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*cries* I typed out this huge response, hit submit and the forum ate it in a 500 internal server error.
Trying again…
RG, of all the things I would have expected from the OUAT forum, it wasn’t for someone to casually bust out Joseph Campbell! *jumps up and down in delight* Now, if we just could throw in Mircea Eliade, my life would be complete!!! ^-^
J’adore Eliade!!! I like you.
I thought about throwing some Eliade and Jung into this mix, but maybe at another date.
So I think if we were to revert this back to the sort of meta-structure question that RG is talking about, it depends on whether A&E decide to do a good vs evil story where good/evil are absolute, or whether they think of it as contextual. I think they’re constantly moving between the two, making it hard to figure out what side of the divide they fall on. Is Rumple pure evil? Well, over time he moves from a trickster archetype to a Machiavellian ruthless dirtbag to essentially, an apparently irredeemable character.
Of those two choices, it’s for sure the latter. Pan is the only evil that stands out and proves the exception to the rule. But when you look at Regina, Hook, Cora, Ingrid and even Zelena to a lesser extent, they did not begin their lives as the Big Bad, and for those that have gone off to Dead Character Island, they did not end as thus. It’s highly contextualized.
I agree that Rumple began as the Trickster (ie: episodes 101-107). What made him so fascinating to watch was that ultimate truth was that under both the Trickster (and the Wizard gets his fair share in there as well) was really The Father. What drove the Trickster and The Wizard was really the Father.
The big issue for me stems from the fact that they’ve removed his center, the Son that informed the Father, but they haven’t seen it through to its logical conclusion: the Father becoming this “dirtbag” (new archetype! lol) because of the loss of the son. They haven’t really explored what it means for Rumple to be The Father but post-Son. This is why his season 4 arc is so frustrating as a viewer (and someone who went around calling themselves RUMPLEsgirl for 3 years now…). This descent into the Chaotic Evil (and yes, I’d agree he’s there) has an easy answer to the question of “why” but it’s never expressed on screen; just mad grabs for power.
(side note: I wrote an entire essay on Archetypes in SF one day. I may have to dig it out. I only have over 30,000 posts of my own to find….)
The other option is that the endgame is actually a battle between absolute good and evil but “incarnated” in specific people. In which case, Rumple the man has been consumed by the DO magic, and his personality no longer mediates how the dark magic works itself out in the world. I think that depends on their theory of magic. Is magic just an abstract force (we get this sense with this whole conservation of magic in the universe thermodynamic theory they got going), “colored” by the essence of those who touch it, or is magic dark or light, and hence colors the essence of those whom it touches?
Without bashing A and E here, but I don’t think they have a clear theory on magic. It seems to be a general universal force but split into dark magic and light magic. I wish they would just do MAGIC and then the person chooses how they wield it (ie: Harry Potter magic) but that’s not the route they’ve taken. They insert items or people who specialize in dark magic and it stands opposed to light magic.
They seem to have some fundamental principles in place like magic = energy and cannot be destroyed and they’ve explored sympathetic magic with hearts and the idea that with a piece of someone you can control/manipulate them.
A and E and the rest of the team more or less seem to insert their laws and concepts of magic more willy nilly than we’d like and thus why it feels like we’re running into contradictions or retcons, as we like to call it in TV land.
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"J’adore Eliade!!! I like you. I thought about throwing some Eliade and Jung into this mix, but maybe at another date.
Heheh! Now we just need Robert Graves, and we’ll have our early-mid 20th century literary analysis/ folklorist bases covered 😉
I agree that Rumple began as the Trickster (ie: episodes 101-107). What made him so fascinating to watch was that ultimate truth was that under both the Trickster (and the Wizard gets his fair share in there as well) was really The Father. What drove the Trickster and The Wizard was really the Father. The big issue for me stems from the fact that they’ve removed his center, the Son that informed the Father, but they haven’t seen it through to its logical conclusion: the Father becoming this “dirtbag” (new archetype! lol) because of the loss of the son. They haven’t really explored what it means for Rumple to be The Father but post-Son. This is why his season 4 arc is so frustrating as a viewer (and someone who went around calling themselves RUMPLEsgirl for 3 years now…). This descent into the Chaotic Evil (and yes, I’d agree he’s there) has an easy answer to the question of “why” but it’s never expressed on screen; just mad grabs for power. (side note: I wrote an entire essay on Archetypes in SF one day. I may have to dig it out. I only have over 30,000 posts of my own to find….)
