Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Morpheus really is Baby!Rumbelle
Well done on guessing this ages ago! I mean, I think @TheWatcher’s right about the impersonation, but you know what I mean. The whole thing’s a bit weird and necessiated by PLOT. They wanted to wake Belle but not repair the RumBelle relationship by having Rumple administer TLK. So we got this…daddy hating fetus impersonating god of dreams solution.
[adrotate group="5"]Rating: 4/10
General thoughts: Too much happened too fast. There was no build up then pay off; it was just like “this happened, this happened, this happened”. Without any proper structure or suspense, the episode felt really flat.
Likes:
– Regina actually mourning Robin. Her feelings and conversations were pretty realistic.
– Seeing Archie and Pongo.
– Belle and Rumple’s relationship problems not being swept under the carpet.
– Regina wanting to create a new story. This is so much more mature than ranting about being entitled to a happy ending like she was in S4.
– Zelena’s line when she heard that they’d caught Hyde. It was something like, “What so quickly? I thought it’d be a long, difficult process filled with twists and turns.” I loved it because it encapsulated my feelings about their Hyde capture and also the other storylines in this episode.
Mixed:
– Aladdin and Jafar. I want to enjoy this story but I’m not sure I will.
– Did all those people arrive on the blimp? I’m confused. I thought they’d already arrived through the portal. Oh well. At least Emma and co. didn’t try to convince the residents of Storybrooke that it was just a weather balloon.
Dislikes:
– Emma, her visions and the “Saviors don’t get happy endings” storyline. Really? Does ANYONE seriously believe that Emma’s not going to get a happy ending? That’s she’s going to die?
– A random macguffin was plucked from thin air to subdue Hyde.
– The scenes in Rumple’s dream castle. These just seemed like a big retcon of ‘Skin Deep’. The whole point of SD was that Belle WASN’T terrified of Rumple. She was brave, she was calm, she even talked back to him. The way it was presented in this episode makes it implausible that she would ever have fallen in love with him. They didn’t need to mess with SD as it was a beautiful episode.
– The retcon of Robin’s “obliteration”. It felt like they were insulting our intelligence. They should have realised how horrible it was BEFORE they wrote it!
– Not specific to this episode, but it’s annoying how they keep pushing blind faith as a desirable quality. Examples include Henry telling Regina to disregard what Hades said and Regina choosing to trust Zelena out of sisterly love and ending up disappointed. Why would Hades lie about the crystal? We know it was powerful as it could destroy gods. As for Regina and Zelena, it was simply unrealistic to expect Zelena’s judgement to improve as soon as she and Regina became friends. She had the right intentions, but intentions to not equate to ability to make the right choice. This is something Regina should have known.
The vision showed Emma getting stabbed, but not actually dying. Not that it matters, as death isn’t the end on OUAT. Even obliteration isn’t the end apparently, so I for one am not “clutching my chest and desperate for breath” with worry.
how does one determine a story’s potency, and who is doing the determining?
This is where the mystical aspect comes in. To accept this theory, you’d have to treat memes as part of the fundamental constitutients of the universe. So, they would simply exist with certain properties, the way an electron simply has a negative charge. Or, to make it more complex, the potency of a meme could be related to how much potential it has to change the world. We’ve all heard the saying about ideas “whose time has come”. Contagiousness, which you mention, is part of traditional meme theory, so that is yet another possible explanation.
But if there are multiple versions of each story, don’t we get into the possibility of multiple versions of each character, and a kind of multiplication of parallel universes at points of bifurcation?
Yes, this would happen. But if you think of memes as kind of like blueprints or archetypes, then it follows that they could have multiple expressions. Here’s an example. A Snow White meme would be about a girl with snow white skin whose stepmother hates her and wants to kill her and who teams up with seven dwarves and falls in love with a handsome prince. This meme could manifest in many, many different story versions and even real life sitations. All of these versions and even people could coexist, because, why not? In one version, Snow might kill her stepmother, whereas in another, she might befriend her. It wouldn’t matter, because this meme doesn’t have an ending, so its manifestations could play out in different ways.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. I’m treating it as an intellectual exercise to try and answer some of the questions about the OUAT universe. Just to clarify – I don’t believe A & E are actually thinking along these lines. It’s just the theory I would have presented if I’d been in their place.
Maybe ideas for certain events, stories or relationships exist out there in the ether? These ideas, or memes, could manifest via an author creating a work of fiction or, if they’re strong enough, as reality itself via the birth of a person or an event. The manifestation would depend on circumstances and the power of the idea. This would eliminate the need for a causal link between the fiction and the reality. One idea might also have several manifestations under certain circumstances, so it could exist both in reality and in multiple versions of a similar story. Some ideas might come into existence with fully formed endings, whereas some may have undecided endings.
I know this is all wild and very vague and raises a lot of questions. It’s the best explanation I can come up. I really don’t think there’s any way to resolve this without an explanation that’s highly mystical, because it touches on the question of where stories come from.
A guest star character from a Disney movie who actually changes clothes?! WHAT IS HAPPENING??
Maybe Belle took her shopping? Jasmine is the princess of the season and Belle is the ‘Random Princess Greeting Committee’ as Screwball says, so they’re bound to have been spending time together.
Secret? Let’s see.
That’s she’s been having erotic dreams about Regina? That she’s worn out from using her powers to jam everyone’s olfactory receptors because Hook insists on wearing the same outfit for weeks on end?
I would love to see a riff on Till Eulenspiegel. Though that’s probably way obscure, come to think of it.
I would love to see Till too. The show needs a trickster now that Rumple has been squashed into one dimension.
I agree that it’s a metaphor for the split personalities, so it might not be centred on one character. I also think this episode might be where that storyline is wrapped up. If MatthewPaul’s schedule predictions are correct, then this is the last episode before the winter hiatus. So it would be the logical episode to conclude that arc.
