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

[Speakeasy]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think those viewers watch the show solely for one character or one pairing, and this show makes it easy to do that, with the centric structure.  Some viewers identify so strongly with a particular character, that they seem to begin adapting that character's POV.

That makes sense, protagonist morality is a big thing in this show and you can probably find enough instances of all the characters looking sympathetic to latch onto that as meaning character X, Y or Z is the real hero.

It's kind of fascinating how this leads to people coming to completely opposite conclusions after watching the exact same characters do the exact same things. I'll never understand how the Blue Fairy was some kind of sinister mastermind.

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

Commenting is definitely welcome regardless of rewatching! 

Ah, thank you! 😁 Just wanted to check.

21 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I had a real problem with him murdering Milah, even though both times it was a more magical, fantasy-style killing. But that's because although his methods were magical, a husband murdering his wife for leaving him for another man is such a real-world issue. You can't open a newspaper without seeing a case like that. Yeah, these men generally use guns rather than ripping out and crushing hearts, but the sentiment and the motive are just the same. And making him be a romantic figure in spite of that -- and then having him "kill" Milah again in the afterlife and still be a romantic figure who gets an eternal happy ending with his new wife -- was really, really bad.

Since lurking on this forum I've been slightly unnerved at remembering my lack of reaction to that, other than that it was dramatic and shocking, and the fact that I wouldn't have connected it to real life spousal murders. I also noticed when lurking somewhere here it never would have occurred to me to say Captain Hook was one of Rumples victims. Certainly not because I think Rumple was justified in what he did, it was just that, maybe it's harder to see a man, particularly one in a violent profession, as a victim of anything, and I wonder how much that attitude is at play in other aspects of the show both for the writers and the audience.

21 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I think the opposite also happened, where a number of viewers mapped their own issues onto Regina, for whatever odd reason, and therefore they sympathized with her. I've seen a lot of things online about her struggling with racism and discrimination because she was Latina, which was never in the show -- in fact, her Latin grandfather was a king. Or there was talk about her being a rape survivor, since they decided that because she didn't want to marry Leopold, he had committed spousal rape if he had sex with her. It seems that a lot of the more obsessive Regina stuff and SwanQueen stuff had very little to do with the character we saw on the screen.

The racism claim is particularly bizarre to me, since there seems to be no inter-human racism in the EF, if anything you'd expect her to be looked down on for her mother being a peasant. Also I distinctly remember her lip curling in distaste when she sees Snow White is working with dwarves.

I also note that Ginnifer Goodwin is Jewish, as is the guy who played Leopold, but his does not seem to get integrated into so many headcanons.

But yes when I started looking at the fanfic around the show I came to the conclusion there was TV Regina; a devastatingly powerful, frighteningly intelligent, fascinatingly warped and uncompromisingly vicious dark sorceress.

Then there was fanfic Regina: who was just a scared little girl who needed the love of a good woman to make her happy and fix all her problems.

And I love the first one but unfortunately she drifted more towards the second one (except for the love of a good woman bit, because THAT would have been too much on a family show😋)

21 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It didn't help that the writers played into that and skewed the sympathy of the show toward Regina, even while also having fun with how deliciously evil they could make her in the past. It's another one of those mutually exclusive things -- she's the saddest victim who ever victimed and she always gets the short end of the stick and no one really understands her, but she's also super-powerful and deliciously evil in a fun, campy way as she slaughters whole villages and rips out the hearts of anyone who so much as looks at her the wrong way when she's having a bad day. These are the writers who actually said that Regina represented the struggle to make it as a writer in Hollywood and didn't seem to see any irony in the fact that she lived in a castle that she stole -- even after she lost the war -- had great wealth and magical powers, managed to cast the curse that was successful for 28 years, and even after the curse broke, she not only didn't lose any power or wealth, but her victims begged her for friendship. But, yeah, she represents struggle.

Ok this is a convoluted theory so I'm prepared for the possibility it doesn't work BUT;

Could the fact that she is a version of a long standing fairy tale villain help to make her more sympathetic and, ina weirdly Doylist way, the underdog?

So, in the show she has all the power, she has to to be an effective villain, but she's a version of a character who we know is supposed to lose, she's got 200+ years of narrative expectation against her, plus the prophecy in the context of the show. When I look at those interviews by the writers about how they had the idea of the Evil Queen getting her happy ending, I think this is what was at work in their mind. They weren't really thinking of her as an individual, because it's hard to want a happy ending for someone who tries to kill a child for being pretty, but as a character who exists in all these stories, always to be defeated.

For the audience, maybe it takes very little, just showing that she isn't JUST vain and bloodthirsty but has other desires and fears, to make her seem human and sympathetic, because the expectation everyone brings from the fairytale is just 'vain, murderous, loses and possibly dies at the end,' 

So you have that, and then there are the unfortunate implications of the villain being a single, professional woman of colour with an adoptive child, whom she has to contend for with his blonde haired blue eyed REAL mother, all after she ruined the White Family's happy ending by bringing about the end of the feudal system*. Particularly if those things are personally important to you, you might not make the effort of separating the context of the outside world from the context of the story (and its not like the story is so brilliant that it invites you to make a big effort to enjoy it)

And there's almost an expectation and a desire to subvert and invert fairy tales sinc they're so well known. Even kids' fairy tales these days contain subversions and nudge-wink acknowledgements of the original versions being silly in some way. So I think maybe some of the audience went in looking for a way for the Evil Queen to be the misunderstood victim.

So... There's my idea. Wow, that was longer than I expected 😲

*Note, social justice should not be on her side all the way here, since she's a rich aristocrat who escapes punishment because of her family connections and is never put on trial for the crimes she commits after that, she gaslights her adoptive child, sexually abuses her employees, and feudal system or not, she didn't give those people an option to keep their homes, memories or traditions. Cultural genocide is still cultural genocide if you disapprove of the culture being destroyed, that's actually ALWAYS the justification for destroying a culture. 

[Camera One]

I think some people also gained a lot of sympathy for Regina right off the bat because she was an adoptive mother who might lose her child to a birth mother.  

Even though I cheered on Emma, the actress who played Regina (and Rumple) really did a great job in the sense that I could still feel for them and even felt sympathy for them despite knowing the horrible deeds they committed.  

This was one of the reasons I fell for this show in Season 1.  I truly enjoyed all the characters.  

But it seems like there were extreme factions who could only sympathize with one character or one couple.  I simply can't imagine enjoying a show where I only liked one character a lot and hated all others with the fire of a thousand suns.

[KAOS Agent]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Even though I cheered on Emma, the actress who played Regina (and Rumple) really did a great job in the sense that I could still feel for them and even felt sympathy for them despite knowing the horrible deeds they committed.  

The thing is that in S1, they largely contained Regina's villainy to revenge on Snow. It was in S2 where she started massacring villages and then later had her crushing the hearts of randoms just because she was sad. They had her claim that all of her victims were collateral damage in her battle against Snow, but that does not work when they have her killing a groom on his wedding day or murdering a jester because he's annoying or taking extreme pleasure in the death and destruction she wrought. She was much more redeemable in S1 having never crossed any of the several moral event horizons she crossed later in the series. 

Mayor Regina also wasn't overpowered. While she had a huge advantage information-wise, she was on the same level as Emma and everyone else. It made her more relatable and sympathetic as a single woman struggling to keep her adoptive son when his birth mother shows up in town.

Edited November 27, 2019 by KAOS Agent

[andromeda331]

I never really saw Regina sympathetic or a struggling single mother. That would have been nice. But they built her up so well as a villain and never really showed her caring at all about Henry. Sure in the first episode when Emma meets Regina she seems like one and starts out saying the right things. But at the end she's clearly lying when Emma asks if she loves Henry. As fun as Henry was wanting to believe at his castle when he talked about his mother. I felt for him. When he says his mother doesn't love him she only pretends too. They never really show us any nice or loving mother-son scenes. She spends all Saturday in bed with her sex slave Graham. He runs off all the time. She has no problem setting up Henry to hear that talk with Emma even though she knows it will destroy him. She put him in therapy to gaslight him. After she kills Graham, Henry wanted to stop Operation Cobra because he was scared Regina would kill Emma. Henry chose to go with Emma when the curse was broken. Then with Charming who he saves by arriving just as Regina was going to kill him. At least until the next episode when Regina shows up at the meeting throwing fire balls until Henry agrees to go with her not because he wants to but because he's scared she's going to hurt someone. Then immediately tries to escape. They never had a good mother-son relationship. Even after they "magically" fix it. Regina ignores him when she's not interested. Emma takes care of all the carrying for Henry. When her boyfriend goes back to the wife she murdered but was undone she refuses to see Henry. He puts together a cheer up basket for her. The closest they ever got was after Henry talks to Regina in season two the second episode and she tries to do better for Henry. That might have been interesting. Since she apparently finally saw the connection in how she treated Henry compared to how her mother treated her. Well, until they dropped that.

