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Well, Matt is having confllict of interests, bc he works with A&E on their new show, Yvette appears she is rude to every fan she interacts in all shows she likes and doesnt agree with her. Let also not forget leanne, Natalie, Jim, Kirstin and others all bad examples of reporters that align with bullies of ouat fandom against “the haters”.
Moreover, the fact that they never defended MRJ when he got all the hate and when those horrible rumors about him were made up as well as how they don’t defend Lana really disgust me. These are actors that has been working for you and they suffer because you can’t stand up against that group in the fandom and call them out on their bad behavior. I just have no respect for these guys and anyone who enables them to continue with this.
Agree, like i said before, is not the story that upsets me, is the real life people and how they treat others. Just now i was re-reading a TV line gos article made by Matt around the TCA time and there was a comment there, that said that even tho the story looked good, she/he was not fan of the actors, especially MRJ ( since ouat) bc he is a bad actor, i mean, really they actually hate an actor bc he the character he played on the previous project was in the middle of their ship. I even said, when GoS premieres if these things repeat, i know he wont say anything, but i will tweet adam to control his fans.
[adrotate group="5"]"I offended you with my opinion? Ha, you should hear the ones I keep to myself".
With certain aspects of 5A seemingly influenced by the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which coincidentally Jane Espenson collaborated on, I wonder if CS is actually Once’s imitation of the Spike/Buffy pairing (reformed villain/main hero), only A&E completely missed the point of Spike/Buffy.
Spuffy was not written to be viewed as an ideal relationship. It was completely unhealthy for both people involved and was played as such. Spike became obsessed by Buffy whilst Buffy’s attitude to Spike blew hot and cold to the point where he didn’t know if he was coming or going. One minute Buffy would sleep with him, the next she’d tell him to leave her alone. Buffy would say he disgusted her then she’d seek him out for sex to make herself feel better only to then be disgusted by it and the cycle went on and on culminating in Spike attempting to rape Buffy.
Spike was meant to be killed off in season 2, however he proved so popular that he was kept on. He disappeared for season 3, guest starring in one episode before returning full time in season 4. Since realistically Spike wouldn’t be able to last if he was still in villain mode and killing people, the show came up with a plot device that enabled Spike to transition from villain to anti-hero and stick around for the rest of the series.
Spuffy didn’t actually get together until season 6 and the “romantic” relationship didn’t last the season. It was shown to be unhealthy from the start. Buffy was in a bad place after being dragged out of heaven and brought back to life and she latched on to Spike because she wanted to feel something. It wasn’t love. Emotions were toyed with, and the lines became dangerously blurred on what constituted consent and what didn’t. Buffy and Spike somewhat mended their relationship in season 7 although it was in a non-romantic sense. When Spike was about to die and Buffy declared “I love you” to him, Spike turned around and told her “no you don’t but thanks for saying it”. The characters recognised that what they had wasn’t real love.
How does this compare to CS? Hook appeared in season 2 as a villain, got “reformed”, became obsessed with Emma, started a “romantic” relationship with Emma, etc. Basically A&E are writing their version of Spuffy but are displaying it as this “great romance” instead of showing how unhealthy it really is. Whereas the Spuffy dynamic evolved naturally, CS has been rushed through. There is no reason why Emma is interested in Hook other than poor writing and the fact that A&E need to shoehorn Hook into the story somehow.
If A&E hadn’t caved to fan pandering, CS could’ve been a golden opportunity. They could’ve shown that “strong” women can and do find themselves in unhealthy relationships through no fault of their own. They could’ve shown Emma struggle to get out of that situation and played it as realistic even though it involves two fictional characters. As it is, A&E are displaying it as a “true love” story and that is wrong on so many levels. Emma is a shadow of her former self, yet supposedly this is considered an ideal for her.
Impressionable young people watch this show, and actually it is partly through the media that they learn to distinguish between what is considered a good relationship and what is not as that is where they’ll get exposed the most to “romance”. Spike was a good looking guy, but the relationship he had with Buffy was not good, and Buffy was shown getting out of that and calling it quits when Spike went too far.
CS on the other hand, is worrying. There is no denying that Hook is good looking even with the Hook, but nobody is calling him out on his manipulative behaviours. He obsessed over Emma to the point where he had to “win” her. He was confident he would as he told her “WHEN I win your heart, and I WILL win it” instead of using words like “if”. In season 4, Hook put on the nice guy act for Emma and her family but was shown to be blackmailing Rumple for his own gain. This came to bite him in the arse, but rather than portraying both men for being in the wrong, Rumple for controlling Hook via his heart, and Hook for trying to blackmail Rumple in the first place, the show tried to absolve Hook of all blame while completely vilifying Rumple. In season 5 Hook deliberately said some very nasty things to Emma because he wanted to hurt her. The show wants to make out that it was the Dark One talking rather than Hook, but the thing is we’ve had 4 seasons of Rumple as the dark one, and not once has the show excused Rumple’s actions as “it was the dark one, not Rumple” so why is that excuse now being used for Hook?
