Once Upon A...SHOULDA HAPPENED THIS WAY!

[Speakeasy]

In the All Seasons thread there were a few mentions recently of how this show had the victims of former villains coming back to get revenge on their tormentors and how odd that was. To me it seemed natural and a good plot hook, but thinking about it, that's because when I was a kid there was a show which did this and did it really well:

That show was the irreplaceable 'Xena, Warrior Princess'-Aiyeeyeeyeeyeeyeeyai!

In that series, Xena's greatest for was Callisto, who had been a child when Xena's army destroyed her home and murdered her family. She responded by essentially deciding to become Xena But Worse- and she made good on it, she was terrifyingly good at fighting and utterly merciless. She was great.

So how does this relate to OUAT? Well with the sole exception of Captain Hook, the villains whose villainy stemmed from their abuse by former villains were pretty underwhelming in this show-actually even Hook was fairly weak as a villain.

But in season 3 we had Zelena, who was effectively Regina But Worse-... Or at least Regina But With Stronger Jazz Hands and an Antagonist. Zelena, of course, wanted revenge for nonsense reasons that were all about her own abandonment issues-would things have been better if she had been Regina's Callisto?

We'd already seen her massacring peasants by then-if Zelena had been a young girl who survived a massacre during the war between Regina and Snow and had fled, found herself in the land of Oz and learned magic, and then come back looking for revenge? For one thing this avoids this bizarre idea that the whole fictional multiverse was apparently frozen in time along with StoryBrooke and the Coradome, second it does also give her reasons to beef with everyone on Team Hero: Snow was fighting Regina and a young Zelena might have blamed her for not doing enough to stop her (and if season 2 stays as was then, well, she has a point...). 

Maybe she's been thrown out of Oz by Dorothy and so she ends up coming back to the Enchanted Forest just in time to find the Evil Queen returned and this sets her off.

Why is she green? Could be anything- my explanation would be that she's part troll, as in like the ones from Snow Falls, but obviously gets most of her looks from her human parent. In the MGM movie she has an army of green cossacks-i don't imagine the copyright on them is too tight, so she could have a troll army in addition to however the flying monkeys work.

I just think this explanation works because Zelena is a troll.

There might not need to be any kind of prophecy or vague magical rules to bring Emma back into the plot, either, of Zelena is really determined to punish Regina for killing her family and friends she could find out where Regina's son is living and be like 'ok then, see that's what goes around but this, your Majesty? This is what comes around'

And then they need to go protect Henry and Emma and also maybe drag Emma back and use her Light Jazzhands to defeat Zelena.

And Rumplestiltskin stays dead.

[Camera One]

This isn't a "shoulda" happened, more like a "coulda" happened.

I was thinking about how A&E might have "twisted" "Frozen" if they hadn't been supervised.

They could have made Elsa into a surprise villain who tricks Emma and the Charmings into believing that she's trying to find her beloved sister, when she wanted to kill Anna instead because of her deep anger and jealousy.  Maybe she had a deal with Rumple, and she has the powers to free him from the Dagger.  Elsa could have killed/created Marian as a way to weaken Regina, who was her rival (Elsa's ultimate goal is to become Mayor of Storybrooke of course).  But no one believes Regina and believes Elsa instead, until the big reveal that Elsa was the true villain after all.  Elsa framed Hans, who was an innocent.  But in the end, Elsa finally remembers the love she had for her sister with a touching flashback, and she sacrifices herself for Anna, and everyone apologizes to Regina for thinking the worse of her.  But Regina is angry, and is tempted to join the Queens of Darkness, ushering in the amazing stories of 4B.  

Edited December 28, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

On 12/28/2020 at 8:56 PM, Camera One said:

This isn't a "shoulda" happened, more like a "coulda" happened.

I was thinking about how A&E might have "twisted" "Frozen" if they hadn't been supervised.

They could have made Elsa into a surprise villain who tricks Emma and the Charmings into believing that she's trying to find her beloved sister, when she wanted to kill Anna instead because of her deep anger and jealousy.  Maybe she had a deal with Rumple, and she has the powers to free him from the Dagger.  Elsa could have killed/created Marian as a way to weaken Regina, who was her rival (Elsa's ultimate goal is to become Mayor of Storybrooke of course).  But no one believes Regina and believes Elsa instead, until the big reveal that Elsa was the true villain after all.  Elsa framed Hans, who was an innocent.  But in the end, Elsa finally remembers the love she had for her sister with a touching flashback, and she sacrifices herself for Anna, and everyone apologizes to Regina for thinking the worse of her.  But Regina is angry, and is tempted to join the Queens of Darkness, ushering in the amazing stories of 4B.  

Well fortunately cooler heads prevailed and instead we got the wonderful story of how Anna taught Charming to swordfight in one afternoon and bitchslapped Rumplestiltskin the omnipotent magical master manipulator by accident but would never do anything to abuse her power over him because she is just too pure and nice. Pure as the driven snow one might say, oh the delicious symbolic irony.

Genuinely the best things in season 4A WERE the things the writers came up with themselves with the story of Ingrid and her sisters. The worst things with that nonsense about the hat were also their own ideas though so I guess it evens out, with their corporate-required kowtowing to the perfectness of Frozen being the axis on which those things spin.

I do wonder whether it would even be possible for Once to have done their own take on The Snow Queen without having to tie it in to Frozen since Disney would want to make sure people remembered Frozen was out there -as if anyone had a chance to forget at that point- and what that might have looked like if they had.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Speakeasy

[Camera One]

13 minutes ago, Speakeasy said:

Genuinely the best things in season 4A WERE the things the writers came up with themselves with the story of Ingrid and her sisters.

Yes, that was the best part, but it worked only because they were forced to tie it in with the "Frozen" movie, creating a believable backstory behind Elsa's magic and her mother's history.  They actually had to look carefully at the plot from the Disney movie and build off of it in a manner that made sense.  

That is very different from coming up with something entirely themselves... well, the Hat and the Stars Aligning in the Sky was an example of *that*.

The other thing that worked was Emma's friendship with Elsa, which again required actually looking at Elsa's personality in the movie and her parallels with Emma.  

These Writers needed the leash to focus their creativity.

Their failure with the Anna storylines and the forced centrics and connections to the horrible Rumple arc revealed the Writers' inherit weaknesses, but at least it was partially saved by good casting and chemistry.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Camera One

[Speakeasy]

2 hours ago, Camera One said:

Yes, that was the best part, but it worked only because they were forced to tie it in with the "Frozen" movie, creating a believable backstory behind Elsa's magic and her mother's history.  They actually had to look carefully at the plot from the Disney movie and build off of it in a manner that made sense.  

That is very different from coming up with something entirely themselves... well, the Hat and the Stars Aligning in the Sky was an example of *that*.

I'll admit to that up to a point, I don't think having to stick to Disney canon is a good thing though, I think that the first season was based on Fairy Tales more than Disney - with a few nods to general Disney concepts everyone associates with fairy tales (like True Love's Kiss, I haven't found ANY written fairy tales that mention that idea). And that was the one that roped people in because they were unique takes on the ideas. I personally think the show got weaker the more it became Disney fanfiction and the characters they imported direct from Disney were weak characters with none of the charm or strength of the animated originals.

(It's almost as if trying to translate a bombastic children's animated musical number into 'serious' live action stuff that is 'weighty and dramatic' enough for adults doesn't really work-isnt it Disn... Oh who am I kidding you aren't listening)

Ok I mean look at the characters that did work: it was all characters that veered way off from their original version. Rumplestiltskin is very different from the original, Regina is very different from the Evil Queen in pretty much any other version of the story, Charming is-well he actually IS a character. Killian Jones has nothing in common with James Hook besides a hook, a ship, and a catchphrase but he still works.

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The other thing that worked was Emma's friendship with Elsa, which again required actually looking at Elsa's personality in the movie and her parallels with Emma.  

Eh... That bit was only possible because they forced a parallel by A) bringing back Emma's magic... I don't remember if they explained how she got it back and B) deciding that Emma's magic was an X-Men Puberty Metaphor Power so that it was uncontrollable like Elsa's and making her family all wary of her like Elsa's parents were. That came off as forced to me. 

I actually remember that originally they were talking about how Elsa was similar to Ginikins and then switched to how she was similar to Emma, which made it seem like someone from corporate said

'No, Elsa is nice and a hero she is not bonding with a classic villain - SILENCE!- we do not care if your version is an antihero or antivillain or whatever you're calling her, she is a classic fairy tale villain and she is not going to be friends with our hero. Make Elsa friends with your hero, what's her name, Amy? -SILENCE!- we don't want to know, just do it!'

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These Writers needed the leash to focus their creativity.

Their failure with the Anna storylines and the forced centrics and connections to the horrible Rumple arc revealed the Writers' inherit weaknesses, but at least it was partially saved by good casting and chemistry.

I mean they were having fun at least I guess.

