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

[tennisgurl]

Pretty sure the magic world I made in my backyard for my Barbie dolls when I was eight had more well thought out world building than Once did. 

 

[Speakeasy]

On 3/26/2020 at 4:21 PM, Camera One said:

I was studying this photo of the United Realms once everything was brought to Storybrooke.  Did Regina only bring the major buildings over, or the actual land mass?  You'd think the Emerald City would be further away if the entire land of Oz was brought over.

Wow I did not remember it being that close together. Going by that picture it's a leisurely stroll from that castle in the foreground over to Storybrooke and onto Castle Knifington, and at most it's a day's hiking to make it all the way to the Emerald City. 

Do you think those hills in the background are meant to be Maine or more story world? Maybe the curse brought all the castles and landmarks close to Storybrooke to form a kind of downtown area then shunted all the countryside off to the periphery.

[KingOfHearts]

The last shot of the series was the camera panning away from the Leaving Storybrooke sign. Is it really "leaving Storybrooke" if you're just driving into Emerald City or Knifington Palace? It takes away the thematic effect when leaving Storybrooke no longer means returning to the real world and into the unknown, but just another jammed up kingdom from the series.

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Going by that picture it's a leisurely stroll from that castle in the foreground over to Storybrooke and onto Castle Knifington, and at most it's a day's hiking to make it all the way to the Emerald City. 

What happened to all those places that were already a day's walk from Castle Knifington or George's palace? Did the Emerald City get plopped on top of Camelot or Eric's kingdom? Did this scrunch George's palace even closer to Castle Knifington? It looks like it compressed existing worlds in order to bring in other worlds.

None of this makes any sense, and it's a solution in search of a problem. There was never any indication during the course of the series that the realms being separate was an issue, aside from when Emma and Henry were separated from the others during the curse reverse.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Maybe the curse brought all the castles and landmarks close to Storybrooke to form a kind of downtown area then shunted all the countryside off to the periphery.

14 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

What happened to all those places that were already a day's walk from Castle Knifington or George's palace? Did the Emerald City get plopped on top of Camelot or Eric's kingdom? Did this scrunch George's palace even closer to Castle Knifington? It looks like it compressed existing worlds in order to bring in other worlds.

Can you imagine being a peasant, and your farmland got compressed, or relocated to Oz?  Seriously, Season 8 writes itself.  Good Queen Regina, My Aunt Fanny.

[Camera One]

I was looking at some of the other screenshots from that montage.

So this is pulling back from that castle which was in the foreground in the other shot, so this would be further from Storybrooke.

What town/castle is the building with the green roofs?  It looks like Arendelle, but the climate should be extremely different from Agrabah.

Did Agrabah have a bridge leading to it before?  So Regina got rid of the desert?

Then, there's Skull Rock.  Where's the rest of Neverland?

Why is the Beanstalk so close to Fictional Victorian London? 

Is the foreground the port town where the Jolly Roger liked to dock?  

The land of Untold Stories have been compressed into a single blimp, or is that it in the foreground?

And here, we have Pleasure Island on the other side of Fictional Victorian London.

Shouldn't it technically be closer to King George's kingdom?  

So the Disenchanted Forest is all the way over here, then?  Why did Alice's troll return?  Is anyone dealing with its latest rampages?  Plus Rapunzel's Tower has been rebuilt.  

Edited March 29, 2020 by Camera One

[daxx]

“All your questions are pointless” - A&E probably 

[tennisgurl]

Wow, they all look so insanely close to each other, when Regina pulled everything together, were people literally falling on top of each other as their worlds were combined? I kind of thought that maybe for most normal people, they could kind of just keep doing what they had been doing, sticking to their own lands, but that looks pretty impossible. I know that every land in this universe has like five people each, but this is so tiny it like she only took the landmarks from each land and left most everything and everyone else behind like a cartoon supervillain stealing national monuments. 

So, when Regina was "elected" Good Queen/God Empress, did every other leader just give up their claims to the throne? Is Elsa no longer a queen? Did fantasy Queen Victoria give up the throne (screw the divine right of kings/queens, our god has cleavage!) and the empire? Erics family? The emperor from fantasy China? Merida? Are they now downgraded to, I dont know, governors who take care of their specific areas on the day to day, but have to pay taxes and run all of their rules by Regina now? How do people from democracies like magic Kansas feel about being in an elective monarchy? Is Regina Queen for life, or can they have another election after a few years? How long did it even take them to explain democracy to people who have no concept of anything but hereditary based monarchies or other forms of government of that nature? And they did it all in secret? For my own piece of mind, I am just going to say that Regina only dragged the places that they had previously visited into this mess (I know that she said she brought all the realms into it, but...my mind just cant comprehend how that could even possibly work logistically or ethically) and not literally all fiction ever because there is just no way I can possibly buy that such an insane amount of people could live together so suddenly, all from insanely differing levels of technology, society, magic, magical creatures, animals, etc. and be cool with all of this, and that this wouldn't just turn into a total disaster as they had to explain to like a trillion people that they have just been conquered I MEAN SAVED by God Queen Regina oh and this is a voting station now vote for who is going to be the ruler of everyone now oh you had a leader well you dont anymore LOL you can vote here oh look there is only one option go figure...

Third world dictatorships have more legit elections than this! I dont even get why this was the happy ending, is this something anyone actually wanted? What I thought would happen was that they would connect all the worlds by portals based in Storeybrooke, with Storebrooke as a sort of multiverse way station, so people can go from one place to the next easily (or even more easily than it was by the end) but this? Like so much of this show, it raises literally a billion questions, and as we all know, questions are pointless. 

[Speakeasy]

23 hours ago, Camera One said:

Can you imagine being a peasant, and your farmland got compressed, or relocated to Oz?  Seriously, Season 8 writes itself.  Good Queen Regina, My Aunt Fanny.

Wasn't the last thing she said in Leaving Storybrooke something like 'I can't wait to see what happens next,'-I imagine them going straight from that to some kind of government meeting with all the kings and queens and whathaveyous of the realms of fiction sitting in their new council chamber shouting incoherebtly at each other because no one knows where the borders are and the clashing weather systems are causing spontaneous hurricanes every couple of days.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Speakeasy said:

Wasn't the last thing she said in Leaving Storybrooke something like 'I can't wait to see what happens next,'-I imagine them going straight from that to some kind of government meeting with all the kings and queens and whathaveyous of the realms of fiction sitting in their new council chamber shouting incoherebtly at each other because no one knows where the borders are and the clashing weather systems are causing spontaneous hurricanes every couple of days.

It is Regina, so her actual quote was, "I can't wait to see what's in store for me next".

And then hastily added "Well, for everyone".

I love your idea for the next scene!

