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We judge characters on what we know about them and not on what the characters know anyway, and that can be a difference of knowledge without any time travel, changes in time line. We judge them from our point of view and experience and culture, which is absolutely okay, but differs from how the characters see themselves and others. Seeing things just from our (audience, outside) point of view might though prevent us from understanding, how things developed, why characters do things they do. Not that we have to see their point of view, but it can broaden once horizon.
Should we judge people on what happened in a different timeline? What we know from the other timeline are insight into how the character acted when things were slightly or more different, it gives us insights into where the characters could have gone if, and I find it okay, if we don’t forget about it in our overall judgment. The interesting qestions is, what did change in the timeline, was the different outcome something that showed a different set of thoughts, motivation within the character or was it merely that the character was prevent from doing what they did in the other timeline by outer forces. So did merely the circumstances change or did the character?
We know little about the changes in the timeline following Emma’s trip into the past. It seems though that most still happened as it did before, maybe with a few variations. So far I have no reason to assume that much of what we have seen in the three seasons has changed at all. Tthings like Regina murdering her own father and sending an assasin after her own mother likely still happened, and for sure she cast the curse. A lot of what we have seen has happened before the point anyway, Regina was already Evil Queen, wasn’t she. So I don’t think that much was swept under the rug, if anything at all. (It’s not necessary, a number of fans seem to suffer amnesia anyway or seem to have seen a very different show)
The changes we know of:
Regina had not the chance anymore to execute Marian, because she disappeared, on the other hand not much of the original outcome at that point seemed to have changed, Robin still though he had failed his love and mother of his son and that she died. It doesn’t change that Regina had the intention to execute Marian, imprisoned her, and I have so far no reason to assume he wouldn’t have done it if Marian had been still in her dungeon.
Can’t put Regina anymore on trial for executing Marian (legally anyway doubtful, unless marked as war crime, an atrocity against human rights, otherwise Regina as more or less rightful ruler had the right to set a law declaring everyone helping Snow or preventing her capture as committing treason and set death penalty for that). Morally that is a different matter. She still was about to do it, just was prevented from doing it. And I find it right to judge Regina for that action of hers.
For Regina: She barely cared about peasants as Evil Queen and I have not the impression she cares by now more about the “little” people and all the damage and suffering she has done to them. That she executed Marian in the original timeline hasn’t bothered her, and now she can even more claim no guilt for herself, because Marian is still alive, though without her doing. Totally undeserved. It didn’t change out of her doings, it changed because of what some else did. No extra point on her redemption card, I am even more inclined to take points away. That will depend a lot on how she will handle Marian being alive and back in Robin’s in Roland’s lives.
For Robin: He didn’t seem to know before that Regina imprisoned his wife and was thought to be responsible for her death, otherwise I can’t explain at all how he ever could fall in love with Regina. I don’t care about fate and what pixie dust tells (and I don’t even say fairy are sneaky), but knowing now Regina was involved raises plenty of more questions about this love for me. Now Robin can feel maybe a bit relieved, that he didn’t fell in love with his wife’s murderer, but Regina was only prevented from doing by others, that change came not from her. Well, it’s his conscience he has to live with. But I never got his love in the first place, being thankful for saving the life of his sons his is in view of all the other things Regina did and Robin new of not enough IMO to sell love to me. Not that quickly happening. I know, people fall in love with jerks and brutal thugs and even serial killers, but that questions there morality as well. Serial killers groupies are illussional. The basic question Robin has to ask himself considering his feelings to Regina have IMO not changed with the change that Marian didn’t die.
Emma didn’t go back to change things, she accidentally was taken back and accidentally changed things, which she then tried as best as she could to tidy. She quite sure committed a violation of any time directive set by Star Trek command, sorry, time traveler rules (unless she were the new Dr. Who) by helping Marian to escape the dungeon. To keep the damage at bay Emma took Marian then with her. Emma made mistakes but she didn’t do anything evil like a few others did. Emma shouldn’t be judge negatively in any way. Nothing says that bringing back Marian will destroy for the next decade or longer Regina’s happiness, so people judge on what they assume anyway. Besides that breaking Regina’s heart (if) outweighs in my book not reuniting Roland with his mother, who loves him.
Other scenarios. If in different timeline Rumple had decided not to kill Zelena, that would make a huge different, but if he was just prevented from doing it because Zelana had escaped and then was killed by a car or so, to me it does still seed doubts about his mind and motivations. Couldn’t put Rumple anymore on trial for murder, right, but I very well still can question his morality.
Another case. If it hadn’t been Hook handing Bae over, it depends a lot on how else it happened. If he was not at all around and in another world, no, couldn’t blame him, but then Bae might have drowned on the sea unless been taken by the merpeople. If Smee would have raised a mutiny and taken over the ship to do it, and Hook was chained under deck, that what make a difference too. If he just had Smee do it and turned his back, more or less pretending he couldn’t do anything about it, that would have made no difference.
