Malcolm and Once Mythologies

[andreth stark]

I’ve been waiting til the winter finale (actually i was waiting til Pan’s death) before post this here, since i hoped to get some answers… but i didn’t.

So, this is the point: when Malcom is first introduced, he is gambling in a tabern. Then, he leaves his son with 2 spinners who, surprisingly, had a magic bean. Afterwards, Malcolm tells Rumpel that his own father left him with a smith who mistreat him. And then, he becomes Peter Pan. As PP, he looks for inmortality, looking for the heart of truest believer, chasing children with lies and by manipulating them, dominates a creepy shadow and ends his days at the hands of his son.

Keeping apart the easy Freudian reading of the whole story, i would like to point out some points:

1.-Abandoned child who grows up with a smith are usually the stuff for heroism in fairy tales, fantastic literature, etc… from Sigfrid on The Song of Nibelungs, to  Gendry in A song of Ice and Fire. I wonder what lies behind Malcolm’s childhood, the history of the smith (more than his real father, to be honest) I mean, it looks like a deliberate chose from writers part, it is a standar tropo…

2.-The spinners as the norns has been discussed in this forums for ages XDD I know it, so I just write it down to trace all the links.

3.-The shadow. It seems to me really similar to the ‘helping spirits’ of the shamans. Malcolm goes to other land (travel between worlds), the shadow appears when he is on a tree (the sacred tree, afterwards the trees used as ‘sacrifice altar’ to Regina, Emma and Snow) afraid (liminal state of the mind). With its help, Malcolm becomes PP (change of the traveler) and since then, it is used as a ‘portal’ to other worlds.

4.-The island. Neverland is a labyrinth controlled by Pan. not a physical labyrinth, but a mental one. This tells us about the fragmented ego of this character, similar to other mythological creatures as tricksters and monsters.

5.-The father-son dynamics. not about love or freudian thingys, as i said, but the fact that from a character so strongly linked to the symbolic and mythological world, a man who is a caring father (and ‘mother’. The dual gender on Rumplestiltskin characterization is an interesting topic in its own) and who ultimately becomes the DO (again, a broken ego, dual this time: the loving father vs the DO cursed personality) and kills his father/PP seem to be the end of a circle, and it kind of reminds me of Zeus vs Chronos circle, in which a monstrous father who eats his sons (Pan doesn’t eat his descendents, but mistreats them) is tricked by one of them to release the others (Rumple making the spell to force Pan to abandon Henry’s body echoes Zeus poisoning Chronos to release his brothers). This makes me think on a sort of ‘cosmogony’, a circle that makes the history of a particular world to advance…

…which is reinforced by the writers statement of start a new, different way of storytelling.

If my… theory? analysis? is rigth, then two thing follow Pan’s death: 1.- Once’s world faces some kind of new beginning, and 2.- if Rumple lives, he is probably coming back in a different way… wiser, and probably more powerful (as ‘Gandalf the White’… Rumplestiltskin ‘The Bright One’ 😛 )

So, I am probably missing a lot of details here, it is late here…but it could be a good starting point, and I really needed to write it down, so, don’t kill me ^^u

[RumplesGirl]

I wonder what lies behind Malcolm’s childhood, the history of the smith (more than his real father, to be honest) I mean, it looks like a deliberate chose from writers part, it is a standar tropo…

I have to wonder if they subverting your expectations by making him NOT be the hero as you would expect. (PS: nice call to Gendry)

1.- Once’s world faces some kind of new beginning, and 2.- if Rumple lives, he is probably coming back in a different way… wiser, and probably more powerful (as ‘Gandalf the White’… Rumplestiltskin ‘The Bright One’ 😛 )

Agree with both of these, esepically the last. I think WHEN Rumple comes back (not IF) he will be stripped of his DO’s curse and be something new–either non magical at all (and will have to learn to live with that) or something “lighter” in terms of magic. I see the first one happening more than the second, to be honest. I think Rumple’s arc has always been learning to be a man again.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[andreth stark]

andreth stark wrote: I wonder what lies behind Malcolm’s childhood, the history of the smith (more than his real father, to be honest) I mean, it looks like a deliberate chose from writers part, it is a standar tropo…

I have to wonder if they subverting your expectations by making him NOT be the hero as you would expect. (PS: nice call to Gendry)

andreth stark wrote: 1.- Once’s world faces some kind of new beginning, and 2.- if Rumple lives, he is probably coming back in a different way… wiser, and probably more powerful (as ‘Gandalf the White’… Rumplestiltskin ‘The Bright One’ )

Agree with both of these, esepically the last. I think WHEN Rumple comes back (not IF) he will be stripped of his DO’s curse and be something new–either non magical at all (and will have to learn to live with that) or something “lighter” in terms of magic. I see the first one happening more than the second, to be honest. I think Rumple’s arc has always been learning to be a man again.

