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@obisgirl wrote:
Hmm, interesting observation. I don’t think Regina would enact a curse where she would have to answer to someone other than her. But I think Storybrooke is kind of like Bridgadoon.
Yup, thought of Bridgadoon as well, when musing about what is the state of Storybrooke in our world. A kind of. For our world Storybrooke doesn’t really exist (yet), while the real word does exist for Storybrooke.
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Our opinions are not that different, just that I think, that Bae might have not forgotten or repressed his memories of his time in the Enchanted Forest. Even I say, he might prefer to not be reminded of it, but more out of own will and active avoidance than because of a psychological process of memories becoming repressed. Not talking about something, not wanting to talk about it or face it doesn’t equal forgetting or repressing memories, and sure is far from amnesia. But I might be a bit technical about it (sorry, psychology theory was one of my subjects at university, but I am not a trained psychologist, just that you know, don’t worry, I don’t analyze you)
Of course repressing a memory doesn’t has to mean, that someone doesn’t have the feelings connected with that memory anymore. The opposite, the emotions are still there, but are projected onto other situations and people, affecting thoughts, desires, actions, and can manifest eventually in neurosis. It’s not just any kind of memory but memories of traumatic events and whatever is connected to those. Freud’s theory 101. Dreams are seen in psychoanalyses as key or tool to regain or build conscious knowledge of repressed memories, which have become a part of the unconsciousness of the person, pretty much unaccessible otherwise (If Freud’s theory about repression is any true is disputed, but that is something for a course in psychology).
What qualifies an event as traumatic isn’t simple to tell. From the view of the person experiencing it an event can be traumatic even though everybody else might think, it’s no life-threatening or extremly stressful situation. I hardly for example would find spiders any scary and stressfull, but other people do and any encounter with a spider could eventually turn into a traumatic event for them. So what August / Pinocchio experienced when coming into our mundane world might not look traumatic to us but very well could have been traumatic for him. Not saying it was, just saying, we have to see it from the point of view of the person affected. And the same goes for Bae the other way around: what looks like a very traumatic experience to us might have been not as traumatic for him.
What we do agree about is, that it doesn’t necessarily take any kind of magic to make Bae not remember or wanting to not remember his past, right?
And I think, Bae was a very smart kid with some self-esteem, different from Pinocchio / August. So I picture im as more likely to first observe before talking in such a strange, foreign place as our world. After all, he knew the bean was meant to send him to a world without magic), so he could very well have been smart enough to assume, that he better keep that part of his life to himself, and just tell a story of his father abandoning him without any hint of magic or even of other realms / worlds existing.
And if Bae is Neal, I somewhat doubt, that without some memory of his past whatever was in August’s box could have been convincing enough to make him believe in what August was going to tell him, and make him leave Emma. Something that speaks in my opinion less for any kind of amnesia nor for repressed memories. Although possible he remembered only another part of his past (like being in Neverland, if he had been there), but at least something that made him believe a story of magic and a curse which has to be broken as a real story.
@PriceofMagic wrote:
Isn’t Neverland meant to make you forget about home so that you never want to leave? Neverland wouldn’t have made Hook forget about his revenge.
Where are the Peter Pan experts when we need one? 😛
From what I remember, or as I remember (digging in my memory, too lazy to read up on it 😆 ), would say it was more, that the kids in Neverland don’t care to remember, they stay in the here and now, past and future are of no importance, it was not Neverland making them forget but would say it offered to be oblivious. Time works differently in Neverland, hundred of years in other worlds, our world might have gone by, but in Neverland it feels maybe like just a year (has nothing to do with not aging, that is something Neverland additionally seem to do for many there, but it’s about time perception)¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯
Such a trip to the Enchanted Forest, or what is left of it, certainly has impact on a person. Emma might have started to believe, that what Henry told is true, but think coming to the Enchanted Forest, seeing some magic there happen, experience it as reality is something now making it all more real for Emma. And it was some emotional roller coaster there for her. So of course she is changed.
Will she be able to trust people again? Yes, she already does, let down her guard somewhat, let people closer. She let Henry through her high walls, Mary Margaret as a friend before the curse was broken. Not to forget Graham, although it was more a delicate first attempt to open up again for a love interest, but she did, despite that it ended already in a second so tragically. Doubt she could have defeated Cora for the moment the way she did without all that happening before.
Heros are often send on a quest to not actually safe the world or whoever, but to find themselves.
Don’t think though that Emma is all there yet, that her quest is over, just a part of it. Despite that I said, that she already has begun to trust people again before the curse broke and her trip with her mother to the Post-Apocalpytic Enchanted Forest, Emma still has issues. Her walls might crumble, have become more transparent, but they are not gone. Some things no one overcomes overnight.
edit: of course there are more challenges in the future for Emma to deal with, but think trust issues are still there as well, She sure now has to deal with exploring and handling her power, what does it mean for her and for her family, that Rumple seems to have some bigger thing, plan going on, Cora and Hook coming to Storybrooke, what to make of Regina (wll she ever learn, that Regina did kill Graham for example, how will she react to that?), Henry’s future, sharing or not sharing parental rights with Regina, she herself as mother and daughter, geting to know her father, just to name what immediately comes to my mind.
