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Welcome, lecygne!
Your views as someone who was a casual, non-shipping viewer don’t surprise me at all. This show is A&E’s own original fairytale, and their own original characters are at the centre of it, and have always been the intended endgame. Whatever twists and turns the story takes along the way, I really do believe that the story of Emma, Neal and Henry will have a happy ending, because that’s why everyone loves fairytales, for the “happily ever after”.Yup. When I introduced my mom to the show before S3A started I asked her at the end of our rewatch “so do you want Emma with Hook or Neal?” Her response? “Why would she ever be with Hook?”
The more I watch of their stuff the more I am mystified by it. Hook has his moments, but I am noticing more and more that when it comes to Emma, Hook oscillates between skeevy and pathetic. He needs to find himself a new-Milah…
I ADORE the “new fairy tale” aspect. It’s super awesome!
That’s pretty funny. I don’t remember having that reaction – it seemed so odd to us, “Who is this random dude, why is he getting a postcard from SB? And then he’s not seen any more? Guess we’ll hear from him more later…” We didn’t even connect the “Broken” with the curse LMAO. Then again NYC is very much a “home” for me; another constant between all ships as well as important in my real life so I tend to take it so for granted and not see it as out of place. LOL!
I remain intruiged by that suit… we were so quick to hear what Emma’s RL job was, I am sure there is a purpose to waiting to hear about Neal’s…
*flails at accuracy* YES. That’s why they randomly decide to “kill” the Blue Fairy–to prevent Emma one more time from being able to sit down and talk to Neal and thus let them start to heal and come back together.
Yes! It’s obstacle after obstacle after obstacle… at this point, it is almost making me wish the WW would just lock the two of them up in a cage somewhere for a couple of days. At least then they could have some good conversation!!
It’s possible it’s your browser. Are you using a tablet or phone?
It’s a Dell running XP posting via Chrome. I did make one post (I think) from my iPhone 4S but the formatting seems to be a board thing – the span tags etc that I see in a lot of posts, especially ones involving quoting. I think it’s just a board quirk but I like things to look pretty so it drives me nuts… I just have to edit 57 times until I get random tags out of my posts 😉
[adrotate group="5"]Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
So, I wanted to ask if this had ever been discussed, ’cause I’m really curious. I tried to search the forum but had no success lol. In Price of Gold (1×04 I think) Emma’s stuff arrives at MMs apartment. She pulls out this box, and kind of runs her hands along the edges and clutches it to herself. Her dialogue at the same time is, “I’m not sentimental,” but of course we know that’s a giant lie. Given that she appears to only have about three boxes of stuff – and we can see the baby blanket behind her, the few things she keeps are pretty important to her, so obviously this box has some type of meaning. I wondered if it was the watch box? Not sure how she would have gotten it if it is – perhaps Neal left it in the car or…?
I tried to go back to Tallahassee (is that the only time we see it, the scene in the car?) but you never really see the outside of the box. At one point you can kind of see the edge, and it doesn’t appear to have the same decorative lines as this box does – so then I thought it was not the same (but perhaps that’s a production error or a different edge, and it is supposed to be the same, dunno.) Initially I thought maybe cigar box; it also kinda looks like a K-Cup storage box with the circles on the top being coffee pods so I could totally be reading too much into it 😉 Has this ever been discussed/established?
Some photos –
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Happy birthday artseediva!! That 3 isn’t so bad or so scary… especially if most of the time you forget it’s there, lol. 🙂
Hi all,
Been lurking for about a month and just wanted to say hi before things got hairy (hairier?) around here.
Welcome! I am still a newbie houseguest, so all of the hospitality I have to offer is to share my spot under this table in the corner, hiding from the panic outside!
I just have to say, I read your post and had to run to my computer and reply to it. As a fellow “normal fan” who has just discovered the fanbase, I identify with SO MUCH of it!
As dontstopbelievin said, I have to think casual fans are following the SF storyline like a beacon, with CS as an annoying distraction designed to exploit the hottness of a certain actor.
