Once Upon A...SHOULDA HAPPENED THIS WAY!

[KingOfHearts]

On 5/1/2020 at 5:19 PM, Camera One said:

Would this have been a good spinoff?  I think Regina was more palatable as a character away from her victims like Snow and Emma, so it might have worked.  But only if there were other hidden fairy tale characters in New York.  

I always thought it would be fun if they did something like Angel where Regina moves somewhere in the real world and starts an agency to deal with magical problems that arise. Zelena could've been her partner. 

Edited May 8, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[KingOfHearts]

After thinking about "Awake", I wish we could've gotten more of Snow pretending to be cursed to keep Regina off her trail. That couldn't have worked very well in that episode, but it would've made for a more interested S2 if instead of the curse breaking, someone like her or Charming got their memories back. I find the dual personalities more interesting than just the mix-matching of famous fairy tale characters. It made the show very unique in the first season. One of the show's greatest tragedies is that cursed personalities and "we are both" weren't explored more.

I still hate how in S2, Mary Margaret and most of the characters from S1 just got deleted out of existence because the memories were returned. Why did everyone have an identity crisis for one episode, only to never have one again after a single speech? What about villains who could've committed atrocities back in EF but have lived for years as innocent citizens? That would be such a moral dilemma. (For the record, I don't mean Rumple or Regina, who both did horrible things in Storybrooke with their memories intact.) What about people who were married to other people in EF, al a Nolans? What about parents with kids they didn't actually have like in the case of Grace? 

We never got to hear what Mary Margaret thought about things and none of the love triangle stuff in S1 was ever brought up again. There was never an awkward scene where Abigail, Snow, and David made sure everything was okay. There's also the fact David likely slept with Abigail while cursed, which was never addressed. (Yet Snow slept with Whale and David gets to punch him. Such a double standard.) Even if no one but Henry knew Regina murdered Graham, Snow would've still at least shed some tears over him. It still perplexes me that they named Snowflake after Neal instead of the man who saved both Snow and Charming's lives.

To me, I think the writers should've kept it more like S1 where the fairy tale stuff wasn't always so overt outside of flashbacks. There needed to be some level of realism involved to contrast with the past. Lost always tried to keep flashbacks and the present day distinct from each other. I'm not saying I want something super gritty or realistic on a fairy tale show, but S1 did a good job of striking the balance between kid and adult stuff. It was more like a prime time drama and less like just crazy fantasy shenanigans, which gave it a wider appeal. I would've kept magic very limited in Storybrooke and introduced real world characters that weren't Greg and Tamara. I'd bring down the barrier so the town would have to deal with keeping things looking "normal". It would be difficult but I'd want to preserve aspects of the cursed personalities as well because I feel they were characters that deserved to live. (Not one-note jokes like Lacey.)

 

[Camera One]

32 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

One of the few things I liked from the episode "Awake" was Charming not having his curse download yet and Snow having both personalities. It was funny that she had to show him around Storybrooke and explain it.

You reminded me there was actually something worthwhile in "Awake".  I went to rewatch some clips and this was the only one I could find on Youtube.

It made me think this could have been a "What if?" scenario for "Snow Falls" instead of the ridiculous and insulting retcon it turned out to be.

I mean, in "Snow Falls", what if Charming woke up and remembered?  

But in "Awake", this scenario IMMEDIATELY became uninteresting the moment the Writers had Mary Margaret suggest Charming find Rumple.

I was also wondering how Charming knew how to put on modern clothes so easily.  It was interesting how he put his clothes on over his hospital gown.  It would have been funny if he balked at wearing pants without putting on hose first.

Was the hospital on Main Street?  Why would MM assume Charming would find that street and Mr. Gold's shop so easily.  And "farmhouse on the edge of town"?  Could that be any more vague?   Every line of dialogue should have been thought through.

After the "Wonderland" spinoff rewatch, we should do 3 minute clip rip-downs.  

13 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

After thinking about "Awake", I wish we could've gotten more of Snow pretending to be cursed to keep Regina off her trail. That couldn't have worked very well in that episode, but it would've made for a more interested S2 if instead of the curse breaking, someone like her or Charming got their memories back. I find the dual personalities more interesting than just the mix-matching of famous fairy tale characters. It made the show very unique in the first season. One of the show's greatest tragedies is that cursed personalities and "we are both" weren't explored more.

Yes, I had always wished that in the Season 1 finale, only one or two people remembered, and then we got to see Emma head a secret resistance while Regina was none the wiser.  They could have delayed Team Princess until Season 3.  

Heck, make this the "what if" scenario for all of Season 6 instead of the boring stuff with The Evil Queen, Gideon and the Black Fairy.

Quote

What about villains who could've committed atrocities back in EF but have lived for years as innocent citizens? That would be such a moral dilemma. (For the record, I don't mean Rumple or Regina, who both did horrible things in Storybrooke with their memories intact.) What about people who were married to other people in EF, al a Nolans? What about parents with kids they didn't actually have like in the case of Grace? 

This was all the untapped potential that they threw out the clocktower along with Johanna.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

Yes, I had always wished that in the Season 1 finale, only one or two people remembered, and then we got to see Emma head a secret resistance while Regina was none the wiser. 

I was just thinking that it would have been interesting to go longer with Emma believing but no one else remembering, so she's dealing with Mary Margaret and David, believing they're her parents, but they don't remember so they don't know she's their daughter. She would be like Henry was, since she didn't have any memories of it all to get back, just belief. But I can't quite figure out how to do that while keeping some of the stuff that worked. I loved that she came to believe because Henry keeled over from eating the apple turnover Regina meant for her, so Regina actually set up her own destruction, but if that's how Emma comes to believe, it's harder to delay the breaking of the memory curse unless we keep Henry in a coma for a lot longer, and then she's probably not going to be hanging out with Mary Margaret or David and feeling weird about knowing they're her parents.

I guess she could have come to believe more gradually, like with all the stuff she saw at Jefferson's place, and putting all the clues together, so there's a time when she believes but doesn't know or have evidence, and Henry keeling over is the final straw. But then if she believed, she wouldn't have even considered taking Regina's turnover, and Henry wouldn't have been desperate enough to eat it to make Emma believe. Maybe Regina sends it as though it comes from Granny's and Henry eats it accidentally -- like Emma's sharing it with him and he takes the first bite while she's getting some milk out of the fridge to go with it -- and keels over. But then we lose that element of Henry's heroism and absolute faith that Emma will save him if he doesn't do it deliberately.

[Camera One]

6 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

I was just thinking that it would have been interesting to go longer with Emma believing but no one else remembering, so she's dealing with Mary Margaret and David, believing they're her parents, but they don't remember so they don't know she's their daughter. She would be like Henry was, since she didn't have any memories of it all to get back, just belief. But I can't quite figure out how to do that while keeping some of the stuff that worked.

I would have liked to see that too.  There could be a progression.  For a lot of Season 1, we were waiting for Emma to believe.  I was personally let down by the Season 1 finale because I wanted to see Emma believe but without Regina knowing.  Instead, both things sort of happened together, reducing the power of both.  And then everyone else remembered and then magic came back, and it didn't result in much payoff for each individual element.

The Henry/apple turnover climax was one of the most awesome aspects of the latter half of Season 1 so I wouldn't want to lose that either.  

Maybe when Emma kisses Henry, she breaks that apple sleeping curse that Henry is in, but it doesn't break the Dark Curse.  That could come later with a kiss between Emma and one of her parents.   That way, Emma could pretend she thought Henry waking up was a coincidence and Regina's guard would still be down, and we could see Emma interacting with MM and David knowing the real truth.

And then in the 2A finale, Emma could succeed in bringing back the memories of either David or MM (maybe during 2A, she could be figuring out how to do that, and has success first in triggering the memories of Red, since the actress was becoming a regular, and Sister Superior could be an unwitting ally as she shows Emma some ancient texts she unearths), and then the 2A finale could be one of her parents "waking".  We could get the underground resistance in 2B, with Emma breaking the Dark Curse by saving whichever parent doesn't remember in the finale, which breaks the full Curse for everyone.  Without magic in Storybrooke, Regina and Rumple wouldn't be overpowered. 

Then 3A could be Team Princess, and 3B could be Neverland, and we would skip over the horrible 2B arc.  The only character who would need to be worked in somehow would be Neal and that shouldn't be too hard.

Edited May 9, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

16 hours ago, Camera One said:

The only character who would need to be worked in somehow would be Neal and that shouldn't be too hard.

There should've been more time for melodrama around Neal. It's strange that Regina didn't seem to even look in his direction, despite him being another competitor for being a priority in Henry's life. You could count the Neal and Henry moments on one hand. There could've been a lot of awkward co-parenting going on. The biggest hole, of course, was where the Neal/Rumple conflict was supposed to be. I don't think Neal was the greatest idea, but the writers could've milked some juicy drama out of his disposition instead of that awful love triangle in 3A. Both 2B and 3A skipped a lot of Neal being awkwardly in Storybrooke, even though everything about his character plus the Hallmark movie villain Tamara should've made things much more complicated. Most of the time he was just running around with everybody else, not too unlike Robin in later seasons.

