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

[Camera One]

7 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The issue was that a lot of time was wasted on plots that didn't matter, specifically the kind that concerned the main characters but had no consequences.  From a micro point of view, most of the episode airtime is wasted on characters regurgitating plot points or skating around important information being withheld from the audience. (Many of the scenes are just the main characters contributing nothing of value or the Big Bads parading their evil schemes. The majority of everything is repetition, and I don't mean a repeated arc formula. The characters repeat conversations relentlessly.

To me, there are different types of filler and different techniques of stalling.  I don't mind stories that don't matter, if they explore something interesting and relevant, like the first season forays into the backstories of supporting characters (I actually liked those, even "Dreamy").  

The type of filler/stalling that irritates me are the ones you mentioned - repetition and especially plot points which were specifically created to lead you on, or to kill time without exploring any character (examples for me would be the stuff in 6A with the Oracle and following the red bird - that was specially meant to make you intrigued, but dishonestly had zero resolution or meaningful expansion.  Or the subplot in 5A with Merida making Rumple brave, leading you on that he had changed, but he was right back where he started by the 5A finale.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

40 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Nova's fate was never revealed, but we NEEDED to find out who Lily's father was in the show's series finale because it was sooooooo crucial and what every fan was waiting for.

You know--the odd thing was, there was always one question about Lily's father in every EW hot seat interview. Apparently there was at least one dedicated Lily fan.

And they picked Zorro. I was like--WTF??!  The last 10 minutes of the series was practically a charade

[tennisgurl]

On 7/28/2018 at 11:11 AM, Camera One said:

That's the only headcanon that makes this show bearable after the first two seasons or so.  We can imagine all the hush-hush conversations Snow, Emma, Charming and Henry have in private as they draw straws to decide who would placate Regina that day.

I like to imagine its like that classic Twilight Zone episode with the little kid with god like powers that all the adults had to constantly placate so that he didnt murder them all if they didnt cater to his every stupid, six year old whim. "Its real good that you winked that city out of existence Regina. Real good..." 

[Camera One]

30 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

Apparently there was at least one dedicated Lily fan.

 Yeah, the reporter.

[Camera One]

Taken from "The Stable Boy":

36 minutes ago, andromeda331 said:

 I've always wondered if Leopold's rush to find a new mother for Snow was guilt on his part for not being there when his wife became sick and died and leaving his daughter all alone to deal with that. But they never came back to it.

I thought that too.  Leopold was interesting because even after Eva died, he continued to go on his tours of the kingdom leaving Snow alone.  Maybe that's why he kept showering praise on her whenever he was actually home.  But as the Writer of "Bleeding Through" said, they weren't interested in Leopold.  

[KingOfHearts]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

The type of filler/stalling that irritates me are the ones you mentioned - repetition and especially plot points which were specifically created to lead you on, or to kill time without exploring any character (examples for me would be the stuff in 6A with the Oracle and following the red bird - that was specially meant to make you intrigued, but dishonestly had zero resolution or meaningful expansion.  Or the subplot in 5A with Merida making Rumple brave, leading you on that he had changed, but he was right back where he started by the 5A finale.

The centrics followed a strict formula based on one or two of the main characters learning a lesson they've already been taught a half a dozen times.

Hook: Hook meets someone who has a profound impact on him, but he betrays them in pursuit of revenge. (Ursula, Nemo, Brennan, etc.)
Regina: Regina is hunting for Snow, someone gives her advice, then she promptly ignores it. (Snow herself, Henry Sr., Tinkerbell, Maleficent, even Cora.)
Emma: Emma has a positive experience with someone, only to lose whoever she just met. (Merlin, Neal, Ingrid, Lily, Cleo.)
Snow: Snow is on the run from or fighting Regina. She either doubts herself or makes a questionable moral judgement, only to be brought back into port by Charming or herself.
Rumple: Rumple is given an important choice to make, but chooses the selfish one.
Charming: Charming doesn't believe himself, but someone leads him to gain courage. (Rapunzel, Anna, Hook.)
Henry: Henry does something astronomically stupid.
Zelena: Pretty much the same as Regina's. Someone shows her the light, she ignores it, back to the status quo.
Big Bad: Something disproportionately crappy happens to them, pushing them to commit mass murder for no good reason. 
Belle: Belle uses her book smarts to collaborate with a guest star to accomplish a pointless side quest. (Mulan, Lumiere, Anna, Merida, Gaston.)

Edited July 30, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

55 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Hook: Emma meets someone who has a profound impact on him, but he betrays them in pursuit of revenge. (Ursula, Nemo, Brennan, etc.)
Regina: Regina is hunting for Snow, someone gives her advice, then she promptly ignores it. (Snow herself, Henry Sr., Tinkerbell, Maleficent, even Cora.)
Emma: Emma has a positive experience with someone, only to lose whoever she just met. (Merlin, Neal, Ingrid, Lily, Cleo.)
Snow: Snow is on the run from or fighting Regina. She either doubts herself or makes a questionable moral judgement, only to be brought back into port by Charming or herself.
Rumple: Rumple is given an important choice to make, but chooses the selfish one.
Charming: Charming doesn't believe himself, but someone leads him to gain courage. (Rapunzel, Anna, Hook.)
Henry: Henry does something astronomically stupid.
Zelena: Pretty much the same as Regina's. Someone shows her the light, she ignores it, back to the status quo.
Big Bad: Something disproportionately crappy happens to them, pushing them to commit mass murder for no good reason. 
Belle: Belle uses her book smarts to collaborate with a guest star to accomplish a pointless side quest. (Mulan, Lumiere, Anna, Merida, Gaston.)

You have been served by Adam and Eddy for publishing their secret writing recipe.

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/29/2018 at 4:46 PM, Camera One said:

The type of filler/stalling that irritates me are the ones you mentioned - repetition and especially plot points which were specifically created to lead you on, or to kill time without exploring any character

Or stuff that happens that should have ongoing ramifications but that's totally forgotten afterward. Which would be most of season 6. There's the oracle stuff you mentioned that seemed to be just for creating intrigue. We wasted all that time with the stuff about David's father, and it really changed nothing and had no real impact. Hook met his brother, who wanted to kill him, and they reconciled to the point of hugging off-camera, then the brother's fate was left hanging, and not only did we never hear if the Nautilus was able to survive (and with it Nemo and Liam), we never saw Hook being even remotely curious, and they didn't bother to bring in his one living relative to attend his wedding.

