a real viewpoint, or they're not honest about what their viewpoint is. Game of Thrones is dark -- bad things happen to good people, bad people succeed, making naive "good" choices only gets people killed, etc., but they're making a statement about how the world works. You can't be trusting and naive because you're up against people who have no honor and don't play by the rules. The struggle is maintaining your own personal code in a way that's smart.

But this show claims to be about hope and heroes and villains, but does things like letting some villains walk while others with lesser crimes are punished, and trying to do the right thing only results in failure, and sacrifice only results in more anguish. The rules are random, and even being smart and wary doesn't necessarily guarantee anything. The villains who come out on top aren't doing so because they're clever or ruthless, but because the deck is tilted in their favor.

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

That's kind of where I come down on this episode. If I look at it as the start of Woegina nonsense, it destroys everything. But taking the episode in isolation, I can deal with sparing a moment to consider Regina's loneliness and sense of loss. I didn't feel like the Charmings were being vilified, either; for this one scene, the show was able to have Regina feel bad without suggesting she was being victimized. It matters, too, that Rumple, who has always been the devil on Regina's shoulder, is the one who implies that maybe the others are being ungrateful in not inviting Regina along. And even in his line, there's the (wholly rational) implication that she's never going to be accepted.  - how we get from that to her actually being invited to the party an episode later, I'll never understand.

Prior to Cora's death, none of Regina's actions are out of character. It makes sense she's upset that Henry gets to go be with the Charmings and that she felt back to her mother. Realistically speaking, she would be very conflicted and vulnerable because she's just starting to learn unselfishness while also being isolated because she's, well, a mass murderer no one likes. While her flip-flopping is far from entertaining, it works in the context because of how much of a mess she is. The problem has to do with the framing, victimization, and the way other characters treat her. Regina can pity herself all she wants but that doesn't mean the other characters are wrong for not passing tissues. However, her believability as a character falls apart when she doesn't react to the revelation that her mother was manipulating everything. I could understand her being put out that Snow killed her mother for a minute, but logically, she would later realize Snow was saving her ass. (And not only protecting her, but Henry too.) She wouldn't start up a revenge revival over it because at the end of the day, Snow did her a favor. The way she acted made her look like an idiot. You'd think she'd at least try to be good to be in good standing with Henry and stop people from wanting to kill her.

Edited September 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The problem has to do with the framing, victimization, and the way other characters treat her.

And the way the other characters treat each other where she's concerned. For instance, Henry's all judgy with his "heroes don't kill" nonsense at Snow for killing Cora, when Regina tried to get him to believe that Cora coming to town was so dangerous for him that she was justified in the spell to kill anyone who came through the portal, even if it turned out to be Snow and Emma. No one stands up for Snow when her killing of Cora is referred to as murder. Even though Snow letting Regina go because there had to be a better way resulted in them all being cursed, they're okay with her "there has to be a better way" plan rather than letting Regina die stopping the failsafe that she was going to use to kill them all.

Regina is written fairly consistently as a bit of a narcissistic sociopath who sees herself as the victim, no matter how bad her own actions are, who has no self-awareness and no empathy. The problem is the writing around her, where they all seem to accept her view of the world. They act like she's a victim and that it's up to them to help her, while they all judge each other far more harshly for more minor faults than they judge her. Regina could have been a fascinating character with a really interesting dynamic with the other characters if they'd been allowed to treat her as what she is and had been allowed to react normally to her (well, normally in the context of not killing her or locking her up for life, given the extent of her crimes). Making her a victim ruined the character, and making everyone else cater to her ruined the other characters.

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

The only way to make this episode palatable would have been if Regina and Cora had thrown down at the end. We need to see Regina fight back against her mother and get angry instead of being portrayed as the sad faced victim whom everyone attacks for no reason. Bonus points if Regina actually brings up Daniel and puts the blame for his death where it belongs. Let her fight for her redemption because she wants to be trusted by Henry and the others, not mope about how unfair her life is. Regina in S1 was fairly proactive in her evil and she seemed like a formidable villain. The more this show has other villains manipulate her into doing their dirty work, the less interesting the character becomes. 

2B would've been a much stronger arc if Regina had at least aided in Cora's defeat. The writers had the perfect opportunity to really sell her redemption. Snow's dark heart plot came out of nowhere and really had nothing to do with the rest of the season. Snow had her husband, her daughter, and her kingdom to deal with, but let's challenge her morality instead. What? None of S2's themes were remotely close to the neighborhood of whether or not killing is bad. 

