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

[tennisgurl]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

That is really horrible.  There's a special place in the light for that type of atrocity.  I vaguely remember being quite horrified by it, but when I read a synopsis, it was written like she simply took their hearts.

 

Arent we glad though that she got to go to heaven by admitting that she loved her also murderous daughters while doing nothing to earn redemption?! A show about hope, hope that the mass murderer in your life can get a happy ending too while doing the bare minimum to redeem themselves. I feel kind of bad, this show has so many horrific mass slaughters, I actually forgot this one! Like mother like daughter I guess. 

I think it was pretty strongly implied that Hook knew what Cora was getting up to (I honestly forgot how brutal that was until it was mentioned up thread) and that is probably one of his worst acts, even if he was just watching. I dont know if I would say its out of character in the way that killing Charming's dad was, as he could probably rationalize it as being awful but necessary for his revenge (he was still in the blinded by rage and revenge point of his character) but we also didn't see the actual event, so its hard to say what he really thought about it. We saw early on that he disliked Cora's casual cruelty and murder, so its possible he wasn't happy about this either or felt like there was nothing else that he could do without getting killed as well, but it was still something he was involved in on some level. This is, again, something that I would have liked to see explored, and would have been a way better event to look at than the stupid "Hook killed Charmings dad" retcon. 

[Shanna Marie]

I may have to rewatch that arc -- which isn't a problem, really, because it's one I actually enjoy watching -- because now I'm not entirely sure exactly how it went.

I'm trying to put the story in order and figure out how to make it make sense. It starts with Regina sending Hook to kill Cora. Cora threatens/tempts him into abandoning Regina and joining her. She tells him about Regina's curse that will send everyone, including the Dark One, to a world without magic, where the Dark One will be a killable mortal. The catch is that anyone who gets caught in that curse will lose their identity and memory, so Hook wouldn't know he wanted to kill Rumple. Hook and Cora go back to the Enchanted Forest, and they fake Cora's death, making Regina think that Hook carried out his mission. Just before the curse hits, Cora creates a magical shield that protects her and Hook from the curse. They'll still be frozen in time, but they'll remain where they are and keep their memories. When the curse is broken, they can travel to that other world, where Cora will be able to confront her daughter and Hook will be able to kill Rumple.

When time starts moving again and Cora's bubble comes down, the people who were caught in that bubble find themselves having to deal with the ogres who moved into the Enchanted Forest after all the people were taken away.

And here we run into some problems with later retcons. In season 2, they made it look like the Coradome wasn't all that big and didn't contain many people. They seemed to have really been frozen, so they weren't really aware of the passage of time and weren't able to go anywhere or do anything. Time did seem to be moving outside the dome, and thus the ogres who had 28 years to establish themselves in the former Enchanted Forest. But then it seemed like the Coradome covered the rest of the world because time was frozen everywhere. Nobody except our world outside Storybrooke and the Wishverse (and possibly the Disenchanted Forest, since WHook was there during most of the curse years, and he wouldn't have aged ahead of Hook Prime, in spite of being from the Wishverse, if he'd been in a place that was frozen) seems to have moved forward during that time. All the Wonderland spinoff events spanned either end of the curse, and none of those people aged 28 years. And then we learned that the dome was big enough for Hook to have sea adventures.

Which makes me wonder what would have happened if Cora hadn't made a dome. Would the entire population of that world have been brought to Storybrooke? It was already a bit much that several kingdoms landed in this small town, but would Regina have taken the whole world? If not, then why couldn't the Charmings have gone into hiding somewhere else in the world?

Anyway, back to Cora ... She seems to have set herself up as the leader of the settlement where the people who were in the dome gathered after time started moving again. I guess she wasn't well known in that world, so they wouldn't have known she was a terrible villain. But Captain Hook might have had a reputation, and it would have hurt her benevolent leader reputation to have Captain Hook as her sidekick, so he had to pose as a wounded blacksmith. I guess she didn't have a firm plan for getting to the other world until Emma and Snow showed up because they went months without doing much of anything. They didn't try to get the compass to have it handy, didn't try to find a magic bean. But then Team Princess comes on the scene, and Cora gets enough information to go after the wardrobe. Then for some reason, she slaughters everyone in the settlement, and either she and Hook plot for him to pretend to be a victim so he can infiltrate Team Princess and get them to help him get the compass (and thus cluing them in about what they need to do to get to Storybrooke) or Hook gets freaked out about her slaughtering the settlement and comes up with the idea to join Team Princess and get to Storybrooke along with Emma and Snow. Neither of them make a lot of sense. The plan idea is dumb, but then why would Cora have allowed Hook to get away from her and team up with the enemy the way he did?

Either way, the plan fails because Emma doublecrosses Hook and gets the compass, and Hook wins his way back into Cora's favor by getting Aurora's heart.

There seems to me to be a lot of extraneous nonsense going on for people who have the firm goal of finding a way to get to Storybrooke. They waste a lot of time with scheming when they could have just gone straight there. And, as with so many villain schemes, they fail to prepare properly, waiting until the rest of their plot is in place before they bother to get all the things they need. If they'd already had the compass (taking care of that in the months between time moving again and Emma and Snow showing up and guiding Cora to the wardrobe), then as soon as they got the wardrobe ashes, they could have taken off without Team Princess having any idea what was up.

5 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I think it was pretty strongly implied that Hook knew what Cora was getting up to (I honestly forgot how brutal that was until it was mentioned up thread) and that is probably one of his worst acts, even if he was just watching.

It is possible that there's a middle ground, where he was in on the plan for him to infiltrate Team Princess, but the slaughter came as a shock to him, like it was a bit extreme as a way to set him up as a victim so Team Princess would trust him -- so maybe Cora's first act was to magically bury him under rubble, then she set about her slaughter. He seemed genuinely freaked out when they found him, so maybe he hadn't exactly been in on that part of the plot, even if he was part of the scheme to set him up to join them. He was still a witness to the slaughter, but maybe not endorsing it, and there wouldn't have been much he could do to stop it if he'd managed to get out from under the rubble.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Anyway, back to Cora ... She seems to have set herself up as the leader of the settlement where the people who were in the dome gathered after time started moving again. I guess she wasn't well known in that world, so they wouldn't have known she was a terrible villain.

Was she pretending to be Lancelot the whole time, as the leader?

Quote

Then for some reason, she slaughters everyone in the settlement, and either she and Hook plot for him to pretend to be a victim so he can infiltrate Team Princess and get them to help him get the compass (and thus cluing them in about what they need to do to get to Storybrooke)

I think when I first watched, I assumed what you said.  Cora slaughtered everyone to plant Hook as a mole for her, to infiltrate Team Princess.  Which was a totally over-the-top reason for mass murder, but whatever, who cares about redshirts, right?  Plus "The Walking Dead" is popular and we can have zombies too.

If Cora was that heavy-handed, why not just kill everyone in Storybrooke too?

They loved Cora, but they never told the biggest story of all.  We did she settle as Henry Sr.'s wife?  Why didn't she try to be Queen herself instead of grooming her daughter to be one?  She was well on her way already.

Edited October 14, 2020 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

Villains on this show really do love their overly convoluted plans dont they? Regina stands out as being a bull in a china shop with no sense of long term planning and subtlety beyond "wipe memories, send to modern day, be mayor forever, results?" when almost every other bad guy have these long decades spanning plans with multiple murders and manipulating all of these people, crossing between worlds, creating false identities, and have so many moving parts and variables that could go wrong like thirty times if anyone didn't do exactly what they were expected to do. You just look at a lot of these plans, and what the villains were actually trying to accomplish, and you really wonder if all of the twists and turns were even worth it. Do all of these villains have to spend as much time as they do creating false identities and making good guys trust them? Do they always have to murder so many people? It seems like creating such convoluted plans could easily go poorly for them, its just contrivance that allows them to work out.

[KingOfHearts]

On 10/13/2020 at 10:50 PM, Camera One said:

Why didn't she try to be Queen herself instead of grooming her daughter to be one?  She was well on her way already.

She seemed oddly opposed in 2x16 to killing the several people in line for the throne. Cora seemed to be someone who liked controlling from behind the scenes, but got more murderous over time. Its weird that the writers wanted her to rip so many hearts out that she literally became the Queen of Hearts, but they also wanted her to be a conniving social climber who operated mostly through manipulation. Murder is used way too often in this show to indicate how evil someone is. I really do think the writers did Cora's village massacre to show to the audience she was even worse than Regina. (At the time, anyway. Regina got her own slaughter later.)

 

I'm personally not a big fan of killing a large number of redshirts to up the stakes. Cora could've worked as a more covert evil, only revealing her true nature to individuals who were directly in her way. Unlike Regina, she knew how to entice people and not act like a raging monster all the time. See her episode in OUATIW, for example. I prefer the idea that she only murdered when necessary because murdering someone could make for one less potential pawn. Killing Daniel made sense because he wouldn't be much use to her as a lowly stable boy and he was a distraction for Regina. It was very intentional and calculated, unlike killing a groom on his wedding day or a random jester.

Edited October 15, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[andromeda331]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I'm personally not a big fan of killing a large number of redshirts to up the stakes. Cora could've worked as a more covert evil, only revealing her true nature to individuals who were directly in her way. Unlike Regina, she knew how to entice people and not act like a raging monster all the time. See her episode in OUATIW, for example. I prefer the idea that she only murdered when necessary because murdering someone could make for one less potential pawn. Killing Daniel made sense because he wouldn't be much use to her as a lowly stable boy and he was a distraction for Regina. It was very intentional and calculated, unlike killing a groom on his wedding day or a random jester.

Same here. As much as I don't like Regina or Cora. Massacres are just unforgiveable and doesn't make you want either one to be redeemed. Both were evil but until those moments their murders were calculated to advance their plans or who rejected them like Graham. They were evil but massacres are just too over the top. And its unnecessary. What's the point? To show they killed a lot of people? Then just move on and not bother to do anything or care that so many people just died? If your not going to use it for anything or do anything with it or make either pay for the crimes then what's the point? I hated both once they massacred people I didn't want them to be redeemed. I wanted them to pay for their crimes. And it makes it so insane that Snow sees it and then lets Regina go. It destroys Snow's character too.  

[Camera One]

On 10/14/2020 at 7:20 AM, tennisgurl said:

Villains on this show really do love their overly convoluted plans dont they? Regina stands out as being a bull in a china shop with no sense of long term planning and subtlety beyond "wipe memories, send to modern day, be mayor forever, results?" when almost every other bad guy have these long decades spanning plans with multiple murders and manipulating all of these people, crossing between worlds, creating false identities, and have so many moving parts and variables that could go wrong like thirty times if anyone didn't do exactly what they were expected to do. You just look at a lot of these plans, and what the villains were actually trying to accomplish, and you really wonder if all of the twists and turns were even worth it. 

