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The Apprentice saying “she is where she belongs” (about Lily) really made me think of the Blue Fairy saying the Dark One curse “doesn’t belong here” (i.e. in the Enchanted Forest). Hence, shady Apprentice/Sorcerer and Shady Blue Fairy.
Yes! And also makes one wonder, where does the DO curse belong? And where/how did it get to EF in the first place? Was it that someone thought it’d make for a better story? (And I agree, I find Blue pretty suspicious too).
That’s more or less my feeling as well. Which means the Author isn’t exactly evil, just corrupted by object he was never meant to wield. He’s been Gollum’d.
lol! Speaking of preciouses, I don’t know what about this dialogue keeps bothering me, so I’ll just paste it here:
Apprentice: How dare you? How dare you force me to do that to that child?
Author: It makes for a better story.
Return the quill.
You are ill-suited for this job.
[…]
You have forsaken your holy duty, and now You must be punished.
Do you think he actually gave the Quill back? Can the AppSourcerer make him return it, I wonder? Or maybe if he really does have an accomplice inside SB, perhaps that’s who’s hanging on to the Quill and this is where the Author was running off to so promptly. He seemed awfully sure of where he was going (although it might have been just away from Emma)
[adrotate group="5"]And given how these seasons are structured now, I think that this current author will either die or retire peacefully by the end of this season. Season five, we get something else. But I think death is more likely.
I have a suspicion this isn’t a job you retire from. The Apprentice mentions something like “you have failed at the sacred duty” blah blah. The language makes me think that August’s description of this as a “job” is a little bit misleading — you’re right, it’s more like Buffy and assorted Chosen One(s).
Which would put more weight into the idea that nothing is truly free will. Everything is determined by ‘fate’.
Interesting! It reminds me of how time travel fiction has dealt with divergent timelines. I’m oversimplifying, but at the two extremes, you have minor actions balloon into a proliferation of AUs; or, on the other end, no matter what you do, the elasticity of the timeline always snaps back into a single (and hence inevitable) sequence (so you can’t change history).
Also, another note: are we looking at a Macro/Micro parallel? Author vs Sorcerer Lily vs The Savior As above so below?
Hah! Well, that is presumably how all magic works, so it wouldn’t entirely surprise me. Though I wonder if they are, in fact, in opposition, I think your hierarchy question is exactly on point. So, the Sorcerer supposedly creates the Author’s job/sacred duty/what have you. Is that what we’ve been told so far? Or did the create the Quill (which looks like it acts as the show’s version of the Printing Press, historically speaking).
So the obvious question, and unless the Sorcerer’s planning to run for office and needs a track record of creating jobs, is why did he feel the need for an Author (but only if it’s an archivist, with not too much creative license). And if the Sorcerer is also a “job” held by many people, do we know if it’s this Sorcerer, whoever he/she is, that created the job of Author? Or his antecedent?
I think the Sorcerer is their God Insert (if Author is their Lucifer Pre-Fall insert–and Michael/Apprentice cast him into the pit of hell…or book…)
You’re likely right, but I wonder… For a good chunk of S4 we were operating under the assumption that the Author was good, and the Sorcerer was bad. Then this got reversed — we are now thinking the Author is bad, and the Sorcerer good (although, as @Slurpeez points out, the Apprentice is a bit of a shady operator). It seems like the next logical move is to say that in fact, they are neither (evil or good). This is where, from the narrative’s point of view, the rug is supposed to be pulled from under our feet, right?
Slurpeez wrote: Maybe the Apprentice simply took the title of Sorcerer from the previous sorcerer, but hasn’t let on yet.
In the dialogue with the Author (“You are ill suited for the job etc”) he says “You have deceived us.” So it seems that either he is talking about himself using the Royal We, or there really is a separate entity that is the Sorcerer. Although I wonder if they are not, in fact, the same person in the sense of inhabiting the same body. There have been precedents
There is definitely 1 artifact in the story that has a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with its host, as per @Rumplesgirl’s observation, namely the DO’s dagger. The hat, we know, seems separate from its “owner”. The dagger gives magic, at a price. The hat absorbs magic (at a price? Leaving what behind?). The quill apparently rewrites reality (or at least edits it). It’s interesting that it doesn’t have a “direct” relationship to magic, in this sense, even though, technically, it occupies a parallel place to the hat.