Regina's treatment as a character just made her look like an idiot, not a vengeful badass. She was manipulated by Cora, Rumple, et al and played as their puppet her entire life. Even Henry Sr., the king of all pushovers, told her she needed to think for herself for once. I believe if the show were more self-aware about her complacent behavior, her arc could revolve around pushing back and being the person she wants to be. (Which, interestingly enough, she could learn from Emma.) Instead of defying "destiny" and labels, Regina put more blame on others. When did she make the choice to decide her own fate? I feel like she never actually did and always floated wherever circumstances or outside forces swayed her.

Oh look - another female character on this show who seemed formidable at first only to be controlled by people like Rumple. We certainly we haven't seen that before.

Edited September 17, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

Picking this up from the "Queen of Hearts" thread ...

On 9/19/2018 at 12:10 AM, KAOS Agent said:

Early in this season, Henry and Regina had the moment where she is repeating Cora's abusive tactics on Henry. It was acknowledged that she doesn't know how to love. It was also clear that she was flat out abusing Henry at that point. He lists multiple reasons why he doesn't want anything to do with her. None of this can be erased. If she shows remorse and starts working toward a better relationship with Henry, then I could see a way towards a better future relationship for them. It seems like they were working towards this up until this episode where Regina had a choice to prove herself and immediately reverted to her selfish ways. 

As I go through the rewatch, the relationship between Regina and Henry as it later was depicted makes less and less sense in light of the earlier episodes.

Since we never got an acknowledgement from Regina that she was wrong to blame Snow for Daniel's death, wrong to become the Evil Queen, wrong to indulge in casual murder and mass slaughter, and wrong to cast the curse as a way of explaining why she quit being evil, about the only explanation we're left with for her abruptly dropping her obsession of decades is that she wants Henry to love her. But she never even seemed to try getting Henry to love her during season one. You'd think if she felt threatened by the presence of Emma, the cool birth mom who didn't have to go through the diapers and fevers and sleepless nights and gets to show up now that he's old enough to have conversations with and hang out with, and if she cared enough about how Henry felt about her that she would later be willing to change the entire focus of her life and alter her personality, she might have made at least the slightest effort earlier.

I'm sure we've all seen this sort of thing with divorced parents who fight their battles through their kids, trying to outdo each other to be the "fun" parent. Emma is basically the "Disney Dad" in this scenario, the one who doesn't have to do the hard work of day-to-day childrearing, who doesn't have to make him make his bed, eat his vegetables, or do his homework, but instead gets to spend custody weekends as though they're at some sort of theme park, going and doing fun things, eating junk food and otherwise having fun. The moms who feel insecure about this then respond by spoiling the kids, trying not to have to be the mean mom who says no. This is where someone in Regina's position would respond to Emma's presence by letting Henry watch TV and watching it with him, giving him pizza and cake for dinner, wanting to hang out and talk. Regina leaves him shut up in the house all day on a Saturday, forbidden to do anything other than his homework, while she spends the day in bed with her human sex toy. It doesn't even seem to occur to her to spend the day with Henry, taking him hiking, to the movies, shopping, on a boat trip, or anything else that would be fun (and keep him away from Emma). If Regina couldn't give up a day of sex to hang out with her son and try to make him like her more than he likes Emma, would she really be able to drop her lifelong obsession in order to make him like her?

They have no conversations other than her telling him what to do. She doesn't spend any time with him -- doesn't even try to. She makes no affectionate gestures. Maybe he's started shutting her out recently after deciding she was the Evil Queen, but you'd think that if that had been a habit before, she'd at least start and then stop herself when he flinches away. She's trying to play the loving mother who's concerned because her adopted son has decided she's evil and that he really needs his birth mother, and it doesn't look like it even crosses her mind to try to touch or hug him like a loving mother would. She doesn't ask him about his day or what happened at school.

Where the relationship really feels retconned is when he gets his memories back in 3B, and they instantly start talking about how he's doing in school and her having a new boyfriend, as though this is a conversation that they casually resumed after that year-long interruption, but there's no indication that they've ever had this kind of conversation. I guess she would have told him to do his homework and criticized how he was doing in math, but he doesn't seem to have ever eagerly reported how things were going at school. I don't recall if he figured out that she was sleeping with Graham, but how excited would he be about her having a new boyfriend with him knowing she murdered Graham, or knowing that her whole murder spree started because her last boyfriend got killed? He's all up in her business about her relationship with Robin when it doesn't seem like they've ever had the kind of relationship where they talked about their friendships or relationships.