This is so true.  It *almost* makes Regina seem refreshing.  The show has ended, and it's still unclear why many of the big bads did half the things they did, or what their actual plan was.  The Black Fairy, Mother Gothel, Hades, Ingrid, Peter Pan, Zelena, Cora... even Rumple at times.  Or maybe it's all just mixed up in my mind.  When the stars in the sky aligns with the stars on the hat, what happens again?  

And then there's Cora wanting to become The Dark One.  So what would have happened if she had?  

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/13/2020 at 10:50 PM, Camera One said:

Was she pretending to be Lancelot the whole time, as the leader?

She was herself long enough for the part when Emma and Snow were first brought there and Snow was still unconscious, and Emma "WALLS!" Swan, the person whose primary character trait is not trusting anyone, blabbed all their personal business to the strange woman she trusted instantly. That came just before the retcon in which Snow remembered watching Cora do magic from when she was a child. Snow only found out that Cora was evil after Regina finally told her that Cora killed Daniel after Snow told her about Regina and Daniel. Regina banished Cora to Wonderland before the wedding, and Cora wouldn't have been doing magic with the king and Snow around because she wouldn't have wanted to jeopardize the wedding (never mind that Leopold should have already known Cora was shady, given that he'd broken an engagement with her because she lied to him, was stealing from him, and was planning to pass off someone else's child as his). Maybe she was switching back and forth between being Cora and being Lancelot, like Lancelot was her sock puppet to persuade people to follow her leadership.

On 10/15/2020 at 10:50 AM, KingOfHearts said:

She seemed oddly opposed in 2x16 to killing the several people in line for the throne. Cora seemed to be someone who liked controlling from behind the scenes, but got more murderous over time. Its weird that the writers wanted her to rip so many hearts out that she literally became the Queen of Hearts, but they also wanted her to be a conniving social climber who operated mostly through manipulation. Murder is used way too often in this show to indicate how evil someone is. I really do think the writers did Cora's village massacre to show to the audience she was even worse than Regina. (At the time, anyway. Regina got her own slaughter later.)

Yeah, that was weird that they established that Cora could commit mass murder, but then later showed that she was within a few deaths of being a queen and never did anything. There was no food poisoning outbreak, terrible disaster while she was on vacation, or anything like that. But she was willing to rip out the hearts of dozens of people for no real reason -- possibly just to create sympathy for Hook's blacksmith guise so he could infiltrate Team Princess. Again, for no good reason.

On 10/15/2020 at 2:51 PM, andromeda331 said:

They were evil but massacres are just too over the top. And its unnecessary. What's the point? To show they killed a lot of people? Then just move on and not bother to do anything or care that so many people just died? If your not going to use it for anything or do anything with it or make either pay for the crimes then what's the point?

This is one of those things where I feel like the writers took on something bigger than they were ready to deal with. It's one thing to redeem a villain who's killed individuals. But when you're dealing with wholesale slaughter, that's not something you move past easily, and especially don't turn it into a "do we have to bring that up?" like it's that bad haircut she had in eighth grade. You might get to some redemption, but it would come with a lot of guilt and should come with consequences. If you're not willing to really deal with it, then don't go there.

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

The Black Fairy, Mother Gothel, Hades, Ingrid, Peter Pan, Zelena, Cora... even Rumple at times.  Or maybe it's all just mixed up in my mind.  When the stars in the sky aligns with the stars on the hat, what happens again?  

That one did make some sense. The ritual with the hat was supposed to separate him from the dagger, so that he could retain the power and immortality of the Dark One without the risk of being controlled by the dagger (maybe also not be able to be killed by it?) and he could leave Storybrooke and still maintain his power. After having been enslaved by Zelena, I could see why he would want to do that. What didn't make sense there was why Merlin would have made the hat in the first place. Was it something he was hoping to use to save Nimue, only it didn't work and he couldn't destroy it?

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

And then there's Cora wanting to become The Dark One.  So what would have happened if she had?  

Cora's plans were all over the map. I think it didn't help that they didn't explain her backstory until just before and then after she died. When we first met her (not counting the "we haven't cast this role yet" appearance of the Queen of Hearts), the family was depicted as gentry, basically the Bennets with fewer daughters (including the meek "I'm staying out of this" husband and the mother determined to get a good marriage for her daughter). They weren't referred to with any titles, which you'd have expected if Henry Sr. was a prince. They must have planned for Cora to be the miller's daughter from the Rumpelstiltskin tale, with that Mills name (though I remember that during season one, there was a lot of speculation that Regina was the miller's daughter -- that actually would have been an interesting mash-up, that the Evil Queen became a queen as the miller's daughter from that story, so she's beholden to Rumple, and that's how he cons her into casting the curse), but the miller's daughter in the story marries a king. Then they showed her committing mass murder, then they give us the flashback in which she marries a king's younger son. But we already know that she wasn't a queen, and though she was living in luxury she's not treated like she's a princess or duchess or any kind of titled nobility, so why did she bother throwing over Rumple for Henry? She could have been living in luxury in a castle with an all-powerful, wealthy sorcerer without a title.

When she gets Hook to fake her assassination, she lures him with the idea that they'll get to a place where Rumple is mortal and Hook can kill him, but was she stringing him along, and it was her plan to kill Rumple and become Dark One? Would someone killing Rumple have become Dark One before he restored magic? They were counting on there being no magic. And if that was her plan all along, you'd think she would have eliminated Hook once he'd outlived his usefulness. Once he'd brought her to Storybrooke, he'd have been an impediment to her plan to kill Rumple herself. She was already going after the dagger while Hook was on his way to New York, so it wasn't just a plan she came up with when Rumple was dying. I'm also not sure what her plan for Regina was. Did she want revenge for banishing her to Wonderland and sending an assassin after her? Did she want to make Regina love her again? We know during 2A that she wants to get to Storybrooke, but we don't really know why, and her actions don't really fit any of her goals. She's a prime case of her plan being whatever the writers need her to do in each episode, but it never really adds up to any greater scheme. It's all episode-by-episode. You can tell they didn't approach it as what Cora wants to achieve, and what steps she'd take to achieve it, but rather what they want her to do in each episode.

[Speakeasy]

I actually think that there's a pretty reasonable arc from The Miller's Daughter to The Stable Boy to season 2 in Cora's brutality. At the beginning she's only just got her powers and murder is still a big step ethically-even if she doesn't feel anything for her in law's she still has the habit of following the laws of society, besides which, suspicion will immediately fall on the common-born sorceress and she probably can't defend herself too well at that point. 

By the time she kills Daniel she's a lot more brazen and confident but still wants to put on a mask of respectability. And even though she kills Daniel, it comes after a heated argument and she seems to see it as her only option to keep Regina in line. That's even though killing a servant is something she can handily cover up.

Finally by season 2 she is totally confident in her powers and has no reason to hide anything from anyone unless her plans specifically demand it. At this point she's been a Wonderland Warlord for decades and she's fine with ruling through terror, so it really doesn't phase her to kill randoms just because it suits her. 

Even when she kills Eva, which I like to pretend didn't happen because I really didn't like the whole Cora Vs Eva sub plot but whatever- it's in secret with a ridiculously circuitous plan. And that's not too long before she kills Daniel so again you can see at that point she's still not up for wholesale massacres.

[Camera One]

There could have been other ways for Cora to gain power for herself.  They had that clandestine conversation between Cora and Henry Sr.'s father, where he promised her power.  What happened with that?  She had zero power over "the people" as wife of Henry Sr.  They even did a fake-out where it seemed like Cora took out the heart of Henry Sr.'s father.  She could have heart-controlled him and make him do what she wanted.  She could have sought revenge on Eva a lot earlier.  There was a big chunk of the story missing.  I also don't see ethics is a huge issue for Cora.  She didn't seem very shaken after killing Eva or Daniel.  She justified it immediately and of course in Eva's case, gloated.  

There's usually a line for villains where they cross over from killing people who they are seeking revenge on (and then killing people who are directly in their way), to killing people indiscriminately.  This show often likes to cross that line for no apparently reason.  They did it with Regina and Cora, and even with Hook when he killed Charming's father.  

Edited October 18, 2020 by Camera One

[AnotherCastle]

Quote

There was a big chunk of the story missing.

Yeah, I always thought there must be some kind of missing piece of the story that lead to Cora and Henry being banished from court to the country and the family being stripped of their titles between Regina being born and the Stable Boy flashbacks.

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, AnotherCastle said:

Yeah, I always thought there must be some kind of missing piece of the story that lead to Cora and Henry being banished from court to the country and the family being stripped of their titles between Regina being born and the Stable Boy flashbacks.

I wouldn't have been surprised if Cora had an affair with Henry Sr.'s father, and that somehow backfired with her plans.  If she gave up her own prospects of power (which she never did, not really), wouldn't she have wanted Regina to be Queen of both Leopold's kingdom and Henry's family's kingdom?  What were the thoughts of Henry Sr.'s older siblings when Cora announced at Baby Regina's christening that she will be a future Queen?  I can imagine a lot of juicy court intrigue, and with magic, Cora would have a huge leg up.

Edited October 19, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

On 10/18/2020 at 6:23 PM, Camera One said:

There could have been other ways for Cora to gain power for herself.  They had that clandestine conversation between Cora and Henry Sr.'s father, where he promised her power.  What happened with that?  She had zero power over "the people" as wife of Henry Sr.

Maybe his idea of giving her power was letting her marry his son-and maybe she really didn't understand she was getting a prince from the bottom of the barrel. Maybe she was supposed to have extra titles besides being Enriqote's+ wife, maybe Xávier* was going to be giving her a place on the Small Council or something. 

Looking at her in that episode, she's not especially subtle-she outwits Rumple but not by doing anything especially clever-and that whole 'my daughter's name is Queeny because she will be Queen!' thing, as wife of the 5th in line to the throne that's basically telling your 4 brothers in law 'I'mma coming for you'.

 Besides which-i don't know if the Enchanted Forest does this obviously, but British official documents refer to Her Majesty as 'Elizabeth Regina'... Were Regina's documents signed 'Regina Regina'? That'd look like overcompensation to me.

I can imagine a King who knows how politics really works keeping her distracted with shiny but meaningless titles while she continues to spin gold for him for at least a few years.

On 10/18/2020 at 6:23 PM, Camera One said:

  They even did a fake-out where it seemed like Cora took out the heart of Henry Sr.'s father.  She could have heart-controlled him and make him do what she wanted.  She could have sought revenge on Eva a lot earlier. 

See to me it would make a good deal more sense if heart control rather than mere heart ripping was a really advanced form of dark magic, maybe one even Cora didn't know until after her time in Wonderland. If I'd been making the show I would (would I? I say all this with the benefit of hindsight and having spent far too much of the last eight years thinking about this stupid program) actually have it be exclusive to Cora and something she learned or even invented as the Queen of Hearts. Otherwise it makes all the villains who could do it but didn't look thick: 'Fruit of the Poisonous Tree' is a really good episode and shows our girl Reggie being chillingly manipulative and cunning-but she looks retroactively stupid if she was relying on a gullible, horny Djinn when she could have heart-controlled Snow White into stabbing Leopold and then killing herself or giving herself up for execution (or even 'accidentally' giving her heart back and letting her go-running with Goodwin and Parilla's desperate attempts to make sense of their character arcs) any time she wanted.