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I tried to make one earlier. It came out more as an apple duck rather than an apple swan.
But you know the tale, still can turn into a swan 😉
Such things always look easy, but it takes practice to make it look as good.
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My summer heated brain (trying to sleep with 30C in my flat, lovely) made of “White Out” “Wipe Out”. lol
White-out – correction fluid. For those too young to remember: In analog times, when we still used pen or typewriters and paper to correct a mistake we used a white fluid to mask the text and then overwrite it with new text. (Or we screwed the paper and tried to throw it into the trash basket with the smooth move of a basketball player.)
Whiteout – in metereology a condition where visibility is significantly reduced by snow or sand, like in a blizzard.
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It was in episode 3×08, Think Lovely Thoughts. Somewhat surprised you don’t remember, it was in context with what gave the episode its title, a pivotal moment of the episode.
Fairyflashback – Malcolm talking to his son Rumple, who got the magic bean from the spinsters.
Rumple: There must be someplace special to you.
Malcolm: Oh. Think, think.(Whispers) Think, think, think, think, think. Think lovely thoughts. That’s it.
Rumple: What?
Malcolm: When I was a boy, my father sold me to a blacksmith.All day in front of hot coals, the sweat and the grime. But every night I would say to myself, “think lovely thoughts.” And in my sleep, I would travel to the most wonderful place.
Rumple: What was it called?
Malcolm: Neverland.
Rumple: Then that’s where we should go.¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯
Trivial Disney evening entertainment hardly can go without Santa, I guess. Yuk. Sorry, not my cup of tea. At least maybe they could use Krampus instead. But seeing that this show tries hard to appear as drama while they hardly make it beyond geeky fun level without the laughs, Santa might terrorize poor Storybrooke one day for a day until either hero Rumple or hero Regina with a flick of their hands get rid of him. Or her.
Back to Elizabeth Mitchell. It would be nice to have just an evil character on the show, without sobby background at least, though she still could have a story. It’s that what the writers get wrong about their idea of evil isn’t born, that it nearly always seem to be the story of being misunderstood, forced, pushed into it. Pan is a bit of an exception, although it was mentioned on the show, that he as boy was sold to a blacksmith (one of the medieval professions connected with magic btw, can think of some story for Pan), a hint of sobby background story. Yeah, wishing probably for the impossible on this show, but it could be good story telling.
Somehow doubt that they will make an absolute evil of one of their beloved Lost alumni though.
Random. Most remember Mitchell from Lost, but the role I still like her most in was as Linda, playing Angelina Jolie’s love in the HBO movie Gia. Not just because she could smooch Angelina. It was a great movie.
Mitchell guest stared as nun in an episode of House in first season, JMo was the one doctor guessing right early what was going on with the nun. Funny enough, in that episode as well a Santa actor is treated by House, it’s a Christmas episode.
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Now, now, have we all forgot about Mulan?
Nope. But I gave my view on what they did with Mulan in length right after the aired it, and it hasn’t changed much. It was not well done. I happily will discuss it, but maybe better in the thread already started for that: https://oncepodcast.com/forums/topic/mulans-sexualitylove-interest/page/2/
And RG said it here in short.
A&E made now clear, they’re not going to explore it with Elsa, so be it.
I just don’t trust these writers anymore being any serious about diversity. They had 66 episode, that is a lot of screentime and time for stories, but their thing is (by now) geeky plot and not human interesting stories.
Sometimes I wonder, if some curse befell the writers, or if A&E have evil twins who took over, because it seems so different what they did in season 01, and even still parts of season 02. The moment they started heading to Neverland the show went down the drain IMO.
But back to Elsa and Anna. It could be nice to have a positive example of sisterly love, because that is something we haven’t really seen on OUaT so far, have we. Well, if they could get over their plot!plot!plot! issue. The connection between Cinderella and Anastasia was mentioned but not really worked with, and only who has seen the to video movies knows, that there could have been an interesting story of step-sisterly love in. With Zelena and Regina we had the jealous and hateful version of sisters (at least on Zelena’s side). We had the twins, James and David, never met each other in life, but David walking a bit in James shoes, not much of a positive siblings story there either. There was Hansel and Gretel, but that was one episode.
This show is about family, okay, but mostly dysfunctional family. That brings plenty of drama, though they never go into the character moments, it’s eaten up by moving on plot. Meanwhile the fandom gets drowned in romance shipping wars, and the writers do much too deliver munition for it.
I would rather prefer for Mitchell not to be family related to anyone. I can imagine that her being the more or less original Snow Queen could be interesting, the Anderson Snow Queen herself is a somewhat ambiguous character. But seeing what they made of the Wicked Witch I have not much trust.