Where was she the sympathetic adoptive mother? She was a terrible mother who treated him like crap, gaslight him and he was scared of. She deserved to lose him. Henry deserved a better mother and no I never felt sorry for her when he want to Emma. She did everything she could to drive him right into Emma's arms. Not to mention all the children she sent to their deaths, how she screwed over Jefferson's daughter, Hansel and Gretel, and Owen. 

[Shanna Marie]

On 11/26/2019 at 9:34 AM, Speakeasy said:

I'll never understand how the Blue Fairy was some kind of sinister mastermind.

I think that was mostly a joke based on how the show never let her do anything actually useful while also saying how powerful she was and on how anything she was allowed to do ended up having terrible consequences. Like her giving Bae the magic bean ended up leading to Rumple turning Regina evil so she'd cast the curse.

On 11/26/2019 at 9:34 AM, Speakeasy said:

So, in the show she has all the power, she has to to be an effective villain, but she's a version of a character who we know is supposed to lose, she's got 200+ years of narrative expectation against her, plus the prophecy in the context of the show. When I look at those interviews by the writers about how they had the idea of the Evil Queen getting her happy ending, I think this is what was at work in their mind. They weren't really thinking of her as an individual, because it's hard to want a happy ending for someone who tries to kill a child for being pretty, but as a character who exists in all these stories, always to be defeated.

I do think there was a lot of that at work in their original concept. In the earlier episodes, it sounded like one of the reasons for casting the curse was to go to a place where the storybook rules didn't apply and all villains would at least stand an equal chance of getting a happy ending. But then somewhere along the way they started with that "villains don't get happy endings" thing even though they were in Storybrooke, and they had that problem where they seemed to firmly believe that Regina always got the short end of the stick even as they gave her all the good things without any real struggle. Even in the arc in which they were really emphasizing that "villains don't get happy endings" idea, they never really explored or interrogated it. It was and wasn't true, all at the same time, depending on who they were talking about at the time.

I think the real problem at the heart of it was that the writers overemphasized with Regina to the point they lost all perspective with her and they treated her like a real person.

16 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

I never really saw Regina sympathetic or a struggling single mother. That would have been nice. But they built her up so well as a villain and never really showed her caring at all about Henry.

That's where I was, and that's where I felt they were incredibly dishonest in later whitewashing her relationship with Henry, supposedly to appease the adoption community that was angry about showing the adoptive mother as evil. But season one Regina was a terrible mother. She put her own desires ahead of Henry's good every single time and was willing to hurt him in order to win. She didn't even act like she had much interest in him. If she'd really felt threatened by the birth mother showing up in town, she could have competed by actually being a good mother to Henry -- spend time with him, let him do things that interested him, not set up situations to crush his spirit. But all she did was attack Emma. She gave Henry no reason at all to want to choose her.

They could have done something positive by having Henry and Regina gradually build a relationship as she worked to do better and to start thinking of him first, as they started doing in season two. It was very dishonest writing to just whitewash it all in season three and act like they'd always been super close. If they wanted to give a more balanced take on adoption, they could have shown a positive adoptive relationship rather than whitewashing the abusive relationship (and then later giving it a creepy closeness that bordered on inappropriate).

[Melgaypet]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

If they wanted to give a more balanced take on adoption, they could have shown a positive adoptive relationship rather than whitewashing the abusive relationship (and then later giving it a creepy closeness that bordered on inappropriate).

Jefferson's daughter Grace/Paige seemed like a good candidate for such a counterbalance. I don't recall any suggestion that her nameless Storybrooke parents weren't loving, kind people. I wouldn't have minded seeing an season 2 episode where Jefferson and these people worked out some kind of co-parenting arrangement, where it was acknowledged that these people loved Grace/Paige as much as Jefferson did and she loved them in return. We Are Both, right? But Jefferson and his daughter disappeared, never to be heard from again.

Plus, she could have been a friend to Henry. As well as Hansel and Gretel, whose Storybrooke names I'm not sure I remember - Ava and...Nick? Is that right? Anyway, Henry could have had a peer group. We wouldn't have to see a lot of them, but I think it might have made him a little easier to take. (Of course, all those kids had reason to be terrified of Regina, so they can't be blamed for keeping their distance. Assuming the writers put even that much thought into their motivations, instead of forgetting them altogether, which, you know.)

[Camera One]

They initially wanted to keep Jefferson on the show.  If they had been successful, I wonder if the endgame would have been Emma and Jefferson instead of Emma and Hook?  That would also have meant incorporating Grace into the story.

27 minutes ago, Melgaypet said:

Plus, she could have been a friend to Henry. As well as Hansel and Gretel, whose Storybrooke names I'm not sure I remember - Ava and...Nick? Is that right? Anyway, Henry could have had a peer group. We wouldn't have to see a lot of them, but I think it might have made him a little easier to take. (Of course, all those kids had reason to be terrified of Regina, so they can't be blamed for keeping their distance. Assuming the writers put even that much thought into their motivations, instead of forgetting them altogether, which, you know.)

As suggested, Henry actually did have some built-in storylines that he could have had even after the Curse ended.  Instead, he just became a mindless Regina validator and lost most of his spunk and personality.  They could have rebooted him in 3B after his memory loss, but they didn't bother.  

[andromeda331]

I remember thinking after the Curse broke that we would finally see Henry make friends. It sadly made sense during the Curse that he didn't have any. He was the only one getting older and since every kid basically doing the same thing every day, how exactly could he make friends? He had no one he could really talk to except for his therapist. No one to hang out with, no one to talk to or seem to have any longer term memory. Emma was the first person he could hang out with, spend time with, and listen to him even if she didn't believe his fairytale stories. But that never happened either. It really is too bad. It would have been nice and given him more to do. Plus make it less weird that he spends all his time around adults.

[Speakeasy]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

They initially wanted to keep Jefferson on the show.  If they had been successful, I wonder if the endgame would have been Emma and Jefferson instead of Emma and Hook?  That would also have meant incorporating Grace into the story.

That would have made for a very interesting family relationship, and possibly for some really touching drama (and, since we like to subvert standard tropes, our heroine can end up being another girl's Good Stepmother). I can't help but think it would have needed a slower pace to be fleshed out, though, rather than the rapid fire witch-invasions and Shocking Twists that dominated from season 2 onward. Hook being essentially a drifter meant they could grab him from the Outside and slot him into the main cast, and drag him along on whatever adventure they were doing at the time without worrying about any other responsibilities (what did happen to his crew after season 3?).

[Camera One]

In the bigger picture, Rumple and Regina were ultimately rewarded for casting the Curse.  Rumple got his True Love.  He was reunited with his son, who died but he didn't consider Neal his son anymore anyway, so it didn't matter as much.  Meanwhile, Regina received unconditional love from her adopted son, validation from her victims and the position of The Good Queen of the Universe.  

All Snowing gained was... well, actually, they gained nothing.  They just lost 28 years with their daughter and had a huge disruption to their life.  

[daxx]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

All Snowing gained was... well, actually, they gained nothing.  They just lost 28 years with their daughter and had a huge disruption to their life.  

This is kind of depressing when you look at it this way. Emma gained a true love but lost her whole childhood, which is painfully sad and can never be made up for. A permanent scar that will never fully heal.

Every time I think about it I get an urge to foster a teenager, but I’m not currently in the position to do so as a divorced mom with two teenagers of my own I’m still working on. 😂 

[KingOfHearts]

8 hours ago, Camera One said:

All Snowing gained was... well, actually, they gained nothing.  They just lost 28 years with their daughter and had a huge disruption to their life.  

They should be grateful. It is Thanksgiving, after all.

Quote

I remember thinking after the Curse broke that we would finally see Henry make friends

He kind of did and kind of didn't. During the Missing Year, he had friends in New York and some pal named "Avery" we never met. Then there was Violet. But still, all those people disappeared and were never mentioned again. Hmmmm.