Yes, that’s it. If the idea was to explore the different possibilities of the Father archetype (which, admittedly, can be both light and dark), they didn’t do it in a way that felt organic or translated to the screen particularly well. I could MAYBE get on board with Rumple’s Tywin Lannister phase (the ends justify the means, everything I do is for family etc…) But as far as the show’s internal mythos goes, if evil is something that’s “made,” then I’m entirely unclear about the process of how exactly Rumple got to a Chaotic Evil “watch the world burn” alignment, if that’s indeed where he’s at.
They seem to have some fundamental principles in place like magic = energy and cannot be destroyed and they’ve explored sympathetic magic with hearts and the idea that with a piece of someone you can control/manipulate them. A and E and the rest of the team more or less seem to insert their laws and concepts of magic more willy nilly than we’d like and thus why it feels like we’re running into contradictions or retcons, as we like to call it in TV land.
lol! This. Though… if evil isn’t born, it’s made, across the board, why on earth is dark magic apparently abstractly evil? Unless dark =/= evil?
could MAYBE get on board with Rumple’s Tywin Lannister phase (the ends justify the means, everything I do is for family etc…)
Hm. Interesting parallel. I definitely get what you’re saying, though Tywin cares less about his actual offspring (with the minor exception of Jaime and only when Jaime plays by Tywin’s rules…) than Rumple does. Rumple actually loved and cared for Bae and did not see him as a pawn to extend the family power. However, Rumple’s 300 year long machination to corrupt Regina and manipulate all the things to get to his child, whatever consequences arise from that, does have a certain “let’s set the Riverlands on fire!” theme to it. If Rumple were to reveal that his S4 arc has been in service of Bae then his Tywin-esque escapades would at least make a decent amount of sense.
I think this is why we call a lot of S4 Rumple OOC. It’s not that he hasn’t been desirous of power, but that they’ve removed the crux of his story without any emotional resolution or follow through. I could more easily swallow Rumple’s S4 arc if he said, “I’m just trying to get my son back!” because that would absolutely be in line with his character and his main, as I see it, archetype harkening back to the very beginning.
But as far as the show’s internal mythos goes, if evil is something that’s “made,” then I’m entirely unclear about the process of how exactly Rumple got to a Chaotic Evil “watch the world burn” alignment, if that’s indeed where he’s at.
I think the show is trying to say it’s because of all these things that have happened to him–Bae dying, being held captive by Zelena–but staunchly refuse to actually say the former, and only hint at the latter. They’ve had him mention being held by Zelena in 411 (and I kept waiting for the very in-character Bae name drop). There are….reasons for this that don’t really speak to the overall mythos of the show or the archetype/character of Rumple but more to do with show politics and a general erasure of Nealfire for whatever reason (something I won’t go into here since…touchy subject).
Though… if evil isn’t born, it’s made, across the board, why on earth is dark magic apparently abstractly evil? Unless dark =/= evil?
I’ve thought about that as well. They don’t stray to far from common symbology and dark = evil is about as common as light = good. They even do this with their costuming–Young! Non Evil! Regina wear lighter clothing; the Evil Queen wears black and darker hues. So yes, I agree that it’s a contradiction in terms that a person can be made evil, but objects might be inherently dark and thus evil.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Hm. Interesting parallel. I definitely get what you’re saying, though Tywin cares less about his actual offspring (with the minor exception of Jaime and only when Jaime plays by Tywin’s rules…) than Rumple does. Rumple actually loved and cared for Bae and did not see him as a pawn to extend the family power. However, Rumple’s 300 year long machination to corrupt Regina and manipulate all the things to get to his child, whatever consequences arise from that, does have a certain “let’s set the Riverlands on fire!” theme to it. If Rumple were to reveal that his S4 arc has been in service of Bae then his Tywin-esque escapades would at least make a decent amount of sense. I think this is why we call a lot of S4 Rumple OOC. It’s not that he hasn’t been desirous of power, but that they’ve removed the crux of his story without any emotional resolution or follow through. I could more easily swallow Rumple’s S4 arc if he said, “I’m just trying to get my son back!” because that would absolutely be in line with his character and his main, as I see it, archetype harkening back to the very beginning.
Yes, I think you’re right, the parallel is tenuous, but insofar as both characters (at least at specific points) appear to be driven by a kind of “categorical imperative” that goes beyond pure selfishness, there might be a temporary similarity. However unsympathetic because he doesn’t seem to care about his children, Tywin still cares about the Lannister name/honor/status, in the long run, presumably for his descendents, not just himself — which doesn’t make him particularly likeable, but it’s also not purely self-centered. What’s so frustrating about Rumple’s transformation is that, as a character, he came full circle, and the writers have seemingly decided to annul any growth he might have done: all his problems started with his drive for self-preservation (not wanting to fight in the troll wars; not wanting his son to fight in the troll wars = “cowardice”), although he was, all in all, a fairly well-intentioned, kind man. And now it looks like his ultimate “undoing” will also be the result of an attempt at self-preservation, except now he’s been moved into the evil spectrum, so we presumably should cheer. One might argue that this is the character’s “natural” evolution, but it feels orchestrated, or maybe made subservient to a predetermined plot point A&E wanted to get to. As a side-effect, I think the fans’ frustration (well, mine at least) is that A&E are not delivering on their “promises to their audience:” most OUAT characters have “grown” and transformed over time (which is sort of the point, no?), and the promise with Rumple was that he too would have a transformative arc. It seemed that they were going to make it redemptive, but even if they don’t, bringing him back to square one and then killing him off is… Well. A waste of an interesting character?
