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It can be a little discouraging reading all those negative comments sometime. For me, when I read the negative comments, I can sometime feel kind of deflated.. and sometimes ..with the little things, it looks kind of nitpicky, especially if it is written and not accompanied ever by something positive.
I absolutely understand this. I come from a lot of fandoms; I know how it feels to be uber into something and have other people be…not. However, I would like to point out that the opposite is equally true. To feel negatively and be told to just sit back and enjoy/ it’s just a TV show/ it’s the writers story/ or at worse to get over what I feel is bad narrative is equally annoying (for wont of a better word). Not that anyone here is actually telling me those things but it does happen in this fandom, if not a lot here. Everyone wants their opinions to be validated by others and whether your pro or anti it can rub you the wrong way when you have to deal with the opposite side.
There’s just…no solution. We’ve tried a various methods around here (the long timers will remember Love Day or Critical Analysis Threads back in S4). But the longer we go on the more it becomes clear that we’re fighting a bit of a lost battle. The only solution is to accept that some people aren’t happy and some people are and we just need to try to be civil in our discourses (which, thankfully, we mostly are).
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"People are particularly harder on Hook than anyone else it seems
A lot of this–for me–is just how this forum developed over the years. I don’t really know WHY–maybe because Jenny and Daniel and Jeremy (and later me when I joined the podcast)–were all unabashedly SF–this forum because heavily pro-SF and heavily anti-CS. This place became a bit of refuge for SF fans who felt maligned elsewhere in the fandom and because of that influx, the CSers began to leave as a result. It’s not fair. I’ve never been fully comfortable in the way I couldn’t find a way to balance things or to make it fair to all sides. It used to be a lot more equal around here; I mean, the CS thread was well on its way to 2000 pages at one point. But again, sorta like I said above, at this point there’s really no solution. Everyone is welcome here but you will quickly find that this site has a pretty heft bias (but we’re great with spoilers, theories, and interesting conversation that hopefully outweighs the fact that, in reality, most people around these parts really dislike CS/Hook).
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Since there likely will be a musical episode of Once, I thought I’d share a video of OUAT set to the opening song of S2 of Galavant — Swanfire style.
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy
Everyone is welcome here but you will quickly find that this site has a pretty heft bias (but we’re great with spoilers, theories, and interesting conversation that hopefully outweighs the fact that, in reality, most people around these parts really dislike CS/Hook).
The discussion and the theories and the spoilers do outweigh the bias. I just never get to talk as much about the bias when the show is airing haha.
Emma is the best character on this show, in my opinion. People do make fun of her. They call Emma a pod person, which is a completely reasonable criticism, but i don’t. I think Emma’s backstory and her parent interactions with Snow and Charming and her child interactions with Henry and her coparenting interactions with Regina are the best thing about this show. I just think they aren’t really part of the writing of the show anymore. While i love Regina’s relationship with Emma as well as Regina’s relationship with Snow, even though they make no sense and should not exist, those relationships should not take precedence over Emma’s relationship with Snow and yet they do. Also, Hook keeps stepping between the Emma and Snow conversations when he should not. Emma can talk to Hook, but not at the expense of her ever having serious, important, life altering conversations with her mother.
I like Emma’s scared about being a savior because she might die plot point, but Emma isn’t going to die, so the will she won’t she of it is not interesting to me. Also, Emma hasn’t had any deep important conversations about why she is worried and what it means for her personally that she might die after finding her happiness and what it could mean for the future and for Henry. Any conversations that she has are not detailed or based on her past or her hope for the future, they are just she is worried. Emma is still the best character on the show, in my opinion.
Seriously though, what is there to say about the good scenes? The scene with Snow and Regina talking by the town hall was really interesting even though everything the characters said is pretty much insane and it makes no sense that they are on speaking terms, but i loved that scene. Or i like that Snow and Charming are at least still worried about Emma moving in with Hook and that they are just being supportive because it makes her happy, but that scene lasted twenty seconds, so what is there to say about it, but that. I liked Emma’s scenes with Aladdin. I would rather she talk to her parents, but at least we got to see a little bit if what she was feeling.