On 10/18/2020 at 6:23 PM, Camera One said:

There was a big chunk of the story missing. 

Very much so-you can come up with all kinds of cool stories to explain how Cora went from Princess to gentry: were they banished after she got too greedy? Did Prince Henry renounce his title to stop her trying to kill his brothers-which even if unsuccessful might well get his innocent daughter murdered in the ensuing crossmurder? Did Xávier's kingdom collapse because Cora caused catastrophic inflation by spinning all that gold? Who knows! No one, because no one thought about it and it's entirely possible she wasn't meant to be a princess and Enriqote wasn't meant to be a prince.

On 10/18/2020 at 6:23 PM, Camera One said:

I also don't see ethics is a huge issue for Cora.  She didn't seem very shaken after killing Eva or Daniel.  She justified it immediately and of course in Eva's case, gloated.  

Again, that's a good 10 years after she got started-sinve Snow was around the same age when she met Regina as when Eva died, maybe a years difference, then we can assume she was already out of Castle Xávier-her chance to climb to power on a pile of dead princes was gone by then.

On 10/18/2020 at 6:23 PM, Camera One said:

There's usually a line for villains where they cross over from killing people who they are seeking revenge on (and then killing people who are directly in their way), to killing people indiscriminately.  This show often likes to cross that line for no apparently reason.  They did it with Regina and Cora, and even with Hook when he killed Charming's father.  

I would blame the flashback format for this. By the time you're seeing Regina killing indiscriminately it's technically I'm the past but you've already seen her killing people for more understandable reasons so they need to be more shocking. It's not a good system if you keep reusing the same characters for the flashbacks.

*Wait a minute, 'Xavier'... And Disney owns Marvel... If there's been a season 8 would he have ended up in a wheelchair 😛?

[tennisgurl]

Something that became a big problem with the whole show was that, like with Cora's life between marrying Henry Sr and killing Daniel, there is so much of every characters backstories that seem to be really important, but we never see that in flashbacks, despite the fact that we get flashbacks every single freaking episode. We have these huge leaps in peoples lives, like how Rumple went from living in a hovel with Bae as the Dark One tormenting his neighbors to living in a castle and being much feared throughout the kingdoms, or Hook going from twitchy indentured servant to upright and polished British officer, flashbacks that could have been used for both character and world building and to show more about how they got to be who they are and more what their goals, especially with people like Cora who's mechanisms makes up so much of the shows backstory. Even Regina, the show favorite character who has probably more flashbacks than any other major character and even got the big hundredth episode, still has massive leaps in her character, going from just bitter and sulky to murderous psycho seemingly in about a week. We dont even get many flashbacks between Snow and Regina once she became her step-mother, despite this relationship being so important that its apparently enough to make Snow stop her execution and let her leave after her many crimes with a slap on the wrist. Which is all bizarre, considering this show has flashbacks every single episode (or I could be more forgiving), its just that they use their flashbacks quite poorly, focusing on padding and ret-cons, especially as the show went on. Instead of finding out how Cora went from wife of a prince to landed gentry social climber many years later instead of becoming queen herself as you would expect, showing Henry and Cinderella falling in love, or showing more of Snow and Charming reign as king and queen, we get pointless flashbacks like finding out how Emma got her red jacket, Regina learning how she needs to love herself as she wades through the corpses of her enemies, and Ana teaching Charming how to be a hero as she Forrest Gumps her way through the Enchanted Forest. Granted, some of those flashbacks, like the aforementioned Charming and Ana outing, are fun at least, but you end up really feeling like we could be using our time better. Some of the flashbacks, like Emma getting her jacket or Regina finding out Robin is her soulmate, just raise more questions about the characters and their world that we will never get answers or, like the Eva and Cora episode or the one where Bae was actually super into Dark One power all along, which add horrible ret-cons and deeply wonky moral judgements. Its not helped that every big guest character gets their own flashbacks with their backstory and how it fits into the main story, and while those are usually necessary, sometimes they too end up being basically pointless, missing the point of the source material (like Merida and Tiana's flashbacks) or making things needlessly complicated, and that also means we dont get the flashbacks to the backstories of our main characters that could actually be helpful, and helped the original supporting characters fade into the background to become set dressing. They had all of time in the world for flashbacks, and yet we still have tons of questions about so many major characters backstories and their motivations, because this show is bad at using its time. 

[Camera One]

39 minutes ago, tennisgurl said:

We dont even get many flashbacks between Snow and Regina once she became her step-mother, despite this relationship being so important 

It is so true that even for characters with way too many unnecessary flashbacks like Regina and Snow, they kept flogging the same dead horse period over and over again.  

Yet we never got to see Snow slowly clueing in on Regina working against her, after her father died.  We could have seen Snow actually reacting to the loss, and figuring out Regina's treachery.  After all, Snow didn't seem surprised that Graham was sent to kill her.  

We could probably come up with similar "untold stories" (heh) for each of the main characters.

For a show like this, the Writers needed a giant timeline for each character, and then they could brainstorm which time periods for a character were missing and still deserved development.

Of course, everything was done in reverse on this show.  They used flashbacks to provide surprise weekly twists, to prop present-day centric stories, to allot "required" screentime for boring protagonists they were bored of, or to give story to new shiny toys.  So they made up convenient flashbacks, retcon and all, on an as-needed basis.  And to top it off, they did not even refer back to previous scripts, much less overarching character arcs, when writing new flashbacks.

Edited October 20, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Of course, everything was done in reverse on this show.  They used flashbacks to provide surprise weekly twists, to prop present-day centric stories, to allot "required" screentime for boring protagonists they were bored of, or to give story to new shiny toys.  So they made up convenient flashbacks, retcon and all, on an as-needed basis.  And to top it off, they did not even refer back to previous scripts, much less overarching character arcs, when writing new flashbacks.

I remember Lost getting this way in S3 when the episode count was high and the amount of story they needed to cover was low. There were several character flashbacks in S3 that added little information or thematic significance. There was even time for the Nikki/Paolo episode. While OUAT similarly kept spinning its wheels, it took itself very seriously and acted like every minor revelation was a big shocking twist. There were many retcons because the writers didn't think the episode stories were interesting enough. Even the most filler-y stuff was sort of glossed over in favor of reminding the audience something TERRIBLE was going to happen in the main plot. There was just never any breathing room. I wish there were more scenes with the characters sitting around a campfire having a casual conversation.

Edited October 20, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/17/2020 at 2:27 AM, Speakeasy said:

I actually think that there's a pretty reasonable arc from The Miller's Daughter to The Stable Boy to season 2 in Cora's brutality.

For me, the disconnect comes at the point where Cora rips out her own heart so she can get past her feelings for Rumple to marry Henry Sr. That doesn't make a lot of sense if you look at her options.

On the one hand, there's Rumple. He lives in a castle and has unlimited wealth and power. He's fallen for her, and she seems to be into him. He's teaching her magic (though we have the usual thing on this series in which five minutes of magic lessons teach you all you need to know, and you can become so powerful your mentor fears you). On the other hand, there's Henry, the younger son of a king. She's so not into him that she has to rip her own heart out so she can go through with marrying him. The only difference between the two, really, is that she gets to be a part of the royal family by marrying Henry, and she has a chance of becoming queen if anything happens to Henry's brothers. If she's so ruthless that she'll rip her own heart out and give up any chance at love (while also having wealth and power and living in a castle) just to put herself in the line of succession, then it seems odd that she didn't take any advantage of having married a prince. She might even have had more power as Rumple's sidekick than she got as the wife of a younger son in a court where everyone knew she'd been a miller's daughter.

Of course, the problem is that they only had her rip her heart out so they could set up the way she'd be killed (and a way to make Snow responsible for it). It had nothing to do with what was going on with her character in the past. It would have made more sense in the past to have stuck closer to the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale and just had Rumple helping her spin the straw into gold and teaching her magic, but without them falling for each other. If Zelena hadn't been a retcon, they could have used her as the loophole in the first-born child contract -- sorry, she's already been born. You're welcome to her if you can find her. Then if she isn't ripping out her heart so she can have a chance at being queen instead of having love (while having the same kind of wealth and power, either way), her story flows better to her gradually becoming more ruthless. But then they'd have had to find a better way to kill her in the present and to make Regina more of a woobie victim with a literally heartless mother, and then that touching final moment between them.

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

We could probably come up with similar "untold stories" (heh) for each of the main characters.

Yeah, for the Charmings, we never saw Snow learning that "Prince James" was really a shepherd/farmer named David, and we never saw the people following them learn it. They just know it at some point. We never really saw how they defeated Regina and George and how/why they made the decision to just rule George's kingdom while letting Regina live in Snow's palace.

For Regina, we didn't see the early time in her marriage -- did she ever make a go of it, only to find that Leo just wanted her as a stepmom for his daughter, or was she distant and cold the whole time? Did she ever try to be a beloved queen, only to learn that the people couldn't get over Eva, or was she a bitch from day one?

We didn't see the slide from Lt. Jones quitting the navy spectacularly to wage a one-ship war against his king to him being a pirate who doesn't seem to be on any particular crusade -- the transition from clean-cut officer on a mission to full-on pirate in leather and with all the jewelry.

[Camera One]

I rewatched a clip and didn't realized she originally got the whole "Love is weakness" mantra from Henry Sr.'s father.  Did she really continue to admire him to the point of adopting his motto?  It's not like he gave Cora much actual power.  So after languishing in the court for years, she still believed she made the right choice to marry Henry and reject Rumple?  I guess the only way to make sense of it is as Speakeasy suggested... she married to raise her social standing, so her daughter would be eligible to marry a King to become a Queen.  I wonder when she started plotting Eva's death?  Right from Regina's childhood?  So she didn't want to seek power for herself until later?

Edited October 21, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/20/2020 at 11:06 PM, Camera One said:

So after languishing in the court for years, she still believed she made the right choice to marry Henry and reject Rumple?  I guess the only way to make sense of it is as Speakeasy suggested... she married to raise her social standing, so her daughter would be eligible to marry a King to become a Queen.  I wonder when she started plotting Eva's death?  Right from Regina's childhood?  So she didn't want to seek power for herself until later?

