A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[Serena]

I don't believe they would ever have Emma chose power when faced with the same dilemmas Rumple did (power over Henry? Power over Hook? Nope).

[RadioGirl27]

I don't believe they would ever have Emma chose power when faced with the same dilemmas Rumple did (power over Henry? Power over Hook? Nope).

If Emma has free will as the Dark One, yeah, no way she would act like Rumple.

 

What worries me it's that they might present the Dark One curse as some kind of virus you can't control and takes away your agency, as a way to justify Rumple's evil actions, so they can say that the Dark One and Rumple have always been two different characters, the same way A&E are trying to present Regina and the Evil Queen as two different characters.

 

I don't know. Since they decided not to kill Rumple in the finale I've been worried that they are going to try to redeem him using Emma and her actions while she is the Dark One as an instrument for doing so.

Edited May 20, 2015 by RadioGirl27

[Shanna Marie]

One thing that worries me about how this Dark Emma arc might work is the fact that the main promo for 4B was all about corrupting Emma -- showing the Queens of Darkness and the rotten apple with Emma looking evil and scary and a Rumple voiceover about corrupting a hero. So now Emma's dark, and even though she wasn't corrupted and she did this out of self-sacrifice to save everyone else and try to stop this free-floating darkness forever, the fact that they promoted the last arc as being about corrupting Emma makes it kind of look like that's what happened.

 

Meanwhile, there's really no good promo hook unless they come up with some thing else -- no Captain Hook, Peter Pan, Wicked Witch, Frozen, Cruella, etc. Emma is one of the few characters in the show who's totally unique to the show, so she's got no real draw to non-viewers, and for casual viewers, depicting her as a threat is going to be a turn-off. It's not like Frozen, where they drew in new people who started bingeing on Netflix as soon as they found out about it to get up to speed. There's not much in there to make people say "ooh, I have to see this." Even a lot of devoted fans are wary.

 

I had a thought that also worries me -- it looks like the obvious cure for this is the True Love's Kiss, which seemed to start to work on Rumple with Belle, until he stopped it. But if tethering this darkness to a person so it could be controlled was the point, would it have been bad for the TLK to work? Would that have just set the darkness free so they'd be back at square one, where Merlin started all this? And does that mean that Rumple pulling back was actually a good thing? (Not that he gets credit for that, since he didn't do it to save the world from darkness but to hold on to his power.) And would this mean that Hook and Emma don't dare kiss now for fear that it would free her from the darkness but then also set it free? Maybe that's why they went so heavy with the forehead lean in the finale, with no kisses. That may have to become their way of kissing for a while.

[Souris]

Replying in Speculation.

[stealinghome]

What worries me it's that they might present the Dark One curse as some kind of virus you can't control and takes away your agency, as a way to justify Rumple's evil actions, so they can say that the Dark One and Rumple have always been two different characters, the same way A&E are trying to present Regina and the Evil Queen as two different characters.

I think that's kind of always how the show has presented the Dark One curse from the very beginning, though. That's why it's called a curse--it infects you and changes you. I don't think it strips away your free will and would call retcon if that happened, but the Dark One curse has always been presented as a magical virus imo.

[KingOfHearts]

The curse is unearned power capable of great evil, if you ask me. It's only given to desperate souls bent on taking control of their lives by cheating instead of honor. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and that's why I think Rumple changed so much yet so little after becoming the Dark One. He was already a guy with issues, but the curse allowed him to act on them in horrifying ways. It's more like a curse on his victims, since they're the ones who truly suffered.

[legaleagle53]

That's not how its going to read to audiences coming back, though. That's my point. It's not appealing and only people who have been intently watching will know that this was done out of sacrifice and does not mean she'll go evil. It's not suitable marketing-wise as a cliffhanger to keep people interested in the next season. Again, this is from the perspective of the returning casual watcher.

 

The irony is that Regina already had the light bulb moment two seasons ago and for the same reason - Cora. In 2x02, she decided to redeem herself because she didn't want to become her mother. This was the catalyst for her entire redemption and was by far more believable than what we got in Zelena's cell. Then Cora came back and well... that trainwrecked for no reason.

 

It trainwrecked because Cora still knew exactly which of Regina's buttons to push and how to push them and because Regina was deep-down still so desperate for Cora to love her that it was easy for Cora to brainwash Regina into being her mother's daughter all over again, and Cora knew this as well.

[browneyegirl89]

I think they made Emma the Dark One to setup for  a TLK kiss with Hook. Yes, they may imply that only Merlin could destroy the Dark One curse but this show specializes in last minute magical fixes that was never talked about previous. Having EMMA as a DO is a way to incorporate Hook in a more useful way but this is speculation on my part.

 

But if it is true, they hijacked the Rumbelle/Beauty and the Beast storyline to give it to the eye candy couple of Captain Swan and I'm not okay about it if that is the kiss. Emma/Hook is really not well developed and not an unique interesting storyline, to me so now they decided to make up another new external obstacle instead of developing that couple. Gosh Hook's presence should have ended in NVL.

[Serena]

I have never seen the DO curse as something capable of erasing free will. I think it's capable of corrupting the weak and cowardly, like any big power (with big power comes big responsibility, blablabla). Rumple was a typical case of the bullied becoming the bully, because his inherently weak nature wouldn't have otherwise.

[FurryFury]

But if it is true, they hijacked the Rumbelle/Beauty and the Beast storyline to give it to the eye candy couple of Captain Swan

 

Seriously? Hijacked? Writing-wise, CS is the best-written couple of the show (which is really not saying much, but still). And there's nothing original or "belonging" to Rumbelle about TLK. Snowing did it before it was cool, I guess.

Edited May 21, 2015 by FurryFury

[Shanna Marie]

If anything, using a TLK to free Emma from being the Dark One would serve as an interesting contrast to what went on with Rumple and Belle, since he stopped it so that he could keep his power. You'd think the fact that they've kissed multiple times since then without it having any effect would have served as a clue-by-four to Belle. She shouldn't have needed that gauntlet to tell her Rumple loved power more than her. She had ample evidence, since even their wedding kiss after he'd been returned from the dead didn't break the Dark One curse. So if Hook and Emma make it work, then that would show that she doesn't love the power more and is a better person than Rumple.

 

Though I still think that if Rumple were really smart, he would have pretended that their wedding kiss broke the curse. Since he's not sparkly in Storybrooke, there really would have been little way of telling unless he was caught using magic. He'd just have to use his cane and limp a bit, and he could have pretended to be totally magic-free, even while scheming behind the scenes. But I guess he likes everyone knowing about his power.

[Curio]

You'd think the fact that they've kissed multiple times since then without it having any effect would have served as a clue-by-four to Belle.

 

Heh. Just FYI, I'm totally stealing "clue-by-four" and will attempt to use it in normal conversations now. 

[RadioGirl27]

I have never seen the DO curse as something capable of erasing free will. I think it's capable of corrupting the weak and cowardly, like any big power (with big power comes big responsibility, blablabla). Rumple was a typical case of the bullied becoming the bully, because his inherently weak nature wouldn't have otherwise.

Nothing that we have seen points there, no. But I doubt that would stop A&E if they want to change it. It wouldn't be the first time. Look at this season, it was a retcon after another, so I wouldn't put it pass them to retcon this if it fits their plan for Emma and/or Rumple.

