OUAT vs. Other Fairy Tales: Compare & Contrast

[KingOfHearts]

Regina will always be Kylo Ren to me. She ain't no Darth Vader. Kylo runs purely on emotion and killed his own father to obtain what he needed to move forward. He shares a certain immaturity with Regina. They're both very passionate, but their drive is also their downfall. Darth Vader was emotional too, but had a greater capacity to care for his family members than his grandson. He had more reason to be angry with life. Regina and Kylo Ren both wish they were as badass as Darth Vader, but they're too whiny and not very bright. They've both had good people reach out a hand to help them many times and continually rejected it.

2 hours ago, KAOS Agent said:

To be fair to Star Wars, Darth Vader realized that he was wrong in the end (and admitted it!), sacrificed himself to save Luke and then died in Luke's arms. He did not become the King of All Space and have all of his victims cheering for him. Also, his "appearance" in The Force Awakens does not glorify him. Instead, it shows whiny baby Kylo Ren worshiping his evil ways while rejecting the light. Darth Vader is not portrayed as a good guy we should all aspire to be. 

And there's this. Redeeming Darth Vader was never on anyone's mind but Luke's and possibly Obi Wan's. There was no "will he change" tug of war going on to any scale to match Kylo Ren's. I don't even think the prequels really woobified him. Kylo Ren's "boohoo Luke almost killed me but didn't" story is a far cry from everything that happened to Anakin in the prequels. I'm not saying Darth Vader had it worse, but there's much more to explain the motivations of the senior than the junior. 

[andromeda331]

Its great that we're talking Star Wars vs OUAT. I often think of ONCE when I'm watching Star Wars. I don't think A&E get why Vader/Anakin dies at end of Return of the Jedi. If they didn't we really wouldn't have the look at all the evil crap Rumple and Regina did but they are really good now. Harming his family has always been his beserk button (see Sand People) he'll risk his life to save his son. Regina's never risked anything to save anyone else. Rumple did and then his character went downhill. Also, if Anakin lived he'd be either executed on war crimes or locked away the rest of his life. That's not a very fun ending. That's why they went with the Death Equals Redemption. To Luke, his father saved his life and murdered the emperor freeing the galaxy. Also, Luke and Anakin didn't really have time to get into any of their issues and he never had to face Leia for what he did to her, Han and Alderaan. Regina and Henry had plenty of time to get into the crappy stuff she did to Henry but chose not to. Nope, they went for one of their instant fixes. Neal had a ton of issues with his father that they never got into. Again even though there was plenty of time. 

Rumple probably is their version of Palpatine. He dupes everyone around him including a young Regina. Except we don't really see much of Regina before she went evil. Her mother murdered her boyfriend was apparently enough to send her over the edge and target a ten year old. Anakin started out a cute kid with a loving mom, no dad and enslave. So yes living Mommy behind  still enslave probably will give him more issues.  Regina once solved her mommy problem by shoving her to Wonderland and was free as bird to do whatever she wanted from then on. Anakin's mommy died after being captured and tortured, which had dreams about and he showed up too late to help her. He's going to always believe he could have saved her by showing up when he first had those dreams. Anakin murders slaughters a village and cries. I'm sure that must have confused A&E a lot Regina slaughtered villages and laughed. Palpatine spent a decade working on Anakin long before Anakin realized he was evil. It was clear from the start Rumple was evil. Regina certainly knew it and that's why she took lessons with him.  She specifically wanted to target and murder her stepdaughter. Anakin didn't really want to murder anyone. He murders the Sand People and knows he went too far slaughtering everyone including women and children. He threatens Dooku in Attack of the Clones but that's because of the Jedi that were killed. He ends up doing a lot of stupid shit in SITH but when he's screaming from his point of view the Jedi is evil. Clearly we are suppose to seen Anakin is evil or insane and has lot his mind. Not, poor, little Anakin and not look how cool Anakin is! He's so sassy! They did a better job showing how Anakin gets to that point then A&E ever bothered with Regina. Her problem was over when she pushed her mother through the Looking Glass.

Regina's certainly no Darth Vader either. It would be hard to be just like one of the coolest villains ever. Kylo would definitely be closer. Too emotional. Vader was shown to be competent. He was seconds away from blowing Luke when Han showed up. His lightsaber battle with Luke in ESB, putting the homing beacon on the Falcon, chasing after the Falcon so he could use them to lure Luke. Most of Regina's plans are really stupid. She'll send a Huntsman someone she clearly doesn't know to kill Snow. What? He let her go?  She hires Hook to kill his mother but didn't plan her mother countering him, getting stabbed with a fork by Ariel. Everything she does to Emma only makes her stay more not less. All she had to do was play it cool and Emma would have left on her own.  

Rumple could sort of be a mixture of Vader and Palpatine. He tries to corrupt Regina so she'll cast the curse and he's looking for his son. Except Regina knew he was evil. They didn't have a decade of him pretending to be an older nice politician. Like Vader he looks for his son. When Luke rejects him. That's not the end of it. He goes to his ship to go get him. When the Falcon gets away. You don't get the feeling he's going to give up and decide oh well he talked to his son once that's it he's going to drop it.  Palpatine and Rumple are really good at using people and don't care about anyone but themselves. Except only one we are told is a good person, has a good heart despite all the evil he's done.

Edited June 24, 2018 by andromeda331

[Rumsy4]

The Westworld Season 2 finale was a big old mess. This season has suffered in quality compared to the last, but there were a couple of standout episodes (which, incidentally, largely focussed on side-characters). But the finale didn't really pay off the scrambled timelines and philosophical monologues we had to sit through to get there. Reading post-season interviews, it seems like the showrunners fell into the same traps as A&E.

