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I definitely agree that they need to step away from the Disney princesses if Disney isn’t willing to let them make those characters flawed and interesting and human because they are worried about their branding. I think they really need to work on making the new characters feel like real human beings. I am just not sure if it is possible, but the potential is there. There is still a lot of great known stories that they could dip into, but they really have to making something deep and real with the reboot.
^^^This so many times. I think the trick is this: if they’re using a familiar character (Disney princess) then they have to change/defamiliarize them, notably making them more human and flawed, but that’s where ABC/Disney will probably put their foot down, and I personally am not interested in live action remakes. And if they’re using less familiar characters, then they need time to set them up. I mean, if they could do it with Rumple, who is not exactly an iconic Disney anything, then surely they can put in the work with other sorts of recognizable, but not overly familiar characters.
One thing I would love to see is the show moving away from a ship-centric narrative, and refocusing on other relationships. There’s a point where ship angst fatigue sets in — and that point has been crossed for me 2 seasons ago. It doesn’t mean the ships have to be broken up, but one romantic angst subplot (Henry & Lucy’s mom) is plenty enough for a season. I would be perfectly content if they leave all the other pairings as they are, limit the temporal scale of S7 into a self-contained adventure, and send Regina (mom/magic user), Hook (step-dad/henchman/rogue), and Rumple (grandfather/magic user) to serve as a backup/rescue party for whatever trouble Henry got himself into. The Rumple/Regina combo has always been one of my favorite things (though please no more sexualizing it, that was horrid). But I think there’s great comic crackfic potential in having the Regina/Rumple/Hook disunfctional team/family unit going off to rescue Henry from himself. Extra points for the fact that they don’t much like each other. On that note, I’d love to see more of a Rumple/Henry dynamic, which might actually work especially well if they introduce an adult Henry and a different actor (no offense to Jared, but I’m not sure he can play a lead versus Lana and Bobby).
Also, at this point, I don’t think the show needs to plumb the tortured depths of any of these their main characters, except for Henry — it would be a lot more interesting to see how they are evolving in relation to present circumstances and challenges.
Other wishes for S7 include no more MacGuffin flora, minerals, or household objects unless there’s a really good reason for why any given MacGuffin needs to be any of these things.
Also, I don’t want a supervillain of the week big bad. Some serious world building / philosophical speculation about the nature of magic/realms/fiction/reality would be really welcome at this stage.
[adrotate group="5"]It was NEVER confirmed with Neal. Just based off headcanons and Belle’s word of all people. Belle doesn’t know Emma. She can speak for Neal and yeah that means he felt true love for Emma but doesn’t mean it was reciprocated. She loved him but it clearly was not true love as she states she did not feel true love the way her parents did until Killian. That is canon.
I can’t figure out if this is a response to my post or an anguished cris de coeur into the ether. Did I mention Belle?
Like….maybe yall should focus on the actual show and not those head canons.
People disagree with you, you lash out. People don’t disagree with you, you lash out. People ignore you, you lash out. Sheesh, there’s no pleasing some people.
Anyway, did my post at any point suggest that I was negating that Emma loved Hook? Or question the authenticity of Emma’s statement? Does it say, for example, something like “Well, Emma says she loves Hook, but really, she does so under very particular circumstances — specifically, she’s getting married and there’s certain ritualized speech patterns you use under such occasions which might involve some hyperbole and overstatements — and so we can’t take her statement too seriously. Or at least, not as seriously as we would on this other occasion where she states she loves someone under a totally different set of circumstances where such ritualized speech patterns don’t apply, where there’s no advanced preparation, and when the statement is clearly made spontaneously.”
If you read the post you were replying to one more time, you may notice the complete and total absence of the above statement in it, or anything even remotely resembling such a statement. In fact, the very first sentence clearly states that I take Emma at her word.