That's another thing that doesn't flow well for me, especially if you throw in the later retcon about how Zelena came about. Per that episode, she started with general-purpose social climbing (never mind that it would have been a step down for a miller's daughter to be working as a barmaid), then with Jonathan, she decided to skip a few rungs and marry a prince. Even though he turned out to be a fraud, she didn't want to set her sights any lower and went for Leopold, only to be foiled by Eva. Then there was the whole spinning straw into gold thing, with her falling for Rumple but realizing she had a chance to actually marry a prince, and the king was even in favor of it. She ripped out her heart so she could put sentiment aside and further her ambition and marry the prince -- but then she fairly quickly declares that it's her daughter who will one day be a queen. But even though she wants her daughter to marry royalty, she doesn't teach her to dance or send her to any balls at court. We learn from the later episode with Nottingham that she was hoping to pretty much use Regina as a puppet and rule through her, and when that didn't work out after Regina banished her before marrying a king, her plan is to do the same thing with Regina's child (implying that she's planning to get her own daughter out of the way?).

I suppose maybe she could have been implying that she was going to get rid of everyone between herself and the throne and Regina would then be the heir (because she wasn't likely to sleep with Henry again, so there wasn't going to be a son). Could that be why they weren't at court when we saw them later? The king decided she was a little too ambitious.

But the real problem with it all is that every bit of backstory was created strictly for the needs of that particular episode rather than being part of some big-picture character arc. In "The Stable Boy," they needed to be living in a place where both Regina and Snow could be out riding, and they couldn't have real horses running against CGI backgrounds to have them be in a city around a castle, plus they probably didn't have the budget to show a full court, and that's why they were off in the country rather than at Henry's father's court. I don't know why they didn't bother with titles, though, unless they hadn't figured out that part. The heart ripping had nothing really to do with what was going on with Cora in the past, but was all about setting up the way to kill her, plus giving some excuse for her evil, that she did it all without her heart and she was a better person and would have been a good mother with it. They couldn't have Cora get rid of everyone between her and the crown because they'd already shown that she wasn't a queen anywhere until she became Queen of Hearts.

It's interesting that Cora was able to land on her own in a strange world and managed to make herself a queen pretty quickly, but even while married to a prince she wasn't able to move herself up. If she was okay with making herself a queen, then wouldn't being with the Dark One, who could have made her a queen pretty easily, have been preferable to marrying a younger son of a queen?

I had a random thought -- Eva was at Henry's father's court when Cora made her flour delivery and attempted to crash the ball, and I don't recall Leo being there. Is it possible that Eva was part of that royal family? She was a princess from another kingdom. If so, then that means Snow, Emma, and Henry would have been biologically related to Regina. Snow and Regina would have been cousins. But I'm sure if that had been the case, it would have been mentioned.

[Guest]

On 10/20/2020 at 8:56 PM, Shanna Marie said:

For me, the disconnect comes at the point where Cora rips out her own heart so she can get past her feelings for Rumple to marry Henry Sr. That doesn't make a lot of sense if you look at her options.

But the assumption here is that Cora had genuine feelings for Rumple to the point that she has to rip out her heart to marry Henry Sr.  And I just don't buy that as it pertains to this episode. 

Its easier to make the argument that Cora was manipulating Rumple into believing she loved him to get out of her deal. First her declarations of love while dressing for her wedding inspires Rumple to change the deal to she owes him his child.  Then she specifically asks Rumple to give her a way to take out the King's heart. Then she has a conversation with the King where there is nothing new said that would compel Cora from changing her mind.  The King basically said the same thing that she and Rumple talked about and she supposedly had rejected alreadt for love.  She went in there knowing what her choice was.  Frankly, I think its entirely possible what she told Rumple about what she was going to do to the King's heart may have been a figurative explanation of what she planned to do to Rumple's.

And Cora weaseled out of her deal pretty easily.  She made a choice to marry someone else so he could never get his child from her in the deal.  But I suspect that that interpretation wouldn't have held up if she hadn't been claiming that she was doing what he taught her and had to remove her heart for the love of him to do it at the time.

There was not a lot of difference between Cora with and without a heart in terms of actual genuine feeling as far as I could tell.  But as always the writing leaves a lot of things open to debate but not in a good way.

I still, however, will never understand why Cora didn't slaughter her way to the throne.

Edited October 24, 2020 by ParadoxLost

[Camera One]

Did we ever find out Rumple's obsession with making deals involving babies?  Was the whole Baelfire backstory supposed to explain this?  He's the last person who should be judging people for abandoning their children.  

[Speakeasy]

Cora ditched Rumplestiltskin because if she was his lover/apprentice she might have more power than a queen but she's always be beneath him and he'd always ultimately be in control. He is older and more powerful than her and he could stop her by force if he didn't like what she was doing, and while he isn't as smart as he thinks he is, he has very clear personal goals and priorities, she can't bully him and she can only manipulate him so far. 

Moreover, the story works better if she has actual feelings for him which she fears he could use to manipulate her-which the later series confirms that, yes, is precisely his MO.

If she's with Henry she doesn't care about him, she can push him around by force if personality and threaten him with violence if he starts to grow a spine, and even if she comes under attack from his family, she can defend herself with magic. They provide wealth, status and legitamcy, she provides magic it's an actual tradeoff where she has something they want and can't get on their own. 

That's the thing about Cora, it isn't just that she wants power compared to her starting point, she wants power without oversight. She's grown up knowing she was near the bottom of the feudal pyramid and she won't be happy unless she knows she's at the top with nothing but clear skies above her. That's why she and Rumplestiltskin connected, they're very similar in that way.

Now this dies fall down on one point: why wouldn't Rumplestiltskin try to get back at her for jilting him? And why wouldn't she anticipate him doing so? As far as I remember she wriggled free of their deal, but didn't have any guarantees to protect herself or her child from his spite afterwards. Cora always assumes people can't be trusted, see 'love is weakness', and it turns out in this case she'd be right, Rumpykins does not handle rejection well.

I'm prepared to believe Rumple wouldn't hurt her because he loved her-genuinely, I buy the love story between Rumple and Cora shown in half of one episode as far more legitimate than his series spanning... um... romance (I guess-apparently a romance needs a happy ending, I don't know if this counts...) with Belle. But I don't buy Cora would trust in his feelings for her for her own protection.

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/22/2020 at 10:28 PM, ParadoxLost said:

Its easier to make the argument that Cora was manipulating Rumple into believing she loved him to get out of her deal.

But that doesn't work if you include the Zelena story, since she already has a firstborn she doesn't even want, so there's no need to manipulate Rumple into getting her out of the deal. She didn't need to scam him. She just could have laughed when he showed up to take her first-born and said, "Nope, this isn't the first-born. You're welcome to my real first-born, if you can find her."

This is probably proof that Zelena's existence was a total retcon, no matter how much they tried to claim they planned it the whole time and that you can tell that Cora and Leopold knew each other back in "The Stable Boy."

On 10/22/2020 at 10:28 PM, ParadoxLost said:

There was not a lot of difference between Cora with and without a heart in terms of actual genuine feeling as far as I could tell.  But as always the writing leaves a lot of things open to debate but not in a good way.

I did get the feeling from Cora's death scene and sudden tenderness with Regina that we were supposed to think she'd have been a better mother and a better person all that time if she'd had her heart. It's a lot like the way they tried to say that Rumple would have been a good person if he hadn't become the Dark One -- and never mind that he murdered someone to become the Dark One, before the Darkness was in him, or that he schemed to become the Dark One again. With Cora, she was still doing horrible things as a ghost and in the afterlife, when her heart had been returned before she died.

I think maybe the seeming disconnect between Cora's all-out ambition and the fact that she was married to a prince and never moved up the ladder from there, plus her not being acknowledged as royalty back in "The Stable Boy" could have been fixed by having her marry wealth instead of royalty. I figure they had her marrying a prince because of the callback to the fairy tale, but even that's a departure because in the fairy tale she marries a king. But a miller's daughter would be taking a big step up to marry landed gentry (a Mr. Darcy type, with wealth but no title), and that wealth and position would then have put her daughter within the possibility of marrying royalty. It would have made sense for her to have gained as high as she could expect, but then be able to launch her daughter even higher (with some scheming) and plan to more or less rule through her daughter and her daughter's children.

I don't think that works as well if you factor in the Zelena part of her backstory because I think that sets her up to be permanently dissatisfied with anything less than being in line to be a queen, and that's where it seems unlikely that she would have been that close to a crown and throne without getting herself all the way there. History is full of situations in which the youngest son ended up on a throne, even in large families. A little war, an assassination, some disease, an accident, and then Henry's on the throne, with his wife actually calling the shots. I just can't picture Cora marrying a king's younger son and being content with that position within the family (and not being called "Your Highness" by everyone around her).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I don't think that works as well if you factor in the Zelena part of her backstory because I think that sets her up to be permanently dissatisfied with anything less than being in line to be a queen, and that's where it seems unlikely that she would have been that close to a crown and throne without getting herself all the way there. History is full of situations in which the youngest son ended up on a throne, even in large families. A little war, an assassination, some disease, an accident, and then Henry's on the throne, with his wife actually calling the shots. I just can't picture Cora marrying a king's younger son and being content with that position within the family (and not being called "Your Highness" by everyone around her).

To try to make anything work there needs to be an assumption that  her ambitions changed as she got each thing that she wanted and found herself dissatisfied.  But without a very narrow focus this doesn't even work because at a minimum I would expect her to have gotten to the point of taking everyone's hearts so that she was the beloved Princess of the family that controlled the kingdom via her puppets even if she didn't manage to get all the way to the throne.

[Writing Wrongs]

I wanted more Baelfire/Neal backstory. His character was Rumple's motivating factor to kick all this off.  I want to know what Neal's life in New York was. He's introduced in a businessman's suit. Was he still a thief or did he have an actual office job? His apartment seemed to be paid for in perpetuity and anyone could live there. We never got to see how he left Neverland and that would've been interesting. How he met Tinkerbell.  But we got to see endless flashbacks of Regina.

I've been watching a lot of OUaT reaction videos on YouTube and it amazes me how everyone loves Regina and her story arc and how she deserves love, blah blah blah. I don't get it. 

[Speakeasy]

On 10/27/2020 at 8:53 PM, Writing Wrongs said:

 

I've been watching a lot of OUaT reaction videos on YouTube and it amazes me how everyone loves Regina and her story arc and how she deserves love, blah blah blah. I don't get it. 

She's cool, attractive, powerful and dangerous but also vulnerable and emotional. She has the power that you want and you can understand her desire for love and acceptance.

You might say you don't want to abuse power like she does but honestly how much you focus on the pain she causes is just a matter of where you focus your empathy; no one is ever entirely fair when they're deciding who they empathise with, and when you're talking about poorly written characters in trashy live action Disney Princess fanfic then you don't have to be, really. 

Plus most people might not want to be supervillains, but they'd like to have the option. You don't want people to fear you on sight but you'd like the option to make them afraid, if the situation called for it.

