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Honestly, I feel Hook shouldn’t have lived past Neverland. He just serves no purpose. Neverland is his story.
I agree. The weird thing was though, when they were doing the Neverland arc which was the perfect place for Hook to be more central to the story, they kept him out of the limelight more or less, he was only a supporting player. Now that he is irrelevant to the story, he is being pushed more as Emma’s love interest.
[adrotate group="5"]All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of Felixreveal that he’s also another fairy tale character?
Some speculated that Hook could either be or be the son of Davey Jones. Hooks name is Killian Jones, and I believe he has his hook on his left hand (I think) whereas the book version of Hook is named James and has his hook on his right hand, so some thought those were clues that he wasn’t Hook or maybe not “just Hook”.
And Davey Jones is flippin awesome so I would have loved to see that come to fruition. And plus it would have made his interaction with Ursula more interesting.
"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGICSome speculated that Hook could either be or be the son of Davey Jones.
Ha! I love it. And while we’re at it, why not aim big?
Some speculated that Hook could either be or be the son of Davey Jones.
Ha! I love it. And while we’re at it, why not aim big?
YES!!!!!!!! XD
"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGICWe’ve wandered well away from the topic again. It makes me think that what we need is a thread where it is ok to actually be critical of Hook because it feels like there’s a bit of a gag order (imposed and policed by certain people who flip out if you dare suggest anything bad about him, but also get up in arms if you suggest that maybe those he’s in conflict with aren’t the worst of the worst and totally deserving of every bad thing happening to them, but most of all that he did to them. I do get tired of seeing this thread turn into a place that’s dominated by discussion about Jones, even if it feels like half of a conversation that I know cannot happen elsewhere and truly, I get the need to have that conversation….but I just wish it didn’t have to happen so much.
I know a large part of it is also that there’s nothing new, and nothing good really, to discuss about Neal or Emma let alone interactions between the two because Quiet Minds ended their story in a way that left many of us with anything but quiet minds. It was bad writing, and while I’m glad the writing staff is changing and Kalinda Vasquez is leaving, its not like she alone could possibly be blamed for the overall “straight out of CS” fan fic moments, and its not like those moments were the only bad bits of writing. We had things that seemed very much like a writing staff that is trying to bend their world around the three most popular characters, in terms of online and convention fan voices. So basically, that’s Dearies, Evil Regals and Hookers–if you’re not a huge fan of those characters, as I was not as I was here more for the heroic types, this story quickly became a study in a twisted morality fairy-tale of “Why its ok to be Selfish, because no one is perfect, and we all just want to be happy!”
The show works hard to avoid giving a voice in the narrative to the victims of villainous acts, unless they in turn are villains themselves. The writers have a few tricks up their sleeves for this, first, they avoid confrontation between a victim and a villain until the act is “water under the bridge”–that is, enough other stuff happens, particularly where the Villain helps the victim or the victim hurts the Villain so that on balance, the audience is tempted to feel they’re “even”.
We see this type of pattern with Ariel and Hook (so he refused to help her and went so far as to (try) to kill a man but totally accidentally saves her from imprisonment in a bottle, so bygones are bygones!), Greg/Owen and Regina (yeah she orphaned him and murdered his father, but he grew up evil and tried to kill everyone and tortured her!), Neal and Hook (Hook traded him to Pan for favorable treatment, but he did help him fight Pan to get his son back), Snow and Regina (oh so many things….).
So Slurpeez’s list of things Jones has done that Emma seems to have a rosier picture of than we in the audience might, is far from a writing flaw that’s specific to those two characters. It’s actually just part of a pattern of writing that results in certain moments that seem like they ought to be emotional and significant–except that it never comes up again.