[Camera One]

9 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I know that she said she brought all the realms into it, but...my mind just cant comprehend how that could even possibly work logistically or ethically) and not literally all fiction ever

Henry said there was a German Snow White and a French Snow White, etc.  So there could potentially be a Council of 100 Snow Whites.  I wonder how the other 99 Evil Queens felt about Regina becoming the Queen of Everything.  I suppose most of them actually did get pushed off a cliff or executed.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

19 hours ago, Camera One said:

Henry said there was a German Snow White and a French Snow White, etc.  So there could potentially be a Council of 100 Snow Whites.  I wonder how the other 99 Evil Queens felt about Regina becoming the Queen of Everything.  I suppose most of them actually did get pushed off a cliff or executed.

Why did we never see a lineup of Snow Whites or Evil Queens? Captain Hooks? Rumplestiltskins working together to take over the multiverse? The writers didn't take advantage of their own stupid concept. I think it would've been funny to see all that chaos. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Speakeasy]

7 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why did we never see a lineup of Snow Whites or Evil Queens? Captain Hooks? Rumplestiltskins working together to take over the multiverse? The writers didn't take advantage of their own stupid concept. I think it would've been funny to see all that chaos. 

It was a big waste, and it really just seemed to be a rationalisation to go back to the better known fairy tales for their new cast. A lineup of the Snow Whites of All Worlds could have been amazing because there are so many ways you can twist the story around.

Stylistically there wasn't even much difference between the enchanted and disenchanted forests except the budget was clearly lower and there was a swamp in the Disenchanted Forest. 

[KingOfHearts]

24 minutes ago, Speakeasy said:

It was a big waste, and it really just seemed to be a rationalisation to go back to the better known fairy tales for their new cast. A lineup of the Snow Whites of All Worlds could have been amazing because there are so many ways you can twist the story around.

With the exception of the Wish Realm people (which don't really count in the same way), none of the characters ever met the alternate versions of themselves. Jacinda never met Ashley, Clorinda never met Ivy, Rapunzel never met Victoria, etc. For most of the characters, there wasn't much of a point in repeating the same fairy tale. They had so little to do with their respective stories that they could be original characters. 

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there was a swamp in the Disenchanted Forest. 

Who could forget Fictional Medieval Louisiana?

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Stylistically there wasn't even much difference between the enchanted and disenchanted forests

That's one of my gripes with this show and OUATIW in some parts. Clearly, they had a limited budget and went for the same wooded settings almost every time, even when it was really boring or didn't make any sense. I don't always notice with other shows, but in OUAT, I'm constantly acutely aware the writers were on a budget. It made the show feel cheap and its universe very small.

"Uh... we can't get Regina's house this week! Where are Regina and Robin gonna make tacos?"

"Let's use the crypt set! We always kept that for some reason!"

Edited March 31, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

43 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why did we never see a lineup of Snow Whites or Evil Queens? Captain Hooks?

Our Hook (Prime or WHook) running into the Disney cartoon/Dustin Hoffman version would have been delightful.

I was going to say that our Snow running into a more Disney-like version could be fun, but it could run dangerously close to the "not like other girls" trope, where the more traditional female who doesn't have a sword and a bow and doesn't punch people in the face is considered worse and weaker than the Strong Female Character. Since the Disney version (and in the fairy tale) is pretty much a child, our Snow could have been a mentor to her.

11 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

That's one of my gripes with this show and OUATIW in some parts. Clearly, they had a limited budget and went for the same wooded settings almost every time, even when it was really boring or didn't make any sense. I don't always notice with other shows, but in OUAT, I'm constantly acutely aware the writers were on a budget.

To some extent, they're limited to the scenery that's available where they can film. Aren't most of the "forest" scenes for shows filmed in the general Vancouver area filmed in the same park? The Stargate shows went from planet to planet, and they all looked like that one same forest. I wonder if there's a permanent "medieval village" set somewhere near Vancouver, because it seems like the same village showed up a lot on the Stargate shows (when they visited a more primitive forest world), in a lot of the Fantasy Cheese Sci Fi Channel movies and in the Once Upon a Time shows. Or is there a Ren Fest with permanent structures in that area where they film in the off season?

I don't so much mind the forest setting since that fits fairy tales. It's their castles, villages, and towns that are weak. They were using CGI, and they didn't bother to build more interesting locations. The only thing like a "city" other than Agrabah and the Land of Untold Stories was that port town. The generic tavern set was overused to the point we decided it was a franchise.

I think they did better at making the forests look different on the Wonderland spinoff, though it was still jarring when they went from a CGI wacky forest setting to a real forest, but they at least stuck in some strange plants and "dressed" the forest to make it look a little different.

[tennisgurl]

15 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Who could forget Fictional Medieval Louisiana?

 

Yeah, remember all of those classic stories set in... Fantasy Medieval Louisiana? 

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

 

Yeah, remember all of those classic stories set in... Fantasy Medieval Louisiana? 

Still disappointed we didn't get Fictional 1920s New Orleans. It probably would've been lame since these writers couldn't even do much with the Land of Untold Stories aka Steampunk World. But Fictional 1920s New Orleans would've been the one "realm of story" I would've enjoyed seeing.

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I was going to say that our Snow running into a more Disney-like version could be fun, but it could run dangerously close to the "not like other girls" trope

It could've subverted the trope and shown that even Disney!Snow could be strong without using violence. Imagine Snow having to journey with her and she can't stand her because she assumes she's a weaker version of herself. But then Disney!Snow uses her animal-talking skills and diplomacy to their advantage. 

I think the writers tried to do their own version of Disney!Snow through Princess Emma, but that failed miserably.

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Our Hook (Prime or WHook) running into the Disney cartoon/Dustin Hoffman version would have been delightful.

This might've been what the writers were going for when they introduced Blackbeard as a stand-in for Disney!Hook.

Edited April 1, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

6 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I think the writers tried to do their own version of Disney!Snow through Princess Emma, but that failed miserably.

I suspect that's what they truly think about the "traditional" Disney princesses compared their strong kickass female protagonists.  So in essence, they never would have seriously considered what a thoroughly "good" princess might be like (by their definition, they're weak, boring and a total joke).  Your idea with her using diplomacy and animal-talking skills is great, since they failed to do that with Snow, uh I mean Mary Margaret.  

17 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

To some extent, they're limited to the scenery that's available where they can film. Aren't most of the "forest" scenes for shows filmed in the general Vancouver area filmed in the same park?

There are several parks (which are actually forests) within the city, but the entire city is surrounded by wilderness, and a lot of filming happens on the mountain trails that are quite close by.  Of course, they all look the same because it's the same temperate rainforest with mostly conifers.

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The Stargate shows went from planet to planet, and they all looked like that one same forest. I wonder if there's a permanent "medieval village" set somewhere near Vancouver, because it seems like the same village showed up a lot on the Stargate shows (when they visited a more primitive forest world), in a lot of the Fantasy Cheese Sci Fi Channel movies and in the Once Upon a Time shows. Or is there a Ren Fest with permanent structures in that area where they film in the off season?

Maybe it's on a set that's used by multiple productions.  There isn't really such a place in public.

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I think they did better at making the forests look different on the Wonderland spinoff, though it was still jarring when they went from a CGI wacky forest setting to a real forest, but they at least stuck in some strange plants and "dressed" the forest to make it look a little different.