Edited November 29, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

They should be grateful. It is Thanksgiving, after all.

In Season 10, they stole the egg of the first Thanksgiving Turkey, so they don't deserve to have a Happy Thanksgiving.

[tennisgurl]

In a way, this show became a sort of Rorschach test for a lot of viewers, seeing what they wanted to see, especially when it came to characterization, and putting a ton of themselves and their own struggles into the characters. This is especially apparent with Regina, who, especially as the show got to seasons two through five, almost seemed to be a totally different character in fandom than the one on the show. Granted that tends to happen in plenty of fandoms, but it was especially apparent on this show, Regina became this representation for all of these fans who saw themselves in part of her, so they couldn't really look at the full picture. Some fans saw a woman of color treated poorly in a mostly white society, some people saw a woman trapped in an unhappy and possibly abusive marriage, a victim of child abuse, a closeted queer woman, a struggling single mom to an adopted son, etc. Some of those things are true (mostly just the thing about Cora being abusive) much of that was clearly something put on the character by other people, and were never really a thing in the show itself. Thats probably why the hard core Regina/Swan Queen stans got so defensive whenever people pointed out the evil things that she did or any other issues with her character, they saw it almost as an attack on themselves and not a fictional character. Thats why you had so many of these posts railing on about "Captain Rape Culture" because early Hook was kind of skeevy and thats why Emma shouldn't be with him but be with Regina, totally ignoring that, unlike Hook, Regina is an actual in cannon rapist (and its one of the few things this show bizarrely has always kept about Regina, right up to the EQ creeping on Aladdin, despite never acknowledging her as a clear sexual predator) because its not about the actual characters, its about the people putting themselves onto Regina and the others characters. 

A big problem with Regina's redemption (well, one of several) as well as a lot of characters actions, is that the show never seemed to understand the scope of what they did and how that would actually affect people in real life. They basically shrug off Regina raping and killing Graham, and and Rumple killing Milah for leaving him (twice!) when things like that can and do happen in real life. You hear all kinds of stories about people who kill their partners for leaving them or for trying to escape an abusive partner, but the show doesent consider that to be a big deal, presumably because its all done with magic. But just because it was done with magic doesent mean it wasnt the same end result as many real world tragedy's! Regina slaughtered countless villages and murdered tons of innocent people, but the show wants us to forget that, as uncomfortably close as it is to real world evil people and what they do, but because it was with magic, I guess its alright? And because its Regina and Rumple, the writers favorites, its not a big deal? The show doesent seem to understand how horrible all of this is, and just glosses over it, but for a lot of the audience, it just doesent work that way.

[KingOfHearts]

I saw an article entitled, "10 Reasons Once Upon A Time Should Have Ended With Season 6" by the cringy website-that-shall-not-be-named. (*cough* ScreenRant *cough*) While there was nothing noteworthy in it to speak of, it got me thinking about how I'm actually glad Season 6 wasn't the last season. Most fans stopped watching after S6 because the ending felt very all-inclusive and S7 replaced half the cast. As clumsily written S7 was, it didn't leave the same sour taste in my mouth that S6 did. If anything, WHook and Alice were just nice bonus characters we wouldn't have gotten if the show hadn't been renewed. Don't get me wrong - S7 was bad with a capital B. S6, on the other hand, was much worse in my opinion. 

[Camera One]

That article reached a new low.  

Some of the 10 weren't even reasons for why Season 6 should have been the last season.

Quote

#7 Regina's Redemption

Regina Mills' hard work at becoming a better person pays off during "Page 23." Battling with her worse self, the Evil Queen, Regina confronts long-buried thoughts and feelings, saying aloud that she loves herself.

Huh?  What does this have to do with whether or not Season 6 should have been the last season or not?

And LOL at someone citing "Page 23" as a pivotal episode.

I too am glad there was a Season 7.  It surprises me that we still had/have so much to talk about this final season with only half the original cast.   In Season 6, the originals were actively damaged by the terrible writing and retcons so it was more painful to watch.  

Edited November 30, 2019 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

Season 7 Regina was consistently nicer and less bitchy than she had been in any other season, heck she was so nice that all the people of Fictonia elected her Queen of the Universe 😜👍🏼

So how season 7 ruined her redemption I'm not sure.

It didn't do her any favours as a character though, because she ended up looking inept. Which I guess did make her look like a bad person when you compare her to how competent she was when she was evil. 

Season one final scheme-

Problem; 'My son's birth mother is leaving but she is fated to break my curse, and besides as long as she's out there my son will always want to be with her and she'll always be a threat, and I can't kill her because that will also break my curse.'

Solution; 'use my last bit of magic to open a portal through time and space and retrieve a sleeping curse apple, bake it into a pastry to give Blondie as a peace offering, she falls into eternal sleep, can't steal my son, can't challenge my authority, but also won't die. I'll worry about the whole time moving forward and my son hating me things after I've dealt with the 'Saviour'.'

Season seven final scheme:

Problem; 'My son doesn't know who he really is, my allies and I are stuck without magic, an evil 10,000 year old eldritch horror who once wiped out all of mankind (apparently) is currently casting a spell that will destroy mankind again, I have been sent 20-odd years back in time so I can't contact my BFF the Saviour or anyone else from Storybrooke without potentially causing a paradox that will destroy the universe.: 

Solution: 'Tell my son that yes, all the fairy tale stuff is true and I am his mother even though I look five years older than him at most (juice cleanse). Fail to convince him. Try to hit the world-ending eldritch horror with a baseball bat. Fail to do that.'

It ends up looking like protecting her son and granddaughter, their new friends and indeed the entire world, just doesn't motivate her the same way as clinging on to her ill-gotten gains or pursuing a mad revenge scheme, or that she can't get anything done unless she's in charge of everything. Or both. 

Edited November 30, 2019 by Speakeasy

[tennisgurl]

The closer we get to the finale, the more the “everyone in Fictonia votes her as Queen of Everything” ending seems completely nonsensical and horrible. It has nothing to do with Reginas character arc other than her wanting everyone to worship her (she has never struck me as much of a leader even as a good guy) but I just can’t buy that however many poor souls got sucked into her vortex would “vote” for her to be Queen for Life or whatever. It’s like the START of a show and the rest of the series should be about the people resisting her despotic rule. Over on the CW, the shows in the Arrowverse have all been preparing for a big upcoming crisis that will effect their whole multiverse and some evil villain is going to come to kill/take over everything...and it’s hard to not picture Regina being the Big Bad trying to suck their shows into her abyss. 

[Camera One]

18 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

The closer we get to the finale, the more the “everyone in Fictonia votes her as Queen of Everything” ending seems completely nonsensical and horrible. 

I can't even imagine how the Writers' "How should we end the show?" discussion went.

At what point did A&E declare it was a good idea to end it with Regina being crowned Queen of Everything?  That sounds like a joke someone would make.  

The whole merge all the universes when there were a bunch of characters who had travelled back in time (causing doubles) just can't possibly make any sense.  And these are so-called sci-fi/fantasy geeks as headwriters.  Actually, they don't deserve that title because a real sci-fi/fantasy geek would have the logistics and details worked out.

Edited December 1, 2019 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

I love the ending 😜 it's the perfect way to finish a show that relied on contrivance and magical shortcuts that caused more problems than they solved; with the most contrived magical shortcut imaginable, which will undoubtedly cause far more problems than it solves 😁

And I think it's a strangely fitting for a Disney show to end with a mad despot appropriating all the stories in the world and framing it as a happy ending.

[KingOfHearts]

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

At what point did A&E declare it was a good idea to end it with Regina being crowned Queen of Everything?  That sounds like a joke someone would make.  

I think they knew no one cared, including the network, so they decided "the hell with it" and did whatever they wanted. Regina being crowned The Good Queen was never in the show's master plan, but A&E used the opportunity to stroke themselves one more time. It had a "hopeful" message but was different enough from the S6 ending to justify its own existence.

Honestly, it's too "WTF" and off-the-wall to even offend me. The Regina love train left the station a loooong time ago. At least you could say it was more memorable than the Olive Garden commercial at the end of S6... and somehow, it stayed true to what the show was about. (For better or for worse.)

Edited December 1, 2019 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

23 hours ago, Camera One said:

At what point did A&E declare it was a good idea to end it with Regina being crowned Queen of Everything?  That sounds like a joke someone would make.  

The whole merge all the universes when there were a bunch of characters who had travelled back in time (causing doubles) just can't possibly make any sense. 