But honestly I get disproportionately upset when you see one character or group getting beefed up by knocking another set down and making them look like idiots. The fact that Ana's arc was the writers shitting on their own world and characters to put on a display of corporate fealty just made it that much more cringey.

[Camera One]

8 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I'll admit to that up to a point, I don't think having to stick to Disney canon is a good thing though, I think that the first season was based on Fairy Tales more than Disney - with a few nods to general Disney concepts everyone associates with fairy tales (like True Love's Kiss, I haven't found ANY written fairy tales that mention that idea). And that was the one that roped people in because they were unique takes on the ideas. I personally think the show got weaker the more it became Disney fanfiction and the characters they imported direct from Disney were weak characters with none of the charm or strength of the animated originals.

The Snow White backstory they wrote for Season 1 did diverge but it still followed the major time stamps of the Disney movie.  Like with "Frozen", they did make an effort to fit their newly invented events into the existing events.  They had to work within certain "rules", which to me, resulted in a more thoughtful, clever product. 

Considering these Writers rarely research source material, I wouldn't have expected the show to be any better if they had stayed away from Disney movies and only did Fairy Tales (and they had exhausted all the popular ones by the end of Season 2).  They also failed with many Disney characters too because they used them as props and in-name-only.  When you have an Aladdin and a Jasmine that acted nothing like them, but dressed in the same costume, that's when the problem became even more glaring.  

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Ok I mean look at the characters that did work: it was all characters that veered way off from their original version. Rumplestiltskin is very different from the original, Regina is very different from the Evil Queen in pretty much any other version of the story, Charming is-well he actually IS a character. Killian Jones has nothing in common with James Hook besides a hook, a ship, and a catchphrase but he still works.

Rumple, Regina and Charming were all main characters from the pilot that probably got a lot of oversight before they were allowed to go ahead.  A&E also got advice from the "Lost" showrunner that probably helped to steer them into workable characters.  Charming (who they wanted to kill off) basically did have the same core personality trait as a typical Prince.  The Evil Queen's backstory still fell within the basic structure of the Snow White story.  To me, Killian was more of a random pirate than an actual Captain Hook.  If all of the characters were like that, I'm not sure the show would have worked.  A lot of the fun of this show were the "knowns" of its universe, as much as the unknown.

Edited December 30, 2020 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

I stop thinking about this show for a while, then I come back to it.

Thinking about Zelena and her relationship with Regina, she isn't a bad idea on paper. Giving Regina a platonic bond with someone she hasn't terrorized actually serves her character well. She always had this "happy ending" ideal where she gets the dashing husband and is loved by all, but forging a passionate platonic relationship would've shown good character development. It's like S5 of Buffy where instead of giving Buffy yet another love interest, they decided to give her Dawn as an anchor and reason to live. It was less weird for someone like Zelena to hang around Regina because she too had a villainous past than it would've been for someone like Robin Hood. If the writers had committed to giving Regina a sister earlier in the show instead of retconning Zelena in later, I think it would've been a really good idea. They just needed to work the story around it and throw in some foreshadowing. Because they didn't do that, Zelena felt very tacked on.

Of course, I also think Zelena needed to be a different fairy tale character and not the Wicked Witch of the West. Any ideas on any famous characters that would've fit her better?

[scarynikki12]

On 2/3/2021 at 2:59 PM, KingOfHearts said:

Of course, I also think Zelena needed to be a different fairy tale character and not the Wicked Witch of the West. Any ideas on any famous characters that would've fit her better?

She could have been Madame Medusa from The Rescuers.

[daxx]

On 2/3/2021 at 1:59 PM, KingOfHearts said:

Of course, I also think Zelena needed to be a different fairy tale character and not the Wicked Witch of the West. Any ideas on any famous characters that would've fit her better?

Evil twist on Mary Poppins, she definitely could pull off the look.

[CCTC]

11 hours ago, daxx said:

Evil twist on Mary Poppins, she definitely could pull off the look.

Would it even be an evil twist?  Mary Poppins was always gaslighting the kids -- "we never jumped into a chalk drawing".  I have heard it is even more pronounced in the books.

[Camera One]

I guess if Regina had a younger sister, who was left with Cora, then that sister could be resentful her sister left her?  

If her motivation is still to change the past, then the ingredients could still require a "special" child, so that could explain Evil Mary Poppins "testing" children, and then honing in on Snowing's child.

But then, we wouldn't get the "epic" Evil vs. Wicked.  

An alternative for Mary Poppins, if she is not evil, is that she is a rogue fairy.  But they were really bad with their fairy mythology.  Anyone with sage knowledge had to be neutralized or stupid.  

[tennisgurl]

On 2/3/2021 at 2:59 PM, KingOfHearts said:

Of course, I also think Zelena needed to be a different fairy tale character and not the Wicked Witch of the West. Any ideas on any famous characters that would've fit her better?

If they wanted to bring in a new mythology, they could make her Baba Yaga, who was a witch from Slavic mythology also often associated with children, either helping or eating them, depending on what story was being told. 

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

If they wanted to bring in a new mythology, they could make her Baba Yaga, who was a witch from Slavic mythology also often associated with children, either helping or eating them, depending on what story was being told. 

Baba Yaga should have been in the Coven in Season 7.

[daxx]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

Baba Yaga should have been in the Coven in Season 7.

I would bet money A&E have no idea who Baba Yaga is. 😂 

[Speakeasy]

I had a dream once that Baba Yaga was the villain in an episode, all I can remember now is the intro with the spooky forest and title with her chicken-house walking by in the background.

44 minutes ago, daxx said:

I would bet money A&E have no idea who Baba Yaga is. 😂 

Someone might tell them. I think she's just well known enough she could have been used, I don't think she has enough name recognition in the US that she would have been a major character though, she'd probably be a one episode aside like Medusa or the (glorious) cockney witch warlord Little Bo Peep.

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

Baba Yaga should have been in the Coven in Season 7.

Season 7 had so many plot elements and yet so little happening. I always thought it could have been much better to make trying to uncover the Coven a major plot thread, it wouldn't be hard to have a string of 8 episodes with each one uncovering one member, it would actually put the flashback format to good use!

[Camera One]

14 minutes ago, Speakeasy said:

Season 7 had so many plot elements and yet so little happening. I always thought it could have been much better to make trying to uncover the Coven a major plot thread, it wouldn't be hard to have a string of 8 episodes with each one uncovering one member, it would actually put the flashback format to good use!

That's what I was sort of expecting with that mid-season cliffhanger!   Or should we say coathanger?

[KingOfHearts]

18 hours ago, Camera One said:

Baba Yaga should have been in the Coven in Season 7.

Also Madam Mim, Yzma, maybe an alternate version one of the Oz witches, Morgana Le Fay, and the witch from Brave we never thought we'd see again.

[Speakeasy]

3 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

Also Madam Mim, Yzma, maybe an alternate version one of the Oz witches, Morgana Le Fay, and the witch from Brave we never thought we'd see again.

Glinda! Cracked.com was right about her all along, what a twist! 😉

[Camera One]

55 minutes ago, Speakeasy said:

Glinda! Cracked.com was right about her all along, what a twist! 😉

It would have to be German or French Glinda.  The actual S3 Glinda was just dumb, not evil.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

7 hours ago, Camera One said:

It would have to be German or French Glinda.  The actual S3 Glinda was just dumb, not evil.

I feel like either the Witch of the East or North or both would've been a good choice. Imagine Zelena screwing them over in the past then having to deal with the ramifications of that in the present with them instead of Hansel. As much as I hated those kinds of plots with Regina, it would've been good to see Zelena deal with that because she actually had time to redeem herself beforehand. 

It would've been less contrived than throwing Hansel and Gretel in Oz and far less messy than having alternate fairy tale characters in Oz Prime instead of some Disenchanted variant. Really didn't need to see Zelena torch a kid either in the same episode we're supposed to feel bad for her. 

Edited February 7, 2021 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

37 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

Really didn't need to see Zelena torch a kid either in the same episode we're supposed to feel bad for her. 

But he was *such* a brat. 

[Speakeasy]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

But he was *such* a brat. 

He did come at her with a poker after she tried to cure his dad's blindness. Common sense tells you not to look a gift horse in the mouth much less try to stab it.

[Camera One]

9 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I feel like either the Witch of the East or North or both would've been a good choice. Imagine Zelena screwing them over in the past then having to deal with the ramifications of that in the present with them instead of Hansel.

The "normal" boyfriend could have played more of a role in this episode as well.

I guess they needed to tie Zelena in with the serial killer storyline, and that was a major unexpected twist.  Though I guess Gothel could have been the one to kidnap that guy.  Another possibility would be Madame Leota.  She looked like she could have been a fun villain if she got out.

 

[Inquirer]

On 2/7/2021 at 8:22 AM, Speakeasy said:

He did come at her with a poker after she tried to cure his dad's blindness. Common sense tells you not to look a gift horse in the mouth much less try to stab it.