They did do a better job with Wonderland, than the Oz forest or the Neverland forest.

[KingOfHearts]

6 minutes ago, Camera One said:

than the Oz forest

I don't know why, but up until the flashback in "Sisters", all outdoor Oz scenes were at night time. It wasn't really spooky like the woods in the MGM film, but it was oddly moody where it didn't need to be. Was it just better lighting for Zelena's green makeup? There were Robin/Will flashbacks at night too. 

Emerald City itself was fine to me, but everything else was Enchanted Forest Lite.

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or the Neverland forest.

Neverland was weird. Sometimes it was a tropical jungle, and occasionally (like in the Malcolm/Rumple flashback) it was your standard Vancouver forest. Then in S6, it looked absolutely awful. I actually didn't mind the potted plant sets in 3A because it was so different in style from all the other forests we'd seen.

Edited April 1, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Speakeasy]

18 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Our Hook (Prime or WHook) running into the Disney cartoon/Dustin Hoffman version would have been delightful.

That could have been a lot of fun but I think it would run the risk of looking gloating-look how much better/smarter/more interesting our version of this character is than this old fashioned loser. The same could easily happen if you had any of the characters run into their Disney counterparts. 

I get the impression this would happen because that was the impression I was left with from the Camelot arc. Their take on King Arthur was interesting and he was actually a nuanced villain with an interesting backstory that dealt with the themes of the series from a worthy and different angle: here is how the idea of a hero can ruin a good person. But the story constantly veered about in ways that seemed to say 'hey, look what a bunch of useless losers the Camelot characters are next to our guys'

18 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

To some extent, they're limited to the scenery that's available where they can film. Aren't most of the "forest" scenes for shows filmed in the general Vancouver area filmed in the same park? The Stargate shows went from planet to planet, and they all looked like that one same forest. I wonder if there's a permanent "medieval village" set somewhere near Vancouver, because it seems like the same village showed up a lot on the Stargate shows (when they visited a more primitive forest world), in a lot of the Fantasy Cheese Sci Fi Channel movies and in the Once Upon a Time shows. Or is there a Ren Fest with permanent structures in that area where they film in the off season?

I've been to Vancouver twice in my life and remember the landscape around the city being absolutely breathtaking. How is it that it ends up looking so generic on all these shows where it's used as a shooting location? Am I just not appreciating it or is there something about the way it's shot?

18 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't so much mind the forest setting since that fits fairy tales. It's their castles, villages, and towns that are weak. They were using CGI, and they didn't bother to build more interesting locations. The only thing like a "city" other than Agrabah and the Land of Untold Stories was that port town. The generic tavern set was overused to the point we decided it was a franchise.

How much do you think that could have been improved within their budget? The fact they did Agrabah and the LoUS shows it was at least possible, but I'm not sure how often they could have showcased something different.

[tennisgurl]

40 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Still disappointed we didn't get Fictional 1920s New Orleans.

Fictional 1920s New Orleans would have been a ton of fun, sad that we missed out on it. Medieval kingdom Louisiana was a real indicator of the laziness of the writers, especially by that point. It was like all they could even comprehend writing was a vague medieval fantasy world, despite it making no sense for this world, these characters, or this story. It wasn't even a budget issue I dont think (it cant be THAT hard make a 1920s world, they already did it once!)  it was just that the writers had long since given up on doing anything creative, even if it was basically all gift wrapped for them in the movie it was based on. 

19 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

A lineup of the Snow Whites of All Worlds could have been amazing because there are so many ways you can twist the story around.

Well, A&E hadn't seen Rick and Morty or The Flash yet, so they didn't know that ripping off the Council or Ricks/Wells was an option yet!

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I think the writers tried to do their own version of Disney!Snow through Princess Emma, but that failed miserably.

That's exactly what I was thinking of when I feared they'd turn it into a "not like other girls" thing.

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

Maybe it's on a set that's used by multiple productions.  There isn't really such a place in public.

Or maybe they have a pile of pre-fab set pieces in a warehouse and just reassemble them in the woods when needed.

2 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Their take on King Arthur was interesting and he was actually a nuanced villain with an interesting backstory that dealt with the themes of the series from a worthy and different angle: here is how the idea of a hero can ruin a good person.

Funny how they did that story, but then Henry being in "I want to be a hero!" mode in season 7 was totally okay and not something to be alarmed by. Zero self-awareness of what they're writing.

2 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

How much do you think that could have been improved within their budget? The fact they did Agrabah and the LoUS shows it was at least possible, but I'm not sure how often they could have showcased something different.

I'm surprised at the effort that must have gone into the LoUS background for them to never use it again. That made for an interesting city set. With Ye Olde Tavern, they could have at least rearranged the furniture or put up some different wall hangings, or something, so it didn't look like the storybook equivalent of a McDonald's.

[KingOfHearts]

21 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

(it cant be THAT hard make a 1920s world, they already did it once!)

Fictional 1920s New Orleans could've had a reference to Fictional 1920s London, like the Cruella DeVil song playing on the radio or something. The writers could've found a clever way to imply they were both the same world.

I'm so glad the writers stopped mentioning the "trapped in time" thing for the realms of story in the scripts. That was the dumbest part of the concept. I'm not sure how you would explain how the fictional stories occurred in the real world without anyone noticing except the authors, any explanation would've been better than the vague "realms of stories".

Edited April 2, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[KingOfHearts]

It's funny how whenever you watch another television show or a movie, massacring a village (or women and children) is often used as a threshold for someone who has become irredeemable. It's normally to show how horrible they are and that they've already gone way off the deep end. Think Anakin Skywalker killing all the younglings. What's so weird is that OUAT seemed to do the same thing when Snow realized Regina couldn't be redeemed, then double backed.

Oftentimes those kinds of crimes or atrocities on the show are glossed over or only mentioned in dialogue. It's a lot easier to forgive Regina for mass slaughter when we don't see the faces of the victims she killed. There are no crying parents in Storybrooke who lost their son or daughter because of Regina. It's actually the opposite - people like Percival and Greg are framed as bad guys. It's all in how the writers frame stuff and omit certain perspectives.

The only way someone like Regina or Rumple is watchable is if you forget the graphic nature of their crimes and treat their victims as red shirts. 

Edited April 10, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

27 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's funny how whenever you watch another television show or a movie, massacring a village (or women and children) is often used as a threshold for someone who has become irredeemable. It's normally to show how horrible they are and that they've already gone way off the deep end. Think Anakin Skywalker killing all the younglings. What's so weird is that OUAT seemed to do the same thing when Snow realized Regina couldn't be redeemed, then double backed.

It was even more rare that we were made to believe that she *could* have been redeemed if she had only gotten some slack from Snow.  The "pull from the brink" moment was AFTER, not before the massacre.  