(and for the sake of more seasons I hope Emma and other characters have to go through some more up and downs in their lives; there is a reason why it is called happy ending, end of story that would be otherwise 😉 )
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@playarita wrote:
Actually scratch the whole generational thing but I do think one reason why Maleficent might have gone after Aurora was that Maleficent saw Aurora as the child she could never have and the child of Aurora’s mother and her ex.
Think there could be curses, spells affecting generations, though not in this case. If you’re looking for some inspiration about Aurora’s stories, and probably what the writers of OUaT took as inspiration, suggest to read the text of Charles Perrault’s version of The Sleeping Beauty In The Wood or the tale of the Italian author Basile “Sole, Luna, e Talia” (Sun, Moon and Talia). There the mother of the prince, then king, tries to kill the princess and her children Aurora and Day.
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Thanks for finding it informative, Medchen.
Nope, haven’t studied fairy tales, but a) was as kid crazy for fairy and folk tales and myths and fantasy, b) had good teachers in German and English literature and in history at school, c) studied social science although my focus at university was more on industrial relations, labor and educational studies but since d) have developed an interest in cultural studies. Have a bit of time at hand at the moment and so the muse and fun to dig into fairy tales. Oh, and there is a number of works about fairy tales in German (we take that seriously here), knowing the language might be an advantage in this case.
What brings me to my statement, that it’s a legend, that the fairy tales of Brothers Grimm are German common folk tales. Even they didn’t claim them as German folk tales anymore when publishing their collection, although their interest when they started collecting was quite sure focused on finding German tales – as many other authors of German Romanticism they were looking for a cultural foundation of a united German nation and identity (you have to look at the historical context of a political fragmented region, divided into a number of principalities, and an aspiring, mostly urban, middle class during and after the Napoleonic Wars). Nevertheless the idea lingers, that they are particular German, but they are if anything of European story telling tradition and it’s safe to guess, inspired by tales from other regions in the world as well.
But it’s disputable if these tales could be even called common and folk tales. The sources of the Brothers Grimm were not common folk, they were well educated, literate middle and upper middle class. With the term folk tales comes often the assumption, those tales are of long oral story telling tradition – but that is something very hard to prove, because what we have is all written “tradition”, claiming to document eventually oral tradition. Some of the motifs and images of pressumed fairy folk tales remind of mediaval heroic epics (Parcival, Arthurian Legend, Nibelungen) and minnesang – literature but not folk tales. As you have noticed, you can find for example motifs of Greek mythology in them, and much of that is based on the works of Homer and other writers of Greek and Roman literatur. German Romanticists by the way glorifyed an image of medieval times that still lingers (look at any fairy tale movie) but is mostly imagination and fiction.
If you’re looking for folk tales would look more at songs, although there too the problem is, we have mostly written documentation claiming to document oral tradition, seldom recorded examples. But something like the Finnish Kalevala might come closer to what common folks were telling than the Grimms’ fairy tales, despite that its history of origins has a similar background (looking for cultural identity of a nation). J.R.R. Tolkien said, the Kalevala was one of his sources for The Silmarillion, a collection of stories giving background to the tale of the Ring and Middle-Earth. And I wouldn’t be too surprised if in some hundred years people would start to believe, that the Lords of the Ring is a literarily refined mirror of folk tales, in a way they wouldn’t be even wrong about it.
But it’s sometimes a matter of definition and use of terms. And of point of view.
There is a book available as online reading (English): Fairy Tales A New History It’s informative and a refreshing view – but I am biased, it supports some of my views.
And agree, there are no stories left untold. We just never will get tired to (re-) tell them in new variations.
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One of the magic of fairy tales is, that they haven’t been protected by copyright laws, at least not those we know as classics today in their basic forms (it’s something different with the disney movies though, those are protected by copyright). Or no one cared some decades, centuries ago. They were told and retold, writen and rewriten, adapted, changed, embbeded into local and regional context, changed, mixed up, and again retold and writen down. Good luck with finding origins. 😉
You will find elements of Snow White in a number of tales and myths, or elements of other tales and myths in Snow White, and sometimes impossible to tell which of the tale copied the other. Just take Snow White and Sleeping Beauty – in both tales you have magically caused states of deathlike and long lasting sleep – and princes, heros coming along falling in love with the sleeping beautiful woman. Deathlike long lasting sleeps caused by magic is a rather common motif. Or take the beginning, which reminds of another Grimm fairy tale, The Juniper Tree, (there a woman wishes for a child as red as blood and as white as snow), and then there is the tale of The Glass Coffin, think I mentioned these two somewhere else already.