As I mentioned in the "Should have happened this way" (or however it goes) thread, all of this seems like a really bad thing for someone who has traveled back in time to do. There's no way that merging all the universes didn't alter history or the timeline. Emma and Hook had to be so careful when they went back in time, but the Hyperion Heights gang is just hanging out with all the past people, Future Regina merged the worlds, and they elected Future Regina queen of the universe.

In the 8th season, the future people start blinking away because all the history alterations change things so that the future they came from doesn't happen. Henry does go realm hopping, but he knows too much about his own future to avoid changing things and the curse doesn't get cast, so they don't end up coming to Storybrooke. And then the whole space-time continuum collapses because the realms got merged in the present, but it was Future Regina who did it, and Future Regina no longer shows up in present Storybrooke.

Mostly, the ending is annoying because it comes out of the blue and has nothing to do with the season. Regina was essentially a background character with no arc, so the story wasn't building toward her becoming a queen or taking on a greater leadership role. And the merging of the realms is like something out of that meme:

Everyone:
Regina: I know! We should merge the realms!

It wasn't something needed or asked for and had nothing to do with anything that had happened. If anything, it was counter-indicated by the events of the season. If it had been easier to travel between realms, Gothel could have easily just popped over to destroy the world instead of scheming to get the curse cast, which required her to bring over all the people who ended up stopping her. Yes, the answer to everything is to make it even easier for villains to pop between realms on their quest for universal domination.

[Camera One]

11 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Regina: I know! We should merge the realms!

It really did come out of nowhere.  I wonder if it's something that A&E might have wanted to do in their final season but they didn't have any of the details worked out, so they did what they always did and just threw it in since it was their last chance to do so.  I can totally see them believing the sight gag of an aerial shot of Storybrooke beside the Enchanted Forest and Wonderland and Neverland, etc. would be one last big flourish.  And Regina being crowned The Good Queen beloved by all would be a parallel to the pilot with The Evil Queen coming into the throne room uninvited and unwanted.  

Quote

Gothel could have easily just popped over to destroy the world instead of scheming to get the curse cast, which required her to bring over all the people who ended up stopping her. 

Not only that, they basically brought Mother Gothel back to life, or at least the past version of her, so now she could just grab her Coven of 8 and destroy the world.  

But we can celebrate the fact that there's still another version of Victoria Belfrey and Dr. Facilier and the Blind Witch when the series closes.  I wonder if anyone managed to free Wish Merlin from the tree.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

7 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Not only that, they basically brought Mother Gothel back to life, or at least the past version of her, so now she could just grab her Coven of 8 and destroy the world.  

And she has access to people from her future, so she can learn how to do things better this time around. Pop over to Storybrooke, now that it's an easy stroll, kidnap one of the Hyperion Heights gang, torture them for info, upgrade her plan. And she would know about the Hyperion Heights gang because all villains are omniscient. Or else she'd get the info from Present Henry when he shows up and knows who she is because he learned it from his future self. And would Regina go through with teaching Drizella when she knows where that leads?

But Gothel was always back to life, since her present day self was always off wherever she was while her future self was back in time. It's just that they brought the present self closer to all of them and possibly gave her access to knowledge of the future.

[Camera One]

Gothel had already once committed genocide, so having all the realms together in one place where she had access to magic was NOT a good thing.  

Wouldn't there also be a fully magical Anastasia running around, while the other one was still in the coffin?  Or had that not happened yet.  Did Drizella and Anastasia travel to the Disenchanted Forest in the Hyperion Heights present, or did they travel back to the time they came from?

[Speakeasy]

I wanted to do a headcount for the Mills-Charming-Swan-Jones-Tremaine-Stiltskin...Goth family at the end of the series, here's what I get:

4 Regina Millses (The Good Queen, the Evil Queen, Mayor Mills and Wish Regina)

3 Henry Mills-Swans (Adult Henry, Original Child Henry, King Henry)

3 Killian Joneses (Storybrooke Hook, Future Young Wish Hook, Past Old Wish Hook)

2 Alice Joneses (Past Alice and Future Alice)

2 Zelrna Millses (Frisco Zelena and Storybrooke Zelena)

2 Robyn Millses (Future Robyn and Child Robyn)

2 of each of the three Tremaine sisters-past and future versions, with one Anastasia presumably still comatose

2 Mother Gothels (one being a tree, but Snow came back from being a fly so I think Gothel can come back from being a tree)

1 Rumpelstiltskin

1 Belle Stiltskin

1 Gideon Stiltskin

1 Wish Pan Stiltskin

Possibly 1 Wish Black Fairy (Fiona Stiltskin)

1 Wish Robin Hood (as Evil Queen's plus 1)

Possibly 1 Roland Hood

1 Rapunzel Tremaine

1 Lucy Mills

1 Hope Swan-Jones

1 Snow White1 Prince Charming

1 Emma Swan

And they all come to Thanksgiving because under the Redemption Through Love Act of 03 Anno Regina, villains with non-villanous children must be allowed to attend family dinners for at least 1 year to allow for the chance of them changing their ways.

I have to admit, I'd rather be Emma and know I was the original, genuine article. It's kind of appropriate that, of all the main figures in the original cast, she's the only one who hasn't been duplicated.

Edited December 2, 2019 by Speakeasy

[KingOfHearts]

To think that 4 Regina's existed in the multiverse at the same point. How did it not explode with all that ego?

[Shanna Marie]

On 12/2/2019 at 1:32 AM, Camera One said:

Wouldn't there also be a fully magical Anastasia running around, while the other one was still in the coffin?  Or had that not happened yet.  Did Drizella and Anastasia travel to the Disenchanted Forest in the Hyperion Heights present, or did they travel back to the time they came from?

What's going on with Anastasia and Drizella if they just go to the Disenchanted Forest during the Hyperion Heights present depends on how the timeline works. They should be going back more than twenty years -- It's about 4 years after the end of season six, going by the ages of Robyn and Snowflake, Robyn is about 18 when Lucy is born, then the curse happens after Lucy's 8th birthday and about 3 years have passed since then, so it's about 25 years. Ivy is played as though she's maybe in her mid to late 20s, so they might go back to about the time Rapunzel went into the tower -- if you're just looking at it based on the characters' ages. But really both Drizella and Anastasia should be older than Emma, since Alice was born soon after the curse would have been cast and that happened after Anastasia died.

There is no way to make the timeline work.

On 12/2/2019 at 3:59 AM, Speakeasy said:

1 Emma Swan

That depends on what happened to Wish Emma. Since apparently the Wishverse existed long before the wish was made, given that WHook was off fathering a daughter in another realm, there had to have been a Wish Emma who then got replaced when our Emma was sent there by the wish. I guess she didn't get sent back when Emma left.

[Camera One]

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

That depends on what happened to Wish Emma. Since apparently the Wishverse existed long before the wish was made, given that WHook was off fathering a daughter in another realm, there had to have been a Wish Emma who then got replaced when our Emma was sent there by the wish. I guess she didn't get sent back when Emma left.

Are there other realms already existing out there, like one where Young Snow used the candle to save her mother, and another realm where Ruth didn't give James to Rumplestiltskin, and another realm where Rumple never became The Dark One, and another realm where Charming decided not to take the scenic route,etc. ?  Where does it end?  Wish Hook #200, coming right up!

Edited December 4, 2019 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

What's going on with Anastasia and Drizella if they just go to the Disenchanted Forest during the Hyperion Heights present depends on how the timeline works. They should be going back more than twenty years -- It's about 4 years after the end of season six, going by the ages of Robyn and Snowflake, Robyn is about 18 when Lucy is born, then the curse happens after Lucy's 8th birthday and about 3 years have passed since then, so it's about 25 years. Ivy is played as though she's maybe in her mid to late 20s, so they might go back to about the time Rapunzel went into the tower -- if you're just looking at it based on the characters' ages. But really both Drizella and Anastasia should be older than Emma, since Alice was born soon after the curse would have been cast and that happened after Anastasia died.

There is no way to make the timeline work.

Maybe time moves slower in the Disenchanted Forest so the Tremaine girls were born 60 years before season 6 in EF/Real World years but only 20-odd DF years. By that reasoning of course those 10-12 or so years Henry spent in the DF, presumably starting at least 5 years after he left to give him time to age into Andrew West, would be 20-25 LWM years. So it would be, let's say, 2045 or something by the time the Coven cursed them.