Then there's season 7, in which most of what happened was just to kill time. All the Cinderella stuff, including Victoria and Drizella/Ivy. Facilier. Everything involving Zelena.

On another topic ... in the discussion about Lost in Other Fairy Tales, I mentioned my frustration that backstory isn't the same as character development, and I think this show relied too much on backstory. But the problem is that there was very little actual character development that defines who the characters are in the present. Characterization was too plot-dependent, like with Snow flip flopping between "I'm not Mary Margaret anymore, I need to be Snow again" and "I want to go back to normal" (with "normal" defined as, basically, being Mary Margaret). And yet I don't think they even realized who Mary Margaret was. Rewatching season one, Mary Margaret isn't a doormat. She may not be swinging a sword, but she's pretty gutsy within the context of her world, and she got more gutsy as the season went on and the curse weakened. Doormats don't carry on extramarital affairs, then dump the guy when they learn he lied, and then still manage to face down the entire town. But they later stereotyped her as being meek and wimpy, I guess because of no sword? But Snow would in one episode be all doom and gloom, and in the next episode be making hope speeches, depending on what the plot called for.

Other characters were more Flanderized than developed, so they were stuck repeating the same loop. How many times did Emma learn how to use and control her magic? How many times did she learn she needed to let down her WALLS? How many times did David have to learn about courage? How many times did he have to learn that Hook wasn't as bad as he thought? How many times did Belle decide her love for Rumple was greater than whatever thing he'd done? While I liked that Hook did have to face up to his past crimes, it was basically the same story over and over again. Regina was stuck in that weird limbo where she was a put-upon saint but also unapologetic about her past and allowed to be mean to everyone. It's like the writers had just one trait for each character and hit it the same way over and over again, and that meant the characters never actually progressed.

[Rumsy4]

I just finished watching Hat Trick. What an awesome episode! It was great, and it also made me so so er...mad. 

Take for instance, how much of a bad-ass Emma was. She got out of the bonds and got the better of Jefferson. Compare that to Emma being unable to apparate out of the spider's web in Season 6. The writers massively under-powered Emma in later seasons to make Regina and Rumple play the heroes. 

And then, there's the whole Emma-Mary Margaret thing. Their interactions were so genuine in this episode. It felt like Emma really did think of her as family. That deep down, the little lost girl in her really wanted Mary Margaret to be her mother. :-/ And they just dropped the whole Emma and MM bond like a hot cake after 2A. 

I posted this is the episode thread, but I think an AU where Jefferson ended up back in the EF and teamed-up with Emma and Snow in Season 2 to get back to Storybrooke would've been great. 

Edited July 31, 2018 by Rumsy4

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

On another topic ... in the discussion about Lost in Other Fairy Tales, I mentioned my frustration that backstory isn't the same as character development, and I think this show relied too much on backstory. But the problem is that there was very little actual character development that defines who the characters are in the present. Characterization was too plot-dependent, like with Snow flip flopping between "I'm not Mary Margaret anymore, I need to be Snow again" and "I want to go back to normal" (with "normal" defined as, basically, being Mary Margaret). And yet I don't think they even realized who Mary Margaret was. Rewatching season one, Mary Margaret isn't a doormat. She may not be swinging a sword, but she's pretty gutsy within the context of her world, and she got more gutsy as the season went on and the curse weakened. Doormats don't carry on extramarital affairs, then dump the guy when they learn he lied, and then still manage to face down the entire town. But they later stereotyped her as being meek and wimpy, I guess because of no sword? But Snow would in one episode be all doom and gloom, and in the next episode be making hope speeches, depending on what the plot called for.

Other characters were more Flanderized than developed, so they were stuck repeating the same loop. How many times did Emma learn how to use and control her magic? How many times did she learn she needed to let down her WALLS? How many times did David have to learn about courage? How many times did he have to learn that Hook wasn't as bad as he thought? How many times did Belle decide her love for Rumple was greater than whatever thing he'd done? While I liked that Hook did have to face up to his past crimes, it was basically the same story over and over again. Regina was stuck in that weird limbo where she was a put-upon saint but also unapologetic about her past and allowed to be mean to everyone. It's like the writers had just one trait for each character and hit it the same way over and over again, and that meant the characters never actually progressed.

At the top of the Unintentionally Unsympathetic page of TV Tropes is a quote from Linkara, History of the Power Ranges on Ransik.
"There is a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic."

That's really true. Having a sympathetic backstory doesn't always make characters sympathetic especially when its being used to justify crimes. A&E try to use Regina and Rumple's backstories to explain why they became evil and why we should feel sorry for them. But it falls short in Regina's case yes her mother was horrible and murdered her boyfriend. But Regina knew it Cora murdered Daniel but blames a child instead. She uses that as the justification for terrorizing Snow, murdering her father, taking her throne and everything else and trying to repeatedly murder her. She's slaughtered an entire village because they gave refuge to Snow. Then there's the not Snow related crimes sending who knows how many children into the Witch's House who she murdered, separating Hansel and Gretel from their father because they didn't want her to be her new mommy, murdering a groom, gaslighting Henry, raping Graham for decades and murdering him when he dumped her, using her new friend Kathryn to frame Mary Margaret for murder. She's not sad when she's committing any of her crimes she's happy and enjoying herself. There's nothing sympathetic about her after Daniel's murdered. Even when she's never felt bad or guilty for anything she's done. She's never apologized for what she did or said she was wrong. She has said she wasn't sorry for anything she did because it got her Henry. But had no problem ditching him when she was so sad over her boyfriend going back to the wife she murdered. She's still all about poor Regina. She never did return any of those hearts either. What is there to be sympathetic for?   

With Rumple in the first season there were little signs that he might be sorry for his past because it cost him his son which he seemed to regret. But then we see all he's been up to since Bae life. Other people he's murdered and screwed over that had nothing to do with his centuries long curse.  Murdered someone for knocking into his son, the mute maid, torturing Robin Hood who was trying to save his wife, telling Belle's father he'd save his kingdom if he gives up his daughter, constantly knocking out Belle so he can go off and be evil, constantly stabbing everyone in the back.  

In contrasts to other characters who really do have sympathetic back stories but are still sympathetic. Snow. She had her entire life destroyed because of something that wasn't her fault. She was manipulated by Cora and was ten. She really thought she was helping Regina. After she defeated Regina and got her kingdom back and had her happily ever after. That was destroyed too by a new Curse that separated her from her husband and her daughter for 28 years. She lost out on raising her child with her husband and had to deal with an already grown up daughter who had a horrible childhood which makes it hard for her to open up now. Her mother died when she was young, she later learned she was murdered, her father was murdered, her nanny was murdered, an entire village was slaughtered because they gave her refuge.