So to earn this post’s place on this thread…here are a long list of moments that got lost between Emma and Neal. Emma never found out Neal gave up his memories for her to get hers back, at least that we saw on screen. Did she realize he sacrificed himself for the Darlings and that’s why Wendy was so willing to risk her life for him? Did she understand he considered them like family and they him (at least, at one point, now they’re apparently off in modern London and too busy to worry about their once-almost-adopted-brother dying or the son he left behind). Does Emma know Neal stayed with Snow and Charming in that missing year to help them retake the castle from the Wicked Witch and only left after they were sort of settled? Does she know he didn’t just land in that cage in NL, but had actually woken up from the near-fatal gunshot wound determined to get back to her and earn her trust and forgiveness? Does she know he met Robin, Mulan, Aurora and Phillip and that more or less, they all had positive impressions of him? Did she know he crossed worlds to get to her? We can throw the *how* he got there bit in the category of unsavory details Emma might not know, because using a little kid as bait, even if you think he’ll be safe, is still questionable behavior, just like stealing a kid’s heart for a magic mirror skype session is. Neal never found out Emma stayed two years in Tallahassee. He did see the bug, but we didn’t get to see these two talk about that at all.
Characters do not talk about certain things on screen and so there is so much more that we know as the audience that apparently doesn’t have any bearing on the way the characters will act because they aren’t aware of it. In one sense, those things may as well not have happened except they did, but it will never be important down the line unless there’s another plot-driven reason for it to be important.
I’m still confused why Emma explained her bug to Regina as something she stole just because she likes yellow, rather than saying its where she met Neal. If anything a statement like that would have been the right sort of emotional bomb statement to allow the two to switch topics back to the demon beast chasing them. It would have felt like Emma shared something with Regina that she normally wouldn’t share so easily, and would have set up their deepening friendship rather than retconning Emma’s relationship with Neal as having nothing to do with the car. Of course, a bigger oddity in terms of things not revealed between these two is the fact that Regina killed Graham and Emma still has no idea.
Let’s look at August now. No one except Rumple knows August actually tried to use the Dark One’s dagger before magic came to town–something that would work now but didn’t then. No one knows he stole from a woman he thought was dying of cancer. Emma does know he stole the money Neal intended to give her, or at least, she knows that’s what Neal said, but she’s not had a conversation with August about it. She won’t either, because all of that is now “Water under the Bridge”. There’s no way for Emma to see August turned into a kid then tortured and turn back and have the first thing she says to him be “so…ten years ago, you stole from me” and not come off like the worst, most entitled jerk ever. Yet the writers cut straight to Emma declaring August her Best. Real. Friend (Totally Platonic! Don’t Panic CS/SQ Fans!). They didn’t earn Emma declaring anything of the sort about August–would have been better to have Emma say she’s glad he’s an adult again, and its kind of complicated and leave it at that. Her feelings ought to be complicated. He did try to help her, but she was freaking out in the woods and his method of helping her wound up getting a little rushed since he was desperate not to turn into a wooden statue. It wasn’t just about her basically, and does Emma know that? He’d have used the dagger if he could because ultimately, he didn’t really care about Emma–just breaking his own curse. That bit of selfishness? Maybe he made up for it when he tried to expose Tamara and came back for everyone, but again, file some of those details in things Emma does not know. Like Jones, August sort of knew Neal was in danger from Tamara because she was not what she said, and despite maybe claiming to be Neal’s friend, he did not take action soon enough to help Neal avoid being shot. That’s another thing Emma won’t discuss with August (or Jones), ever. August also will never have a conversation with Henry about how August knew his dad too, both the positive and negative aspects of that.
These are things that are not relevant to the main thrust of the plot of Dark Swan–unless some of them come up in a spell of shattered sight way, where Emma rants and the audience is supposed to dismiss what she’s saying as unfounded and excessively hurtful exaggerations against these people who really care about her (despite these things they’ve hid from her). Speaking of the Spell of Shattered sight–Anna never had a chance to encounter Belle again, nor did anyone call Belle out for lying about not knowing Anna or Elsa–but again, Water under the bridge and when the poor woman’s kicked her husband that she thought was her TRUE LOVE out of town, saving the day to boot, who is going to come down hard on her for a lie?