But, on an unrelated note, you seem to be bandying this term “headcanon” in a way that I find puzzling. Do you mean that you don’t think that OUAT is open to interpretation? That there is literally one single acceptable reading of the OUAT text and all other takes are foul heresies and must be stomped out at the root — a thankless exegetical task you are selflessly taking on? Alright, carry on.
If the Commander treas anyone as intellectually inferior, I think it’s Serena Joy. He feeds her tiny tidbits of information of the outside world–his world–only because they’re married and I think that’s part of the unwritten code in this world (in the perfect world they envisioned, not the one that is actually in effect) but the moment she starts to have ideas, he shuts her down and walks out.
So I watched the new one last night, and I’m so curious about what you thought about the backstory there. I thought it was fascinating — many of the flashbacks are so interesting on this show.
So all you SF fans, how do you explain that? I know Emma says that she had never experienced true love before at her wedding…and that is rather damning.
I see no problem with taking Emma at her word. I simply think that we should then take her at her word consistently. During the wedding, she states that she is experiencing something with Hook that is qualitatively different from her previous experiences, and labels that true love. Sure, why not? In fact, I should hope that her feelings for Neal, for her parents, for Henry and for every other important person in her life are each particular and unique forms of love — of course they are, why wouldn’t they be? And all are equally true, lowercase t. But as far as TL as a magical force is concerned (rather than an emotion/feeling/state or what have you) I am simply saying that Emma shares it with Henry, and that’s confirmed beyond doubt. In other words, both things can be true: Emma’s statement of her experience can be an accurate reflection of her experience, AND she does in fact share TL with other people. I don’t necessarily see a contradiction here.
How dare you suggest otherwise?
LULZ!!! That’s a good one.
(Welp… in case you were actually using ‘how dare you’ non-ironically, if you re-read my post you may notice that it suggests absolutely nothing about the veracity of Emma’s statement or vows one way or another.)
The show stated she only said I love you to Neal at that moment because of the stakes much like in S2 finale she called Snow and Charming Mom and Dad because she thought they were all gonna die.
Are you saying that when not under duress, Emma doesn’t think of the Charmings as her Mom and Dad? I don’t know what to tell you… ?
Emma’s true love by her own words is Killian Jones. Get. Over. It.
Let me get this straight — are you arguing that someone can only have True Love with one person they’re romantically and sexually involved with and all other relationships, past or present, or non-sexual/platonic/familial, get automatically demoted to something other than True Love? Because if so, that’s patently wrong based on the cosmology of the show. Lets leave the Neal question aside for a second, since this seems to be a hot button issue, but the show established that Emma’s True Love, independent of Killian, was Henry. Are you saying that it too maybe wasn’t reciprocated? Or somehow asymmetrical? Or some kind of false ideology, not really true love, but some other kind of love that works just as well in breaking curses? Considering that we’ve now had a bidirectional TLK, we know that Emma shares True Love with her son. That is a sentiment entirely independent of her feelings for Hook, and that predates her even having met Hook. Based on the way the show presents TL, a character’s individual experience is actually entirely irrelevant. TL in OUAT is represented as a force of nature, the magical efficacy of which is triggered, provided certain conditions are met, independently of the nature or current status of a given relationship.
Also, your statements are inconsistent: you’re saying that Emma cannot be taken at face value when she said she loved Neal, but should be taken at face value when she says she loves Hook. Either she can be taken at face value, or she can’t.
Yes. June’s not a person or human. She’s an object there for his pleasure and it pleases him to have her play Scrabble and smile and joke and be grateful for magazines
Yes — have you thought about the reason for the magazines? I mean, there’s something so poignant about the way that June is perfectly cognizant that this is trashy reading, nowhere near fulfilling to her intellectual capacity, but starved for any reading, it’s this incredibly powerful motivator. And it’s unclear whether the commander is giving them to her because that’s literally what he thinks she’s intellectually capable of, or because it’s this subtle form of psychological torture because they index a different life.