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/26/2020 at 4:40 PM, ParadoxLost said:

To try to make anything work there needs to be an assumption that  her ambitions changed as she got each thing that she wanted and found herself dissatisfied.  But without a very narrow focus this doesn't even work because at a minimum I would expect her to have gotten to the point of taking everyone's hearts so that she was the beloved Princess of the family that controlled the kingdom via her puppets even if she didn't manage to get all the way to the throne.

If her ambitions changed as she got each thing and found herself dissatisfied, then she definitely would have found a way to make herself queen after marrying a prince and finding that it wasn't that great. Up to that point, her arc flows pretty well -- she starts as a miller's daughter wanting to better herself (never mind that a miller's daughter working as a barmaid would have been lowering herself, but let's just say she was earning extra money so she could move elsewhere and start over). I don't think at that point she was looking to marry a prince, but then Jonathan convinced her he was a prince who wanted to marry her. Even though he turned out to be fake, she'd set her ambitions on marrying a prince then, so just an ordinary rich man or lord wouldn't satisfy her. That could even have been part of the issue with Rumple, that even if he could have given her wealth and power, she wanted a prince, dammit! After losing two opportunities to marry a prince, she was going to have a prince, come hell or high water. But then being married to a younger son with no real prospects would have probably been dissatisfying, and by then she had magical powers and no heart, so surely she'd have done something.

Of course, part of the problem with this is the total lack of worldbuilding, so the social structure in this world is weirdly vague. There doesn't seem to be anything between peasants and princes, and if you aren't royalty, you're a peasant, regardless of status. When there are no rungs on the social ladder, social climbing becomes a real challenge. David and his mother owned their farm (since they talked about selling it), so they were yeoman farmers, not peasants, but they're treated as poverty-stricken peasants. A miller would have been middle class, and probably the highest status in the village other than the local lord, but they acted like Cora was a peasant. Jefferson was an artisan, so he'd also have been middle class, but he's treated like a peasant. Ditto with pre-Dark One Rumple. A spinster would have been an artisan and independent businessman. There don't seem to have been any wealthy landowners or minor lords. There may have been one or two dukes mentioned, but all the people at the various balls seemed to be royalty from other kingdoms. I guess Cora didn't have any choice but to go for a prince if she wanted to move up in the world because there wasn't anyone in between her status and royalty.

On 10/27/2020 at 3:53 PM, Writing Wrongs said:

I wanted more Baelfire/Neal backstory. His character was Rumple's motivating factor to kick all this off.  I want to know what Neal's life in New York was. He's introduced in a businessman's suit. Was he still a thief or did he have an actual office job? His apartment seemed to be paid for in perpetuity and anyone could live there. We never got to see how he left Neverland and that would've been interesting. How he met Tinkerbell. 

I'm still baffled by the decision to kill him off and never actually tell his story. Look at what we're missing:

• How he got away from Pan and survived in Neverland
• How his relationship with Hook developed in Neverland. They talked about having been friends, so did they reconnect later? How did they get from Bae hating Hook to them seemingly getting along? When Hook left Neverland, did he give Bae the chance to come with him?
• We know how he got away, but what did that look like? How did he react to landing in modern America? How did he survive? How did he become "Neal"?
• What did he do after he got Emma sent to prison? Did he straighten out his life?

And then all the stuff we never got to see after they found him. They never addressed what happened to his mother, but he ended up on good terms with both Hook and his father, so who did he believe killed her? What did he think about what his father did to get to him? Did Emma's parents ever learn what he really did to her? Did Henry?

As for future storylines that could have happened with him, there was so much inherent conflict involving him. There was working things out with his father (which should have taken longer and been more of a process, not a quick fix). There was the issue of him being good friends with his father's nemesis. There was the very complicated triangle with him, Hook, and Emma (I'm generally not crazy about love triangles because they're lazy storytelling, but in this case, there was a lot of potentially interesting material there, given that Hook was basically Neal's stepfather, while Neal had really hurt Emma, and Hook wanted Emma but also didn't want to hurt Neal and didn't want to come between Henry and his father. They set up a triangle, then killed it right away). There was sharing parenting of Henry not only with Emma but also with Regina. But I guess they thought it was more important for Regina to have a sister, so he had to die.

[Camera One]

I'm surprised Cora pinned all her hopes on Regina, and didn't use magic to steer her to the path she wanted her to go in.  In "The Stable Boy", Regina was openly defiant of Cora and it's highly unlikely Cora didn't know about the tryst with Daniel.  Why not wipe Regina's memories of Daniel, like she did with Zelena?

It was clear A&E lost interest in Baelfire/Neal long before they killed him off.  They were done with him after "Manhattan", really.  Poor actor probably thought he had such intricate relationships and potential with so many of the other regulars that he would get more story.

DIRECTOR: Are you ready for your scene with the two big villains of this show, Regina and Rumple, now that you're at the main location of Storybrooke?  These two X's show where the two of them will be standing.

ACTOR FOR NEAL: Oh awesome.  Where do I stand?

DIRECTOR: Right here beside the X.  Now take 10 steps back.  No, further back.  Further back.  Further back.  Good you're out of focus now.  Pick up the wooden sword and practice your best fake swordfighting moves and the child actor will be here soon.

Edited October 29, 2020 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

8 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

You might say you don't want to abuse power like she does but honestly how much you focus on the pain she causes is just a matter of where you focus your empathy; no one is ever entirely fair when they're deciding who they empathise with, and when you're talking about poorly written characters in trashy live action Disney Princess fanfic then you don't have to be, really. 

I think it's more a POV thing. They never gave the POV to Regina's red shirt victims. It was always about her side. She's sad and lonely and misunderstood. Slaughtered villagers didn't get a voice because they were dead. Or if they did, those people had no right to be upset with her because she's changed now and then they are quickly dispatched before anyone can truly think about the magnitude of her evil (see: Percival). Non-red shirts were also not allowed to show any kind of anger and they glossed over the truly nasty consequences of Regina's actions - Emma and Snow found each other so who cares that Emma's entire childhood was destroyed and her relationship with her parents will never be what it should be? They joked about Snow and her one night stand and never gave any play to the awfulness of people who were brainwashed into believing they were married to someone else. Kathryn and David were clearly having sex which isn't something either would have done without the spell as each loved their spouse. And of course, they dragged her victims down focusing heavily on relatively minor actions as the worst and often played into Regina's victim blaming (e.g.  Snow was a brat).

When the only thing that's shown on screen is sad, sad Regina who just needs to be loved and there's no focus on those she's screwed over and how bad off they are comparatively - Percival was a kid who saw his family, friends and neighbors slaughtered; I'm sure he was sad, lonely and in need of love too - it's much easier to root for the psychotic mass murderer. Imagine a scenario where Percival was given an entire episode complete with his backstory of a loving family and happy home and showing Regina smiling at him while she murders everyone he loves. Is Regina rootable after that? Would we care about how sad she is? A story of her trying to atone for the atrocities of the past would work, but there wouldn't be a whole lot of sympathy for her. 

[Guest]

17 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

When the only thing that's shown on screen is sad, sad Regina who just needs to be loved and there's no focus on those she's screwed over and how bad off they are comparatively - Percival was a kid who saw his family, friends and neighbors slaughtered; I'm sure he was sad, lonely and in need of love too - it's much easier to root for the psychotic mass murderer. Imagine a scenario where Percival was given an entire episode complete with his backstory of a loving family and happy home and showing Regina smiling at him while she murders everyone he loves. Is Regina rootable after that? Would we care about how sad she is? A story of her trying to atone for the atrocities of the past would work, but there wouldn't be a whole lot of sympathy for her. 

I always thought that the issue with Regina was that the writers liked Regina so they wanted the audience to like Regina and thought the way to do that was to make it so that, ultimately, no one pointed out her flaws or her past deeds and were overly supportive of her.  Like we would forget.

Maybe its just the way I am, as a viewer, but I tend to even things out.  When a show is uneven, I go the opposite way.  If they make everyone a cheerleader than I'm going to double down on the characters flaws.  But if everyone was unrelenting in dumping on Regina even though she made honest attempts to do better I would have been on her side and rooting for even if she wasn't perfect all the time.

I think that was why it was easier to like Rumple than Regina, because at least some of the time the reaction to him was realistic.

[Shanna Marie]

On 10/29/2020 at 8:02 PM, ParadoxLost said:

Maybe its just the way I am, as a viewer, but I tend to even things out.  When a show is uneven, I go the opposite way.  If they make everyone a cheerleader than I'm going to double down on the characters flaws.  But if everyone was unrelenting in dumping on Regina even though she made honest attempts to do better I would have been on her side and rooting for even if she wasn't perfect all the time.

That's the way I am. If you spend a lot of time telling me how great a character is, or how sad and such an underdog they are, I resist. I figure that if they're really great, I'll figure it out for myself based on what they show me, and if they don't show me something absolutely amazing, then I'm likely to turn against that character. If you want to make me love a character, show them trying really hard and doing good things or having bad things happen to them while the other characters put them down. I think most of my all-time favorite fictional characters have been those who at least start as an underdog on the show (for real, not Regina style) and who end up doing amazing things.

On 10/29/2020 at 2:15 AM, KAOS Agent said:

I think it's more a POV thing. They never gave the POV to Regina's red shirt victims. It was always about her side. She's sad and lonely and misunderstood.

That is actually something I saw on a list of writing guidelines today, that the audience will sympathize with the character whose perspective is given. The Percival situation really is a good example of that. They don't give Percival's POV at all. It's about Regina being shocked and horrified to be called out and embarrassed at the ball, not about Percival having watched his village being burned by the crazy woman. And then when Robin is wounded, it's about how sad it is for poor Regina that she might lose her boyfriend. It's not about how much it sucks for Robin to have been badly wounded or about how sad it is for poor Roland that he's on the verge of being an orphan.

There was a similar situation with the return of Marian at the end of season 3, where it was framed as "poor Regina might lose her boyfriend" rather than "a little boy is reunited with his lost mother and a husband is reunited with the wife he thought was dead." One of my friends reacted as "oh, poor Regina" after that, and I pointed out how gross it was that Robin had been dating the woman responsible for taking his wife away from him. My friend was really shocked to think of it that way and it really changed her perspective. But the show apparently didn't want anyone to take that perspective. We were supposed to feel bad for Regina.

I've never understood why they bothered making Marian Regina's victim if they weren't going to actually deal with that. Why not just have Emma find her at Rumple's place, where he took her after Roland was born as "payment" for that magic wand that saved her life so she could have Roland, since "magic always comes at a price, dearie" and after Belle was gone, he'd have been able to get away with that sort of thing. Then you can just look at it as Robin choosing between his wife and the person he met after he lost his wife, not choosing between his wife and the person responsible for him losing his wife.

At the beginning of the series, I'll admit that I wasn't crazy about Emma. I was prone to dislike her, in part because I had really disliked Jennifer Morrison's character on House, and I'm not a fan of those edgy "WALLS" tough girl types. But seeing her persevere while Regina kept trying to drag her down in season one, and then later seeing her constantly trying to help while everyone else seemed to expect her to save the day all the time and criticized her when she wasn't perfect made me end up cheering for her.

