A New Beginning: OUAT 2.0

[Shanna Marie]

9 minutes ago, Camera One said:

If each Author is confined to their own "world", then why was Henry in the Alternate Forest writing down stories? 

Is he writing stories? I don't remember seeing him writing anything (but I also haven't been paying a lot of attention). Is he writing officially as an Author, or is he writing for his own purposes? If his goal was to get written into the books, then he wouldn't have been writing the stories, would he? He'd be wanting to have the local Author write him in. Otherwise, all those stories he wrote that he participated in would have counted as him being in a storybook (I still don't get that rationale, that he's upset that he wasn't included in books that happened in other places).

12 minutes ago, Camera One said:

When Jared Henry rode off into the ring, did he immediate go to an Alternate World?  Or did he start off in the Regular Enchanted Forest? 

I think that's what gave us the idea time might be passing faster for him, if he was realm-hopping before he got there, but we haven't heard of him visiting other worlds. He's been in Alternate Forest long enough to have made a friend (but apparently not long enough to know about a resistance movement or that there's a Lady Tremaine, so also likely a Cinderella). Maybe when he threw the bean, he thought about a place where he had a chance to get in on the ground floor of stories he wanted to be in, and this was the result.

[Camera One]

20 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Is he writing stories? I don't remember seeing him writing anything (but I also haven't been paying a lot of attention).

No, he hasn't written anything.  I just figured since he was the Author, that was a job for life.  I guess in the Season 7 premiere, they did give the impression that he's done since he "finished" the book.

So you're probably right, he's trying to get another Author to write him into another book.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Camera One

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

So you're probably right, he's trying to get another Author to write him into another book.

Please don't let it be Alternate Isaac! I couldn't stand him as Phil in LOST. I couldn't stand him in ONCE. That probably means the actor is good at his job. lol

[Camera One]

I don't think it's good when you want him off your screen pronto.  A&E clearly love writing for him, though.  

[Mabinogia]

OMG my head hurts!

All this other writers writing for other realms just makes me feel like none of this is real and is all just each writers imagination. And yeah, how did Henry jump into someone else's book, and is that person pissed because Henry is now screwing up his story? How would Henry have liked it if some moron came and trashed his story?

[Rumsy4]

28 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

How would Henry have liked it if some moron came and trashed his story?

After the amount of moronic plots we've seen over the last few seasons, I feel like that might have been an improvement.

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

A&E clearly love writing for him, though.

Yeah. He's another authorial self-insert. Poor put upon Isaac, punished for unleashing his imagination. 

Edited December 8, 2017 by Rumsy4

[Shanna Marie]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

So this season has major issues with time AND space.  This is quite a multidimensional series.

I found myself thinking about this, and now my brain hurts.

We've got the Enchanted Forest world, and then there were other worlds in that universe -- it had a Wonderland, a Neverland, the black-and-white world, Victorian Literature world, Oz, Storybook Depression-era Kansas world (must be a boring place, because there's just that one story that starts and ends there), the World of Untold Stories, and it seemed to have its own Underworld.

Then there's the Wishverse, which has, at the very least, its own version of the Enchanted Forest and probably its own Neverland, since WHook must have gone there (or else he wouldn't still be alive). Does it have its own Oz, Wonderland, Victorian literature world, Underworld, etc.?

And now there's the Alternate Forest, which has some of the same stories as in the Enchanted Forest, but in different ways. It apparently has, at the very least, its own Wonderland. Because its Wonderland is different from the Enchanted Forestverse's Wonderland, we're not just dealing with another realm in the same universe. It would have to be a different universe, unless, perhaps, it's the Wish Wonderland they went to -- Alice is, after all, partially from the Wishverse, on her father's side. But since the defining point of the Wishverse was that the curse didn't get cast, would Wish Wonderland be any different from Wonderland 1.0? WCora would have still been there, and depending on what happened around the time of the casting of the curse, she might still be there (if WRegina didn't send WHook after her).

Our world seems to have access to all these worlds (as long as some form of the Dark Curse is in play, so that there's magic somewhere in our world), and there doesn't seem to be any more difficulty in traveling between the universes than there has been for traveling between worlds. Is there just one Land of Untold Stories that serves all the universes, or is there one for each universe? Could two Lady Tremaines run into each other there? Two Jasmines?

They've created a really complex multiverse, apparently without giving much thought to how it actually works.