I cannot be the only casual viewer out there thinking (wishing?) that lion tattoo was inked on the high seas only to heave a sigh of disappointment when its owner was revealed.
For the casual viewer, who has been telegraphed SF over and over and over again, CS tries too hard. Heck, I even get SQ feels from time to time. Nothing but eye rolls for CS.
One of the things that’s been so interesting to me, as we’re rewatching the show, is how clear and obvious certain things are. We chunked our way through S1 in about ten days, and as a result, my roommate caught a lot of things that we missed. There’s a lot to be said for it being told as an uninterrupted story. Case in point: we had about three days between finishing S1 & starting S2, and when Broken opened, roomie said, “Oh! That must be Henry’s Dad.” (Actually, her first reaction upon the noisy NYC scene & blaring music was, “Um, is this the same show?” but then she put it together lol.) In real life, we had four or five months between seasons, and bestie and I reacted more like, “Who the heck is this random dude?”
We watched through 2×04, so the next time we watch we should get to at least 2×05 & 2×06 (Tallahassee!!) I am very very interested to see her reactions to both Hook & Neal, as I think she’s a pretty classic EveryViewer – the girl watches and forgets about it. She is not one to ponder the show after the fact or ship anything (although she bawled at the scene of Snow and Emma in the nursery, lol. I have hope that we might get her on the SF train yet.) Bestie & I are not spoiling anything for her, we want to allow her to experience the show as it’s laid out, so I will definitely report her reactions here as we work our way through S2.
However, all this said, I didn’t realize I was truly shipping SF until the spoiler of doom. After all in my little world, it wasn’t shipping: it was plain fact. SF = end game. No other options. The love triangle was ridiculous and contrived. But now? I was suddenly distraught. How could this be?!!
I sought out every spoiler, every likeminded fan post. It was only then that I saw how numerous CS fans were online. I was floored. What? Emma with a totally random FTL villain? And not even random.
The “homewrecker” who arguably started all this? Because, for real, if Milha had not abandoned her son (not even talking about Rumple, she could have left Rumple and taken Bae) there would have been no curse.
Yes – this, this, this!! Part of the reason I allowed myself to ship SF is because I had NO doubt that they were endgame. Then I got online and things got confusing… CS justification, my “endgame” is apparently the underdogs, and there was the spoiler of doom?! It took coming back here and reading through the thread – as well as going back and watching key moments – to realize that my faith wasn’t misplaced. I would be lying if I said the SoD didn’t make me a tad nervous – I do have rotten history with my “obvious” ships being messed over by behind-the-scenes politics and the like – but in all honesty I am VERY chill about it. Assuming A&E are being legit that it is story reasons, I have zero SF fears. Zero. In fact the closest thing to a fear might be that they butcher the story along the way, and plop them together without resolving all of their junk. They neeeeed to resolve it. It won’t even take that much, just two or three good 5-7 minute scenes, where they ACTUALLY DEAL with their past before being interrupted by nefarious fiances, being dropped through magic bean portals, or being zapped to other lands.
(To go tangential, I have a theory that part of the reason N&E rarely have the opportunity to have good meaty conversations is that it was necessary to drag their story out. If you actually let them have a good conversation, their story would be resolved very very quickly, because the only thing keeping them apart is all of the unresolved junk from the last decade. But if they are constantly being torn apart or kept on an adventure, they can delay them resolving things through conversation. I am sure that I am not the first SF fan to state that, but as I am watching through bits and pieces of their story, it is occurring to me how little time they have had to just talk. Since the discussion on the beach and the ILY as he fell through the portal, they just haven’t had a chance to resolve it. It has to be written that way, because once they do, there will be no more triangle…)
Then I found this forum and this thread. Should the spoiler of doom be unfavorable to my ship, I don’t think I can stay with the show. It will leave a hole in my viewing life, and I will need a support group to cope. Then, if the spoiler of doom passes over us, and everything is okay, I’m going to want to celebrate with someone.