[Camera One]

18 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

There should've been more time for melodrama around Neal. It's strange that Regina didn't seem to even look in his direction, despite him being another competitor for being a priority in Henry's life. You could count the Neal and Henry moments on one hand. There could've been a lot of awkward co-parenting going on. The biggest hole, of course, was where the Neal/Rumple conflict was supposed to be. I don't think Neal was the greatest idea, but the writers could've milked some juicy drama out of his disposition instead of that awful love triangle in 3A. Both 2B and 3A skipped a lot of Neal being awkwardly in Storybrooke, even though everything about his character plus the Hallmark movie villain Tamara should've made things much more complicated. Most of the time he was just running around with everybody else, not too unlike Robin in later seasons.

It's almost funny because it would have been so EASY to work with all the issues that EVERY character in the main cast would have had with Neal, but A&E went the opposite direction and couldn't sideline and write him off fast enough.

With someone like Robin Hood, I acknowledge that it was more of a stretch to incorporate him into the story organically.  He had absolutely no connection to Emma, Snow or Charming, and even his link with Rumple was tenuous (well, downright ridiculous considering the whole "I owe you a great debt" crap).  Though in this case, they kept Robin around for a long longer.   They didn't even try to create a bond between Robin and Henry (though their "story" would probably be Henry occasionally calling Robin a "dirty thief" resolved 42 minutes later only to reappear again the next half-season).

I was also thinking about Red as a regular in 2A.  I think it might have been slightly harder to work her in, because she doesn't really have a history with either Regina or Rumple.  But I saw a lot of potential with Red Handed, if she had become Emma's deputy.  Red did have room to grow with self confidence and acceptance, and her relationship with Granny even.  

In both cases with Neal and Red, they ignored all the logical internal and external character issues and forced uninteresting and ill-fitting subplots on the characters like the Tamara stuff in 2B with Neal and Red trying to find her pack or whatever the hell she was supposedly doing in her guest appearances later on.

I'm just curious what the supposed brainstorming sessions for this show looked like because it was so lacking in creativity and actual care for most of the characters.  Maybe they spent 99% of the brainstorming session making jokes about "What if Garfield the Cat came to Storybrooke" instead of discussing actual natural character development and journeys.  

Edited May 9, 2020 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

There should've been more time for melodrama around Neal. It's strange that Regina didn't seem to even look in his direction, despite him being another competitor for being a priority in Henry's life. You could count the Neal and Henry moments on one hand. There could've been a lot of awkward co-parenting going on. The biggest hole, of course, was where the Neal/Rumple conflict was supposed to be. I don't think Neal was the greatest idea, but the writers could've milked some juicy drama out of his disposition instead of that awful love triangle in 3A. Both 2B and 3A skipped a lot of Neal being awkwardly in Storybrooke, even though everything about his character plus the Hallmark movie villain Tamara should've made things much more complicated. Most of the time he was just running around with everybody else, not too unlike Robin in later seasons.

I hated Neal, but I agree. There was so much for them to work with Neal. He's relationship with Rumple he did love Rumple but hated the magic, finding out everything Rumple did to find him, and his still hate for magic. Not to mention what happened to his mother. What does he think about that? Does he think Hook was lying? If so why? Did that kick start him thinking maybe he was right? Neal/Bae knew his father became crazy after he got magic but did he think he'd gone as far as to kill his mother? When did he change from Bae to Neal? However long he was in Neverland makes sense as to change him. And make him hate magic even more. How does he feel about Henry? He has daddy issues and now he's a father. Plus his son was raised by the Evil Queen. That should have been where he and Henry really started and bonded. Being raised by a parent they do somewhat love who is also magical murdering psycho. He's relationship with Hook? Did they interact after he in Neverland? No being annoyed at selling him out to Pan? Did he just get over that? What about Emma? He screwed her over pretty well. Although I do love that they had Emma at least comment "because Pinocchio told you". Also she now has magic. How does he feel about that? Regina should have been freaked out because she had more competition for Henry. 

They skipped over whether or not Snow or Charming ever knew that Neal sent their daughter to jail for his crime which they really shouldn't have. Charming should have hated Neal. I wouldn't have minded Snow being for Neal and Emma if they had her knowing about that but also coming from Enchanted Forest where everyone has only one love. She's not used to people dating or even having relationships with more then one person. Also from Snow's world any man who ends up with a second wife that's usually the psycho. That would have been interesting way to explore the different worlds. Emma explaining to her mother how its so normal in LWM. Belle and Neal should have had some conversations, what does he think of her? Does he think his father's changed (probably not since he wanted to turn him back into a twelve year old) since he's with Belle? It still would have made more sense for him to lead the anti-magic group giving his history and hate of it. 

They just had so much with Neal/Bea and they did nothing with it. Half of the time I hated him and the other half I wondered why he was even there. He was like Pre-Robin Hood sometimes just there not doing anything. He didn't really do anything. He continued to be a jerk to Emma. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by andromeda331

[Camera One]

I think the case with Neal showed two things - they thought very little beyond a twist and they also lost interest after a twist.  They plotted out what would happen in "Manhattan" and after that, they had no plan for how Neal and Rumple would interact in Storybrooke (in fact, they immediately jumped to the Lacey "twist").  They also completely lost interest in Neal given they didn't have their favorite character Regina react appropriately to competition for Henry, nor did they even try to have Snowing respond to Neal because they were thinking about the Snow-being-mean-to-Cora twist. 

Edited May 9, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

23 hours ago, Camera One said:

We could get the underground resistance in 2B, with Emma breaking the Dark Curse by saving whichever parent doesn't remember in the finale, which breaks the full Curse for everyone. 

Although I did like Emma breaking the curse by kissing Henry, the more I think about it, the more I think it should have been one of her parents. For one thing, it seems weird to break a curse with a TLK involving two people who aren't affected by the curse. One of them should have been under the curse. For another, it didn't take any kind of leap of faith for Emma to accept and love Henry. She already knew he was her son. Her problem was not being able to see herself as a mother, but that realization could have happened outside anything to do with magic. It would have been a much bigger deal for her to be able to have a TLK with one of her parents, when it defies all logic that they could possibly be her parents, since they're the same age. Accepting that enough for it to count as "true love" would mean accepting and believing everything to do with magic and the curse -- on both their parts. I'm picturing a scene in which Emma and the parent talk to each other about it and say that it sounds crazy but it feels right, then there's a hug and a kiss on the cheek or forehead, and that breaks the curse.

And the believing really should be a true leap of faith, not just touching a magic book. I hate how they retconned that in 3B. In season one, yeah, there was the magical whoosh from looking at the book, but that was because she already believed when she looked at the book (she'd looked at it many times before). She looked at the book because she believed. I'm not even sure what that whoosh was supposed to be about because it's not like she had any memories to get back. But then in 3B, it turns out it's just touching the book that brings the magical belief. I really wish they'd had Henry actually figure it out for himself based on observation and investigating, like he did in season one. There was enough weird stuff, with lame explanations, for him to figure something out. I'd really have preferred that he never got his memories back so he always felt like he'd grown up with Emma. After all, that was supposed to have been Regina's price for undoing the curse.

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

With someone like Robin Hood, I acknowledge that it was more of a stretch to incorporate him into the story organically.  He had absolutely no connection to Emma, Snow or Charming, and even his link with Rumple was tenuous

The thing is, while they ignored all the links Neal had to most of the rest of the cast, I don't think it's absolutely essential for everyone to start out already having links to everyone else. It's possible to create and develop relationships among characters who've just met, and they didn't bother to do that with Robin. Part of the problem with him was that there was no character there. He was a cardboard cutout to accessorize Regina's life. Even when they gave him history, it didn't end up mattering. He had zero reaction to learning Regina was responsible for him losing Marian. We barely saw him react to getting his wife back. He supposedly was all about fighting for justice for the poor, but he didn't seem to care that he was dating the queen who'd been oppressing the poor. He had a kid but barely seemed to remember that most of the time. Robin might have worked as a character if they'd used the Robin Hood mythology, let him react like a human being to things, and let him interact with someone other than Regina. They showed Henry being all sad at his funeral, but I don't know that we ever saw them speak to each other. He had a couple of scenes with Hook that were fun (probably more because Sean and Colin were good friends in real life), and there was some similarity to their backstories, so they could have built something there.

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

I was also thinking about Red as a regular in 2A.  I think it might have been slightly harder to work her in, because she doesn't really have a history with either Regina or Rumple.  But I saw a lot of potential with Red Handed, if she had become Emma's deputy.  Red did have room to grow with self confidence and acceptance, and her relationship with Granny even.  

One of my favorite bits in season one was Henry trying to help Red find a job she could do, with him focusing on things related to the Red Riding Hood story, even though she had no idea that's who she was. She was a wonderful receptionist/dispatcher at the sheriff's office, since she knew everyone and knew what was going on. That worked so well that I was aghast when they abruptly dropped it and had her decide to go back to the diner. I don't think she needed a background with Regina or Rumple to have had a purpose. She didn't need to be a main character, but she was good for fleshing out the town and showing that there were people other than the main characters. If they'd kept her working in the sheriff's office, she could have held down the fort while Emma was running around, and she could have provided a sounding board for the other characters. She had friendships with Snow, Emma, and Belle, as well as David. I also loved the potential when it looked like they were going to get her together with Whale -- the wolf girl and Frankenstein. But it was their usual case of getting excited enough about a character to make them a regular, then promptly losing interest. See also Zelena, Will, and Robin.