[Speakeasy]

On 4/10/2020 at 3:57 AM, Camera One said:

It was even more rare that we were made to believe that she *could* have been redeemed if she had only gotten some slack from Snow.  The "pull from the brink" moment was AFTER, not before the massacre.  

I always saw that whole thing as dramatic irony in that Reggie was learning that A) she was really making a mess of this whole Queen thing and B) Snow White would still have agreed to kiss and make up, except we knew she'd murdered a village, and Snow didn't. So at the end of the episode it was like 'see you could have worked things out with a mutually agreeable compromise if you'd just not tried, again, to murder your problems, how well has that been working for you up to this point, incidentally? but you did, so you can't'

I also see 'the Queen is dead, long live the Evil Queen' as along the lines of that line in MacBeth, 'I am in blood steeped so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o'er'

She's accepted she's done a lot of bad shit, she's never going to make up for that in the eyes of the world and they're never going to see her as good or just so fuck it; let's break out the manskin boots and the skull goblets, we're doing this.-now for it to work properly in this way it should probably have come in season 1, and I think it definitely should have come before that flashback where Snow pardons her(if that plot should have been kept at all which it shouldn't)because her rejection and it's Shakespearean outcomes are rendered kind of worthless if we already know that she'll be forgiven anyway, but hey-ho.

Ok also, at the risk of outing myself as some kind of black hearted monster... How damning was it for a medieval ruler and/or military leader to kill civilians like that, does anyone know? This sounds unbelievably horribly callous, but context is important if they live in the kind of world where other nobles would basically just shrug at the idea of chopping up disobedient peasants.

Edited April 11, 2020 by Speakeasy

[tennisgurl]

Something I always thought was especially weird was that, as they were desperately trying to drag the Charming family down to further push Regina up (which, I think that ship sailed several mass murders ago) as a super awesome best hero ever or to try to throw some moral ambiguity into this show, they could never find a way to really make them look quite bad enough, and yet they acted like they were. With stuff like the egg napping and Emma killing Cruella and Snow killing Cora, we were supposed to see these as heinous and evil acts, making them on par with Regina and her murder spree and years of tyranny, and the characters and the narrative itself talked about and treated these things as Very Bad Things, but the circumstances behind what happened were so weirdly specific, and when you actually look at the greater context of what was happening, it seemed like even the show itself was trying to give them an out, despite the show then proceeding to wave its finger at them. Like with Emma killing Cruella, we are supposed to see that as bad, because Emma killed someone who couldn't directly kill someone else. Only, anyone watching the show could see that Emma was acting to defend Henry, that she had no clue that Cruella couldn't kill him, and that in those circumstances, killing her was an understandable response. Or with the egg, not only do the Charmings pretty much get forced into/manipulated into doing it by The Author, but they tried to bring the egg back to Mal, and were only prevented by a bunch of other random things out of their control. Its like the show wanted to make its heroes more morally ambiguous, but they just didn't have the balls to really make their heroes cross a line, or even get close to it, so they made circumstances so bizarre and specific (Emma cant kill Cruella because the Author made it impossible for her to kill with his magic ink!) that they arent very applicable in an ethical issue or something that even the characters would have full knowledge of, or make it so that the heroes are absolved of responsibility for anything they did wrong, but are still trying to act like they did something horrible in an attempt to make these situations more complex than they actually are. So instead of a show with shades or moral grey, you get a show where any minor infraction, no matter how understandable and even justified, from some characters is treated as much worse than it is, and where anything no matter how evil and unforgivable from other characters is brushed aside. So they can have endless flashbacks of Regina and Rumple killing more and more people in every flashback, usually while we`re also inexplicably supposed to feel bad for them as they cackle over the dead bodies of innocent victims, and the narrative just blows past it (or even plays it for laughs or as a "badass" moment!) but will desperately try to tell us that everything even remotely questionable done by the heroes is a bad thing, even if it isn't consistent with what we saw.  

Probably the closest they really got to making one of the Charming Family do something really morally questionable was when they had Snow kill Cora through Regina, which was something the audience could at least see as being questionable, especially in the way that she did it. But, again, what she did was so understandable (killing a woman who has done horrible things, is still doing them, and is threatening to hurt her family, friends, and people) especially as a leader, and the way the narrative treats it as being just SO EVIL that her heart is turning black with darkness, it just creates this dissonance between the audience and what the show is telling us. It doesn't help that, as much as characters go on about how Snow should have "found another way" no one ever seems to say what that other way would be, or what options Snow should have used instead. Just stand around and let Cora murder more innocents? Is that being a good leader? A good person?

All of this just makes me continue to suspect that A&E have based most of their show on seeing other, better stories, and what they've done, and just copying it, without really understanding what made it actually work in those stories. 

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/10/2020 at 1:36 PM, Speakeasy said:

Ok also, at the risk of outing myself as some kind of black hearted monster... How damning was it for a medieval ruler and/or military leader to kill civilians like that, does anyone know? This sounds unbelievably horribly callous, but context is important if they live in the kind of world where other nobles would basically just shrug at the idea of chopping up disobedient peasants.

I don't have extensive knowledge, but I can't think of too many cases of a ruler wiping out his/her own people on the scale Regina did just for grins. The peasants might have been collateral damage in a civil war, like the Wars of the Roses or some of the other internal struggles over the years. Or an invading army might torch a village. I guess, in a way, you could consider that this situation was a parallel to the various wars over who would be king or queen, since Regina was killing the people who supported her rival. Justice also could get pretty harsh, and up to the 19th century in England the death penalty was common even for some relatively minor offenses (though, often that meant that the minor offenses weren't punished because judges and juries couldn't make themselves give the death penalty for something so minor, and that meant that the really harsh laws caused some really high crime rates). Someone could be executed for killing a rabbit on a lord's land, so harboring a fugitive might have had a death sentence (though there would have been a trial, not instant death). In the medieval era, nobles didn't really consider peasants to be fully human, so a noble or royal just randomly killing a peasant because they were having a bad day and the peasant dared to be happy might have been considered on the level of kicking a dog.

However, we don't know that this is the way their world worked. Leopold seems like he was a pretty just and fair kind of guy, so Regina's behavior would have been pretty shocking to the people. It seems like the village slaughters were seen as evil acts. It's just that Regina got forgiven for them (but not by the people actually affected) because she's different now.

On 4/10/2020 at 3:05 PM, tennisgurl said:

All of this just makes me continue to suspect that A&E have based most of their show on seeing other, better stories, and what they've done, and just copying it, without really understanding what made it actually work in those stories. 

You'd think that as much as they seem to like Star Wars, they'd have figured out how to set up a villain with a sad backstory for redemption. Regina was manipulated by a darker figure with an agenda, as Anakin was manipulated by Palpatine. But in the Star Wars movies, they set it up so that most of the really bad stuff wasn't Anakin's/Darth Vader's idea. It's Palpatine who gives the order to kill all the Jedi, and Anakin carries out the order. Later, it's Tarkin who orders destruction of an entire planet. While Vader definitely isn't a good guy, he comes across as less evil and maybe even a bit honorable. Then he sacrifices himself to save someone else and dies right after his redemption. Vader doesn't end up becoming a beloved father to Luke and Leia after everything he did, not even as a Force Ghost. With Regina, it's like once Palpatine started whispering to Anakin, he went off and started blowing up planets (even as Palpatine told him maybe that was a bad idea), but then after he switched sides he became the leader of the New Republic and hung out with his kids. And then Palpatine also got a happy ending.