Yes, this! I do not ship well alone, and thank you for having this friendly, welcoming safe haven so that those of us who need to cling to our fellow SFers can do so!
ETA: OMG, this formatting junk is going to be the death of me. Why do all of the BBCodes and HTML get all crazy mixed up?!
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
OMG guys, it’s 5:30AM, insomnia strikes and I just had an epiphany. We’ve been looking at this alllll backwards, or at least, I have not seen anyone say this. Regarding the characters, who the WoO parallels & the finale – it’s so obvious!!
It’s not Emma who is Dorothy – it’s Neal!! Why do I say this? What has Neal’s 3B been about so far? Finding his way home to Emma and Henry. In the MGM film, who does Dorothy find her way back to? Aunt Em & Uncle Henry… because THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME!!!
I really just want to face palm, here, bevause that is so freaking exceedingly obvious I feel like no one has seen the forest for the trees. Guess it’s the spoiler of doom clouding everyone’s judgement.
The only question that leaves for me then is, if Neal is not the heart, as so many have speculated, then who is?
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Aside from the aforementioned Fix You, which I’m pretty sure should be the official SF theme song, I’d submit The Cure’s Lovesong –
Whenever I’m alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Re Manhattan – I just watched it last night – and Neil was utterly desperate to get that child’s age. He doesn’t yell much (particularly not at anyone other than his father,) but he was about ready to lose it in pursuit of that number. And honestly? He gets massive props for knowing what it “should ” be, ie, exactly how long he’d been separated from Emma.
When it comes to Henry, I have in my head this backstory whereby young Bae, in his eternity in Neverland and probably also in our world, must have thought SO MANY times of his Dad’s betrayal and, “If I ever have a son, he’ll never know that kind of pain.” Certainly, whether that is an actual thing or just my headcanon, he was invested in being Henry’s father from the instant that he met him. Which meant from quiet meetings on an NYC fire escape to letting go of his true love (again) by dropping through a portal to re-confronting the land of his nightmares to rescue him, he’s there.
For me, I think, it’s hard to separate the SF ship stuff from the Henry stuff because IMO it’s all the same. Often when Neal refers to them it’s as a unit – he’s taking his family home, or making his way back to Emma&Henry. Certainly, if Emma told him to scram, he’d still be around for Henry, but as it stands now, in his mind it seems a package deal. I know he has differennt motivations for pursuing each of them, but it doesn’t matter… He has set out to right his family, and for him, it’s that duo. The laser-focus MRJ stated in some interview is spot-on. It’s what he’s wanted for hundreds of years, and it’s so close to his grasp – he will fight until he gets it.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
@Ranisha – that’s too funny! I was trying earlier to recall the Philip Philips song to see if it fit, all that I could get to come up in my brain was “Gone, Gone, Gone” which is so not what I was going for!
I had a thought about Hook and his coy-ness. This might be totally shipper goggles on, but we’re gonna roll with it for a moment, ’cause it was just a thought… When Hook asked about if she was heartbroken over Walsh, and he said “Good,” and it sounded really jerkish and kind of pathetic, IMO. But then I had a thought. He’s clearly hiding something about the missing year, and he’s very… annoyed but resolved anytime Neal is mentioned. “He’ll turn up, he always does…” Not worried, not pleased, just resolved. Wondering if after they were zapped through time & space, if the boys had a talk and his reaction was not so much, “Good, ’cause I’m gonna win it,” but “Good, Neal still has a chance.” That is, of course, assuming something like that happened in the missing year, which is just straight-up speculation.
It also might have to do with my headcanon re the spoiler that shall not be mentioned, where I am wondering if it is Hook who might die. I started into this above, but from a story perspective, Neal needs to stay. But Hook’s redemption could easily come in the form of saving Neal – somehow dying to make up for the wrongs he’s done to Bae in the past. The arc for his character needs to come to a place of him embarking on selfless acts, and while death seems a leeeetle severe, it’s the best fit I can think of. He is also the least connected of the core cast, outside of Belle, but since she has a TL I am pretty sure that trumps some old history and a vendetta.