Emma who grew up on her own in foster care and alone abandoned as a baby on the side of the road. She was sent back at three because the parents then had a baby of their own, she got one good foster home but Lily ruined that, and Ingrid who wanted her for her powers, she trusted Neal who sent her to prison for her his crimes and she gave up her baby, who showed up at ten and dragged her to a town with his psycho adoptive mother. She opens herself up again to Graham who is murdered (although she never finds that out), meets August who screwed her over back when he convinced Neal to abandon her but is back now because he needs her to break the curse, the only friend she has gets framed for murder, almost loses Henry because Regina tried to put her under sleeping curse. The Curse is broken and she has her parents. Except 28 years have passed.  Ends up in the Enchanted Forest having to battle ogres and Cora. Finds Rumple's son who is Neal so he's back and never once explains to her pissed off son that he's the one who set her to jail and dismisses her concerns about his psycho girlfriend, Henry's kidnapped.  

[KAOS Agent]

What bothered me about all these sad backstories was the lack of even handedness in how they were treated. Most of the characters had some seriously messed up pasts. Everyone should have received the same treatment in the narrative when judging them in the present if sad pasts were meant to explain/excuse their actions. This is where the show failed on an epic level and lost my sympathies for various characters.

Snow suffered on a massive level and still maintained a ridiculous level of goodness. However, the second she did something remotely human or moved to protect her interests rather than sitting back and letting villains walk all over her because hope™, she is castigated and painted as the worst. She slapped Geppetto! She is turning evil! Really? Should we examine how the writers would treat Regina or Rumpel in these situations? Because Regina would be sassy and audacious and cheered for giving Geppetto what for after destroying her child's life. Same for Rumpel. No one harms their child and gets away with it. This is an idea that many would cheer. I know I cheered when Snow slapped Geppetto and was really upset that it was treated as a horrible act.

Snow stops Cora from becoming the Dark One and killing everyone but obviously that was a terrible move that darkened her heart. Rumpel kills his mother not because he cared about the harm to others, but out of revenge because she screwed him over regarding Belle, and he is hailed as a great hero. Explain this to me. 

Then we have Hook, who was pretty terrible, but continually faces people he'd wronged and had them react like normal humans who hated him. He was repeatedly hit with the karma stick (and rightfully so) to the point where it started to get a little tiresome because there had to be some other story they could give the character especially when other characters were so often given a pass. Couldn't they at least try to spread some of this type of comeuppance around to Regina, Rumpel, Zelena, etc? I know that some will point to all the bad things that happened to the villains, but too often it was the others around them suffering for the villains' sins. Robin gets raped and Regina is the one talking about how life kicked her in the teeth yet again. What now?

Emma goes to the Underworld and gets slapped for killing Cruella, an act that was painted as deserved because killing Cruella was a huge step down the road to evil. Never mind that Emma was trying to save her son at the time. How would Regina have been treated for the same action? Would everyone instantly assume Regina was super evil again? Or would we immediately see her being lauded and thanked for saving Henry followed by a celebration at Granny's?

All of the characters were flawed and had sympathetic stories that helped to explain these flaws, but this does not mean that this puts them all on a different moral plane. You can't have one character be cheered as a hero for an action that would result in another character being castigated and vilified for doing the same. If you have a black and white tenet that "heroes don't kill" then you can't have someone kill another and be hailed as a hero. Once was so incredibly frustrating to me because the "heroic" villains got all the glory because they were not being held to the impossible standards of the traditional heroes, which just made the heroes look at best like do nothing morons and at worst like selfish uncaring rulers (see: not seeking justice for village slaughter because being happy is the best revenge).

Edited July 31, 2018 by KAOS Agent

[Rumsy4]

5 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

Robin gets raped and Regina is the one talking about how life kicked her in the teeth yet again. What now?

Losing Henry at the end of 3A was also considered Regina's "price", but she wasn't the only one separated from a loved one. Snowing lost Emma all over again and vice versa. Henry lost everyone who loved him. So did Neal, Belle, and even Hook. And yet, Regina's pain and suffering were The Worst(TM). But the way Robin's rape was dealt with was one of the vilest aspects of Regina's farce of a redemption. Male rape in the show was always so horribly dealt with, and yet they kept repeating that trope. At least Gothel didn't get a farcical redemption story, I guess...

[KingOfHearts]

18 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

And then, there's the whole Emma-Mary Margaret thing. Their interactions were so genuine in this episode. It felt like Emma really did think of her as family. That deep down, the little lost girl in her really wanted Mary Margaret to be her mother. :-/ And they just dropped the whole Emma and MM bond like a hot cake after 2A. 

The irony is that they were less like family after they found out they were related by blood. 

14 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

At the top of the Unintentionally Unsympathetic page of TV Tropes is a quote from Linkara, History of the Power Ranges on Ransik.
"There is a difference between having a sympathetic backstory and actually being sympathetic."

One of my favorite quotes that I believe is relevant here - "Cool motive, still murder."

[tennisgurl]

You know, watching Hat Trick, its kind of sad how much the set up for this multiverse made sense at first, and how basically easy to follow it was. The EF is in one world, Storeybrooke is in another, and there are many more worlds that exist in this multiverse, all bumped up against each other, some with magic, some without, and some needing it to exist. You can sometimes travel to other worlds, but its tough to do. All these worlds are equally real. It seems simple enough, you really just need to explain how people in our world have stories about events happening in Wonderland and the EF, and thats it. 

But then the Author crap started, and it basically changed everything for no reason whatsoever. The worlds are still there, but now theres some magical Author guy who can write down stuff that happens in the multiverse, and it doesn't actually take place in a real reality, but in a "realm of story" or something, where time never changes, and is just a story world or something. They can also rearrange reality, but arent supposed to, and write every story ever. Or at least, some of them? So, this is just a long line of creepers watching people that may or may not actually exist but are clearly sentient, who are sharing their personal snuff films with all of us? Because "our" world is the only one thats real? Or, what? It just raises so many disturbing questions that the show never really took the time to think about. So much for all the worlds being real, now some of them are imaginary! But the people are still real! Its like they wanted to go full on meta fiction and explore the nature of stories, or the relationship between creator and creation, but unlike works like Animal Man or Stranger than Fiction, which actually dealt with the drama and existential questions of discovering your a fictional character, it just kind of through out all of this stuff, and never followed up on it. It just made everything super confusing, especially when they decided that all kinds of versions of each character exist so that Henry can bang Cinderella. It was so convoluted. 