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Although I did like Emma breaking the curse by kissing Henry, the more I think about it, the more I think it should have been one of her parents. For one thing, it seems weird to break a curse with a TLK involving two people who aren't affected by the curse. One of them should have been under the curse. For another, it didn't take any kind of leap of faith for Emma to accept and love Henry. She already knew he was her son. Her problem was not being able to see herself as a mother, but that realization could have happened outside anything to do with magic. It would have been a much bigger deal for her to be able to have a TLK with one of her parents, when it defies all logic that they could possibly be her parents, since they're the same age. Accepting that enough for it to count as "true love" would mean accepting and believing everything to do with magic and the curse -- on both their parts. I'm picturing a scene in which Emma and the parent talk to each other about it and say that it sounds crazy but it feels right, then there's a hug and a kiss on the cheek or forehead, and that breaks the curse.

And the believing really should be a true leap of faith, not just touching a magic book. I hate how they retconned that in 3B. In season one, yeah, there was the magical whoosh from looking at the book, but that was because she already believed when she looked at the book (she'd looked at it many times before). She looked at the book because she believed. I'm not even sure what that whoosh was supposed to be about because it's not like she had any memories to get back. But then in 3B, it turns out it's just touching the book that brings the magical belief. I really wish they'd had Henry actually figure it out for himself based on observation and investigating, like he did in season one. There was enough weird stuff, with lame explanations, for him to figure something out. I'd really have preferred that he never got his memories back so he always felt like he'd grown up with Emma. After all, that was supposed to have been Regina's price for undoing the curse.

The thing is, while they ignored all the links Neal had to most of the rest of the cast, I don't think it's absolutely essential for everyone to start out already having links to everyone else. It's possible to create and develop relationships among characters who've just met, and they didn't bother to do that with Robin. Part of the problem with him was that there was no character there. He was a cardboard cutout to accessorize Regina's life. Even when they gave him history, it didn't end up mattering. He had zero reaction to learning Regina was responsible for him losing Marian. We barely saw him react to getting his wife back. He supposedly was all about fighting for justice for the poor, but he didn't seem to care that he was dating the queen who'd been oppressing the poor. He had a kid but barely seemed to remember that most of the time. Robin might have worked as a character if they'd used the Robin Hood mythology, let him react like a human being to things, and let him interact with someone other than Regina. They showed Henry being all sad at his funeral, but I don't know that we ever saw them speak to each other. He had a couple of scenes with Hook that were fun (probably more because Sean and Colin were good friends in real life), and there was some similarity to their backstories, so they could have built something there.

One of my favorite bits in season one was Henry trying to help Red find a job she could do, with him focusing on things related to the Red Riding Hood story, even though she had no idea that's who she was. She was a wonderful receptionist/dispatcher at the sheriff's office, since she knew everyone and knew what was going on. That worked so well that I was aghast when they abruptly dropped it and had her decide to go back to the diner. I don't think she needed a background with Regina or Rumple to have had a purpose. She didn't need to be a main character, but she was good for fleshing out the town and showing that there were people other than the main characters. If they'd kept her working in the sheriff's office, she could have held down the fort while Emma was running around, and she could have provided a sounding board for the other characters. She had friendships with Snow, Emma, and Belle, as well as David. I also loved the potential when it looked like they were going to get her together with Whale -- the wolf girl and Frankenstein. But it was their usual case of getting excited enough about a character to make them a regular, then promptly losing interest. See also Zelena, Will, and Robin.

She would have been great working at the Sheriff's office with Emma and giving her something to do. Or maybe future in the town. She was helping out after the Wraith in town, she was the one on Charming about a plan, and then after Regina took Henry, that he needed to put the town first. Red would have been great in either position or both. 

[tennisgurl]

On 5/9/2020 at 9:11 PM, Shanna Marie said:

. I also loved the potential when it looked like they were going to get her together with Whale -- the wolf girl and Frankenstein.

Oh I was so excited about that, I thought that pairing would have been so much fun and could be so interesting, and I actually liked what they brought up in that episode, that losing their terrible traumatic memories from their real lives wasn't the worst thing ever and feeling kind of ambiguous about getting them back. Its not something that is really touched on much, that some people might not be thrilled to get their memories back, and they used those characters and their backstories really well. Of course, because its this show, they were instantly distracted by the new shiny and by Regina crying or something, so Whale pretty much disappeared after this episode except for brief (though often hilarious) cameos, and Red would only get a few more token episodes before disappearing until she gets her consolation one episode romance. 

[Guest]

On 5/9/2020 at 3:03 PM, Camera One said:

Maybe they spent 99% of the brainstorming session making jokes about "What if Garfield the Cat came to Storybrooke" instead of discussing actual natural character development and journeys.  

Its always about Regina isn't it?  Always dreaming up ways to make someone want her lasagna so she isn't sad instead of actually developing characters/

[Speakeasy]

I've been watching some YouTube stuff about Greek myths recently, the number of stories and characters that could be used there is just staggering. Season 5 ending with them killing a god could have led to season 6 getting the whole rest of the Olympians involved in the show-does anyone think that could have worked ?

[KingOfHearts]

7 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Season 5 ending with them killing a god could have led to season 6 getting the whole rest of the Olympians involved in the show-does anyone think that could have worked ?

A&E probably would've plagiarized a lot from Xena.

I wouldn't want to spend an entire season in the Underworld, but there was enough to work with in all that to sustain a whole season for sure. One half could've been in the Underworld while the other was in Storybrooke or some other above ground location dealing with the gods, maybe with a larger part for Hercules/Megara. However, I honestly like the way the writers sprinkled in mythology throughout the show. They just could've done it better. Seeing Poseidon show up and Cupid being referenced were nice touches but were only skin deep. 

Come to think of it - Hades and Poseidon are supposed to be brothers. It was setup in 4B that Poseidon might've been willing to help the heroes out later. It would've been awesome if he or at least Ursula was brought on his behalf. Heck, just seeing Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus in a flashback together would've been badass.

The writers had so much to work with for the Greek mythology stuff and all we got was Zelena shoehorned in as a Persephone stand-in.

Edited May 18, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[Speakeasy]

On 5/18/2020 at 4:26 PM, KingOfHearts said:

A&E probably would've plagiarized a lot from Xena.

You can do a lot worse than plagiarising Xena, that sounds like a good move

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I wouldn't want to spend an entire season in the Underworld, but there was enough to work with in all that to sustain a whole season for sure. One half could've been in the Underworld while the other was in Storybrooke or some other above ground location dealing with the gods, maybe with a larger part for Hercules/Megara. However, I honestly like the way the writers sprinkled in mythology throughout the show. They just could've done it better. Seeing Poseidon show up and Cupid being referenced were nice touches but were only skin deep. 

Fair point, I don't think you'd necessarily need a Greek Myth World, but since they established that the Olympians were a big deal in their confused cosmology I wondered if more of them could have come in for an arc.

Also given the recurring villain redemption theme, Greek myth is full of people who get turned into monsters for a bad choice or being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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Come to think of it - Hades and Poseidon are supposed to be brothers. It was setup in 4B that Poseidon might've been willing to help the heroes out later. It would've been awesome if he or at least Ursula was brought on his behalf.

Poseidon didn't strike me as very impressive in his appearance, I was kind of surprised he was meant to be a god since he didn't seem to do anything that was beyond the regular witches and warlocks of the series.

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Heck, just seeing Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus in a flashback together would've been badass.

Agreed.

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The writers had so much to work with for the Greek mythology stuff and all we got was Zelena shoehorned in as a Persephone stand-in.

Yes... Interesting choice there.

Strange as well since Zelena actually did die and come back to life, one would think that would have provided a good way to retroactively insert a meet cute with Hades, but apparently not.

[Camera One]

4 minutes ago, Speakeasy said:

Strange as well since Zelena actually did die and come back to life, one would think that would have provided a good way to retroactively insert a meet cute with Hades, but apparently not.

That would have been a really good time to set that flashback.  But I guess they needed to have Hades re-create Storybrooke in the Underworld, so they picked the Zelena-was-jealous-of-Regina-for-being-chosen-by-Rump-to-cast-the-Curse phase.

[Speakeasy]

10 hours ago, Camera One said:

That would have been a really good time to set that flashback.  But I guess they needed to have Hades re-create Storybrooke in the Underworld, so they picked the Zelena-was-jealous-of-Regina-for-being-chosen-by-Rump-to-cast-the-Curse phase.

She was still jealous though, she was so jealous she dressed up as Regina's boyfriend's dead wife so she could lure him away to a life of domestic resentment in a strange world purely out of spite... 

Ahhh...

