A Thread for All Seasons: OUaT Across All Realms

[KingOfHearts]

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The S6 premiere's lesson was you can "choose" to have hope, but why, when Fate has determined where you will end up?  

It completely undermines Emma's character. She's supposed to be the character who makes her own decisions independently, but she is the most screwed up by Fate. There's no point in choosing hope if your future is already set to be grim. 

Edited October 2, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[MostlyC]

A friendly reminder to all- if it ain't aired yet, it belongs in the spec or spoiler thread.  Here, we talk about things that have already happened.

 

And look- a bunny with a tiara! The bunny wants us to stay on topic too.  Let's not make the bunny sad.

[Free]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It completely undermines Emma's character. She's supposed to be the character who makes her own decisions independently, but she is the most screwed up by Fate. There's no point in choosing hope if your future is already set to be grim. 

Exactly, and it doesn't help that it's been in constant reset mode so it feels like they're still trapped in a never ending curse.

[KAOS Agent]

Emma's fate and her role to push people into being independent has always bothered me because Emma is the character on Once who was literally conceived to meet a specific fate. Rumpel even stated in the latest episode that he needed Snowing alive and procreating, so he was working behind the scenes to make sure that happened. It's very icky that she exists only for that reason. 

The Oracle said that we can change the path slightly but the destination is always the same. This runs counter to Neal's stupid reasons for ditching Emma. If she was fated to do something, then whether he stayed with her or not, she was going to break the curse. Her path to getting there just probably would have been easier had he not abandoned her. Everything we've seen was always fated to happen. That being the case, Emma was never her own person. It's weird that everyone always supposedly has a choice, but Emma is the one tagged with this fate thing with no choice. Now, the show can play all it wants with Emma fighting herself/random villain in hood and overcome this fate, but they've already made it such that her fate did mean a lack of choice. She was conceived to break the curse. She was abandoned as a baby, abandoned as a teenager, struggled to survive as an adult all because she needed to be that way to break the curse. None of it was her.

[Camera One]

The dialogue they gave Neal in Season 2 already contradicted August's convoluted plan to separate Emma and Neal.

Neal: [to Emma] You know, there's not a ton about my father that I remember that doesn't suck. But he used to tell me that there are no coincidences. Everything that happens, happens by design, and there's nothing we can do about it; forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. Fate, destiny, whatever you wanna called it.

So basically, no one should bother doing anything on this show.  Because what's the point.

[Kktjones]

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

Edited October 3, 2016 by Kktjones
Trying to delete post :)

[Free]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

The dialogue they gave Neal in Season 2 already contradicted August's convoluted plan to separate Emma and Neal.

Neal: [to Emma] You know, there's not a ton about my father that I remember that doesn't suck. But he used to tell me that there are no coincidences. Everything that happens, happens by design, and there's nothing we can do about it; forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. Fate, destiny, whatever you wanna called it.

So basically, no one should bother doing anything on this show.  Because what's the point.

Basically it's true, it feels like nothing really happened past the curse breaking.  S2-3 feels like a lot of retconning from their original plans and then they just made things up on the fly since then.

[KingOfHearts]

The writers were right about S6 having a different format. It hasn't been like S1 by any stretch of the imagination, but it's slightly different. The premiere and 6x02 both had a lot more going on than usual. A lot of random scenes were thrown at the screen for exposition. I actually thought while watching 6x02 they were going to have one flashback scene at the beginning of each episode. (The rest of the flashbacks weren't absolutely necessary to understand what was going on.) I'm interested to see if we get another mid-arc slog of random centrics. 

[Curio]

Ironically, 5x02 and 6x02 are incredibly similar, but I think that's just because they're both Regina centrics and all the character centrics fall into their very paint-by-the-number formulas now. 

[YaddaYadda]

I guess they needed to tell us that Regina can sword fight even though she can't dance, so maybe she's under the hood and maybe she isn't, and the  Rumple's protection of Snowing in the EF is no longer valid now that they are in Storybrooke, so watch out, they are going to probably revisit the heart split! Or maybe they won't be looking at the heart split and it's something else entirely.