And it didnt need to be like that! They could have had the original stuff with all the worlds being real, and still had the Author. Say the Author is more like a muse style person, or a group of them, who can travel around the multiverse, observe what happens there, and just inspire writers in other worlds, and thats why we have these stories. Some of the Authors could be really broad strokes in their inspiration, and thats why some stories (like Snow White) are different than what we know from the stories, and some stories (like Frozen) are almost word for word. That way, they can still do the Author stuff, without so many plot holes. Hell, they could make the Authors a sort of multiverse cops who are in charge of keeping the multiverse in line, and they show up when our heroes have mucked around with space and time, and they have to get them back to the EF before their world bleeds into ours, or something like that. Anything would have been less confusing.

[KingOfHearts]

44 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

It seems simple enough, you really just need to explain how people in our world have stories about events happening in Wonderland and the EF, and thats it. 

I could've gone without that and wouldn't care. It was never much of a plot point until the Author happened. There were moments where like, "Wait, they're real too?" but the discrepancies were rarely acknowledged or affected anything. No one ever questioned why Cruella DeVil was living in modern day Long Island, whether Dorothy was from real Kansas or Fictional!Kansas, or why Hook wasn't wearing mustaches or perms. It was played for laughs whenever the writers realized, "oh these are fairy tale characters in the real world!" That was once in a blue moon, too. It got dropped completely after S3. Not a single character had any reaction to being famous or legendary in the Land Without Magic. People's perceptions of them never bothered them. I would've been perfectly satisfied with the Authors maybe just getting the details wrong or twisting them. Maybe they went through time, as S7 revealed is perfectly possible. It didn't really matter to me.

What did matter to me was having multiple versions of the same characters. I hated the use of alternates in S7 and using a real world person like Blackbeard was weird. I much preferred where Snow White was THE Snow White and everybody else just got it wrong. The opening card of the Pilot says these are the characters we *think* we know. Down the line, the writers made up the awful multiverse Author crap. I do not appreciate the infinite number of ethnically diverse Cinderella's. It's contrived and doesn't actually service the show. It's like trying to plug up one small hole by creating thousands of bigger ones. It's just not necessary.

Edited July 31, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

Having re-watched Stable Boy, crowning Regina queen of the multiverse makes even less sense. That episode makes it clear that being queen was what Cora wanted, not Regina. It was Cora's ambition. Somewhere along the way, it also turned into Regina's. Regina's arc should have been about going back to that simple life she had once desired with Daniel. Not getting rewarded for her sociopaths behavior by being made a queen again.

[Camera One]

17 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Quote

  10 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

I'm still confused about how Regina thought she could just run away with Daniel and Cora wouldn't do anything about it. Even if Snow hadn't said anything, Cora would have been on their tail immediately and then killed Daniel anyway. It wasn't something that was ever going to work out for them, which makes the whole thing even worse to me. The whole backstory was full of holes.

You could probably say the same about Regina and Robin Hood. I'm sure she could court him and run off with him without any consequences whatsoever. Leopold would definitely just stand by and wish them well.

Hello, it's your favorite writers Adam and Eddy.  We're so glad you are still chatting about one of our crowning achievements (no pun intended!) "The Stable Boy" (which explored class relations in addition to the magic and suspense you all love!  We like to sneak in some social commentary, a mark of great writers).  We can clarify your questions for you very easily.

Regina was planning to run away with Daniel to one of the other realms of story where Cora can't touch her.  You see, as a teenager, Regina had occasion to venture into one of those realms of story, or maybe the Land of Untold Stories, or something, and she knew Cora couldn't get to her there because she overheard Cora saying to Madame Leota that she wanted desperately to go to one of the other realms of story.  Mother Gothel also had a special tunnel that led from Cora's estate to The Land Before Time.  

Regina and Robin Hood could also have travelled to another realm of story, maybe the one with German Snow White through a magic bratwurst in the kitchen.  Or the intergalatic zones of story controlled by a mysterious entity called The Producer, but I don't want to ruin the surprise in case ABC wants another season in the future!  As you could see from the hints above, a Regina prequel could also be a treasure trove of stories!  Did you know she had amnesia 101 times (which ties in with the story of Cruella of course).  But we've said too much!

Hope that helps!

A&E

Edited August 1, 2018 by Camera One

[superloislane]

On 31/7/2018 at 2:40 PM, Rumsy4 said:

Losing Henry at the end of 3A was also considered Regina's "price", but she wasn't the only one separated from a loved one.

This is something I really don't get - losing Henry for a year (even though it was supposed to be FOREVER) was apparently the great price Regina had to pay and was shown this way on the show. But since she wasn't the only one to lose a loved one, what was everyone else paying for here? Why did they have to pay a price? We'll never know since when the good guys lose someone, it's treated like it's just a part of life and 'oh well shit happens I guess! Move on!' but when a villain loses someone, it's a great price they paid for all their evil and a part of their redemption and you should feel bad for them. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, superloislane said:

But since she wasn't the only one to lose a loved one, what was everyone else paying for here? Why did they have to pay a price? 

They made it worse by making it seem like no one else cared about losing Emma/Henry, to the point where Snow got to comfort Regina.  The only other person who was written to care was Neal, except they went out their way to make sure history repeats itself and he does something desperate and stupid to get back to his son.  Everyone is basically a prop for Regina or Rumple, but what else is new.

[Shanna Marie]

On 7/31/2018 at 6:06 PM, tennisgurl said:

So, this is just a long line of creepers watching people that may or may not actually exist but are clearly sentient, who are sharing their personal snuff films with all of us? Because "our" world is the only one thats real?

Before they did a story about the Author stuff, I had thoughts about how maybe something about our belief in the fairytale characters went across the realms and helped create that world, and that's how Snow White was having her story play out centuries after we started having stories about Snow White -- only her story went very differently from anything in the storybooks because once she was given life, she became a real person who could make her own choices. But then for characters like Hook, who were written more recently, maybe his adventures in that world came across the realms and inspired JM Barrie to write his stories.