 Or maybe they're... Elves? And they age slower than normal people after they've hit a certain age. 

Alice actually CAN use that second reason to why she should be in her 40s-50s but looks 20-something since her mother is immortal and so she might be as well, or at least have an extended lifespan (she's literally the ONLY ONE who has that excuse though).

Nothing can explain how 16-20 year old Alice met Cecelia in Wonderland 2 before her own birth, though. Unless there was a time portal just lying around.

Quote

That depends on what happened to Wish Emma. Since apparently the Wishverse existed long before the wish was made, given that WHook was off fathering a daughter in another realm, there had to have been a Wish Emma who then got replaced when our Emma was sent there by the wish. I guess she didn't get sent back when Emma left.

That's a fascinating question...

Either there was a separate physical Wish Emma who did everything Wish Emma must have done, like giving birth to Wish Henry, and she was sent somewhere else, or she was annihilated when it became time for Emma Swan to get sent to the Wish Realm OR she is like Schroedinger's Swan, so BOTH her history as Emma Swan and her history as Princess Emma are equally and simultaneously real, but there is only one physical person, despite there being two physical worlds for that history to take place in. 

There are no rules and nothing means anything, so it's hard to say which is more likely. I prefer Schroedinger's Swan, but I'll admit that a separate WEmma seems more this show's style. 

Edited December 4, 2019 by Speakeasy

[KingOfHearts]

Adam articulates how I feel about S7.

[Camera One]

I was reading old interview quotes from 4A.

Quote

"Instead of trying to do a twist on the characters and changing them," executive producer Eddie Horowitz explains, "we really wanted to make the characters like what they were in the movie, honor them and who they are and where they came from in the movie, but find a twist in how they interconnect into our Once Upon a Time world…For us, it's fun to find out what happens when Anna meets Rumpelstiltskin? What happens when the most hopeful person in the world meets the darkest person in the world?

This seemed to be the major difference with how they approached Frozen.  They didn't change the characters but just how they fit into this universe.  That seems less creative but in some ways it worked better and less distracting since we already had a handle on these characters and we didn't have to deal with A&E's shoddy characterizations.  Rather than situations like "Huh?  I don't buy Lady Tremaine is really Rapunzel" or that Edmund Dantes was only the Count of Monte Cristo in name.

Quote

Sounds to me like Anna and Charming will have some interaction, as well Regina and Elsa. "Regina's used to being alone as is Elsa," Lana teases. "There's that similarity." 

They didn't seem to stress this "similarity" very much at all.   I wonder why... maybe because their reasons for being "alone" is completely different?

Quote

Jennifer Morrison told me. "We are now discovering one script at a time the way they've put them into our world and it's amazing to see how it feels like they've always been there. "

Translation: We find out one script at a time so stop asking us where this is going.

Apparently, Ginnifer Goodwin was going to be in the original Frozen as Anna, where The Snow Queen (Megan Mullally) was completely a villain.  Olaf was the villain's sidekick guard played by Josh Gad.  Another character would have been played by Jason Biggs.

[Guest]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was reading old interview quotes from 4A.

This seemed to be the major difference with how they approached Frozen.  They didn't change the characters but just how they fit into this universe.  That seems less creative but in some ways it worked better and less distracting since we already had a handle on these characters and we didn't have to deal with A&E's shoddy characterizations.  

I tend to think that not changing the characters actually forced more creativity on them.  Or a less lazy version of creativity.

I think structure that has to be worked around can end up with a better outcome for an idea than one that doesn't face any obstacles.

Its like when the South Park creators lawyers tell them they can't say Tom Cruise is in the closet and they respond with what if we actually put him in a closet?

Its why I wish they had imposed upon themselves some sort of guideline, at the beginning, on how much leeway or types of liberties they would take with the fairy tales (and its not like there are a lot of versions to draw from) so they could periodically do a check in to see if they were taking lazy shortcuts.

Not strict adherence. Stuff like Little Bo Peep is a mob enforcer was clever.  But Lady Tremaine is really Rapunzel was not.

Enforced structure is why I think that "Snow Drifts" /  "There's No Place Like Home" are among the best episodes.  They had to figure out how to work with time travel during a period they had already done flashbacks to and worry about not messing up the future.

Edited December 7, 2019 by ParadoxLost

[Camera One]

Bringing this over from another thread because I think it's quite interesting.

9 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Regarding Mulan and Once, I had a thought... Was the inclusion of Mulan the first example if the writers making a character weaker than her source material? 

Mulan does seem to be a sort of anomaly on this show.  Most fairy tale/Disney/literary characters brought in had an episode that continued/told part of their story with direct links to the source and often supporting characters from the source.  

But Mulan strangely was always supporting someone else's story.  There was one flashback peripherally set in Enchanted Forest-Ancient China, but that was more about Belle than Mulan.  I liked seeing her occasionally in Scotland or Oz or wherever, but I was always looking forward to finding out about HER as a character.

I mean ultimately, if she had been Joan of Arc instead of Mulan, would it have made any difference in any of the episodes she appeared in?

Quote

I mean she isn't the lead so the show wouldn't focus on her but I think it's glaring that her movie is so epic and she's sidelined so much... And this happens with all the epic characters they bring in; King Arthur is a loser and a charlatan, Hercules is a sad sack who needs Snow White to get a pep talk to give him a pep talk before he gets his groove back, Edmond Dantes is a pawn in a revenge plan he wouldn't even deem worthy to use as a diversion, and Beowulf (the starting point of ALL ENGLISH LITERATURE) is some asshole killed in a flashback to retroactively ruin an original character.

It's interesting because in each of those cases, those characters got an episode within the context of their original story.  And in all those cases, the character was changed to undermine the original character.  In Mulan's case, her backstory wasn't changed but it was rarely mentioned... I don't remember her talking about her father at all.  The whole thing with Philip/Aurora and her feelings did undermine her basic character traits like with those examples above.

Hercules needed Mary Margaret to give him a pep talk but only after Snow White needed Hercules to give her a pep talk.  This show is sad sack central.

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

Yes! This! This has always bugged me. Philip was her friend and comrade in arms before she met Aurora. She was helping him on his quest to find his fiancee, who turned out to be his magically proven True Love, since his kiss broke her sleeping curse. Even considering making a move on her friend's fiancee after helping him find her goes against everything the character of Mulan was supposed to stand for. She would have suffered nobly in silence rather than do something to hurt her friend. I'm not sure she would have even let herself consider falling in love with Aurora in the first place. She'd have been totally off-limits, especially while Philip was out and they were trying to save him.

I am guessing much like everything else, this was made up for Season 3, and it was not part of their "plan" in Season 2.  I'm not even sure what their plan in Season 2 even was... they had Philip, Aurora and Mulan MIA for 2B except for the season finale.  Was there a plan to bring them back in 2B?  The whole Wraith escape for Philip occurred off-screen.  It was clear in the 2A premiere that Mulan had feelings for Philip and then it transferred to Aurora by 3A.  Did they intend to use Mulan more but the actress wasn't available.  Did they decide to pair Mulan/Aurora since Philip's actor didn't want to come back (he expressed surprise finding out on social media that Aurora was pregnant and later said he wasn't interested in playing the character anymore).

Still, that wasn't an excuse for the lame Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent adaptation they did in 4B with King Stefan.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

But Mulan strangely was always supporting someone else's story. 

She isn't Mulan to me. She'll always be "Third Wheel" in my heart.

Quote

I don't remember her talking about her father at all.  

I'm fairly positive the Dragon was ultimately meant to be Mulan's father, but the writers never got to addressing that storyline. 

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Still, that wasn't an excuse for the lame Sleeping Beauty/Maleficent adaptation they did in 4B with King Stefan.

I didn't think you could do a worse adaptation than the Maleficent movie, but A&E proved me wrong.

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

I am guessing much like everything else, this was made up for Season 3, and it was not part of their "plan" in Season 2. 

In season two, it was your basic Les Mis triangle, with Mulan pining over Philip while helping him reconnect with the woman he loved, while he was barely aware that Mulan was a girl. Mulan was thisclose to wandering the streets of Paris at night in the rain while singing "On My Own." But she loved Philip enough to want to do what was best for him and what he wanted, so she put her own desires aside. Then Aurora was awake and Philip was out, and Mulan considered it her duty to look after Aurora for Philip's sake. That was especially difficult for Mulan because she really didn't like Aurora at first. She saw her as a useless girl, and odds are that she thought she was a better match for Philip because she was more of a peer. But as she got to know Aurora, she gained respect for her. That seems more in line with Mulan's character, putting her own desires aside to do what was best for her friend.