Why get her involved with the God of Death and not use this to try and salvage some of that trainwreck of a storyline? She could have made a deal with him to come back to life in exchange for making sure Marian died because she was supposed to die in the original plan or something. And he could have chucked Marian in the River of Souls and somehow given Zelena her memories and her super glamour that worked on her metaphysical internal organs.

[KingOfHearts]

21 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Strange as well since Zelena actually did die and come back to life, one would think that would have provided a good way to retroactively insert a meet cute with Hades, but apparently not.

I didn't even think about that. The writers did so little to comb through their own material just to see what they could use and connect to the Underworld. I'm still bitter Mulan didn't help by sharing how they were able to rescue Phillip from damnation by the wraith. They even brought her back to 5B and it wasn't even mentioned. Forever bitter.

21 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Fair point, I don't think you'd necessarily need a Greek Myth World, but since they established that the Olympians were a big deal in their confused cosmology I wondered if more of them could have come in for an arc.

You could've had some fun "fish out of water" stuff with the Greek gods walking around Storybrooke like mortals. Imagine Zeus flirting with every woman he sees.

[Camera One]

11 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Why get her involved with the God of Death and not use this to try and salvage some of that trainwreck of a storyline? She could have made a deal with him to come back to life in exchange for making sure Marian died because she was supposed to die in the original plan or something. And he could have chucked Marian in the River of Souls and somehow given Zelena her memories and her super glamour that worked on her metaphysical internal organs.

That is such a good idea.  They probably didn't know they would be doing Hades and Greek myth until they were planning for 5B, but they could have worked Zelena's past with Hades with her "death" at the end of 3B for sure.  

[Shanna Marie]

On 5/18/2020 at 10:26 AM, KingOfHearts said:

Heck, just seeing Poseidon, Hades, and Zeus in a flashback together would've been badass.

We needed at least Hades and Zeus in a flashback to explain what Hades's deal was. Is that the only arc villain who didn't get a "centric" flashback to explain his backstory? They talked about Zeus trapping him, but we got no more info than that, so we didn't know if Hades had been wronged or if Zeus had a good reason, we got no insight into their relationship. I think with every other villain we at least got their origin story. Regina's path to villainy was explored in excruciating detail, and ditto Rumple. We got Hook's "hook" explanation story, then later his pirate explanation backstory. We got Cora's villain origin, then further back to show she was already on a path. We saw why Greg/Owen hated magic. I guess we never did see Tamara's anti-magic origins, but she was more of a support figure for Greg. We saw Pan's origin and Zelena's path toward green villainy and why she wanted to turn back time. We saw what happened to Ingrid, Cruella's origins, and how Ursula became a villain. I guess they skipped Maleficent, but they did show why she hated Snow if now how she became a villain. We saw Arthur's background and the origins of the Dark One. Jekyll and Hyde got a origin story episode, and we saw how the Black Fairy came to be. But Hades was the Big Bad of an arc and all we saw of him was when he was either falling for Zelena or manipulating her (or both). No villain origin, no seeing what Zeus did to him and why. And I think we needed that to set up what he was going to do once he was free and explain why providing the information on how to kill Hades was enough for Zeus to resurrect Hook.

[Camera One]

43 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

We needed at least Hades and Zeus in a flashback to explain what Hades's deal was. Is that the only arc villain who didn't get a "centric" flashback to explain his backstory? They talked about Zeus trapping him, but we got no more info than that, so we didn't know if Hades had been wronged or if Zeus had a good reason, we got no insight into their relationship. And I think we needed that to set up what he was going to do once he was free and explain why providing the information on how to kill Hades was enough for Zeus to resurrect Hook.

It was almost like they got to the end of the 5B arc and realized they forgot to work out the details with Hades.  Beyond his epic love story with Zelena and that bike ride of twoo luv, of course.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

On 5/24/2020 at 1:21 AM, Camera One said:

That would have been so disappointing!  Narnia was such a rich world with memorable locales and characters, with so many books to source from.  But that would have been straight up A&E's alley, given how they squandered the use of Oz, Greek mythology, heck most of the Disney movies, much less Grimm or Perrault fairy tales or folk stories from around the world.

Ha!  That would definitely have been another case of "To be answered on Twitter..."

Or the Narnia kids would be running around the Enchanted Forest and Belle chose to protect an inanimate object over them, or Regina tries to adopt them after trying to murder them, and that's another case where Adam on Twitter would explain they're from a Very Special Fictional WWII Realm™, and that's how they could have been in the EF in the oft-visited Bandit Snow years.

Ww2 world would suck, presumably it would require the Nazis be able to stomp back and forth across Europe forever.

On 5/24/2020 at 1:21 AM, Camera One said:

They could have done a Christmas episode where in the present-day, Regina feels excluded from the Charming Christmas festivities, while in the past, we see Regina as The White Queen kidnapping Father Christmas and using Edmund as a reindeer, while her father tries to convince her to let the captives go.

After S7 finished I did a few rounds of mental fanfic writing about how else it could have gone, one of my ideas was Narnia, based on the new Twuest Beweever being named Lucy.

So in my version we'd have a very different version of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, in which the Pevensies basically lost and three of them got turned to stone or killed. The one who escapes is Susan, she ends up in the Land of Untold Stories and comes over to Storybrooke. In the inter-season years she befriends Henry and tells him about how her family have been trapped and how she's been running from it, and he gives her a hope speech and they find a way back to Narnia to rescue them. They end up stuck there for years because time runs faster in Narnia, and by the time Henry's family, who were not ok with this, catch up with them, theyve both regenerated into older actors.

So after that my ideas get really hazy. Basically in one version the other Pevensies have died and Lucy is Henry and Susan's daughter who is named after her aunt. In another, they were turned to stone and Lucy gets thawed out and is actually either confused or is playing Henry when she tells him she's his daughter-because she figures he really wants to relive his mother's adventures.

And there's some kind of curse or spell that sends them all to the LWM and the White Witch is playing them all and has something like a coherent plan (and is played by someone who is more imposing than Emma Boothe or Gabrielle Anwar) and I need to work out something for Hook, Alice, Rumple and Gina to do.

And it galls me to make the Pevensies American but they made the Wicked Witch of the West English, so fair is fair I suppose.

[Camera One]

12 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Basically in one version the other Pevensies have died and Lucy is Henry and Susan's daughter who is named after her aunt.

I think a happy ending is better, if the Pevensies turned to stone, and there's a possibility of saving them.  Finding out that Lucy is Henry and Susan's daughter would have been a nice twist, if we initially think she might be Lucy herself.  In that case Lucy would have gone into the wardrobe first, so that explains why she believes.  

Then maybe Adult Henry and Susan in Hyperion Heights fall in love all over again after they stumble into a wardrobe.  

Regina and Whook could still have gone to help Adult Henry in Narnia... maybe Whook would have sailed the Dawn Treader.  

If we had to keep the same actors as Season 7, it might make it a bit more difficult.

 

[Speakeasy]

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think a happy ending is better, if the Pevensies turned to stone, and there's a possibility of saving them.  Finding out that Lucy is Henry and Susan's daughter would have been a nice twist, if we initially think she might be Lucy herself.  In that case Lucy would have gone into the wardrobe first, so that explains why she believes.  

Yes, that'd work. Since she lives in a regular city it would need some extra explaining as to why she believed in magic-the original books provide a good model if she went through the wardrobe but it doesn't work when she tries to show someone.

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Then maybe Adult Henry and Susan in Hyperion Heights fall in love all over again after they stumble into a wardrobe.  

That would be cute.

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

Regina and Whook could still have gone to help Adult Henry in Narnia... maybe Whook would have sailed the Dawn Treader.  

Yep. You could have Regina (and Zelena?) go off in one direction while Emma and Hook Classic go in another. Regina ends up in the Dawn Treader with Whook and they find their way to Narnia. Though there's still need to be a reason for Whook to be de aged.

4 hours ago, Camera One said:

If we had to keep the same actors as Season 7, it might make it a bit more difficult.

Yeah... I don't know what I'd do with most of the new cast or with Rumplestiltskin. And while I can accept Andrew West as Henry I wouldn't want Ramirez playing the new female lead.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Yep. You could have Regina (and Zelena?) go off in one direction while Emma and Hook Classic go in another. Regina ends up in the Dawn Treader with Whook and they find their way to Narnia. Though there's still need to be a reason for Whook to be de aged.

Maybe Regina could find Whook on one of the Islands, as she passes them en route to Narnia.  Mother Gothel could have sent him there, and we could get a flashback showing how he got de-aged. 

Is there a literary character similar to Mother Gothel who could have imprisoned Alice?  They could still have done Princess and the Frog in Narnia.  

Rumple could be looking for Aslan so he could become mortal. 

Aslan turns out to be the Cowardly Lion, who is actually Simba.  And The White Witch hated Aslan because she was attacked by Scar as a child.  Kidding on these last points (sort of).

 

 

Edited May 26, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

15 hours ago, Camera One said:

Maybe Regina could find Whook on one of the Islands, as she passes them en route to Narnia.  Mother Gothel could have sent him there, and we could get a flashback showing how he got de-aged. 

Is there a literary character similar to Mother Gothel who could have imprisoned Alice?  They could still have done Princess and the Frog in Narnia.  