[KingOfHearts]

I'm so sick of angst over characters killing out of defense. Snow killed Cora in 2B, Emma killed Cruella in 4B, Belle killed Gaston and David killed James in 5B, and now Regina has killed Monte Cristo. Is killing the only way to show "darkness" creeping up the soul?

I can't wait for Henry to write, "Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit has a body count."

Edited October 5, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

Apparently it was it okay for David to kill Percival, though.

[Camera One]

It's all over the place.  Snow killing Cora was so bad that despite showing remorse, even Charming and Emma were not allowed to defend her when Regina brought it up.  Apparently, the lesson Snow had to learn was that there's an easy way and a hard way.  However, when Regina does the same thing and actually shows remorse, both Snow and Emma are on hand to remind her it's not her fault, and it's considered a huge monumental step forward in her redemption journey.  Meanwhile, in other cases, killing someone in self-defense just doesn't merit another scene, as in what's his name, oh yeah, David's case.  And then in the Underworld, Henry felt the need to do what Cruella asked because Emma wasn't a hero anymore for killing her.  Until this was dropped as well, since Henry never mentioned it again.  And even Rumple was shaming Emma by pointedly reminding her that some people were in the Underworld because of her.

[KAOS Agent]

They also tend to ignore past events. Emma threw Walsh off of the roof of her apartment, but somehow that didn't matter in terms of darkness. Meanwhile, Cruella has a gun to Henry's head and Emma pushing her off the cliff was the worst thing ever.

Let's not forget the flying monkeys that they knew were actual good people (like Aurora, Phillip and Little John) that they all killed in 3B. Emma killed a couple, Regina took out at least one, Hook killed two and David got another with his sword. No one cares about them either.

[Camera One]

Not to mention when Blue "died" and came back to life, no one batted an eye or expressed any positive emotion.  Maybe they're all droids.  

Edited October 5, 2016 by Camera One

[Mathius]

On 10/3/2016 at 3:52 PM, Free said:

Basically it's true, it feels like nothing really happened past the curse breaking.  S2-3 feels like a lot of retconning from their original plans and then they just made things up on the fly since then.

No, a lot happened in S2-3.  As badly written as it was, 3B is truly the last time a lot of things of full, lasting significance happened on the show. Zelena (who went on to become a mainstay) got introduced, Neal died and the negative effect on Rumple officially started him down the path of irredeemable villainy, Rumple and Belle got married, Captain Swan happened, and Outlaw Queen happened as well (even in S6, post Robin's death, we aren't going to be done with it or with him).  Afterward, the only big important things to happen that actually continue to matter are Henry becoming the Author (at the very end of 4B) and Robin dying (at the very end of 5B).  95% of S4-5 is just padding done to slowly build to those big events.

Edited October 5, 2016 by Mathius

[KingOfHearts]

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Afterward, the only big important things to happen that actually continue to matter are Henry becoming the Author (at the very end of 4B) and Robin dying (at the very end of 5B).  95% of S4-5 is just padding done to slowly build to those big events.

The only other major thing you can take from S4-S5 is the Captain Swan development. 

[Rumsy4]

We actually now have some evidence to support Brennan's bogus-sounding Sleeping Curse story. Maybe the "nurse" had some of the Sands from the Temple of Morpheus, and used it to enter Brennan's Dreamscape, fell in love, and woke him up. It still doesn't explain why someone in a Sleeping Curse needed a nurse. Unless she was a random nurse, and just came across Brennan's Sleeping Body, and  wanted to play reverse Snow White and Prince Charming.

[Shanna Marie]

15 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The only other major thing you can take from S4-S5 is the Captain Swan development

Even there, it's not exactly so much development that you'd be lost if you skipped from the end of season 3 until now. In the past two seasons, they've gone from that first real kiss to a date to saying I love you under pressure to passing the True Love test in the Underworld to saying I love you without pressure, but their day-to-day relationship doesn't look all that different. It's progressed on a reasonable trajectory without any major twists, so you wouldn't be surprised or confused by where they are now vs. where they were at the end of season three, unless you're surprised or confused that they aren't further along and married and expecting their first kid by now (since there's also no indication of how much time has passed in their world in those two years).