[Camera One]

Well, the friend I watched the series with thought Emma was boring, and Snow White was dumb.  So A&E's intended narrative worked to a tee.  

[andromeda331]

2 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

That's the way I am. If you spend a lot of time telling me how great a character is, or how sad and such an underdog they are, I resist. I figure that if they're really great, I'll figure it out for myself based on what they show me, and if they don't show me something absolutely amazing, then I'm likely to turn against that character. If you want to make me love a character, show them trying really hard and doing good things or having bad things happen to them while the other characters put them down. I think most of my all-time favorite fictional characters have been those who at least start as an underdog on the show (for real, not Regina style) and who end up doing amazing things.

 

On 10/29/2020 at 7:02 PM, ParadoxLost said:

I always thought that the issue with Regina was that the writers liked Regina so they wanted the audience to like Regina and thought the way to do that was to make it so that, ultimately, no one pointed out her flaws or her past deeds and were overly supportive of her.  Like we would forget.

Maybe its just the way I am, as a viewer, but I tend to even things out.  When a show is uneven, I go the opposite way.  If they make everyone a cheerleader than I'm going to double down on the characters flaws.  But if everyone was unrelenting in dumping on Regina even though she made honest attempts to do better I would have been on her side and rooting for even if she wasn't perfect all the time.

I think that was why it was easier to like Rumple than Regina, because at least some of the time the reaction to him was realistic.

Same here. I hate when everyone becomes a cheerleader for a character. Its weird and most of the time the words never match up with what the character does or is. Regina's a perfect example she's supposedly had it the worse when we've seen so many characters have it worse and usually at Regina's hands. The more everyone on NCIS talked about how great Gibbs was the more I hated him. It even works for characters I used to like in the beginning I loved Rory Gilmore but after she went to college everyone kept talking and treating her like this amazing perfect girl despite the fact she had become a selfish spoiled brat. You want me to think Regina had it worse, show me. 

[Writing Wrongs]

As I've been watching reaction videos I've noticed things that didn't quite fit with later stuff. Apart from the appalling retcon of Cora and Leopold's relationship (I have to assume she gave him a memory potion or something or it doesn't make sense), Regina first summons Rumple and he tells her that he held her as a baby. I don't feel like that fits with what we learn later of Cora and Rumple. I can't see Cora letting him anywhere near Regina after their break up. 

I loved one girl's reaction to The Huntsman backstory, "That's rape..". 

[Speakeasy]

On 11/1/2020 at 4:37 AM, Camera One said:

Well, the friend I watched the series with thought Emma was boring, and Snow White was dumb.  So A&E's intended narrative worked to a tee.  

Emma being boring is very much a subjective point-ypu can point out ways in which the character has an interesting background and interesting viewpoints but - in my case and apparently in your friend's - the execution never made her particularly interesting. I mean to me she was ok but she got less and less interesting as the show went on and other characters always stole the limelight.

Snow is dumb, that's an objective fact and I defy you to show me a consistent pattern of her being smart.

[KAOS Agent]

6 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I mean to me she was ok but she got less and less interesting as the show went on and other characters always stole the limelight.

Which is exactly why the show became less interesting to me. The show's initial introduction to the audience was about Snow and Emma with Regina as the antagonist in past and present. Snow/Mary Margaret had the most screen time in S1. It was very clear that the writers were only interested in writing for their "fun" characters and so the show became the Regina show co-starring Hook, Rumpel and later Zelena. I mean the show spent a season with two Reginas, so we know where their priorities were.

I hated what became of Snow White. And agreed, she was generally really dumb. Emma was seemingly grudgingly given a story each season that was quickly shunted to the background while they played with their shiny toys. They had a ton of story and conflict to mine with her character, but couldn't be bothered to actually allow Emma to have feelings.

[CCTC]

On 10/31/2020 at 11:39 PM, andromeda331 said:

I hate when everyone becomes a cheerleader for a character.

I have to confess I watched All My Children for a number of years.  When soap writing is lazy - they do this a lot when they want to redeem a character.  Near the end of my run of watching it, they brought on a bad girl named Babe, and quickly decided she should be a heroine.  They quickly had everyone singing her praises - even going as far as saying she was love.  Sadly, they were too lazy to alter her story arc, so she was doing really bad things as everyone was saying how great she was.  The show had a need for a bad girl at the time, and the actress was not bad and  was much more interesting as a schemer with flashes of vulnerability than the ever weeping heroine, so it was too bad they did all the contortions trying to make her a heroine.   Although I guess this is not as offensive as the soap staple of reforming a bad girl by assault.  Hopefully they have moved  away from using that.

[Shanna Marie]

On 11/5/2020 at 4:14 PM, Speakeasy said:

Emma being boring is very much a subjective point-ypu can point out ways in which the character has an interesting background and interesting viewpoints but - in my case and apparently in your friend's - the execution never made her particularly interesting. I mean to me she was ok but she got less and less interesting as the show went on and other characters always stole the limelight.

That goes back to that character emotional perspective thing, that the way you get the audience invested in a character is to show the character's perspective, and they seldom let us in on what was going on with Emma after maybe season 2. She didn't get to react emotionally to much, and when she did it was in a bizarre way that was hard to relate to.

Take 4A. They spent the whole arc showing us Regina's emotional reaction to her boyfriend of two days going back to his wife. We had the immediate reaction in the season premiere, with her big emotional meltdown, murder plans, and realizing that Emma saved Marian from her, then the "do you want to build a snowman?" moment with Emma. Then we had her quitting her job to mope and kicking Henry out of the house so she could mope. There was her trek through the woods with Emma and Emma begging to be her friend. She had conversations on the issue with Emma (multiple times), Snow, Henry, Robin, Marian, and even Rumple. We knew every single detail of exactly what she felt about every step in the situation, and that all led to the next arc, in which she set out to try to change her fate and be able to get a happy ending.

In contrast, in that same arc Emma was dealing with some pretty deep questions about magic, what it meant to her, and where it made her fit with her family and society. She realized that she had a big gap in her memory, with a foster mother she didn't know she had, one who had been closer to her than any other parental figure in her life. Meanwhile, she was tentatively starting a new relationship, but was held back by fear of losing him, since she'd just lost someone else she loved, and not long before that she'd lost someone she was just starting to have feelings for. And yet her emotional reactions to all these things were barely touched upon. The magic issue was instantly resolved with one pep talk from Elsa and some magic fireworks. We didn't really see what she felt about it after that. We just saw some of the confusion about learning Ingrid was her foster mother, but I don't think we got a real reaction from her once she got her memories back and Ingrid died almost immediately afterward. We don't really know how she felt about that. After her fears about losing another love, Hook was nearly killed right in front of her, and there was zero emotional reaction from her. It didn't seem to affect her at all, didn't seem to have anything to do with their relationship going forward. It's hard to get invested in a character when we don't ever really get her perspective on things, when we never get any insight into what's going on with her, when we don't know what she feels about anything.

And meanwhile, how do you relate to someone who watches a person nearly burn her mother to death and who was imprisoned and nearly executed by her, and then turns right around and begs to be that person's friend? Or who has a friend lie to her and betray her, and years later she still blames herself for not reaching out to that person? Or who watches her boyfriend nearly die and then ducks away from kissing him to run off and check on someone who's sad because her boyfriend left town? Emma was seldom allowed to have normal human reactions to anything, which made her hard to relate to.

Plus, her storylines tended to make her passive. They were about things happening to her, not about things she was doing. She was usually rendered helpless in some way for the big climactic showdowns, and when she got to take action, it was about sacrificing herself. If she was the center of the arc, it was about something happening to her -- like the Dark One arc, which was about what was done to her and the efforts others were making to help her. Or the shaky hands arc, which was about her looming fate, with her not being able to do anything to escape it.

[Speakeasy]

On 11/6/2020 at 5:11 AM, KAOS Agent said:

Which is exactly why the show became less interesting to me. The show's initial introduction to the audience was about Snow and Emma with Regina as the antagonist in past and present. Snow/Mary Margaret had the most screen time in S1. It was very clear that the writers were only interested in writing for their "fun" characters and so the show became the Regina show co-starring Hook, Rumpel and later Zelena. I mean the show spent a season with two Reginas, so we know where their priorities were.

They clearly never meant Regina to be Just Bad, though, for me the most powerful moment in the first season is 'The Thing You Love Most'-this isn't a monster incapable of love; if anything she's something worse, a person capable of intense love but who is so full of rage and resentment that she'll sacrifice it in the name of revenge. Right off the bat that's something interesting and compelling.

Emma always suffered in S1, in my view, because she was meant to be solidly down to Earth, and spent most of her time being confused and frustrated in the understated real world setting while everyone else got a flamboyant magical alter ego-except for Henry, but he was this kid who ran around insisting everything was fairy tales, which is whacky enough on its own.

I mean also... Emma was there slowly figuring out that Everything is Fairy Tales... I don't think anyone ever doubted that Everything was Fairy Tales, so she was essentially doing all these investigations to play catch-up with both the villain and the audience.

I did find the villains more fun in general but they went through what I think is a common problem with villains that are too popular and became less and less interesting as they got integrated into the main cast. By the time we got to the two Reginas neither of them was fun, interesting, menacing or sympathetic.

And I really got to hate Rumplestiltskin by the end... But I've been thinking about that and I honestly think that might be a testament to Robert Carlyle's portrayal of the character. For all his bizarre magical eccentricities he's actually fairly believable as a nervous, embittered man with an addiction who really wants to be better but isn't strong enough to say 'no' to the needle, no matter how much he has to lie and how much pain he causes. I think it's a very credible story, it's just frustrating and depressing to watch.

On 11/6/2020 at 5:11 AM, KAOS Agent said:

I hated what became of Snow White. And agreed, she was generally really dumb. Emma was seemingly grudgingly given a story each season that was quickly shunted to the background while they played with their shiny toys. They had a ton of story and conflict to mine with her character, but couldn't be bothered to actually allow Emma to have feelings.

Snow in season 1 is a very different woman to Snow in season 2 and onward. You see her in 'Snow Falls' and she's determined, she's bitter and she's gone out of her way to get a weapon to take out her enemy in a way that neutralises her many advantages. Even when she apologises and grovels to Regina in... I forget the episode... But even then, Regina is holding the man she loves hostage. If you say you'll do anything for love sometimes that means facing a dragon in badass single combat, sometimes it means swallowing your pride and grovelling to someone you hate. Snow in those flashbacks is the kind of woman you can see successfully toppling a tyrannical witch-queen.

Later on... No.. not so much.

[KingOfHearts]

On 11/14/2020 at 8:37 PM, Shanna Marie said:

That goes back to that character emotional perspective thing, that the way you get the audience invested in a character is to show the character's perspective, and they seldom let us in on what was going on with Emma after maybe season 2. She didn't get to react emotionally to much, and when she did it was in a bizarre way that was hard to relate to.