The season 3 stuff was pure fanservice because a vocal subset of fans saw the dislike turning into respect, along with Mulan's determination to protect Aurora, as romantic (never mind that she was protecting Aurora for Philip's sake because Philip loved her), and so the narrative, and Mulan's character, totally changed.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

The season 3 stuff was pure fanservice because a vocal subset of fans saw the dislike turning into respect, along with Mulan's determination to protect Aurora, as romantic (never mind that she was protecting Aurora for Philip's sake because Philip loved her), and so the narrative, and Mulan's character, totally changed.

Was it meant to be the original Ruby Slippers, a consolation prize for Swan Queen fans?  I mean, 

[Speakeasy]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Was it meant to be the original Ruby Slippers, a consolation prize for Swan Queen fans?  I mean, 

I would think... And hope, that this was motivated by regular tokenism. If either of these were to appease Swan Queen fans it's honestly insulting to everyone; it belittles the importance of LGBT representation by saying it's only necessary to appeal to this incredibly specific group of fans, and it insults that group of fans by thinking they'll be happy with any two characters of the same gender as their OTP getting together, and by doing that it kind of implies lesbians are interchangeable for story purposes. Heck, it insults their own characters by reducing Emma and Regina, their leads, to their gender.

So I'd hope they were thinking 'let's throw the Representation/Social Justice crowd a bone' rather than 'let's get the Swan Queen crowd off our backs'

11 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

In season two, it was your basic Les Mis triangle, with Mulan pining over Philip while helping him reconnect with the woman he loved, while he was barely aware that Mulan was a girl. Mulan was thisclose to wandering the streets of Paris at night in the rain while singing "On My Own." 

😆😆😆

11 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But she loved Philip enough to want to do what was best for him and what he wanted, so she put her own desires aside. Then Aurora was awake and Philip was out, and Mulan considered it her duty to look after Aurora for Philip's sake. That was especially difficult for Mulan because she really didn't like Aurora at first. She saw her as a useless girl, and odds are that she thought she was a better match for Philip because she was more of a peer. But as she got to know Aurora, she gained respect for her. That seems more in line with Mulan's character, putting her own desires aside to do what was best for her friend.

The season 3 stuff was pure fanservice because a vocal subset of fans saw the dislike turning into respect, along with Mulan's determination to protect Aurora, as romantic (never mind that she was protecting Aurora for Philip's sake because Philip loved her), and so the narrative, and Mulan's character, totally changed.

It's interesting from a representation perspective because while it's easy to see why people clamoured for option 2, the relationship they had in 2A is the other kind of representation which was so often trumpeted on this show; friendship and respect between women, and there's a bit more nuance there as well, in my view, because it's two women who have preconceived notions about each other which they have to overcome: Aurora to see that just because she's another woman who is close to her lover doesn't mean Mulan is The Other Woman (and that even if she is in love with him, to recognise that Mulan is really serious about this Honour and Duty stuff), and Mulan to see that Aurora can have her own kind of strength despite being born to privilege and not being able to kill things.

13 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

She isn't Mulan to me. She'll always be "Third Wheel" in my heart.

Always the bridesmaid, eh Ping? It's an odd way to appeal to these vocal Sleeping Warrior/Gay Princesses Now fans by giving them a gay(or bi) princess, making her a mopey third wheel to a straight couple, giving her a couple of cameos and having her last appearance be as the mopey third wheel to a gay couple.

13 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I didn't think you could do a worse adaptation than the Maleficent movie, but A&E proved me wrong.

I liked Maleficent. Well, mainly I liked Angelina Jolie and the War Ents.

Didn't this episode also say,or imply, that Briar Rose was Aurora's mother, and that she'd basically gone through another version of the Sleeping Beauty story with Mal going after the family for multiple generations? Or did I headcanon that? In either case I think that's an interesting concept.

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

Mulan does seem to be a sort of anomaly on this show.  Most fairy tale/Disney/literary characters brought in had an episode that continued/told part of their story with direct links to the source and often supporting characters from the source.  

But Mulan strangely was always supporting someone else's story.  There was one flashback peripherally set in Enchanted Forest-Ancient China, but that was more about Belle than Mulan.  I liked seeing her occasionally in Scotland or Oz or wherever, but I was always looking forward to finding out about HER as a character.

I mean ultimately, if she had been Joan of Arc instead of Mulan, would it have made any difference in any of the episodes she appeared in?

I wonder if they didn't want to take the risk of messing up a Disney Princess story (because most of us know her as a Disney Princess not a Chinese legend, as opposed to Sleeping Beauty or Snow White where a new version can be seen as parallel to the Disney Princess version because we all know the fairy tale) and of accidentally doing something insensitive in their portrayal of fairytale China. 

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

It's interesting because in each of those cases, those characters got an episode within the context of their original story.  And in all those cases, the character was changed to undermine the original character.  In Mulan's case, her backstory wasn't changed but it was rarely mentioned... I don't remember her talking about her father at all.  The whole thing with Philip/Aurora and her feelings did undermine her basic character traits like with those examples above.

They clearly, I think, wanted her to be respectable, and a legitimate hero-again I think this is due to being an official Disney Princess. They really seemed to go out of their way with those other characters to make them inferior to the regulars (Regina off handedly mentions she could kill the Knights of the Round Table 'with a wave of my hand'-for instance). It seems like they didn't know how to put that into practice.

I also don't think they saw her later attitude as undermining her character, maybe this is us overthinking it, but I think there's a difference in attitude as well; that maybe the thought was that you shouldn't keep your feelings hidden and should have the courage to take a chance on love, which is a common romantic movie message,but usually in those movies the disposable fiancé isn't someone the love interest has magical curse-breaking true love with, or braved wraiths and witches and Odin knows what else in order to get to.

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

I am guessing much like everything else, this was made up for Season 3, and it was not part of their "plan" in Season 2.  I'm not even sure what their plan in Season 2 even was... they had Philip, Aurora and Mulan MIA for 2B except for the season finale.  Was there a plan to bring them back in 2B?  The whole Wraith escape for Philip occurred off-screen.  It was clear in the 2A premiere that Mulan had feelings for Philip and then it transferred to Aurora by 3A.  Did they intend to use Mulan more but the actress wasn't available.  Did they decide to pair Mulan/Aurora since Philip's actor didn't want to come back (he expressed surprise finding out on social media that Aurora was pregnant and later said he wasn't interested in playing the character anymore).

It's... To paraphrase Phil Coulson, they lack conviction. If you want to put them together PUT THEM TOGETHER. Fridge Philip and have the two of them get closer and closer in their shared grief until they learn to move forward and find love again with each other, that's a nice story. If you can't or won't do that, have the three of them ride off into the sunset as man and wife and ethnic third wheel, or have them separate because Mulan is going back to fairytale China, or something..

[Shanna Marie]

On 12/8/2019 at 1:10 AM, Camera One said:

Was it meant to be the original Ruby Slippers, a consolation prize for Swan Queen fans? 

I don't think so. I really do think it was primarily fanservice, coming from their addiction to praise/fear of criticism. There was a lot of online noise about how Mulan returning Aurora's heart looked sexual, and I think the writers played into that by making it canon text that at least Mulan had feelings for Aurora. (They're weirdly selective about which group of fans they'll service, but I think people like those on this forum didn't praise them enough to get what they wanted.) But either they chickened out or were held back by Disney. It seems that they were restricted from changing the outcomes for Disney Princesses too much (maybe even why Belle was never allowed to leave Rumple for good, even though he was a villain. They didn't want Belle dumping the Beast). They had more leeway for more generic fairytale characters, but Mulan is mostly known in the US via the Disney cartoon, so comes closer to being a specific character.

But that then did lead to questions and criticism about representation, which led to the infamous "Really, we've got an LGBT episode in the works!" interview, which led to headlines, so they had to come through with it, and that led to the Merida/Ruby/Mulan adventure, which again wimped out. Which led to the "Ha, no, that wasn't our LGBT episode. We really do have a real, epic romance coming up." Which was how we got "Ruby Slippers." And that led to Alice/Robyn for the "really, we're going to actually do it this time, and it will be a relationship like any other one on the show, a real story arc."