[YaddaYadda]

Emma under the hood is winning the poll.

Is this because we're all having a deja vu with David fighting himself, and it's the whole like father like daughter thing?

[Shanna Marie]

49 minutes ago, YaddaYadda said:

Emma under the hood is winning the poll.

Is this because we're all having a deja vu with David fighting himself, and it's the whole like father like daughter thing?

Nah, for me it's because that's the easiest way to resolve the situation, where Emma gets killed, but then is saved by reintegrating her good self into the bad one's body, so she's back to being Original Recipe Emma, and somehow it'll be Emma who learns the Valuable Lesson rather than Regina, since Regina isn't really allowed to learn anything that sticks for more than thirty seconds or to suffer any consequences for her actions. And their clues that it's Regina/the Evil Queen are so obvious that they have to be a misdirect. Then again, TS;TW.

[Curio]

29 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

And their clues that it's Regina/the Evil Queen are so obvious that they have to be a misdirect. Then again, TS;TW.

I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of misdirects in each episode leading up to the battle. So next episode it'll be, "Oh no, it might be Rumple!" And then the next it will be "Oh no, it might be Jafar!" Etc. But one line I caught from 6x02 that I didn't notice the first time was Archie's line to Emma, "Does this have anything to do with your rival, the Evil Queen?" Is Archie the one character on this show equating Regina and the Evil Queen as the same person? Go Archie! Regina might have been Emma's rival, but they haven't played with that at all since Season 1. This story would have had a lot more impact if they didn't rush Emma and Regina's BFF status because there would have been a lot more tension whether or not grey Regina would go through with killing Emma.

[Camera One]

I'm going to reply in Speculation.

[Free]

On 10/4/2016 at 10:51 PM, Mathius said:

No, a lot happened in S2-3.  As badly written as it was, 3B is truly the last time a lot of things of full, lasting significance happened on the show. Zelena (who went on to become a mainstay) got introduced, Neal died and the negative effect on Rumple officially started him down the path of irredeemable villainy, Rumple and Belle got married, Captain Swan happened, and Outlaw Queen happened as well (even in S6, post Robin's death, we aren't going to be done with it or with him).  Afterward, the only big important things to happen that actually continue to matter are Henry becoming the Author (at the very end of 4B) and Robin dying (at the very end of 5B).  95% of S4-5 is just padding done to slowly build to those big events.

Neal's whole arc just felt sidelined after the reunion and they didn't seem to know what to do with him, so they just made Rumple the back and forth designated villain.

Zelena just feels like Regina 2.0 in terms of character redemption arc.

Robin's death just feels like a rehash of Daniel's only without the evil aspect.

It feels like a rehash each arc with slight variations: sometimes there's another curse, memory loss, time skips, Regina's recurring problems, etc.  Last season had warnings from Neal for the UW arc and Merlin for the Camelot/DS arc.  This season, it's a hooded person 'killing' Emma.  Once again Emma is keeping secrets and is isolating herself for yet another season in a row.  It's very repetitive and it feels like the writers don't know how to progress things so they have the characters constantly repeat their actions to drum up the same drama.

Quote

They also tend to ignore past events. Emma threw Walsh off of the roof of her apartment, but somehow that didn't matter in terms of darkness. Meanwhile, Cruella has a gun to Henry's head and Emma pushing her off the cliff was the worst thing ever.

Let's not forget the flying monkeys that they knew were actual good people (like Aurora, Phillip and Little John) that they all killed in 3B. Emma killed a couple, Regina took out at least one, Hook killed two and David got another with his sword. No one cares about them either.

That's exactly it, plot points and characters have been dropped left and right so it feels like barely much of consequence has actually happened.

Edited October 7, 2016 by Free

[YaddaYadda]

7 hours ago, Free said:

Once again Emma is keeping secrets and is isolating herself for yet another season in a row.

