To be fair here, it’s not like the show itself doesn’t have the built-in idea of taking well-known characters and combining them. As a person who was onboard Hookriel, well I cannot draw a line at TPB being used for Hookiecup. I do still feel Emma ought to be her own unique character but if that is not the TPB plan well then it isn’t, but I don’t think it could have been their ORIGINAL plan.
Oh absolutely. And I wasn’t saying that there is no way that Hook couldn’t be Wesley and that Emma couldn’t be Buttercup; I’m saying it’s all interpretation and those who argue for HookieCup are coming at that with their lenses firmly in place and already have romantic notions about HookieCup/CS. That plays into their interpretation and that’s fine. But it’s important to remember that each of these characters are Adam and Eddy’s. They may combine several classic characters into one, but that in and of itself makes that character unique and the sole property of A and E. So, Snow is *not* Disney’s Snow and she’s not the Grimm Brothers’s Snow. She’s A and E Snow White; she bears traits from previous incarnations of Snow but she also has other ideas laced into her being.
Social Media is a new thing for TV networks, and with this week’s news of Blockbuster dying out, it’s just another sign of how entertainment is adjusting to a world of digital media distribution. They want live viewers to sell to advertisers rather than DVR add skipping, who knows when they’ll see it viewers. Adam is motivated to make sure his show does well. As an artist maybe some part of him wants to tell his “vision” but ultimately we all know there are so many limits placed upon network TV. Budgets, actors, egos, copyrights, weather, you name it but also, fan reaction. So there’s this fad of CS out there now and regardless of how intentional it was from the writer’s point of view, they are aware of it. Despite all the people who say it was clearly the plan from the start, clearly endgame even now, there’s always the possibility it was added in or its just a bit of a diversion because it IS popular. We can’t know. We may never know unless the writers reveal it or the actors do. I am never going to believe ReHo was the plan from the start. The tattoo, the actor change, the lack of any particular obvious hints –it all just says “ok, they are embroidering this new tale now” but they are building it slowly. They did it in a way where even if it wasn’t always the plan it looks like it is being planned.
I also agree with this. I think it might have been GoldenKey who said this but it feels like A and E aren’t writing for themselves anymore but rather for their fans. It’s a hard line to fine, though. A and E are writers but they are also business men and they recognize the importance of live views and bringing in money in order to continue writing. So on the one hand, they need to stay true to their vision but on the other, they have to ensure that their vision isnt going to drive away the people watching. I see equal amounts of “CS is endgame” and “SF is endgame” but like you said, until Adam and Eddy show or tell us “this is how it was always going to be” we don’t know. There are some numbers to back up the CS popularity, but it’s not substantial at all. The KISS episode was higher rated in the demos than the episode before, BUT “Ariel” pulled in an even higher demo rating and that had more to do with the iconic character than any lingering CS feels. And then 307 dipped back down to our standard 2.1 and I think that is mostly attributed to being tired of the triangle because the mermaid was still in the episode. (I know far too much about ONCE ratings. I have turned into a crazy person)
If he’d been Neal, just real-world-guy, her first-love, then I guess I’d think he’s just an obstacle to her romance with Hook. He isn’t though. They spent too much time setting him up as a kid, and as an adult, though his story doesn’t take center stage so far. Like Henry, there are a lot of characters who react because of him even if we don’t see him and his point of view at certain times. Yet we DO see his point of view. They did take him to the FTL and give us those season-staging scenes of him stating his goals, get to my son and my…I don’t know what she is but I want a second chance because I love her.
I agree. They did a lot of work setting up Nealfire. I mean…the Curse was for him. The thing that drove the show from the beginning. That’s what I loved so much about “The Return.” It took everything you thought you knew (Regina cast a curse to get her happy ending over Snowing–typical fairy tale stuff) and turned it on its head (Papa Rumple set in the Curse in motion after he lost his son in order to find him–very human stuff). The Neal = plot device theory is slowly driving me mad because it means that the entire show is built on a rather shaky literary device and I don’t think that’s worthy of Adam and Eddy and their undeinable skill. We all fell in love with the show from the start in season one. To say that the show, built around the idea of a father finding his son and everything that went into that, is just a plot device…well…that’s bad writing. Especially if it’s in service of another love story that has yet to really take hold ON SCREEN.