 

Oh, and Rumbellers should not worry about Hook and Emma breaking the Dark One Curse with a TLK. I hope I'm wrong and CS share an epic TLK this season, but I don't expect it to happen. If it ever happens, the TLK between Hook and Emma would be in the last season of the show.

[Shanna Marie]

The clue-by-four is the more forceful relative of the clue stick, for when you really, really need to make something sink in.

 

On the topic of the TLK and breaking the Dark One curse, we do have precedent with Emma and Hook for her being willing to give up power for him. Even before they were involved and anything more than friends (she may or may not have had romantic feelings for him at the time -- probably did, given that she kissed him for real a day or so later, but she was still not wanting to deal with those feelings at that time), she saved his life by doing CPR when he drowned, knowing that it meant losing her power. So there's a contrast between Rumple not being willing to have a TLK with Belle for fear of losing his power, and Emma, who's already shown that she puts Hook ahead of power. She's also shown that she puts Henry ahead of power, since unintentionally hurting Henry with her power made her decide to try to give up her magic.

 

That's why I'm iffy on this story line. It doesn't really tell us anything new about Emma, unless they go wildly inconsistent with her character and use this to absolve Rumple, since we already know from multiple incidents that Emma puts people ahead of power and that should make the outcome of this kind of a "duh." The most it gets us is a sign of character growth from her that she put herself in a situation she's fairly certain to not be able to get herself out of on her own, putting her fate in the hands of the people she loves and trusting in them to be able to resolve the situation and save her. But I fear and dread the idea that they might use her sacrifice to take her down a peg and show that she's no better than the villains. She finally got to be the hero and save the day, and they're darkening that. She got the TLK and broke the curse in season one, but since then she's either been rendered helpless at the critical moment or has been given no credit. Her joining in to help Regina with the failsafe was the tipping point that saved Regina and the whole town, but Regina got hailed as a hero for stopping the thing she started with intent to kill the whole town. Emma barely got acknowledged, and Regina claims that no one ever has her back, even though she'd be dead if not for Emma. Emma was tied to a tree while Regina took on Pan to save Henry, and then was frozen while Rumple killed Pan. Emma got her magic removed and then was helpless while Regina got light magic to stop Zelena. Emma was just about helpless against Ingrid while Anna saved the day, and then was frozen and unable to help Hook while Belle saved the day. Now Emma finally gets a chance to use her unique abilities to save the day -- and Regina, yeah, no one ever has her back -- and it makes her the Dark One. Which character really always gets the short end of the stick, huh, writers?

[KAOS Agent]

I honestly don't understand anyone's obsession with the idea of Captain Swan True Love's Kiss expelling the Dark One from Emma. It's not necessary to this storyline. Emma has shared True Love's Kiss with Henry. If they wanted to get rid of it, have them kiss and we're done. This is not a case of Emma/Hook "stealing" the Beauty and the Beast storyline from Rumbelle (it doesn't make sense anyway since Hook/Emma fell in love before the "beast" part). It's not a case of whose ship is the best or why Hook is the evilest evildoer and having True Love with Emma is icky or Hook is the bestest thing ever and you need the validation of the kiss to proclaim Captain Swan True Love.

 

In a ret-con from both "Skin Deep" and "The Miller's Daughter" we're being told that the Dark One is not a curse, but a separate entity and its power/essence will not simply vanish into the ether when expelled from its host as Cora had previously told us ("He’s dying. And when his name disappears, all of that power of his will just… Boil off into the air and… Then there will be no new Dark One."). The way the Apprentice described the darkness, True Love's Kiss would simply untether the Darkness from Emma's soul and release it back into the wild to destroy at will. Emma took it on to try to contain it. Now eventually when they know how to defeat/banish the Darkness, they may need a True Love's Kiss to release it from her to do whatever, but that's not how this story is even remotely going to start out. And again, Henry is Emma's proven True Love, so I don't see this as the characters thinking Hook/Emma need to find it to fix the problem, even if it does eventually resolve because Henry's dead (yes, please!) or otherwise unavailable and Hook tries the kiss again. This time successfully.

[Shanna Marie]

In a ret-con from both "Skin Deep" and "The Miller's Daughter" we're being told that the Dark One is not a curse, but a separate entity and its power/essence will not simply vanish into the ether when expelled from its host as Cora had previously told us ("He’s dying. And when his name disappears, all of that power of his will just… Boil off into the air and… Then there will be no new Dark One."). The way the Apprentice described the darkness, True Love's Kiss would simply untether the Darkness from Emma's soul and release it back into the wild to destroy at will.

I suppose there are enough variables to maybe be able to handwave what's going on here. Dreamshade was apparently the only way to kill the Dark One, and maybe it would have not only killed Rumple but also would have killed the Dark One (gee, maybe they should have checked to see if Hook still had any remaining supplies on the Jolly Roger, and they could have taken care of all this before Rumple's heart completely gave out). There's no telling what would have happened with the kiss if it had carried through, but I'm guessing that since that solution would be way too easy, given the number of people who could probably give Emma a True Love's Kiss, they're going to retcon how well that would have worked. Or maybe Emma's different since she got the Dark One in such a different way, and it was all of Rumple's darkness plus the Dark One. My guess is that they're going to now say it won't work, and if it comes up at all, it will be used as an excuse to keep Emma and Hook physically apart, with no kissing and just a lot of forehead leaning. I'm actually in favor of that if it means they have to have conversations from a distance instead of their entire relationship being reduced to background PDA, the way it was for much of the spring season.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if they ignore it entirely because that really throws a monkey wrench into the relationship between Rumple and Belle, since it means he definitely didn't love her enough to let go of his power and it means she should have known that he loved power more. And then there's his charcoal briquette of a heart, the heart she kept proclaiming was good. Man, how disappointing is it that Belle got to be awesome for about two episodes, at most? I had such high hopes for her.

 

I also think they're going to have to come up with some other hook or Big Bad for this arc because Emma as Dark One alone isn't really enough to sustain a story arc, offers little marketing hook, and puts more emphasis on Emma than they seem willing to do these days. Is Merlin even enough? Kind of like how the Frozen stuff ended up being more of a subplot and a springboard to the Ingrid story, which ended up being a secondary threat to the real problem of Rumple, with the Apprentice and Author plots for the entire season being set up there. Frozen was the "ooh!" factor, but it was mostly the setup for Ingrid, and Ingrid was the distraction to keep them from noticing Rumple with the hat and Apprentice stuff, and meanwhile Regina was obsessed with the Author. So maybe Dark Emma was just the cliffhanger shocker and will be quickly resolved after that's been used as a springboard to the real plot.

[Souris]

Heh. Just FYI, I'm totally stealing "clue-by-four" and will attempt to use it in normal conversations now. 

 

Ditto! What a fun turn of phrase. "He needs a clue-by-four up the side of the head!" LOVE IT!

 

Oh, and Rumbellers should not worry about Hook and Emma breaking the Dark One Curse with a TLK. I hope I'm wrong and CS share an epic TLK this season, but I don't expect it to happen. If it ever happens, the TLK between Hook and Emma would be in the last season of the show.

 

Yeah, I'd be shocked as hell if CS gets a TLK anytime soon. Certainly not in 5A. They're dragging their milestones out.

 

But I fear and dread the idea that they might use her sacrifice to take her down a peg and show that she's no better than the villains. She finally got to be the hero and save the day, and they're darkening that.