ETA: Yeah I just rewatched it and Hook’s body language says otherwise, but I am still wondering if it is a red herring. I have a feeling the remainder of the season is going to be trying to keep the fans guessing before they roll out their final bits of the tale, and they might do some weird unexpected things. Or I’m just insane. One of the two. 😉
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
I feel like I’m always going to be like four pages behind, apologies for the multiquote!
So before I jump into the convo I want to give a quick intro to me – I hope that’s okay to do here in this thread – I honestly don’t anticipate posting much outside of it.
Welcome!!! All newbies get hot cocoa with cinnamon and cookies!!!
Thanks! I’m totally hiding over here in my corner with my cocoa lol.
No dedication in thread-reading, just… if I’m gonna try to discuss stuff I would rather not be making “new, exciting” discoveries that had been hashed out ad nauseum before. (On that front, is there a thread that goes through S1&2 observations? An older one, the middle of this one…? I have a few things I’d like to bring up/discuss but I’d like to read older discussion on it too!)
Say what?! That is not how it read at ALL to us, as casual viewers
Something we’ve been saying for a long time
Yeah I read that point today, I think it was Phee who said it, back on pg 90-something. But it’s completely true, watching without spoilers, without outside info – we’d come across an article here or there, of course, but 99% of our impressions of the show were just the show. No interviews, no “word of God” via twitter – just what we see on screen, that says, these two are it.
When you back up and look at the overall “poetry” of the show… it’s blatant. In my mind’s eye, there’s kind of the lineage on the left side, Emma on up, and the lineage on the right side, Bae on up, two converging lines that meet down in the middle at Henry, and it’s just so so so so clear.
Marry this point I shall
LOL!!
I am going to try to spoiler the paragraph below but RG you’ll have to forgive me if I screw it up!!
I must earn my cookies somehow
I *think* I figured it out. Took about six edits, I guess you have to open and close the spoiler tag around each paragraph? And forget italicizing inside of something that’s spoilered out?
Hopefully y’all don’t mind chatty houseguests.
This totally did not even scratch the surface of my notes, and quite frankly, that scares me a bit… clearly I should have come aboard sooner.we love them, actually
Oh, good. I just emailed my notepad list to myself and it has 33 points on it. I think some of them overlap, but, yeah. If I could figure out how to make an embarassed-looking smilie face here I totally would.
If you take a magnifying glass, and come right in on the CS stuff – yeah. They have a story. They have promise. I am not even decidedly anti-CS! They are fine, they are just not SF. But to me, it’s like those photomosaics – when you’re standing right up on it, yes, that is a photo of Aunt Myrtle and her beloved cat, but when you take ten steps back, hey, it’s really a fleck on Albert Einstein’s head! And that is where I think SF has the win as endgame. If you consider either potential pairing in insolation, they both have merit and potential to go forward. But Once is not a show of isolation. Once is an ensemble cast, where each thing someone does is affected by and continues to affect another. That’s a huge piece of the show, you know, the EQ enacted the curse to get back and Snow but it affects soooo many more people than that, it’s people they know, people they don’t know – people who don’t even exist yet (yes, Henry, I am looking at you.)
Welcome! It’s great to read your insights, and I totally agree with this point in particular.
Thanks! I think it’s an extended metaphor that bears well for a lot of what happens on this show.
To be fair to my above photomosaic points, zooming out, I guess I would say – the overall show – what is it? Emma’s fairy tale, right? So we have two potential stories here – Option A, Girl from crap background meets boy from crap background, they fall in love and restore faith in life. Get torn apart by a curse, faith gone, little family scattered in three different directions. Family reunited as curse is broken (and then torn asunder by a magic bean, curse repealing, re-cursing… you get my drift) work out issues and eventually live happily ever after. Option B, girl from crap background meets boy from crap background, they fall in love & restore faith. Get torn apart by curse, faith gone, family scattered, reunited with issues never fully resolved and then runs off with a pirate while boy meets demise. Which of those sounds like a fairy tale? (Frankly option B makes me want to curl up in my corner and bawl!!) Story-wise, I still do not see where the death of Neal makes the most sense
When you spell it out like that, it’s so clear that Emma and Neal are each other’s destiny and where the real-world fairytale is.