No, it was actually stupider than that - she tried to cure his dad's blindness, but the dad refused and said under no circumstances would he accept a cure from her after learning how she had left his children to die. Zelena then gets mad and throws the cure into the fireplace before turning to leave. That's when Hansel is all "how DARE you throw away the thing that my dad just said he wasn't accepting under any circumstances!" and came at her with a poker.

I'm not trying to victim-blame or excuse Zelena's actions, but geez was Hansel too stupid to live.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Inquirer

[Speakeasy]

1 hour ago, Inquirer said:

No, it was actually stupider than that - she tried to cure his dad's blindness, but the dad refused and said under no circumstances would he accept a cure from her after learning how she had left his children to die. Zelena then gets mad and throws the cure into the fireplace before turning to leave. That's when Hansel is all "how DARE you throw away the thing that my dad just said he wasn't accepting under any circumstances!" and came at her with a poker.

I'd say their dad was really not thinking there. 10/10 for honour.and principles but a solid -13/10 for pragmatism. Hooking up with Zelena would be winning 5 consecutive jackpots* with the bonus prize that Zelena neatly proves that even if (as Glinda says in the movie) all ugly witches are bad, not all bad witches are ugly. 

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I'm not trying to victim-blame or excuse Zelena's actions, but geez was Hansel too stupid to live.

While you can't excuse the nasty shit Zelena has done, and there's a lot of it, I think she comes off as kind of more sympathetic than her sister because she's so clearly unbalanced and a lot of the time it seems like something sets her off and she goes and does something she later regrets. I don't know maybe I'm being too nice to her because of chauvinism and nationalism (🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧) but it seems to me like she (in the earlier seasons)gets an immediate rush out of hurting someone who's pissed her off but it doesn't really last, whereas Regina (again, early on)really gets fixated on the idea that if someone has wronged her they must suffer

* Jackpot 1- can cure blindness, jackpot 2- can treat other ailments with magic, jackpot 3- can conjure food, water and all the essentials of life out of thin air, jackpot 4- can fight off lions, tigers, bears and cannibals, jackpot 5- can probably lift them out of poverty and find them somewhere to live outside the cannibal infested wilderness.

Edited February 8, 2021 by Speakeasy

[tennisgurl]

The entire Zelena/Hansel backstory was basically nonsense where everyone had to act as stupidly or as horribly as possible, it needed to be twisted and turned every bizarre way imaginable to give us Hansel/Jack the witch serial killer and his connection with Zelena, no matter how contrived. Like, what a coincidence that Zelena, in Oz way before the show started, happened to run into Hansel and Gretel, who are having almost the exact same thing happening to them as what happened to the Hansel and Gretel in the EF, and then bumped into their blind father after she left his children to die, good thing he is blind and doesent know who she is, and it also just so happens that they both, despite traveling the multiverse for decades, ended up in the exact same curse in the Seattle Without Magic, and he got his memories back just in  time to find her again, it was just all so ridiculous. Then Zelena has to decide to care about one person for the first time in presumably years because he doesn't recognize her as the local tyrant, then he stupidly wont just take the cure for blindness, then Hansel stupidly tries to attack Zelena, the witch who they know is super powerful, then she fries Hansel like an asshole, its just such a bizarre series of events and coincidences to get to Jack the serial killer. Jack/Hansel himself doesn't really make much sense as a villain anyway, what was his plan? He created this whole other identity as Jack, becoming pals with Henry and going on adventures, but he was really a cackling psycho just under the surface? Was he killing witches secretly this whole time, was he trying to find Zelena to get his revenge? If not, why both being Jack when he could be running around killing witches or looking for Zelena and the other witches he blames for all of his problems? Even in Hyperion Heights, his whole story was just so weirdly framed and plotted. Like this show does a lot, so many people that have legit beef with the semi reformed villains have to be played as these mustache twirling murderous psychopaths, so we get Jack the poetic serial killer, who is super evil for killing the coathangers, even though the coathangers are the bad guys, instead of a someone more morally grey who is really doing these things because he thinks its for the best like you would think given his backstory and the fact that most of his victims are pretty bad people, or at least are people he has reason to hate. Granted, Hansel is one of the less sympathetic of the Victim Turned Villains, but like a lot of these stories this show does, I would have really liked to have seen Zelena really deal with the consequences of her actions as the wicked witch, instead of Hansel/Jack just being evil and then killed, and no one mentions him ever again. 

Really, Regina having a sister isn't a bad idea, as far as ret-cons go. Even a sister who has also gone down a dark path, she could help her try to avoid making the same mistakes she did, kind of like what she did with Drizella at first, and give her more of a mentor role, it could have worked alright. But really, beyond their episode with Cora where they all forgive each other in the afterlife, Regina and Zelena being sisters was hardly used at all, other than Zelena getting added to the "they're family, so they can get away with anything" club. 

[Camera One]

I think the "green with envy" approach made Zelena into a rather annoying character right from the start.  Since A&E worshipped Regina, they thought it was natural that someone would be so jealous of her, but Zelena's jealousy was hard to buy considering her magic seemed more powerful than Regina, and who the heck would have wanted to cast the Dark Curse anyway?  It made her into a pathetic loser right from the start, despite the "epic" Wicked vs. Evil showdowns on Main Street every night after Happy Hour.  

I'm not sure how a sister of Regina's plotline could have been worked in organically.

[Speakeasy]

13 hours ago, Camera One said:

I think the "green with envy" approach made Zelena into a rather annoying character right from the start.  Since A&E worshipped Regina, they thought it was natural that someone would be so jealous of her, but Zelena's jealousy was hard to buy considering her magic seemed more powerful than Regina, and who the heck would have wanted to cast the Dark Curse anyway?  It made her into a pathetic loser right from the start, despite the "epic" Wicked vs. Evil showdowns on Main Street every night after Happy Hour.  

Her being 'green with envy' was weird, it could maybe have worked if Oz was a bit more established as a really whacky technicolour place where metaphors are magic rather than the Emerald City plus more of the same farmhouse & forest. I dunno, maybe.

Now as for the cause of her jealousy, again here I think it was clear she was unhinged. She was pissed off at Regina because her mother had rejected her and picked Regina, then Rumpy did the same thing. She had to grow up in dirt with Walder Frey while her sister got a mansion and then a palace and then got to cast the biggest most important spell even though Zelena was older and better at magic. Also there were the other witches who she thought were going to replace her with some new girl.

I mean it still didn't quite work for me, I think you can use her vague Issues to explain her actions but that doesn't make it particularly compelling. 

Edit: the reason being that I can imagine her hatred for Regina on an intellectual level but it's harder to feel it vicariously or even kind of imagine it emotionally because there's not much personal connection there. Regina has done nothing to her so it's harder to see this as something you could feel, I think. I find it easier to feel sorry for her for being stuck in this warped view of the world, but she's meant to be menacing, not pitiful. And as far as menace goes she doesn't menace Regina that much, doesn't really hurt her, doesn't specifically threaten someone she loves, the biggest emotional problems Regina has in 3B are around seeing her son who doesn't recognise her, but that's a byproduct of her own plan. She's supposedly Zelenas main target but Zelena doesn't really even faze her with anything she does and doesn't really try to, to be honest. 

'Fight me bitch!'

'Cool I can count it as cardio, 6pm ok?'

Now this is different in what she does to Rumplestiltskin, she really fucks him up and revels in it and in those scenes where she had him imprisoned I thought she was very menacing, which brings me to:

There was a suggestion some time ago on here about how she could have developed this familiar relationship with Rumple and he was ready to train her up to cast the curse but then realised her sacrifice would have to be him and that he was thinking of her as a daughter and he worried this was distracting him from his search for Bae, so he tries to weaken their relationship by being mean to her and obviously goes too far and she gets mad at him and they part on very bad terms. And in this version I see any relationship she has with Regina actually being a smokescreen because her real hatred would be for Neal and so she would actually deliberately murder him to bring back Rumple and then want to do... I don't know what her end plan would be you have a few options there.

Everything she does to hurt him or the other characters would be tinged with the desire to impress him and force him to recognise her as better than Neal. 

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I'm not sure how a sister of Regina's plotline could have been worked in organically.

An older sibling contradicts 'The Miller's Daughter' so it'd have to be a younger sister and she'd have to have been assumed dead for years otherwise it'd be weird noone had mentioned her. OR I guess she could be a half sister on her father's side, you'd need to know a bit more about her father's side of the family for that to work, I think.