As weird as it may sound, it’s almost as if the actual unhealthy relationship is between Hook and the show itself. Hook does less than stellar things and the show goes out of its way to make excuses for his actions. “He was upset”, “He was controlled”, “It was the dark one talking when those hurtful things were said, not him”, “He didn’t mean it!” The show needs to get out of its unhealthy relationship with Hook because until that day, CS is going to be displayed as this paradigm of virtue rather than the mess it actually is.
All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of FelixJust now i was re-reading a TV line gos article made by Matt around the TCA time and there was a comment there, that said that even tho the story looked good, she/he was not fan of the actors, especially MRJ ( since ouat) bc he is a bad actor, i mean, really they actually hate an actor bc he the character he played on the previous project was in the middle of their ship
This, right there, boggles my mind. How old are these people? I mean, seriously. I don’t mean to be ageist, but sometimes it sounds like the OUAT fandom is simply overrun with middle-schoolers.
@PriceofMagic – You make some excellent points. But I think there are two main differences between Spuffy and CS. First, Spike had relationships to other characters in the show. Spike was an arrogant, impulsive loudmouth, but he was also occasionally capable of empathy, and the writers interspersed his usual comic relief dialogue with some pretty insightful lines. He was sympathetic despite being an anti-hero.And second, despite the physicality of their relationship, Spike didn’t really come across as an inherent sleaze bucket. And at no point was he, or Buffy, or Spuffy sugar-coated. It was a bad situation all around that had a fairly bad ending, even though it was also one that had an emotional resolution.
OUAT did an extremely shoddy job at integrating Hook into the fabric of the story, and in combination with Hook coming off as completely scuzzy half the time, it just raises all kinds of red flags. Essentially, I think the secret “wish fulfillment” aspect that’s powering these really bad writing choices is that Hook is meant to be a reformed pick-up artist. But it just doesn’t work. There’s always going to be a segment of the population that’s going to look at this particular portrayal of masculinity, and reject it, not matter how much we’re being told he’s a different man. I think it’s probably about one’s gender ideology and personal politics. I’m pretty sure for my personally there is nothing that I will ever like about Hook — I suppose that’s a form of bias, but I just can’t get over the disgust over his sleaziness. It’s not because he’s a “sexualized” character, whatever that means. It’s because the character, at its very core, derives his own identity and self-worth from “adding notches to his belt”.
It’s probably also why I find Rumple, with all his ForTheEvilz ridiculousness, a lot less loathsome than Hook. Say whatever you will about DO!Rumple, he never came across as a lecher.
It was a bad situation all around that had a fairly bad ending, even though it was also one that had an emotional resolution.
This, for me, is the biggest and most important difference. Joss knew that it couldn’t be romanticized and he didn’t try to. Spike didn’t get the girl in the end. The girl recognized that it was unhealthy and terrible for her, for him. One of the best moments fro S6 is when Buffy asks Tara, tearfully and full of self-loathing and disgust, why she “lets him do those things to me.”
I’m pretty sure for my personally there is nothing that I will ever like about Hook — I suppose that’s a form of bias, but I just can’t get over the disgust over his sleaziness.
Same. He makes my skin crawl; he reminds me of men out there in the real world who believe that women should fall into their arms (and other body parts) simply because they are who they are. (RG points to all the Killgrave commentary she’s done in relation to CS and Hook; and I know I’m a broken record at this point, but in media this type of character can really resonate-when the writers are conscious of what they are doing, when the writers make that privileged part of their narrative and combat it within their story; but that’s the point. A and E aren’t aware of what their show is saying).
It’s not because he’s a “sexualized” character, whatever that means. It’s because the character, at its very core, derives his own identity and self-worth from “adding notches to his belt”.
Yes this. Being sexualized isn’t necessarily a bad thing; human beings are sexual creatures by and large. But it’s far more nuanced than what OUAT does. OUAT doesn’t really do this and tends to categorize their characters in binary terms: You can be the Madonna or the Whore. You can be the Sweet Guy (which usually means either virgin or sexual but with no outlet because women apparently reject those kinds of guys in favor of the second type) or the Predator who has had *tons* of women but none of them lasting longer than a few knocks of the boots. (Note: in a lot of stories, the Predator is only tamed through the Madonna which is a whole other disturbing thing).
