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I think the only reason Regina was compelling in season 2 was because of Lana’s acting. I don’t know why they thought they would make us have sympathy for Regina by showing us she massacred an entire village and planning to kill everyone in Storybrooke.
It’s a fair point. The slaughtering of the village was ridiculous given what they were trying to do with the character. However, I had no issue with the characters not forgiving her until season 3B because she was truly a terrible person to everyone. Forgiveness takes time and it felt realistic. Regina’s entire story arc is the only thing that doesn’t feel rushed on this show. I don’t know if it’s Lana’s acting, the writing, or whatever. Even when evil, she always loved her son. Henry was her moral ground. And Emma’s relationship with Regina over the years is also the best written relationship on the show. And it shall be her and Emma standing together to take down Rumple once and for all……haha I wish. But back to jumping the shark….as others have pointed out, jumping the shark is something the writers incorporate that seems out of left field just to improve ratings. Just because they wrote away from what made season 1 so great, doesn’t mean they are jumping the shark. If you are one of those people who truly believes they are writing for the sole purpose of shippers out there, then ok. Maybe, because they are attempting to change up the story to please fans and therefore keep the viewers they have. But I just don’t buy it. Writers take risks. They took a risk with Neal and killed him off. Maybe that didn’t work. But as I’ve said before, I think fans get way too caught up in shipping everyone and shipping wars that they think writers do too when the plot happens to coincide with their ship beliefs. I think it’s entirely possible the writers loved Hook, knew the fans loved Hook, felt that Neal had run it’s course, and thought it would be an emotional death, and a way for us to really hate Zelena. And then, Hook gets even closer to Emma and shippers think it’s because there were more CS fans then SwanFire fans. All you can do is speculate. You don’t really know. If I was writing a story, I would certainly take into consideration fan favorites and what not, but it would not be the biggest factor in my storytelling. I would think that I would have a story I wanted to tell and I would tell it. Obviously if your ratings suck, you may need to change things, but to say they jumped the shark because the narrative revolved around ships seems silly. There were ships going on in season 1 too. Obviously snowing, Emma and Graham, Regina and Graham, Rumple and Belle. The writing has just contradicted itself and has just been generally poor lately but that is not jumping the shark.
I’m not a shipper. I wouldn’t have had a problem with Neal’s death if it had been done right and if it had had an emotional impact on the characters, especialy on Emma, but they basically forgot about about him two episodes later when Emma spend an entire episode with Regina (SQ fanservice) and the lips curse started (CS fanservice), and honestly, you don’t fake kill a character just to actually kill him later. Another question I raise is what is the timespan of season 3B? a weak? So was it enough for Emma to mourn Neal for about 5 days before dating another guy? If they really had cared about Emma as a character, if they really had wanted Neal’s death to impact her, they would have taken their time before pairing Emma and Hook to allow it to develop naturally. They didn’t because they wanted that CS wish fulfillment.
I always like to give Ned Stark’s death as a main charater’s death that actually make sense – it set up the next two season with twotfk, and it allowed tragedy for other characters to develop from it, as opposed to Neal’s death.
Another narrative that suggest that the show only cares about the ships now is Regina and Robin in season 4A. They had adulterous sex time after time while his wife was in “coma” and his son was nowhere to be seen, and then Regina admits it to Snow White and the latter is all like “good for you” for doing a horrible thing, just to enable a justification for what Regina is doing so fans would approve OQ.
[adrotate group="5"]"All your questions are pointless"
but I’m curious about what you (and others here) think that original “formula” was, and how it’s changed.
The original formula is much what you said: familial ties and how those nebulous and complicated ties inform much of who we as people are. Ties being both those that are by blood and those that are not.
At the end of the day, OUAT is largely Emma’s fairy tale story and it’s not one about her finding her romantic smooshy-face true love, but her finding 1) her place in the world and 2) her family. Hers’ is, at least at its bare bones, a typical hero story in which the hero is removed from their home at the beginning–where they were misunderstood, lonely, an orphan, alone, damaged or anything combination thereof or even all of those hallmarks–go on some sort of adventure of self-discovery, and then come back home a fully realized person with a purpose but importantly some sort of family, be it of blood or other. Sure, sure they’ve fought some sort of cosmic evil or whatnot, but it’s all in service of their inner journey toward selfhood.