Edited February 9, 2021 by Speakeasy

[tennisgurl]

I always thought it was kind of weird that Regina never had any siblings, you would think that social climber Cora would have wanted a few extra kids to use to bump up her social status and/or see if they have magic she can exploit, especially when Regina got older and wasn't going along with her plans. If she had a few other kids with Henry, she could have even possibly let Regina go off with stable boy if she had a few more backup kids to marry off to kings and queens. In most societies with inherited titles and fortunes, having a lot of kids was often a pretty important thing, and for Cora, that would mean she can have more opportunities to grow her power through her kids. Maybe she thought they could team up against her if she had more than one? In fact, if they wanted to do "Regina's long lost sister" they could have even made it so that Zelena was her older sister, the first daughter she and Henry had, but something went down, maybe Zelena was born green due to some magical quirk and Cora thought she was a disappointment and a freak and after she had Regina, she threw Zelena away in Oz, and wiped Henry and Regina' memories of her or something. That's not only a reference to the Wicked Witch's backstory in Wicked (which the show clearly borrowed some things from) but it would give Zelena a real visceral reason to be really bitter and envious towards Regina, especially if Cora doted on her "perfect" daughter while ignoring Zelena until she abandoned her. I think that would have not only been a more traumatic backstory for Zelena, but it would also make her envy towards Regina seem more understandable, and if Regina did have memories of Zelena (and not that one stupid ret-con day, but a real relationship) then their conflict would actually be personal. The way it was set up, it hardly even mattered that they were sisters for the most part, and Zelena's crazy envy of Regina seemed ridiculous and impersonal, considering they never actually met, especially after season after season of being told how Regina is the most screwed over person ever. Allegedly. 

[Shanna Marie]

On 2/8/2021 at 8:34 PM, Camera One said:

I'm not sure how a sister of Regina's plotline could have been worked in organically.

It would have needed to be planned in advance. If Cora had already had a baby, her interactions with Rumple would have gone very differently. When he demanded her first-born, if she'd already dumped her first-born, then she'd have been like, "Cool, whatever," and wouldn't have needed him to rewrite the contract.

Now, that would have been a potentially interesting storyline, if Rumple really had taken and raised Cora's first-born as payment. Zelena really would have had a reason for jealousy if the man she thought of as her father was focusing his attention on someone else, and then she learned it was her sister. But that doesn't really work with the Wicked Witch of the West thing. She'd have needed to be another character, and I can't think of who. Maybe it worked out kind of like it did and she ran away to Oz after feeling rejected by Rumple, but she didn't grow up there.

The casting also didn't work. Zelena and Regina don't look anything like they're even remotely related, and I don't even see how you'd get Zelena from Cora and Jonathan. Plus, I don't know the relative ages of the actresses, but Zelena always struck me as a lot younger than Regina, not older. Mader would have made a better comic relief sort of character -- I can imagine her as someone like the princess in Once Upon a Mattress (especially the Carol Burnett version) because she has that rather fairytale beautiful look but can also be so funny. A klutzy, larger-than-life princess would have been perfect for her to play. They needed a different energy for what they wanted Zelena to be.

Can't you picture Rebecca Mader doing something like this:

 

[Speakeasy]

I recently saw a fun educational YouTube about the myth of the abduction/marriage of Persephone 

 

And it reminded me of an idea I saw on here about how the Dark Swan plot could have gone. Basically that idea was that Our Heroes would need to cut a deal with Hades to get the darkness out of Emma, with Hades being portrayed as a kind of put-upon bureaucrat rather than a magic Bond Villain.

I wonder if that could have worked as an alternate setup for 5B-there is no double-cross from Rumple, Hook drags the darkness down to Hell with him. I have a vivid idea of how this would go-theyre basically shooting/falling down this shadowy tunnel with Hook clinging onto the Darkness which is shifting continuously from one form to another trying to freak him out enough that he'll let go. Nothing works until it turns into Emma and says something that gets him to loosen his grip, just enough that it can escape and he ends up crashing down onto a cold stone floor.

There's the option that it says something like 'we can go back, do t leave our child alone' and there's a subplot where Emma may or may not be pregnant. So t know if that'd be any good.

So when Hook is groaning on the floor of some cave, a shadowy figure steps in and says in a deep, menacing voice, 'well, well, well, haven't you been causing a fuss?' or something.

And then there's a whole episode about Emma getting some of the other characters to agree to follow her and after three or four episodes of them battling their way through the Underworld with various spooky metaphorical challenges they sneak into the palace of Hades and... Find Hook basically having dinner with Hades and Persephone and regaling them with stories of his pirate adventures.

So it turns out that Hades and Persephone do this a fair bit because they like hearing people's life stories. In fact they're a bit obsessed with hearing the new ones, it's like reality TV for them. But they've also been talking to him about the Darkness which is now rattling around the Underworld and making a mess. It's corrupting the souls of the dead and weakening the veil between the worlds. 

So when Team StoryBrooke arrives it's actually a pretty near coincidence because hey! Now we have the two previous hosts of the Darkness! The rest of the season is about some kind of plan where they use the sympathetic connection between Swan & Jones and the Darkness to draw it in and trap it in a jar or stock it in Tartarus or something, with the promise that in return they'll send Hook back to the world of the living.

There'd have to be some more twists, I'm not great with twists though so maybe I'll think of some later.

Oh also you'd have some if the mains going down there and some stating in StoryBrooke to deal with the fact that it's population has recently doubled and the new immigrants are all fighting to the death on Main Street because half of them are loyal to Arthur and the other half are loyal to Guinevere and to Not Being Magically Roofied.

Edit and musings: so on a related note the video briefly mentions Ishtar's descent to the Underworld, and I briefly wondered whether the writers were thinking of that myth in 5B. Ishtar was a Babylonian/Sumerian/Canaanite  goddess of love, fertility, war, royal authority and probably some other stuff. There's a myth where she has a mortal lover who dies and she goes down to the Underworld to get him. That story has mentions of a substitute being needed to free someone from the Underworld and Ishtar is initially trapped by the ruler of the Underworld who doesn't want her to leave because if people just came and went as they pleased it'd make her look weak. Then in the end (I THINK, I haven't researched this thoroughly) Ishtar's boytoy magically and surprisingly comes back to life, but he needs to get a substitute and he feats his sister to do half his time in the Underworld while he does the other half.

I'm reaching here, there's probably nothing to that but I thought it was fun to speculate.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Speakeasy
Conspiracy theories

[Speakeasy]

Short one this time:

A month or so ago I rewatched Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica, it's a mixed bag, some of it is amazing and beautiful and some of it is punch-the-screen frustrating. I only connected it to OUAT because of the following stream of consciousness;

Katee Sackhoff plays a space fighter pilot named Starbuck, which is the name of the first mate in Moby Dick, and she has an antagonistic relationship with the first officer onboard the Galactica, Tigh, who is played by Michael Hogan. Now if you've ever seen or heard Michael Hogan, you may understand why I think he would be the ideal man to play Captain Ahab. The man does brooding and obsessive really well, this was reinforced when I saw his character on Teen Wolf, who could kind of be described as Ahab with Werewolves.

But this of course all got me thinking of whether the characters from Moby Dick could have been used well in OUAT instead of Ahab's brief, boring appearance in season 7. I had this idea of Henry going out to the Worlds of Story to do his Authorial Duties and deciding like, just for fun (or maybe because there's a reason he doesn't want to be recognised), he'll use a pseudonym and he says 'uhm... Ishmael, call me Ishmael' when asked, and then he ends up in some kind of alternate version of Moby Dick and... The whale is Ahab's abusive grandmother... Or something... I don't know how to do OUAT twists.

But anyway, Michael Hogan, brooding in his fishing supplies store, staring at fish hooks. He'd have been great. Would have been a better villain than any of the season 7 crew until the final 2 episodes.

Also with them both being nautical types it'd probably make a bit more sense for him to have a history with Hook or WishHook. I haven't developed these ideas very well.

Actually if you want to keep Hook's estranged daughter and to do the whole patented OUAT 'What a Twist!' thing then the aforementioned Katee Sackhoff could probably play a genderbent Captain Ahab. Ahab's obviously a man's name so I don't know how you'd explain that, I don't think it's a last name. But anyway in the show I thought her character might be bipolar since she flips from manic 'LESSSA BLOW UP SOME ROBITS WEEEEEEEEE!'  to brooding 'life is shit and I'm even more shit I'm gonna drink now' quite a bit. That could be an interesting take, and you could have her as another obsessive sailor who hooks up (ayyyyyyyy) with Killian at some point and they have this ongoing custody battle across the high seas... I don't know if this would work or which version of Hook it would have to be but it could work and it's definitely an OUAT Twist.

Uhh. So that's my stream of consciousness. I said it was going to be short. Apparently I lied.

Edited February 23, 2021 by Speakeasy

[Shanna Marie]

18 hours ago, Speakeasy said:

I had this idea of Henry going out to the Worlds of Story to do his Authorial Duties and deciding like, just for fun (or maybe because there's a reason he doesn't want to be recognised), he'll use a pseudonym and he says 'uhm... Ishmael, call me Ishmael' when asked, and then he ends up in some kind of alternate version of Moby Dick

Ooh, this could be kind of fun, a much better way of dealing with the Author concept -- like, what if the Author is actually all those first-person narrators who aren't the main characters. There are all those 19th century novels that are told in first-person by someone who hears a story from someone, like Wuthering Heights, or Frankenstein. What if all those people telling those stories were the same person, popping in and out of stories, like some sort of literary Quantum Leap. A traveler gets caught in a storm, takes refuge at the nearest house, and the housekeeper mentions something offhand about the troubles the house has has. The traveler says, "Do tell," and gets out his magic pen.