They started writing to one section of the online fanbase (reddit in this instance). They made the timelines non-linear just to confuse viewers and deliver a couple of "shocking" twists, which in retrospect, seems completely unjustified. For a season with just ten episodes, there was a whole lot of filler. And they really wasted some of the phenomical cast they had on needless wheel-spinning. The finale was overcrowded. There were plot holes worthy of A&E. One character recognizes a dead person whom she has presumably never seen before as an adult. People suddenly became all-knowing for no apparent reason, etc., etc.. The writers had a whole year and a half to plan this season! This is not to say I didn't enjoy the season, but the finale rather dampened my enthusiasm for the show. 

Edited June 26, 2018 by Rumsy4

[KingOfHearts]

Just saw The Incredibles 2. A lot of people enjoyed it, but the producers played it was too safe for me. I really liked the innovation and nuance of the original, which was completely lacking in the sequel. The second one is very goofy with a lot of fluff moments. Not nearly as serious or heavy. It's not a bad movie by any stretch, but it's just not my preference. If you get a kick out of Jack-Jack or Edna Mode shenanigans, I'm sure you'll like it fine. I just saw potential within the plot for so much more unrealized.

There was this one scene about heroes being overly trusting of people. "We can trust Rumple because he gave us a shiny object that one time!"

[Shanna Marie]

I may have had the ultimate Frozen viewing experience last night. My friend's band was playing at a seafood restaurant/sports bar kind of place, and half the TVs in the restaurant were showing the Telemundo airing of Frozen. It was like watching a silent movie, but with the soundtrack being Southern blues/rock. It actually kind of worked. The really amusing thing is that one of the TVs next to a Frozen TV had on a hunting show, so on one screen we'd see Sven running and on the adjacent screen, we'd see a hunter taking aim with a hunting bow. Then Sven was out of the picture, and the hunter was showing off the deer he'd shot. Hmmm ....

On another note, I've been reading some Scandinavian folk/fairy tales, and it's interesting how many similarities there are to a lot of the Grimm tales. They're very, very big on those youngest son makes good stories, but that got me thinking about all the deus ex machina things on Once, where the magical object they need just happens to appear when they need it. With the flashback format, they had the opportunity to do those "be nice to the old person/animal, and you'll get the magical help you need when you need it" stories. In the flashback, Snow/Charming/the relevant guest character pauses in the quest or mission to help the animal or old person. In the present, they get the magical help they need because that animal (in human form) or old person is in Storybrooke. Or they come across the seemingly useless thing the animal or old person gave them back then, and it turns out to be just what they need. And maybe set it up a few episodes earlier, where we know it's something they have and we're seeing the story of the quest or mission.

[Camera One]

5 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

With the flashback format, they had the opportunity to do those "be nice to the old person/animal, and you'll get the magical help you need when you need it" stories. In the flashback, Snow/Charming/the relevant guest character pauses in the quest or mission to help the animal or old person. In the present, they get the magical help they need because that animal (in human form) or old person is in Storybrooke. 

It is A&E, so it's always going to be "be nice to the old person/animal and the old person/animal tries to murder you and/or turns out to be the devil incarnate PLOT TWIST!"

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Camera One said:

It is A&E, so it's always going to be "be nice to the old person/animal and the old person/animal tries to murder you and/or turns out to be the devil incarnate PLOT TWIST!"

Regina: "You can't trust a talking squirrel. Come along, let's go. I'm late for my mani-pedi."
Snow: "Regina! He's stuck in a burning tree! One that YOU accidentally set on fire with one of your fireballs!"
Regina: "Do what you will, miss goody-goodie. But don't say I didn't warn you."

*One month later.*

Regina: "I told you NOT to trust him!"
Snow: "How was I supposed to know he was actually Darth Vader??"

Edited July 2, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

I was reading about a new animated movie retelling Aladdin but set in China like in 1001 Nights.

Quote

The pic is a modern re-telling of the classic Genie in a bottle tale from 1001 Nights. The core of the story reminds us that the most important things in life – hard work, honesty, friends, and family – cannot be wished for.

Is that what the story was about?  I thought it was about a princess desperately seeking a Savior to solve all her problems.

[Shanna Marie]

I've been reading Norwegian fairy tales, and they have a number that have parallels to the familiar Grimm versions but with distinct differences. Their Cinderella story is so bizarre that it could have come out of this show. It's called "Kari Woodenskirt." Our "Cinderella," Kari, is the daughter of a widowed king. He marries a woman with a daughter, and the new queen and her ugly daughter are jealous of Kari, so when the king goes off to war, they make her herd the cattle and starve her so she won't be beautiful anymore. But a bull notices her plight and tells her there's a cloth in his ear, and if she spreads it on the ground, a feast will appear. Thanks to this, she stays plump and pretty. The queen bribes a servant to follow Kari and find out how she's eating, and when she learns about the cloth and the bull, she fakes her daughter's illness and bribes a doctor to say that the only thing that will save her is meat from this bull. The king has returned from war, and when he sees his wife's tears, he orders the bull to be slaughtered. Kari goes to the bull in tears, and he tells her to climb on his back, and they run away. There's an interlude in which they go through a forest of copper, a forest of silver, and a forest of gold, and each time Kari is warned not to touch anything. She tries not to, but each time accidentally one item (like a leaf) gets pulled off, which brings a troll that the bull has to fight and kill before they can pass. When they reach another kingdom, the bull tells her to go work in the kitchen of the castle and live in a pigsty. Before she goes, she has to kill him, cut off his head and hide, use the hide to wrap up the objects she got in the forests, and bury them at the base of a mountain. When she needs help, she's to bang on the mountain wall with a stick. So, all dirty and poor-looking, she goes to work in the castle. When the prince calls for bath water, she begs to be allowed to bring it to him, and when she does, he mocks how ugly she is and throws the water at her. On Sunday, she begs leave to go to church, and she knocks on the mountain, which gives her a lovely copper gown and a fine steed to ride to church, where everyone, including the prince, is in awe of her. He asks her who she is and where she's from, and she tells him "Washingland" and uses a magic spell so he can't follow her. The next week, he calls for a towel, and she begs to bring it to him, but he mocks her. She asks to go to church again, and this time gets a silver gown. The prince is even more captivated by her, and she tells him she's from Towelland and disappears. When he needs a comb, she brings it, and he sneers at her yet again. She gets a golden gown to go to church this time, and the prince is more in love than ever. He spreads pitch on the church step to keep her from getting away. She manages to jump over it, but she loses her shoe when she escapes. He can't find Combland or any of the other places she's said she was from, so he searches for the girl who fits the shoe. The stepsister shows up to try the shoe, and it fits! But the birds at the wedding sing about how the shoe is full of blood, and they find that she's cut off her toe and heel to fit it. The birds sing that it's Kari's shoe, and the prince doesn't believe that could be true, but he has to try, and not only does the shoe fit, but she has the other one. So they get married.