We never did learn why there was an Author in the first place. It seems to have been something Merlin started, since his Apprentice was running things, but even when we met Merlin, we didn't learn anything about this. I never really did grasp the "realms of story" thing. Really, all realms are realms of story because there are stories told about people in all worlds. Some worlds would clearly have to be different from out world because of stuff like magic, but there are plenty of stories taking place in our world -- including stories that they stuck in "realms of story." The whole point of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz was that she was from our world, in Kansas, a totally ordinary place. It kind of ruins it for her to have traveled from one story world to another story world. The Count of Monte Cristo was meant to take place in our world because it was exploring the injustice of that society. Move it to a story world and you've missed the point entirely. I suspect part of the "story world" thing came mostly as an answer to a question when someone pointed out something not lining up, and the easy way out was to say it's a story world that's stuck in that time period.

On 7/31/2018 at 6:48 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I do not appreciate the infinite number of ethnically diverse Cinderella's.

I think that could have worked if done well. After all, just about every culture in our world has a story that maps to the main points in the Cinderella story -- the poor, abused servant who gets supernatural help to get all dressed up, and that leads to her marrying royalty, usually with some element of having to flee and the royalty having to pursue, and quite often shoes are involved. There's the German Grimm version and the French Perrault version that even both use the Cinderella name (or something that translates to that), with the German version of Cinderella getting her supernatural help from the spirit of her dead mother via a magical tree and wearing golden slippers and the French version having a fairy godmother and having glass slippers. Even within the Grimm collection, there's not only a Cinderella story, but there are others that sort of fit the same theme/structure, like Donkeyskin, where she's a servant in the castle who gets magical dresses to sneak into the ball. So, there's room for there to be a different version of Cinderella in each world. The key there is "different," and for that, they needed to have delved a little more into the story and used one of the different versions. Casting a Latina actress wasn't enough. She still had a similar dress in the iconic Disney version blue, still had a fairy godmother, still had glass slippers. It wasn't like we got, say, the Grimm version, who's getting a golden gown and slippers rained down on her from the hazel tree planted on her mother's grave. There was material for Henry to have run into other versions of the story people he knew. They just didn't really bother doing anything with that concept other than use it as an excuse to have Henry get to marry Cinderella and to have another version of Alice.

[Camera One]

38 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

It wasn't like we got, say, the Grimm version, who's getting a golden gown and slippers rained down on her from the hazel tree planted on her mother's grave. 

I fully expected the Season 7 Cinderella to have that special bond with her mother with the tree.  But at least we got an equally moving tale of Jacinda as a teenage extra standing around in the background.

Edited August 2, 2018 by Camera One

[profdanglais]

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But then for characters like Hook, who were written more recently, maybe his adventures in that world came across the realms and inspired JM Barrie to write his stories.

That would have been such an interesting take, since so many fairy tales derive from oral traditions that someone just decided to write down, then others wrote other versions and so forth. They could discuss how there are different Cinderellas and Snow Whites because those stories are so old, but with Hook or Dorothy they're much more recent so fewer versions exist. The conflict could have been not that the characters weren't fleshed out because they were in stories, but that the stories simplified them to make a point, but the real versions were much more complex. There could have been a lot of interesting stuff with the characters being frustrated by how they're interpreted by the writers -- OUAT Snow was a bandit, OUAT Pan was a villain, etc. 

Sometimes I really want a do-over on this show. 

[daxx]

4 hours ago, profdanglais said:

Sometimes I really want a do-over on this show. 

I’ve been wishing for this by different show runners for a couple seasons because the concept is brilliant, the execution was the problem.

[andromeda331]

58 minutes ago, daxx said:

I’ve been wishing for this by different show runners for a couple seasons because the concept is brilliant, the execution was the problem.

So do I. They had a great concept, the cast was amazing, characters with so much baggage to work with and so much potential. Basically, all of fiction to chose from. How awesome is that? How much fun would be. There's so many things they could have done. In the right hands the show would have been so awesome and I really think it could have gone on for ten seasons because they had such a great cast and all of fiction to work with.

[Camera One]

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, it's really hard to tell when all we saw of them was some stolen kisses in the stable and her abusing him in front of her mother. It's hard to say what Regina really lost or if they would have managed to make it work, so it's hard to feel much of a sense of loss. I'm mostly thinking that maybe Daniel lucked out in being killed rather than having to live with Regina. I'm pretty sure they didn't intend to show that she was a budding sociopath all along, but she flipped so completely to evil and was so awful that it's hard to imagine that she would have just gone through life being nice and happy if this one bad thing hadn't happened to her. Something else might have set her off, and her complete lack of empathy would have created a wedge in the relationship. As it is, she never seems to think "poor Daniel." All she ever thinks about is "poor me."

The way you described this reminded me of how they gave Ashley's stepsister Clorinda the same basic premise as Regina in 6A.  We also saw Clorinda abusing that lowly footman in front of her mother Lady Tremaine and a few stolen kisses.  Then Ashley revealed the secret to Lady Tremaine and Clorinda was dragged away by her mother, and yet Clorinda's response was to go along with her mother's plan to kill Cinderella.  I suppose the difference was Lady Tremaine never murdered the footman in front of Clorinda, though she was going to, in the present-day.  Complete with the the victim (Ashley) in this case needing to suffer by getting impaled and then asking forgiveness from Clorinda, who doesn't reciprocate an apology.  The warped morality of their stories aren't an anomaly because they write the same things again.  

[Shanna Marie]

Thinking more about the Author stuff, it's really obvious that they didn't make it up until later in the game. The voiceover at the start of the season one episodes says something about how the stories are real, but not as we know them, which implies that the Grimms, Disney, etc., got them wrong, or at least missed some major details. But then later we learn that the Grimms, Disney, etc., were "Authors" who had magical powers to (apparently) write the true stories in their sleep. Didn't Henry reveal some secret by doing that sleep writing? Isaac, the Author who broke the rules by using his power to make things happen, was the one who got the story right. Or were the Grimm, Disney, etc., stories about different versions -- like Jacinderella vs. Ashley? But then Season One Narrator is wrong because the stories were right. They just happened to be about entirely different people than the ones we're seeing.

I think it would have worked much better without the Author concept at all, if maybe some spell or person had created Henry's book for a purpose, and it was a one-time thing without the implication that every event everywhere was being recorded in magical books.

33 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The way you described this reminded me of how they gave Ashley's stepsister Clorinda the same basic premise as Regina in 6A. 

Oh wow, I hadn't thought of that! I guess it's like how Whook basically had Jefferson's story -- the father separated from his daughter and kept apart from her by a curse, having to watch her from afar.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But then later we learn that the Grimms, Disney, etc., were "Authors" who had magical powers to (apparently) write the true stories in their sleep. Didn't Henry reveal some secret by doing that sleep writing? Isaac, the Author who broke the rules by using his power to make things happen, was the one who got the story right.