 

Sadly, I completely believe this is exactly what will happen and their main purpose in making Emma the Dark One. They're systematically tarnishing the heroes to make the villains look better. Belle's selfishness got Anna almost killed and captured by Ingrid. Snowing stole a baby from her mother and gave her extra darkness. Now it's Emma turn for them to turn their poison pens toward undermining. They never make heroes look BETTER on this show, so there's no way Emma is coming out of this anything but darker and less heroic. Regina and Rumple will be walking around with a permanent beatific glow and choirs of angels following them by the time this show ends.

[Camera One]

I suppose there are enough variables to maybe be able to handwave what's going on here. Dreamshade was apparently the only way to kill the Dark One, and maybe it would have not only killed Rumple but also would have killed the Dark One (gee, maybe they should have checked to see if Hook still had any remaining supplies on the Jolly Roger, and they could have taken care of all this before Rumple's heart completely gave out). There's no telling what would have happened with the kiss if it had carried through, but I'm guessing that since that solution would be way too easy, given the number of people who could probably give Emma a True Love's Kiss, they're going to retcon how well that would have worked. 

 

I was wondering why Hook wouldn't have asked Triton and Ariel for some squid ink.  They've built up so many magical objects and solutions that it makes no sense when these are conveniently forgotten when crisis number five thousand occurs.

Edited May 22, 2015 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

I wouldn't be surprised if they ignore it entirely because that really throws a monkey wrench into the relationship between Rumple and Belle, since it means he definitely didn't love her enough to let go of his power and it means she should have known that he loved power more.

 

But haven't they already demonstrably shown this? I believe it's even been said in dialogue by both Rumpel & Belle. They tried to cover it with Rumpel's excuse that he didn't believe in love, but that's ridiculous since True Love's Kiss was actually working to remove the Dark One from him. There was actual physical evidence that Belle truly loved him and he pulled away to retain his power. One can handwave things and say that all later kisses did not have the intent to remove the Darkness such that there was no effect when they kissed, but the initial kiss definitely proved the existence of True Love between Rumpel and Belle.

 

A more interesting exploration would be why Bae couldn't give his father True Love's Kiss and why it wasn't suggested by Shady instead of the bean. Apparently, no one thought of parent/child love being as pure as a romantic love in the context of curse breaking. It seems rather stupid in retrospect because Bae did clearly love his father even as the Dark One.

 

I think that as much as they want to pretend that Season 5 will be about Emma, it will once again ultimately be about Rumpel and the Dark One mythology. Rumpel was much too sane and in control as the Dark One to make it remotely believable for Emma to go all out evil and threaten her loved ones. Plus, what would be her motivation? She's not addicted to power and knows that she's loved with definitive proof due to her curse breaking kiss with Henry. Emma needs to either be separated from everyone to make her start doubting things or never really considered a true threat in order for this story to be at all believable. I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt (I'll see what happens in the teaser Jen said was filmed for Comic Con showing what happened to Emma), but Dark!Emma is just not sustainable for more than a few episodes.

Edited May 22, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[YaddaYadda]

There is one thing they might do and that is give Emma the Elsa treatment, in the sense that terrible things are happening and people start blaming Emma for it because they witness her losing control over her powers once or something like that. Except that someone else is fucking with her and everyone like Ingrid did with Elsa.

Emma has a lot of magic residing inside of her and we don't know what that does to a person. Does all that magic make her physically ill? Does it burst out of her? Is she able to control it? It's a whole lot that we don't know about. Even Rumple, when he's out of his coma, will he still be able to do magic? Regina and Cora weren't born with magic and they learned it. And I would find the whole Emma sees/inherits what the other Dark Ones before her did to be horrific. Not only would that whitewash the things that Rumple did, but she'd have first hand knowledge of how he manipulated her existence to suit his purpose and how he killed Milah and took Hook's hand among other things which for me would only serve to torment Emma, which pleas no and thanks because it would seem that the writers mission is to send Emma over the edge.

About the TLK, that's overplayed and I don't care for it and since there have already been changes from curse to an actual thing inhabiting a person and I understand the role of the idiot hat better, I'm not sure that they're going down the TLK road right away, but they might try to kill the Dark One while it's still inside Emma and then do the TLK. It's already tethered to a person, why would they release it and risk losing the goop. Emma could be put under a sleeping curse like the rest of her family has.

What if Emma is the one who had to TLK someone? That could happen to. What is she's the one who manages to save herself because of who she is? They've been telling us how special she is and how the only one who saves me is me (and this will undoubtedly be a team effort) Emma is not a desperate soul anymore. She has people she loves and do anything for and them for her and she has hope too which is something she didn't have before and she has let love in. I guess these things have to weigh in the balance.

[Amerilla]

I wouldn't be surprised if they ignore it entirely because that really throws a monkey wrench into the relationship between Rumple and Belle, since it means he definitely didn't love her enough to let go of his power and it means she should have known that he loved power more.

 

As with all this TS,TW, it tends to be dependant on the plot of the moment, but have they ever defined True Love as a love that stands higher than all other love? Or singular?

 

True Love just seems to mean a love that starts under unusual circumstances between people not really looking for love and that is seperated by outside forces but always finds it's way back together. And in a pinch, it can break a curse.

 

So, there's no reason within the canon of the show to think that Belle and Rumpel aren't True Loves even if he loves someone or something else "more,"  or that Emma could not be True Loves with Henry AND Neal AND Hook all at the same time, or that Regina can feel True Love even with her heart sitting in a bag 10 miles across town.

 

You'd think the fact that they've kissed multiple times since then without it having any effect would have served as a clue-by-four to Belle.

 

"Clue-by-four" is great. However - and I know I've probably said this before - it's pretty clear that not every kiss between True Loves is True Love's Kiss.  True

Love's Kiss seems to be about intent.

 

In Skin Deep, Belle intended to break the curse, and it started to break. Charming intended to wake Snow from her curse, and she did; Snow did the same for him when he. Emma in S1 and Regina in S3 intended to show Henry infinite love, and it jarred him loose from the Curse du Jour. Run-of-the-mill kissy-face between two people is just kissy-face. Due to plot requirements, Belle hasn't intended to break the Dark One's curse since that one time.

 

A more interesting exploration would be why Bae couldn't give his father True Love's Kiss and why it wasn't suggested by Shady instead of the bean. Apparently, no one thought of parent/child love being as pure as a romantic love in the context of curse breaking. It seems rather stupid in retrospect because Bae did clearly love his father even as the Dark One.

 

Nothing about Bae or Neal turned out to be worth exploring, apparently. If TLK can indeed break ANY curse, it makes it even more absurd that he died in the arms of Emma, who both the overall plot and the in-episode dialog defined as a True Love, and a father who had almost literally figured out how to move the heavens and the earth to find him, and they just sat there and cried while (breakable) curse the killed him.

 

Unless they have some long-term plan to make Shady the ultimate Big Bad, I categorize the whole "why didn't Bae just kiss 'em" as as plot mechanism to get him to the LWM without Rumpel. In terms of S1, it also set Emma's love for Henry in a special category.

 

Rumpel was much too sane and in control as the Dark One to make it remotely believable for Emma to go all out evil and threaten her loved ones.

Carlyle has said, and I believe we've seen it on-screen, that Rumpel's sanity and control grew over time. In the beginning, he's snapping necks and stabbing maids and crushing Milah's heart; many, many decades later, he's more into transmutation and torture than straight-up murder. We didn't see enough of Zoso to see if it worked the same way with him, but in terms of how they could structure Emma's story, there's no canon reason why they couldn't make her go all-out evil.