And I say "what the hell?" This guy was horribly abusive to her the whole time, unless she was wearing a pretty dress. In most of the Norwegian stories with a helpful animal who demands to be killed, cutting the head off breaks the curse and the animal turns into a handsome prince. I kept waiting for the prince to come out of the mountain and reveal himself as her friend and helper who would then punish the abusive prince. It's a warped enough romance to almost remind me of Rumple and Belle, and the jumping from a Snow White kind of story to the bits in the forest with the trolls to the Cinderella kind of story is the way the Once plot jumps around.

[Camera One]

1 hour ago, Shanna Marie said:

I've been reading Norwegian fairy tales, and they have a number that have parallels to the familiar Grimm versions but with distinct differences. Their Cinderella story is so bizarre that it could have come out of this show. It's called "Kari Woodenskirt." Our "Cinderella," Kari, is the daughter of a widowed king. He marries a woman with a daughter, and the new queen and her ugly daughter are jealous of Kari, so when the king goes off to war, they make her herd the cattle and starve her so she won't be beautiful anymore. But a bull notices her plight and tells her there's a cloth in his ear, and if she spreads it on the ground, a feast will appear.

Stuff like this would have been fun to see, even if it's not the "familiar" tale.  Heck, this Cinderella could have made a more interesting Season 7 one.

[KingOfHearts]

When I read stories like that, I wonder what the author was on when they wrote it.

[Shanna Marie]

15 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

When I read stories like that, I wonder what the author was on when they wrote it.

These are oral folklore, so I imagine there were multiple authors. My guess is that it maybe started with someone telling the story about the princess being starved and getting help from the bull. Then when someone else retold that story, maybe someone in the audience asked for more or the storyteller decided to add on, and the bull and the princess's adventures in the forests with the trolls got added. Later, someone may have heard a Cinderella story and added a Cinderella-like tale to it. Though I still don't get the princess marrying someone who was so cruel to servants and who totally changed his opinion of her merely based on the way she was dressed. Then again, I guess that things like the prince meeting Cinderella when she was in her rags and them hitting it off (like in the recent live action movie) is more of a modern thing. It might not have been something that was considered at the time these tales were originally being told, and the way someone treated servants wasn't an indication of their character the way we'd consider it now.

[Guest]

I just watched the 12 Monkeys finale.  That may have been the best final season and episode I recall seeing.   I laughed. I cried. I may have demanded a couple characters hug (some listened, others didn’t) I sang. I fist pumped.  And I sang again.  I laughed some more.  I had deep thoughts.  I cried. OK, I may have sobbed uncontrollably.  I smiled through the tears.  I whooped.  I laughed while I sobbed. It was a roller coaster that ultimately left me satisfied.

Now, I’m not going to go into any specifics because it is too early to drop spoilers.  But it did make me think about OUAT beyond the normal…this is evidence that timelines can be managed and continuity can be kept across seasons and characters can have more than shallow relationships and mysteries and storylines do pay off.

I got to thinking about OUAT because 12 Monkeys spent a bit of time exploring the idea of “happily ever after”.  I never thought about it, but thematically that makes sense on a time travel show.  If you are monkeying around with time and changing things to make things better or fix things, then is the final state you reach worth the price of giving up everything you’ve come to know and changing everything that made you who you are?  What if that perfect, idealized moment is frozen in amber and goes on unchanged forever? Is there any joy without heartache? Does a perfect future mean anything if there is no more struggle?  Is “happily ever after” something to strive for or is it about the journey?  Is it about the people on the journey with you?  And if it is, can you give all of that up?

And that should have been one of the major themes on OUAT. What happens when “happily ever after” is interrupted by a curse and you are tossed into the real world?  But they were interested enough in characters and relationships to do anything with that and ultimately the show just devolved into villains being annoyed that they don’t get to have a happy ending and isn’t that unfair.

Not that either OUAT finale was very good, but it’s a lot of the reason I like the season 6 finale over season 7.  Season 6 at least had a montage showing that everyone went on and had a life they lived during their happily ever after.  Season 7 was handing Regina a “happily ever after” you are queen of the universe and there are no more stories to tell kind of ending. 

I don’t know.  The 12 Monkeys finale just made me feel like OUAT would have been a better show if they hand taken the approach of demonstrating that getting a happy ending wasn’t the point.  That there were things more important than “and they lived happily ever after, The End.”

[Spartan Girl]

A new YA retelling of Beaury and the Beast just came out: Beast by Lisa Jensen. It has a pretty clever twist on the fairy tale. In this version, the transformation causes a split personality between the beast and the prince. The beast is good while the handsome prince is evil; and if "true love" breaks the spell, the good beast changes into the evil prince. So basically, it's the Angel/Angelus deal, only it's the monster that has the soul.