Emma’s journey literally starts with her being removed from her home. Her ending is about coming home–not a literal home as I’m not convinced that A and E will ever give up SB in favor or the EF–but a metaphorical one. The metaphorical home the characters build together in SB as one big, slightly messed up, family. The original formula was about a family that has hurt each other, fought with each other but been bonded through fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it until a new generation can heal the breach. Snow and Regina can’t really heal what happened between them without Emma and, really, Henry. Rumple can’t enter the fold of humanity again without Baelfire and, again, Henry. (Henry, for those paying attention, really was rather important until the writers got distracted by shiny objects).
Now, while the emphasis might be on family and savior actualization, it does not discredit romantic love. It can (and did in S1) work along side the family themes rather fabulously; hence the show opens with Charming TLKing Snow and that arc ends with Emma TLKing Henry. Romantic love working in tandem with familial love. Both of them being “true love.” What happened was that over time, one of those types of “true love” got picked up and placed at the forefront of the story, made to be more important. It wasn’t familial love, in case anyone was wondering. They still occasionally pull out that old hat–like Regina breaking the curse in 3B with Henry or devoting one episode per arc to Emma/Henry/Regina (always with hints of Neal, by the way…405 and then 505)–but it’s not given an equal weight at romantic love. As I’ve said before, for example in S5A, we got countless scenes of CS kissing or having big romantic moments but very few (like almost none) of Emma and her parents or Emma with Henry.
A lot of that, for me, started with the love triangle in 3A which was the truly bad part of what I though was an otherwise great arc. But it really got going when the writers rebooted the series after 3A finale, Going Home. The set back to square zero and made the drive more about romantic love over family love–so while Regina and Henry had a “break the curse” moment, it was in the middle of the season and the season ends with the three big couples all having moments, Belle and Rumple get married, Regina and Robin acknowledge their feelings and being in earnest, while Hook and Emma make out on a bench. In order to do that, the writers had to remove pesky obstacles that would stand in the way of romance working in tandem with family–so Neal (a son before he was ever involved with Emma) died and Henry (always a son and never a love interest until the writers suddenly realized he was no longer 9) became a side character who only pops up to give his two mothers motivation or encouragement.
None of this is a true shark jump. It’s a reboot and a retooling of the series. The shark jump, for me, is still Frozen because, essentially, it became a whole new show after S3A finale and 315. In order to sell this new show to audiences who are getting frustrated by plot holes, inconsistency, character backpedaling and ect ect and moreover, have expectations about what OUAT is supposed to be about, the writers had to have a gimmick that would bring in (say it with me now!) eyeballs and money. And ‘lo, Elsa did pop out of an urn. Frozen is the shark jump for OUAT v 2.0, a version that emphasizes romantic love over familial love and is more invested in the ships than it is in ties of family.
The great irony here, by the way, is that Frozen is one of the few Disney movies that actively places family love over romantic love. This is why I said 5 pages back that while it’s an obvious shark jump (money, ratings, eyeballs) it’s one that makes a modicum of sense with the OUAT version 1.0.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I wouldn’t have had a problem with Neal’s death if it had been done right and if it had had an emotional impact on the characters, especialy on Emma, but they basically forgot about about him two episodes later when Emma spend an entire episode with Regina (SQ fanservice) and the lips curse started (CS fanservice)
Ok so this is honestly the brunt of the disagreement here. Just because they write two characters interacting with each other, does not mean they are doing a service to SQ fans. They have to write a friking story. Regina is a big part of the story with Emma since the start of the show. Just because they have time together on screen does not mean they are trying to appease shippers. You could say they are trying to appease all ships if you go down that road.
[mod]
Let’s keep it polite and centered please. This thread has been a nice almost scholarly approach so far but history has shown on this site and the fandom at large that any time ships come up (which is better, who is being appeased, who is not, who needs to “get over” something ect and ect ad infinitum) things get hairy.
Let’s stick to what’s working with the narrative, what’s not, where things went awry, what’s a shark jump, what is not a shark jump, themes, and so forth. If you have a claim, back it up.
[/mod]
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I wouldn’t have had a problem with Neal’s death if it had been done right and if it had had an emotional impact on the characters, especialy on Emma, but they basically forgot about about him two episodes later when Emma spend an entire episode with Regina (SQ fanservice) and the lips curse started (CS fanservice)
Ok so this is honestly the brunt of the disagreement here. Just because they write two characters interacting with each other, does not mean they are doing a service to SQ fans. They have to write a friking story. Regina is a big part of the story with Emma since the start of the show. Just because they have time together on screen does not mean they are trying to appease shippers. You could say they are trying to appease all ships if you go down that road.