I agree with the secrets, I disagree with the isolating herself. She's talking to someone even though it's Archie and she sought Hook after she sent him away.

[KingOfHearts]

6 hours ago, YaddaYadda said:

I agree with the secrets, I disagree with the isolating herself. She's talking to someone even though it's Archie and she sought Hook after she sent him away.

I think Emma will come clean soon. Her initial reaction was a knee-jerk. For us, it's annoying because we've seen her deal with the same issues for so long. But her current emotional/mental state should be in complete chaos after everything that's happened. 

Edited October 7, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Free]

6 hours ago, YaddaYadda said:

I agree with the secrets, I disagree with the isolating herself. She's talking to someone even though it's Archie and she sought Hook after she sent him away.

The show is still dragging it out until the end of the arc though, so it's still separate from the rest of her family.

[KingOfHearts]

I'm actually enjoying S6 more than I enjoyed any part of S4 or S5. That sounds really weird, considering the writing is still very subpar. It's probably the tone. Other than Emma's tremor crap, it's been more upbeat and adventurous. I enjoy watching the characters just do their thing. The writers haven't been strictly following the "centric" formula, at least in the case of the mains. We don't have to press pause on the story so we can see Rumple's marriage troubles with Milah or Emma getting her past retconned again. The flashbacks are still there, and while they're not always needed, they don't derail everything quite as much.

These are just my early conclusions. I may feel completely different by the end of the first half.

Edited October 10, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

As usual, most of what happened in "A Bitter Draught" was swept under the cinders by "The Other Shoe".  

Snowing supposedly lost two of their former employees they were close to, yet they seem completely unaffected, as the Writer had Snow waxing nostalgic about teaching and there was zero reference to the Count when discussing vengeance with David at the end of the episode.  

Henry made a list of everyone.  That's great.  But what about asking the people from Untold Stories HOW they got there?  Both the Count and the stepsister/stepmother (and Cinderella, for that matter) knew about the Key, which is something they can try to find. For all they know, there could be a few more half-dead Charlottes around who needs to go back pronto.  Regina et al go charging up to Hyde, but they never think to ask Jekyll everything he knows about the Land of Untold Stories.  How about going through the book and identifying all the potential people The Evil Queen might manipulate and use?

They have Regina walking around moaning about how she can't defeat The Evil Queen and *talking* about getting one step ahead, but what about setting up traps around town to try to neutralize her magic (if at least temporarily) so they can cuff her?  What about creating some spells to prohibit access to certain places The Evil Queen needs to go?  

Edited October 12, 2016 by Camera One

[YaddaYadda]

13 minutes ago, Camera One said:

They have Regina walking around moaning about how she can't defeat The Evil Queen and *talking* about getting one step ahead, but what about setting up traps around town to try to neutralize her magic (if at least temporarily) so they can cuff her?  What about creating some spells to prohibit access to certain places The Evil Queen needs to go?  

What about putting up a protection spell around Hyde's cell? You know, since they knew the EQ could get to him? EQ is a threat, Hyde is a threat, but the one threat they could really neutralize? They just didn't.

Heroes are fucking stupid. I'd like to say that it's because they get tossed around and hit their heads a lot on landing, but that's not the case. They're just stupid.

[Camera One]

16 minutes ago, AudienceofOne said:

I know I'm echoing a previous sentiment but I'm hoping somebody could explain to me how 'Untold Stories' are any different from what the show has been doing since Day 1?

The concept is so undefined that I don't think even A&E knows.

I mean, in this week's episode "The Other Shoe", basically it was a villain who hid away somewhere and came back in this episode to gain revenge.  It's not really much different from Cora waiting in Cora-Dome or Ingrid buying her time before they came to Storybrooke.

In the last episode "A Bitter Draught", it was someone who should have died but went somewhere to avoid dying but now they're back, they die.  They've done something similar with Liam being alive in Neverland, but dying the moment he left.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Camera One

[AudienceofOne]

Now Cinderella's ugly stepsister, that was technically an untold story. But by telling it through Cinderella's story it just came off as the same 'twist' on an existing story we already know. That is literally the show's bread and butter.