It's pretty good, although a lot of reviwers were pissed that the prince

is a sexual predator

. But it got me thinking how much better, or at least slightly less messed up, the a Rumple/Belle romance could have been if the OUAT writers had tried something like this.

[tennisgurl]

I was listening to a podcast today about animation and its history and how the industry works (its call Drawn, I recommend it for anyone who loves Disney or animation), and they did an interesting episode on villains. One part that I especially found fascinating (and is applicable to Once) is an interview the host did with an animation historian, who was asked about what Disney villains all had in common. He spoke about how many cartoon characters might look like one think, but are coded as something else (Dino looks like a dinosaur, but is a puppy, Bugs looks like a rabbit, but is a vaudeville comedian), and that many, if not most, Disney villains are actually coded to kids as abusive parents. Even if they arent literal parents, or are even menacing literal kids, they often tap into an instinctual fear that children have, that the grown up your taught to go to for help is actually a bad person who will use their grown up powers against you, as an authority figure of some kind, or they pretend to be nice grown ups, but actually hate you, and are going to hurt you the second you feel safe. It taps into something that terrifies kids, even if its only on a subconscious level, that an adult who is supposed to take care of them, who they've been told will take care of them, is actually evil, and can use their power as adults to hurt them.  And when I thought about it, its kind of crazy how many of them fit into that mold. 

Edited July 12, 2018 by tennisgurl

[KingOfHearts]

OUAT took the abusive parent coding to an extreme and made the villains actual abusive parents. 

[KingOfHearts]

I watched a video critiquing Star Wars: The Last Jedi and something made me immediately think of A&E. In that movie, there's lots of "gotcha" moments that are used for shock value at the expense of realistic characters. "You think Luke is going to feel nostalgic about his lightsaber? Gotcha! He throws it away. You think Rey's parents are important? Gotcha! They were nobodies. You want to see Snoke's backstory? Gotcha! He dies a lame death with no explanation for who he is." The writers try so hard to subvert expectations that they forget it's the predictable structures that make good stories. Hook killing Charming's father is shocking but it undermines Hook's character. Emma breaking up with Hook after their proposal is abrupt but doesn't make any sense when you consider what they've been through. The ending to "Going Home" is a lot less weighty when Storybrooke returns in the immediate episode. Many times A&E will throw in this big shocking twist, only to drop it in the spring or fall premiere. Sometimes they would copy Lost's pattern and wait a few episodes before coming back to an interesting plot development. ("Oh? You want to learn more about The Others? Take this random Sun centric about her affair instead.") Killing momentum in order to keep the audience guessing is dumb.

[Rumsy4]

5 minutes ago, KingOfHearts said:

The writers try so hard to subvert expectations that they forget it's the predictable structures that make good stories.

I think that’s partly why fanfic can be so satisfying. The readers are already invested in the characters. The stories tend to follow certain fanfic writing rules that have been established over the years. For example, there’s the Coffee Shop AU, where the main characters—guess what—meet at a coffee shop. If the story is tagged “angst”, I’m not going to go in expecting fluff. 

In many ways, TV and movie writers want to set themselves apart from the tons of other similar shows and movies out there. But in trying to avoid it, they fall into other pitfalls.

I guess one of my main beefs with the new Star Wars movies is how badly they undermine the hopeful ending of the original trilogy. Did you suckers think Han and Leia lived happily ever after? Pffft... Did you lot imagine Luke became a successful Jedi? Hahha nope. In a bid to raise the stakes, Disney turned the Star Wars movies into stories about a long series of failures by a lot of different people. Where’s the hope in that? 

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

In many ways, TV and movie writers want to set themselves apart from the tons of other similar shows and movies out there. But in trying to avoid it, they fall into other pitfalls.

A&E also did this to themselves. They took a tried-and-true formula (the half-season arc), then threw it out the window. The 22-episode format never worked to the show's benefit, even in S1. They responded to the complaints that the show was too predictable or repetitive.  It gives new meaning to the phrase, "write what you know", because the writers didn't know how to write longer arcs or filler. As many problems as their format had, some of it did work.

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

I guess one of my main beefs with the new Star Wars movies is how badly they undermine the hopeful ending of the original trilogy. Did you suckers think Han and Leia lived happily ever after? Pffft... Did you lot imagine Luke became a successful Jedi? Hahha nope. In a bid to raise the stakes, Disney turned the Star Wars movies into stories about a long series of failures by a lot of different people. Where’s the hope in that? 

I actually enjoyed The Force Awakens because it proposed so many interesting mysteries and did follow the successful format of A New Hope. It wasn't groundbreaking or perfect, but its flaws could've been fixed by future films. (Resolving why Rey is a Mary Sue, deepening Kylo Ren's character, etc.) A question without an answer is pointless. The Last Jedi threw everything interesting about it down the toilet. I practically rolled my eyes at the end of TLJ when the boy had hope for the Rebellion. It's such a repeat of what we've already seen.

One thing I can appreciate about OUAT is that S7 didn't ruin the happy endings. A&E could've easily done that. (Although, I do think they ruined whatever Rumpbelle had going for it at the end of S6. I'd be pissed if I were a Rumpbelle fan.)

Edited July 15, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

Both Aladdin and Cinderella in some adaptations were insecure about their simple lives when they fell for royalty and in various adaptions they sang to their mothers who had died.  On "Once", Charming too was from a non-royal background and ended up having to rule, so he could also relate to the culture shock.  Both Jasmine and Cinder's Prince felt trapped by convention and being forced to marry.  

I've always thought it would have been interesting if Snow/Charming and Aurora's parents would have met, since they both missed out on their children's lives.  Aurora and Emma both would have grown up not knowing their true backgrounds, with their parents sending them away to save them.  

[Writing Wrongs]

I'm re-watching Alias Season 5 and I realize that Sloane and Rumple are similar.

Sloane's claims of having changed to being a better man after all the crap he pulled and his ultimately sacrificing his daughter for his Rambaldi obsession. 