You can’t just take the two sentences I wrote out of context and generalize it to the whole series. Emma having scenes with Regina can be really great and not all of them are fanservice (mainly the ones in 1-3A). I was talking specifically about 317, two episodes after Neal died, probably two days after, and Emma doesn’t even mention him and is up and about to do some alone time with Regina, and not with her son, who just unknowingly lost his father (which is another problem I have with Neal’s death). Regina was not the main point of the post, it was more about Hook, but don’t think that Regina and Emma’s scenes don’t have a lot of subtext which their main purpose is fanservice (405 is the best examples with lines like “I wanted you to be my friend” – these are 30 year old women. 30 year old women should not talk like they are 13 years old).
"All your questions are pointless"
[mod] Let’s keep it polite and centered please. This thread has been a nice almost scholarly approach so far but history has shown on this site and the fandom at large that any time ships come up (which is better, who is being appeased, who is not, who needs to “get over” something ect and ect ad infinitum) things get hairy. Let’s stick to what’s working with the narrative, what’s not, where things went awry, what’s a shark jump, what is not a shark jump, themes, and so forth. If you have a claim, back it up. [/mod]
Sorry about my last post, published it before I saw this one.
"All your questions are pointless"
Let’s keep it polite and centered please. This thread has been a nice almost scholarly approach so far but history has shown on this site and the fandom at large that any time ships come up (which is better, who is being appeased, who is not, who needs to “get over” something ect and ect ad infinitum) things get hairy. Let’s stick to what’s working with the narrative, what’s not, where things went awry, what’s a shark jump, what is not a shark jump, themes, and so forth. If you have a claim, back it up.
I thought what we were doing was fine. I’m not saying what ship is better or what not. I honestly could care less. In fact, just seeing you have to throw the warning message up due to shipping stuff seems to prove that people care way too much about the ship wars. But I digress. I assure you, that is not me. I just thought given the topic of shark jumping, and because Bar Farer brought up how he felt A&E switched the story to focus solely on the ships, and it was in that moment that he felt the shark jumping occurred, I thought everything we were talking about was relevant. And I can’t speak for him, but I thought everything was civil. Disagreeing can be civil. It’s not all unicorns and rainbows haha. I have nothing against his opinions and I’m sure he feels the same way. In fact, I enjoy the banter. It shows you care. But if you guys think it’s too much, my bad.
Let’s keep it polite and centered please. This thread has been a nice almost scholarly approach so far but history has shown on this site and the fandom at large that any time ships come up (which is better, who is being appeased, who is not, who needs to “get over” something ect and ect ad infinitum) things get hairy. Let’s stick to what’s working with the narrative, what’s not, where things went awry, what’s a shark jump, what is not a shark jump, themes, and so forth. If you have a claim, back it up.
I thought what we were doing was fine. I’m not saying what ship is better or what not. I honestly could care less. In fact, just seeing you have to throw the warning message up due to shipping stuff seems to prove that people care way too much about the ship wars. But I digress. I assure you, that is not me. I just thought given the topic of shark jumping, and because Bar Farer brought up how he felt A&E switched the story to focus solely on the ships, and it was in that moment that he felt the shark jumping occurred, I thought everything we were talking about was relevant. And I can’t speak for him, but I thought everything was civil. Disagreeing can be civil. It’s not all unicorns and rainbows haha. I have nothing against his opinions and I’m sure he feels the same way. In fact, I enjoy the banter. It shows you care. But if you guys think it’s too much, my bad.
I didn’t mind the debate, I actually enjoy discussing with you, and everyone on this forum for that matter, this is one of the most level headed OUAT forums and I feel comfortable discussing here.
I can see why it can be viewed as off topic and the fear that a ship war can start any minute now, for what is worth, I don’t really care about shipping either.
"All your questions are pointless"
It’s okay, everyone. @MatthewPaul and I just tend to get a wee bit nervous about discussion of ships. We’ve been holding this place together for 4+ years mostly with duct tape and glue and often times…BOOM. Bad things. Things that make me twitch internally. And when he and I start texting each other with “we probably need to keep an eye on this…” then we like to nip things in the bud. Again, because of past BOOMs.