Oh, and not only do we have the weird coincidence that Henry just happened to show up in the world that WHook visited (retroactively), you have to wonder why he was back in the Wishverse when Emma ran into him if he was looking for his daughter, who was in another universe. So, he went to the Alternate Forest from the Wishverse, fathered Alice, gave up his ship to stay with Alice, then at some point someone cast the poisoned heart curse and separated him from Alice, he got his ship back and went back to the Wishverse and started drinking, then met Emma and swore off rum and was inspired by the idea of having true love that might break his curse, but he apparently needed to get copied on Henry's distress call to travel to the world where he last saw his daughter. And though he was supposedly searching for his daughter, he also seemed surprised to learn about the ruined tower, so did he still think she was in the tower? He found Alice by just running into her, so he apparently could have found her long ago, so why was he hanging out in the wrong universe for that? I guess I could kind of see him going back to his home world if contact with his daughter would kill him. It would be a way of avoiding the temptation and risk. But didn't he talk like he not only needed to break the curse, he needed to find her, and the chess piece was a clue, like he would need to verify her identity or he would need to prove his identity to her? And then we got "Papa! Alice!" so there was no point to the chess piece.

WHook gave up rum, and we saw Rogers seemingly tempted by the bottle that he decided not to drink from. But haven't we also seen him drinking at Roni's? Is it just rum he gave up? Is he drinking root beer at Roni's?

[Noneofyourbusiness]

13 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Storybook Depression-era Kansas world (must be a boring place, because there's just that one story that starts and ends there)

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might come from there, too (and Paul Bunyan was in the book in New York). Remember, Tom Sawyer was in Snow's class in Season Six. And there's also the 19th Century France that the Count of Monte Cristo came from (and presumably the Three Musketeers seen in the Land of Untold Stories marketplace), the 1920s England that Cruella came from, Mount Olympus, "the worse place", the netherworld that Wraiths' victims souls go to, and the netherworld that Sleeping Curse victims' souls go to.

19 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And now there's the Alternate Forest, which has some of the same stories as in the Enchanted Forest, but in different ways. It apparently has, at the very least, its own Wonderland. Because its Wonderland is different from the Enchanted Forestverse's Wonderland, we're not just dealing with another realm in the same universe. It would have to be a different universe, unless, perhaps, it's the Wish Wonderland they went to -- Alice is, after all, partially from the Wishverse, on her father's side. But since the defining point of the Wishverse was that the curse didn't get cast, would Wish Wonderland be any different from Wonderland 1.0? WCora would have still been there, and depending on what happened around the time of the casting of the curse, she might still be there (if WRegina didn't send WHook after her).

I think that was not a Wish Wonderland but an Alternate Wonderland, since Cecelia also ended up there.

21 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Oh, and not only do we have the weird coincidence that Henry just happened to show up in the world that WHook visited (retroactively), you have to wonder why he was back in the Wishverse when Emma ran into him if he was looking for his daughter, who was in another universe.

Hadn't he given up on looking for her until Emma inspired him to take up the search again?

[Rumsy4]

34 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

But haven't we also seen him drinking at Roni's? Is it just rum he gave up? Is he drinking root beer at Roni's?

I think he was just drinking water from the gifs I've seen on tumblr. 

35 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

he apparently needed to get copied on Henry's distress call to travel to the world where he last saw his daughter.

The distress call alerted him to the possibility of Emma coming to that world to rescue her son. That's why he traveled there, hoping to impersonate his original and get a True Love's Kiss from Emma. 

[Shanna Marie]

46 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn might come from there, too (and Paul Bunyan was in the book in New York). Remember, Tom Sawyer was in Snow's class in Season Six. And there's also the 19th Century France that the Count of Monte Cristo came from (and presumably the Three Musketeers seen in the Land of Untold Stories marketplace)

Tom and Huck would be from 19th century Missouri World, though that could be a land on the same world as Victorian Literature World, kind of like Arendelle and Camelot were lands in the same world as Enchanted Forest 1.0. So 19th Century Literature World (broadening it a bit) contains the London of Alice 1.0 and Jekyll, the American south of Tom and Huck, and the France of Monte Cristo, and possibly the Three Musketeers (even though they take place in a different century -- maybe that's like Camelot being medieval in the same world as the more 18th century Grimm-era Enchanted Forest and Regency Jones brothers).

31 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

The distress call alerted him to the possibility of Emma coming to that world to rescue her son. That's why he traveled there, hoping to impersonate his original and get a True Love's Kiss from Emma. 

But he phrased it as though he had no idea where to find her, and it turned out she happened to be in (and from) the world he only traveled to when he knew Emma would be there.

[Rumsy4]

42 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

and it turned out she happened to be in (and from) the world he only traveled to when he knew Emma would be there.

I'm confused about what you're trying to say here. 

[Shanna Marie]

13 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I'm confused about what you're trying to say here. 