On 12/8/2019 at 5:02 AM, Speakeasy said:

It's interesting from a representation perspective because while it's easy to see why people clamoured for option 2, the relationship they had in 2A is the other kind of representation which was so often trumpeted on this show; friendship and respect between women, and there's a bit more nuance there as well, in my view, because it's two women who have preconceived notions about each other which they have to overcome: Aurora to see that just because she's another woman who is close to her lover doesn't mean Mulan is The Other Woman (and that even if she is in love with him, to recognise that Mulan is really serious about this Honour and Duty stuff), and Mulan to see that Aurora can have her own kind of strength despite being born to privilege and not being able to kill things.

That would have been an interesting approach to take, to skewer the "Not Like Other Girls" myth and show these two women who were very different but learning to respect each other and not get caught up in jealousy over a man. Though that would have worked better if we'd actually seen them working together to save Philip and Philip coming back to himself to find his fiancee and his friend as friends.

On 12/8/2019 at 5:02 AM, Speakeasy said:

I also don't think they saw her later attitude as undermining her character, maybe this is us overthinking it, but I think there's a difference in attitude as well; that maybe the thought was that you shouldn't keep your feelings hidden and should have the courage to take a chance on love, which is a common romantic movie message,but usually in those movies the disposable fiancé isn't someone the love interest has magical curse-breaking true love with, or braved wraiths and witches and Odin knows what else in order to get to.

It is a pretty common movie/TV trope that the worst thing you can do (other than tell someone else's secret) is have a feeling you don't express. If you have any feelings toward a person, you MUST tell them, regardless of the possible consequences. Look at Love Actually, with a whole plot line about a man in love with his best friend's wife, building to him confessing his feelings to her even though he doesn't expect anything to come of it. It's treated as a romantic, heroic act rather than a real jerk move. In reality, it would make things really awkward. Is she expected to keep this a secret from her husband? What happens if she tells her husband? Will he be willing to put up with his friend after that? I think that was the idea behind this storyline, that Mulan had to be courageous enough to recognize and express her feelings and she had to live with the fact that she didn't, with no consideration given to how that plays into her friendship with Philip.

[Camera One]

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

maybe even why Belle was never allowed to leave Rumple for good, even though he was a villain. They didn't want Belle dumping the Beast

I did get the sense from their interviews that A&E genuinely thought Rumbelle was a very moving True Love story to the end, and Rumple betraying everyone (including Belle) over and over again was irrelevant to how genuine his love was.

Quote

It seems that they were restricted from changing the outcomes for Disney Princesses too much

I guess the main exception didn't come until Season 7, when they had Rapunzel with all the Tangled imagery poison someone's heart and then develop into a jealous murderess.

3 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But that then did lead to questions and criticism about representation, which led to the infamous "Really, we've got an LGBT episode in the works!" interview, which led to headlines, so they had to come through with it, and that led to the Merida/Ruby/Mulan adventure, which again wimped out. Which led to the "Ha, no, that wasn't our LGBT episode. We really do have a real, epic romance coming up." Which was how we got "Ruby Slippers."

This was very true.

They never did do a romantic relationship with two guys, did they?

Edited December 10, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

55 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I did get the sense from their interviews that A&E genuinely thought Rumbelle was a very moving True Love story to the end, and Rumple betraying everyone (including Belle) over and over again was irrelevant to how genuine his love was.

I don't think they ever really considered having Belle dump Rumple, but I was trying to figure out how Disney let them get away with that depiction of one of their hot properties, especially with a live-action version coming out. The only thing I could imagine was that they were okay as long as Belle ended up in her canon relationship.

58 minutes ago, Camera One said:

They never did do a romantic relationship with two guys, did they?

No, and there were no other queer couples, even in the background. That's why it came across as so weird when no one even blinked about Red and Dorothy when it looked like they'd never ever seen a gay couple before.

I wonder, was Jiminy/Archie ace? I don't recall any hint of relationship for him, other than his friendship with Gepetto/Marco.

[Camera One]

From an interview during 6B:

Quote

Can we expect another reunion with Rumple and the Black Fairy?

Kitsis: I would be really disappointed to set up his mother and we only showed them together for about 20 seconds. If we didn't [reunite them], I would throw something at the TV.

I would be really disappointed if they set up Snow and Emma as mother and daughter and we only saw them alone together for about 20 seconds every other season.  I think the TV should be destroyed by now if we threw something at the TV for every instance of dropped payoff involving the "heroes" on this show.

[Camera One]

Considering they never told the backstory of "Mulan", I think it would be a possible candidate for a spinoff.

Another possibility is "The Lion King".  I'm surprised they didn't attempt to incorporate that story with the characters in human form, which was a variation of Hamlet.  Scar and Regina could commiserate about pesky children blocking the path to the throne.

There could have been a Fictional Shakespearean World, and we could have gotten Romeo and Juliet, the 3 Witches from Macbeth, Lady MacBeth, etc.

I just thought of something.  Instead of Jasmine and Aladdin in Season 6, we could have Nala coming to Storybrooke repeating that she needed to save Pride Rock and then we find out that Simba ran away from his destiny as Savior™!  

[Speakeasy]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Considering they never told the backstory of "Mulan", I think it would be a possible candidate for a spinoff.

The possibilities there are endless, but to be honest I'm not sure Jamie Chung would want to come back for it... Could they swap her out for someone else?

Id be up for Ming Na Wen playing an older and jaded Mulan with some backstory that explains why she's no longer in fairytale China, but I fear I'm just imagining her Agents of SHIELD character with a sword.

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

There could have been a Fictional Shakespearean World, and we could have gotten Romeo and Juliet, the 3 Witches from Macbeth, Lady MacBeth, etc.

You could probably put Shakespeare characters into the Enchanted Forest or Land of Untold Stories and they'd fit pretty well (I mean if Blackbeard, a version of a real person, can be in the Enchanted Forest..) at one point I was doing a Fantasy Coven recruitment for the S7 villains and I picked Lady Macbeth as one of them.

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

I just thought of something.  Instead of Jasmine and Aladdin in Season 6, we could have Nala coming to Storybrooke repeating that she needed to save Pride Rock and then we find out that Simba ran away from his destiny as Savior™!  

Simba would have been more fitting than Aladdin, he had a lot of insecurities in his movie but he never backed down from a fight.

Would have made more sense for Simba to be the Cowardly Lion than for Selena to have just once seen this fireproof lion this one time too. Lion King is one of Disney's most enduringly popular things though, the Powers might not have wanted to risk Once... Onceing it.

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't think so. I really do think it was primarily fanservice, coming from their addiction to praise/fear of criticism. There was a lot of online noise about how Mulan returning Aurora's heart looked sexual, and I think the writers played into that by making it canon text that at least Mulan had feelings for Aurora. (They're weirdly selective about which group of fans they'll service, but I think people like those on this forum didn't praise them enough to get what they wanted.) But either they chickened out or were held back by Disney.

This is an odd thing to say on a website for discussing TV shows, but I think it's things like this that show writers shouldn't engage with fans that much, at least not in terms of trying to take their desires/suggestions/whatever on board. Modern fandom has this tendency to be really factional, this show more than many others, many fans are not looking at the whole structure of the story, they're looking at one character or one relationship when they make these kind of claims/requests/demands, without worrying too much about how that fits into the rest of the plot.

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

But that then did lead to questions and criticism about representation, which led to the infamous "Really, we've got an LGBT episode in the works!" interview, which led to headlines, so they had to come through with it, and that led to the Merida/Ruby/Mulan adventure, which again wimped out. Which led to the "Ha, no, that wasn't our LGBT episode. We really do have a real, epic romance coming up." Which was how we got "Ruby Slippers." And that led to Alice/Robyn for the "really, we're going to actually do it this time, and it will be a relationship like any other one on the show, a real story arc."

I wonder if this would have been different if the show had started a few years later, there seem to be a lot more gay storylines on TV these days even compares to 2011/12... Mind you, Glee was already a big success at that point, and they'd had 2 gay romance subplots for years, so who knows.

I do wonder sometimes why they didn't actually have a Swan Queen romance if they wanted an LGBT storyline, Disney clearly didn't care what they did with Regina, and Emma was their own creation. I mean maybe that just wasn't the plan but the plan seemed to change from one episode to the next anyway, and a big chunk of their most vocal fans would sing hymns to their glory for all of time if they did. 

