Where will they eventually settle: Storybrooke or FTL?

[Josephine]

This was touched upon in the SwanFire thread, but it might just need it’s own topic.  No matter who you ship, where do you think the majority of people will end up.

FTL was a land of princes, princesses, magic and True Love.  A literal land of fairy tales.  Storybrooke is set up as where they’ll never find their happy endings.  But is this really true?  We’ve talked about FLT and the EF is great if you’re a royal or magical, but there is a whole subset of population that were poor and living in feudalistic times.  Suddenly, they’re ripped from their homes into a cursed existence and then eventually “wake-up”.  But they woke up to a world of technology, equal rights, health care and clean running water.  They went from having “third world problems” to “first world problems”.  Will these peasants really want to go back to FTL and return to their lives of servitude after living with the conveniences of our world.  If they do somehow find a way someday to transport everyone back home, how will FTL continue?  Like before.  Can it?  What if some of them want to stay?

I admit I’d be happy for them to stay in Storybrooke.  That’s just my opinion.  I think we’ll go back to the EF at some point again, but for everyone living permanently, I think it’s still up in the air.

My ideal outcome is a little bit of both.  If you’ve seen the movie Enchanted, some of them stay in our world, but some of them return to their fairytale world.  Maybe somehow there can be an open portal that can be activated regularly like a door so people can cross back and forth.  Yes, it’s far-fetched, but the whole show is.

So where do you hope they end up?  Enchanted Forest or Storybrooke?

 

[RumplesGirl]

I think it might be a very individual decision and I think as the show goes on it’s going to become a sore subject for everyone. Let’s take them one by one:

Charming: No question about it, he wants to go back to FTL. He’s is the consummate Knight In Shinning Armor. He longs for a sword in his hand, a horse, and doing good deeds.

Snow: I think in her heart of heart she wants to go back to FTL. But more than her own desires, she wants to be with Emma. She won’t leave Emma ever again. Where Snow ends up might ultimately rest with Emma. Speaking of…

Emma: She hasn’t had positive experiences in either land. SB is dangerous right now but that doesn’t mean it will always be bad. This world in general however hasn’t been kind to Emma. But FTL wasn’t a whole lot better with its odd food and Ogres. However she did catch a glimpse of the life Snow and Charming wanted to give her. I think she will eventually want to go back to FTL.

Henry: He’s like his Grandfather. FTL all the way. He wants to be a knight and a prince and a hero. He wants the fairy tale.

Neal: Storybrooke. His opinion may change as he goes through S3 but right now FTL is the last place he wants to be.

Regina: This is a hard one. She had more power in SB because of the Curse but since the Curse broke she doesn’t really fit in anywhere. She’s mayor but the Charmings are more or less in charge. In FTL she would no longer be queen with a castle. Regina’s ultimate happiness rests on the decisions she makes this season, ie: can she accept love again.

Rumple: FTL. I don’t think he like our world very much, magic or no magic. I think his true vision of happiness was always finding Bae, settling down in a little cottage with Belle and living out the rest of his life.

Belle: Whither Rumple goes, there goeth Belle.

Hook: Honestly? Neither. I am saying this without my shipping goggles but he has adventure in his bones. I don’t know that, even after he gives up his revenge on Rumple, that he’ll ever want to truly settle down. Even with Milah he was content to be a pirate and travel.

Over all it looks like FTL wins.

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

[PriceofMagic]

I think it may all come down to Home is where the heart is. Nobody is going to want to leave anybody behind. Alternatively perhaps if half of Henry’s family go back to EF and half stay in Storybrooke, Henry might spend term time in Storybrooke and Holidays in the EF.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[kfchimera]

I think like a mix of Jo’s posts and PoM. It’s not really about where, but who, yet in the end, they all do have preferences.

I mostly agree with RG’s breakdown except for Emma. I’m not sure Emma wants to go back to FTL. Henry’s fascinated with it, and I think her reaction to him was not sharing his sense of wonder about it, but more like, kid wherever you are, but seriously? There?. I think deep down, Emma wants to be with her family, and right now that means Snow, Charming and Henry so its more that she’s outnumbered on the where to live question. If it were up to her and only her, she’d be happy with a peaceful Storybrook, safe from the outside world, but without any melodrama on the magical members of the town. She understands that Snow and Charming don’t “get” modern life like she does, and she wouldn’t want to see them unhappy. Yet the idea she could get out of town if she needed, that the safety valve is there should she want it (even if she never uses it), I feel like that would be something she’d want. I guess I don’t see her as the kind of kid who dreamed about living in a fairytale world, but rather, dreamed of the very simple things of a good life in this one. Just a much less lonely one.

I love that quote of JMO’s about how if season one is about who they were “Once”, and season 2 was how they are “both”, and then this season will show who they are “truly”. Maybe Emma does embrace her role as the savior, and her identity as a fairytale character who belongs in FTL. I feel like so far though, that’s not a real reflection of who she wants to be anymore than Regina wants to be the Evil Queen anymore.

“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

[Phee]

Good idea to start this topic as its own thread, Josephine.

Agreed with what people have said about characters having to follow their hearts. In the cases of Emma and Neal, they don’t appear to have any personal connections to anyone in our world outside SB, so I think if their family wanted to go back, they wouldn’t have anyone tying them to our world to make them wanna stay.

I also think there could be a necessary, practical side to going back as well though, because I just dunno if our world would be a safe place for SB to actually integrate into.

SB has never existed on any maps. The people don’t really exist as far as our world is concerned. With the Curse no longer in effect, what does that mean for SB? If it can no longer self sustain itself indefinitely, it will have to connect with the outside world. As that happens more and more, if people start traveling into and out of town, word will get out about this SB place and people will get curious and eventually everything about SB will be exposed. There is still magic there, and many people in our world would love to use and abuse magic if they had access to it.

If they remain completely closed off from the rest of the world, would that be satisfying for the SBers? Unable to travel outside town still, because the secret must be kept, but now knowing with full consciousness that the whole world is out there just beyond their reach. It’d feel a bit like living trapped in a cage.

If the cloaking spell doesn’t last, and THO come to town, even if the SBers take care of them, they’ll be living under the constant threat of more and more people possibly coming to expose and/or destroy them.

Considering stuff like that, I think they’d probably all be safer back in FTL with the ogres.

If they all do go back, FTL needs to be rebuilt. They would take with them all of the real world knowledge they acquired thanks to the Curse. They now have knowledge of a whole different system of governing, of a whole different social structure that doesn’t consist of royalty and peasants. They have knowledge about medicine and electricity and machinery, including cars. They could take all of that stuff back with them, and use it to rebuild FTL, and the place could end up being the best of both worlds.

[PriceofMagic]

If they all do go back, FTL needs to be rebuilt. They would take with them all of the real world knowledge they acquired thanks to the Curse. They now have knowledge of a whole different system of governing, of a whole different social structure that doesn’t consist of royalty and peasants. They have knowledge about medicine and electricity and machinery, including cars. They could take all of that stuff back with them, and use it to rebuild FTL, and the place could end up being the best of both worlds.

I agree. If everyone does decide to go back to FTL, they should take the comforts of the modern world along with the women are equal to men mindset and democracy.

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

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