[tennisgurl]

There are so many ways they could have explored the Author concept. One thing I wish they would have done is to get a bit meta with the actor playing the Author himself. The actor who played Isaac, Patrick Fischler, is a prolific character actor, one of those actors that has done tons of work in movies and television in small or one off roles. You usually recognize him, but he isn't really famous enough for people to know his name. He's been on a lot of TV shows in particular, a ton of one off and supporting roles, for many years and in a wide variety of shows and films and even doing voice work in video games. Always around, but never the focus. 

I think it would have been clever if they implied that somehow all of these minor roles were all actually Isaac doing his author duties. Quietly observing the story, and only getting involved in minor ways to get into the action and see what all happens. Even that his bigger roles were the start of Isaac getting too involved in the stories and trying to change things to make them "better" like we saw him doing with Snow and Charming. They can even just imply it if they don't want to get too meta, but it could have been a fun way to use the actors own history. 

[Shanna Marie]

3 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

I think it would have been clever if they implied that somehow all of these minor roles were all actually Isaac doing his author duties. Quietly observing the story, and only getting involved in minor ways to get into the action and see what all happens. Even that his bigger roles were the start of Isaac getting too involved in the stories and trying to change things to make them "better" like we saw him doing with Snow and Charming. They can even just imply it if they don't want to get too meta, but it could have been a fun way to use the actors own history. 

That's kind of like what they did on Legends of Tomorrow, where John Noble did the voice of the demon villain, and then they went all meta with the characters hearing his voice in some other role, realizing he sounded like the villain, and thinking maybe they could use that to deprogram someone influenced by the villain. They went back in time to the filming of the Lord of the Rings films, had a fake script they asked John Noble (playing himself) to read, recorded him, and then used that.

[Camera One]

On 4/10/2021 at 12:58 PM, Shanna Marie said:

I had to give this some thought. The real purpose behind her guest episode the way they did it was to reassure Captain Swan fans that season 7 wasn't destroying Emma and Hook's happy ending by revealing that "Rogers" was WHook, not Hook Prime. I'd originally thought it would be interesting to delay the revelation that we're dealing with Wishverse characters, but I don't see how that could work with flashbacks. You might be able to think for a while that Regina and Hook on the Jolly Roger in the fairytale world was yet another retcon, but Prince Henry and Rumple would make it pretty obvious. So I think it would be "audience superior" suspense instead, with the audience knowing that these are probably the Wishverse characters who are cursed, so we know cursed Prince Henry (let's call him Walt, since he needs a curse identity other than "Henry Mills" and naming him after Disney seems like something they'd do) is right about them being cursed fairytale characters but wrong about who they are and what their relationships to each other are.

So, I think I'd use Emma for the episode when Walt learns first that he's right about them being cursed, then that he's wrong about who they are, maybe the midseason finale before the winter break. Walt's been trying to find information about Storybrooke, but it doesn't show up in any searches. There's no record of it, and that's making it tough to convince the others that they're from Storybrooke. But then one day, Detective Rogers is at his desk when an alert pops up on his computer screen, with a bulletin notifying police that a fugitive alert has been canceled because the fugitive was captured by Sheriff Emma Swan of Storybrooke, Maine. That startles him because he's seen that name in Walt's books, and supposedly this woman is his wife, his true love that he's been separated from by the curse. There's a phone number for the Storybrooke sheriff's office in the police report and he writes it down, then he picks up the phone to call, but backs off. He can't bring himself to talk to her, but he brings the phone number to Walt, since he's the one who really believes. Rogers is worried that hearing from her husband who sees her as a stranger will be too shocking for her, but Walt really believes he's Henry, so maybe he'll handle it better. Walt calls, and Emma answers. We see her sitting in the sheriff's office, holding a baby as she mans the phones and does paperwork. She recognizes Walt's voice as Henry, which confirms all his theories -- but instead of her reacting like "Where have you been? I've been so worried!" she acts like it's a run-of-the-mill call from a kid she saw that morning, talking about something mundane, like letting him know that she put the thing he needed for school in the outside pocket of his book bag. While she's talking, Hook comes in, and she pauses the conversation to listen as he reports the call he was just out on. Walt overhears and recognizes the voice as Rogers, talking about names he saw in the storybook. He really gets to hear Hook's voice when he leans over Emma to take the baby from her, so he's certain that it's the same person. Except he can't be. Walt is left stunned. These people exist. But the people he knows in his neighborhood aren't missing from Storybrooke. Cliffhanger! So now they know they aren't the Storybrooke people, but the book mentioning the trip to the Wishverse isn't in the library, so they don't yet know about the Wishverse.

Meanwhile, in the flashback, I think we need to deal with what happened with Wish Emma. If we're to believe these Wishverse characters are real, then that world can't just have been a construct that appeared the moment the wish was made, so there was no Wish Emma since Emma Prime was in that role. So maybe the Wish Emma was zapped away to the other side of the world when Emma Prime was put in her place, and she's been stuck there, trying to survive and find a way to get back home. WHook finds her and recognizes her from having met Emma Prime. He's already been deaged and gave up drinking (as WHook said he did in season 7), and he kind of hopes he can have the same thing with her that his counterpart has with the Emma he met, which could break the curse. He offers to take her back home, figuring he can let nature take its course on the journey, but along the way he really does start falling for her. He likes her enough that he doesn't want to just use her. He wants what the other Hook has. They get back to her home, where she learns that her parents have been killed and her son is missing. WHook volunteers to find Henry for her while she runs the kingdom, and he gives her a pep talk about how he knows she has the strength to be queen. And he hopes that maybe if he manages to find Henry, that will win her love so he can get that TLK. Which sets in motion him being around Henry when the curse hits.

We'd still need the cameo in the series finale so we could see WHenry and WHook coming home to WEmma, but they got that in the season 7 we actually got, so I figure we're good (if not, we see a backlit figure in a white princess dress at the end of a corridor, and we see their reunion in silhouette). I don't know if we need to check in on the Storybrooke bunch at the end, unless maybe they get involved in helping the Wishverse people get home, kind of like happened in the actual series finale. Except no smushing all the worlds together. Just break the curse, get everyone to Storybrooke, and then a portal home, and we see just enough of the Storybrooke folks to have a good coda for their happy endings. Also, no Regina gets crowned Queen of the Universe.

I was thinking more about your Alternate Season 7, so I will reply in this thread instead.

The arc for WHenry and Whook are clear, so I was thinking about WRegina.  We didn't see much of her, but I found it interesting that she actually gave up when the Curse did not go through.  It would have interesting to see her re-connect with WMaleficent, who encouraged her to give up.

I was thinking that maybe they could actually give WRegina the redemption arc that the original recipe didn't get.  What if WRegina eventually comes to the conclusion that Cora was the real cause of her problems?  Maybe she could go digging and find out about WZelena, the Wicked Witch.  That could be the basis for a more sisterly relationship in the present-day in Hyperion Heights.  WZelena might have been interesting this way, too.  Maybe WZelena cast the Curse to seek revenge on WDorothy or something.  WRegina tries to talk her out of it, but WGothel (who had become close to WZelena by claming they are so alike) tricks WZelena and the Curse goes forward even though WZelena tried to stop it last minute.

I'm a bit stuck on the role of WRumple in this alternative version.  He was a fun villain at the end of Season 7.   Would that stay the same?  Would he be awake or asleep in Hyperion Heights?    How would you use Belle's guest appearance if we didn't have that "Up" rip-off episode?  I suppose WRumple could be in a tenuous partnership with Mother Gothel, though what would be his motivation to cast the Curse?  

Perhaps Alice turns out to be Ozma and she falls in love with WDorothy?  That could replace Alice and Robyn.  If Mother Gothel was also the Wicked Witch of the East but she didn't die, and a prophesy spawned the child of a monster will be the rightful ruler of Oz or something, so that would be Alice, who would initially be trapped in a Tower in Oz where Whook would raise her for a few years before the Heart Curse.

If WRegina saw through WGothel's manipulations of WZelena, this would result in conflict between them in the flashbacks.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/13/2021 at 9:38 AM, Camera One said:

The arc for WHenry and Whook are clear, so I was thinking about WRegina.  We didn't see much of her, but I found it interesting that she actually gave up when the Curse did not go through.  It would have interesting to see her re-connect with WMaleficent, who encouraged her to give up.