10 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It is a pretty common movie/TV trope that the worst thing you can do (other than tell someone else's secret) is have a feeling you don't express. If you have any feelings toward a person, you MUST tell them, regardless of the possible consequences. Look at Love Actually, with a whole plot line about a man in love with his best friend's wife, building to him confessing his feelings to her even though he doesn't expect anything to come of it. It's treated as a romantic, heroic act rather than a real jerk move. In reality, it would make things really awkward. Is she expected to keep this a secret from her husband? What happens if she tells her husband? Will he be willing to put up with his friend after that? I think that was the idea behind this storyline, that Mulan had to be courageous enough to recognize and express her feelings and she had to live with the fact that she didn't, with no consideration given to how that plays into her friendship with Philip.

I know! 

And for a show that is about fairy tales but Not Just Romantic Love, it doesn't help if you devalue the importance of friendship to set up a love story.

It's a storm in a teacup of course because these are all guest characters who they couldn't bring back after their brief appearance.

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

No, and there were no other queer couples, even in the background. That's why it came across as so weird when no one even blinked about Red and Dorothy when it looked like they'd never ever seen a gay couple before.

I wonder, was Jiminy/Archie ace? I don't recall any hint of relationship for him, other than his friendship with Gepetto/Marco.

This I think illustrates the whole problem,I don't imagine they thought Archie was ace, because I think they'd assume everyone was straight unless stated otherwise. And even if they did, it wouldn't matter unless they said so explicitly.

I don't think thewriters were prepared to make the effort to include queer characters until they were prodded to do so, which is why the effortsfelt so weak up until S7, where Mad Archer (or whatever) was about on the average level of an OUAT half season romance.

[Camera One]

On 12/7/2019 at 12:03 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I'm fairly positive the Dragon was ultimately meant to be Mulan's father, but the writers never got to addressing that storyline. 

The other possibility was Lily, I guess.  I'm still shocked at the reveal that her real father was Zorro.  A&E are so clever and detail-oriented.

Mulan's father having magic would have undermined the story somewhat, since Mulan went to war because her father was too weak to fight.  I suppose there could have been a parallel story where Mulan went off to fight and Mulan's father learned magic so he could rescue Mulan, at great cost, since he was banished to the Land Without Magic.  

They never did have Mulan say she was looking for her father, so it was strange to hint at the Dragon's daughter in Season 6 yet they didn't do the same in Mulan's appearance in Season 5.

I suppose if Mulan's bonds with her father was explored as well as Belle's bond with hers, we really didn't miss anything.

Edited December 10, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

4 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I do wonder sometimes why they didn't actually have a Swan Queen romance if they wanted an LGBT storyline, Disney clearly didn't care what they did with Regina, and Emma was their own creation. I mean maybe that just wasn't the plan but the plan seemed to change from one episode to the next anyway, and a big chunk of their most vocal fans would sing hymns to their glory for all of time if they did. 

I don't think the writers actually wanted an LGBT storyline. I don't think they really wanted Swan Queen, or even Aurora and Mulan. They just wanted the praise for even considering it, but didn't want to change their plans. I think that's the main thing that was going on with the Mulan and Aurora thing. They didn't want to change things enough to deal with actually splitting up Philip and Aurora and putting Mulan with Aurora, but they wanted to be praised by the vocal fans, so all they did was make Mulan's interest canon text but didn't go anywhere with it. I think the main point of all that was to set up Mulan joining the Merry Men, and wasn't it in welcoming her to the group that we saw Robin's tattoo?

As for Swan Queen, they had no intention of ever going there, but they wanted to keep those fans engaged, so they kept teasing things and setting up situations for the fans to squee over. I think they even backed off of some of the Emma and Hook stuff to keep those fans happy. But as a result, no one was happy. The teasing just fueled the Swan Queen speculation and gave those fans hope, which only made them angrier and more frustrated. And it meant that the relationship they were actually doing on screen was weakened. I think it also weakened Emma's character, since the teasing usually put her in a subservient position to Regina. Season one Emma never would have chased after Regina, begging to be her friend.

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

There could have been a Fictional Shakespearean World, and we could have gotten Romeo and Juliet, the 3 Witches from Macbeth, Lady MacBeth, etc.

Fictional Shakespearean World could have been a lot of fun. But knowing this show, it would have amounted to a guy named Romeo showing up for 30 seconds, stating his name, but otherwise having nothing to do with Romeo. A Romeo is a lover, right? So he'd show up and flirt with every woman around before getting killed in a duel. The people actually familiar with the play would be left going, "Huh? I think they missed the point."

After all, these are the guys who took the Count of Monte Cristo, whose story was about the ultimate long game, taking years to develop a subtle revenge scheme, and had him walk into a party and state, "I'm here for revenge!"

[KingOfHearts]

47 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The other possibility was Lily, I guess.  I'm still shocked at the reveal that her real father was Zorro.  A&E are so clever and detail-oriented.

I believe A&E were straight up asked if the Dragon was Lily's father and they said no. But it was weird that the only male dragon person on the show, who had a missing daughter to boot, wasn't Lily's.

[Camera One]

Talking about how there were zero clues that Nick was the serial killer until the big twist reminded me of my recent rewatch of "Whatever Happened to Frederick".  I was surprised that August actually said to Emma, "Well, say what you want about me. I always tell the truth."

That was 7 episodes before the reveal that he was Pinocchio, and that's the type of thing you want to see on a rewatch, a line that seems like a throwaway but actually was a clue about who he was.

I don't think there has been any of those types of moments in the rewatch of Season 7 thus far.  

Edited December 18, 2019 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

Talking about how there were zero clues that Nick was the serial killer until the big twist reminded me of my recent rewatch of "Whatever Happened to Frederick".  I was surprised that August actually said to Emma, "Well, say what you want about me. I always tell the truth."

That was 7 episodes before the reveal that he was Pinocchio

Ah, back in the days when the characters actually had something in common with their fairytale counterparts, other than maybe their name and perhaps an article of clothing. It was specific enough that you couldn't just slap a fairytale identity on an existing character (as I'm pretty sure happened when suddenly Jack who fought giants was actually Hansel).

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Ah, back in the days when the characters actually had something in common with their fairytale counterparts, other than maybe their name and perhaps an article of clothing. It was specific enough that you couldn't just slap a fairytale identity on an existing character (as I'm pretty sure happened when suddenly Jack who fought giants was actually Hansel).

It was also apparent that the writers did more than just read the Wikipedia articles. They used subtle details from the story that wouldn't have been terribly obvious for someone who hadn't read or seen the source material before. 

If you compare Nick with Jefferson, Jefferson makes a lot more sense as the fairy tale character he's alluding to. While both he and the Mad Hatter were "mad", Jefferson was more nuanced with a slightly different definition of the word. What's funny is that it's not original to say Hansel and Gretel were traumatized by the incident with the witch. There's been many takes on the tale where they grew up as witch hunters or even magic users themselves. The problem is that Nick has so little to do with Hansel. As others have already stated, if he wants revenge on witches, it doesn't make sense that he sat around twiddling his thumbs and then suddenly decided to do random hits. This show has always been clumsy with characters who are against magic. Another problem this show has is tacking on too many personas to the same character. He's Hansel, Nick the ex, Jack the Giant Slayer, and a serial killer. If you're going to make a character wear that many hats, you need to show the transition between the phases and give good reasons for why they changed or pretended to be someone else. As it stands, Nick's motivations were weak sauce. He doesn't fit into the narrative at all.

If the writers wanted to drive a wedge between Henry and Jacinda for drama, Jacinda or Henry should've already been in a relationship with someone else under the curse. Having a random ex come in that nobody knows hardly anything about it is super cheap. When Kathryn showed up in S1, she was "married" to David. She wasn't some ex-girlfriend he could just dump because Mary Margaret looked hotter. That's what made that situation so difficult. The show even bothered to elaborate on her character so we'd sympathize for her, both in the past and in the present, over the course of several episodes. In S7, Henry and Jacinda had a lot more agency than anyone in the S1 curse had. They were free to make their own choices and there weren't many obstacles in the way. Unlike David and Mary Margaret, their personalities were exactly the same as before. Jacinda had no reason to go out with Nick other than "he's a lawyer and he's hot."  He was supposedly Lucy's biological father, but that was never actually a factor. Nobody cared -not even Jacinda. And all this crap is thrown against Nick being Henry's guy pal, and it just makes no damn sense.

At this point in the season, Henry and Jacinda didn't even need a love triangle. It was completely unnecessary, like everything else about Nick.

Edited December 18, 2019 by KingOfHearts