Just that they made it sound like searching for Alice was going to be a big deal, when he knew where she was likely to be, and it was awfully convenient that when he got copied on the distress call, it brought him to that same world that he doesn't seem to have considered going back to until he got the call. All it would have taken to fix it was have WHook tell Hook Prime that he just needed to break the spell, not that he needed to find her. But he was talking about finding her like it was an epic quest, even though he was in the world where she was born, and her tower was apparently in walking distance, and they just bumped into each other a little while later. He had lived in that world for apparently some time, then had left that world and didn't seem to have considered going back there, but talked about being unable to find Alice. Basically, all he had to do to find her was go back to the place he last saw her, and there she was. Either he should have had a harder time finding her and not found her anywhere near a place he might have thought to look for her (maybe even had the backstory happen in a different world), or they could have talked only about finding a cure, not about having to find her.

It came across like they were making it up as they went along but not going back to check what they'd already put in an episode, like the varying way they described Eloise as being a little girl and then she turns out to be a grown woman who would have been at least an older teenager when she disappeared. In episode two, the missing girl is a "little girl" and WHook has no idea how to find his missing daughter, and will need to use the chess pieces to verify their identity to each other. A few episodes later, the missing girl is a grown woman, and WHook just bumps into his daughter near the tower where she used to live, and they both recognize each other on sight. Funny, they actually downgraded the drama, from a lost child to a lost adult (still tragic, but not the same), from a quest to find and identify a missing daughter to just bumping into each other.

[Rumsy4]

1 minute ago, Shanna Marie said:

Just that they made it sound like searching for Alice was going to be a big deal, when he knew where she was likely to be, and it was awfully convenient that when he got copied on the distress call, it brought him to that same world that he doesn't seem to have considered going back to until he got the call.

Oh. I thought you were talking about Emma. Now I get it. 

3 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

It came across like they were making it up as they went along but not going back to check what they'd already put in an episode,

I'm pretty sure that's what happened. It's their usual modus operandi. Sometimes, details don't match up even within the same episode. 

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It came across like they were making it up as they went along but not going back to check what they'd already put in an episode

5 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

I'm pretty sure that's what happened. It's their usual modus operandi. Sometimes, details don't match up even within the same episode. 

Ha, I was going to say pretty much the same thing, which was ding ding ding "What is Adam and Eddy's M.O.?". Bad Writing for a thousand, Alex.  You got the Daily Double Evil Queen, contestant.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Camera One

[Noneofyourbusiness]

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Basically, all he had to do to find her was go back to the place he last saw her, and there she was.

True, but she went to Wonderland (and other places) in between, so she wasn't there last time he checked and he didn't know she'd conveniently be there again. Very conveniently.

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Tom and Huck would be from 19th century Missouri World, though that could be a land on the same world as Victorian Literature World, kind of like Arendelle and Camelot were lands in the same world as Enchanted Forest 1.0. So 19th Century Literature World (broadening it a bit) contains the London of Alice 1.0 and Jekyll, the American south of Tom and Huck, and the France of Monte Cristo, and possibly the Three Musketeers (even though they take place in a different century -- maybe that's like Camelot being medieval in the same world as the more 18th century Grimm-era Enchanted Forest and Regency Jones brothers).

I would more likely group them by theme than century.

[Camera One]

Another thing with Alternate Enchanted Forest... I think KingofHearts asked this in an episode thread - how would Tremaine have been able to find information about Henry having the Heart of the Truest Believer?  If there were so many Alternates everything, wouldn't it be easier to find Magic Beans, or Magic Saplings or Magic Wood for building Magic Cabinets, etc.?  Especially if Whook could so easily travel to an entirely different universe.  With all these multitudes of worlds, universes and realms to conquer, it makes it even more ridiculous how everyone wants to take over Storybrooke.

[jhlipton]

7 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

It came across like they were making it up as they went along but not going back to check what they'd already put in an episode.

Like others: TS,TW -- NO!!!! Say it ain't so!

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

If there were so many Alternates everything, wouldn't it be easier to find Magic Beans, or Magic Saplings or Magic Wood for building Magic Cabinets, etc.?  Especially if Whook could so easily travel to an entirely different universe.  With all these multitudes of worlds, universes and realms to conquer, it makes it even more ridiculous how everyone wants to take over Storybrooke.

And it makes Rumple look even more incompetent that he couldn't get to his son in more than a century without having the Dark Curse cast when every incarnation of Hook can easily bounce around not only between worlds but between universes, and he has no magical powers.

Ooh, it just occurred to me ... WHook is possibly even more of a contrast to Rumple, since he's also a parent, but he's a parent who gave up everything to stay with his child, while Rumple couldn't let go of his power to stay with his child. You'd think that would make Rumple hate him as much as he hates Hook Prime, but Weaver doesn't seem to hold any animosity for Rogers. He seemed to sincerely trust him in this latest episode after Rogers called him out. It doesn't even look like he's hiding inner loathing.