This show has a problem in that there are too many unconnected characters. That is why Belle and Hook have conversations. That is why Emma talks to Hook so much and Rumpel to Belle so much and Regina to Zelena so much because those three characters, Hook, Belle, and Zelena don’t really have relationships with the other characters. The problem being that then causes writing problems. They then have an episode where Belle needs to talk to someone and it can’t be Rumpel because Belle is in a fight with him, again, and they need to have Emma and Regina together because Emma is the moving piece, she is figuring out what is happening, and they needed to have the conversation where Regina asks Emma to kill her. They then have this weird thing happen where Emma says Granny’s rooms are bad, which makes no sense, and so Hook invites Belle to go sleep on his ship, which makes no sense, and Belle actually accepts, which makes no sense. Then Belle and Hook have personal conversations that make no sense. Many times weird things happen on this show to free Emma and Regina so that they can talk to one another or to new characters that no one cares about.
One of the things is that even the scenes i love with Emma and Snow or with Snow and Regina or with Emma and Regina or with Rumpel and Emma or Regina or with Aladdin being the new character i like the most right now, still exist within the writing problems. I might like a scene or a relationship, but it can still be really badly written.
I think the reason i dislike Hook dating Emma so much is because of how much i like Emma as a character. Robin should not have dated Regina and i am glad he is gone or was gone, but i don’t care about Robin. Emma being such a well developed with a good back story and a deep and flawed and realistic character dating someone like Hook which goes against all of her development is grating to the extreme.
I don’t think its fair to really assume that those who dislike stuff about the show are only doing it because they are upset the ship they wanted didn’t sail.
I agree with this. I wasn’t even really ready for Emma and Neal to get back together when he died. I think they had so much more to talk about then what was said, just like i think that Emma and her parents have so much more in depth things they need to talk about with regards to Emma’s childhood before their relationship can just be done and happy. But the build was swanfire. Even now, Emma and Neal have had much more in depth conversations about their past and what happened to them when they first met then Hook and Emma have had. Emma and Hook have been dating for months and done all sorts of terrible things to one, worse then what happened with Neal which was bad, and yet Emma and Hook have still have not had in depth conversations about those things. And those things keep building. With Emma and Neal it was the one thing, the one life altering incident. With Emma and Hook it is more like fifty things, fifty extreme and damaging and abusive things.
And that all comes back to me liking Emma and wanting her character to be consistent and well developed and Hook being her love interest does not do that for her.
Also, this show does not regularly past the Bechdel test anymore either. Sure, it does at times. The characters talk about the bad guy of the moment, but even that is passing the test at the absolutely lowest of bars. In Season 1, Emma and Regina regularly talked about Henry, about what it means to be a parent, about Emma being sheriff, about Mary Margaret being in jail, about Henry’s counseling, about Emma’s past and what it would mean if that was found out, and all sorts of things happening in the town from week to week. Many things that had nothing to do with a man because there was no man. Graham was like one episode. I think Emma found out Regina was sleeping with him and he died in the next episode. Snow and Emma did talk about David, but they regularly talked about Henry, Regina, Mary Margaret being in jail, and Emma’s past. There were whole multi episode arcs between the female character that were about other things.
That rarely happens now. Emma and Snow talk about Hook. When Belle talks to Emma or Regina, it is about Rumpel. When Regina talks to Zelena or Snow it is about Robin. There are other things going on in those conversations, but the point many times is something to do with what is going on with their romantic relationship. Emma and Regina are the only female characters that regularly have conversations about things other then their love interest.
No one has to accept the show for what it is; this show is too problematic on too many levels to accept it. I can accept that Emma and Hook are dating, but when Hook continues to do problematic things with Emma and Henry and just general evil, it is going to get brought up. It isn’t like Hook is just a good person and a good boyfriend now. Also, just because this season is a little tiny bit better the 3b, 4 and 5 does not make it good. Especially because it was built upon the backs of that bad writing.
Also, this show does not regularly past the Bechdel test anymore either.
I am more surprised when it does. Actually, I’m sorta floored when it does.
One of the things I miss are those sorts of conversations you pointed out above. A lot of the times, people pair up into romantic twosomes and talk.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"It’s not allowing them to look at the show clearly now to see if they can actually see any improvements or if they fixed anything. Like there’s no way they got worse at doing everything this season. Very possible they took a step back on certain things, but they definitely have improved on some things as well. But those negative people only focus on the bad stuff and it is quite frustrating for someone who has actually enjoyed this season for the most part.