[Camera One]

When I read in the summer that interview where A or E said that the Untold Stories characters had their stories paused in the middle, I was actually intrigued, and now I'm wondering why.

Maybe I was thinking that each story (Monte Cristo) would play out the way we know it would play out (with the original endings), but the characters (let's say The Count of Monte Cristo) decided he didn't want to have that ending.  That could have provided some really interesting character moments depending on where the various stories were stopped and why the character was afraid of their particular ending.  That's definitely not how this concept is playing out so far, though.  And now thinking back, even the format I originally expected wouldn't work too well, especially if characters had a happy ending in the original work, and it wouldn't provide them with much free will if they were forced to live out the story as told.

After watching the Season 6 episodes so far, I agree with AudienceofOne that this is ultimately no different from any of the flashbacks from previous seasons.

Edited October 13, 2016 by Camera One

[KAOS Agent]

From the Neal thread:

Quote

Yeah, I'm not really a fan of the impossible to get back explanation from 3B, but to be honest, as a fan of Snow and Charming, I'll take it. Otherwise, they look really, really bad for never trying to get back to their daughter and grandson until it was needed for the safety of their new baby. 

It occurred to me that we know for sure Walsh was not in New York prior to the reverse curse because he was the monkey that was shot by Robin when they first arrived back in the Enchanted Forest, hence the scar on his neck. So sealed portals not really a thing. Sorry to burst the Snowing bubble. 

They did try to cover it later by saying something about how the doors were sealed to anyone who'd returned via the broken Dark Curse, but that leaves way too much wiggle room for the others to have worked something out with people who hadn't come over in the curse. Like find Mulan or go to Arendelle and have someone there use a bean/take the portal door/use the White Rabbit to get to NYC with the memory potion and talk to Emma. Snowing never even tried because they decided that Emma's new life would be a good one and that they shouldn't interfere. Which is fine until they never bothered to consider Emma's feelings on having that new life destroyed due to their own problems. They only showed up because they needed the Saviour, not because they wanted to see their daughter. She wasn't even mentioned in their goodbyes to each other before casting the curse. It was all about the new baby. Then Snow got rather pissy that Emma even had feelings about how much her life had sucked once they'd entered it again. Her kid's father was dead, Henry's life was in danger, Emma's entire existence was threatened by the time travel stuff.  Good times. Man, now I've travelled back to how much I hated what went down in 3B with regards to Emma and her parents.

[Rumsy4]

Even in this episode, when Snow was trying to convince David to let go of revenge and be there for Emma and Neal, David only mentions Neal in his reply. 

[Camera One]

If that doesn't show how little the Writer cares, I don't know what does.

[InsertWordHere]

IA that there's no way all the doors were actually sealed (by their logic, it's not just Walsh who should have been unable to get there, it's all the characters who traveled to our world before the first curse). I am just saying that that's what they clearly stated in the show. It's a continuity error and one that has never made sense to me. Given how much they love to have different "surprise" characters cast the dark curse, I'm guessing they just wanted a reason to have Snow cast it. 

[KingOfHearts]

46 minutes ago, InsertWordHere said:

IA that there's no way all the doors were actually sealed (by their logic, it's not just Walsh who should have been unable to get there, it's all the characters who traveled to our world before the first curse). I am just saying that that's what they clearly stated in the show. It's a continuity error and one that has never made sense to me. Given how much they love to have different "surprise" characters cast the dark curse, I'm guessing they just wanted a reason to have Snow cast it. 

When the writers could have provided some other motivation for casting the curse. Maybe Zelena needed Emma or something in LWM, so she could have forced Rumple to crush Neal's heart. That would have been darker and given his death a more thematic approach. It would be so much more tragic if Neal didn't kill himself like an idiot. But instead, the writers had to break the dead-is-dead rule with Rumple, give Neal a stupid send-off, break the universe so Snow's only option would be to cast the Dark Curse, and make up a contrived loophole to bypass the heart ingredient. There were about a hundred better ways to go about 3B.