I was going to wonder what Wish Rumple did about seeing his son, but then I remembered that Bae must have come back on his own in order to be Henry's dad, so I guess Rumple didn't care whether the curse got cast. Eventually. He still would have had to go a decade or so before Bae came to that world, or else Bae would have been even older than Emma than he was in our world.

[KingOfHearts]

3 hours ago, Camera One said:

Another thing with Alternate Enchanted Forest... I think KingofHearts asked this in an episode thread - how would Tremaine have been able to find information about Henry having the Heart of the Truest Believer?  If there were so many Alternates everything, wouldn't it be easier to find Magic Beans, or Magic Saplings or Magic Wood for building Magic Cabinets, etc.?  Especially if Whook could so easily travel to an entirely different universe.  With all these multitudes of worlds, universes and realms to conquer, it makes it even more ridiculous how everyone wants to take over Storybrooke.

And as I pointed out in the One Little Tear thread - how did Gothel know so much about the Dark One?

[Camera One]

26 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

And as I pointed out in the One Little Tear thread - how did Gothel know so much about the Dark One?

Because in Alt Enchanted Forest, she's The Green One, which is like The Dark One except she has a Spade instead of a Dagger.  She's also looking for The Guardian so she can be cleaved from The Spade and be reunited with her lost love who died at the Edge of Realms, Farmer in the Delle.  

Edited December 9, 2017 by Camera One

[Noneofyourbusiness]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

And it makes Rumple look even more incompetent that he couldn't get to his son in more than a century without having the Dark Curse cast when every incarnation of Hook can easily bounce around not only between worlds but between universes, and he has no magical powers.

Most of the methods of travelling between worlds don't work for a land without magic.

[Mabinogia]

11 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

WHook is possibly even more of a contrast to Rumple, since he's also a parent, but he's a parent who gave up everything to stay with his child, while Rumple couldn't let go of his power to stay with his child.

And this is why, no matter how many times they try, I will never think "poor Rumple". He chose power over his child. So much of this show is about parental love, Snowing giving up raising their daughter to protect her, Emma giving up Henry for his own good, Regina thinking she's doing the right thing for Henry (even if she wasn't, she did think she was), Whook giving up his vengeance to find his daughter, etc. And then there's Rumple. His great feat for his son is to fuck over an entire kingdom because he was a chicken shit who abandoned his child in the first place. 

Sorry, I hate Rumple the way most of you hate Regina. I do not want anything good for him ever! He destroyed Belle. He's the reason the dark curse happened. He is the worst character on the show for me. I would even take Murderella over him. At least she's fun to make fun of. lol

[jhlipton]

8 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Most of the methods of travelling between worlds don't work for a land without magic.

Until they do -- TSTW, after all.

But also: Beans (rare until they're needed), the Author's house, the Jolly Rogers, ...

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, jhlipton said:

Until they do -- TSTW, after all.

But also: Beans (rare until they're needed), the Author's house, the Jolly Rogers, ...

Not the Jolly Roger. We never saw whether the portal in the Sorcerer's house would work in a land without magic, because it was used when Storybrooke had magic. In fact, our heroes had to use magic to make it appear.

Nothing that they said wouldn't work for a land without magic was later shown to. Off the top of my head, the only ones that do are beans, the portal the Apprentice made for Ingrid, Peter Pan's shadow, and the Dark Curse. Looking glasses, the White Rabbit, Jefferson's hat, the Oz curtain, etc. only work between magical realms. Still annoying that they completely glossed over how Wish Hook got to the New Enchanted Forest.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Noneofyourbusiness

[Mabinogia]

It would make sense that any magic used to create a portal wouldn't work in a land without magic because there is no magic in that land to open that end of the portal. So, given how crap this show is, obviously any magical means can be used to get to a land without magic if the writers need a character to enter a world without magic. That's how magic works around here, if it's needed, it works, if it gets in the way of the story they are trying to tell, then it doesn't work. 

[KingOfHearts]

S7 has managed to capture some of the spirit of the S3-S5 arcs, which were pretty formulaic. At least it has a story that's going somewhere. S6 was just so aimless with very little structure at all. I know some of us (myself included) complained in the past about the show's predictability. However, S6 proved the writers need to stick to their groove in order to churn out anything half-decent. 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, and 5B were all stronger arcs because they had discernible beginnings, middles, and ends, as well as straight-forward goals. S7 has so far harkened back to that formula. I just wish it would be done with better actors, without the multiverse stuff that doesn't make sense, and in a better setting than HH. I don't think the entire story is horrible per se, but the context needs a lot of improvement in order for it to be interesting. 5B's plot wasn't all that great or groundbreaking but the Underworld was intriguing enough to keep my attention.