Agreed. I didn’t know until just recently that A&E stated it was Emma’s fairy tale. I just don’t see how her true love = guy who is responsible for tons of pain for her BabyDaddy, whom she also loves an awful lot. No, fairy tales introduce the true love early in the story – and in Emma’s, it was before the story even began.
Oh so many pretties tonight!! Thanks Lauren and I hope you claimed that awesome pic that’s been going bonkers on social media for the last 12 hours!!!
@dontstopbelievin Welcome to the thread again! That was one heck of a first post but I loved every minute of reading it. I’m curious about your history with other ships because I have a feeling we may have a few that have overlapped in our respective TV viewing history! That’s probably for another thread though or feel free to DM me later if you want to chat. I can’t wait to read more from you and I hope we’ve all made you feel very welcome in our little SF Haven! *hands out cookies and cocoa* 
#HopeforSwanFire Agreed, I love Lauren’s pic! She did a great job. 🙂
Thank Heather – there is something you said up thread (way up thread) that gave me pause, but the couple I’m thinking of wouldn’t be a TV couple. I’ll have to shoot you a message. I do feel welcomed – thanks! Just trying to not threadjack extensively… 🙂
I gotta say the 322 title has got me all knotted up. I am confident it is definitely about SF! I am just hoping it is exactly what it sounds like – Emma realizing “home” is exactly where she’s known it is all along – and not some wacky bittersweet business. After I posted earlier I started to remember all of the reasons I don’t trust TPTB… fingers and toes crossed A&E pull through on this one! It could be soooo epic…
I definitely have FY stuck in my head now. Beautiful song… very fitting.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Ooh boy, I could see that title going a whole lot of different ways… but wholeheartedly agree that it ties into our duo. Huh, who might find their “home” in the finale?
So before I jump into the convo I want to give a quick intro to me – I hope that’s okay to do here in this thread – I honestly don’t anticipate posting much outside of it. I have learned to stick to my kind!! I think my ship history is relevent for my POV on things so I’d like to share it, though perhaps it is just me being self-important. Anyways I feel like if you cower in a corner of someone’s castle and they kindly offer you cocoa, you should make yourself known :p
Anyways, I am not new to fanbases or ships, but it’s been a long time. I come from the age of message boards and mailing lists – we did not have tumblr, or twitter, and if you wanted to interact with the subject you sent fan mail or went to an event! So half the cast interacting directly with fans is all new business to me – I am still trying to decide if I like it lol.
My shipping history includes mostly “true wuv” couples, and a few that didn’t fare so well. Some real, some fake – I have sat through every itineration of possible union, separation, reunion, triangle, marriage, kid with other people, death, back-from-the-dead, memory potion, insanity, comeuppance, rose-colored glasses, parallel, foreshadow, spoiler, spoiler denial, shipping war… you name it I sat through it. Generally speaking – even for couples that would be considered canon/soulmates/endgame – it “never ends well,” which I put in quotations, because it’s literally what I told myself to defer from joining the fanbase for the last, oh, year? (Gee, thanks for joining us at this sensitive time, you all say.) Somehow I always end up way too entangled in the fanbase and have in fact met most of my besties via ships!! That said, I have not had a ship in close to a decade; my last ship ended up in a weird spot where things got a little too real… too close to the subject matter to remain just a fan, having ended up knowing a bit too much to actively participate in the fanbase, but not quite close enough to legitimately be involved on the other end of things. Quite frankly it sucked, since it was not happy times and I have no interest in doing that again!!! It was at that point that I swore off shipping, because I just get too attached and then get my little heart broken. “It never ends well, self,” I said.