 

On 11/14/2020 at 8:37 PM, Shanna Marie said:

Plus, her storylines tended to make her passive. They were about things happening to her, not about things she was doing.

This post pretty much nails on the head why I don't really like Emma after 2A. She's really engaging in the first season when she's choosing to stay in Storybrooke for Henry's sake, taking the fight to Regina because she wants to, and investigating crimes because she's invested. (Not because those crimes happened to her.) She has a lot of agency in S1 and she's highly motivated. That makes for a captivating character. I don't find her very interesting in later seasons because she just reacts to whatever is going on most of the time. She doesn't choose to do something unless her hand is forced. (aka she's the "Savior" and must do everything out of obligation) The writers just made her so depressing and the antithesis of the person she as in S1 in that instead of pushing back at life, she just takes what's given to her. Her big lesson is that you can't escape fate no matter how hard you try and that is not empowering nor hopeful.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

They clearly never meant Regina to be Just Bad, though, for me the most powerful moment in the first season is 'The Thing You Love Most'-this isn't a monster incapable of love; if anything she's something worse, a person capable of intense love but who is so full of rage and resentment that she'll sacrifice it in the name of revenge. Right off the bat that's something interesting and compelling.

And I really got to hate Rumplestiltskin by the end... For all his bizarre magical eccentricities he's actually fairly believable as a nervous, embittered man with an addiction who really wants to be better but isn't strong enough to say 'no' to the needle, no matter how much he has to lie and how much pain he causes. I think it's a very credible story, it's just frustrating and depressing to watch.

Snow in season 1 is a very different woman to Snow in season 2 and onward. You see her in 'Snow Falls' and she's determined, she's bitter and she's gone out of her way to get a weapon to take out her enemy in a way that neutralises her many advantages. Even when she apologises and grovels to Regina in... I forget the episode... But even then, Regina is holding the man she loves hostage. If you say you'll do anything for love sometimes that means facing a dragon in badass single combat, sometimes it means swallowing your pride and grovelling to someone you hate. Snow in those flashbacks is the kind of woman you can see successfully toppling a tyrannical witch-queen.

 

23 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

This post pretty much nails on the head why I don't really like Emma after 2A. She's really engaging in the first season when she's choosing to stay in Storybrooke for Henry's sake, taking the fight to Regina because she wants to, and investigating crimes because she's invested. (Not because those crimes happened to her.) She has a lot of agency in S1 and she's highly motivated. That makes for a captivating character. I don't find her very interesting in later seasons because she just reacts to whatever is going on most of the time. 

It's interesting because all of these are examples of how the Writers lost the nuance of their main characters by Season 2.  The grey villains became difficult to sympathesize with after flashbacks featuring massacre (Regina) and love triumphs over torture (Robin Hood episode with Rumple).  The "heroes" became reactionary and becoming less rootable.  

They were able to keep viewers staying on the basis of goodwill from Season 1 with the "hope" of better writing and the allure of the fairy tale/fantasy/Disney crossover universe.  I suspect Captain Swan was what kept a lot of people with the show.

Edited November 26, 2020 by Camera One

[tennisgurl]

On 11/26/2020 at 9:32 AM, KingOfHearts said:

I don't find her very interesting in later seasons because she just reacts to whatever is going on most of the time. She doesn't choose to do something unless her hand is forced. (aka she's the "Savior" and must do everything out of obligation)

Emma is basically a perfect look at how to badly do a chosen one story. Instead of it making her a more significant hero or doing anything to make her story more compelling, she just became a passive broken victim of fate, who stopped doing things because she wanted to do them or because they were heroic like she did at first, and only did things because larger forces than her were shaping her destiny, removing all of her agency and stripping away so much of what made her interesting. At first, she had a destiny, but she was still an active participant in that destiny who made her own choices about staying in Storeybrooke, fighting against Regina's bad treatment of both Henry and the town, and the experiences in her life made her tough, but they were her experiences. She had her destiny, but she had a lot of other stuff going on. Later on, her Savior destiny became all there was to her, her entire arc became totally passive and depressing. Her Savior destiny was shown to be a miserable fate that left her shaken and miserable and she was unable or unwilling to really fight it, half of her arcs were about other people and forces controlling her, and in general everything she did was out of obligation or because she was forced into it, not just because it was the right thing or it was just what she wanted to do. Even her backstory became filled with things happening to her because Merlin or the Author or August or whoever were pulling the strings, her whole life was was being shaped and manipulated by others from start to finish. What you would expect in a story like this would be her fighting against fate or destiny to shape her own path, having her make a new version of being a Savior that she chooses, or fighting to stop her Savior fate or to fully embrace it, but we never really get that. She just accepts her fate as a Savior who will die of Savioring and thats that. Its just sad how what was once a really proactive and compelling character basically became a broken shell who only exists to be a victim of fate, circumstance, and others manipulations. I guess the point was to make her more tragic, and I guess they succeeded in the worst way possible. Or maybe it was to make her more of a hero and push her into heroism, but it did the opposite, where she was really a hero who did things because they were right, to someone who did things because she was forced to, which is the opposite of being a hero in the way the show wanted her to be. The Savior stuff was utterly pointless to making her a hero, which she already was, and just made her less of one by forcing her into it. 

In a weird way, its kind of like what happened to Regina when the show decided she was the shows designated woobie who was to be pitied as the saddest victim of all who isn't to blame for any of the evil she did. At first she was a proactive and twisted Big Bad who's evil plans might have been nuts, but they were HER evil plans and it was HER kind of nuts, and she was a real threat to the heroes. Then they decided that Poor Regina was the real star of the show, so now it was actually all her being manipulated by Cora and Rumple and Jefferson and a never ending barrage of baddies who were actually the real villains pulling the strings and she was just the sad poor thing that was being used, and even her evil plan was all just manipulations by Rumple and Cora. She ended up just being a pawn in a greater scheme and, like Emma, a victim of fate and bigger schemers and became largely passive in her own story. It took a badass villain (and I really did think she was a compelling villain for most of season one) and removed everything that made her a compelling villain, and in their desire to make her more sympathetic, they also made her stupider and much less interesting. She didn't even decide to became Queen of the Universe, everyone else did it for her!

This is how we ended up with a climactic ending (well, the ending for Emma and Storebrooke) where both our hero and our villain are just fighting because destiny said so, and not because either of them really want to or have any real goals to accomplish. 

[Shanna Marie]

Thinking more about the "why do a lot of people relate more to Regina than Emma?" question, I think that a lot of Regina's issues are either more relatable or are presented in a more relatable way, focusing on the more universal aspects.

For instance, I doubt too many people in the audience have experienced watching their mother rip out and crush their lover's heart, but the majority probably have experienced getting in trouble because someone tattled on them. That was the thing the show focused on, Regina's anger at Snow for betraying her, rather than on the actual heart ripping.

Cora's real crime, as presented in the show, wasn't the murders but rather sacrificing her daughters' happiness to her ambitions. Basically, she was a pushy mother who wanted Regina to do the things that would make Cora happy rather than the things that would have made Regina happy, and that's a pretty common issue, whether it's a pushy stage mother type, a social climber, or someone who's more concerned with security and urging a kid away from a perceived riskier profession.

The fear of losing Henry is something divorced or adoptive parents might relate to, but they went a bit more universal here and made it also come across like what happens when you fear you might lose your friend to the new kid in town.

Then there's the "nobody likes me" pity party, and never mind that people didn't like her because she devoted decades to torturing them, since when you're having a "nobody likes me" pity party you don't think about what you might have done to deserve it.

And the "my new boyfriend dumped me to go back to his ex" thing is pretty common.

Meanwhile, while her actions were way over the top in response to all this, her emotions were reasonably appropriate. You're angry when someone you thought you could trust betrays you. You might even be angrier at the person who tattled than you are at the authority figure who punished you because you expect punishment from authority but don't expect betrayal. You feel sad when no one likes you, threatened when you might lose a friend. Even her relationship with Cora makes some kind of sense if you ignore the murder and just focus on the pushiness, because then you have the push/pull between wanting to please and wanting to find your own way.

Contrast this with Emma. There aren't a lot of people who'd relate to being left on the side of the road and growing up in foster care. You could probably have made a more general thing out of that, like a search for identity or feeling unwanted, but they kept focusing on those specific things. I don't think we saw Emma searching for identity or purpose. It was specifically about finding her parents and learning why they abandoned her.

With Henry, they focused on her specific circumstance of giving birth in prison after being betrayed by the baby's father and giving the baby up for adoption and didn't get into anything more general like having regrets for something you did in the past or wondering how it might have gone if you'd made a different choice (even when she got that do-over with the year in New York, we never saw her contemplating having made a different choice).

There was the thing of finding her parents again and they were her age, which is pretty odd, but they didn't make that more relatable by making it a metaphor for the way your relationship with your parents changes when you're an adult.

Her initial relationship issue was that her ex got her sent to prison and it turned out he'd lied about who he was. That's not exactly relatable, and they didn't try to broaden that. Then there was her fear of relationships because everyone kept dying on her.

All that alone made Emma hard to relate to if you're the kind of person who needs to make that kind of connection to a character. But worse, Emma's reactions to a lot of these things didn't make sense. It wasn't what most people would feel, and she didn't do the things most people would do. When she did react in a reasonable way, she was treated as wrong -- the infamous WALLS. Anyone growing up the way she did would have emotional walls, but this was treated as a terrible flaw. Instead of being mad at a person who'd wronged her and tried to kill her, she tried to become friends. When she got mad about a friend betraying her, she was painted as a bad friend. She didn't put up any kind of fight for custody of Henry, in spite of knowing that Regina emotionally abused him and tried to kill her. That's something I think a lot of parents would have trouble relating to. She wasn't allowed to be angry at Neal for sending her to prison. She was just calmly accepting that he had no choice.

I think there's sometimes an interesting case to be made with a hero character who reacts contrary to normal by being more forgiving or braver, etc., but when it goes totally counter to common sense the character isn't very relatable. And even in those cases, the character may have the appropriate emotions but then works to overcome those emotions to take the contrary actions. There's some struggle between the reasonable feelings and doing what they feel is right. So, say with Neal, she might have had more struggle between being hurt at what he did to her while needing to accept it for the greater good.

[Melgaypet]

I was thinking about all the kingdoms in the Enchanted Forest, and trying to count them up. There was Leopold/Snow's kingdom, and King George's kingdom. There was King Midas' kingdom. There was Philip and Aurora's kingdom, Prince Thomas and Cinderella's kingdom, Rapunzel's kingdom, Prince Eric's kingdom, King Xavier's kingdom, and Princess Eva's kingdom. (I have no idea where Belle's home or Rumple's is supposed to be.) That's nine kingdoms, all apparently within a short ride/and or walk from one another! How does that even work? Even say that Eva's kingdom was more distant because she'd been betrothed to Leopold her whole life while never meeting him, that's still nuts. Also, do any of these kingdoms have actual names? Misthaven referred to the Enchanted forest as a whole, right?