That would be good. Then maybe we might actually get the Maleficent stories we never got from the Prime Universe. The backstory up to the curse should be pretty much the same. Though I wonder if the eggnapping thing happened. This was the universe where Emma wasn't the Savior, so would the Charmings have faced the issue of Emma potentially being either a great hero or a great villain? They made it seem like the difference was the curse not being cast, but they'd turned the Savior thing into something more all-purpose, so it wasn't just about her being baked into the curse as a backdoor. Theoretically, Emma should have been Savior regardless of the curse, since it's not like all evil was eradicated. Anyway, that would probably mean that Lily grew up with her mother and Maleficent wouldn't have had a hate on for the Charmings. Could she have helped them stop Regina?

Another possible angle could be Regina's maternal instincts. Supposedly, she was some kind of natural maternal figure in spite of having made herself barren. Would she have adopted a kid in a world where she didn't get Henry? If she's roving the world as a pirate queen for 30 or so years, she might have picked up orphan kids along the way. That could set up conflict in the present if Walt thinks he's the Henry who was adopted by Regina, but it turns out the Regina he knows is actually the adoptive mom of a different kid. In the past, maybe she ended up with a kid who turned out to have been stolen, so she's got a conflict with the birth parents -- maybe there's something there with Gothel if she built herself another tower after escaping thanks to Alice and then stole a kid (like in the movie), and Regina helped rescue her/him.

On 4/13/2021 at 9:38 AM, Camera One said:

I was thinking that maybe they could actually give WRegina the redemption arc that the original recipe didn't get.  What if WRegina eventually comes to the conclusion that Cora was the real cause of her problems? 

Yes! Yes! Yes! We need this. Use season 7 as a second chance to fix some things.

On 4/13/2021 at 9:38 AM, Camera One said:

WZelena might have been interesting this way, too.  Maybe WZelena cast the Curse to seek revenge on WDorothy or something.  WRegina tries to talk her out of it, but WGothel (who had become close to WZelena by claming they are so alike) tricks WZelena and the Curse goes forward even though WZelena tried to stop it last minute.

I was joking earlier about WZelena being the one to cast the curse because she wanted to show Rumple she could do it without needing to kill him, only when she did it, he no longer wanted it, but the more I think about it, it really could work. Gothel could be manipulating her toward that, and WZelena realizes that WRegina was right and she shouldn't have after it's been cast and it's too late to stop it. The rivalry in the past could be a contrast to the cursed versions of Zelena and Regina being best buds. WZelena turning up all crazed with wanting to bring down WRegina could be part of WRegina's redemption, making her confront the fact that Cora really screwed them all over, though I guess that would have to be in the backstory, then Zelena goes off and comes back, finally ready to cast the curse.

Hmm, where's Cora in all this? She'd be pretty old but could be alive. Is she still in Wonderland? A lot of it would depend on when they stripped Regina's powers and kept her from casting the curse. She sent Hook to get Cora pretty soon before the curse was cast, so was she stopped before sending for Cora or after Hook faked Cora's death and brought her back? If Cora is back, then it's possible Regina had a confrontation with Cora that made her realize the truth about everything back before she and Hook headed off to get the magic flower. I don't recall, had she already gotten over wanting to cast the curse at that point, or did she make that decision after Hook got her the flower?

On 4/13/2021 at 9:38 AM, Camera One said:

I'm a bit stuck on the role of WRumple in this alternative version.  He was a fun villain at the end of Season 7.   Would that stay the same?  Would he be awake or asleep in Hyperion Heights?    How would you use Belle's guest appearance if we didn't have that "Up" rip-off episode?  I suppose WRumple could be in a tenuous partnership with Mother Gothel, though what would be his motivation to cast the Curse?  

All I'd thought was that he's driven by revenge against WRegina for WBelle's death. I don't think he'd want the curse anymore, so it works against him when WZelena casts it, but since it's still the curse he created/adapted, he does come out ahead in it (though I guess if it's still the same curse, it would just create Storybrooke 2.0 instead of a city neighborhood, which could be kind of fun, mirror Storybrookes, but I think not shooting on location was part of the budget cutting, so maybe Zelena spiffed up the curse, since she wouldn't want to live in a small town).

If Zelena cast it, then wouldn't she have her memories and be awake? I guess Gothel could have put her own spin on it. And we still don't know what Gothel's motivation should be. Not coat hangers and getting a stone that's in the basement of a movie theater after thousands of years.

On 4/13/2021 at 9:38 AM, Camera One said:

How would you use Belle's guest appearance if we didn't have that "Up" rip-off episode?

I don't know that we need her, since that was all about explaining how our Rumple came to be with these people and why Belle wasn't with him, a bizarre way of saying he and Belle didn't lose their happy ending (even though she's dead). She might get a cameo in that episode when we see what's going on in Storybrooke, so we see that she and Rumple Prime and Gideon are living happily ever after in town, in between trips. She drops by the sheriff's office after Walt's call to pick up her key and thank Hook for housesitting while they were off in Paris, or something.

[Camera One]

On 4/14/2021 at 7:27 PM, Shanna Marie said:

I don't know that we need her, since that was all about explaining how our Rumple came to be with these people and why Belle wasn't with him, a bizarre way of saying he and Belle didn't lose their happy ending (even though she's dead). She might get a cameo in that episode when we see what's going on in Storybrooke, so we see that she and Rumple Prime and Gideon are living happily ever after in town, in between trips. She drops by the sheriff's office after Walt's call to pick up her key and thank Hook for housesitting while they were off in Paris, or something.

I was thinking maybe there could be a flashback which showed WBelle was not killed by WRegina.  WBelle decided to fake her death because she was over Rumple after seeing him steal babies (or any of the other horrific things he did). 

If they want to redeem WRumple, then maybe he could find out WBelle's alive... she never married but had a good life surrounded by books, and WRumple has the motivation to win her back but he's tempted by an easy-way-out offered by Mother Gothel, and in the climax, he still sacrifices himself for Whook, and he reunites with Belle in life or death.

I was watching a trailer for a movie with Bailee Madison who played Young Snow, and it made me wish for a 13-episode limited series showing Teenage Snow, Leopod and Johanna going on a tour of the kingdom dodging dangers sent by Regina, while working through the grief of losing her mother and figuring out what type of ruler she wanted to be, while maybe meeting younger versions of the fairy tale characters we know and love.  Snow could slowly begin to suspect Regina (who would mostly be off-screen and no woobification).

Edited April 17, 2021 by Camera One

[Shanna Marie]

On 4/17/2021 at 3:15 PM, Camera One said:

I was thinking maybe there could be a flashback which showed WBelle was not killed by WRegina.  WBelle decided to fake her death because she was over Rumple after seeing him steal babies (or any of the other horrific things he did). 

So a fakeout within a fakeout? Regina had already faked Belle's death to Rumple, so Belle got free somehow and faked her death? I do think WBelle probably has to live because it gets icky if WRegina actually just let her starve to death in her dungeon and yet we're supposed to see her as a hero (then again, Regina Prime did equally bad stuff, and ...). I was pondering, what if when WHook went to Regina's place to interrogate Belle, she actually left with him? It would be a Hook-like thing to do to leave the bones in the cell in case Rumple actually bothered tracking Belle down.

A lot of it hinges on when the Charmings managed to strip WRegina's powers so she couldn't cast the curse. Was it soon after her initial threat or right before she did it? That would alter a lot of things. If it's before WHook showed up at WRegina's palace to interrogate WBelle, then that means he probably doesn't get tested for killing Cora, so he doesn't know about his father and younger brother, and he doesn't kill his father. He doesn't go get Cora. So Cora's still in Wonderland and possibly still alive even in the present. Was it before Regina went to Wonderland to get her father? If she doesn't cast the curse, she doesn't murder her father, so where is he in all this?

On 4/17/2021 at 3:15 PM, Camera One said:

If they want to redeem WRumple, then maybe he could find out WBelle's alive... she never married but had a good life surrounded by books, and WRumple has the motivation to win her back but he's tempted by an easy-way-out offered by Mother Gothel, and in the climax, he still sacrifices himself for Whook, and he reunites with Belle in life or death.

That could work. I might even buy WRumpbelle if he truly did change and actually had to win her again by proving he'd changed. 

So, Belle's initial cameo appearance would be the flashback showing her escaping and faking her death because she doesn't want to go back to Rumple. Then her end of series cameo is a changed Rumple finding her. But for that to happen, he can't sacrifice himself to death. Maybe he just uses his magic for good, purely to help another person (by the rules established with Dark Emma healing Robin that shouldn't work, but come on, that was silly).

On 4/17/2021 at 3:15 PM, Camera One said:

I was watching a trailer for a movie with Bailee Madison who played Young Snow, and it made me wish for a 13-episode limited series showing Teenage Snow, Leopod and Johanna going on a tour of the kingdom dodging dangers sent by Regina, while working through the grief of losing her mother and figuring out what type of ruler she wanted to be, while maybe meeting younger versions of the fairy tale characters we know and love.

That could be fun, but you know if they did it, it would probably be all about what a brat Snow really was.