 

She's not addicted to power and knows that she's loved with definitive proof due to her curse breaking kiss with Henry.

 

It's dressed up as a love of power," but Rumpel is really "addicted" to safety. To someone who was kicked around in his mortal life, power provided the sheild he needed to walk through the world without fear. It's why he can't give it up.

 

For all we know, Emma's true addiction is skinny jeans, and the plot will revolve around her attempting to dominate the global stretchy-denim market.

[YaddaYadda]

The whole dark curse vs Dark One inhabiting a person who just completely wonky.  If they knew they were going to go down the road of Emma being the Dark One which I'm sure they had planned for sometime anyway, why not just say right away that the Dark One is an actual entity as opposed to a curse.  I mean is it still a curse?  And how incompetent is Merlin?  Even Shady (err...Blue) thought about banishing Rumple to the LwM to render his powers useless.  So I personally don't get any of this at all.  

 

This is why I'm not sure that Emma is still in Storybrooke and I'm not sure they will be banishing or destroying the Dark One while in Storybrooke since Emma can just leave town.  Her parents can leave and go visit her whenever they want.  They can relocate if they wanna be close to her and she can just live a normal life.  She can have shared custody of Henry with Regina.

[KAOS Agent]

Carlyle has said, and I believe we've seen it on-screen, that Rumpel's sanity and control grew over time. In the beginning, he's snapping necks and stabbing maids and crushing Milah's heart; many, many decades later, he's more into transmutation and torture than straight-up murder. We didn't see enough of Zoso to see if it worked the same way with him, but in terms of how they could structure Emma's story, there's no canon reason why they couldn't make her go all-out evil.

 

 I can see why he'd say he gained more control over time, but even from the start Rumpel was never a threat to Bae. The people we saw him hurt were the soldiers who'd treated him badly and he used the power to gain revenge on them and then he killed the mute maid. He murdered the maid because she also had the power to hurt him and that one did seem like it was the Dark One taking him over, but he still killed her for a reason. Milah's murder also had a motive. His motives may not have been entirely sane (the death penalty because your kid skinned his knee is seriously messed up), but there were reasons. He wasn't indiscriminately murdering people right and left. Plus, he went out and did something "heroic" by taking out all of the ogres and saving all of the child soldiers who would have been lost in the war. 

 

One of the things I've seen is this notion that Rumpel became the Dark One to save his son, but that's not really what happened. He had control of the dagger and thus, the Dark One. He knew what having control of the dagger meant. He could have ordered Zoso to kill the ogres and used him for the power of "good". Instead, Rumpel murdered Zoso to gain all of the power for himself. He made a very dark choice for power before he came under the Dark One's influence and it wasn't because he needed to protect his son. He already had that power when he gained possession of the dagger.

 

Everything we saw with Rumpel in the months following his becoming the Dark One shows that Emma would be unstable, but not completely irrationally evil. Rumpel still had love for his son. If Emma felt like she was a danger to anyone at all, it seems to me that she'd do everything in her power to stop herself. She'd willingly going under the sleeping curse or leave town or any number of things to stop herself from committing the type of crimes Rumpel did. 

Edited May 23, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[Camera One]

It was, but I think it's because of the way the characters were being used.  With Regina being kept mostly separate from the Frozen stuff, it meant Henry was one of the characters she could regularly interact with, so lots of Henry time. 

 

Since they were making Emma "dark" the second half of the season, and Henry is something Emma sees as a good thing in her life, it would mean minimizing her Henry time.  By the time Operation Mongoose actually happened, they didn't need to worry about it.

 

When analyzing this show, the writing and the reasons for it feels so mechanical.  The operative word is everything depends on how a character is being "used".  The writers are plotting certain characters based on how they will be used for plot or to support another character.  I suppose planning an arc will normally go like this, but I don't know how it can be done without this seeming so contrived and obvious.

Edited May 24, 2015 by Camera One

[jhlipton]

Re the current poll: A character we've not seen before will take possession of the dagger, do nothing with it, cause it to lose its power then that character will die -- without ever truly impacting the main story line.

[KingOfHearts]

I've been watching some fantasy anime lately, and there's a problem that stuck out to me that Once has. The antagonists are ridiculously overpowered for no real reason and the heroes take turns with the idiot ball until the last possible minute, when a deue ex machina saves the day. I appreciate villains that are hard to beat because they're smart, not because they just so happen to have super strong magic powers. The climactic comeback is even more ridiculous because either an exterior force sometimes completely unknown comes to save the day or the heroes somehow find it in themselves to exert more power. These seem to be common scenarios in fantasy settings featuring magic conjured from peoples' bodies.

It's annoying to watch six hours of the heroes losing, followed by ten minutes of unexplained victory.

Edited May 26, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[paperplate]

Does anyone remember if they have featured any Arthurian legend or anything from Camelot yet in any episode/season?

[Shanna Marie]

Does anyone remember if they have featured any Arthurian legend or anything from Camelot yet in any episode/season?

Lancelot showed up in the flashbacks during season 2. He performed Snow and Charming's initial informal wedding, when they wanted to get married before Charming's mother died. We saw him in the present, but it turned out it was Cora just pretending. I don't think we actually ever saw his body. Then in season 3 there was a flashback in which Charming faked the sword in the stone to persuade Snow that she was fit to be a ruler. In season 4, Rumple had returned from a visit to Camelot in the flashback in which the Queens of Darkness were introduced.

[OnceUponAJen]

Sorry, duplicate information!

Edited May 26, 2015 by OnceUponAJen

[FurryFury]

I've been watching some fantasy anime lately, and there's a problem that stuck out to me that Once has. The antagonists are ridiculously overpowered for no real reason and the heroes take turns with the idiot ball until the last possible minute, when a deue ex machina saves the day. I appreciate villains that are hard to beat because they're smart, not because they just so happen to have super strong magic powers. The climactic comeback is even more ridiculous because either an exterior force sometimes completely unknown comes to save the day or the heroes somehow find it in themselves to exert more power. These seem to be common scenarios in fantasy settings featuring magic conjured from peoples' bodies.

It's annoying to watch six hours of the heroes losing, followed by ten minutes of unexplained victory.

Which anime were you watching? Just curious. Overall, they tend to have worse writing than western TV shows and also horribly overuse some cliches. Anime target audience is generally much younger (even for seinen/josei stuff it's usually people in theiir 20s), which I guess is the reason. And for, say, shounen stuff it's basically a law when the hero is beaten within inches of death and then rises up, inspired by something, and kicks the villain's butt. There are some upsides to this medium, of course - way more variety, for instance, and shorter, better plotted (at least theoretically) seasons.

 

I do agree Once has a similar problem, but so do some other speculative fiction shows. "Idiot ball" is just so much easier to write.

[KingOfHearts]

Maybe it's more bothersome on Once because it's supposed to be a more mature, intelligent show. Plus, the villains can get annoying with their constant monologuing. I don't always hate deus ex machinas, but the ones used in this show have been increasingly ridiculous. Maybe it's the added kid friendliness that makes it more like Saturday morning cartoons than a prime time drama. My expectations, I suppose.