Serena’s motivation is still about a child and what that child will mean for her and Fred. The other Wife comes from seemingly a place of compassion. The show uses visuals like touch to highlight differences, like Serena dragging Offred to Luke and the other Wife gently touching OfSteven’s shoulder. (Of course I’ll note here that it’s also a warped sense of compassion because the Wife can’t do anything about Emily’s captivity and withholding the rape for this month does nothing about the rapes in the future months)
The thing that stood out to me is the different ages of the two wives. Steven’s Wife seems post-reproductive, in a way that hints at a shift in the stakes of sexuality, or the nature of what intimacy looks like, not only for her but possibly for her husband. This is the first time we get a sense that at least some of this social elite of Commanders and Wives also feel trapped by the rituals of their self-imposed reproductive imperative.
I think Serena’s motivation is more complicated than just a child. Fred’s little speech to June about women’s biological destiny, or what have you, hints at Serena’s double-bind. She is, by the rules of the very society she and women like her helped usher in, a failure. What’s so interesting is the open secret that the men are likely infertile — or at least bear a similar burden of infertility.
For some reason, the part of the episode that made me most uncomfortable — maybe more than Ofglen’s first encounter with Nick — was the stuff with the Commander. There was something about his insistence on intimacy that felt like itself a form of violation — or a breach of agreement — only made worse by that final confrontation in his office. It’s like suddenly the blinders are off, and right, this man does not see Ofglen as fully human, and yet demands a connection from her.
I think Rumbelle has been a disaster for a while, but 6A really outdid itself. So the HEA was telegraphic and not very satisfying because it didn’t fix anything. But telegraphic as it was, I do hope they leave Rumple and Belle well enough alone, even if it’s offscreen. Yes, DO Rumple is entertaining, but A&E haven’t used him in interesting, smart ways since Season 1. He’s a schema at most. The Mr. Gold/DO Rumple dualism of the first 3 seasons is where the narrative potential was, and they just dropped the ball on that completely. I enjoy Dark One Clippy in homeopathic doses, and I don’t enjoy Black Hat full on “Godfather” style Mr Gold much at all, despite Bobby’s incredible acting talent. I did absolutely adore Mr. Gold in the first few seasons, precisely because it was a much more complex, rounded out character. Bobby’s flat, joyless affect in playing Mr. Gold makes me thing of Emma’s slow transformation, and that makes me a bit sad.
But as far as Rumbelle is concerned, the problem isn’t just that A&E seemed averse to wanting to develop Belle, which I think is just a symptom of the show’s kind of latent misogyny, whereby the only female characters they’re interested in developing are the ones that seem the most male-like. There are structural problems that I don’t think they could overcome no matter their intentions. Ultimately, A&E are not good writers, and that’s just that. But here are the overall problems I think that underpin what happened with RB:
1) Rumple without Neal lacks an orienting axis of motivation. Gideon does not substitute for Neal effectively. Belle by definition cannot.
2) Since S1, Rumple has been massively overpowered and difficult to use plot wise. A&E should have produced some kind of consistent check on his powers, perhaps exploring the idea that “magic comes with a price” in a more active way. It would help if they didn’t change their rules of magic every three seconds.
3) Rumple and Belle have a massive power differential, which makes the couple hard to write without Rumple automatically coming off as abusive or high-handed. This would be a difficult pairing in the hands of sensitive, psychologically complex writers. A&E aren’t that, so in a sense, the safest thing to do is shelf Belle as much as possible.
4) The show’s framing of Rumple’s powers misses the main point of what makes his predicament interesting. As the DO, he’s effectively managed to mostly not let the darkness (TM) wreak havoc on the world for, give or take, hundreds of years by (1) avoiding enslavement and (2) telling Clippy off whenever he can. In other words Rumple fulfills the socially useful function of keeping the DO power more or less contained, which means that through inaction he’s actually doing a good thing. The drama of the character, in principle, is that as soon as he wants something for himself, any sort of action is a liability because any action/desire is warped by the darkness. Which effectively means that there’s an internal mechanism that makes it very difficult for him to act in the world. But A&E seem to have missed this aspect of the character.