Why I am here then? Well other than the inevitable heartstring tug that makes us all shippers, I had some encouragement and some logic. My roommate (one of the aforementioned besties) and I have watched Once since its premiere, although I am learning now that I mayhaps did not pay quite as much attention in the early days as I should have. She has a ridiculous love of Bae (and I am rather fond of him, too!) At some point last season, my guess would be shortly after Manhattan, she was exaulting her love of Bae and I sighed and said something to the affect of, “Yeah, and if I was allowed to ship, I could totally ship those two… But I’m not and I won’t so I can’t.” I held strong through the rest of the season and then over the summer, you know, life. By the end of the Neverland arc, I had to utilize all of my willpower to not plop “Once forum” into my google box, but thankfully (?) holiday travel rescued me and I survived the hiatus without giving into my shipping.
We gained a third roommate in the fall – she did not watch the show so we would watch it on Sundays after she went to bed. By the end of 3A she was curious and wanted to sit down and watch it with us. We were all “Well see that’s Rumplestiltskin but he’s also the Beast and the Crocodile and Peter Pan’s his…. no. This won’t do. You have to watch it from the beginning.” The library’s waitlist took entirely too long (in fact I just now cancelled it, I was still 7 people out!) so we ended up buying both seasons. So as the show came back, the three of us sat down to watch the show from the beginning. May I just say, if you have not taken the opportunity to do so, DO THIS, the show is soooo much richer the second time around. Some of my SF observations come from this, as A&E have done some crazy little things that tell me there is an amount of foresight and planning that goes into things.
Anyways, my anti-ship resolve was weakening and my bestie (the original roommate) did not help any. It had turned to, “If I was allowed to ship, I would totally ship them…” and her reply was, “I am already on the boat, get on it with me.” “But it never ends well!” There were multiple whispery conversations over several evenings held away from the other roommate – mind you, she was still all, “Wait, who’s Katherine? And who was the EQ’s true love?” – as we tried to discuss the current show without giving it away from her. This junk is hard, friends! Pretty much impossible to discuss SF when sitting on the couch with someone who does not yet know Bae = Neal = H’s father = not a giant craphead who ditched Emma, when you don’t want to spoil it. So, whispered conversations it was, and they mostly went like this – “No, no, I’m not getting on the ship.” “Crap, I think I’m standing next to the ship. I might be looking at it but… I’m not getting in.” “So, this ship I am contemplating boarding…” “I think I have one foot on the ship. Crap.” I ended up allowing myself to find the fanbase of the show – see it’s not a ship if you’re just discussing the show! – and of course that was the beginning of the end.
In the meantime, we have just finished S1. Took from Friday night until the following Sunday, not too shabby! Second roommate is all “Okay?” and “Henry’s so cute” and bestie and I are all “Squee!! Six more episodes! Except not really ’cause next but not really so then five after that!” Second roommate pretty much thinks we’re insane, but that’s cool, we warned her about that before we agreed to room with her. (See aforementioned “too close” ruined fanbase, she doesn’t really know about all of that, either… too complicated. :/)
So as we worked our way through S1, I had bestie trying to get me on the ship, and then I logic’d myself into it. The long and the short of it is, with all of my other ships (every.single.one) there were – simplified – two major heartache issues: 1) ridiculous amounts of talking about having babies, held out as an endgame prize, but pretty much just having loss/babies with someone else, and 2) couple go splat. The latter is usually due to crap like a headwriter change, actor’s contract up, whatever, not story or actual plot reasons! So I had an epiphany one day, I said, “Self, this duo that you are fighting so hard not to ship already HAVE a kid, and I have every confidence that they’re endgame, so why exactly is it that you feel this ship is risky?” I really couldn’t argue with my own insanity, so I put conditions on fandom, which was pretty much, come into this from a fair, balanced POV. No more rose-colored-glasses, I wanted to make SURE I was confident of their endgame status before I allowed myself to take that leap. I made myself read a significant chunk of the general threads, check. Mostly what I found though is that I really love the fanbase thing… and I have really, really missed it. But if I am going to do it it has to be cautiously, evenly and fairly, with eyes wide open. I am not interested in rose-colored-glasses’ing a situation only to be blindsided by the inevitable. So I also required myself to read the CS thread… okay, I want to be honest and say, I said I was going to read the whole thing, but 800 pages… and just no. So I read the first chunk and the last chunk and a handful of well-written metas – enough to feel I had a balanced view of the situation, and yeah, my shipping tendancies did not change. (More on this later.) I planned on reading the entire SF thread before I was allowed to post but, well, 800 pages and if I’m gonna fanbase it up I want to fanbase it up!! I’m on pg93 – I WILL read them all, just might take a couple of weeks. :p