[Camera One]

14 minutes ago, Writing Wrongs said:

Sloane's claims of having changed to being a better man after all the crap he pulled and his ultimately sacrificing his daughter for his Rambaldi obsession. 

By the end of the series, I was getting tired of the mixture of his redemption/betrayals.  At least he didn't get his happy ending, I guess.

Edited July 23, 2018 by Camera One

[Guest]

 

So I really want to see Christopher Robin.  The trailers have that special something that the OUAT pilot and a couple of the stronger episodes of season 1 had.  It has that feel of a fondly remembered childhood story come to life.  It speaks to my inner little kid.  It feels like its made explicitly to speak to the nostalgia of us grown ups.  Or at least that's what I'll tell myself since I don't have any little kids to drag to the movie with me.  Maybe I'll borrow my niece and nephew.

But at the same time its trying to remind us what we've forgotten as we've grown up and life became busy.  And its bringing Pooh and friends to the "real world" (albeit not current timeline, which I prefer).

[Shanna Marie]

I recently re-read a book that gave me somewhat OUAT vibes. If not for the fact that it was published in 2013 and Belle only showed up to kick off Rumpbelle in early 2012, and apparently the book took three years to write, I would accuse it of being inspired by/starting as Rumpbelle fanfic. I think maybe I get that impression because it reminds me of Uprooted, which was inspired by Rumpbelle. The book is The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker, and like Uprooted, it's basically a Beauty and the Beast story in which a young woman is living in a castle with a surly magician and starts to learn magic from him. There's even an interlude of going to court at the capital city.

The interesting twist on the Beauty and the Beast story is that the magician never demanded she live with him. He actually rescued her and is giving her refuge. The basic story is that a grad student from our world is out hiking and stumbles through a portal into another world without realizing it. It takes her a long time to realize it because the first people she runs into are the fairies (like the folklore version, not the Disney version), and the spell they weave around her makes her think they're just beautiful, glamorous, wealthy people in our world. When the magician rescues her from their enchantments, she realizes she's in a medieval-like world. The magician knows about our world and has even been there, but portals come and go, and he lets her stay with him until they can find a portal to send her home. In the meantime, she starts studying magic. I guess there's still a power imbalance, since she's totally dependent on him, but it's not nearly so Stockholm Syndromy as a lot of Beauty and the Beast stories. Actually, I suspect that this started as some kind of Snape fanfic because I was thinking all along that her descriptions of the magician sounded kind of like some of the rather idealized fanart I've seen of Snape, and at one point there's a character from our world who sees him and blurts out "Snape!"

I'm iffy on whether I'd actually recommend this book (I was re-reading it because something else I read made me think of it, but I couldn't recall something, and that bugged me). There's some interesting stuff, but the pacing is really weird. There are long stretches in which nothing really happens. Also, it ends in a semi-cliffhanger, and the author says she's just finished the second draft of the sequel. It doesn't quite live up to the promise of the title. I'm not sure quite what I wanted from the title, but I didn't get it. I guess I thought it would be funnier or snarkier. There is some snark, as we're dealing with a modern woman who's aghast at the medieval attitudes of this world, and there's some culture clash.

[Guest]

Regina's horse and the ship on the Expanse share the same name.  Rocinante.   Both named for Don Quixote, I guess.

[andromeda331]

6 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

Regina's horse and the ship on the Expanse share the same name.  Rocinante.   Both named for Don Quixote, I guess.

Regina probably killed him and took his horse.

[Rumsy4]

4 hours ago, andromeda331 said:

Regina probably killed him and took his horse.

He probably deserved it. Poor Regina was forced to kill him because he had the temerity to pretend he was a hero while she was crying over Daniel’s grave.

[Camera One]

I finally watched "Man of Steel".  I had seen "Batman v Superman" first, and thought Superman, Lois Lane, etc. were boring and humorless.  This movie made me like Superman and Lois Lane a lot more, despite the story being buried in overly long death-and-destruction action sequences.  I was surprisingly engaged by the flashback scenes with Superman's father and also Superman's childhood, though it seems like they tried to cram his entire original story, his Smallville backstory and the meeting Lois Lane stuff, plus have the present-day disaster movie all in one. 

It reminded me of "Once" since after this "Man of Steel" "centric" movie, Superman became essentially a cardboard cutout shell character in "Batman v Superman" with no actual personality.  They went through pretty much everything in that first movie, so what else was left to show in Clark Kent's journey?  Pretty much nothing.  It's like how on "Once", when it's not their centric, sometimes even the main characters can become glorified extras without a unique voice.  I'm going to rewatch "Batman v Superman" to see if I appreciate it more, but from what I remember, it was even more boring CGI fight scenes pretty much from start to finish.

[KingOfHearts]

I've just got to vent. I'm so tired of writing that's needlessly complicated, adding extra layers that are contrived and don't need to be there. It makes the audience feel like idiots, especially when it's about unraveling a mystery. It's like expecting people to solve a puzzle without vital pieces, almost as if the writers intended no real solution. They could be making it up as they go along but people will try to make sense of it anyway, leading to a dumpster fire. A&E did this constantly and I think it's one of the reasons we keep talking about the show. We want a solution to why the show was written the way it was, but the patterns only line 80% of the time. It's that missing 20% that keeps us wondering what the hell happened.

I've seen this problem in other media and as someone who is very analytical, it makes me want to bang my head against the wall. A&E got into the habit of throwing random crap at the wall and going, "Haha, bet they'll buy this?" like they were conning people into thinking they were writing the next Lost.

Edited July 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Camera One]

2 hours ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's like expecting people to solve a puzzle without vital pieces, almost as if the writers intended no real solution. They could be making it up as they go along but people will try to make sense of it anyway, leading to a dumpster fire. A&E did this constantly and I think it's one of the reasons we keep talking about the show.  A&E got into the habit of throwing random crap at the wall and going, "Haha, bet they'll buy this?" like they were conning people into thinking they were writing the next Lost.