On an entirely different topic, it's always bugged me that they didn't deal with or resolve the fact that Rumple murdered Neal's mother. By the time Neal died, he seemed completely reconciled with his father, but he was also friends with Hook, so who did he believe killed his mother? But I've realized that it's not an either/or thing. Him accepting that Hook was telling the truth about not killing Milah and that Milah really did willingly run away with Hook doesn't mean that Bae/Neal then had to also believe that Rumple killed her. There's room for a lot of denial there. If there was a fake story about the pirates kidnapping and killing her, then maybe she left Hook and let him think she'd been killed. I still think it needed to have been addressed before Neal and his father could be reconciled, but it's not as though Neal was necessarily totally reconciled with his father while believing that his father killed his mother. And I get the feeling that the show thought Milah had it coming and that Rumple was at least somewhat justified, which is rather gross and misogynistic, but considering that she ended up being punished in the underworld and got her soul obliterated while Rumple got to go to heaven and be with his true love, it does seem like the show is saying that her leaving her husband justified the death penalty and he was the wronged party.

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't have extensive knowledge, but I can't think of too many cases of a ruler wiping out his/her own people on the scale Regina did just for grins. The peasants might have been collateral damage in a civil war, like the Wars of the Roses or some of the other internal struggles over the years. Or an invading army might torch a village. I guess, in a way, you could consider that this situation was a parallel to the various wars over who would be king or queen, since Regina was killing the people who supported her rival. Justice also could get pretty harsh, and up to the 19th century in England the death penalty was common even for some relatively minor offenses (though, often that meant that the minor offenses weren't punished because judges and juries couldn't make themselves give the death penalty for something so minor, and that meant that the really harsh laws caused some really high crime rates). Someone could be executed for killing a rabbit on a lord's land, so harboring a fugitive might have had a death sentence (though there would have been a trial, not instant death). In the medieval era, nobles didn't really consider peasants to be fully human, so a noble or royal just randomly killing a peasant because they were having a bad day and the peasant dared to be happy might have been considered on the level of kicking a dog.

However, we don't know that this is the way their world worked. Leopold seems like he was a pretty just and fair kind of guy, so Regina's behavior would have been pretty shocking to the people. It seems like the village slaughters were seen as evil acts. It's just that Regina got forgiven for them (but not by the people actually affected) because she's different now.

You'd think that as much as they seem to like Star Wars, they'd have figured out how to set up a villain with a sad backstory for redemption. Regina was manipulated by a darker figure with an agenda, as Anakin was manipulated by Palpatine. But in the Star Wars movies, they set it up so that most of the really bad stuff wasn't Anakin's/Darth Vader's idea. It's Palpatine who gives the order to kill all the Jedi, and Anakin carries out the order. Later, it's Tarkin who orders destruction of an entire planet. While Vader definitely isn't a good guy, he comes across as less evil and maybe even a bit honorable. Then he sacrifices himself to save someone else and dies right after his redemption. Vader doesn't end up becoming a beloved father to Luke and Leia after everything he did, not even as a Force Ghost. With Regina, it's like once Palpatine started whispering to Anakin, he went off and started blowing up planets (even as Palpatine told him maybe that was a bad idea), but then after he switched sides he became the leader of the New Republic and hung out with his kids. And then Palpatine also got a happy ending.

On an entirely different topic, it's always bugged me that they didn't deal with or resolve the fact that Rumple murdered Neal's mother. By the time Neal died, he seemed completely reconciled with his father, but he was also friends with Hook, so who did he believe killed his mother? But I've realized that it's not an either/or thing. Him accepting that Hook was telling the truth about not killing Milah and that Milah really did willingly run away with Hook doesn't mean that Bae/Neal then had to also believe that Rumple killed her. There's room for a lot of denial there. If there was a fake story about the pirates kidnapping and killing her, then maybe she left Hook and let him think she'd been killed. I still think it needed to have been addressed before Neal and his father could be reconciled, but it's not as though Neal was necessarily totally reconciled with his father while believing that his father killed his mother. And I get the feeling that the show thought Milah had it coming and that Rumple was at least somewhat justified, which is rather gross and misogynistic, but considering that she ended up being punished in the underworld and got her soul obliterated while Rumple got to go to heaven and be with his true love, it does seem like the show is saying that her leaving her husband justified the death penalty and he was the wronged party.

I got that feeling too. While I do think its really crappy for her to abandon her son. She didn't deserve what happened to her because of that. Also, that's never what comes up or even why Rumple kills her. Because she left him. There's still two more annoying parts. One they do show how miserable Milah was and she begs Rumple to move away from the village that hates them but he refuses and that deal he made without consulting her about their second born child. And the second of course is what's par for the course on this show. Everything Rumple does is so much worse then what Milah did. Like starting with him not going with Bae into another world. Milah abandoned Bae but so did Rumple and unlike his wife he abandoned him into another world where Bae was completely alone. Milah at least left him with a father who loved him. He's murdered who knows how many people, tortured people, manipulated everyone, betrays everyone including those he loves. He's "claimed" to want to be reunited with Bae but will only find ways that allows him to keep his power. But you know he has a good heart and gets into heaven. Milah gets her soul obliterated.

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Milah abandoned Bae but so did Rumple and unlike his wife he abandoned him into another world where Bae was completely alone. Milah at least left him with a father who loved him.

Yeah, the mother who left her young son with a loving father who was already the primary caregiver (since it looked like Rumple took care of the parenting and she did everything else) deserves to be punished for eternity in the afterlife. But the father who let his son go alone into another world and murdered his wife (twice) gets a romantic happy ending and gets to spend eternity in heaven with his second wife.

Really, no fictional character who murders his wife for leaving him should be allowed to have another romantic relationship that's considered true love unless maybe there's a big change of heart and a lot of repentance, like maybe he was an alcoholic at the time and killed her in a drunken rage, then he was so horrified by what he did that he quit drinking.

[SilverShadow]

On 5/11/2019 at 10:52 PM, Shanna Marie said:

Sometimes I mourn the show that could have been. With the casting and premise they had, there's so much they could have done, exploring the nature of fairy tales and concepts like heroes, villains, and happy endings. Have fun with the mix-ups and mash-ups, letting the fairy tale princesses compare notes, the princes get together and talk about what they had to deal with (did we even really get the various princes together other than Philip and Charming being in a couple of the same scenes and Charming being at Cinderella's ball with Thomas? We needed Thomas, David, Eric, and Philip all together, though I guess they weren't all in Storybrooke at the same time). The recovering villains support group. The fed-up heroes support group. Culture clashes among the people from various kingdoms thrown into Storybrooke together.