They seemed to have made changes even between Season 4 and Season 5.  In 4B, it looked like Isaac was actually writing.  Or at least he had to go seek out the stories.  By Season 5, Henry just went to sleep and came out with fully illustrated pages of what was happening far away.  They didn't show Adult Henry sleep-writing once in Season 7.  

I still don't understand where Isaac's story world in the Season 5 finale existed.  It appeared to be literally inside the book.  So Rumple wanted to live out his entire existence stuck in a book replaying the same events over and over again?  Or was that something Isaac decided to do himself?  It didn't seem like a real world, like the Wish Realm.  

Edited August 2, 2018 by Camera One

[companionenvy]

Having just finished rewatching S1, all of this is particularly frustrating, because while the season isn't perfect - and some of the warning signs are more apparent in retrospect -- it is a damn satisfying season of TV. Is it the smartest and tightest-written piece of drama I've ever seen? No. But it has a fun premise, it is consistently entertaining, it makes me care about the characters, and it provides a great payoff for the main arc of S1 while setting up an interesting scenario for the start of S2.

And guess what? It didn't need a byzantine mythology about Authors and story-worlds to do it. Even if the show had wanted to get meta (an impulse I generally support!), there was plenty to be done with the idea of these people living in a world familiar with garbled versions of their own stories. We could have gotten episodes showing how writers who were not mystical, capital-A Authors, but ordinary people from the LWOM came to encounter and write about FTL people.  How they perhaps deliberately changed certain things, maybe as a means of wish-fulfillment. Or, we could have had our characters themselves struggling to figure out what was true and what was myth - i.e, a Snow White variant has troubling/relevant information on Snow's parents that she herself wouldn't have been privy to, and she can't be sure whether to trust it or not. 

The author mythology, on the other hand, introduced any number of ridiculous logical problems without really having any worthwhile emotional stakes. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, companionenvy said:

We could have gotten episodes showing how writers who were not mystical, capital-A Authors, but ordinary people from the LWOM came to encounter and write about FTL people. 

That was what I expected when the show first started.  It was the simplest explanation and could have resulted in some very fun episodes.  Maybe Walt Disney walked into a totally uncharacteristic moment which made him think Snow White's story was all sunshine and unicorns.  Or Grimm saw a character in a bad moment and assumed they were the villain.

But instead, we had ridiculously convoluted world-building like Wendy was from the REAL Victorian London, but Hyde and Alice in Wonderland #1 was from FICTIONAL Victorian London while Alice in Maybe Some Other Wonderland #2 was from the Land of Latina Cinderella and Mother Awful and Dorothy was from Fictional Kansas and was in Oz, but didn't bump into Blind Witch #2 from the Land of Latina Cinderella presumably.  

Edited August 3, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think it would have worked much better without the Author concept at all, if maybe some spell or person had created Henry's book for a purpose, and it was a one-time thing without the implication that every event everywhere was being recorded in magical books.

I really thought that's what it was for. That the book and Emma being the Savior were just parts of that story. Like glass slippers and the fairy godmother were part of Cinderella's story. That they weren't for all stories or a bunch of them. Just for a specific story. To break a Curse in that story.   

[tennisgurl]

I know that everything is being remade now, and its super annoying for the most part, but I would love to see a Once reboot in ten years or so. It would suck to probably not have the cast anymore, but the show has such a great concept, and the universe has so much amazing potential, that I think it deserves a better run than what they had. Bring in a different show runner, some new writers, and maybe have A&E back as consultants (with very limited power) and I think you could have the amazing show that season one promised. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

I know that everything is being remade now, and its super annoying for the most part, but I would love to see a Once reboot in ten years or so.

Yes, unlike the majority of the shows currently being rebooted (Charmed, Buffy, etc), "Once" actually has many more directions it can go.  After the child put up for adoption brings their biological parent to a town full of fairy tale characters, a multitude of different things could have happened.  Never mind the "requel" A&E already did with gender-switch Emma (Adult Henry) and Latina Henry (Lucy).

Edited August 3, 2018 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

But instead, we had ridiculously convoluted world-building like Wendy was from the REAL Victorian London, but Hyde and Alice in Wonderland #1 was from FICTIONAL Victorian London while Alice in Maybe Some Other Wonderland #2 was from the Land of Latina Cinderella and Mother Awful and Dorothy was from Fictional Kansas and was in Oz, but didn't bump into Blind Witch #2 from the Land of Latina Cinderella presumably.  

I suspect that the "realms of story" concept started because of the Wonderland spin-off. They wanted some intersection with the mother show, so we had Will in Storybrooke to kick it off, and they also had to do their mash-up thing, so he was both the Knave of Hearts and Robin Hood, and that meant we had to run into Robin Hood, who'd already been established in the mother show, and then since they were in Wonderland, we had to have Cora as Queen of Hearts, and all that put the show as taking place around the same time period as the mother show. But they also needed Alice to be from Victorian England. I'm not even sure they figured out the problem up front on their own. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the "fictional Victorian England" thing was something they made up on the spot when someone asked how Alice could be Victorian when the story was taking place in the present.

But at least there are plenty of stories to populate a Fictional Victorian England world (much of Dickens, some of the Brontes, Alice, Jekyll & Hyde, probably some Jules Verne, so maybe that's Nemo's home world, Tom Sawyer could have been from the America in that world, etc.). Fictional Depression Era (if they're going with the movie) or Turn-of-the-Century (if we're going with the book) Kansas world doesn't have a lot going for it, and it's not even a place where anything happens. It's just the place Dorothy leaves to go to Oz. I think even the "Fictional Kansas World" explanation came up because people asked how Dorothy could have been from the 1930s when it would have been the 80s in our world, and I don't think that was ever clarified on screen, just in interviews. Really, in 1980-1982 or so, her dress would have fit right in because the prairie style was big around that time, so she could have been from our world. There's just that problem that there are already books and movies about Dorothy going from Kansas to Oz, and then it happens again for real in the 1980s, and that's what the stories are based on? But I think we still have that problem with her being from an alternate story world, since the Dorothy from that story world is having her Oz adventures more than a century after the book was written.