And then much of season 7 was based on them having such a close bond that she had no life without him, so she had to drop everything to follow him. I guess she made up for lost time, but, again, we have the woman who couldn't be bothered to spend a Saturday afternoon with her 10-year-old son when she feared she was in danger of losing him to someone else who now has no life apart from him even when he's an adult. It's like season one involved totally different characters and Regina and Henry in later seasons are the Folger's Crystals versions, swapped out to see if anyone notices. (We did.)

[KAOS Agent]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Where the relationship really feels retconned is when he gets his memories back in 3B, and they instantly start talking about how he's doing in school and her having a new boyfriend, as though this is a conversation that they casually resumed after that year-long interruption, but there's no indication that they've ever had this kind of conversation.

This never made any sense for me. At one point in 2B, he was so scared of her that he was planning some sort of arsenal to protect himself and his family from her. There was that whole thing where she was going to make him a zombie or something who would only love her. When that failed, she started planning to murder his family, friends and the entire community (everyone he has ever known basically) so that it would be just the two of them and him freaking out about it before she wiped his memory. These are not actions that anyone could just ignore or forget. There is also no way to pretend that these are the actions of a loving mother. She's a completely selfish woman who only cares about herself and wants her possessions to remain hers and only hers. From the memory wipe on, I believe he had exactly one private conversation with her. That happened on the Jolly Roger. It's not like something could have happened offscreen either. They were never physically together. She was in hiding while working on her kill the world plans, then he was kidnapped, then he was body swapped with Pan only to reunite minutes before the reverse curse. It was ridiculous to have him regain his memory and immediately act like they were the perfect family and simply picking up where they'd left off.

Of course, 3B was all about how Emma was a bad mother. She disciplines Henry for being a horrific brat and is portrayed as wrong for doing so. She realistically wants to return to New York where he's very happy and has a normal life with lots of friends as opposed to living in creepyville where everyone has once again been ripped from their homes and deprived of their memories and are constantly under threat from powerful magical villains. Emma's the worst. And see, Henry has a fabulous relationship with Regina. They've always been so close and loving.

[Shanna Marie]

10 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

It was ridiculous to have him regain his memory and immediately act like they were the perfect family and simply picking up where they'd left off.

Then there was the bit early in season four when she's basically told him to stay away because she's sad about her married boyfriend going back to his wife and he goes to her house and demands to be let in because he wants to be back home and back in his room -- but the last time he was in that room, it was when Regina was holding him prisoner and used the tree branches to hold him in. The "Henry" who spent a night there and had the kind of cozy goodnight we never saw between Regina and Henry was actually Pan. Henry hadn't lived in that house for probably close to a year and a half, regardless of whether or not Regina told him to stay away. Plus, Henry had never really shown much affection or concern for Regina. He was terrified of her. But he's making gift baskets for her?

[Camera One]

In order to be satisfied by/enjoy the payoff in the two series finales this show had, one needed to buy into the following:
- Regina was redeemed and truly loved Henry
- Rumple and Belle were a happy loving couple
- Emma and Hook were a happy loving couple

I just never felt the scenes between Regina and Henry.  If Season 1 Henry didn't hate Regina enough, Season 2 premiere Henry actually walked in on Regina strangling his grandfather to death.  He couldn't see the gleeful grin on her face, but still, that has got to affect Henry at least a little bit, right?  No?  Oh, silly me.

By 5B, I was done with Rumbelle and I was actively disgusted with Rumple's treatment of Belle by 6A.  So seeing them happily ever after was the opposite of what Rumple deserved.

Edited September 22, 2018 by Camera One

[daxx]

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

In order to be satisfied by/enjoy the payoff in the two series finales this show had, one needed to buy into the following:
- Regina was redeemed and truly loved Henry
- Rumple and Belle were a happy loving couple
- Emma and Hook were a happy loving couple

I just never felt the scenes between Regina and Henry.  If Season 1 Henry didn't hate Regina enough, Season 2 premiere Henry actually walked in on Regina strangling his grandfather to death.  He couldn't see the gleeful grin on her face, but still, that has got to affect Henry at least a little bit, right?  No?  Oh, silly me.

By 5B, I was done with Rumbelle and I was actively disgusted with Rumple's treatment of Belle by 6A.  So seeing them happily ever after was the opposite of what Rumple deserved.

Your third qualifier was almost ruined by season 6 but not quite. The previous seasons are strong enough to allow me to squint through season 6 without feeling that Captain Swan was completely soiled. I’m not sure if I’ll rewatch most of season 6 when we get there.