 

 Catching up on posts, so sorry for responding to an old comment but so much word. The three things I never got but I wanted so badly were:

1) Princess Slumber Party. At minimum Snow, Emma Cindy, Belle, Aurora, and Ariel. I wouldn't mind adding Jas, Merida, and Mulan. Preferably no Regina. 

2) Princes' Night Out. Preferably at the same time as the above, with the episodes following each other. Charming, Hook, Thomas, Phil, and Eric. Rumple can come because socially awkward Rumple is hilarious. Aladdin can also be there if Jas is with the girls.

3) Hook and Eric being sailing bros. They're both boat nerds. ONE SCENE JUST ONE of them talking about ship stuff while Emma and Ariel look at each other all 'can you believe we love these dorks?' and I would have forgiven the show all its sins. Okay maybe not Murderella and Queen of Everything Regina, but most of its sins.

[KAOS Agent]

Because I've been bored, I was trying to come up with my favorite moment for each main character on the show.  But something I've realized in thinking about moments I loved is that  I can't really come up with many anymore. The later seasons of the show soured me even on the things I used to love.  That said, here are some of my favorites:

Snow - Using the candle and Regina to kill Cora. Harder paths be damned, this was by far the best Snow White moment (S2)

David - Sword fighting the guards with Baby Emma in his arms (S1) 

Rumpel - Killing himself and Pan with the dagger (S3)

Belle - That time she actually kicked Rumpel to the curb and forced him out of town (S4)

Zelena - That time she picked apart all of Regina's woe is me complaints and told her "enough with the martyr complex". (S3)

Hook - The entirety of the S3 finale. (S3)

Emma - Her entire role in Hat Trick. It's one of the few times where Emma is allowed to show her street smarts and she gets the win without it being taken away. (S1)

Regina - That time she apologized to everyone and admitted she was wrong. Oh wait... I liked her when she and Rumpel were screwing with each other (but  not when they were screwing each other).

Henry - When he was totally indifferent to everything because he was a normal kid with happy childhood memories (S3)

[tennisgurl]

6 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Regina - That time she apologized to everyone and admitted she was wrong. Oh wait... I liked her when she and Rumpel were screwing with each other (but  not when they were screwing each other).

 

I actually did quite like the interactions between Regina and Mr. Gold in season one, when Rumple was pretending not to have his memories but was also saying kind of vague things that sounded like he did have his memories to screw with Regina while Regina was trying to figure out what he knew and what he didn't while also both trying to manipulate each other and jockey for power in Storeybrooke while snarking, those were always fun scenes for me. It was when Regina was still a threatening villain and Rumple/Gold still had ambiguous motives, before both of their characters got pretty well destroyed because A&E fell in love with Poor Regina and Rumples character lost all consistency and motivation.  

[Speakeasy]

Oh come on; 'Je ne regrette rien, bitch!'-heartcrush!- was a badass moment.

Maybe not her best in the series, she was at her best in season 1, but am I really the only person who saw her heartcrush Peter Pan in mid gloat and cackle with delight?

Edited April 22, 2020 by Speakeasy

[Speakeasy]

On 4/19/2020 at 4:34 PM, SilverShadow said:

 

3) Hook and Eric being sailing bros. They're both boat nerds. ONE SCENE JUST ONE of them talking about ship stuff while Emma and Ariel look at each other all 'can you believe we love these dorks?' and I would have forgiven the show all its sins. Okay maybe not Murderella and Queen of Everything Regina, but most of its sins.

You'd be fine with the rambling Author Plot, with Rumple's banishment meaning nothing, with the whole Zarion nonsense, True Love's Kiss being cheapened to the point where you can give it without speaking to the recipient or while lying through your teeth to them at the time, Bloody Season 6 and the 'watch the cups, which cup is the real villain under?' bullshit and waste of a perfectly good Jaime Murray, and innumerable Tense Action Scenes between epic magical heroes and villains consisting entirely of people standing in the woods glowering at each other, so long as you saw a couple of good looking men talking about sailing?

That's extremely generous of you 😋

[KingOfHearts]

I just rewatched the Pilot for the first time in a while. (I didn't get to join y'all for most of the rewatch, as you know.) 

I won't go into the nitpicks that have already been discussed in depth, even though there are a lot of them. But, something that struck me this time was how atmospheric it felt. Everything had a certain tone in Storybrooke that was otherworldly and fantastical, even when there were no overt supernatural elements on screen. The show managed to replicate this at times in different fashions, but it never really did after S3. The story itself seemed grand and epic when paired with the flashbacks. In later seasons, the scale kept growing smaller and smaller. 

Something random I noticed I didn't catch before was that Rumple not only knew what Emma's gender would be, but that Snow knew she was going to give birth to a girl. This of course gets called back in 2x03, where Snow finds out she'll have a daughter via Ruth's necklace. Charming still thought it was going to be a son. The flashbacks in the first three seasons did a good job of explaining things like that in the Pilot without completely retconning everything... for the most part. (Let's just forget S6 tried to tie in the "final battle" Rumple mentions in the Pilot with its craptastic storyline.)

The Pilot was some great escapism. Not sure if I'll do a full rewatch, but it was nice to go back to when OUAT was actually fun to watch.

Edited May 1, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/19/2020 at 10:34 AM, SilverShadow said:

1) Princess Slumber Party. At minimum Snow, Emma Cindy, Belle, Aurora, and Ariel. I wouldn't mind adding Jas, Merida, and Mulan. Preferably no Regina. 

2) Princes' Night Out. Preferably at the same time as the above, with the episodes following each other. Charming, Hook, Thomas, Phil, and Eric. Rumple can come because socially awkward Rumple is hilarious. Aladdin can also be there if Jas is with the girls.

3) Hook and Eric being sailing bros.

Just as they were allergic to dealing with the culture clash/worlds colliding potential, for a show with a premise of "all the fairytale characters live in the same world and know each other," they were really reluctant to actually deal with the mashups after the first few seasons.

They had the fun of the princesses attending each other's weddings and having happy hour in season one, and we had Team Princess in season two. But as the series went on, it ended up just really being about the Snow White characters with Captain Hook thrown in and the Wicked Witch and Robin Hood occasionally doing something -- and Hook, the Wicked Witch and Robin Hood by then had very little connection with their original stories or characterizations. They could have been anyone from any story. Belle and Rumple were usually off in their own little silo, though I guess Rumple was a one-man mash-up, since he was not only Rumpelstiltskin and the Beast, but he was also connected to most of the Peter Pan characters, as he was Peter Pan's son, Captain Hook's "crocodile," and Tiger Lily was his fairy godmother.

At least season seven had Cinderella being best friends with Tiana.

16 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

But, something that struck me this time was how atmospheric it felt. Everything had a certain tone in Storybrooke that was otherworldly and fantastical, even when there were no overt supernatural elements on screen.