One last strange thing. While he was sending Mal’s baby through the green vortex of doom, the Apprentice kept repeating (twice, I think, but maybe more) that he’s sending her “where she (it? the baby) belongs.” Which seems like a harsh statement considering he just said she’s a blank slate (now presumably with Emma’s potential for darkness). But what if we took it as a statement of fate. As in, she literally belongs there, because she’s supposed to cause a chain of events to occur.
I’m not really sure he can’t manipulate from intside the book.
<ul>
<li>Someone gave August the page with the door</li>
<li>The book appeared to Mary Margaret (when there was no magic in Storybrooke)</li>
<li>Someone gave Robin page 23</li>
<li>The light leading to the key was projected from the page with the door</li>
</ul>
SOMEONE is leading everyone around by their noses. It might not be the Peddler, but some manipulation is taking place in Storybrooke.I agree. Although A&E do like their red herrings (ex with Lost, and the assumption early on that the Smoke Monster is actually a sentient entity). It appears that we have someone working in cahoots with the Author… or maybe against him, depending on how we’re viewing the results of these discoveries. Incidentally, do we know or have any inkling as to the relationship between the Author and the quill? What happens if the quill is Authorless?
On a different note, if “Author” is technically a job title, is “Sorcerer” also a job, occupied by many different people at different times? If so, what’s the job description? And if not, then… who or what is it?
Well, lol. I’m not touching that first question with a ten foot pole (and neither will anyone else! *MOD GLARE*) but it does go back to something @MatthewPaul brought up which is that on some level the Author and they way they’ve depicted him in Fischler is very much a stand in for Adam and Eddy themselves.
😀 Sorry, this wasn’t meant to start a nautical battle! 😉 Let me generalize the question. Love, as we usually think of it in our culture, is one of those emotions where free will seems powerless. You can choose to act on a feeling or not, but you usually can’t choose to feel. But the corollary of that is that you also can’t force someone to fall in love — to bend them to your will in that way. In this, love is “autonomous” from the subject. Which brings up Authorial authority in relation to romances in the show. And I will leave that thought open-ended…
I think he’s telling the story to himself, and to borrow from FanFic world, he has a lot of plot bunnies.
Oh dear, this makes me immediately think of Monty Python’s Killer Bunny.
Anyway, to make a slightly more high brow reference, philosopher Walter Benjamin has this quote (in the context of writing about book collectors): “Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.” The idea is similar to the saying that if you can’t seem to find the story you’d want to read, you need to write it. Which makes me think that you’re right that he’s writing for himself. And presumably, if before that the stories were self-telling, in a sense, and Author(s) were in fact Archivists or maybe Translators, then this one is the first “genuine” author of the bunch (arguably. Depending on whether you think of art/creativity as generating something “new”)
If the underlying moral and philosophical thesis of this show has always been “evil (and good) aren’t born, they are made” how do we rationalize what we now know about the Author and his own writing of the story? Are we to understand that “made” doesn’t mean “made by the heroes and villains themselves” but rather “made by the Author?” They still aren’t born good or bad, but rather made that way based on the whims of the writer? And how do we rationalize the villains and the heroes doing both good and bad even AFTER the Author was put into the book? Thoughts? Suggestions?
That’s a really interesting question, on both ends. So the first aspect — if villains and heroes are literally made by the author, where does free will come into play? The analogy I kept thinking back to is a chess board, where the pieces are sentient. This is a trope in a lot of films and stories (from Star Wars to Harry Potter, for example). I think the question is always whether the game “plays itself,” or whether someone is manipulating/ordering the pieces about. And where the player stands in relation to the playing board (is the player outside/above the board, or is he/she inside the game, taking on the place of a piece, as in the first HP)? Clearly, the stakes would be different. The other question we might ask is whether the player is playing solo (or against him/herself), or is there an opponent?