The only thing I'd really be keen to save would be Whook and Alice and their relationship. Mother Gothel is disposable to me so she could be replaced by the White Witch, which would tie them into the rest of the story. 

You could also use Narnia Time here: Alice is born after season 6, we explain Whook sunk into depression because his ship was lost with all hands and that after years of searching he found that the only way to kill Rumplestiltskin was to become him, and that was too far. But after S6 he somehow ends up in Narnia, Jadis de ages him and offers him some 'Turkish Delight' and makes him her consort. Then at some point he bores or displeases her, he gets chased out of the palace and sneaks back in when he can to see his daughter, then gets caught and exiled to a little island, which is where he is when he meets the rest of the cast.

You could do Princess and the Frog, but I wasn't too keen on those characters either. I wondered if Narnia could be a setting to bring in animal-related stories, both from Disney, Bambi or the Lion King and so on, and from fairytales, like Aesop's fables.

Now I don't really think Once has the budget for cgi talking animals that don't look embarrassingly bad-the recent 'His Dark Materials' series had them and they looked great but they had to be pretty sparing, and that was an HBO-BBC production. Id imagine if you went this route you'd do a 'Teen Wolf' style copout where you can tell someone is a particular animal species because of the type of contact lenses and dentures they have 😁

Quote

Rumple could be looking for Aslan so he could become mortal. 

Aslan turns out to be the Cowardly Lion, who is actually Simba.  And The White Witch hated Aslan because she was attacked by Scar as a child.  Kidding on these last points (sort of).

That is something I'd thought of, and it would be the Once Way of doing things 😁

Edited May 27, 2020 by Speakeasy

[tennisgurl]

Of all of the disappointments of this show (and there were so very many) the one that still sticks out to me is The Author plot, which had tons of potential for interesting characterization, world building, and deconstruction, and it was all just thrown away. One of the questions I most wanted answered, going all the way back to the first episode, was who wrote Henry's book, and following that, how do we know these stories that happened in another world, and all we got was even more questions, and more frustration. Something else kind of weird, when I continued thinking about the story, is that in all the talk about how evil Isaac was for changing the stories to make things more "interesting", they seemed to tally ignore the more obvious ethical dilemma here with the nature of the The Author, but I will get to that soon...

So here is my hypothetical idea for what the Author plot could have been. Lets say that, instead of Isaac just being an asshole with a poorly developed god complex, he was once an idealistic young aspiring writer, who had a lot of natural talent and a desire to share wonderful stories with people, but for whatever reason, he just couldn't get his foot in the door, and has become a rather sad and lonely person. Lets say that Isaac was, in fact, quite a bit like Henry, a true believer, but who was losing that belief in wonder and stories. Then, the Apprentice shows up, and gives him the powers of the Author, and sends him out into the multiverse to start recording stories. Maybe then we can also get some real exposition about the Author and what their job is and more about how the multiverse works, maybe answers some more questions that were left vague in the show, like if ALL fiction is based on stuff that the Author witnessed or just some of it (like the most archetypal examples of genres, and the rest is actually made up by normal non magic authors) and if it is all real, why some events have been changed and why some are pretty much exactly the same, how we get the stories in our world, how long Authors have been around and why they do what they do, stuff like that. They dont have to answer everything, sometimes over explaining just makes things even more complicated (especially on this show) or less magical and mysterious, but they could at least answer some very basic things about how this world works, and that could actually serve to better raise the stakes. 

So anyway, young Isaac starts trotting around the fictional multiverse, watching stories unfold, writing them down and sending them on their way back to the Land Without Magic, and its exciting and wonderous and he sees so many lands and so many people, and eventually, he starts to slowly get involved in the stories. However, as exciting and wonderful as it all is, and how much he loves sharing stories, something starts to feel off for him. He sees things that are wonderful, but also things that are horrible. He watches people suffer and die, he sees pain and sickness and misery, and he just sits there and watches it all unfold, making sure he gets the right amount of pathos from the horror he witnesses, and its starts to grind on him. He has so much power, but he is forbidden to help, and being the idealistic nice guy that he is, he feels increasingly unhappy that he is not only using the lives of people for the entertainment of others, but that he has this amazing power and is told not to use it to help people. Lets say that he ends up really getting into watching one story, so much so that he starts slowly starts getting involved, getting to know the people he writes about, even starts helping them on their quests and struggles against evil (no Author powers, just helping) and even maybe falls in love with someone there (because thats the kind of stuff this show loves) and everything is a grand adventure with a Happy Ending almost guaranteed. However, again, things go sideways, and the person he fell for is now dying, or a villain has gotten WAY too powerful and is about to enact their evil plan which will kill countless innocents, and he just cant leave it alone, and he uses his powers to Deus ex Machina the person back to life, or turning the villain into a turnip or something, and the day is saved! Except, thats not what happens. Because the person he saved didn't die, the narrative basically goes off the rails, and more people end up dying, or because the villain was defeated in such a silly way, it just creates a power vacuum that every other villain is scrambling to fill, which just leaves to even more death and destruction. Isaac frantically tries to change everything to get to that Happy Ending, but things keep falling apart (you can do a whole parody/deconstruction about authors who use cheap narrative short cuts to get to the ending that they want) and eventually, things have gotten so bad that Isaac just loses it and basically just starts re-writing the whole thing, forcing people into roles that they dont even want, erasing free will, even the person he loved who he saved and started this whole mess, all in the name of the Happy Ending. He spent so long watching awful things happening and doing nothing, that now he has swung the other way, and does so much that he has destroyed free will and/or his meddling where he doesn't always understand context or consequences has just created more problems then it solves. Maybe even the LWM is suffering, stories arent being told or they're being told poorly, and its having adverse effects. See, you can do stuff like this when you explain how your world works!

This all happens in his backstory episode. When we actually meet Isaac, he has left that world behind (either its in ruin, its a scary stepford land, or its just gone if they want to get really dark) and is now going after other worlds, where he has gone full God Complex and no longer even bothers with writing stories down, he just looks to control them, feeling like he knows best, that he knows the villains from the heroes (even if they might disagree) and that he will write the stories the "right" way...or else. This sets him up as the new bad guy, and personally I would get rid of his involvement in the stupid egg napping plot (and that whole plot all together) and instead have him fuck with the heroes now, manipulating them and making them act out of character, which creates dissent among them in a way that actually makes sense and doesn't add a stupid ass retcon, before they realize what is going on and try to stop him. Maybe the Apprentice shows up to tell them that Henry is going to be the next Author and that they have to defeat Isaac so he can take his place, and that kicks off the plot, or vice versa, Isaac screws with the heroes, so they track down the Apprentice, and he dices on Henry, whatever. 

This is also where we get into the ethical dilemma that is just kind of sitting there but never addressed in the show, like a big awkward elephant in the middle of Granny's. The Author is essentially just hanging around the multiverse, watching people at very intense and emotional moments as well as just going about their lives, and...thats kind of creepy you know. The only problem the show has is that Isaac abused his powers to make people act out of character and later wrote his own self insert fanfic world, but the very idea of the Author raises a ton of questions that are never even discussed, even in a handwave way. Its basically magical voyeurism, and maybe even worse, considering they mine real events and the real lives of people to share them with other people for their enjoyment, which is all pretty messed up when you think about it, your basically selling people your damn snuff collection, but nobody knows it. Of course, a lot of that questions how much the Author changes from what they see to what they write, but I am going forward with the idea that while details change, the gist more or less stays the same (sure would be nice if we had any rules about how this freaking world works...) which means that, essentially, the Author is using these people for the amusement of others and for the nebulous purpose of passing their experiences to another world. We dont really know why they do this or how it started, or how the whole "fairy tales from different worlds" stuff comes in (did the Author just change some details of Snow Whites story, or was the Disney movie actually based around the Snow from another world?) so I am basically making my own hypothetical situation, but say that when the heroes hear about all this, their reaction isn't more or less just "oh, huh, ok"  when they hear about the Author and the nature of their world, but being confused and rather angry, which leads to the next ethical question. Isaac might have gone off the bend trying to use his powers to change things that he shouldn't have, but is just watching countless atrocities so much better? How many villages did Regina burn while the Author made sure to get good descriptors of their dying screams and sobbing loved ones? Is this like a Prime Directive from Star Trek thing, where they dont want to interfere with other societies because they fear the consequences of meddling in things they dont fully have context for (and the Prime Directive and its ethical questions are a whole different thing) or is all of this for the sake of the story, because, well, misery and tragedy makes for good drama? Have Snow ask if it was Isaac or some other Author who sat their and watched her parents die, ask why, with all of these powers, did they let her life be destroyed and her kingdom fall into disarray? Maybe instead of having just the Apprentice, have a former Author show up who retired, and maybe he was actually the one who was the author of Henry's book, and sadly admits that he witnessed every terrible thing that happened and watched quietly because thats just what he does. They can even expand on the Authors powers, like he can go invisible or something or can change his appearance to better blend into any place and time, and that explains how he can go undetected and see so much. Have a whole bit where the Apprentice of the retired Author talks to Henry about how hard the job can be, that he sometimes worried that he become cold and uncaring towards the subjects of his writing, seeing them as pawns and archetypes and plot devices who all exist to keep the story going, not as people, and Henry is left conflicted about his future as an Author. What Isaac did was terrible, but was the original way the right way? When you have that much power, do you have an obligation to help people, or is that playing God? If they want to keep Regina and the Queens idiotic plot about looking for the Author to complain about their story and how they keep losing and wanting to have a happy ending written, they can have Regina confront the old Author and/or the Apprentice about her bad breaks and demanding her happy ending, and have them tell her that they didn't make her or anyone do anything, they only watch and report on what they see, this was all based on her own choices,  and the consequences of her own actions, and they cant just wave their pen and give her a happy ending, that would make them like Isaac and his chaos, if she wants a happy ending, she has to make one of her own. 