I love the part where Emma first goes to the B&B, and it's like she has to travel through a dark, spooky fairytale forest to get there. I don't think we ever got that angle on the B&B again, even though most of the action in the town ended up taking place in the adjacent diner. Did they film that in a different place that they couldn't get access to again?

[Camera One]

23 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I love the part where Emma first goes to the B&B, and it's like she has to travel through a dark, spooky fairytale forest to get there. I don't think we ever got that angle on the B&B again, even though most of the action in the town ended up taking place in the adjacent diner. Did they film that in a different place that they couldn't get access to again?

I guess that was supposed to be the "back" entrance to Granny's?  It's actually a completely different building (historical home from 1910) in another municipality of Greater Vancouver, so that's probably why they just stuck with the actual entrance of the restaurant that is used for "Granny's", which is in Steveston along with Main Street and the library, etc.

Edited May 1, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I guess that was supposed to be the "back" entrance to Granny's?

In that episode, it seemed like it was the direct entrance to the B&B, as opposed to going in through the diner. The inn in the pilot didn't really fit into the geography of the town that we later saw. There's no place for that forest anywhere near the diner. In the pilot, it almost seemed like it was a separate building in a different part of town, though I don't know how Granny would have run both that way. It probably just seemed that way because it was a different building in a different town, so they may have meant it to be the same building or adjacent buildings.

It was certainly more atmospheric the way they had it in the pilot, but I can imagine that it wouldn't have been practical on an ongoing basis. But that doesn't mean they had to strip the atmosphere from the whole town.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

In that episode, it seemed like it was the direct entrance to the B&B, as opposed to going in through the diner. The inn in the pilot didn't really fit into the geography of the town that we later saw. There's no place for that forest anywhere near the diner. In the pilot, it almost seemed like it was a separate building in a different part of town, though I don't know how Granny would have run both that way. It probably just seemed that way because it was a different building in a different town, so they may have meant it to be the same building or adjacent buildings.

I agree that was meant to be the direct entrance to the B&B part of Granny's.  But I assumed the restaurant was attached or adjoining.  I thought that back hallway lead to the rooms, so that's why I figured the restaurant fronted onto Main Street and the Inn fronted the street behind, which would be residential.  It's still an awkward arrangement.  Did the pilot show the restaurant?  If so, they probably hadn't yet determined the geography of the town (not that the writers cared about geography... or history or science or English literature or logic or mathematical calculations of years or distance).

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

It was certainly more atmospheric the way they had it in the pilot, but I can imagine that it wouldn't have been practical on an ongoing basis. But that doesn't mean they had to strip the atmosphere from the whole town.

That is what strikes me everytime I watch the pilot.  They managed to siphon out every bit of atmosphere from Storybrooke over the seasons, but it all comes back when rewatching that first episode.  It helped that the town was most atmospheric at night, but it was also their treatment of the town as mundane and boring which changed it.  Sort of like how they managed to remove all the charms of Mary Margaret.  

Edited May 2, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

I agree that was meant to be the direct entrance to the B&B part of Granny's.  But I assumed the restaurant was attached or adjoining.  I thought that back hallway lead to the rooms, so that's why I figured the restaurant fronted onto Main Street and the Inn fronted the street behind, which would be residential.  It's still an awkward arrangement.  Did the pilot show the restaurant?  If so, they probably hadn't yet determined the geography of the town (not that the writers cared about geography... or history or science or English literature or logic or mathematical calculations of years or distance).

I could swear we saw the diner in the pilot because didn't we see Ruby lounging around in her "slutty" outfit and clashing with Granny before Emma went to the inn? I'm not sure why they needed to have Granny running both the inn and the diner, unless they really wanted to have Emma going through the woods to get to "Grandma's house" in the pilot, but then they wanted Granny as a recurring character and she was more likely to show up in the diner where everyone was hanging out. And I guess in that town, running the inn wouldn't be a full-time job, since no visitors came to town until Emma showed up. Granny may have just been renting out empty rooms in her family home while running the adjacent diner.

It is possible that the inn fronts on the street behind and parallel to Main Street, so the diner fronts Main Street, and the in and the diner are back-to-back. But I've never been able to reconcile the interior and exterior of the diner. It's always a jolt when they show the exterior because it doesn't match what you picture when you see the interior (and there were far more scenes of the interior without any kind of transition showing the exterior). From the outside, it looks like it's the short end of the diner that fronts on the patio area, which fronts on the street, and the diner extends lengthwise back from there. As I recall, it's on the end of a row of buildings -- we saw Regina, Robin, and Roland walking down the sidewalk past buildings, eating ice cream, in the season 3 finale, and then they reached the gate onto the patio and entered the diner. If you're facing the diner from Main Street, they were coming from the left, so there are buildings to the left.

But from the inside, looking at it from the same angle, there are a row of windows down the left side of the room, with booths in front of them, and I seem to recall at least one situation in which someone sitting in a booth could look out the window and see something happening on Main Street. It also looks like the door is centered on that wall from the outside, but it's closer to the booths from the inside, since the counter and kitchen are on the other side. They should have flipped the layout inside, so the kitchen was on the side up against other buildings and then the windows and booths would have overlooked the side street.

Maybe the front isn't actually on Main Street, but rather faces the side street so that those booths on the left side overlook Main Street. In that case, the back of the inn would be up against the side of the diner where the kitchen is.

Or I could be remembering the exterior all wrong. They didn't use it very often.

[Camera One]

I've never been inside the real restaurant but the show did retool the interior.  In real life, someone sitting in the booths would be able to see outside since there's quite a bit of space before the next building to the left, but I don't think they would be able to see a clear line of sight directly onto Main Street, unless they were looking out the front windows.  Here's Google Street View.

I know in the studio lot, they built Granny's, and a scaled down model of the buildings across the street, so they could film there instead of Steveston and it would still look real.  I don't remember what they saw looking out the side windows...

From this featurette, I can sort of see a hedge out the side window... they really used those blinds strategically.  It's hard to find any interiors of the real restaurant... the front portion looks sort of similar in this food review video.  In this behind-the-scenes, you can see the exterior of Granny's they rebuilt on the studio backlot.

I never got the sense Emma walked through a forest to get to the Inn but I like that imagery if they were trying to create it.  She passed through an archway with plants or some tall hedges that surround the entire front yard, which are common in some types of houses here.

Edited May 2, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

48 minutes ago, Camera One said:

In real life, someone sitting in the booths would be able to see outside since there's quite a bit of space before the next building to the left, but I don't think they would be able to see a clear line of sight directly onto Main Street, unless they were looking out the front windows.  Here's Google Street View.

Huh, based on that, I'd say that the inn was the rooms upstairs above the restaurant, but I don't remember if that part showed on the show or if it was doctored in post-production.

I may be remembering incorrectly about them looking out the window and seeing something on Main Street, but they definitely got more sunlight in through the blinds than I'd expect to see from that layout. Didn't Henry notice the time portal column of light by looking out the window? Or was he looking out the front window by the door?