It's a very dishonest way of writing a show or a season.  And with the egregious contradictions in the timeline, it became really blatant in Season 7 that they didn't bother to put in the work to make the pieces (aka random crap thrown at wall) fit together even within a season, and yet they went on interviews patting themselves on the back for a job well done.  They accepted, even celebrated it as their method.

I too have seen it in other sci-fi/genre shows.  Shocking plot now/think it through later is sloppy.  I understand that it's always a time crunch within a season since each episode needs to be written right after the last, but a properly thought out plan needs to be done before the season starts.  I guess another difficulty is when plans change.  With "Once" we speculate that plans change, but it's hard to know for sure and we can bet A&E won't ever admit changing course.

[KingOfHearts]

32 minutes ago, Camera One said:

It's a very dishonest way of writing a show or a season.  And with the egregious contradictions in the timeline, it became really blatant in Season 7 that they didn't bother to put in the work to make the pieces (aka random crap thrown at wall) fit together even within a season, and yet they went on interviews patting themselves on the back for a job well done.  They accepted, even celebrated it as their method.

It hit hard for me in S6. Any theories we had about the Savior or the Black Fairy were replaced with a convoluted mess nobody asked for. 

32 minutes ago, Camera One said:

I too have seen it in other sci-fi/genre shows.  Shocking plot now/think it through later is sloppy.  I understand that it's always a time crunch within a season since each episode needs to be written right after the last, but a properly thought out plan needs to be done before the season starts.  I guess another difficulty is when plans change.  With "Once" we speculate that plans change, but it's hard to know for sure and we can bet A&E won't ever admit changing course.

It's troublesome when they already have a lot setup, but they don't follow through with it. They didn't have to come up with a bunch of random new stuff when Chekov's Arsenal is already there. Perfect example: Mulan knew how to free someone from the Underworld because she saved Philip, but instead we got her third wheeling Ruby Slippers. So rather than reintroduce the character through something already established, she was thrown into a contrived new plot that was completely unnecessary.

This is a horrible show to make theories or speculate on since it doesn't even follow its own logic. It's so meta in all the wrong ways. 

Edited July 27, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[Rumsy4]

On 7/26/2018 at 3:10 AM, Camera One said:

Frogurt was more of a quaternary character, so their desire to write for him was probably because they were bored of the primary, secondary and tertiary characters but they weren't the showrunners so they were stuck.

This explains it. I have wondered why Eddy was so interested in Frogurt when in OUAT he was obsessed with just the main characters (just Regina and Rumple, really).

If A&E had taken over as show-runners for LOST, the final season would have ended with Benjamin Linus being named the next Jacob and everyone apologizing to the Smoke Monster for ruining his life. 

[andromeda331]

9 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

This explains it. I have wondered why Eddy was so interested in Frogurt when in OUAT he was obsessed with just the main characters (just Regina and Rumple, really).

If A&E had taken over as show-runners for LOST, the final season would have ended with Benjamin Linus being named the next Jacob and everyone apologizing to the Smoke Monster for ruining his life. 

Then declared God of the Universe and all Universes! It must have killed them that not only did none of that happened but Ben didn't even get to go with everyone. He had to remain. I can only imagine their pain when the main characters were allowed to punch him repeatedly who cares they had every right too. They probably still have nightmares about it. They probably sobbed like crazy when poor Ben had to be forced to dig his own grave and shout that no one would have him (who cares how many times he screwed everyone over). He may not have gotten all that he deserved but he did get some of it. Watching him being manipulating into killing Jake was awesome. I still wish that had really been Locke it was awesome to see Ben sweating it. If only Regina ended up paying for her crimes as much as Ben did it still would have been a lot better. Yes, Ben still deserved a lot more but its better then Regina getting away with everything, never punished, never held accountable, never even sorry for anything she did.

Edited July 30, 2018 by andromeda331

[KingOfHearts]

5 hours ago, Rumsy4 said:

If A&E had taken over as show-runners for LOST, the final season would have ended with Benjamin Linus being named the next Jacob and everyone apologizing to the Smoke Monster for ruining his life. 

Even though they didn't write the episode, I thought "Across the Sea" was very A&E. "The good guy isn't as good! The bad guy isn't so bad! Blame everything on crazy parent! None of this worldbuilding is going to be explained!"

[Rumsy4]

They certainly seem to have picked up the worst aspects of LOST and ignored the best (characters and relationships).

[KingOfHearts]

1 hour ago, Rumsy4 said:

They certainly seem to have picked up the worst aspects of LOST and ignored the best (characters and relationships).

S6 of Lost reminds me a lot of S1 of OUAT but not necessarily in a bad way. The flash sideways are like the cursed personalities in Storybrooke. But yeah, I agree. They thought all the "gotcha" moments in Lost were what made it great. It's not that those weren't memorable (Lost is known for its cliffhangers and sudden WTF twists), but A&E only replicated it well a handful of times. 

Lately I've been watching Wrecked, which is a comedic parody of Lost. It has more character moments than later seasons of OUAT and it's got about half the running time. The Good Place's writing puts OUAT to shame it's also a 30-minute sitcom. (But it's also deep and has a ton of character development and worldbuilding.) That's why I call BS on the writers' "sometimes you have to sacrifice other people's stories to tell Regina's story" excuse. They have time, they just don't use it.

Edited July 30, 2018 by KingOfHearts

[andromeda331]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

S6 of Lost reminds me a lot of S1 of OUAT but not necessarily in a bad way. The flash sideways are like the cursed personalities in Storybrooke. But yeah, I agree. They thought all the "gotcha" moments in Lost were what made it great. It's not that those weren't memorable (Lost is known for its cliffhangers and sudden WTF twists), but A&E only replicated it well a handful of times. 

