Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
[adrotate group="5"]
You know how when you look at a painting and you see vivid colors all working together so beautifully to create a masterpiece with intricate detail? Imagine if the artist takes these vivid colors and simply combines them all in one dish? It would become a colorless muck! This is how a writer should think about his story when he writes it. Each character is a unique color and should not be “combined” with; (should not display behaviors of) “other characters” in order to make (her)him “three dimensional”.
This is how I see TV shows like OUAT. Every character was introduced as a vivid color. With (his)her own exciting personality trait that made (him)her a unique part of the story as a whole.
let’s start with the Mills Family: Regina is a character driven by passion. She is fire. Red. Hot. even a little crazy – as passionate people sometimes tend to be. Regina could be wonderful, or terrible – depending on what she is passionate about. This is why she is a fan favorite. This is why her redemption arc is the most satisfying and believable. If her passion is love – she will stop at NOTHING to protect her loved ones – even if it means ripping children’s hearts out (like in Neverland). OTOH, if she is passionate about revenge, she will stop at nothing – even if it will destroy HER – and even if the thing she is passionate about makes NO SENSE AT ALL like her anger at a 10-year-old. She can easily be blinded by her passion and be totally unreasonable, irrational and yes, crazy. When her passion is love and she doesn’t know how to love very well, she will be possessive and even abusive to those she loves. HOWEVER, if she is shown the way – if the people who love her show her how REAL love has to look like, she will sacrifice everything she knows and start to learn how to love properly – even if it means NOT having the people she loves with her.
Zelena, OTOH, is driven by envy. Seeing someone else HAVE something can make her crazy. It makes sense for a person with such a character trait to be all creepy with someone she fancies. Because other people’s feelings aren’t important to a jealous person, because they are so busy pitying themselves. Their own feelings of envy drown out everyone else’s feelings. It’s all about them. Which is what makes Zelena so interesting and brilliant in her own color. She’d rather no-one have it if she can’t have it. (like these boyfriends who kill their girl so that “no one will have her if I can’t”)
Their mother Cora is deliciously ambitious. She will stop at nothing to get what she wants, and what she wants is power within society. It might stem from a childhood where she was “stepped on” by society and she wants to change that. I would say she is driven by a combination of passion and jealousy and that she ultimately chose greed over lust by ripping out her own heart so that the object of her passion (or love) would NOT stop her from reaching her goal. A goal which is a result of envying the rich society. Cora being who she is added her own bright color to the canvas. Even her death didn’t undo who she was, because she realized that “love would have been enough” had she chosen passion over jealousy.
Pan is the typical selfish, lazy, bored man who refuses to face life and take responsibility. He doesn’t care much for people or power over them. All he wants is to sit on his ass or fly around his island and not care about anything. —-Until it gets boring. THEN he will use the companionship of “people” – but not as playmates – as playthings. Just something to keep him entertained while he flies around eating and drinking and satisfying his lazy needs. I think Pan’s character sees people’s suffering as simple entertainment. It doesn’t necessarily give him pleasure to watch someone suffer, but it entertains him, so he doesn’t mind it. His abuse of his son (kicking him while he was down, telling him how unloved and useless he is) wasn’t because he enjoys seeing his son suffer, but because his son got in the way of his own comfortable existence. He didn’t need Henry’s heart to become powerful over anybody, he didn’t try to kill Henry to HURT his family. He just needed it so he could continue to exist on his little island. Nothing personal.
Then there are characters like Hook. An exciting character who had a need to flirt and seduce every female within his radius. He was delightfully vibrant in color. He had ONE motive – to kill Rumple. Yet, when we see his initial interaction with his enemy – we are surprised that HE was the bully in that picture. And in THAT scene Hook was driven by the need to “pick” on the weak in order to validate his own good form and “willingness to fight” So, this fascinating narcissistic character, who was deeply hurt by his own victim, is now out to kill him. and he would do ANYthing to accomplish his goal. He changed sides every episode, and sometimes twice in one episode; attractively disloyal. How beautifully colorful! Every time Hook came on the screen the audience sat at the edge of their seat, thrilled to see what will happen next.