Edited December 9, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Yes, it is funny that A&E have gone back to that formula they supposedly intentionally moved away from in Season 6 (the formula being new villain comes to town, they fight them and then defeat them).  The only similarity between Season 7 and 6 is the full-season arc rather than a half-season arc which adds to the seeming aimlessness.

[KingOfHearts]

4 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Yes, it is funny that A&E have gone back to that formula they supposedly intentionally moved away from in Season 6 (the formula being new villain comes to town, they fight them and then defeat them).  The only similarity between Season 7 and 6 is the full-season arc rather than a half-season arc which adds to the seeming aimlessness.

I don't think the full-season arc even worked in S1. Too much drag in the middle. I used to complain about the monotony of the half-seasons, but now I actually miss them. At least you knew what you were going to get.

Edited December 9, 2017 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Just now, KingOfHearts said:

I don't think the full-season arc even worked in S1. Too much drag in the middle.

I think that's the only season where it *could* have worked better.  For me, the problem in Season 1 was more the poor pacing.  If A&E had known they would have Emma believe, have the Curse broken, have Regina exposed, have everyone remember AND have magic brought back in the Season 1 finale, Emma could have more gradually gained more evidence and/or belief instead of going back to zero every time she made progress in episodes like "Hat Trick", and then hitting all the big moments in a single finale episode resulting in minimal payoff for any of it.  

[Noneofyourbusiness]

2 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

So, given how crap this show is, obviously any magical means can be used to get to a land without magic if the writers need a character to enter a world without magic. That's how magic works around here, if it's needed, it works, if it gets in the way of the story they are trying to tell, then it doesn't work. 

But the showrunners have stated that the White Rabbit's holes and Jefferson's hat can't open a portal to a place without magic at the opposite end, and so far they've stuck to that. Which means inventing previously unheard of methods like the Apprentice/Sorcerer's doors.

Edited December 9, 2017 by Noneofyourbusiness

[jhlipton]

1 hour ago, Mabinogia said:

It would make sense that any magic used to create a portal wouldn't work in a land without magic because there is no magic in that land to open that end of the portal.

12 minutes ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Which means inventing previously unheard of methods like the Apprentice/Sorcerer's doors.

But that's exactly what they do.  "We need to get Character X from The Land [Mostly] Without Magic [Until We Need It] to SomewhereElseLand.  How do we do that?"  "I know, let's show something that has apparently been in the L[M]WM[UWNI] but no one has noticed!!!"

TSTW

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, jhlipton said:

But that's exactly what they do.  "We need to get Character X from The Land [Mostly] Without Magic [Until We Need It] to SomewhereElseLand.

It's generally been the other way around.

[KAOS Agent]

Pretty sure Henry opened up a portal in the middle of Manhattan just by giving a cringeworthy speech. The idea that Rumpel couldn't have gotten to the Land without Magic and then returned home has been completely blown up. And all the machinations he went through to get Snowing's True Love potion became silly when everyone and their brother shares True Love. So all he needed was to walk through a door or find the enchanted trees (which appear in multiple universes that are all easily accessible) or find one of the 18,000,000 last beans or cast the curse using wolf's bane (no heart necessary) and grab some hair from pretty much everyone in the Enchanted Forest to create the potion that brings magic to the world so he can use any of the many portals to go back home. Alternately, he could cast the curse, find his son and then rip up the curse to send them back home. Done. Rumpel sucks.

[Mabinogia]

Rumple is the Rube Goldberg of evil. Why get to the world without magic the easy way when he can instead steal an evil curse, raise a young girl to be evil, wait for her mother to kill her first true love so she will then put her enemy under a curse that will move a bunch of people to the land he wants to go to, but they will be trapped there for years until the savior shows up to, well, save them, then he can go be with his now grown son. Yeah, that's the only possible way he could have gotten to his son, that he pretty much forgot all about anyway. Rumple might be the dumbest character on the show. And that is saying something. 

[Rumsy4]

4 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

Alternately, he could cast the curse, find his son and then rip up the curse to send them back home. Done. Rumpel sucks.

Dang. I never thought of that!! 

[Shanna Marie]

55 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

The idea that Rumpel couldn't have gotten to the Land without Magic and then returned home has been completely blown up.

Especially when you consider that his son wasn't even in the Land Without Magic for most of that time, including at the time when the curse was cast. He was in Neverland, which was apparently easy enough to reach that Hook basically commuted and went back and forth often over the century or so he lived there. Rumple could have reached his son at any time, and he had the magic in his castle to find out where his son was (since it was in his castle after the curse, when Neal used it to find Henry in Neverland). Neal was a raging idiot with no magical powers, and it took him maybe a day to find out where his son was and figure out a way to get to him when his son was in the same place he spent all that time without Rumple being able to get to him.