Sorry in advance for having to put this with numbers… I struggle with quotations :S

To the first comment, Yep, probably… that is why i waited till PP was death… i expected something behind that story. (Even the Jason Ogg the smith of Lancre in Discworld is a nice guy, and Prattchet likes twisting everything XDD)

And to the second one, I think wiser could be understand that way, yes. Although I kind of prefer him having ‘white’ magic… there is a lack of good magic in Once, all we have are fairies, and being Blue their leader, ‘good’ is a big assumption (to me at least)

[RumplesGirl]

And to the second one, I think wiser could be understand that way, yes. Although I kind of prefer him having ‘white’ magic… there is a lack of good magic in Once, all we have are fairies, and being Blue their leader, ‘good’ is a big assumption (to me at least)

I’d love for him to have “good” magic because yes there is a lack of it. Emma is TL incarnate but that’s about it. I trust the Blue Fairy about as far as I can throw her so I don’t count Sneaky Fairy.

It might also be the end game for Regina, to have her move from one side to the next. Both she and Rumple made huge sacrifices in the winter finale and pushed them down redemption road.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Gaultheria]

Even if he no longer has any magical ability, Rumpel will still know all about magic. He’s going to be the Giles of the new Scoobies. Regina is a cross between Faith and Willow, Hook is Spike, Neal is Xander, Emma is kind of obvious,…

Seriously, though, Rumpel is starting to resemble Merlin, and Merlin had a complicated relationship with time, so the pre-existence of Arthurian legend in the Enchanted Forest isn’t really a problem.

Gaultheria's fanvids: http://youtube.com/sagethrasher

[koffeegirl]

andreth stark wrote: And to the second one, I think wiser could be understand that way, yes. Although I kind of prefer him having ‘white’ magic… there is a lack of good magic in Once, all we have are fairies, and being Blue their leader, ‘good’ is a big assumption (to me at least)

I’d love for him to have “good” magic because yes there is a lack of it. Emma is TL incarnate but that’s about it. I trust the Blue Fairy about as far as I can throw her so I don’t count Sneaky Fairy. It might also be the end game for Regina, to have her move from one side to the next. Both she and Rumple made huge sacrifices in the winter finale and pushed them down redemption road.

 

I agree, RG. Blue really has not shown her magic to be very powerful…and she is supposed to be more powerful that Rumple. I hope we learn more about her and her background–I still think she wanted the curse to be cast–also, how did she know that Rumple planned to make Emma the savior–Blue must have a motive. I almost feel that she manipulated Rumple into making the curse as much as Rumple manipulated Regina into casting it. Although, I want Rumple to be a man again I would be disappointed if Belle’s TLK isn’t involved in it somehow. I’d like to see Regina and Rumple learn to practice magic “good” like you say–since Rumple and Regina have both used anger in the past (Miller’s Daughter and Emma/Regina with the fire in NL. Love is supposed to be most powerful magic at all so I would think Rumple and Regina having been redeemed could use love for their families to fuel their magic now.

[Myril]

Just a few thoughts about magic (and guess should claim the title of defender of the Blue Fairy):

Using magic to do good for others or to do something selfish and thus eventually bad for others, is not alone what distinguishes good from dark magic. Neither does what emotional energy you tap into, more negative (anger, hate, fear) or positive (love, compassion, empathy). That is how I see it.

Good magic knows limits, practicing good magic means to set or accept limits to what you can do with magic, and to use it only limited.
Dark magic knows no limits, practicing dark magic means to question and eventually deny, that there are limits, and use it without limits.
Because of accepting and staying in limits good magic looks less powerful than dark magic, although it in itself might be more powerful.

The Blue Fairy follows rules and is strict about rules, her magic is limited and used in limited ways. Rules can be annoying and sometimes feel unfair and like you’re kept from doing good for others, it might look like you even have no interest in helping someone in situations, but power without control can easily become destructive (as can be overly rigid rules though, when rules exist merely for the sake of rules, but that I don’t see with the Blue Fairy).
Pan made his own rules, breaking them whenever it pleased him, and was able to do pretty much everything (even to a degree cheat aging and death, and he himself was convinced he could do it, although he fails in the end).
Cora didn’t care about rules and used magic to get whatever she wanted (or tried to).
Regina/Evil Queen didn’t care much about limits either, but was somewhat limited by her own emotions (love and hate, her own ambivalence probably hindering to fully tap into one or the other), making her magic a bit wonky.
Rumple/Dark One believed in one rule, that all magic has a price, but when you’re willing to pay any price, magic has no limits.
Love might be the most powerful (good) magic of all, but has limits, like it doesn’t seem to work, when the other person doesn’t recognize the love.

Don’t see a lack of good magic in OUaT, magic is ambivalent, and the solutions are not to be found in using magic, but in experiencing it (as in the magic of love, which one can’t use in a good sense, only give and embrace in a good way).

