Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

RumplesGirl wrote: Yeah, fantasy only functions if your rules are consistent!

I agree. If the writers of “OUAT” had introduced different rules in S1 like “magic CAN bring back the dead, but only in special circumstances like acts of self-sacrifice” then I’d be very accepting of David’s miraculous resurrection.

Take Narnia for example. In C.S. Lewis’s novel “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe,” Aslan the lion is willingly killed by the Snow Witch in exchange for the lives of other characters. Yet, just as she thinks she’s defeated the lion, he comes back to life. After his resurrection, Aslan explains to Lucy, one of the story’s protagonists, how this is possible.

“It means that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”
―Aslan describing the Deeper Magic (Chapter 15).

So, because it was part of the “deeper magic” for a person to be resurrected so long as the sacrifice was made for someone else, it’s totally in keeping with the story’s internal logic for Aslan to return to life.

With Once, however, it was stated explicitly by Rumplestilitksin that magic can do much but that it can’t raise the dead. That is why Rumple could not resurrect David’s brother, Prince James,  but had to convince David to take his place instead. Yet, now S3 is full of loopholes and exceptions to the “dead is dead” rule (which is more like a guideline only enforced now when it’s convenient for the writers to do so). The story has become inconsistent and therefore unbelievable.