So, yeah, Rumple sucks. Either he didn't try very hard or he was too caught up in fear about his father to gut it up to find his son.

[Camera One]

I'm guessing A&E might explain it as Rumple being afraid of seeing his son again, or afraid of encountering his father?  That's what makes Rumple so relatable.  All of us experiences fear.  We all have our own Daggers.  All of us has murdered people who dared to defy us.  Oh wait...

Edited December 10, 2017 by Camera One

[Camera One]

In the Adelaide Kane Instagram takeover video, someone asked if she "shipped" Henry and Ivy.  Her reply: "No.  Henry and Cinderella have a bond of true love and they're meant to be together."  I think she memorized the company line, LOL.

Edited December 10, 2017 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

22 hours ago, Camera One said:

I'm guessing A&E might explain it as Rumple being afraid of seeing his son again, or afraid of encountering his father?  That's what makes Rumple so relatable.  All of us experiences fear.  We all have our own Daggers.  All of us has murdered people who dared to defy us.  Oh wait...

Sure, its not like it makes more sense for Rumple to see it as a way kill two birds with one stone get his son back and destroy his father. Nah, he'll just wait another century or two.   

[tennisgurl]

21 hours ago, Camera One said:

In the Adelaide Kane Instagram takeover video, someone asked if she "shipped" Henry and Ivy.  Her reply: "No.  Henry and Cinderella have a bond of true love and they're meant to be together."  I think she memorized the company line, LOL.

LOL! They probably have all the actors reading off of cue cards. 

[Camera One]

Just pasting this here before Adam deletes it.

SwanFireQueen‏ @I_Love_Lana_Bex 11h11 hours ago

The Dark Curse was cast in 1983. The 7x09 flashbacks happen before 7x07 flashbacks *(Which took place in 1983) Ella was 13-18 by 1983 and Henry wasn't born until 2001... So Ella's should at least 30 years older than Henry...

Adam Horowitz @AdamHorowitzLA

FollowingFollowing @AdamHorowitzLA

Replying to @I_Love_Lana_Bex    707 was going off WISH REALM time line of THEIR dark curse (which wasn't cast). Doesn't mean it's 1983 over there. And Ella's realm is NOT wish realm. So you can't extrapolate timelines from one to the other

----------

Using capital letters... must have struck a nerve.  So you can't extrapolate timelines from one to another, even if the same character appears in both, eh?  Is Adam saying that maybe Regina kept trying to cast the Curse but failed, so years went by before Regina was ousted and went to Hook for escape?  

Edited December 11, 2017 by Camera One

[Noneofyourbusiness]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Using capital letters... must have struck a nerve.  So you can't extrapolate timelines from one to another, even if the same character appears in both, eh?  Is Adam saying that maybe Regina kept trying to cast the Curse but failed, so years went by before Regina was ousted and went to Hook for escape?  

I think he's saying that (contrary to what he said during the first few seasons) time doesn't move at the same pace from one world to another and is all random and whatever the plot needs it to be.

You know, I've been waiting for someone to say to Henry, "If your mother is the Evil Queen, does that make you the Evil Prince?"

[KingOfHearts]

I find the "time moves at different paces" concept on this show particularly infuriating, even though I've seen it in other media without being bothered. I'm not still not sure why. When the Pevensie children came back to Digory Kirke's mansion, I didn't flip any tables. Perhaps it's because we've been working with a pretty linear timeline up until S6. I'm thoroughly convinced the writers are only utilizing the mixed timeline nonsense because they have no idea how to keep their timeline or character ages straight. There would be so much more depth if the writers used actual dates. We'd be able to study it and make deductions to inform the show's mythology. It would show the writers put a lot of thought into their work. But, as it stands, they're doing whatever they want without constraints because they only make it up as they go. It's insulting to the fandom to leave out details and really waters down the show's universe.

Too, they've yet to actually take advantage of the timey-wimey stuff. They did it in S1 with Emma growing up to be the same age as her parents. But what's the point of Henry being old enough to be Lucy's father? Meta-wise they wanted a new actor for the reboot and to gender-swap Emma/Henry, but it doesn't add much to the story itself. We don't even know if he's really Lucy's biological dad. The only person with any serious emotional ties to Lucy is Jacinda, but she doesn't exactly need to exist either. You could stick Henry with any other love interest. (Like, you know, Violet or Ivy.) Why does Alice need to be contemporaries with her dad? It's all just so unnecessary. Emma being 28 was pivotal to the plot.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

4 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

I find the "time moves at different paces" concept on this show particularly infuriating, even though I've seen it in other media without being bothered. I'm not still not sure why. When the Pevensie children came back to Digory Kirke's mansion, I didn't flip any tables. Perhaps it's because we've been working with a pretty linear timeline up until S6.