Maybe then we can go into a whole thing about the importance of stories in the world and how the LWM and the story worlds have a symbiotic relationship where the stories must be told to keep all of the worlds strong, which at least makes the whole thing seem less creepy and voyeuristic if its all for a specifically good reason, and not just some creeper driving around the multiverse in his unmarked white van, getting off on other peoples private lives. 

I have no idea where it would end, except that Isaac would be defeated and Henry would probably get the pen, but I dont quite know how the ethical question would be answered. Maybe instead of Henry just dicking around the multiverse in season seven on the worlds longest gap year, maybe its him trying to find a way to be a good Author? 

A lot of this is just based around headcannon that I have about the multiverse and how it works, because, as I said before, its all very poorly explained in the show (and it was all so simple when Jefferson laid it out in season one!) and I still dont get what even makes something a "realm of story" or whatever, as opposed to just some other dimension, but whatever, if they want to make that a thing, they better freaking use it, we dont have to get super technical, but I feel like this story would make Isaac a much more interesting villain, would better make him sort of a shadow to what Henry, naively obsessed with simple morality and happy endings, could become as an Author, could answer some questions about the universe without too terribly into techniques, add a lot of drama and even comedy (if they wanted to go even more meta and maybe have hijinks as our gang go to different worlds they are totally unprepared for, or meet alternate versions of themselves, or watch their own movies) and be more on brand for what I think that this show was trying to do with its fairytale mashup premise and themes. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by tennisgurl

[Camera One]

I think initially, I expected a much more simple explanation of the storybook.  It would have made sense if Blue had created the book as a way of ensuring the Curse would be broken.  Maybe it was initially a self-recording book (like the one in the Oz book), but Blue altered it so that the stories of Snow's best friends and allies would be included.  Maybe she also got insider information about what Regina did from a spy within the castle.  It was inferred that Blue had to make "preparations" for the Curse I think?  But they never referred to that again because let's hire a great actress and let her do nothing!

It would have been hilarious if at the end of 4B, Blue had revealed to Regina and Rumple, "I wrote the book, you dumbasses.  There's no such thing as The Author".

The concept of having someone who is called "The Author" was too convoluted and raised too many problems with the logistics of how he/she can be everywhere at once, and whose stories got told and whose didn't.  The whole idea of "The Author" having powers was even worse - it messes with free will, so makes the plot less interesting to me, if someone can just force others to do whatever with their magic pen.  

I would have liked an exploration of other people from "our" world who had accidentally stumbled upon the Enchanted Forest and other "realms", and had come back telling the stories that THEY saw, perhaps with embellishments or biases.  They didn't have to be "The Author".  That was how they could have included people like Disney, or the Grimm brothers, Perrault, and even Shakespeare or Jules Verne, etc. if they wanted to be creative with it.  They could have had authors like Lewis Carroll or Frank Baum encounter people who did venture into other worlds, so got their information second-hand.  

Henry didn't need a power.  If he really had to have one, maybe he of the Truest Believer could believe something into existence if he thought/felt really hard.  It wouldn't be any dumber than Henry waking up in the morning and somehow writing and illustrating an entire tale that happened somewhere else.  

Edited May 29, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

30 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I think initially, I expected a much more simple explanation of the storybook.  It would have made sense if Blue had created the book as a way of ensuring the Curse would be broken.  Maybe it was initially a self-recording book (like the one in the Oz book), but Blue altered it so that the stories of Snow's best friends and allies would be included.  Maybe she also got insider information about what Regina did from a spy within the castle.  It was inferred that Blue had to make "preparations" for the Curse I think?

That's where I thought they were going with it, too, that the book was another back door to the curse that would enable them to break it and it was part of Blue's preparations to help them get their memories and identities back.

I figured that the fact that these people were storybook characters that lived after their stories had been told for hundreds of years and the book itself were two totally different issues. I had this wacky theory that there was something about the power of belief, of their stories being told, that brought them to life, that all the stories told for generations created a world where these stories came to life, and then they went off in different directions than the versions we knew because once they became real people who had free will, different outcomes might come out of the same circumstances. Plus, throwing them all together in the same world where they ran into each other would also change things.

That theory got blown up when they introduced Hook, who probably lived before his story was told, but he's so different from his book counterpart that you could maybe say he was created by all the same legends about pirates that inspired Barrie, so they're more Hooks in parallel than him being created by the Peter Pan story bleeding over. It gets trickier when you factor in the Darlings, who seem to have really lived in our world, but then maybe he was actually writing their story and they aren't part of the "story realm."

42 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It would have been hilarious if at the end of 4B, Blue had revealed to Regina and Rumple, "I wrote the book, you dumbasses.  There's no such thing as The Author".

That would have been perfect!

42 minutes ago, Camera One said:

The concept of having someone who is called "The Author" was too convoluted and raised too many problems with the logistics of how he/she can be everywhere at once, and whose stories got told and whose didn't.  The whole idea of "The Author" having powers was even worse - it messes with free will, so makes the plot less interesting to me, if someone can just force others to do whatever with their magic pen.  

The Author thing was such a mess in so many ways. They'd said "the stories are real!" but they're from realms of story, and the people who were writing them before they happened got them wrong. The Author had power to alter reality but wasn't allowed to alter reality. And Merlin created the whole thing but we never found out why or what purpose these people automatically writing these stories were supposed to serve.

45 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I would have liked an exploration of other people from "our" world who had accidentally stumbled upon the Enchanted Forest and other "realms", and had come back telling the stories that THEY saw, perhaps with embellishments or biases. 

I'd been thinking during the discussion of how they could have handled Narnia that they didn't really use the Narnia trope of the person from our world stumbling into a magical world. They just had the people whose stories were about that -- Dorothy in Oz, the Darlings in Neverland, or I guess the journey to Camelot, but then all those people were originally from that world (other than Emma and Henry). But nothing like someone entering a wardrobe and entering the fairy tale world. That person returning to our world would explain the stories.

They could have kind of done something like that with Henry's realm hopping in season 7, but they skipped the part of the story where he's newly arrived, having the culture clash, and figuring things out. They threw a mention of the Connecticut Yankee into the Camelot arc, though that gets even more complicated with the timing, since he would have had to travel there a hundred or so years after Twain's story and would have been from the 70s or so. We could have seen a flashback of him arriving.

It's funny, we had so many of the fairy tale people coming through portals to our world, but very little going the other way, even though that's such a common fantasy trope.

51 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Henry didn't need a power.

What's weird is that they gave it to him, but then it ended up not really being used. Like so many of their powers, it was so powerful that if it was used, it would resolve things too easily, so they had to come up with ways or reasons for him not to use it, which were then thrown out when they needed him to use the powers. It was forbidden for Authors to use their powers to change reality, but then Henry did it and it was okay.

[Camera One]

I was also thinking that maybe Blue could have been the one who spread the idea that villains don't get their happy endings, and created the mythical idea of an Author who rewarded the heroes and punished the villains to motivate good behavior.  

Instead of finding The Author, maybe Rumple and the Queens of Darkness could have been looking to mess with the threads of The Fates.  Perhaps Rumple's weaver guardians told him of a legend of The Fates who wove happy endings for heroes and unhappy ends for villains.  Then, the mysterious hooded Weaver could turn around, and it's Blue too, LOL.

33 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I'd been thinking during the discussion of how they could have handled Narnia that they didn't really use the Narnia trope of the person from our world stumbling into a magical world. They just had the people whose stories were about that -- Dorothy in Oz, the Darlings in Neverland, or I guess the journey to Camelot, but then all those people were originally from that world (other than Emma and Henry). But nothing like someone entering a wardrobe and entering the fairy tale world. That person returning to our world would explain the stories.

It really would have been a natural story to tell.  It seems like they were solving time problems with the "realm of story" explanation.  For example, Dorothy went to Oz at the same time as Zelena, so Dorothy came from a Fictional 1930s world.  Would it have been so bad to have wormholes in time?  So Dorothy could have travelled through time and space from the real 1930s?  If they didn't want to have 101 Snow Whites, maybe the Grimm Brothers travelled forward in time, and witnessed the Snow and Regina that we saw, but they changed it up in their telling.  Or they saw different bits and pieces, which caused them to infer a different"version" of events.  Or they were told incorrect information... a dwarf saying he heard Regina gave Snow a poisoned comb?  