This interview by A&E mostly nourished my nightmares for the upcoming season. Right now only one reason is there for me to want to tune into the first episode regardless, and that is that I’m curious to see how Georgina Haig will do as Elsa (I liked her as Etta)
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The quotes are from the insidetv interview (thanks corbin)
Horowitz: In Once Upon a Time, we’ve approached these stories in different ways. Sometimes it’s like the Peter Pan way, where there’s a complete flip on the character and that’s our twist on it. And other times it’s about how these characters that we know fit in this world on this show—and that’s more what we’re doing with Frozen. We want to be true to the characters, we don’t want to change what they were in the movie, we want to be true to what we love about them and what everybody loves about them. Instead, we want the twist to be how they fit into our universe.
He meant their twist on the Disney version of Peter Pan, right? Because there are other versions and in the play and books he is even a bit of a creep (though of course not Rumple’s evil psychopath father). Even as kid I didn’t like Peter Pan that much.
Kitsis: (…) It was like seeing two toys on a shelf we wanted to take off and play with.
I fear as much. More toys to play with, more little understanding of the richness of the tales and the characters.
Horowitz: We sometimes like to think of our show as a Disney cul de sac. You can come in, and have some fun with the characters, leave, and the characters are what you loved before.
Maybe my language skills are not the best, but doesn’t cul-de-sac mean a blind alley, dead-end? In English and in French (my French particular is rusty though). I mean, I could agree with OUaT being a kind of dead-end for good story telling though.
Elsa didn’t have a love story in the movie, and that was part of what some really liked about her. Will you give her one here?
Kitsis: What’s interesting to us about Elsa is not who she falls in love with. Our show has always been about family. Love is our franchise but most of our love has been about families coming together. What we love about Elsa is that she is uncomfortable with her power, she’s lonely but wasn’t quite sure how to break that loneliness — it took the love of her sister. So we’re not interested in Elsa meeting someone, we’re interested in exploring her as a person, like we have with Regina the past few years.
Horowitz: We’re not planning to put Elsa on match.com. We’re more interested in what the movie explored, the relationship between sisters, and that relationship will be central to the story.Oh, the show is about family. But Emma needed by all means not one but THREE love stories in her life (Neal, Walsh though short, Hook), and Regina has to have her true love destined by pixie dust. Not to mention that Rumple seems to be the man. And Snow and her daughter have little relation. All about family. Sure. Whatever. Maybe in season 1, once upon a time so to speak.
Don’t get me wrong, I want them to stay true to the characters as the movie set them up, at the core the love between sisters. Still I had to laugh reading that.
And despite that I nourished some tiny hope for a while, I was already quite sure that OUaT would have not the spine to go somewhere else with Elsa. They are stuck in traditional views though still telling themselves how incredible inventive they are. They can try to prove me wrong but I don’t expect this show to have a decent and even less a good LGBTQI+ character story ever. If it comes to diversity I have given up on the show.
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@schaendlich I disagree with you on the reading of the contract and its details. But both are possible, you see a plothole and I don’t.
Cora probably still owed Rumple, but what should he have done about that without further endangering his plans? He needed her for a while, one way or the other, besides that she had learned some tricks to protect herself in time. He helped to exile her to Wonderland, and didn’t hesitate to take her life to save his own later.
And he pretty much took her daughter, didn’t he, made her his puppet, what better revenge than that?
Making her daughter his kid was never a smart idea on Rumples’ side though. He faired better this way.
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A first look at Jamie Dornan in season 2 of “The Fall”
http://www.spoilertv.com/2014/07/the-fall-season-2-first-look-promo.htmlHe’s good as creepy guy.
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It’s always easier to draw people at first, when you build up some of the characters already on the “main” show, but still you have to make audience stay and keep watching.
In the case of Frozen it could work anyway, because of the popularity the characters have at the moment regardless OUaT, as long as they don’t totally mess up with them on OUaT. And they can do it even fast and I would say without much of a build up. One episode is enough to tell if people are going to like the actors they choose, and that is if it comes to Frozen right now the main challenge. Can they sell them as Elsa, Anna and Kristoff? If yes, they might be able to do a Frozen show next season already. Think, if people like them on OUaT then A&E might get a some pressure even to do it, if they like it or not.
Somehow get the feeling at the moment those two might have found their personal Pandora’s box with Frozen, tempting to open it but probably a bad idea to do it.
They have to still come up with a good story arc for the characters, something having to keep interest for at least 10-13 episodes, something good for a whole show on it’s own. Otherwise all they will have as audience are Frozen crazy people, which could be a decent target audience, but might not bring the big numbers. Not that it should be about big numbers all the time, a good, steady, well defined audience can be as much worth for marketing, but somehow doubt that that will be something the network would be satisfied with.
It’s certainly nice of Paul Lee to put that much trust into A&E and praise them with big words (although it makes me now doubt a little his competence, the words were a bit too big maybe). Inventive, oh well, if he thinks that is inventive. OUaT is solid entertainment, but wouldn’t call it inventive.
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