[Shanna Marie]

11 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

When the writers could have provided some other motivation for casting the curse.

My easy fix for that has always been Snow and David finding out that Zelena sent Walsh after Emma, and they worried that Emma would be defenseless if she didn't know about magic, etc., so they were desperate to find a way to get to her. Plus, have this happen after we saw a lot more of them looking for ways to defeat Zelena. Bonus if Zelena didn't sabotage herself by all the flying around and cackling and letting them know exactly what she had planned, months before she was going to do it (and yet somehow she managed to keep a straight face while pretending to be Marian without ever slipping at all to gloat to Regina, even when they were alone).

[Rumsy4]

54 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Maybe Zelena needed Emma or something in LWM, so she could have forced Rumple to crush Neal's heart. That would have been darker and given his death a more thematic approach. It would be so much more tragic if Neal didn't kill himself like an idiot. 

This was one of my theories, actually. That would have been such a tragic irony for Rumple to have been forced to cast the Dark Curse using Neal's heart. They could have even done the split heart thing with father and son, later stating is as a mere temporary fix to explain Neal's death. It was such a missed opportunity.

[Daisy]

while in the middle of the rewatch (Season 3 now) I think the Show missed a huge opportunity (surprised) to really build the "anti-magic" contingent on the show, and I personally think they shouldn't have used their bullets in season two. We know Henry (and Neal) hate magic and don't really consider it a good thing period. It would have been so much more amazing if Neal had been part of this "We Kill Magic" society, and Henry wants to be a part of it. 

I think that's part of the glitches what i am having with the show now. a lot of the danger is all magic related. and I personally feel it should't. at this point there should be more real-life threats re: exposure, and all of that jazz. there should still be people wanting to go back to the Enchanted Forest and what not.  I am still mystified why everyone is so kumbaya about the situation as it is. 

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

while in the middle of the rewatch (Season 3 now) I think the Show missed a huge opportunity (surprised) to really build the "anti-magic" contingent on the show, and I personally think they shouldn't have used their bullets in season two. We know Henry (and Neal) hate magic and don't really consider it a good thing period. It would have been so much more amazing if Neal had been part of this "We Kill Magic" society, and Henry wants to be a part of it. 

I actually think the anti-magic plot was perfect for S2. The beginning of the season started with bringing magic to Storybrooke and everyone was getting used to it. With Neal coming in and Rumple & Regina dealing with their powers, it was all out in the open. The issue was that the anti-magic sentiment got piled over by PLOT. It wasn't really about people hating magic or coping with a changing environment. It ended up being a device to insert Greg/Tamara's evil schemes and to introduce Pan as a master manipulator. The ideas started well, but they weren't executed without becoming a farce.

Quote

I think that's part of the glitches what i am having with the show now. a lot of the danger is all magic related. and I personally feel it should't. at this point there should be more real-life threats re: exposure, and all of that jazz. there should still be people wanting to go back to the Enchanted Forest and what not.  I am still mystified why everyone is so kumbaya about the situation as it is. 

I totally agree that we need some non-magical threats to deal with. I understand this is a fantasy show and we should be fighting witches, monsters and that whole gamut, but reality can be a formidable opponent against fairy tale characters. If this show would use any of the nuance it had in S1, the writers would know that.

Edited October 13, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

16 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

There was the weirdness in this episode where Henry was reading in the book about how the Count's story wasn't supposed to end that way. So how was the story untold if it was in the book?

I don't remember this line, but it adds to the confusion about the whole "untold stories" concept.  In "The Other Shoe", what was the ending for Cinderella's stepsister in the book?  Shouldn't we have been told?  

[KingOfHearts]

5 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I don't remember this line, but it adds to the confusion about the whole "untold stories" concept.  In "The Other Shoe", what was the ending for Cinderella's stepsister in the book?  Shouldn't we have been told?  