Edited May 29, 2020 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Instead of finding The Author, maybe Rumple and the Queens of Darkness could have been looking to mess with the threads of The Fates.  Perhaps Rumple's weaver guardians told him of a legend of The Fates who wove happy endings for heroes and unhappy ends for villains.  Then, the mysterious hooded Weaver could turn around, and it's Blue too, LOL.

That would have made a lot more sense than the idea that some author who wrote about events that had happened somehow might be the one controlling what would happen. That got all jumbled up, especially with the stuff about how the Author was wrong about Regina when he just wrote what she actually did -- and then it turned out he liked her and was on her side, not ruining things for her, but then it was never acknowledged that Regina was totally wrong about him.

That whole storyline was like me wanting to get the school yearbook staff to go back and change the yearbook to make me Most Likely to Succeed so I would be more successful now, and never mind that the class voted on Most Likely to Succeed and it wasn't in the yearbook staff's power to change that (well, aside from the fact that I was on the yearbook staff and actually was voted Most Likely to Succeed).

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

It seems like they were solving time problems with the "realm of story" explanation.  For example, Dorothy went to Oz at the same time as Zelena, so Dorothy came from a Fictional 1930s world.  Would it have been so bad to have wormholes in time?

That's definitely what they were doing. Wasn't it on Twitter when someone asked if Dorothy was from the 80s and they responded that she was from a fictional Depression Era Kansas world. Actually, given that they were doing stuff from the books like silver slippers instead of ruby red slippers, it should have been turn-of-the-century Kansas world. I wonder what else was in Depression Era Kansas world, or was it a broader Depression America world? Lots of Steinbeck, I guess. We've got the Okies loading up to leave the Dust Bowl, and just down the way, Dorothy is going to and from Oz. Really, the way their Dorothy was dressed, she could have been from around 1981 or so, the era of the prairie skirts, peasant blouses, and those Gunne Sax dresses. It was the era of Little House on the Prairie fashion. Though then we've got the issue of the real person living decades after the fictional version was written, so I guess unless there's time travel from the turn of the century, Dorothy has to be from another world or else they'd have to get meta and self-referential, with a girl named Dorothy from Kansas just happening to live out the same events as in a story that just about everyone knows. You can't have all the characters recognizing Oz characters while Dorothy has no clue about any of it.

I thought in season one Rumple said something about the curse moving them in space and time, but once they got to where people were traveling back and forth and communicating in real time through the sleeping curse dreams or through mirrors, they couldn't really imply that the fairy tale world was a hundred or more years earlier, unless they were doing something like the fairy tale version of Sleeping Beauty, where she really does sleep for 100 years, so when Emma and Snow go to the Enchanted Forest for Team Princess, it's hundreds of years later and the people still left in that world have only recently awakened from being frozen all that time. But they intersect with too many other worlds to make that work.

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Or they saw different bits and pieces, which caused them to infer a different"version" of events.  Or they were told incorrect information... a dwarf saying he heard Regina gave Snow a poisoned comb?  

That could actually be an interesting premise, since it would depend where an observer landed how they saw it all. You could have a totally different view of a story depending on where you saw it. It's hard to imagine anyone seeing Regina as the victim and hero even if you just saw her side of the story, though, since her actions were so over-the-top and unwarranted. But if you missed a lot of it and only saw bits and pieces and heard her justifications, you might think she was in the right to go after that terrible bandit Snow White.

[tennisgurl]

Blue actually being the one behind Henry's book, using it as a backup plan or clue for Emma or some other possible way to break the curse when Emma arrives is a great idea, and it would honestly explain a whole lot. A lot of Blues sketchy or useless behavior could be explained as her playing the long game, that she was sort of a good counterpart to Rumple, using magic to manipulate the situation year after year to try and get to some kind of end goal, which in her case, is breaking the curse and ridding the kingdom of evil. Maybe she even used her powers to see into the future or talked to the Fates and heard many different scenarios and it turns into a Doctor Strange in Infinity War thing, where she realizes that the only way to beat Regina is to let her cast the curse, and then find a way to break it. That would not only make WAY more sense than the whole stupid Author plot, but would make Blue an actually interesting and competent character, not uselessness personified. Or if they dont want her to be so manipulative, just say she wrote the book, and thats that! It just works so much better. 

There was no reason for the Author/realms of story stuff to be so freaking confusing and convoluted. There are so many easier ways they could have done this, but in trying to cover their asses about timeline issues, they raised a billion more questions about the very nature of this universes existence. 

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

That whole storyline was like me wanting to get the school yearbook staff to go back and change the yearbook to make me Most Likely to Succeed so I would be more successful now, and never mind that the class voted on Most Likely to Succeed and it wasn't in the yearbook staff's power to change that (well, aside from the fact that I was on the yearbook staff and actually was voted Most Likely to Succeed).

LOL, that analogy really makes just about as much sense as Regina and Rumple's plan to find The Author.  And can you imagine an entire movie built around that premise?  It would be ridiculous and no one would be able to take the story seriously.

Edited May 30, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

The writers probably didn't think much about how the Once Multiverse was supposed to work, or if they thought about it they didn't come to any conclusions. Outside of the main cast making a couple if quips I don't think they wanted to draw attention to the fact that the characters are fictional people in our world or for the story to get into why that was. I can appreciate why-I think they wanted to write a mashup of fictional characters having adventures and not to have philosophical issues get in the way. Maybe the characters reflecting on whether they were real or not would be a bit close to breaking the 4th wall. I mean if you draw attention to this it's hard to avoid admitting that the world with Maine and Seattle in it is the real world and the ones with fairies and dark ones aren't real, and if you focus too much on that then maybe that belittles the important drama that happens in the unreal worlds.

[Shanna Marie]

11 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

Maybe the characters reflecting on whether they were real or not would be a bit close to breaking the 4th wall. I mean if you draw attention to this it's hard to avoid admitting that the world with Maine and Seattle in it is the real world and the ones with fairies and dark ones aren't real, and if you focus too much on that then maybe that belittles the important drama that happens in the unreal worlds.

I feel like that only really became an issue when they started the "worlds of story" stuff. Previously, it was more like real people reacting to fictional representations of themselves, like, say, how Queen Elizabeth might react to The Crown, or there was a movie about her activities the night of VE Day that was based on something she really did (go out into the crowds celebrating the end of the war) but that was entirely fictionalized. Her life was turned into a story, and she certainly must have feelings about how well she was or wasn't depicted and how accurate those events were to her real life. Her being a TV/movie character doesn't mean she isn't real.

Once they started talking about the characters being from realms of story, that made it seem like they were less real.

[Speakeasy]

On 5/30/2020 at 11:14 PM, Shanna Marie said:

I feel like that only really became an issue when they started the "worlds of story" stuff. Previously, it was more like real people reacting to fictional representations of themselves, like, say, how Queen Elizabeth might react to The Crown, or there was a movie about her activities the night of VE Day that was based on something she really did (go out into the crowds celebrating the end of the war) but that was entirely fictionalized. Her life was turned into a story, and she certainly must have feelings about how well she was or wasn't depicted and how accurate those events were to her real life. Her being a TV/movie character doesn't mean she isn't real.

Once they started talking about the characters being from realms of story, that made it seem like they were less real.

That was when they basically admitted the story worlds weren't real, but then didn't follow up on it - the implication of what Isaac said to Cruella is that her world has no history because it exists to provide a 20s motif, is that true for all worlds? And what else are they lacking? Is the Enchanted Forest made up of a dozen kingdoms with about 50 people apiece and castles that are created and maintained by narrative expectations, to provide the right kind of setting?-but before that they clearly wanted to bring in people from all kinds of different stories, and specifically stories like 'Peter Pan', 'Alice in Wonderland', 'Frankenstein' and 'the Wizard of Oz', all of which were very deliberately imagined and created by their authors, not reinterpreted from folklore...

So it's possible I'm overthinking this. Still, I think it's harder to justify Captain Hook and the Wicked Witch of the West, regardless of how little they had in common with their book versions, than Snow White or Little Red Riding Hood. 

But... Maybe you could say that, yes, all stories are true in their own worlds because ideas cross between worlds through dreams or something. Maybe you could make a joke out if it by having a fairytale in the Enchanted Forest about some famous figure in our world. 

[Camera One]

While I liked the Cruella flashback episode, that seemed to be only episode where they seem to present a "realm of story" as a static place where the people in it isn't even aware of the year.   It's one thing if the year 1920 was like that, and so was Year 1000 and Year 1992.  But it's another thing when no one has any concept of years.  

They never really revisited that interpretation again, so it almost feels to me a one-off exception rather than a rule.  

[Speakeasy]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

While I liked the Cruella flashback episode, that seemed to be only episode where they seem to present a "realm of story" as a static place where the people in it isn't even aware of the year.   It's one thing if the year 1920 was like that, and so was Year 1000 and Year 1992.  But it's another thing when no one has any concept of years.  

They never really revisited that interpretation again, so it almost feels to me a one-off exception rather than a rule.  

It's actually a bit more confusing than that.