There is folklore classification known as Aarne-Thompson classification system (abbr. AT) and an updated version the Aarne-Thompson-Uther sytem (abbr. ATU). Snow White is classified there as 709, as is Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree and a couple of other tales. I found this text version of Snow White with links to compare with other versions and other tales of the same type. :geek:
Shakespeare wrote a piece, Cymbeline, in which a princess named Imogen falls into a deathlike sleep induced by a potion – her stepmother wants her out of the way, trying to kill her, but someone changes the potion into a sleeping potion. And there is a man from her father’s court the princess is in love with and marries secretly, name of that “prince” charming is Posthumus Leonatus (what a name). Posthumus has to leave court and land, doubts the faithfulness of Imogen, meanwhile Imogen’s father has to deal with war. There is a lot of drama happening before Imogen and Posthumus have their happy ending of course, true love and marriage blessed by the father. Go figure. That drama is from maybe 1611 (date is not certain, might be even older).
The Brothers Grimm noted the daughter of a high ranking state offical as their first source for the tale, Marie Hassenpflug. Her mother had Huguenot ancestry and so probably she heard or has read tales of Charles Perrault, a french writer known for Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella. Hassenpflugs were well educated and not common folk, so can assume, they knew some classic tales from books. That the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm are based on common German folk tales is a legend.
That doesen’t mean, that there haven’t been stories alike around before and for along time, folk tales, fairy tales, myths. Doesn’t rule out either, that people’s imagination was fired by real story like that of Margaret von Waldeck, mixed with already known myths or tales. Just look at how fiction is created today, writers very sure get inspired by other fiction, by myths, legends as much as real life stories. Guess wasn’t that much different in history.
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@PriceofMagic wrote:
We know everyone was cursed to lose their memories when they came to our world and if they cross the town border they lose their memories again so it is possible that Bae, being from fairytale land, lost his memories when he came to our world.
As Gypsy wrote, August didn’t lose his memory. That theory only works, if we assume, the enchanted tree did more than work as a portal, protecting in other ways from the curse as well, while the curse affected everyone from magical realms wherever they were, even in our non-magical world. Find that unlikely.
@fairy dust wrote:
I do think that if Baelfire has memory loss it will be because of a different reason than those in Storybrooke. He would not have been under the same effects of the curse that they were. That is why Henry knew that everyone was stuck in time. He was living in Storybrooke but he was not under the curse because he was not brought over from the Enchanted Forest.
If Baelfire’s memory loss is from the curse then it would indicate that the curse effected the other lands in a similar way that it effected the Enchanted Forest.
To be a bit technical: The people in Storybrooke didn’t lose their memories, the memories were repressed and concealed by new memories.
Kitsis&Horowitz say in a featurette about the Mad Hatter, that the curse went far, to places and realms they had only hinted at up to episode “Hat Trick” (1×17). Of course that doesn’t have to mean, that all places and realms where affected in the very same way, but I think it’s likely. Besides those under the protective shield Cora created, we only met the giant as not affected by the curse – and we can wonder why (possible that Cora’s shield somehow protected him too, or the giant’s realm is an exception, as might be the Other- or Netherland they went to due to Sleeping Curse). So far everybody affected by the curse was confined to Storybrooke for the past 28 years and still is. So if Bae was in another magical realm when the curse was enacted, wouldn’t it be more likely, that he were in Storybrooke all the time? If so, Neal couldn’t be Bae.
If Neverland were a place for people to lose their memories, then Hook should have forgotten about his wish for revenge. Unless the forgetting thing works only on children. I’m no expert in matters of Peter Pan (has been a while I read the novel), but don’t think Neverland was a place where people where meant to forget in the sense of losing their memory (or repressing it), but it is a place where you can happily ignore time and everything else, make fun and happiness all that is important and kinda forget about the rest, it’s a place of escapism. Wasn’t it, that when you left Neverland you forget after a while more and more about it until you barely remember it at all, and as adult stop to believe in it?
I don’t think Bae forgot or repressed his memories. There is no need for that, not wanting to be reminded of his Fairy Tale Land past is enough in my opinion. His father turned into a monster to protect him, and even before Bae seemed to have a few difficulties with how his father was acting, despite quite sure loving him. The last time he saw his father, his father had betrayed him, breaking his promise, their deal, and Bae called him a coward. Mr Gold himself told Archie, that he thinks, that Bae still might be pretty angry – and he could be right about that. If he is still angry, why should he be interested in seeing his father again besides giving him a piece of his mind? It’s a more interesting character development, if Bae is angry, disappointed of his father and not so eager to reunite with him, particular assuming, that Bae is not in Storybrooke. Will give his father some more headaches how to reconcile with him. And Bae will have to work on his issues as well. (I just want this show to run some more seasons, so let us adjourn happy endings for a while longer, okay?)
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@PriceofMagic We have a very different view on the Blue Fairy. So agree we disagree.
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