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Neil Gaiman did it, why can’t OUAT, right?
I want you to re-read this fragment and tell me what’s wrong. ?
Let’s say it was offered in the spirit of a Zen koan, as a meditation on the ontological emptiness of #hope. 😉
[adrotate group="5"]Wow! This excites me. I know someone on this show who “stole” two heros’ wives
LOL! I haven’t even thought of that. I was still at Hades and Persephone (though he didn’t technically ‘steal’ Persephone, just tricked her with his offer of a healthy snack)…
Honestly, no way they’ll go there, but if they did, Koschei is such a delightful villain. 🙂 Who doesn’t like an old greedy bone-sack necromancer who keeps his life squirreled away in a needle kept inside an egg, inside a duck, inside a hare, inside a goose, inside a locked chest, on top of a tree on a desert island?
I was half-way hoping they’d get into Slavic folklore when they introduced Chernobog. Neil Gaiman did it, why can’t OUAT, right?
Regarding “Egg-gate,” I really think half the problem was the awful, muddled writing. I genuinely think the writers got themselves confused with that one. They felt like they had to achieve a couple of goals at once: introduce the Author, connect Emma, Maleficient, and Lilly, set-up the stuff with the darkness/DO curse, and knock Snowing off its moral high ground, because that’s been one of their strategies for making the villains look better.
I think what they wanted to set up for Snowing was an impossible choice: like would you sacrifice someone else’s child if it would give yours a chance? Essentially, something that would pit one’s core principles against one’s deep seated instinct to do everything to protect one’s kid. But it didn’t work — the muddled talk about “potential for darkness,” rather than a more concrete, visceral threat just made Snow and Charming come across as privileged jerks, literally taking advantage of someone they described as ‘not even human’ (or something like that) to slightly bend luck in Emma’s favor. It was just over the top, and made Snow seem like the spoiled brat she used to be.
Though, maybe I should stop #hoping for the Greek myths to make an appearance. I’m pretty scared about what they are going to do to my warm and happy place.
You and I both. Oh well, if Belle is around I suppose she can be called upon to info-dump something on Persephone.
Anyway, pulled out my copy of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. These lines struck me…
I must say, the Demeter/Persephone myth is sort of perfect for OUAT and its exploration of mother/daughter relationships — but I think @Slurpeez might be right. It might be too high-flying for what OUAT (or, really, ABC) imagines its audience to be. Not ruling it out, though — and the passage you’re citing is awesome.
On the other hand, if you watched Lost Girl, you might remember the Naga/Garuda plotline (taken from Hindu and/or Buddhist mythology). So a) they didn’t shy away from introducing pretty obscure mythological references, and b) for those in the know, they messed with the original framing, and inverted the bad guys/good guys (nagas are typically bad news, at least in Buddhism, and Garuda, at least in some forms of Buddhism, end up being treated as guardian deities). But then again, it’s a Canadian show, and they’re honestly a lot more adventurous than much of US mainstream TV, especially of the Disney variety. So maybe not the best comparison.
There seems to be a disconnect between what the writers say versus what they show. And I think that is because the writers are using doublespeak so as not to offend any one class of fans.
You know, I love this idea of doublespeak — if nothing else, it has these delightfully Orwellian overtones, and imagining OUAT as a dissident text written in such a way that the Ministry of Truth censors couldn’t pick up on the subtext is sort of wonderful. Or ambiguously like Shakespearean play — is Hamlet really crazy or faking it, that sort of thing. But I guess I’m just too much of a cynic — I think the doublespeak has more to do with the fact that the right hand doesn’t know what the left one is doing. In other words, I think different writers are doing different things, and aren’t necessarily writing “in unison” and with one message in mind. I guess one can look it up, but I wonder about the contradictions: like Henry one day saying he doesn’t like Hook, and on another episode helping him find a house for Emma and him. Is this written by the same writers? I think it’s this sort of “jerking” characters back and forth that I find most problematic and troubling.
I was thinking something along the same lines. I’ve also got her pegged as another mother figure to Emma–and she’ll give some line about how she learned to be a good mom from *her* mother who never stopped looking for her.
Ah, good point. But I would also not put it past them to mess with the Persephone/Demeter/Hades myth in some unhappy way, like Demeter actually ending up being some sort of problematic figure.
If we think about it as a phoenix and not the Russian myth, then Persephone descends and ascends with frequency.
Fun fact about firebirds and Russian mythology — there’s a connection between several versions of the fairytale with Koschei the Deathless which is a sort of a wizardly/immortal male figure who, to quote Wikipedia, “is an archetypal male antagonist, described mainly as abducting the hero’s wife.” Also, notoriously hard to kill. Anyway, I’m overthinking this.
It seems to me that the producers think Snow and Charming are keystone characters that can’t be killed or sidelined without ruining the show, but neither have they allowed S&C to transition to the role of middle-aged parents and community leaders.
I think that’s absolutely right. But also, I think the show runners don’t really know how to go about transitioning Snowing into middle-age beyond marital bickering, embarrassingly unhip outfits, and a general sense of doltishness occasionally interspersed with Snow’s inspirational speeches. I suppose it’s the “All happy families are alike” problem.
Considering this show’s track record with figures from Emma’s past, I’d go with the latter. August, Merlin, Neal, Lily, and Ingrid. Walsh too, if you include Emma’s time in New York during the missing year. Chances are, she’ll encounter this person again in the Underworld, too.
My crackpot theory du jour is that this is young Persephone.
Though how this might relate to firebirds, I’ve no idea 🙂
Nitpick: The “Firebird” is the name of a distinctly different bird in Russian folklore, not an interchangeable word for Phoenix (though phoenixes are strictly speaking “fire birds”, yes). Assuming the title’s meant to refer to resurrection, I’m actually really bugged that they didn’t go with simply Phoenix or From the Ashes or something because Firebirds don’t resurrect.
You’re so right. And if Firebird=Pheonix, they are doing some serious mixing metaphors. At least in Slavic folklore, not only does the firebird have nothing to do with resurrection, but it also usually spells major problems for the protagonist (i.e. it’s a quest item in Slavic fairytales, where the protagonist has to go fetch said bird after finding a feather, usually for someone else, and running into all sorts of trouble on the way). Anyway, unless they meant it that way, the Firebird usually is a lot more trouble than it’s worth 😉