Isaac pointed out that she couldn't tell what year it was to show that her world wasn't real. So people from Flapperia do have a concept of years and an advancing calendar, and know that it should be used as standard. They just don't use one and don't notice they aren't using one.

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/2/2020 at 3:48 PM, Camera One said:

While I liked the Cruella flashback episode, that seemed to be only episode where they seem to present a "realm of story" as a static place where the people in it isn't even aware of the year.   It's one thing if the year 1920 was like that, and so was Year 1000 and Year 1992.  But it's another thing when no one has any concept of years.  

That's one of the things they obviously didn't think through about the whole "worlds of story" concept. In the Enchanted Forest world, It seemed more like they'd stagnated without any progress, staying in a sort of Georgian-era society for at least a century. And even then, things got weird, since Camelot was medieval even though it was in walking distance from Rumple's castle (given that Neal and Belle walked to the Dark One vault from Rumple's castle and the Charmings walked to the Dark One vault from Camelot). Then there's Hook, who was from a century earlier, but who seemed to come from a more advanced age, given that he had cannons on his ship and used a pistol, so they had gunpowder, and yet everyone in the Enchanted Forest was still using bows and arrows. I guess to a large extent their society was more medieval, since they didn't use gunpowder and were primarily rural, with no real urban areas, but they wore more Georgian clothes, and I think the coaches we saw were more 1700s than medieval.

In the Wonderland discussion, I'd pondered whether we just happened to be seeing the Victorian era equivalent of that world and there might have been progress, since there was a reference to "Mrs. Darcy's son." Was that world more a general "Fictional British World," and a couple of generations ago it had been Regency World, where all the Jane Austen books took place, and now Lizzie and Darcy's grandson was being presented as a possible suitor for Alice? That would be the only way I could imagine a "Victorian Literature World" working, since the Victorian Era was long. Just with the works of Dickens, you'd span Regency, 1820s, 1830s and on up to the 1860s. Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend couldn't take place at the same time in the same world, and both of them should be in the past for Alice, if we're going by publication date of the books. She'd have been a child in the late 1860s-early 1870s, so adult Alice should be in the 1880s, which fits with that being around the same time as Jekyll (published in 1886).

But the idea that time doesn't actually really pass in those worlds or that people there aren't aware of the passage of time (even though children grow up) is just weird. If children are growing up, you're going to be aware of time passing. Your world may not change much. You may stay at the same level of technology and wear the same clothing styles, but if you're watching a child grow up, you're going to know how many years have passed. There was no indication that people in the Enchanted Forest didn't know when it was.

[Camera One]

9 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

You may stay at the same level of technology and wear the same clothing styles, but if you're watching a child grow up, you're going to know how many years have passed. There was no indication that people in the Enchanted Forest didn't know when it was.

Regina or Zelena celebrated a birthday I think?  And Regina recognized the anniversary of Daniel's death.  So the concept of "years" did exist in the Enchanted Forest, even they call it 1978.

I think most people would assume the Victorian period, the Edward period and the Regency were all the same.  Especially A&E, who thought European dresses existed in Seattle 2000 years ago.

Edited June 6, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

I'm stating the obvious here, but the writers didn't seem to care about fleshing out their fantasy world or how any of it worked. Hook can have a pistol because it's a fairy tale and nothing has to make sense. It's just what people associate with pirates, even if there are implications in the story like the fact if there's people with gunpowder, they should outmatch the people with bows and arrows. A&E never stopped to think about any of that. I'm not too upset that it's not completely accurate as far as the style of the time period goes (I'm content with "vague Victorian England"), but it's clear the writers didn't care at all about the world they were building. They just had three laws of magic that even they couldn't abide by, the Dark One, and later the Savior, and that was about it.

I've gotten more into high fantasy worlds lately and it's crazy how much detail is normally put into the quality ones. The writers didn't have to delve deep into lore or anything, as fairy tales are normally pretty simple in nature. It's not even that they need to explain how every little thing works. The problems were that the writers were inconsistent about the few rules they did employ and they took on complicated concepts they couldn't handle. In short, the scope of the show was too big for them. They would've done better with something more focused but they threw everything and the kitchen sink into it. There's shows that pull off that grand of a scale while preserving a compelling story, but they're the exception, not the rule.

Edited June 8, 2020 by KingOfHearts

[daxx]

31 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

They would've done better with something more focused but they threw everything and the kitchen sink into it. There's shows that pull off that grand of a scale while preserving a compelling story, but they're the exception, not the rule.

Which is why they did much better with Amazing Stories. They only had to keep consistency within a single episode.

[tennisgurl]

23 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

Then there's Hook, who was from a century earlier, but who seemed to come from a more advanced age, given that he had cannons on his ship and used a pistol, so they had gunpowder, and yet everyone in the Enchanted Forest was still using bows and arrows.

I am still really annoyed that they never really explained where Hook came from, or, if he is supposed to be from the Enchanted Forrest, as its implied a few times, why he is so different than everyone else there. Is he from another country but in the same world, where its themed around pirate adventures or British Empire style naval stuff, or is he from a totally different world? Wherever he is from seems to be more technologically advanced, most notably it has gun powder allowing him to use a pistol and his ship to have cannons, while the EF seems to be all bows and arrows and swords. The existence of gun powder, but that only one person/area seems to have, just raises so many questions that we will never get answers to. In a way, thats even more frustrating than all the weird clothes stuff. You could handwave clothes as being a sort of mashup of various time periods I guess (as the show has zero interest in actual world building) but such different forms of technology would be much more plot relevant you would think. 

[Camera One]

You would think gunpowder would make swords obsolete.  But these are characters who, when faced with a villain with unlimited magical powers (much less a gun), pull out their sword.  

Edited June 9, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

At one point I thought it might've been revealed Hook was originally from the Land Without Magic. Imagine the reversal of the Curse in S3 leaving Hook behind and even he is surprised. 

[daxx]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Imagine the reversal of the Curse in S3 leaving Hook behind and even he is surprised

He wasn’t brought over by the curse, he came via bean, he should have escaped the curse reversal as well as those from Neverland and Neal. Yet more incomplete world building.

[KingOfHearts]

21 hours ago, daxx said:

He wasn’t brought over by the curse, he came via bean, he should have escaped the curse reversal as well as those from Neverland and Neal. Yet more incomplete world building.

We missed out on Neal and Hook being roommates in the apartment. But at least we got Rumple and Ursula living together and bickering about ramen, right? 

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/8/2020 at 9:11 PM, tennisgurl said:

The existence of gun powder, but that only one person/area seems to have, just raises so many questions that we will never get answers to. In a way, thats even more frustrating than all the weird clothes stuff. You could handwave clothes as being a sort of mashup of various time periods I guess (as the show has zero interest in actual world building) but such different forms of technology would be much more plot relevant you would think. 

Yeah, you can get past the weird clothes because this is a fantasy world, not necessarily an accurate representation of our world and any historical period. But you do need to be somewhat consistent in things like technology. The development of gunpowder changed warfare. If there's gunpowder, guns, and cannons, you're not going to be fighting primarily with swords other than maybe at close quarters. Anyone who had gunpowder was going to have a distinct advantage. It might even have made up for not having magic. It definitely should have been a benefit against ogres. All the stuff around Hook was really poorly thought out (or not at all). It was there because he was Captain Hook -- he had cannon and a pistol because he was a pirate -- not because it fit into the world in any way. I've semi-seriously theorized that the Charmings' era was some kind of dark age, where they'd gone backwards in technology from Hook's time, when the navies at war were shooting cannon at each other, but they'd lost the gunpowder technology over the years and were back to swords. But then there were the Ogre Wars Bae was going to be sent to fight in, which was in approximately the same era. Would that war have been dragging on if they'd had artillery?

It does make a lot more sense if you imagine that Hook was from a different world and ended up in the Enchanted Forest world when he was running errands for Pan, but then he was in the same world as Rumple before that.

On 6/9/2020 at 11:18 AM, daxx said:

He wasn’t brought over by the curse, he came via bean, he should have escaped the curse reversal as well as those from Neverland and Neal. Yet more incomplete world building.

Their initial explanation seemed to be that Hook and Neal weren't born in our world, so they got sent back. But then they blew a hole in that when they introduced Lily and Ursula, who also were from the other world and didn't come via curse, but they don't seem to have been dragged back by the curse reverse. Ursula certainly wouldn't have been slogging away in New York. Which means Neal and Hook could have left with Emma and Henry and wouldn't have been sent back if they weren't in the town. Oh, and what about Ingrid? She walked in to town. Was she dragged back by the reverse, then sent back by curse 2 even though she hadn't been in curse 1? Was she sent straight back to Arendelle and book it back to the Enchanted Forest in case they got sent back again, or did she arrive with everyone in the Enchanted Forest?

On 6/10/2020 at 9:05 AM, KingOfHearts said:

We missed out on Neal and Hook being roommates in the apartment.

And Hook trying to figure out modern life in New York so he can pass as fitting in, with some coaching from Neal.

[daxx]

12 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

And Hook trying to figure out modern life in New York so he can pass as fitting in, with some coaching from Neal.

I literally wrote this fic. My one and only MC because it bothered me that much.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408677/chapters/7463360