I didn’t of course even go into Belle and Rumple, which is chock-full of instances of “water under the bridge” and with Rumple’s heart all scrubbed clean, its unlikely we’re ever going to get more from Belle than that deus-ex-machina-gauntlet-driven speech where she said there were signs but she didn’t want to see them. They aren’t going to talk specifically about her views about the choices he’s made–and if he does wake up, well ultimately is she a person who believes the end justifies the means like he was? Or does she think that some means are never justified, no matter the end? I’m not positive I can answer that question about any of these characters given how the writers feel like they can introduce new “old” events that apparently were never talked about (like the Eggnapping plot). It’s the flip side of how things we think ought to be talked about are not, there are apparently things that happened that are now being talked about at length (but were not before).I honestly do not expect the writing to suddenly improve just because they have one new, inexperienced voice on the team for next season–but I can’t help but feel Vasquez leaving is still a good sign, because between her writing the Hook backstory graphic novel and the episodes she’s done and things she’s said in interviews, I’m feeling a bit hopeful that the writers might be gearing up for another change, some kind of “reset” to where the story went in the last season.
If the writers don’t refine their process though, it won’t get rid of the story-go-round feeling that certain things are written by Writer A who has not talked to Writer B, and therefore it won’t show up when relevant in the next story, and by then so much will happen it will feel irrelevant to ever bring up.
Sorry, I’m out of time to try to edit this to a bit more coherence –but basically…the biggest villain in this show is the writing.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
It makes me think that what we need is a thread where it is ok to actually be critical of Hook because it feels like there’s a bit of a gag order
Well we have character discussion threads, but lord forbid we speak ill of St. Jones outside of this place. Any kind of criticism of his character is seen a “Hook-hate” by others so…yeah, no.
but I can’t help but feel Vasquez leaving is still a good sign, because between her writing the Hook backstory graphic novel and the episodes she’s done and things she’s said in interviews, I’m feeling a bit hopeful that the writers might be gearing up for another change, some kind of “reset” to where the story went in the last season.
Let us pray.
the biggest villain in this show is the writing.
That basically sums it up for me.
"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGICOne of the moments that we should’ve seen but never did was Neal confronting Rumple about Milah or the fact that Hook dated Neal’s mom and is now dating Neal’s baby mother. What about Belle reuniting with her father? There’s lots of emotional moments we should’ve seen and would’ve liked to have seen but didn’t.
I understand what you’re saying @kfchimera about all the Hook talk in this thread but as @Watcher pointed out, this is the only place we can be critical of Hook without it causing arguments elsewhere on the forum.
All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of FelixAll I wanted was some of this:
With a little bit of this:
Just a touch of this:
and tons of this:
But all we got was this:
But who knows. We’ve got Zelena, the murderer, presumably the dark one vault key (the murder weapon). Maybe OUAT will pull a True Blood and bring us a ghost MRJ like True Blood did.
"I could have the giant duck as my steed!" --Daniel Radcliffe
Keeper Of Tamara's Taser , Jafar's Staff, Kitsis’s Glasses , Ariel’s Tail, Dopey's Hat , Peter Pan’s Shadow, Outfit, & Pied Cloak,Red Queen's Castle, White Rabbit's Power To World Hop, Zelena's BroomStick, & ALL MAGICIt makes me think that what we need is a thread where it is ok to actually be critical of Hook because it feels like there’s a bit of a gag order
Ain’t gonna happen. Sorry. I’ve tried my hardest over the past three years but I’m surrendering to the cesspool. It’s bad enough that I’ve got people talking smack about my forums already but to have to take these kinds of conversations outside of here…good lord. I would never sleep ever again. Sorry.
I’m still confused why Emma explained her bug to Regina as something she stole just because she likes yellow, rather than saying its where she met Neal.
Because who’s Neal?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
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