That's it. Because in earlier seasons, A&E were adamant that 20 years in our world equaled 20 years in the Enchanted Forest (hence the time freeze being necessary). And Arendelle was frozen (more literally) for twenty years.

Where in the current flashback timeline is there room for Lucy to be born and grow up for twelve years in the New Enchanted Forest (ala the "The Final Battle" flashbacks) before the Curse hits? I could almost see her being a magical construct.

9 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Why does Alice need to be contemporaries with her dad?

Oh, well that's easy. Because they want her to be old enough to function as a character who's not limited to little girl plotlines and don't want Hook to be old and fat. The two facts aren't related to each other, just simultaneous. And I don't think they're contemporaries. Rose Reynolds is 23, but Alice/Tilly is probably in her teens. And of course Hook is in his thirties.

[Camera One]

There are still a whole lot of crucial elements we don't know, including:
- Who cast the Curse and why
- Why Tremaine decided not to resurrect Anastasia in the Alt Forest 
- What Gothel and Ivy planned to do with Anastasia, and the "magic" inside Anastasia that Tremaine accused Ivy of wanting
- What bad thing would happen to Roni's love ones if the Curse was broken
- How long it has been since Season 6, and how time works in Alt Forest vs. Storybrooke, and how long the Curse in Hyperion Heights has lasted
- How everyone got swept up in the Curse
- Whether Henry is truly Lucy's father and why she was so sure of it
- Why Rapunzel had Marcus killed and why she turned completely evil
- Why The King in Alt Forest wanted Marcus killed and allied with Lady Tremaine
- Why Drizella started hating Cinderella
- Why Gothel wants to find The Guardian
- Who The Guardian is and what they do
- What Rumple was doing with Alice
- How Alice escaped The Tower and who gave her and Whook a poisoned heart
- How Drizella found out she was born with magic and why Rapunzel didn't want her to develop it
- How Gothel knows Rumple
- How Tremaine knows Rumple and how she knows about The Guardian

I'm probably forgetting more questions.

What Adam would say is we need to wait and see and it will all make sense in the end.

Edited December 11, 2017 by Camera One

[Camera One]

ABC STUDIOS

MONDAY MORNING, Dec 10.

ADAM enters the Writers' Room

ADAM: Alright everyone, I think we need to figure out this timeline thingy.

[KingOfHearts]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

ABC STUDIOS

MONDAY MORNING, Dec 10.

ADAM enters the Writers' Room

ADAM: Alright everyone, I think we need to figure out this timeline thingy.

*brief moment of awkward silence*

*everyone, including Adam, busts out laughing*

EDDY: You really had us going there for a second!

[Mabinogia]

10 hours ago, Noneofyourbusiness said:

Rose Reynolds is 23, but Alice/Tilly is probably in her teens.

Wait, is Alice supposed to be in her teens? YIKES! I had her pegged at at least 23 to 25. I also always assumed Hook was somehow immortal because I was under the impression his obsession with the crocodile happened generations ago.

The timeline on this show bugs because I don't get the impression the mess is intentional. I think it's just that the writers come up with an idea (Alice is Hooks kid!) and are too lazy to find a way to actually make it work, so they just say "time is different" as if that is a satisfying conclusion. I actually like the idea of different worlds going at different speeds, like the idea no one ages in Neverland, or Storybrooke was frozen in time for so many years. I could buy that Wonderland, say, is one day per our year. But that wasn't how it was originally presented and now it just feels like they are cheating because they think they have a clever idea (bringing all the "kids" back but keeping the parents the same age as the actors rather than old aging Regina/Hook/Zelina.

[Noneofyourbusiness]

42 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

I also always assumed Hook was somehow immortal because I was under the impression his obsession with the crocodile happened generations ago.

He spent most of that time in Neverland; that's why he went there with his ship and crew in "The Crocodile" after Rumple taunted him about how he wasn't going to live long enough to get revenge.

11 hours ago, Camera One said:

There are still a whole lot of crucial elements we don't know, including:

- Why the Fairy Godmother helped Cinderella go to the ball to kill someone and if she knew that part.

- How Lucy was brought up in the New Enchanted Forest for ~twelve years between Drizella declaring her intention to cast the Dark Curse and it actually being cast.

- Why Henry's fake family's graves weren't where he thought they'd be.

[Shanna Marie]

On 12/9/2017 at 6:22 PM, Camera One said:

I'm guessing A&E might explain it as Rumple being afraid of seeing his son again, or afraid of encountering his father?  That's what makes Rumple so relatable.