[Shanna Marie]

I had a mental rabbit hole that led to an idea that might work in our alternative season 7 based on the Wishverse scenario ...

There must be a Wish Neverland if WHook is still alive and WBae was around during Emma's lifetime to father WHenry, but is WPan still alive in the present? In the Prime universe, Pan needed Henry because he had the heart of the Truest Believer. But WHenry doesn't strike me as a Truest Believer, and since he grew up in the Enchanted Forest, there isn't anything to believe. He knows it all exists. Magic is part of his everyday life. 

But if Wish Neverland is still dying and WPan still needs the heart of the Truest Believer, and he knew more than a century ago that it would be Henry, what if he's the one that manipulates the Wishverse Curse into being cast, so it would send WHenry to the World Without Magic, where he could become the Truest Believer? WPan could even show up as another kid at school or another kid in the foster home to encourage WHenry in believing and manipulate him into doing something on the basis of that belief that would get him to Neverland, where WPan could use him. I wouldn't want to go all-in on a repeat of 3A, so maybe they never actually get to Neverland and defeat WPan in Hyperion Heights, or if they do go, it's for one episode near the finale, and it's not a grand #SaveHenry thing, just the final showdown, but Pan as an ongoing villain in a "real world" setting might be entertaining.

Then thinking about how Neverland might have been affected got me started thinking about how Wish Wonderland might have been changed (and real Wonderland, not the Disenchanted Forest version). A lot would depend on whether Cora left the way she did in the Prime universe and if she didn't, how she reacted to Jafar showing up. Would she have teamed up with him? Teamed up with Ana against him? She'd have probably wanted his spell, but her presence might have screwed it all up.

But let's say things come out more or less the way they did in the spinoff we saw, though the Rabbit would have had to get Will from Sherwood, not Storybrooke, and Alice and Cyrus going after Will's heart would have been a lot less amusing, but we're not remaking that series, so we don't have to see it. We just get some of the aftereffects. Like, say Wonderland Alice's book about her adventures in Wonderland becomes a big multi-realm bestseller (the Rabbit takes it around, I guess). After WHook gets cursed, he actually acts like Hook and doesn't immediately get depressed and give up. He builds a house at the base of the tower and sends supplies and other things up to Alice Jones in a basket, and they talk to each other from a distance. When Alice Jones is a teenager, WHook gives her a copy of this book, and she's utterly captivated by it. While her father is off on a shopping trip and she's reading this book to amuse herself, she wishes the Rabbit would come get her -- and he shows up, tunneling into her tower, and offers to take her to Wonderland. She leaves a note for her father so he won't worry about her, but a gust of wind as the Rabbit's portal closes blows it so that it's hidden. WHook comes back and Alice doesn't appear at the window when he calls and doesn't haul up his basket, so he climbs to the tower and finds no trace of her (and doesn't find the note), so he despairs that something has happened to her and goes in search of her, eventually sinking into alcoholism and depression. Meanwhile, she's having adventures in Wonderland (and other places), not realizing her father thinks he's lost her.

Maybe time doesn't pass normally in Wonderland, and that's how Alice Jones seems to be in her late teens/early 20s in the present instead of in her mid-30s, which she ought to be if she was born not long after the curse would have been cast (if we're bumping up the present a few years so that Henry is 17 or so instead of the 13 at most he should have been at the end of season 6).

[Camera One]

53 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

Like, say Wonderland Alice's book about her adventures in Wonderland becomes a big multi-realm bestseller (the Rabbit takes it around, I guess). After WHook gets cursed, he actually acts like Hook and doesn't immediately get depressed and give up. He builds a house at the base of the tower and sends supplies and other things up to Alice Jones in a basket, and they talk to each other from a distance. When Alice Jones is a teenager, WHook gives her a copy of this book, and she's utterly captivated by it. While her father is off on a shopping trip and she's reading this book to amuse herself, she wishes the Rabbit would come get her -- and he shows up, tunneling into her tower, and offers to take her to Wonderland. She leaves a note for her father so he won't worry about her, but a gust of wind as the Rabbit's portal closes blows it so that it's hidden. WHook comes back and Alice doesn't appear at the window when he calls and doesn't haul up his basket, so he climbs to the tower and finds no trace of her (and doesn't find the note), so he despairs that something has happened to her and goes in search of her, eventually sinking into alcoholism and depression. Meanwhile, she's having adventures in Wonderland (and other places), not realizing her father thinks he's lost her.

I would have preferred that over that flashback with the Conjured-by-Alice Giant in Season 7.

It's a good idea to give Whook an actual reason for becoming a drunk, since that made no sense in the original Season 7.  But at the same time, I did like the concept of the heart curse, which prevented Whook from ever getting physically close to Alice.

Quote

 but Pan as an ongoing villain in a "real world" setting might be entertaining.

I wonder if the actor would have wanted to come back to a continuing role.

An alternative is Robert Carlyle plays a grown-up Peter Pan who had aged because Neverland was dying, and this new Curse was a way to reverse it.  Mother Gothel's motivation in "Tangled" was to stay young, so that could align with Peter Pan's motives as well.

[Shanna Marie]

On 5/1/2021 at 4:56 PM, Camera One said:

It's a good idea to give Whook an actual reason for becoming a drunk, since that made no sense in the original Season 7.  But at the same time, I did like the concept of the heart curse, which prevented Whook from ever getting physically close to Alice.

I'm keeping the heart curse, but they needed a better reason for WHook to have given up on Alice and become a drunk, given that this is the guy who devoted a century to revenge. His main character trait is that he's an obsessive who just doesn't give up. He wouldn't have wandered off and left Alice just because he couldn't hug her. It would have taken something more.

On 5/1/2021 at 4:56 PM, Camera One said:

I wonder if the actor would have wanted to come back to a continuing role.

That's a good point. He seems to have a fairly active film career, but he's been a regular on other shows (that didn't last). But thinking more about it, I'm not sure we'd want Pan around for the whole season because Pan being behind it all would be the Shocking!Twist after a few red herrings, and if Pan's around as a regular, we're going to be pretty sure he's up to something. At first, we might wonder if it was WRegina. Then we meet Gothel and figure it might be her. Then we learn that WZelena cast the curse, but then we finally learn that WPan manipulated it, so Pan himself might not show up until the last few episodes for the final showdown.

On 5/1/2021 at 4:56 PM, Camera One said:

An alternative is Robert Carlyle plays a grown-up Peter Pan who had aged because Neverland was dying, and this new Curse was a way to reverse it.  Mother Gothel's motivation in "Tangled" was to stay young, so that could align with Peter Pan's motives as well.

That could work -- we think that the Rumple in Hyperion Heights all along is WRumple, but then we finally see that he's got WRumple tied up in his basement and learn that "Rumple" is actually WPan.

Except we saw middle-aged Pan, so we know what he looks like, and it wasn't like Rumple. Maybe there's some shapeshifting going on? Zelena was able to keep on her Marian glamour in the World Without Magic, so maybe Pan put on a Rumple glamour.

[KingOfHearts]

27 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Setting the 3B flashbacks of the "Missing Year' in Oz with the events from the second book could have been interesting]

The Missing Year was a good concept in of itself, but there was too much going on to make it all work when the writers throw in Oz. You needed a strong antagonist to come in to instigate the external conflict that would bring everybody back together, but did it really have to be the Wicked Witch of the West? The flashbacks would almost certainly need to be in Oz to make it worth it. Oz was not something you could just namedrop or borrow a character from if you weren't going to explore it more in-depth later. Heck, an entire "Once Upon a Time in Oz" spinoff could've happened. That's not to say Oz was so good it needed more time, but there was way more to work with there than in Neverland yet we stared at potted plants for a dozen episodes or so.

This brings me to an interesting question - was 3B actually a good time for the Missing Year, or should it have occurred later? I agree that 3B needed to be more Storybrooke-focused. There was potential for good Missing Year flashbacks, but half of the flashbacks ended up being pretty pointless. We did NOT need THREE episodes to explain Zelena's backstory. She's green with envy. We get it. Even "Kansas" was more about Zelena than any of the Ozians or Dorothy. The writers didn't want Oz, they just wanted "Wicked vs. Evil." 

The flashbacks for "The Tower" and "Jolly Roger" seemed really filler-y. More time needed to spent on explaining things like how Hook out-ran the Curse, the methods the heroes used to stop Zelena before being so desperate they needed to cast the Curse, how the heroes were managing the kingdom, and some semblance of a romance between Regina and Robin Hood so it didn't feel so forced in present day.

Edited June 6, 2021 by KingOfHearts

[andromeda331]

 

6 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

The Missing Year was a good concept in of itself, but there was too much going on to make it all work when the writers throw in Oz. You needed a strong antagonist to come in to instigate the external conflict that would bring everybody back together, but did it really have to be the Wicked Witch of the West? The flashbacks would almost certainly need to be in Oz to make it worth it. Oz was not something you could just namedrop or borrow a character from if you weren't going to explore it more in-depth later. Heck, an entire "Once Upon a Time in Oz" spinoff could've happened. That's not to say Oz was so good it needed more time, but there was way more to work with there than in Neverland yet we stared at potted plants for a dozen episodes or so.