As for Emma having the heart with the greatest potential for darkness, I think she still has it. The Chernabog going after Emma in 4×12 confirms it. I’m starting to think the apprentice either deceived Snow and Charming into believing he could cast out Emma’s darkness so as to send Lily to this world, or the apprentice only succeeded temporarily in casting out the potential for Emma’s darkness and that she regained it as she grew up an orphan without anyone to guide her (she was a car thief after all).
So Emma still having the greatest potential for darkness has me wondering how that is going to spur Rumple in his pursuit to corrupt Emma. He obviously is still aware of the fact she has the potential for darkness, as he said at the end of 4×12. He was also the one who tricked Belle into releasing the Chernabog when the fairies were released from the sorcerer’s hat. Did Rumple intentionally seek to unleash the Chernabog in SB, and if so why? If the Chernabog had gotten hold of Emma’s heart, what would have happened to her? Is the Chernabog the Dark One’s minion? Does Rumple plan to use the Chernabog to get hold of Emma’s literal heart? Rumple is fully aware the Emma still has this greatest potential for darkness, since it’s his plan to corrupt the Savior. So, again, what was the point of releasing the Chernabog in relation to Emma and Rumple’s plan to corrupt her heart? Will we see the Chernabog again? Is the Chernabog the Beast of the Dark One?
"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
As for Emma having the heart with the greatest potential for darkness, I think she still has it. The Chernabog going after Emma in 4×12 confirms it. I’m starting to think the apprentice either deceived Snow and Charming into believing he could cast out Emma’s darkness so as to send Lily to this world, or the apprentice only succeeded temporarily in casting out the potential for Emma’s darkness and that she regained it as she grew up an orphan without anyone to guide her (she was a car thief after all).
What’s odd about this is why the Apprentice then proceeded to yell at the Author to the effect of “why did you make me do this, it wasn’t very nice!” Unless he meant sending Lilly to this world, not the casting out darkness bit.
I suppose it would also depend on how A&E define “potential.” Here’s another “meta” theory 🙂
If potential has to do with the degree of agency any given character has in a story (i.e. the degree to which their actions are capable of changing events and affecting others) — which is what I think maybe they’re thinking — then one could imagine a situation where the two aspects of this agency could be split between two people. So, if the Apprentice’s exorcism actually did something, we might speculate that Emma’s actions (no matter the intention) are skewed to have, always, in the long run, a positive impact on the heroes, but negative effect for the villains (for example, bringing back Marian = interferes with Regina’s HEA). By contrast, Lilly’s actions might be skewed to have a negative impact on the heroes. So we’d have Emma as agent of order, and Lilly as agent of chaos. Now, that doesn’t change the “amount” of agency Emma has. BUT. There’s this saying in creative writing that a convincing villain is one who thinks he/she is the main protagonist. So by turning her “evil”, Rumple would be shifting the universal/narrative odds in his favor, because positive/negative are then relative to who the protagonist(s) of the story are. If you will, this relies on a play of words between Heroes (white horse, shining armor, square jaw…) and heroes (the person from whose perspective the story is told), as well as villains=antagonists.
So we’d have Emma as agent of order, and Lilly as agent of chaos
Yes, that. Makes me wonder how familiar A and E are with Michael Moorcock and the Eternal Champion.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Michael Moorcock and the Eternal Champion.
Oh, that’s a great parallel! The interesting thing here is that because the point is maintaining Balance, the Champion (a) doesn’t know the effect of his actions and (b) their cumulative results have to, in the long run, “come out even,” so getting ahead~failing make no difference as long as the great karmic checkbook balances itself out. (Also somehow reminds me of Planescape: Torment. But that’s neither here nor there.)
Books of the moment: HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES and THE HERO'S JOURNEY Written by Joseph Campbell
This man,… http://t.co/q5L4DJQvVk
— Jennifer Morrison (@jenmorrisonlive) April 7, 2015
*pats self on back*
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"*pats self on back*
No way! Wait… seriously?!
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