Edited May 27, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[paperplate]

Thanks for the info Shanna (saves me from re watching everything)

[KAOS Agent]

The conversation in the Writers thread got me thinking about how they wrote Operation Mongoose. Since it's less about the writing itself and more of a question about what the hell the characters were thinking, I thought I'd review this season long plot arc here.

 

Let's start with when it started: 

 

Regina: These stories about me in the book, I was written as a villain and things never work out for the villain, so I want to find who wrote this book and make them... Ask them... To write me a happy ending. Is that crazy?

Henry: This is the best idea you've ever had. We have to change the book because it's wrong about you.

 

So Henry and Regina both agree that not only is the book wrong about Regina, but that it needs to be changed. In the next episode, they share this conversation where again the intent of finding the author is to change the book:

 

Henry: Look, I know I might not understand everything that's going on with you and Robin Hood, but there is one thing I understand better than anyone else... Operation Mongoose.

Regina: The storybook?

Henry: We're gonna find the author, make him change it.

 

They also discuss how Rumpel must know the author because he married Belle and thus figured out how to get a happy ending. This ignores the fact that his son just died days before the wedding and he was under Zelena's control until the day before it, so he found the author in a day? And that's why Belle married him rather than him asking her. Again, his son just died, but Rumpel got a happy ending. If Henry died, but Regina got to marry Robin a week later, would she have considered that a happy ending? 

 

Now I just want to know what exactly they thought was going to be changed because it seems to me that if anything is changed about Regina in Henry's book, Henry wouldn't exist. Presumably, Regina wanted fake Page 23 to be real. Did she or he even consider the ramifications of that? If Regina runs off with Robin, there's no Evil Queen threatening Snow, so Snow & David don't meet. Emma isn't born and Henry ceases to exist as well. Even if Snowing meet and have Emma, if Regina isn't casting the curse, Emma is not the Saviour and does not come to this world and meet Neal and thus, still no Henry. That's not even taking into account the ripple effects it would have on all the other people in the kingdom. I guess there'd be a lot more people left alive to be happy?  So essentially with Operation Mongoose, Henry was sacrificing his life and Roland's too (and possibly Emma's & Baby Snowflake's) for his mother's happiness and neither of them gave it a second thought.

 

Now later, when they discussed it with Emma, the story about Operation Mongoose changed. Regina says, "We were looking for the author. I was hoping he could write me a happier story." No one discusses that the book was wrong about Regina or that they want to rewrite it, just that she gets a happier story now. However, by the time they talk to the Blue Fairy six weeks later, they're back to rewriting the book.

 

Regina: But that book seems to have great power.

Blue: Oh, it does.

Regina: So I thought if he rewrote it...

 

It's beyond frustrating that not one single person considers what exactly rewriting the book means particularly since Emma & Hook had just gone back in time and had to fix everything because of one snapped twig. How stupid is everyone? Why would anyone go along with this plan? Even Regina should have had second thoughts. And she ultimately decided not to rewrite things, not because she realized that it was a bad idea, but because she decided she had what she wanted and was happy already. It only became a bad idea when Rumpel began dictating the story with his own rather vindictive specifications. 

Edited May 29, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[october]

The least disruptive change Regina could've made is to have it written that Marian never got sick again. That way Robin and Roland could stay. Marian could divorce Robin and start a new life in a safe town with people she knew. But I don't think that was ever flagged as an option and it wouldn't make sense to take such a convoluted route to cure Marian anyway.

 

It really shows the depths of Regina's narcisism and the writers' appalling tunnel vision where this character is concerned. Re-writing her story is basically what she did in the pilot with the dark curse. Storybrooke was meant to be her happy ending and look how that turned out.

 

This line from Henry in the episode Unforgiven soured me against Operation Retcon (I refuse to write its real name) forever.

 

Henry: We're gonna find the author, and when he rewrites your ending, everything will be the way you want it to be.

 

It's just the most inane, piece of shit plan I've ever heard. This is almost as bad as the time he told Regina that he wished he'd never gone to find Emma. And to have all the other characters go along with it and feed Regina's delusions, even the usually down to earth and practical Emma, was excrutiating (especially when Snow and Charming hesitated to burn the page to protect Emma because of what it'd mean for Operation Bullshit).

 

It's not as if the town line couldn't ever be breached. Regina could've worked overtime to come up with a magical device that'd let her visit Robin or vice versa. That'd be much easier and have fewer potential negative ramifications than Operation Dumbass. She could've also worked on a cure for Marian (as a sort of penance for killing her in the alternate timeline). Instead she pulls out her script like Robin Hood in Men in Tights and demands a rewrite. That they can call her a hero and yet make her so oblivious to other people's needs confuses the hell out of me. Was she even planning to consult with Robin about this? Is he allowed to have an opinion? (I already know the answer- the man is cardboard and they'd never dare have him go against what Regina wants).

Edited May 29, 2015 by october

[Curio]

Now I just want to know what exactly they thought was going to be changed because it seems to me that if anything is changed about Regina in Henry's book, Henry wouldn't exist. Presumably, Regina wanted fake Page 23 to be real. Did she or he even consider the ramifications of that?

 

This was one of the most infuriating things about the entire Operation Mongoose plot. How can the audience be invested in a plot where we don't even know what the characters are hoping to achieve? Yeah, we know that it was all about Regina's "happy ending," but a goal has to be more specific than that. What does that mean for a character whose happy ending is constantly switching season to season? It would be like if the writers had Emma go on a quest to find "The Light" because it's essential for saving the day. Well, what the hell is "The Light?" Is it a physical lantern? Is it a metaphor for a good-natured person? And then the writers would have all the characters using this term "The Light" without anyone ever questioning what it is for the entire season. Finally, with about three episodes left in the entire season, they finally tell the audience what it means, but at that point, the audience has checked out already.

 

With Operation Mongoose, we didn't even know what Regina wanted until Zelena came into the picture. Apparently, Regina's "happy ending" was finally introduced by the writers in the third-to-last episode of the entire 22 episode season (erasing Zelena from existence), and it ends up she changed her mind about that in the same damn scene we finally got to hear what her plan was. But what was her plan before Zelena came into the picture? Throughout all of 4A, Zelena was presumed dead, so that means Regina's "happy ending" must have been something else. So what was it back when Operation Mongoose was first introduced?

 

As much as I enjoyed Patrick's take on The Author/Isaac, if we get to go through all of Season 5 without mentioning anything about the stupid storybook plot, The Author, and Operation Mongoose, I'd be a very happy camper.

Edited May 29, 2015 by Curio

[Mari]

But the story is so awful, retconny, and contradictory, that I'm left with questions about what was the original intent. The plan couldn't've been what ended up on our screens.

What happened that this story made so little sense, and at what point did they scrap their original idea, and for what reasons?

[KingOfHearts]

 

Yeah, Cruella was by far the best new thing about 4B. (Pretty much the only good thing about 4B.) At most, I've seen some people a bit intrigued by who Lily's dad is, but I haven't seen a whole lot of fans clamoring for her to be a new regular or anything.

The only two things I enjoy that 4B gave us was Cruella and the real world Rumple/Queens interactions in 4x12. I couldn't care less about anything else that happened in the season. I do sort of appreciate Zelena coming back, but the Marian debacle and the pregnancy fiasco ruined it for me.

Edited May 29, 2015 by KingOfHearts

[Shanna Marie]

So Henry and Regina both agree that not only is the book wrong about Regina, but that it needs to be changed.