1.-Abandoned child who grows up with a smith are usually the stuff for heroism in fairy tales, fantastic literature, etc… from Sigfrid on The Song of Nibelungs, to Gendry in A song of Ice and Fire. I wonder what lies behind Malcolm’s childhood, the history of the smith (more than his real father, to be honest) I mean, it looks like a deliberate chose from writers part, it is a standar tropo…

In the Song of Nibelungs Sigfrid is no abandoned child nor growing up with a (black-) smith, that is told in other tales of Sigfrid or Sigurd and the Nibelungensaga, namely the Völsunga saga and the Thidrekssaga. Just clarifying that, so people know, which tales to look into. As much as Sigfrid was portrayed in all tales as heroic he was as well a bit of an ambivalent character. From a more modern point of view some of Sigfrid’s deeds where rather unheroic (helping his king to take his wife by force for example, nothing that would be as acceptable for a good hero nowadays, thankfully, although one can say, he paid with his life for that in the end – but Sigfrid is not the only hero who in traditional and classical tales, mythology, fairy tales is treating women less in the manner of a gentle man without harming the hero status).

It stroke me as interesting as well, that they chose to bring Malcolm in connection with a blacksmith, the abandoned son motif though I perceived mostly as the curse of the males of the Stiltskin family.

Heroes just can’t have had happy childhoods. But neither do villains. One can think, that having a rather happy childhood is a huge obstacle in becoming a full hero or even an important villain. Being normal is boring and sucks. 😉

Smiths, blacksmiths particular, were masters of fire and seemingly able to change the nature of things (turning more or less a piece of rock into a weapon for example), which gave them something mystical and magical.

Hephaestus, the Greek god of blacksmith, craftsmen, fire and volcanoes created on instructions of Zeus Pandora and her pithos (Pandora’s box).

Quite sure the writers did it deliberately, but I’m not sure how deep their thinking goes about mentioning a blacksmiths as master of young Malcolm. By now have the impression, they are a bit too much in love with what I would call pop references, nothing profound.

re 2. The spinster as Norns, fates, the mythological use of spinning and weaving as representation of destiny. Possible. Just one more thing: find it interesting that in English spinster means foremost a woman, but general a person who spins, but as well an unmarried woman being beyond marrying age. If you have to take care of destiny, you just can’t take care of a family, can’t have it all. 😛

And the fathers in OUaT so often abandoned their kids, want to or have to.

Finding true love might be actually easier than building and keeping a family in the OUaT universe.

re 3. Don’t know about comparing the shadow to concepts of helping spirits or spirit guides. Think the idea of spirit guides is of a more benevolent nature, so would if think more for an evil spirit posing as spirit guide. Although seen from Malcolm’s POV the spirit was benevolent and helping him to fulfill his wish of (eternal) youth. But I saw the shadow more in the line of the archetype shadow CG Jung worked with.

re 4. The island as labyrinth of Pan’s making, or maybe should more say as a maze of Pan’s making. Don’t see a connection between labyrinth/maze and fragmented ego and neither see, that monster and tricksters necessarily have a fragmented ego. Their ego’s can be quite coherent. Unless they are eventually tragic heroes cursed to live as monsters, but that is not Pan. Labyrinths are more of a journey of a hero to his or her self, not an easy path to find, and eventually they have to overcome a monster to make it through. If anything a fragmented ego stands at the beginning of this journey, or might be a stage in between, but in the end it is meant to lead to a centered and grown ego – or you can get lost in the maze and never find your way. Had not the impression, that Pan was lost in his own labyrinth, or jungle. The island was a labyrinth in the sense of a journey to their selves for the Nevengers (sometimes known as the JR6) and somewhat Henry.

re 5. The idea of the Cronus-Zeus myth. Doesn’t bode that well to me, if thinking of the whole story beginning with Uranus and how Zeus avoids being overthrown as well, by keeping his children less powerful than him. Zeus was prophesied, that children he would have with Metis (a Titan and first wife of Zeus) would eventually be powerful enough to overthrow him – so he tricked Metis and swallowed her (but she was already pregnant with Athena, which then though wasn’t born by her, but leaped from Zeus’s head). One could also say, that Greek mythology kinda ends before any children of Zeus found the power to take over. The winner takes it all and tells the tale, but that was no Greek myth anymore.

The Greek mythology of Uranus-Cronus-Zeus paints the sad image, that one generation has to defeat and take down the parent generation to form and rule their own world. It is understood as standing for cultural changes, if you like, a society, group of people advancing. What is alike is that Malcolm/Pan similar to Cronus gets rid off his offspring to keep his power, or more to (re-) gain power, aka youth. Rumple though gives up his power to overcome his father, something Zeus didn’t do.

Quite obviously the writers are going for a sort of new beginning, a new but perhaps different cycle, not in the sense of reboot (as Rumple once offered his son), but in the sense of a new, different level, which could be called progress, an advancement.

Pan was meant to be a big bad, so he had to have some impact. And really an impact, changes in characters, not mostly just the setting (found the impact of Cora disappointing although it gave some insights).

¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯

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