Anyways, enough about me. I want to wrap this up with my justification for why I am so confident SF is endgame. Because the truth of the matter is, as a casual viewer, I had no question. I knew there were CS shippers, it didn’t surprise or bother me, but when I stepped into the fanbase I was utterly SHOCKED to find out I was rooting for the underdog. Say what?! That is not how it read at ALL to us, as casual viewers. As I read, in calculated form, what the CS folks had to say I have to concede they make some really good points. I can see where they are getting what they are getting! And I do not begrude them for it. So I questioned, a bit, my confidence in endgame. I poked around a bit more and considered it, and for me, I think here is what it boils down to.
If you take a magnifying glass, and come right in on the CS stuff – yeah. They have a story. They have promise. I am not even decidedly anti-CS! They are fine, they are just not SF. But to me, it’s like those photomosaics – when you’re standing right up on it, yes, that is a photo of Aunt Myrtle and her beloved cat, but when you take ten steps back, hey, it’s really a fleck on Albert Einstein’s head! And that is where I think SF has the win as endgame. If you consider either potential pairing in insolation, they both have merit and potential to go forward. But Once is not a show of isolation. Once is an ensemble cast, where each thing someone does is affected by and continues to affect another. That’s a huge piece of the show, you know, the EQ enacted the curse to get back and Snow but it affects soooo many more people than that, it’s people they know, people they don’t know – people who don’t even exist yet (yes, Henry, I am looking at you.)
When you back up and look at the overall “poetry” of the show… it’s blatant. In my mind’s eye, there’s kind of the lineage on the left side, Emma on up, and the lineage on the right side, Bae on up, two converging lines that meet down in the middle at Henry, and it’s just so so so so clear. It’s been discussed ad nauseum, the reason for the curse and the one who would break the curse – that’s the arc of the show. To use the photomosaic again, the magnified story is “EQ enacts curse to get back at Snow; Emma will save all,” but when you back it out, you realize not at all – they are ALL pawns in the larger story, which is Rumple retrieving his son. That’s something that bestie and I both missed the first time around, and I think the second roomie missed it, too. It’s so easy in those early episodes to get focused on, “Who’s the guy on the motorcycle?” “August,” “No, what CHARACTER is he?!” and the red herring of August-as-Bae that it’s easy to miss the full story of the thing. It was amazingly apparent to both of us; in fact, as we watched the scenes in Gold’s shop in 1×22, I was thinking about how it had totally flown over my head, and bestie turned to me and said something to the effect of, “I missed what they were going for, completely, the first time around.” I think before we have S2 we’ll need to have the debate about whether to point that out to second roomie – does it give too much of the story away? Ruin the fun of “meeting” Neal and then watching the show lead us to the Bae = Neal connection? I suspect it might, so perhaps we’ll leave well enough alone.
Anyways, to distill further from that… that is what makes me incredibly chill about the spoiler-that-shall-not-be-mentioned. I think there are two possibilities; it is story-related, as A&E have said. Or it is not, it is outside-forced (actor, TPTB at the network, whatever,) and they are covering – which is understandable. The fact of the matter is, if it is outside-related, and the outcome is gonna suck, it’s gonna suck – period. There is nothing we can do about it, that outside force is going to change the course of the story and that stinks but there’s nothing there to analyze & wig out about. It’s done, for reasons that totally ruin the show (IMO.) But if we choose to trust A&E (and that is something I have a reallllly hard time with, TPTB is what screws my couples more than anything – but I have zero history with them, so I suppose I will choose to trust them,) then there’s no issue. I am going to try to spoiler the paragraph below but RG you’ll have to forgive me if I screw it up!!