About the only thing that really makes any of it make sense is the idea of repeated pattern archetypes -- there's no one Dorothy, Snow White, etc., but these things seem to happen all the time. Some of their adventures get captured by storytellers but many more go unknown. There was something along those lines in the 500 Kingdoms series by Mercedes Lackey. The idea there was that the magic inherent in that world tended to shove things and people into story patterns. If there was a girl whose father married a widow with daughters, odds were that she'd turn into a Cinderella, but things got wonky when the other things weren't in line to let that story play out, like if there was no prince of the right age in her kingdom. It was the job of the fairy godmothers to keep an eye out for these patterns happening and use their knowledge of the patterns to intervene. For instance, if the queen in a kingdom died and there was a daughter, a godmother jumped in to pose as a potential evil queen stepmother to keep an actual evil queen from marrying the king. That way, there were a lot of the same stories happening, but they all played out in different ways.

[KingOfHearts]

I'm okay with Victorian England World (though dragging people from the real world would've been far more interesting), but it's the idea that worlds are stuck in different time periods that bothers me. It's so bad that Cruella can't even recall the year, which makes no sense. They're not real, living worlds if no one is allowed to invent anything new or major events can't happen. If the timeline is what's throwing the writers into a pinch, they can always turn to the "time moves differently" bit or Blue Fairy's line about moving through "time and space". They started doing that in S7, but there's a way to do it that's not nearly as frustrating or illogical. It needed to established earlier in the show that time wasn't completely a 1:1 ratio.

Have Dorothy originally from 1900 Kansas but transport her in time in Oz.

Edited August 3, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

39 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

If the timeline is what's throwing the writers into a pinch, they can always turn to the "time moves differently" bit or Blue Fairy's line about moving through "time and space". 

Have Dorothy originally from 1900 Kansas but transport her in time in Oz.

That was always how I assumed it worked in Season 1.  It wasn't a stretch to me that the Enchanted Forest was "timeless" and visitors from the Land Without Magic would always travel through time and space, as you said.  They did not need to muddle things up (as per usual).

[KingOfHearts]

8 minutes ago, Camera One said:

That was always how I assumed it worked in Season 1.  It wasn't a stretch to me that the Enchanted Forest was "timeless" and visitors from the Land Without Magic would always travel through time and space, as you said.  They did not need to muddle things up (as per usual).

You don't even have to explain the fact their society hasn't progressed much, unless there are a lot of flashbacks taking place over centuries. I was a little bummed that the flashbacks with Kid!Rumple didn't really look much different, given it was 200~ years ago. The writers could've done a little research, perhaps mapping out a few design choices against the real world. Weren't the navy officers in Hook's flashbacks wearing uniforms from the 1700s or something? I don't know. It would've been cool if A&E actually did their research and took influence from the eras they were drawing from. That seems like high fantasy 101.

By far the worst example of an anachronism was the Prehistoric 1980s Victorian society LOL. I'm so glad S7 happened because it gave us so many WTF moments we can laugh at for years.

Edited August 3, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

48 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

If the timeline is what's throwing the writers into a pinch, they can always turn to the "time moves differently" bit or Blue Fairy's line about moving through "time and space".

That could have worked and even seemed to be what they were initially doing. It was only later when they established the 1:1 time ratio by having direct communication in real time.

1 minute ago, KingOfHearts said:

You don't even have to explain the fact their society hasn't progressed much, unless there are a lot of flashbacks taking place over centuries. I was a little bummed that the flashbacks with Kid!Rumple didn't really look much different, given it was 200~ years ago. The writers could've done a little research, perhaps mapping out a few design choices against the real world. Weren't the navy officers in Hook's flashbacks wearing uniforms from the 1700s or something?

I think that lack of progress was a real mess. Hook should, theoretically, have been as out of place in the modern Enchanted Forest as he was in Storybrooke. Neal should have been a bit lost when he returned during the missing year, since hundreds of years had gone by (or maybe 100 years -- they kept moving that date around). Belle should have been quizzing Hook about historical events he'd witnessed that she'd only read about in books -- "Oh, you were really at the Battle of Whatever? What was it like?"

But I don't think they could make up their minds whether this was a generic medieval fantasy world or if it was set in the 1700s of the Grimms. Hook's stuff fit into the late 1700s, and a lot of the costuming was rather Georgian -- like a lot of Rumple's outfits once he was the Dark One, with those button-up coats that definitely weren't medieval. But then the women's costuming was all over the map, with some medieval-looking gowns, some very Edwardian dresses, some 80s prom dresses, some 80s Dynasty dresses, some Victorian-looking outfits, Belle's very Georgian coat over hot pants, Bo Peep's very 1700s Baroque outfit, Abigail's Renaissance attire, and Regina's Stolen From Cher wardrobe.

Hook's ship had cannons, and Hook sometimes used a gun, but otherwise it was a world without gunpowder, apparently, as they were fighting with bows and arrows and swords. If it had been a 1700s setting, there would have been a lot more firearms.

Not that this fantasy world had to map directly to any one era from our world, but you would expect some changes in a hundred or so years, and you would expect the level of technology to remain somewhat consistent. If it's a world with gunpowder, that's going to change things more broadly. You're not going to have one random person with gunpowder-related technology -- unless that's an actual story point. It should be a bigger deal if it's a world without gunpowder, except this one guy has a pistol and cannons.

[Camera One]

These Writers couldn't be bothered to fully research Disney movies or classic novels, much less Grimm/Perrault fairy tales or folktales or stories from other cultures.  So it goes with the territory that they wouldn't research history.  Yes, it was definitely LOL that these 1980s Victorian mean girls were co-habitating with indigenous societies in the Pacific Northwest "thousands of years ago" in what is now the Land Without Magic Unless You Know Where To Look Or If You Believed Or If You Have A Magical Object From A Land With Magic Or If You Siphon Magic From The Guardian.

Never mind, let's back that up.  These Writers couldn't be bothered to look up their OWN frickin' scripts from earlier seasons, so it goes with the territory that everything was a sloppy incoherent mess.  

Edited August 3, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yeah, I could see that -- a spunky, spirited princess who's been trained in how to fight but who is naive and idealistic. I do think that apparently marrying very young (since she still seemed to have had Henry when she was a teenager) and then being widowed would have added some layers so that she wouldn't have been that naive and idealistic. As a teenager she might have been kind of like Anna, but by the time she's around 30 and has raised a teenage son on her own after his father died, I don't think she'd still be quite that innocent.

I don't think she would have been that innocent either.  The Enchanted Forest had so many dangers and was so medieval.  It would realistically have taken Snowing years to establish any sort of peace and prosperity, if they ever really did so. 