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Joss knew that it couldn’t be romanticized and he didn’t try to. Spike didn’t get the girl in the end. The girl recognized that it was unhealthy and terrible for her, for him.
Yes. I think what was so beautifully done with Spuffy is this idea that where Buffy and Spike are with each other is largely a symptom of where they are with themselves, and this absolutely comes across. Both become deeply unlikeable because of the way they treat each other, but it’s written with enough complexity (or simply enough “meta”) for the audience to realize that this isn’t because they’re horrible people, but because they’re both in a deep dark emotional hole, and latching onto each other largely out of desperation and desire to feel better at the expense of someone else because that’s all they have the energy to do. They have good chemistry, and Spike could be woobified, but the show is steadfast enough in its politics to go to all sorts of lengths to not make Spuffy “shippable.”
Similarly, with Jessica Jones, the show leaves you 0 room to want to “ship” Jessica and Killgrave. It constantly works really hard to bring the audience just to the brink, then yanks it back and goes “no no, don’t go there. Your instinct was right. Stay with Jessica.” It’s done so well.
OUAT is the opposite. It absolutely does everything to enable “shipping.” I think the main problem is not even the ships — though they are a big part of it — it’s how OUAT comes off as incredibly judgmental, while totally lacking any sort of reliable moral compass. It presents its audience with shades of (increasingly darker) gray, but insists that some of these grays are actually whites, and some are blacks. Unless this is actually some sort of brilliant meditation on the hypocritical nature of humans, that essentially all these characters we’ve come to know for years now are just in the grips of complete and utter dissociative psychosis and have no sense of what way is up.
If that’s what’s up, then alright. I could live with that.
OUAT = where fairytale characters come to die.
The show clearly tries to be Buffy so hard. I would like to add more points.
In “Buffy”, after she sends Angel to hell and he comes back, her friends, understandably, weren’t supportive of their relationship because Angel tried to kill them all, as well as with her relationship with Spike. The characters in “Buffy” weren’t affraid to call Buffy out on her problematic relationship. Something that OUAT is affraid to do because then it would point out all the flaws of Emma and Hook relationship and enable viewership to think if that relationship is problematic. It is something I saw with Regina and Robin relationship when Regina admitted to Snow that she had adulterous sex with Robin, and Snow, instead of saying “This is wrong”, encouraged her.
Which is why the characters in OUAT seems so unrelatable, because they don’t act as what normal people would in those situation, and I’m tired of the excuse that this is a fantasy show, that this isn’t real. The point is that characters should have real emotions and real reactions in a fantasy setting.
OUAT could never be like Buffy even if it wanted to because Buffy is a character driven show. Everything that happens has a goal to serve the characters and develop them as opposed to OUAT where characters have become templates to drop plot on them that won’t affect them and won’t develop them. The villains in Buffy never got the depth or the “Grey” like OUAT’s villains cause their whole point is to affect the main characters, these villains are going to be off the show once Buffy defeats them so there is no point in wasting time in order to make them sympathetic or showing the backstory of why they became the way they are.
Even Charmed, which became silly in its later seasons depicted a woman getting out of bad relationship.
I just hope for a conversation between Emma and Snow, in which Emma tells her that what she and Hook had wasn’t love, that she was weak and tried to fill the hole in her heart, which was created after Neal died and Hook was easy, it was easy to be in a relationship with him, that she couldn’t lose Hook cause losing him ment that she’ll return back to the hole that was created after Neal died. Hook was a distraction from realizing the lost love with Neal, which will make sense cause in 5A there were moments where I thought that that is what they try to do such as Henry using the song, Emma cries with a dreamcather in her hand, Emma deflecting Zelena when she said “I killed Neal”, trying to avenge him, using Regina’s tear for her loss of Daniel, instead of Emma’s of Neal, which might have worked, Regina trying to bring out the truth from Emma, which later we realize is a commitment issue with Hook that could have been related to Neal, how can she find tallahassee with someone else.
This is just hopeful thinking which I know won’t be true cause “Hook is the best, he’s hot”.
"All your questions are pointless"
Unless this is actually some sort of brilliant meditation on the hypocritical nature of humans, that essentially all these characters we’ve come to know for years now are just in the grips of complete and utter dissociative psychosis and have no sense of what way is up.
I could live with that but I also believe that the show/writers aren’t capable of being that deep and contemplative.
This is just hopeful thinking which I know won’t be true cause “Hook is the best, he’s hot”.