The problem is that I don't think they ever did address why Rumple either didn't bother to find out where his son was all that time or made no effort to reach him while he was in Neverland, instead of devoting all his effort to getting a curse cast that would take him to a world where his son actually wasn't at the time. The reunion between Bae/Neal and Rumple was rather unsatisfying on a lot of levels, but you'd think Neal might have brought that up during one of their fights:

RUMPLE: (Makes sad face) I know I made a mistake in letting you go. I've regretted it every day since then, and I did everything I could to reach you again.
NEAL: Funny, I was in Neverland most of that time. You didn't have to get a curse cast that destroyed a civilization to reach me there, so why didn't you try?
RUMPLE: (Makes another sad face): You don't understand, I wasn't ready to face him again.

Or it seems like something his enemies might have thrown in his face. Wouldn't Pan have had a snarky remark about not wanting his son back badly enough to encounter his father? Wouldn't Hook have taunted him with the fact that he spent that century looking after Rumple's son while commuting back and forth between worlds, while Rumple couldn't manage to find his own son? But it seems like the writers didn't realize that they wrote that situation. They wanted Rumple to get the curse cast to set up the story, and they needed Bae to be in Neverland, mostly to explain why he was still alive when Rumple reached him, and they needed Neal to get to Neverland, so they had him use Rumple's gizmo in his castle, and they don't seem to have connected the dots to realize that it meant Rumple should have been able to know where Bae was, and it was in a place where he could reach him.

14 hours ago, Camera One said:

So you can't extrapolate timelines from one to another, even if the same character appears in both, eh?  Is Adam saying that maybe Regina kept trying to cast the Curse but failed, so years went by before Regina was ousted and went to Hook for escape?  

Oh wow, I really wasn't paying attention because it only just struck me that, yeah, these events would have come before Alice was born. Alice's timeline was already problematic because either she should be about 40 years old now or she was born well into what should have been the curse, in which case WHook and WRegina should have looked a lot older in that flashback. I guess maybe the Wishverse could have been accelerated for a while because it had to catch up, so events that happened at the beginning of what would have been the curse ended up happening years later in the Alternate Forest, or something like that, but once Hook was in the Alternate Forest, he was on the same timeline as them, so Ella was a teenager and Drizella at least a pre-teen when Alice was born, but I don't get the sense that Drizella/Ivy is more than ten years older than Alice/Tilly.

But then we're back with the Lucy issue. If she's really Henry and Ella's child and she aged normally, then the events of the When Henry Met Ella era flashbacks are happening at least ten years in the past. While you can kind of squint and accept that Henry and Ella might not have changed a lot between mid-late 20s and mid-late 30s, or that Regina might have gone from 40-something to a well-preserved 50-something, Tilly seems to be in her early 20s in Hyperion Heights. That should mean she was maybe 13 during these flashbacks, but she was an adult or possibly an older teen when she met Hook again. If she's supposed to have been in her teens then and has aged ten years, she's a bit old for the feral wild child manic pixie bit.

And yet, we saw Lucy at this age when the curse was cast, so it's not as though they pulled another Henry and she aged normally while the adults around her were frozen in time. Either there was a pre-curse that froze everyone else, she's not actually Henry's biological daughter and she's already out there as an almost 10-year-old, or they pulled a Dawn and she was suddenly inserted into their lives, with their memories altered to believe she'd always been there (that's a plot they haven't yet stolen from Joss Whedon, so it's a possibility).

12 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I find the "time moves at different paces" concept on this show particularly infuriating, even though I've seen it in other media without being bothered. I'm not still not sure why. When the Pevensie children came back to Digory Kirke's mansion, I didn't flip any tables.

It's all in how you set it up. They set up time moving differently in Narnia early in the book when Lucy returned after her first visit, telling all her stories about what she did, and they knew she'd only been in the wardrobe a few seconds, so they thought she was making it up. Then they ended up using those time differences in the story, with centuries passing in Narnia between their visits. That made it all look like it was planned and written to be that way. In this case, it's just a mess, and they've made no effort at clarifying it. They tell us now on Twitter that it wasn't 2017 when Henry left, but didn't the show say something like "present day" on the screen? They could have given us an accurate timestamp then. They could easily have told us how long Henry had been gone from Storybrooke by having someone say either something like "I can't believe it's been five years since you left" or "How can you have grown up so much when you've only been gone a few months?" They have too many things that are impossible to reconcile, no matter how you try to parse it, and it's so complicated they really need to spell it out instead of just doing the "time passes differently" handwave.

I would add to the list of things they haven't explained:
If Henry was in that world long enough to be friends with Jack and to have taught him to act out entire Empire Strikes Back Scenes, how did he not know that a Cinderella story was playing out around him when there was a Lady Tremaine and a ball that all the girls in the kingdom were invited to, and how did he not know about a resistance movement against the king?