I'm still waiting for Clorinda's eyes to be pecked out by birds.

Snow: "Oh, crap! Sorry!"

Edited October 13, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

The episode titles are really accurate this year.  Episode 2 was like a "bitter draught".  And even though Episode 3 was better, we're still waiting for "the other shoe" to drop.

[KAOS Agent]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

I don't remember this line, but it adds to the confusion about the whole "untold stories" concept.  In "The Other Shoe", what was the ending for Cinderella's stepsister in the book?  Shouldn't we have been told?

It was just before Henry started talking about sequels. The idea from this conversation seemed to be that they needed to read the stories so that they knew why all of these people had tried to stop them. So Hook tells Henry to get reading.

"When my mom helped everyone during the first curse, it was simple. Those people had been ripped away from the stories they wanted to play out. And these people ran from their stories for a reason. And before we can help them, we need to find out why they ran."

It seemed like they tracked Ashley to the pumpkin farm by reading Clorinda's story and finding out about the footman. Once they knew who the footman was, they figured that's where Ashley and Clorinda would both be. The problem then is that this isn't an untold story because it's actually in the book. So really it's an unending story? But then how would that be in a book? Does the story simply end with a cliffhanger where Clorinda and her mother go through the door with a little "To be continued..." at the end? And it doesn't really work out with Henry talking about how the Count's story wasn't supposed to end that way. I think the idea of people whose stories ended unhappily pausing their stories is an interesting one, I just don't think that there's any real thought as to how that isn't an untold story as much as it is an unfinished story.

Hester Prynne, the Count of Monte Cristo, Jekyll & Hyde, those stories are not untold. We know how they ended. I think that's the sticking point for me. And since it seems like there is a book where these stories are written, it's even more confusing. I don't think this season is going to make a whole lot of sense.

Edited October 14, 2016 by KAOS Agent

[YaddaYadda]

1 hour ago, KAOS Agent said:

Hester Prynne, the Count of Monte Cristo, Jekyll & Hyde, those stories are not untold. We know how they ended. I think that's the sticking point for me. And since it seems like there is a book where these stories are written, it's even more confusing. I don't think this season is going to make a whole lot of sense.

I think that's the mistake, basically?

Like for the Count of Monte Cristo, they decided to use the vengeance part of his story because of Regina's big epiphany, instead of picking up his story where Dumas ended it. Killing off the count means that his story never really happened at all. Is Charlotte supposed to replace Haydée? The whole thing was so incredibly vague and anyone who has no idea who the Count of Monte Cristo is will not care about the character at all, and I think that's why they chose him and made him expendable. 

Clorinda makes more sense, her story was paused when she was pushed through the portal, and when she was forced out of the Land of Untold Stories, it picked up almost where it left off.

I would have rather they decided to go with the character that are already part of the fabric of the show, but that we have never seen, or haven't in a while.

Don't bring in characters like the Count of Monte Cristo or whoever else they have in mind for this season if you're not prepared to do them justice.

[Shanna Marie]

I think the overall problem is that the mythology of the Author, in spite of having whole arcs built around it, is so half-baked and underdeveloped that nothing to do with it makes any sense.

So we've got Merlin, from within his tree, or maybe his Apprentice, deciding that events needed to be recorded (or maybe he came up with this in the 500 years before he got treed?) and designated someone to do this, and gave them realm-jumping capability and a magic pen that allowed the Author to record events without actually witnessing them. The pen can also alter reality, though the Author is forbidden to do so, and the pen requires ink made from the blood of a dark Savior, which seems awfully specific and weird. Why would you need something bad to happen -- which you'd think a Savior turning dark would be -- in order to make something work? Or is it just that the pen requires dark Savior ink to alter reality and that's why there's a power that's a no-no, which ordinary ink will do the job of recording events? The Grimms and Walt Disney were former Authors, and yet somehow they managed to tell the stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty before they actually happened, and their versions were wrong, something we were reminded of repeatedly in the first season when we were told that the stories were true, but they happened in a different way than we heard.