But I'm sure the only actual idea A&E had in their heads was to make Wish Emma a comic relief caricature.   As you said, they didn't even reconcile Wish Emma's supposed backstory of losing a husband to the sing-song clueless princess they had her portray.  

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

There isn't enough there to say it's A&E's unique spin on the character. You can't just ignore the essence of what you're adapting. That's just lazy. If you're going to subvert expectations, you have to go all the way. 

Somewhere along the line, the writers decided that merely giving a character the same name as that of a fictional one was good enough to qualify as adapting the original. That's why we got a Count of Monte Cristo who was nothing like the original nor a subversion, a Robin Hood who spouted off about his "code" but was a cipher, Tiana who was born into royalty, but not as a clever twist to the fairy-tale, and an un-Facilier Facilier. 

Edited August 4, 2018 by Rumsy4

[Camera One]

11 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

Somewhere along the line, the writers decided that merely giving a character the same name as that of a fictional one was good enough to qualify as adapting the original. 

 

By the last few seasons, it was almost like they picked the best part of the character and left it out or did the opposite.  The Count of Monte Cristo was the king of slow burn carefully planned revenge, but they just had him burst into a ballroom and threaten everyone.  Tiana was supposed to be an ordinary workaholic, and then they gave her inherited wealth and power, changing her entire internal conflict.  The strong Meg became a damsel in distress.  Jasmine went around looking for a man to save her kingdom.  There was nothing in any version of the story to suggest Rapunzel would grow up to be Lady Tremaine.  It became borderline insulting. 

Edited August 4, 2018 by Camera One

[Camera One]

So I was thinking about The Apprentice.  He was the one who told August all about Neal and Rumple's dagger and Emma, etc?  So why didn't The Apprentice go to Emma and guide her and prepare her for becoming The Savior?  Surely, he was allowed to tell people stuff since he went out of his way to find Lily to tell her all about how Snowing kidnapped her as a child and separated her from mother.  

So The Apprentice wasn't brought along with the First Curse, but he was brought along for the Second Curse?  Why?  

[daxx]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

So The Apprentice wasn't brought along with the First Curse, but he was brought along for the Second Curse?  Why?  

I suppose you’ll need to ask the “Master Storytellers”. lol

[Rumsy4]

Because poor Lily deserves kindness more than Emma.

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

So The Apprentice wasn't brought along with the First Curse, but he was brought along for the Second Curse?  Why?  

Since he was wandering in our world during the first curse, maybe he was already here when that curse hit, and he either stayed in the outside world or went home, then he got caught up in the second curse.

I've wondered why the Sorcerer's mansion was created by the second curse but not the first. For one thing, we later learned that Merlin was the Sorcerer, and he never had a mansion. For another, why would the second curse create something that wasn't created by the first curse when they used the same info?

[Camera One]

12 minutes ago, companionenvy said:

Unlike August and Emma, who as children weren't expected to fend for themselves once discovered, Snow would have had to do something to support herself and Emma without any documentation to prove that she existed, no skill sets that were particularly relevant in the LWOM, and not even enough sense of how the new world worked to know what she needed to avoid saying and doing in interacting with other people to avoid raising major red flags.Honestly, the likeliest scenario: Snow decides to go back to a life on the run as a bandit to support Emma, but is ill-equipped to do so in the modern LWOM and gets arrested, or discovered sleeping in some hole in a forest. She would have probably wound up in a mental institution, if not jail, and Emma would still have gone into foster care. 

Since Season 6 just turned out to be a bunch of repetitive storylines and filler anyway, I wish we could have just gotten a series of "what if" episodes, and this would definitely have been one I would have wanted to see.

One I wanted to see but turned out horribly was of course "What if the Curse never happened and Emma got to grow up in the Enchanted Forest?"

[andromeda331]

15 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

Because poor Lily deserves kindness more than Emma.

Of course she does! Don't forget Emma had a better life then Lily growing up! 

[daxx]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

One I wanted to see but turned out horribly was of course "What if the Curse never happened and Emma got to grow up in the Enchanted Forest?"

Example A of why I stopped wishing for things by these show runners. Anything we’d wish for would be twisted into something the fans would hate. Example B the first proposal. Example C the wedding (don’t hate it but it’s everything I didn’t want) I didn’t like the location, it should have been on the Jolly, the dress is all wrong the Camelot white dress was better, the rings were way too modern and sterile, Hook’s tux was too modern and not fairytale, why didn’t Nemo marry them on the sea? 

[Rumsy4]

I accidentally posted this in the wrong thread.

Emma's backstory is unbelievable. It's ridiculous that she'd never been in any foster home for more than six months. And yet, the writers didn't use the opportunity to make her a bit like Harry Potter, with her manifesting magic unknowingly and scaring away foster parents. Except for Cleo, every single significant interaction she had pre-Storybrooke was with people who were also from the EF. And the Cleo backstory was somehow the worst of all. It really reduced Emma into a Cleo copycat, and made her a runaway until she was twenty-six. And Emma, please stop crediting Bagel with your breaking-and-entering skills. You could do that before you met that loser. Her goodness was apparently only because Snowing did a Foetal-Darkectomy on her. It's obvious that A&E didn't care a hang about Emma.

12 minutes ago, daxx said:

Example A of why I stopped wishing for things by these show runners. Anything we’d wish for would be twisted into something the fans would hate. Example B the first proposal. Example C the wedding (don’t hate it but it’s everything I didn’t want) I didn’t like the location, it should have been on the Jolly, the dress is all wrong the Camelot white dress was better, the rings were way too modern and sterile, Hook’s tux was too modern and not fairytale, why didn’t Nemo marry them on the sea? 

Agree with all your criticism. Season 6 was the worst!! I try to forget it ever existed.

[profdanglais]

1 hour ago, daxx said:

Example A of why I stopped wishing for things by these show runners. Anything we’d wish for would be twisted into something the fans would hate. Example B the first proposal. Example C the wedding (don’t hate it but it’s everything I didn’t want) I didn’t like the location, it should have been on the Jolly, the dress is all wrong the Camelot white dress was better, the rings were way too modern and sterile, Hook’s tux was too modern and not fairytale, why didn’t Nemo marry them on the sea? 

Yes, yes, yes, yes, and more yes. It's like they forgot who Emma and Hook were and just wrote a generic engagement/wedding that could have been for anyone. And then juxtaposing the wedding with the whole Black Fairy nonsense was also frustrating.