Which is really bizarre on Henry's side of the equation because the entire first season was about him fighting to prove that she really was the Evil Queen and that she really had rewritten reality with the curse to create Storybrooke and keep people from being their true selves -- and then trying to fix it. Even if he came to decide that maybe she wasn't really as bad as she was written in the book, he knew for sure that she'd created the curse. He believed that she murdered Graham. He knew that she was trying to poison Emma and even ate the apple tart to keep Emma from being poisoned because he trusted that she could break the curse and save him. So how could he possibly say that the book is wrong about Regina? It would have made a lot more sense to say something like "the book doesn't tell the whole story because it leaves out the part where you're a hero now, and maybe if we update the book, it will change the way things work out for you." Not that it still makes total sense because the whole thing is inane, but it would have made slightly more sense.

 

How can the audience be invested in a plot where we don't even know what the characters are hoping to achieve? Yeah, we know that it was all about Regina's "happy ending," but a goal has to be more specific than that.

That's writing 101, the very basic stuff, which is why it's so mind-boggling that a team of professional, moderately-to-very experienced writers produced this nonsense. It would have been one thing to have a vague goal for a single-episode McGuffin that only exists to give them something else to be looking for when they stumble upon the truly important thing, but this is the major goal for the overall arc of the entire season, something that every single character is out to get, and we never know what it is. They don't even seem to know. Henry's devoting his entire life to this vague idea of Regina's happy ending without ever clarifying what it is -- rewrite things so she goes into the tavern, eradicate Marian, force Robin to choose Regina? The others all take huge risks in order to help Regina get this happy ending without knowing what it is. I'm not sure even Regina knew what she'd do until that very last moment.

 

Then it was massively anticlimactic to have spend the entire season, to have opened up so many horrible cans of worms, only to have Regina realize -- long after they learned that it was a bad thing for the Author to do anything but record events and he was punished for doing what they were planning to ask/make him do -- that she writes her own happy ending. To which most of the audience says, "Duh! That's what we've been saying since the moment you brought up this idiotic idea." So we basically wasted much of a season on a goal that even Regina figured out was a waste of time.

 

What happened that this story made so little sense, and at what point did they scrap their original idea, and for what reasons?

Was there ever a way it could have made any sense at all, aside from having Henry look at Regina like she was crazy and say, "You do realize that's not how the world works, right?" the moment Regina brought up the idea in the first place? It might be something fun to ask Adam on Twitter, though.

[Curio]

It would have been one thing to have a vague goal for a single-episode McGuffin that only exists to give them something else to be looking for when they stumble upon the truly important thing, but this is the major goal for the overall arc of the entire season, something that every single character is out to get, and we never know what it is. They don't even seem to know.

 

The way the writers set up Operation Mongoose and all of Season 4 reminds me of the times in college where you had to present your paper topic to the professor for approval. If your topic and thesis statement wasn't specific enough, it was rejected. The best part was watching the students who did not get the concept of having a focused thesis, and then they'd argue with the professor for a good 10 minutes.

 

"But I really like World War I."

"That's great, Billy. But what about WWI would you like to write about?"

"All of it."

"You can't do that. Be more specific."

"The battles?"

"Be more specific."

 

It's like the writers decided they wanted Season 4 to center around Regina and her happy ending, but that's such a broad and general plot to cover that they ended up not even covering what her happy ending was for the majority of it—which was supposed to be the entire point of the stupid fucking plot.

[Shanna Marie]

It's like the writers decided they wanted Season 4 to center around Regina and her happy ending, but that's such a broad and general plot to cover that they ended up not even covering what her happy ending was for the majority of it—which was supposed to be the entire point of the stupid fucking plot.

Then there's the problem that what sparked all of this was Robin's wife coming back, so Regina didn't get to have her boyfriend, and she -- and everyone else, strangely enough -- seemed to think this was proof that she was being ripped off because of her former villain status and she could never be happy without the book being rewritten. And then it turned out that Robin's wife had been dead this whole time, so never mind. Yeah, there's Zelena's hellspawn, but Regina would hardly be the first woman dealing with a man who had a child with an ex neither he nor she gets along with. So all that angst and drama was about something that wasn't even real.

 

The only two things I enjoy that 4B gave us was Cruella and the real world Rumple/Queens interactions in 4x12. I couldn't care less about anything else that happened in the season.

I liked the Ursula/Hook episode, if you take it out of the context of Operation Dumbass -- which it completely contradicts and undermines. Their part of the episode works pretty well as a standalone if you look at it as just Hook facing one of his former victims and atoning for his wrongs while learning that he needs to rethink the way he approaches things in order to be successful. In context, it's pretty ridiculous to have a whole episode about villains finding their happy endings by getting over their need for revenge and making amends set against the idea that the way for Regina to get a happy ending is to rewrite the stupid book.

[KAOS Agent]

 

Even if [Henry] came to decide that maybe she wasn't really as bad as she was written in the book, he knew for sure that she'd created the curse. He believed that she murdered Graham. He knew that she was trying to poison Emma and even ate the apple tart to keep Emma from being poisoned because he trusted that she could break the curse and save him. So how could he possibly say that the book is wrong about Regina?

 

This is the same Henry who decided that Marian dying of the frozen curse was a great thing because Regina could be happy with Robin. It's just bizarre the lengths they went to to twist his character into someone that would be on board with this idea. The same kid who wouldn't allow people to kill someone in self defense because "heroes don't kill" was totally on board with an innocent young mother dying so his mom could have her boyfriend. It's called divorce, Henry. Seriously, what the hell?

 

Incidentally, here is what I said in the episode thread about Henry when Operation Mongoose was first introduced: "And then there was Regina/Henry. He really is the truest stupid. Even if we pretend that all of Regina's past misdeeds were just literary license, what part of the fact that he grew up in a cursed town and his biological mother was severely traumatized by her parentless upbringing due to said curse did he miss?"

 

And here's Mari from "The Apprentice" thread: "Suddenly, they made Henry into a character who is just fine plotting semi-evil plots with Regina, who cheerleads her decisions, and who actively plans on going into Operation Mongoose--which is so very vague and badly written that it doesn't even make sense.

It doesn't make sense that 10 year old Henry could see the difference between right and wrong more clearly than 12 year old Henry, and it doesn't make sense that Henry is spouting things like "You were never evil!  This making the writer change the book is a great plan!  Operation Mongoose!"

 

What's amusing is that there were people willing to wait and see about this storyline. Many were expecting Henry to get a reality check and for Operation Mongoose to be better fleshed out and clearer about its goals. Twenty episodes later and this did not happen. It is not good that the things we were saying when it was first introduced are the same things we're saying now that it's over.

[jhlipton]

 everyone pretty much acted as they should based on their characterizations. 

 

We can't have that!  That's crazy talk!!!

[Shanna Marie]

Suddenly, they made Henry into a character who is just fine plotting semi-evil plots with Regina, who cheerleads her decisions, and who actively plans on going into Operation Mongoose--which is so very vague and badly written that it doesn't even make sense.

For a moment I had the evil thought that maybe they're destroying Henry on purpose as a reaction to the pressure to improve the relationship between Regina and Henry to make the adoptive mother look better -- so they did it by showing that Regina brought her son up to be as much a psychopath as she is. But then reality struck and I remembered that they don't think they're writing Regina as a psychopath and see her as truly a victim of undeserved bad fortune, so they probably think they've made this a healthy relationship.