Yeah, there weren't really a lot of ONCE moments that there were great cliffhangers or really good twists.  After awhile you knew what the twist was, you knew everything that happened up until that meant nothing, it wasn't going anywhere, you knew some random artifact was going to come out of nowhere, you knew they were going to stand around until the second to last episode when everything happened, you knew Snow would sprout hope and cheerleader Regina who'd complain and whine, Henry would be stupid, Emma had Walls and Rumple would betray.  LOST actually had really good cliffhanger and twists. Two of the most disliked characters turned Jin and Sawyer but it wasn't automatic and the group didn't automatically forgive them. A&E want all the praise that LOST got but without doing any of the work. They outline nothing, they don't bother to come up with beginning, middle and end. They drop almost everything story arcs, plotlines, characters. When things didn't work on LOST or with fans they dropped them. A&E can't handle being criticized by anyone and doubled down on all the mistakes that hurt LOST rather then learning from them. And of course the refusing to ever sacrifice Regina's story or Rumple. The constant re-cons.  

Quote

Lately I've been watching Wrecked, which is a comedic parody of Lost. It has more character moments than later seasons of OUAT and it's got about half the running time. The Good Place's writing puts OUAT to shame it's also a 30-minute sitcom. (But it's also deep and has a ton of character development and worldbuilding.) That's why I call BS on the writers' "sometimes you have to sacrifice other people's stories to tell Regina's story" excuse. They have time, they just don't use it.

 

It was BS they wasted so much time on nothing. All those episodes before the sudden gauntlet or wand fixed it all. They could have replaced all those wasted hours and still had the woeRegina stuff and still have done without losing any time. And would have made the episodes more better. 

[Camera One]

"Lost" also wasn't afraid to experiment with new formats and approaches each season.  They didn't immediately reset to the status quo after big cliffhanger gamechangers.  It's sad they eventually abandoned their character focus and their secondary characters, but that was after five and a half seasons.  It's actually amazing that A&E didn't learn the biggest lesson from the show they get free association with.

[Rumsy4]

1 hour ago, KingOfHearts said:

It's not that those weren't memorable (Lost is known for its cliffhangers and sudden WTF twists), but A&E only replicated it well a handful of times. 

I was one of those obsessive LOST fans and I enjoyed every bit of the theorizing. I'll always fondly remember desperately refreshing EW, waiting for Doc Jenson's post-episode recaps to drop. I was actually living in Hawaii at the time and even went to one of the season premiere parties on the beach. 

Damon and Carlton did yank our chains with all the mysteries, but IMO, they get unfairly criticized for not answering questions. I think there were only a handful of unanswered questions in LOST. Unfortunately for some of the fans, the biggest question--what is the Island--ended up having a mystical/philosophical answer. I don't think any answer would have satisfied all the viewers. I would have hated it if it had turned out to be some nonsense like "aliens", but maybe others would have liked it. ABC also muddied the issue by putting footage of the plane wreckage at the end (why did anyone think that was good idea??!). LOST wasn't a perfect show by any means, but I do think they revolutionized television as we know it. 

LOST didn't have a clean ending with everything wrapped up with a neat bow tied to it, but I think that was fine. It fit the tone of the show. A&E tried to wrap up OUAT with a neat bow, but the package inside was a contradictory mess. The feel-good factor A&E were going for just didn't work because they never put any effort into creating realistic relationships or a plausible mythology for the show. The Last Supper scene at the end of OUAT Season 6 rang false because it presented an untrue front of happy relationships. The Multiverse merger and Regina's coronation destroyed the logical plausibility of Season 7 in retrospect because of all the time-line mess it created. OUAT had a lot of potential, but so much of that was wasted.

[Camera One]

11 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

The Last Supper scene at the end of OUAT Season 6 rang false because it presented an untrue front of happy relationships. 

I was thinking about and comparing The Last Supper scene with the scene at the end of "Lost" in the Church.  Despite all their differences and conflicts, I could believe that everyone in the Church in "Lost" had grown close to one another and cared about one another.  It was a reflection of the character building the "Lost" writers did do during their show, throwing unlikely characters together and interacting.  Ben Linus was rightfully left outside.

With The Last Supper, I never could buy that ANYONE at the table would want Rumple there.  Regina there reminded me all the forced friendships they tried to jam through between Regina/Snow, Regina/Emma and Regina/Henry.  Zelena did have a better redemption but she had hardly interacted one-on-one with a few of the characters.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Camera One

[andromeda331]

35 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

I was one of those obsessive LOST fans and I enjoyed every bit of the theorizing. I'll always fondly remember desperately refreshing EW, waiting for Doc Jenson's post-episode recaps to drop. I was actually living in Hawaii at the time and even went to one of the season premiere parties on the beach. 

Damon and Carlton did yank our chains with all the mysteries, but IMO, they get unfairly criticized for not answering questions. I think there were only a handful of unanswered questions in LOST. Unfortunately for some of the fans, the biggest question--what is the Island--ended up having a mystical/philosophical answer. I don't think any answer would have satisfied all the viewers. I would have hated it if it had turned out to be some nonsense like "aliens", but maybe others would have liked it. ABC also muddied the issue by putting footage of the plane wreckage at the end (why did anyone think that was good idea??!). LOST wasn't a perfect show by any means, but I do think they revolutionized television as we know it. 

LOST didn't have a clean ending with everything wrapped up with a neat bow tied to it, but I think that was fine. It fit the tone of the show. A&E tried to wrap up OUAT with a neat bow, but the package inside was a contradictory mess. The feel-good factor A&E were going for just didn't work because they never put any effort into creating realistic relationships or a plausible mythology for the show. The Last Supper scene at the end of OUAT Season 6 rang false because it presented an untrue front of happy relationships. The Multiverse merger and Regina's coronation destroyed the logical plausibility of Season 7 in retrospect because of all the time-line mess it created. OUAT had a lot of potential, but so much of that was wasted.