The interior on the show looks like a fairly typical diner layout, where the diner is on the corner of the block. The door is at the corner of the building, with booths down the side by the windows and the counter and kitchen are on the interior side. There are dozens like that in New York, and even diners elsewhere follow that model. Our local diner near me is laid out almost exactly like that, and it's in a purpose-built building (though it's a new building, it's designed as though it's an old downtown building because that town has created a fake old downtown). But the exterior here looks like it would have an entirely different restaurant inside (which it does). It looks more like the "tea rooms" you find in small towns in the South, where there are only individual tables and the kitchen in the back rather than booths and the kitchen and a counter on the side opposite the booths. In that building, I can't imagine putting the kitchen on the side of the building that faces a side street where you'd have your best windows. You'd put the kitchen at the rear.

58 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I never got the sense Emma walked through a forest to get to the Inn but I like that imagery if they were trying to create it.  She passed through an archway with plants or some tall hedges that surround the entire front yard, which are common in some types of houses here.

I think it was just the lighting and the sense of creepiness that gave a sense similar to walking through fairytale woods, even though it wasn't dense trees. She did have to walk past some tall hedges rather than just walking up to the house straight from the sidewalk.

[andromeda331]

14 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I could swear we saw the diner in the pilot because didn't we see Ruby lounging around in her "slutty" outfit and clashing with Granny before Emma went to the inn? I'm not sure why they needed to have Granny running both the inn and the diner, unless they really wanted to have Emma going through the woods to get to "Grandma's house" in the pilot, but then they wanted Granny as a recurring character and she was more likely to show up in the diner where everyone was hanging out. And I guess in that town, running the inn wouldn't be a full-time job, since no visitors came to town until Emma showed up. Granny may have just been renting out empty rooms in her family home while running the adjacent diner.

That scene was at the inn. Ruby and Granny were arguing about her being out all night and slutty when Emma comes in asking for a room shocking both of them. Why they had an inn though I don't know. Ruby and Granny look like they hadn't had a guest in years if ever. Except of course for Regina's hooks ups with Graham why would they need one? Everyone pretty much lived the same day over or close to it. Why would any of them need to go to the inn?  After Emma arrived they seemed to have more people staying there. But before? 

[Camera One]

I was just listening to music on Random, and a nice OUAT score composition came on.  I checked what it was and of course, it had to be "Regina's True Love".  😈

Edited May 5, 2020 by Camera One

[ParadoxLost]

On 5/1/2020 at 8:07 PM, Shanna Marie said:

It was certainly more atmospheric the way they had it in the pilot, but I can imagine that it wouldn't have been practical on an ongoing basis. But that doesn't mean they had to strip the atmosphere from the whole town.

It always struck me that the show really had no idea how to handle budgetary constraints.  They were just lazy with it and lacking creativity to some how create atmosphere on whatever budget that they had.  A lot of the time, it felt like the show dropped their money on a couple episodes they cared about or one set for an arc and then just walked in circles the rest of the time.  

I've been watching a lot of BTS of Community lately and saw something that the idea that sparked Pillows and Blankets was that they were way behind budget and needed to make a couple episodes on the cheap.  Which just baffles me because they could have just done an episode that was all in their study room.  But that is the difference between creative and non creative.

It was always really sad to me that there was so much literature for OUAT to play off and they never really used it.

Its been so long since I've made a drive by complaint about OUAT.  Still repeating myself in 2020.

Edited May 7, 2020 by ParadoxLost

[KingOfHearts]

On 5/4/2020 at 9:44 PM, Camera One said:

I was just listening to music on Random, and a nice OUAT score composition came on.  I checked what it was and of course, it had to be "Regina's True Love".  😈

The tracks for Regina are actually some of my favorites in the series. "One Perfect Day After Another" does a fantastic job of conveying Regina's feelings of triumph and later boredom when she's trapped in Groundhog Day Storybrooke. It plays her theme but it becomes more sluggish and slow as the track goes on. "The Queen's Curse", which plays during the Pilot, is so wonderfully ominous and suspenseful. It really feels like something terrible is about to happen. It finally kicks into full gear with Regina's theme, crescendoing at the end as the Curse swallows up Regina and Snow. 

The show's soundtrack was awesome at conveying emotions even when they weren't in the writing or staging. (A lot of the Rumpbelle music is very romantic, despite all their scenes making me want to gag.) Listening to it always makes me feel nostalgic.

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Just as they were allergic to dealing with the culture clash/worlds colliding potential, for a show with a premise of "all the fairytale characters live in the same world and know each other," they were really reluctant to actually deal with the mashups after the first few seasons.

The writers attempted to do more of this stuff in later seasons, but it always fell flat. You had the random Not!Team Princess specials, like Mulan/Merida/Red, Red/Mulan/Dorothy, Jasmine/Ariel/Hook, etc. that didn't have much to do with the overarching plot. The connections or clashing potential the characters had was never leveraged, so much so that it seemed like A&E just drew names out of a hat.

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I love the part where Emma first goes to the B&B, and it's like she has to travel through a dark, spooky fairytale forest to get there. I don't think we ever got that angle on the B&B again, even though most of the action in the town ended up taking place in the adjacent diner. Did they film that in a different place that they couldn't get access to again?

Did anyone ever stay at Granny's after S1 that we saw on screen? It wasn't much of a B&B after S1. Just a diner.

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It always struck me that the show really had no idea how to handle budgetary constraints.  They were just lazy with it and lacking creativity to some how create atmosphere on whatever budget that they had.  A lot of the time, it felt like the show dropped their money on a couple episodes they cared about or one set for an arc and then just walked in circles the rest of the time.  

The only time I felt the writers were creative in managing the budget was when they did Underbrooke in 5B. It was a clever way to keep it "Storybrooke" but a slightly different atmosphere. They didn't need potted plant sets or to jump back to Storybrooke to remind everyone what show they were watching.

Edited May 8, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Did anyone ever stay at Granny's after S1 that we saw on screen? It wasn't much of a B&B after S1.

Neal and Tamara stayed there in 2B, since that's where they were when Emma got Henry to play lookout while she searched their room. Then in 3B, Hook, Emma, and Henry were staying there after the return to Storybrooke. It looks like Henry and Emma moved back in with the Charmings after Henry got his memories back, and I suppose Hook stayed there until they got the Jolly Roger back. I don't think we saw any scenes in the inn area after 3B, though. In 3B there were a couple of scenes in the hallway between rooms, and I think one or two in Emma and Henry's room, and the gang gathered to discuss the situation in what seems to have been some kind of lobby/parlor area. After that arc, they referred to it (in season 4 they talked about Aurora staying there, and in season 6 they were talking about putting up the Untold Stories people), but I don't think they showed it.

[daxx]

39 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I suppose Hook stayed there until they got the Jolly Roger back

They never used the comedy right in front of them. They could have had an ongoing thing with granny and Hook as he continued to pay in gold doubloons even after granny tells him he can get dollars and not continue to overpay.

[KingOfHearts]

I think it's funny we all seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Granny's and how it was used in the show.