 

I'm still astonished that everyone jumped on board Operation Dumbass without the tiniest scrap of evidence or moment of skepticism. Regina got this idea that she could get a better outcome by changing the book by staring at a book that shows her exactly what happened, with no suggestion that the book changes anything, and with the book ending at the casting of the curse, so it has nothing to do with what happened with Robin. The first suggestion that there might be anything to the book having a link with fate is that alternate page, which only shows what might have been, that Regina could have made a different choice, but she didn't so it didn't end up in the book. Emma thought the plan was a great idea even though she herself saw the book go blank and then be rewritten based on what happened after it happened. The only person who ever expressed the slightest doubt was Snow in the infamous "adultery isn't bad" bit, when she was trying to tell Regina to have hope when things don't work out exactly the way she wants them -- but then later Snow was so convinced that Regina had to have the Author to get a happy ending that she refused to destroy the door page even though it might have caused harm to Emma. It was like there was some mass delusion in which no one said what probably most of the audience was saying. They managed to assassinate every single character with one fell swoop.

[KAOS Agent]

I was thinking about this while mowing the jungle in my backyard today, which is why I have too many thoughts about this storyline and can't stop with it (I did give up on the mowing though and am considering stealing the neighbors' goats to mow the rest for me). Anyway, one would assume that after the entire experience of watching what happens when you write what you want, Henry would have grasped that writing what you want is a bad thing. And yet, there he is still thinking about writing his father back to life. Henry still didn't really get the message. Thankfully, the Apprentice seems to have learned how to talk to kids since his ill-advised conversation with Teen!Lily, and points out that a) Neal cannot be brought back and b) Henry's book is not just fictional stories, but actual truth that cannot be rewritten. 

 

On the Regina front for how Operation Mongoose ended, I like that she realized that she creates her own happy ending and she is often the cause of her own suffering and needs to get out of her own way. However, a much better character arc for her would have included her accepting/admitting that her actions were villainous and that she also hurt others and hurting others to get what you want is a bad thing. It would have also helped if she hadn't made her realization that she didn't need the author when she had literally everything she claimed she'd wanted from his rewrite in the first place. How hard is it to turn away from potentially screwing something up when she's got power, magic, money, her soulmate, her son, his son and the forgiveness of her victims?

Edited May 30, 2015 by KAOS Agent

[Faemonic]

Then there's the problem that what sparked all of this was Robin's wife coming back, so Regina didn't get to have her boyfriend, and she -- and everyone else, strangely enough -- seemed to think this was proof that she was being ripped off because of her former villain status and she could never be happy without the book being rewritten. And then it turned out that Robin's wife had been dead this whole time, so never mind. Yeah, there's Zelena's hellspawn, but Regina would hardly be the first woman dealing with a man who had a child with an ex neither he nor she gets along with. So all that angst and drama was about something that wasn't even real.

 

... it's pretty ridiculous to have a whole episode about villains finding their happy endings by getting over their need for revenge and making amends set against the idea that the way for Regina to get a happy ending is to rewrite the stupid book.

 

The thing is, I think that this concept could have worked if the way it was treated wasn't so shallow. Henry's fairy tale book purported to tell the "real" stories of Misthaven. This is less in the vein of Perrault spelling out that The Moral Of The Story Is, even less in the vein of the Grimm brothers publishing an edition that would be more acceptable to modern middle class families and precious delicate sensibilities. It's a modern literary convention of "character X did Y because of Z motivation". But...that doesn't make it unbiased, because events are being transformed into language and narrative. The characters might have chosen their own actions within the limits of their personal experience and perspective, but who has chosen the words? What gave any author the right to represent so many people's lives? King George would read like an evil person for not supporting Snowing's True Love, but what if he did what he did for money because his kingdom was in economic recession? What about his heartbreak over his wife's fertility issues, yet King George never remarried if only for the sake of continuing his dynasty? If the book didn't cover that in at least as much detail as Snowing's motivations or even Rumple's, then it was biased. If Blue had written it, as had been a popular fan theory for the first four seasons, then her angle of storytelling would have made sense. Blue had a giant secret to keep, and it's August who types out and sews an extra story segment into the book that hints at Blue's and Gepetto's conspiracy.

 

I'm not even saying that the author ought to have been Blue, only that the authors do matter and would have been cool to introduce...if it were a matter of one author that presumed to sort ordinary complex people who are doing their best to struggle through life into simplistic labels of Hero and Villain. Instead, it did seem to be an excuse not to explore or expand on definitions.

 

Happy Ending, for example. The original Snow White story ended at the wedding. This one continues from there and tortures Snowing by tearing their family apart. Couldn't that have been a clue that there is no such thing as a happy ending? There are only happy middles! If it's an End, then you're probably dead and therefore in no position to be either happy or unhappy. Regina lost her happy ending because she redefined it, moved the goal posts. Henry is RIGHT THERE, Regina! Emma puts up with your family drama and helps you through it! If Regina had kept aloof with Robin Hood, would Regina have considered her Happy Ending lost the moment Henry has to re-take the SATs because he only learned to build birdhouses at Storybrooke, or if he wanted to go abroad for university? That's not a happy ending lost. That's life going on.

 

Someone else pointed out that Hook's happy ending angst came off a little out of left field. Did what Ariel say go right over his head? Villains don't get Happy En...um, villains don't get Sustainable Happy Middles because villainy is defined by the means that prove to be self-destructive. Well, Hook admitted that even though his redemption goal was heroic, it was too easy to regress to his previous limitations of perspective, and he understood that this (apparently) inherent character trait rendered him innately unworthy of a Sustainable Happy Middle with Emma in his life. But that's not villainy, that's low self-esteem from poor impulse control.

 

And then Isaac's book! Entertaining episode, but I am so confused about what the point of it all even was. By giving the villains happy endings, Isaac apparently meant "Rumple and maybe Zelena" for some reason I don't know because Isaac had been willing to write Zelena right out of existence like ten minutes before. I don't consider Lily having a happy end being somebody's mook, but was she on the winning side because she was a villain under a savior darkness curse that provided the ink to even write, or was Lily on the losing side because she chose Hope and a relationship with her mother over vengeance and is therefore a hero and should therefore be miserable in Isaac's Bizarro World? Neither Evil Snow nor Bandit Regina were happy in the other world, even though Snow was the designated villain and therefore doomed to a happy ending that villains always get in this world, unless not, because original Snow was a hero... Deckhand Hook was apparently a hero in that world only because he was unhappy? But Isaac had cured Hook of his alcoholism. Blackbeard hadn't changed one bit! He's always chuckling and punning over the Jolly Roger that he keeps getting back anyway.

 

If I recall correctly, the original show was inspired by the idea of what if Snow White's evil queen had won. But there's no story to that. So, now the story seems to be that Regina can't win either way, or just doesn't really notice or appreciate when she has.

 

It's called divorce, Henry. Seriously, what the hell?

It's this show. Before Marian got re-frozen, Robin Hood was all on board with partial custody of Roland and a 50-50 split of property, and Regina could hardly believe it and she still saw problems like, "What is Roland going to think???" Clutch the pearls!!!!!

Edited May 30, 2015 by Faemonic

[Shanna Marie]

It would have also helped if she hadn't made her realization that she didn't need the author when she had literally everything she claimed she'd wanted from his rewrite in the first place.