When vibrant characters like these suddenly don’t do what’s expected of THEIR character, when a womanizer is suddenly stuck to only one woman; when the untrustworthy suddenly doesn’t betray; when a bully suddenly leaves the other characters alone… he becomes boring and colorless. All his vibrant colors turned to one blob of muck. Suddenly Hook is just a waste of space in the large canvas of beautiful art. But his new, boring character becomes big and takes up even more space on the canvas, and not only that, OTHER characters suddenly lose THEIR vibrant colors too! Zelena becomes a loving mother, Snow becomes selfish, Rumple (Mr.-in-your-face-honesty) lies, Cora becomes someone who already gave up a child before she ripped out her heart… the show becomes one big mess of colorless muck! And the audience are just sitting there, horrified by what happened to such a beautiful painting of a show!All this talk about why fans get engaged in the show and if fans are entitled or not and the writers having all the power…
I believe that these writers are NOT ignoring the fans, and that is the problem. CS is direct fan-pandering swanqueen is fan pandering…
And lines like “we should have called him Bealfire” or making a scene where Hook “saves” Milah from a sexual preditor to shut up the people who associate him with rape culture.
Their story is unrecognizable anymore because the characters lost their luster.
Why is GoS considered ‘shocking’? I think it’s typical TV story. It reminds me a bit of Law and Order SVU or something. I like the story so far and root for the lawyer and friends to bring down the warden.
On a different note, NBC are airing a show called “better late than never” (starring William Shatner among others) and they asked a bunch of random people to watch it in advance and give their honest opinion of the show. (I got $20 for my opinion :-))
Do networks usually do this? Because if they did… if ABC would have asked random people to rate ouat I bet CS would have faded away years ago….
@RG, I think you kinda said it all. But here are a few thoughts:
Rumple’s claim seems to be that one protects one’s loved ones by “all means necessary.” This is the Machiavellian position, I guess. We’ve seen something similar with Snowing and Lily, but unlike Snowing, Rumple’s statement that he is dark — incorporating this into his identity — allows him to forego the sort of mental gymnastics we saw from Snow White where she had to literally dehumanize Maleficient’s child to justify her actions. But that’s not surprising — the Machiavellian position if actually a quite “honest” one.
For what it’s worth, I think Rumple is digging in his heels to counteract what he perceives as Belle’s intransigence, but they will need to find a middle-ground if this is to work. Belle’s a bit black/white on things. So when Rumple counters Belle’s (over-)statement that “darkness always wins” with “I’m sorry this happened to you” — this I think speaks more to something like “I’m sorry you had to stumble into the gray area in this particular
I don’t think it’s necessarily “machiavallian” since no one is looking to dominate the world, only to protect family. However, yes, Rumple is certainly alot more honest about “saying it like it is” instead of dehumanizing a baby in order to save their own, he was honest about the darkness of sending Hades Zelena’s innocent baby to save his own. Let’s call kidnapping, murder, etc by the right name and not pretend like we are still heroes while doing this.
I will not even get into the ooc-ness and inconsistancies of his character (the Gold I knew from a season back would NEVER hurt a child no matt what – even Emma admitted to that while demonizing him about August)
But when a person realizes that he is endagering innocent children’s lives by starting a war, for example, in order to protect his own children, he will not call himself a “hero” but understand that he is doing evil, (even though it might be a nessesary evil)
At the same time, this “warrior” doesn’t want his family (the family he is trying to protect from death/pain/whatever) to be as evil as him and use these means to protect themselves.
The comment of “I didn’t want this to happen to you” is pretty much similar to Snow not wanting to steal a boy’s heart and comntrol him with dark magic in order to find and save Henry. That’s why Regina did it instead of Emma, because Regina is already tainted by darkness and won’t be as traumatized by doing the evil thing.
There is a reason that soldiers are never the same after a war. Their morals had to be compermised. They killed in order to save themselves/their fellow soldiers/ their country etc.