And that's what really should have made ONCE better. They saw what worked on LOST and what didn't. They had five and half seasons that were really good with except of part of season two but they learned from it and realized they needed to be going in a direction. That was a good idea until season six when it was clear they didn't know a lot of the answers and the ones that did didn't make any sense. In hindsight they should found a way to balance both answer some questions while leaving some a mystery. Maybe fans have realized there was no way to wrap it up a bow although to be a little fair the LOST writers always been able to pull it off before. When your used to seeing something spectacular you expect the finale to blow all of those previous away and when that doesn't happen your going to be disappointed. I agree about footage of the wreckage. I can't believe anyone thought that was a good idea.  But A&E had a front row seat to all of it. So you'd think they'd take what worked from LOST and fix what didn't work. Had they done that ONCE would have been awesome.  

[Writing Wrongs]

12 hours ago, Camera One said:

With The Last Supper, I never could buy that ANYONE at the table would want Rumple there. 

It reminded me of the Thanksgiving scene from Smallville. I had a hard time believing that Clark and Martha would be thankful enough to want to have Lionel Luthor there. Big eyeroll.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Writing Wrongs

[Shanna Marie]

I quit Lost after season one, in large part because it seemed to me that they had decided that backstory was the same thing as character development, and I found that frustrating. A complex backstory doesn't develop or flesh out a character unless we see how it affects the character in the present, and that "centric" model of focusing on the character whose backstory we were getting in the episode meant that we weren't seeing that much development in the present. The story was inching along in the present because they spent so much time in the past.

And yet, they really developed the characters compared to what we got in OUAT. But I think that's a topic for the All Seasons thread.

[Writing Wrongs]

I love watching Lindsey Ellis' YT videos about Disney movies. She has a new one talking about Beauty and the Beast (Emma Watson one) and how Disney seems to be making live action remakes to correct/explain things criticized in their animated classics. It's pretty interesting.

[KingOfHearts]

2 hours ago, Writing Wrongs said:

I love watching Lindsey Ellis' YT videos about Disney movies. She has a new one talking about Beauty and the Beast (Emma Watson one) and how Disney seems to be making live action remakes to correct/explain things criticized in their animated classics. It's pretty interesting.

I basically had the same opinion as her over Beauty and the Beast. It tried to fix so many issues that weren't real problems in the first place.

[Spartan Girl]

On August 6, 2018 at 2:57 PM, KingOfHearts said:

I basically had the same opinion as her over Beauty and the Beast. It tried to fix so many issues that weren't real problems in the first place.

It was still better than the Rumple/Belle trainwreck.

But in all seriousness, I did like how the live action Belle and Beast hit it off over mutual love of literature. 

Anyway, I saw Christopher Robin tonight and it was very cute. The best scenes were of Pooh and the gang reacting to the city of London. I couldn't help thinking of OUAT doing something similar, but I doubt it would have been done so well. Thank God they never got their hands on Pooh...

[Shanna Marie]

I saw Christopher Robin today and really loved it. Ewan McGregor certainly has a knack for playing the straight man in stuff like this, where he's all-in with the premise and utterly sincere even though most of his scenes are with a stuffed bear. I don't think Disney's too clear on who the audience is, though. All the previews before the movie were for children's movies, and most weren't even the sort that adults would also like. But I don't think this is a kid's movie at all. A kid might find Pooh and the other animals funny, but the movie's really about being an adult. It's told from the adult perspective. I'm not sure a kid would even get it, and might find the adult angst boring.

Meanwhile, have we discussed The 10th Kingdom here? I scrolled through a number of pages in this thread and didn't find anything, but I have a vague memory of the topic coming up at some point, either here or at TWOP. I watched it when it was on initially, and found that it's on Prime Video and watched the first episode tonight. It's got a lot in common with Once, with the mash-up of fairy tales and the collision of the real world and fairy tales. In the fairy tale world, it's been more than a century since the events of the fairy tales, and an evil queen breaks out of the Snow White Memorial Prison, which sets things in motion that bring a young woman from our world and her father in contact with the fairy tale world. The first episode is mostly in New York, but after that, they're in the fairy tale world. I would say that it scratches the Once itch, up to a point.

[KingOfHearts]

44 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

I saw Christopher Robin today and really loved it. Ewan McGregor certainly has a knack for playing the straight man in stuff like this, where he's all-in with the premise and utterly sincere even though most of his scenes are with a stuffed bear. I don't think Disney's too clear on who the audience is, though. All the previews before the movie were for children's movies, and most weren't even the sort that adults would also like. But I don't think this is a kid's movie at all. A kid might find Pooh and the other animals funny, but the movie's really about being an adult. It's told from the adult perspective. I'm not sure a kid would even get it, and might find the adult angst boring.

I'm not sure if I can stomach knowing that real life Christopher Robin's story was hardly a fairy tale.

[Camera One]

Is the movie about the real Christopher Robin, or about the storybook character after he grew up?

I watched "The 10th Kingdom" way back when it first aired.  I remember practically nothing about it except I think I was disappointed in it overall.  I would love to watch it again in light of "Once Upon a Time".

1 hour ago, Spartan Girl said:

Thank God they never got their hands on Pooh...

Pooh was an evil gang leader terrorizing Hundred Acre Wood and out to snatch The Last Magical Honey Pot. Christopher Robin was supposed to be The Savior but he used the Shears to cut himself away from his responsibilities and turned into Eeyore at Treasure Island.

Edited August 8, 2018 by Camera One

[Spartan Girl]

6 hours ago, Camera One said:

Is the movie about the real Christopher Robin, or about the storybook character after he grew up?

 

Storybook/Disney character.