That's another problem with it all. Even before she realized that she didn't need the author because she wrote her own happy ending and had been the person getting in the way of her own happiness, she already didn't need the author because even without his magical intervention she got everything she wanted. She had Robin back, and Robin wanted to be with her. He just didn't want Zelena killed because he wanted his baby. So before her big epiphany, Regina had everything she'd said she wanted.

 

There's also a bit of a creepy factor in tying the flashback about her making herself barren to her epiphany and resulting decision to let Zelena live, given her then spelling out what the deal would be because it means she gets even more of what she wanted -- still without magical Authorial intrusion to rewrite the rules. She in effect gets Zelena to play surrogate mother for her with a child that it sounds like she and Robin will raise as their own. Regina may have made herself barren, but now she's going to get a baby of her own that's biologically related to her and that's also her lover's child. She's getting all the happy ending boxes ticked off about as well as she can without rewriting history.

 

And yet there's zero self-awareness, in spite of her epiphany, no sense of realization that she did get everything without the rules changing, and therefore that she'd been wrong all along about the villains getting happy endings issue, and because of being wrong she'd stirred up a lot of stuff that was going to cause harm for everyone else. Just as she's never apologized or taken responsibility for her former evil, there was never any "I should never have gone down this path" when they were frantically preparing for whatever Isaac might do with the ink she gave him.

 

Hook admitted that even though his redemption goal was heroic, it was too easy to regress to his previous limitations of perspective, and he understood that this (apparently) inherent character trait rendered him innately unworthy of a Sustainable Happy Middle with Emma in his life. But that's not villainy, that's low self-esteem from poor impulse control.

I think it was more that he feared he might not be able to get a Sustainable Happy Middle with Emma because he was afraid he'd screw up again. Plus the fact that Emma seemed to totally believe that Regina couldn't get a happy ending without the rules being changed, and if Emma believed that about Regina, what did she think about him? He puts himself in the same class as Regina, even as Emma doesn't seem to. This is part of the problem with Emma being such a gung-ho member of Team Dumbass. It set up some inherent contradictions, where she's all "if we don't find the Author, Regina can't have her happy ending!" but at the same time is more like "you did the right thing and are working hard to change yourself, you'll be fine if you keep this up" with Hook.

 

And then Isaac's book! Entertaining episode, but I am so confused about what the point of it all even was. By giving the villains happy endings, Isaac apparently meant "Rumple and maybe Zelena" for some reason I don't know because Isaac had been willing to write Zelena right out of existence like ten minutes before.

I think this was a case of them changing the premise in mid-stream. I know when the storyline was first brought up, we were all imagining that it would climax in a big AU finale, but what we were picturing was more of an "It's a Wonderful Life" scenario in which they saw what a world where villains got happy endings would really be like. That's what they seemed to be building toward, showing us the outcome if villains were actually rewarded for their bad behavior instead of bringing about their own downfall because they don't know when to stop. In the spoiler thread, we were imagining a hellhole in which the villains were triumphant and got everything they wanted -- and yet still weren't happy and took it out on everyone else, proving that it was more the attitude than your villain/hero status that led to happiness. The villains who were getting everything they wanted would still end up being unhappy because there would be something else they wanted, while the Snow Whites of the world would still be happy because they had hope and would find a way to appreciate and enjoy what they had.

 

But what we got in the climactic AU was just a role reversal in which some of the current heroes were villains, while some of the people who had been villains in the past were heroes and others were somewhere in between. There was no consistent thesis in the world we were presented, no exploration of the tropes or themes. All they really did was give Regina Snow's story, with a dash or two of Emma's story, and then put Snow into Regina's role. I guess this had something to do with the motive changing, as Rumple didn't care so much about the villains getting happy endings as he wanted to make himself a hero so as to preserve his heart and get everything he wanted. Even as Rumple's fanfic, that scenario doesn't really hold together, though. It makes sense that he'd make himself a great hero, make Belle his loving wife, and make Hook a coward/weakling. But this is the man whose first act upon the curse breaking and magic coming back was to summon a wraith to kill Regina. Why would he make her a hero? He's never acted like there was anything personal about anything between him and Emma. She was a means to an end, but it wasn't like he hated her, and she hasn't really done anything to directly oppose or thwart him, so why would he punish her? He blames Zelena for killing Neal, so why would she get any kind of happy ending with Robin? (unless he considers Robin a punishment) Or did Rumple only dictate a few things, like his own role, Belle's role, and Hook's role, and everything else was Isaac's fan fiction?

[Mari]

I had the impression that Isaac deliberately wrote Regina with an unhappy life because he was annoyed she wouldn't change things when she had the chance.

[didia]

I believe my problem with 4B is that I really disliked their big arcs in this half season. Usually, I enjoy their big ideas but dislike some details or execution. I really hated the idea of an all powerful  author who can tamper with everybody's  will. It was better than  I thought, but it didn't make sense, as people already said here.

 

Charming and Snow deserved a better story. It's absurd to believe they would have done such a thing without a damn good reason. They could have saved it for me, if they decided to develop the story, like they do to villains. The author could have created a false prophecy saying that their first born would be more powerful than the dark one and regina together, and would grow to destroy all the Enchanted forest and everyone who lives there, or be a protector (savior). They could have some witch cursing Snow and her baby, anything to try to make it a litle understandable. I know it is cheesy, but is right up their alley.

 

I loved Cruella and Ursula. The actor who played the author did a good job too.

Edited May 31, 2015 by didia

[Shanna Marie]

I had the impression that Isaac deliberately wrote Regina with an unhappy life because he was annoyed she wouldn't change things when she had the chance.

But she pretty much had Snow's exact life. Which makes things even more ironic, if Snow's life and the way she was treated by Regina is something that could be given as a punishment, while Regina's whining about never being able to win, the heroes have it so easy, etc.

 

I suppose there's no chance that Regina will have come away from the experience with any empathy or remorse for what she put Snow through after walking a mile in her shoes. This plot line did Regina no favors. It just made her look like an even worse human being because it spotlighted her entitlement and lack of remorse for her previous crimes if she felt like she was being cosmically wronged by not getting everything she wanted after not having murdered anyone in more than a year, it showed how selfish she was that she focused all her efforts on gaming the system to get a happy ending rather than doing anything for anyone else, it showed her use of the book as a scapegoat to blame for everything that happened to her rather than looking at her own actions, it showed her inability to take responsibility for her actions in never considering the harm that her quest caused to others, and it showed that she's still lacking in empathy if living the life she forced Snow into didn't make her feel at all bad about what she did to Snow.

 

I loved Cruella and Ursula. The actor who played the author did a good job too.

Their casting people do an amazing job because they keep finding these people who are so perfect for the roles, and the cast does such a great job bringing these characters to life. If only they had better stories to work with.

 

I'd love to see Ursula again. She and Poseidon could help facilitate travel between realms.

[YaddaYadda]

Charming and Snow deserved a better story. It's absurd to believe they would have done such a thing without a damn good reason.

 

 

That's the thing though right?  Emma's last words to her parents explains exactly why the writers went with the whole eggnapping thing.  I think it was a very clumsy and misguided attempt at saying Snowing took the darkness out of Emma once and she's counting on them to do it again.  They certainly didn't have to go down that road with Snowing, but I guess the whole "the end justifies the means" saying will come into play during season 5.  Emma did tell them to do it as heroes though, so fucking over someone for her in order to save her will be a no go.