I suspect I’m one of the “negative people” that shall not be named, at least part of the time 😉 I hear you, @thedarkonedearie. It can be frustrating when someone is constantly critical of something you enjoy.
At least for me, part of it is what others have articulated around critique as an exciting form of intellectual and social engagement. This has probably as much to do with your background and training as with anything else. I write and critique texts for a living — so this is what I do in my fandoms as well. Lets call it professional deformation. @hjbau also wrote a post a few pages back about how thinking about OUAT’s narrative structure has helped her develop into a better writer — I think that’s another, really legitimate and productive way of engaging the show. @rumplesgirl routinely brings in her background in the analysis of myth and narrative which, for me, enriches my viewing. Many people here trade impressions of other shows and books they’re consuming. So it seems to me that there are many different focal points on this forum, and it doesn’t boil down to just people who keep complaining and people who praise the show, or people who want their ship or their character to get a happy ending — that’s a huge oversimplification of the actual dynamics of this place. Personally — and again, this is just my own predilection — I don’t find praise, especially unconditional praise, particularly generative or interesting, of conversations or of thinking more generally, though I realize that this kind of taste for pulling things apart might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But that doesn’t mean I don’t find engaging other people in debate not interesting — even when we disagree, to me these conversations are fun and make OUAT enjoyable. That’s another point — not all the ‘critics’ here agree with each other, so I wouldn’t necessarily lump everyone together.
An aside: on the accusation, generally thrown around in the fandom (not necessarily by you, @thedarkonedearie) that people are just bitter about ships. The biggest problems with almost all the couples on the show except for Snowing, which is repetitive in its own way, is that the writers don’t know how to explore mature and/or maturing relationships. However one might feel about Hook (whether positively or negatively), I think CS (as well as Rumbelle) both suffer from this. You cannot keep a pairing on the cusp of commitment (whichever side of the commitment divide they fall on) for six years and make it compelling, especially in a show that’s not a procedural. And I don’t necessarily buy the argument that it’s because stable couples are narratively boring — I think that’s more of an assumption about the audience. I think it’s just poor execution and a lack of imagination and skill on the showrunner’s part. My point is this: complaints about the way a relationship is written isn’t the same thing as wailing over your favorite ship being sunk.
And on that note: it’s not just you either enjoy OUAT, or your enjoy being critical of it on a forum with like minded buzz kills. Like many others, I enjoy OUAT because of the conversations I have here, even, and perhaps especially, because they are critical conversations. Let me give you another false analogy. Say, you’re interested in cars. You might be interested in/enjoy cars because you like to get in one and take it for a spin, so you’re spending more time behind the wheel. To link it back to a show, what you enjoy is how a show makes you feel. Or you might enjoy cars because you like to try figure out how they work, so you’re spending more time digging around under the hood (if cars don’t do it for you, take any other technological analogy that separates use from function). So this is where you enjoy a show because you like to think of how it’s constructed: narrative, characterization, aesthetics… But one way is not more legitimate than another, and they are not mutually exclusive either.
It would be rather strange to accuse someone who likes tinkering with cars of not liking to drive them enough, no? These aren’t mutually exclusive forms of engagement, and one is not better than the other. In this analogy, I think what you’re complaining about is that this forum is overrun with mechanics 🙂
In my opinion, the show is at its best when (a) it develops the complicated relationships that tie the main characters together and does it in character (b) when it explores the big ideas that characterize its foundation, i.e. those we find in myths and fairytales, so my complains and praises usually fall along one of those two dimensions.
Also, this show does not regularly past the Bechdel test anymore either.
I am more surprised when it does. Actually, I’m sorta floored when it does. One of the things I miss are those sorts of conversations you pointed out above. A lot of the times, people pair up into romantic twosomes and talk.
I miss those conversations too. And the show might technically pass the Bechdel test more then i think, but as i said, it is now done on the slimmest of margins, whereas in the early seasons it was so much a part of the show. They do, too often, just split up into their romantic couples and just go off on their own adventure.
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