Anyway onwards…to address a few things.
Yes, everyone cares way too much about shipping, but it also this goes back to what I was saying upthread about OUAT version 2.0…it generates more interest in the shipping and emphasizes that the ships (or at least the romantic love) is more important than anything else. Think back to S1. People shipped, to be sure, but you didn’t have the almost violent on-line cyber wars that are far too common with the OUAT fandom now. There was a strong GoldenSwan vs Rumbelle presence but certainly nothing (nothing!!) compared to CS vs SF. Why? Because the show didn’t focus on romantic love to extent (and place such emphasis upon) romantic love. It worked in tandem with family love to show that both are just as powerful and meaningful but what made OUAT so fresh was that it focused on that family love as being given equal weight as romantic. That weight is now given to romantic ships almost exclusively. Whether or not you think that’s bait or appeasement isn’t really the point; it’s the shift in narrative and what the show upheld at its core.
I agree with something Bar said upthread and have said so myself a few times in other places: I would have been okay (well, more okay, I guess) with Neal’s death if it had any sort of emotional weight. Yes, I wanted SF together and I wanted Emma and Neal and Henry to find Tallahassee inside SB with their fully healed family of Regina, Snow, Charming, Rumple and Belle, but the hardest part of Neal’s death is really two fold and nothing to do with shipping: 1) the signal in the show’s direction to uphold “sexy” romantic love over family–the show could easily have had Neal and Emma NOT reunite but had Neal be a father to Henry and thereby break the ‘Stiltskin clans history of abandonment. and 2) that the death mattered for all of 5 seconds when death can be a powerful motivator in narrative. If anyone watches Arrow, think about Sara’s death in S3. It carried the show through the entire season. Whenever anyone talked about their motivations or their impetus for what they were doing, it all came back to losing someone they deeply loved. That’s how how you tell a death-of-a-character story in media. But because the show shifted thematically, Neal’s death was never given any sort of meaning or weight.
The shark jump is an irritating side affect of the show rebooting and rebranding itself.
A lot of times people who are angry with OUAT and the writers get labeled as bitter shippers and nothing more. Sure, I don’t like that SF didn’t work out but my main complaint has always been that change in tone and thesis. From a show that was fresh by virtue of strong women, female focused, and centered on family love (and thus a deconstruction of most modern day fairy tales) to one that makes women all about the men they are dating/love/married to and centers on romantic love it went from fresh to cliche.
My complaints and deconstruction of this show doesn’t stem from a place of deep unabated hatred. It stems from disappointment.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"The great irony here, by the way, is that Frozen is one of the few Disney movies that actively places family love over romantic love.
Yes, absolutely! (And also everything you said in the post about Emma’s hero journey is spot on). Which is why it’s also so frustrating that Emma is now stuck in her own version of eternal recurrence (the reset to 0 phenomenon). And while I also agree with some of the other posters here that Regina’s arc stands out as the only one that’s relatively well done, sometimes it feels like OUAT treats character development as a zero sum game. Which makes me wonder if maybe the writers have a very limited set of ideas about how characters can develop, and therefore if the progression doesn’t go along a certain model, the character stagnates. Emma, Snow, Charming, and Rumple all suffer from different degrees of fossilization at this stage.
I think trying to find “causality” with why the show went so awry (fanservice or story) is always going to be speculative insofar as it tries to attribute intent to the writers. But we certainly can think about how it went south (i.e the mechanics) — so that’s where shark jumps and plot holes come into play. The other question is what sorts of messages OUAT then promotes, wittingly or not. In that sense, re: shipping — there’s an argument to be made that the kind of bullying, ship obsessed fandom doesn’t just come out of thin air, but is actually produced by the show itself. @RG, your observation about the change in the shipping practices suggests exactly that — that there’s a turning point in the “mood” of the fandom that also corresponds to a turning point in the show.
Similarly, the upthread discussion of SQ I think illustrates the way OUAT shifted gears with privileging romantic love: that all (non-blood-kin) “pairings” are tinged with something like potential romance is a bit odd. There’s something about OUAT then that seems to promote a rather narrow and rigid hierarchy of who counts as “significant others,” while executing a weird sort of double speak — so it’s about family on the surface, but what “motors” the story and characters forward is the romance.
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