I am glad I was never put in the position of a soldier or a policeman, but in order to really understand them I must take a step back and think about how I would behave in their situation. Would I have pulled the trigger? Before demonizing policemen or soldiers for killing their victims, one must think honestly about his own split-second decisions before sitting on the couch (in his safe home) and judging them for thiers. This is why police and soldier misconduct is judged by the courts and the jury rather than by the media
Wow, I am bringing politics into this, this was totally not my intentions when I started to post lol
Zelena thrives on futility and hopelessness. to her, breaking people’s will is “entertainment”. therefore, Z’s and H’s love will grow “hopelessness” flowers etc.
No, it does not matter if they were peasants or not. Murder is murder. However, the statement “he has to stop killing peasants” sounds like he kills peasants every month or something, while in reality, he HAS killed some innocent people centuries ago, and hasn’t done it since.
“he used the dagger to kill soldiers” snow and charming killed countless soldiers on screen. so did many heroes on this show. Does it matter what dagger or sword they used? This whole “heroes don’t kill” is one big joke on this show. He used the dagger to kill the dangerous kidnappers who sacrificed children to the Ogres.
Excalibur has everything to do with the dagger. It was refused with the dagger before he pulled it out of the rock. You said it. You need both, or rather, you have to have both: you can’t have one without the other. Just because the blue fairy possesses “light” magic, doesn’t mean she isn’t bad or won’t use it for bad puposes.
No, the dark one does not necessarily mean dangerous. A zombie!DarkOne would be dangerous. And that’s what he warned Regina about and that’s what he wanted to protect Belle from when he gave her the dagger before he collapsed and told her to go with Will. He DID try to give his wife the dagger. He tried very hard. He stopped trying after that story with the snow queen.
OK. I am listening to the Once Podcast, and I must add my thoughts to this. RG claims that it isn’t true that one can’t exist without the other (man and beast) but this is the truest statement that has ever been said!
“power corrupts” is a very famous american motto. “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”
there is no such thing as “dark” power and there is no such thing as “light” power. there is only power.
(saying that “Dark One” power is pure evil and that it can’t be used for good because it’s supposed to be evil, is like saying that anyone who speaks parseltongue must be as evil as the dark lord because it is a dark power) why is it a “muddy nasty message” to wield dark magic for good?? just because some self-righteous blue fairy said that it “doesn’t belong” and it’s dark etc.?
things that were said in the podcast: “rumple keeps calling it power but it is evil”, “the way he is using it is evil” they keep saying that he “kills peasants” “as it includes deceit murder kidnapping babies for potentially nefarious reasons” – Keb I must say that even tough he has killed exactly two peasants (the snail guy – was he even a peasant? and their maid Honora) he rarely used the power for evil! when did he ever kidnap babies? now he gets to pay for Zelena’s crimes too? deceit? the only time he ever lied was when he lied to Belle about the dagger. (I will not even get into the psyche behind the fear that Belle won’t trust him unless she had the dagger because in neverland Neal didn’t trust Rumple because he couldn’t give him the dagger or that *giving* the dagger to ANYONE would scare the heck out of Rumple after the trauma of 3B)
on the contrary, this dagger is more a symbol of heroism than it is anything else:
1) he used the dagger to save his son +1000 children from the Ogres War
2) he used the dagger to cut off his shadow so he could save Henry with the full knowledge that he will have to die in the process (very painful as affirmed by Felix)
3) he used the dagger (when he had no magic) as the only way to save the town from Pan and actually die in the process.
4) he let go of the dagger knowing full well that he will be slave to a sadistic person with an agenda against him
5) he pulled Excalibur from the rock
now we can list how the dagger symbolizes struggles and sufferings
1) he was caged and was treated like a puppet
2) for many many lonely years with no love and no light he fought the darkness for his child’s sake. and instead of dominating the world he lived alone in darkness and isolation
3) he never fully became The Dark One (as affirmed in Neverland with Vision!Belle)
3) tried really hard to give his dagger to his wife even though being controlled scared the wits out of him.
4) he tried to prevent dying and becoming a dangerous dark-one and when he failed he gave Belle the dagger and sent her away with another man.
BUT, I just have to put it out there: “i love this dagger” was the only line that gave me the creeps. how can a man love the object that enslaved him and hurt him the way Zelena did in season 3?
saw this on tumblr…
RG, now I understand what you were saying about the media’s effect on rape cultureI get it now