This brings me to an interesting question - was 3B actually a good time for the Missing Year, or should it have occurred later? I agree that 3B needed to be more Storybrooke-focused. There was potential for good Missing Year flashbacks, but half of the flashbacks ended up being pretty pointless. We did NOT need THREE episodes to explain Zelena's backstory. She's green with envy. We get it. Even "Kansas" was more about Zelena than any of the Ozians or Dorothy. The writers didn't want Oz, they just wanted "Wicked vs. Evil." 

The flashbacks for "The Tower" and "Jolly Roger" seemed really filler-y. More time needed to spent on explaining things like how Hook out-ran the Curse, the methods the heroes used to stop Zelena before being so desperate they needed to cast the Curse, how the heroes were managing the kingdom, and some semblance of a romance between Regina and Robin Hood so it didn't feel so forced in present day.

I kind of wish they had followed season one's example with making the flashbacks and the current story weaved together so much. Seeing Snow and Charming meet and fall in love, Snow and Regina's history and the rest. There were a few duds. But they could have made season two Sleeping Beauty. They introduced Aurora in the first episode and Maleficient had a reason to hate most of the main characters. Have her free while continue to work on the town figuring out what they were going to do post-curse. Take more time to work on it. They could still have Team Princess. Maybe even still have Cora but come in for the second half. She was too good of villian to waste on the first half and she could still maniuplate Regina since no one should trust Regina yet. The third season could be Peter Pan but maybe end the season with everyone but Emma and Henry going back to the Enchanted Kingdom and still use it tied into Regina's cost. Season four could be the missing year. What was it like being back? How did everyone adjust? What changes did they want to make if any? How many actually prefer Storybrook with the electricity and food you didn't have to hunt to get. Actually have Regina deal things too. Zelena can still be the villain but don't make her Regina's sister and make the most of the Oz characters. Maybe just someone who took over after Cora and everyone went to Storybrook. Hook can still get Emma but bring her and Henry to the Enchanted Forest but maybe end with them wanting to bring Storybrook back. Heck maybe Emma and Henry could be "Dorothy" arriving in the Enchanted Kingdom and trying to figure out what's going on and how to break the spell or whatever is going on.

[Camera One]

I watched the first 20 minutes of the live-action "Cinderella" just now as a break from work.

I couldn't watch any more due to the cruelty towards Ella.  It wasn't deliciously evil, just despicable.  The dad was gone for half a day and she sends Ella to the attic?   

I also felt really angry at the father, for marrying Lady Tremaine and bringing her to the house, and then leaving on a trading trip.  He would have been pretty blind to not see how difficult it would be to live with the stepsisters.  He must have seen their gambling lifestyle.  Was he just dazzled by Lady Tremaine's beauty or something?  

I wonder what would have happened if Ella had been all alone when she lost her father.  That would have been an interesting "might have been" to explore.  Stuff like that would be fun if there were another fairy tale spinoff show.  

Edited June 7, 2021 by Camera One

[KingOfHearts]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

I watched the first 20 minutes of the live-action "Cinderella" just now as a break from work.

I couldn't watch any more due to the cruelty towards Ella.  It wasn't deliciously evil, just despicable.  The dad was gone for half a day and she sends Ella to the attic?   

I also felt really angry at the father, for marrying Lady Tremaine and bringing her to the house, and then leaving on a trading trip.  He would have been pretty blind to not see how difficult it would be to live with the stepsisters.  He must have seen their gambling lifestyle.  Was he just dazzled by Lady Tremaine's beauty or something?  

I wonder what would have happened if Ella had been all alone when she lost her father.  That would have been an interesting "might have been" to explore.  Stuff like that would be fun if there were another fairy tale spinoff show.  

I don't know, Jacinda's story was so good I don't think we need another Cinderella adaptation ever again. Nothing can really top it.

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

I don't know, Jacinda's story was so good I don't think we need another Cinderella adaptation ever again. Nothing can really top it.

That would be very hard to top.

[Shanna Marie]

On 6/6/2021 at 5:14 PM, KingOfHearts said:

This brings me to an interesting question - was 3B actually a good time for the Missing Year, or should it have occurred later?

I think the main point behind it all was the "there's no place like home" thing and Emma feeling like she belonged with all the fairy tale stuff, and I suppose that needed to happen fairly early in the series. Then again, I don't feel like there was truly a chance to establish any kind of life in Storybrooke before she was sent away. She spent 2A in the Enchanted Forest with Snow, then 2B doesn't seem to have lasted very long (in-world) and she was in New York finding Neal during a chunk of that. Then they were off to Neverland. Maybe they needed a sort of "normal" arc set in Storybrooke but showing the weirdness that comes with magic and all the fairytale stuff before it got undone. Then Emma has grounds for comparison between her life in New York and her life in Storybrooke. Maybe she needed to have time to feel like she didn't belong in Storybrooke before she got to "I'm going back to New York because this isn't who I am" and needed to learn otherwise.

But I'm not sure how you'd go about arranging a delay of at least half a season, unless you stuck in the "normal" half season before Neverland, since the curse reverse and Missing Year came about in the aftermath of that. Unless Pan stays locked up in the box and doesn't escape to swap bodies with Henry until after another arc. That could have been fun. Return from Neverland, settle down a bit, play out the triangle some, with Hook forcing himself to hold back and letting Neal have a go at reviving his relationship with Emma, and give Emma a chance to compare and contrast Neal, representing "normal," and Hook, representing "fairytale," while also feeling a bit out of place in a magical Storybrooke. There would have to be some kind of villain or crisis, of course. Then maybe that arc villain finds the box and does something to free Pan, which then sets off something like the end of 3A, leading into the Missing Year.

[daxx]

17 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

There would have to be some kind of villain or crisis, of course. Then maybe that arc villain finds the box and does something to free Pan, which then sets off something like the end of 3A, leading into the Missing Year.

A minute to breath and have Storybrooke normal for a few episodes after Neverland would have been good, wouldn’t even need a full half season, just more than 10 minutes. 😂 

[Speakeasy]

On 2/12/2022 at 6:34 AM, scarynikki12 said:

I wished they had distinguished between types of spells and the spell caster's motivation. There's a belief that it's easy to be bad but really hard to be good so why not incorporate that into the magic world building? Make the good magic really hard to master and therefore things like healing spells are something Regina and Rump can't do because they're both about shortcuts and immediate gratification* while Emma succeeds because she knows how important it is to put in the work to be good and actually does it. It would still give a reason for Regina and Rump to cast all the destructive magic that they did because destroying is easy and fast while building is hard and time consuming.

*I know Rump waited centuries to find Bae but he really didn't have a choice since the Curse needed someone like Regina to cast it and he had to wait until he found her. If he could have cast the Curse himself without being sucked into the magic he wouldn't have waited.

I'm quoting this over here because I really like the idea of dark and light magic being really, categorically different, and am curious about how others would want that to be implemented.

Personally I think as you've said here, it makes a lot of sense for dark magic to be unable to heal-or maybe it could heal you by draining someone else of their life force, or turning you into something else.

On the reverse, light magic would be unable to kill, perhaps unable to injure, but it would be able to protect or to neutralise dark magic.

Maybe both kinds can create things but it all depends on what the effects of those things will be on the world-and how that intersects with the desires and emotions of the mage and, if applicable, the person the thing is created for. So Cinderella's accoutrements would be created with light magic and they'd have the intended effect of making her happy, while the Blind Witch's house would be created with the goal of ensnaring children, and would be made with dark magic.

I'm not sure how you'd distinguish this mechanically though. Maybe all magic comes with a price and, using the above example, the price for Cinderella's spell was that her godmother had to ensure she got out of her horrible family and found happiness, while the blind witch needed to eat children to sustain her magic.

If the fairies actually needed to make people happy and to encourage love to keep their magic going-i don't know if that's a bit too twee, but it would put their actions in a different context. It doesn't make them cynical, I don't think, but it would mean they weren't just nice because they were nice, there'd be a system to it.

I also do really like the idea, at the bottom of it, that darkness and light are not equal and opposite. It is harder to be good than evil, it is harder to create than to destroy, it's harder to maintain than to destroy. But that doesn't mean that the force that creates is weaker than the one that destroys.

I keep imagining also-this is possibly because the Rings of Power trailer has been doing the rounds and I've been reminded of the movies-I keep imagining what you might get of you were serious about Reul Gorm being an ancient godlike being, and I'm imagining her getting a Scary Galadriel moment. Just one, and very brief, but just enough that you understand she isn't weaker than Rumple, she's just doing something that takes a lot more effort, and if she were to give up and choose anger and destruction, well, to quote a witch from another story about fairy tales:

"Oh, if I were as bad as you, I'd be a whole lot worse"