The only way “The darkness made him do it” excuse works is if the show applies across the board. But they don’t. For Rumple, he is simply a bad man. It’s never “yes, he tortured Robin Hood, but the darkness made him do it because that’s how insidious it is.” It’s “Rumple is power obsessed and can’t give up his grip on the darkness.” But for Hook it’s “he didn’t mean to almost kill all of Emma’s family and send them to hell. The darkness made him do it.” It’s very much a double standard but with Hook, like you said, it gets washed away in order to sell the narrative that he’s a good guy.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"The only way “The darkness made him do it” excuse works is if the show applies across the board. But they don’t. For Rumple, he is simply a bad man. It’s never “yes, he tortured Robin Hood, but the darkness made him do it because that’s how insidious it is.” It’s “Rumple is power obsessed and can’t give up his grip on the darkness.” But for Hook it’s “he didn’t mean to almost kill all of Emma’s family and send them to hell. The darkness made him do it.” It’s very much a double standard but with Hook, like you said, it gets washed away in order to sell the narrative that he’s a good guy.
Don’t forget that Hook didn’t want the darkness because he knew how it would affect him. Rumple keeps going back to it willingly. And I think it’s safe to say that Rumple changed a lot once he became the dark one. The darkness obviously affected him. He went from being a coward, but otherwise a good father, to not only a coward, but a ruthless human being. And obviously the darkness changed Nimue too. I think it’s decently documented how the darkness changes people. So I didn’t have as big of a problem with Hook’s fast dark turn at the end of season 5a as others did. It was rushed, yes, but I was OK with it. There were far bigger issues I had at the end there than that. That’s all I’ll say haha.
The only way “The darkness made him do it” excuse works is if the show applies across the board. But they don’t. For Rumple, he is simply a bad man. It’s never “yes, he tortured Robin Hood, but the darkness made him do it because that’s how insidious it is.” It’s “Rumple is power obsessed and can’t give up his grip on the darkness.” But for Hook it’s “he didn’t mean to almost kill all of Emma’s family and send them to hell. The darkness made him do it.” It’s very much a double standard but with Hook, like you said, it gets washed away in order to sell the narrative that he’s a good guy.
Don’t forget that Hook didn’t want the darkness because he knew how it would affect him. Rumple keeps going back to it willingly. And I think it’s safe to say that Rumple changed a lot once he became the dark one. The darkness obviously affected him. He went from being a coward, but otherwise a good father, to not only a coward, but a ruthless human being. And obviously the darkness changed Nimue too. I think it’s decently documented how the darkness changes people. So I didn’t have as big of a problem with Hook’s fast dark turn at the end of season 5a as others did. It was rushed, yes, but I was OK with it. There were far bigger issues I had at the end there than that. That’s all I’ll say haha.
I had a lot of problems with it.
1. Regina just saying “It will create another dark one” without the why and how is not a good enough explanation for me.
2. The fact that he was the dark one only when he was told and there is no indication for it bothers me because it is just a cheap shock value twist, it is obvious that it wasn’t planned to be that way, mainly because all the dropped plot points from the early episodes- Emma’s “You failed me”, Regina being the savior. That twist also show that the darkness didn’t affect him and it was his actions. If the darkness had affected him, it would have affected him from the beginning of the season and not when it is convenient. This twist was not planned and it has abc written all over it.
"All your questions are pointless"
The darkness obviously affected him. He went from being a coward, but otherwise a good father, to not only a coward, but a ruthless human being
The darkness did clearly affect Rumple, no denying that but look at the degrees. You called Rumple ruthless but I strongly disagree with that, especially in terms of Rumple vs Hook. After the initial taking on of the DO’s curse and the first few months, Rumple did not murder anyone to our knowledge (you can speculate but canonically within the story, he did not). Instead he chose to make deals. He chose to give people what they wanted (or thought they wanted) in return for other favors. Yes, he manipulated the HECK out of people and situations but always played into what those people claimed to have wanted and always gave them a choice.
He did not summon up a bunch of Former <del>Jawas</del> Dark Ones or open the <del>Hellmouth</del> portal to the Underworld. He did not mark anyone for death. He did not use the combined forces of the Dark Ones for any nefarious purpose. Hook, within about 10 mins of becoming the new DO plotted to betray his girlfriend, betray his girlfriend’s family, and committed cold blooded murder. Once he remembered he was the DO, his emotional attack on Emma was far worse than anything we ever saw from Rumple or Emma–at least subjectively, in my opinion. I can never forgive Hook telling Emma that she’ll always be an orphan and Emma just standing there taking it, being his emotional punching bag. Rumple could be cold or manipulative but you never saw him talk to Belle that way when he was the DO, either in the EF or in SB. In fact, in a lot of the instances of interaction between them, Belle had the power by standing her ground and standing up to Rumple, calling him on his nonsense. But the message OUAT wants us to take away is that only one of these characters is “good” and “worth saving” and that the CS ship is healthy and laudable.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
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