If you look at the story of Baelfire, exclusively, zoomed in (and yes, I know this is going completely against the photomosaic argument I gave above,) it’s plain to me what HAS to be his happy ending. Bae has this history, that goes back generations. His grandfather ditched his father, with NO regard for his wellbeing. His father ditched him, this time out of (a very misguided) attempt for love, but it broke him nonetheless. Miraculously he found a family, and (what we now know to be) the familial legacy of his grandfather ripped that away from him. He spent “centuries” being this utterly lost little boy, until he met someone who “got” him completely and fulfilled that sense of family that he desperately craved. And then – surprise! – that family legacy crept up again, this time at the hands of his father, and he had to let go of that sense of belonging he’d finally received. This guy is now beyond broken, he is utterly shattered. A decade later, when he finally gets another go at his family, he has 5.3 seconds with them before he gets bean-portaled and shadow-flown all over creation before being curse-zapped right back from whence he came… sans family again. What goes beyond shattered? Pulverized? Powdered? I mean, really. And then, wait for it, curse-zapped back again, or something, I dunno, but reunited with his family for another 4.7 seconds (for a total of ten seconds, my friends,) of familial happiness before he is offed. REALLY? That is not story-driven. That’s a load of junk is what that is. And I just have a hard time believing it’s where A&E are going. Alternatively, if that last step changes to… curse-zapped back again, and reunited with his family so that they can work out their issues and finally, FINALLY have those connections they have craved all of these years and – most importantly – not abandon his child, THAT is story mastery. I cannot see any sense, at least not any story-driven sense, of cutting it off at the knees.
Ship aside, Neal HAS to be able to be a father to Henry, and not abandon him, for this to truly be a good story of paternal redemption. Dying (even if it is for him) does not do that. Dying for his son (or “dying” as the case may be) was a marvelous redemption arc for Rumpel; Rumpel who always put himself first and his child second. Neal has shown, already, that he is willing to do anything for Henry – Henry comes first. He (much like Emma, though hers was more reluctantly,) has been a parent to him since he has known he existed. “Course correcting” the legacy of this family requires Neal to be there for Henry, truly support him and not leave him fatherless. I am guessing it is not accidental that although Henry had a parent and a reasonably good life for his first ten years, he did not have a father figure – that cycle was continued, even utterly unwittingly. To bring the character of Baelfire full circle, Neal needs to be a present, involved and loving father to Henry. Full stop. The end.
To be fair to my above photomosaic points, zooming out, I guess I would say – the overall show – what is it? Emma’s fairy tale, right? So we have two potential stories here – Option A, Girl from crap background meets boy from crap background, they fall in love and restore faith in life. Get torn apart by a curse, faith gone, little family scattered in three different directions. Family reunited as curse is broken (and then torn asunder by a magic bean, curse repealing, re-cursing… you get my drift) work out issues and eventually live happily ever after. Option B, girl from crap background meets boy from crap background, they fall in love & restore faith. Get torn apart by curse, faith gone, family scattered, reunited with issues never fully resolved and then runs off with a pirate while boy meets demise. Which of those sounds like a fairy tale? (Frankly option B makes me want to curl up in my corner and bawl!!) Story-wise, I still do not see where the death of Neal makes the most sense.
All right, enough noveling for me. Hopefully y’all don’t mind chatty houseguests. 😉 This totally did not even scratch the surface of my notes, and quite frankly, that scares me a bit… clearly I should have come aboard sooner.
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
Do y’all have room for one more to hide out in your Tallahassee-shaped castle? Full intro to follow tomorrow (I should be asleep… but instead I’m here… doing this…) but I have a serious need to make some shipping happen. The notepad on my phone is getting entirely too cluttered with my random SF observations and I would love to unload…
Cause this story needs some mending & a better happy ending...