And now we're hearing about Untold Stories that are actually quite famous and have been told by famous authors and that are in an official "Author" book. Although all the previous characters we've met were unaware that they were characters and were surprised to find out that they were famous characters in another world, somehow these people are aware enough that their lives are stories that they know they can stop things from reaching their inevitable conclusion by going to the Land of Untold Stories. We don't know if the book has a big "to be continued" at the point where each of these people went to the Land of Untold Stories or if it tells the Untold Stories (which wouldn't make them "untold"). Maybe instead of looking at that book, Henry should be going to the library and looking up the famous books to see what happened after the pause button was hit. Though I guess that wouldn't work, given that the Count of Monte Cristo's story bore no resemblance to the Dumas book other than the revenge theme and Clorinda's story isn't included in Cinderella. Meanwhile, Henry is trying to help them tell their stories, when the whole point is that they were trying to keep their stories from being told.

When you spell it out like this, it sounds like these writers are on drugs. Clearly, they haven't ever tried writing out their mythology like this to examine it.

[Camera One]

Going through fairy tales and Disney movies like it's a 10 minute buffet has thrown away a lot of possibilities for half-season arcs.  The classic example was tossing in all three "Queens of Darkness" at once.  We found out practically nothing about Maleficent/Aurora's origin story, nor about Jim & Anita with Cruella.  Granted, we did spend an entire half-season in the Underworld and only saw Zeus for a minute, so it's not like more time = deeper exploration of a story or myth.

But I was thinking about Cinderella, and how they could have made Lady Tremaine a dictator of the Land of Untold Stories (maybe working with Hyde) after she got there.  They could still have told the story of how she ended up married to Cinderella's father, the story of how Cinderella's mother got the Key to the Land of Untold Stories, maybe some backstory about the Fairy godmother, not to mention a guest appearance by Anastasia (and Will) if they had kept her as Cinderella's other stepsister (Tremaine could have trapped Anastasia and we could see Will get her back this season).  If Henry had succeeded in wiping out magic in Storybrooke, Tremaine and Hyde could have been the magic-less villains.  Heck, Lady Tremaine could be out for revenge against Regina too, since Cora had double-crossed her in the past.  The Land of Untold Stories could also have victims of The Evil Queen for Regina to work through and apologize to.  Cinderella could easily have been the focus of 6A along with the Land of Untold Stories.  They could have cut out the stuff about Emma seeing her own death, and just learn from a Savior who was hiding out in the Land of Untold Stories (maybe Aladdin, which would be the focus of 6B) about the progression of hand-shakes.  Then 6B could explore not just Aladdin but A Thousand and One Nights.

Edited October 16, 2016 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

I talked about this a little in the Strange Case episode thread, but S6 seems to be at a standstill. The show is running on neutral. Let's examine everyone's "motivations":
* Emma wants to discover who the Cloaked Figure is. Ooo.
* Regina wants to get rid of the Evil Queen because she's an inconvenience.
* Hook is just waiting to move in with Emma.
* Charming is on a vague, secret quest to learn more about his father's death.
* Snow wants to be a good teacher.
* Belle wants to sit around and protect her baby.
* Rumple wants Belle and Damien to like him.
* Henry is just eyeing Violet and getting kisses on the cheek.
* Zelena doesn't even know what she wants. She's just sitting around with her baby, cheating on her sister... with her sister.
* EQ is messing with random people for the heck of it now.

So, to me, the characters are mostly just sitting and waiting for things to happen. Charming is the only character with an active goal, and it's not a very big one. Rumple is willing to take action as well, but he has to wait for opportunities. He's stuck at his shop, looking for poor saps to make deals with. It's all so freaking boring. I understand we're getting Aladdin stuff next week, but that's very much its own thing. It has little to do with the main characters, other than with Emma and her Savior issues.

Why is the Evil Queen even here? She'll be on the chopping block soon, just like Jekyll/Hyde were. She's an antagonist just for the sake of having an antagonist.

Edited October 17, 2016 by KingOfHearts