That thought reminded me that Snow and Charming must have merged George's and Leopold's kingdoms after winning the war against George and Regina, which made me wonder whether Charming was then publicly known as Prince James or Prince David? I could swear he was called the former in Cinderella's first episode, at the ball where she met them and Thomas, which would have been after he and Snow were married and ruling together.

That made me wonder if, in the Wish World episode, was he known as King David? I can't remember. But then I was thinking about the Wish World, and how it made no sense, and how downright insulting the portrayal of Princess Emma as a simpering fool was. Then I started thinking about ways it would make more sense, like Emma would have younger-but-still-close-in-age siblings, there would be no Henry, Emma would be trained in archery and swordplay even if she didn't have any "field" experience. Emma would probably be married to some neighboring prince - like Abigail and Frederick's oldest son, for example - but not necessarily. I don't see Snow or especially Charming forcing her to marry if she didn't want to and the need wouldn't be urgent if she had siblings. It'd be cool if she were a diplomat and a stateswoman. That would show some core Emma traits - compassion, smarts, and being a problem-solver - in a different way. I have no idea if she or her brother NotNeal would be the heir. They never established how that worked in the EF. I also don't know if she'd have magic. Was Emma magical because she was a True Love baby or the Savior and was she the Savior because of the curse or because she was a True Love baby or because she was Chosen by...something? The show seemed confused on that point. I mean, if I'm making the rules, Princess Emma doesn't have magic.

I'm rambling. And procrastinating. I should be working on my own writing, not trying to fix others'.

[Camera One]

11 hours ago, Melgaypet said:

That thought reminded me that Snow and Charming must have merged George's and Leopold's kingdoms after winning the war against George and Regina, which made me wonder whether Charming was then publicly known as Prince James or Prince David? I could swear he was called the former in Cinderella's first episode, at the ball where she met them and Thomas, which would have been after he and Snow were married and ruling together.

Charming was publicly known as Prince James.  Even Leroy/Grumpy thought Charming's real name was James, until "Tiny".   So he continued the masquerade even after George was defeated.   Was it to ensure the people in the kingdom assumed he had legitimate claim to the throne?  

Quote

Was Emma magical because she was a True Love baby or the Savior and was she the Savior because of the curse or because she was a True Love baby or because she was Chosen by...something? The show seemed confused on that point. 

Yeah, the Writers kept that vague.  They arbitrary made Emma a generalized savior of all in 3A and not just the breaker of the Curse, and of course all that predated The Savior™ nonsense in Season 6.  Emma wished she wasn't The Savior, but it was unclear why she wasn't The Savior in the Wish Realm.  Presumably, it was because Snowing defeated Regina.  But how?  When?  Snow did become Bandit Snow, so it was unlikely she would have raised a traditional helpless princess.  

Not to mention making Wish Emma so naive actually contradicted their own concocted backstory in that same episode.  This Wish Emma lost her husband Neal in a war.  She wouldn't be acting like some 16-year-old wide-eyed innocent.  

Edited December 5, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

You know I had a thought about Wish Emma a little while ago: in 4B with its stupid Darkectomy and Eggnapping plotlines, the idea was that Emma would have no darkness if she was raised by nice people-but since she wasn't she still had the capacity for darkness like everyone does. Is the implication that Princess Wish Emma is what a person with no 'Darkness' looks like? 

Like... Is the implication that when they say darkness or evil they are actually talking about, ultimately, the idea of being active - trying to impose your own will on the world around you? And that's why Emma had to express her light magic by letting herself get stabbed and why Blue never really did anything? And even when light magic was useful it was for stuff like blocking Cora from doing something horrible to someone. Light magic is a passive principle and at most it kind of allows the world to do its own thing without interference from dark magic. And a person who is all light lets things happen and... Maybe they kind of encourage others to be themselves or do what they were going to do or what they wanted to do anyway but they don't really try to do much themselves?

I doubt there was that much thought going into it, but maybe?

[daxx]

10 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I doubt there was that much thought going into it, but maybe?

Outside of “wouldn’t this be cool” or “what if we do the opposite of what the fandom wants”  I don’t think any deep thought went into it.

[Camera One]

10 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Like... Is the implication that when they say darkness or evil they are actually talking about, ultimately, the idea of being active - trying to impose your own will on the world around you? And that's why Emma had to express her light magic by letting herself get stabbed and why Blue never really did anything? 

Light magic is a passive principle and at most it kind of allows the world to do its own thing without interference from dark magic. And a person who is all light lets things happen and... Maybe they kind of encourage others to be themselves or do what they were going to do or what they wanted to do anyway but they don't really try to do much themselves?

That really fits the pattern of "light magic" on this show.  The whole concept of "hope" is rather passive.  Other "Powerful" good magic characters like Glinda and Merlin's "plans" seem to involve hoping that someone would make the "right choice".  

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, daxx said:

Outside of “wouldn’t this be cool” or “what if we do the opposite of what the fandom wants”  I don’t think any deep thought went into it.

For the Wishverse, it was probably a combination of "wouldn't it be funny if they're all old and fat and Emma is the exact opposite of herself?" and "Regina actually did them a favor by casting the curse."

If they'd actually thought through the logical changes from no curse, it would have been very different.

• The Charmings would have had a lot more kids, fairly close in age to Emma. They got pregnant on their honeymoon, and then got pregnant again as soon as they decided to have another kid, so they were pretty fertile. When you remove the frozen in time curse years, Snowflake is only a couple of years younger than Emma, and that's with all the drama of the curse, Snow and Charming being separated first by the curse, then by her being sent to another world, and then everyone in town living in Snow's house that didn't have separate rooms, and then Neverland. Without all that, and living in a castle with actual rooms in a world without birth control? A big family.
• There would have been no Henry. It makes no sense for Bae/Neal to have been in that world, since that's not something the lack of a curse would have changed. It might have made some sense if maybe the reason there was no curse was that Bae came with Hook on his last trip from Neverland to that world, and then Rumple went "never mind" about the curse, but they made it clear in season 7 that the reason there was no curse was that the Charmings stripped Regina of her powers. It's a bit icky if Bae did come back with Hook then because that would have made Bae about 16 years older than Emma. It's also hard to imagine that the Charmings would have been okay with their teenaged daughter marrying the son of the Dark One. They wanted Prince Henry, but his presence is really hard to account for in a world without the curse. More likely, Bae would have just lived out his life in our world, with no idea what was going on back home.
• Very likely, 30-year-old Princess Emma would have been married to the king or prince of a neighboring kingdom and would have children under 10 or so.
• Princess Emma definitely wouldn't have been a twit. Her mother would have still gone through everything she went through, so she'd have taught her daughter to ride and shoot, at the very least. Based on what we saw of Snow's upbringing, she also would have been expected to have responsibilities in the kingdom (if she wasn't living in and helping to rule another kingdom by that point).
• Season 7 did at least give a rationale for fat, drunk WHook, so it wasn't just the lack of a curse and never meeting Emma that screwed up his life, though I still have trouble buying that Hook would have given up on finding his daughter and just sat around drinking instead. And then there's the issue that Hyperion Heights WHook was probably about the same age (after the reset) as the WHook Emma met. I guess the rum made all the difference?
• Where was Cora? Did they take away Regina's powers before she met Hook and sent him to kill Cora (but he brought her back instead)? But then if that's the case, then WHook's father would have lived long enough to raise Liam 2.0.

On 12/4/2020 at 1:49 PM, Melgaypet said:

I have no idea where Belle's home or Rumple's is supposed to be.

The way they talked, Belle's home was yet another kingdom, Not!France, where people had Australian accents. We don't know what Maurice's title was, but they were acting like he was responsible for protecting their land from ogres. Rumple just seemed to have a residential castle, not a titled position. He had a fancy house but didn't rule anything.

On 12/4/2020 at 1:49 PM, Melgaypet said:

Also, do any of these kingdoms have actual names? Misthaven referred to the Enchanted forest as a whole, right?

I thought that the Enchanted Forest was Leopold's Kingdom, with Misthaven being its formal name. Then there was Sherwood Forest, but I'm not clear on whether that was a separate entity or just a region within one of those other lands, the way the real Sherwood Forest is an area within England. And you forgot Camelot, which wasn't too far from Rumple's place, since his place was in walking distance of the Dark One vault, which was an easy stroll from Camelot. And then across the lake from that was Dubroch, or whatever it was they called Not!Scotland (but then maybe actual Scotland, since Hook referred to Merida as a Scot).

Pre-Napoleon's conquest Germany did have a lot of little Grand Duchies, principalities, and even kingdoms, some of which weren't much bigger than cities, with a castle on just about every hill (and there are still dozens of people who get called "prince" or "princess," though it's meaningless now), but there still weren't 11 or so all within walking distance of each other. In the season 3 finale, Hook ends up running between Midas's castle and Regina's castle, then carries Marian from near Regina's castle to Rumple's castle. I haven't been able to figure out how the geography works.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

• There would have been no Henry. It makes no sense for Bae/Neal to have been in that world, since that's not something the lack of a curse would have changed. It might have made some sense if maybe the reason there was no curse was that Bae came with Hook on his last trip from Neverland to that world, and then Rumple went "never mind" about the curse, but they made it clear in season 7 that the reason there was no curse was that the Charmings stripped Regina of her powers. It's a bit icky if Bae did come back with Hook then because that would have made Bae about 16 years older than Emma. It's also hard to imagine that the Charmings would have been okay with their teenaged daughter marrying the son of the Dark One. They wanted Prince Henry, but his presence is really hard to account for in a world without the curse. More likely, Bae would have just lived out his life in our world, with no idea what was going on back home.

If they wanted to do "there are certain constants - events that will always happen no matter what", and one of them being Emma and Baelfire having Henry (hence Peter Pan having a drawing of Henry long before he was born), then they could have explored what changed in the past that resulted in that path.  Maybe that led to some minor change which allowed Snowing to defeat Regina.   If Baelfire had ended up staying in Neverland much longer, then he could have been closer in age to Emma.  "Might have been"'s are so interesting to explore, but this show really squandered the opportunity like they do everything else.  They could have had a guest star filled Season 6 exploring this alternate timeline because like it or lump it, they had written their characters and the present-day plot into the ground by the Season 5 finale, which was clearly yet another indication their creative well had run dry (eg. inserting Regina into the Bandit Snow role, The Dark One becoming The Light One, etc... lazy writing).

 

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

In the season 3 finale, Hook ends up running between Midas's castle and Regina's castle, then carries Marian from near Regina's castle to Rumple's castle. I haven't been able to figure out how the geography works.

I'm imagining a coffee table book, where a different map of their "world" is presented based on the information from each episode/arc.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Camera One