To bring this back to the Author, this metaphor isn’t perfect, but I think it points to the different “levels” or maybe scales of manipulation that might be happening, as well as the stakes/risks that one runs.
On a slightly different note, if the goal of the author is to tell a “better story,” but, also, presumably, to keep their power to tell the story, then we cannot, by definition, have a happy ending for anyone, heroes or villains, because then the story would end. For that matter, there can’t be unhappy endings either. The story has to keep going, and our characters are then stuck in a perpetual limbo/cycles of repetition. Some folks on this forum have pointed out that villains are characterized by the inability to recognize their happy ending — whether that’s the case or not, this is what powers the story and allows it to go forward, so something that the Author would, minimally, encourage it seems.
Then we get into the really hoary stuff. Is Neal dead because CS makes for a better story? Is Rumple revived and apparently evil because it makes for a better story? Does a tormented Regina who can’t be with Robin make for a better story? etc => In other words, are we to take this as Authorial design, or authorial design (Author vs show writers)?
And finally, I keep asking whose story. Who is the Author writing/telling this story to? Who is his presumed audience? Obviously for previous authors it was something very general, like “humanity”… So who is this one writing for that he suddenly felt the need to change the rules and write a better story?
Part of me fears that this is actually what A and E intended. A lot of this feels very LOST-ian. Does everything happen for a reason because of some sort of God/Fate-Manipulation (John Locke’s approach) or was it a series of events based on choices the castaways made but stemmed from their own choices and not God-manipulation (Jack Shepherd’s approach). In LOST it was a fascinating philosophical dialogue to watch…but here the idea that maybe it’s all God-Manipulation flies in the underlying moral thesis of the show since S1: evil isn’t born, it’s made. If everything we’ve seen the characters do since the Author became the Author (good or bad) is somehow Authorial manipulation then how do we rationalize the “evil (and good) isn’t born, it’s made” mentality.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’m having trouble with too. And there’s a big gulf between being “pushed” in a particular direction, and having one’s actions puppeteered.
I think we’ve seen that throughout the seasons. Not every villain is evil for the sake of being evil. I think the closest we’ve ever come to that level is Pan. Every other villain we’ve come across is sympathetic one way or another that you really can’t call them evil. And every villain and hero has their own code that they live by. It’s how they get things done, their methods that differ.
Very true. I think the primary difference, and the thing that really throws me sometimes with OUAT is is self-referentiality.OUAT is not just about showing good vs evil (however configured and reconfigured) but also a constant talking/narrative about the nature of good and evil. Which, lately, the narrative and the actions are starting to diverge, so I think the frustration, puzzlement, and/or disappointment with Snowing many folks are expressing in this thread has to do with the cognitive dissonance that this apparent divergence causes.
They’re totes cool with BURNING A MAN ALIVE (reasonable assumption that’s what’d happen to him because they know he’s trapped in the page they’re gonna burn) just to keep covering their own butts. Like, seriously, that’s really a thing they actually thought would be acceptable to do? It’s lovely that they realised it was wrong before they went through with it, but for a while there they were totally cool with murder. And it wasn’t, “This person will kill my family if we don’t kill them first,” this was just, “If he gets out he’s gonna tell on us for being bad.”
Lol!”Oh noez, Maleficent burned some random guards, she’s an evil beast… let’s steal her baby! […] Ooh, look. The guy who could rat us out is trapped in this page. Let’s burn it! (Wait, that’s not really heroic, is it)”
*facepalm*
I’m fine with “hero” characters having flaws because perfect characters are annoying and unrealistic. But the way they’ve gone about it with Snowing isn’t so much showing that they’re good people with flaws, it’s more like they’ve never really been good people and what we’ve seen of them previously has just been a facade. What they’re trying to do with the characters now just doesn’t fit, it doesn’t feel natural, it devalues how they’ve shown them previously. It’s just poor writing IMO.
Exactly. But I do wonder — is this poor writing (as in, they’re trying to make them look less sympathetic, but doing it in a sloppy, heavy-handed way) or is it intentional? Is the thought process “How far can we push our audience and make them hate these previously sympathetic characters?” (I know not everyone was on board with Rumple to begin with, but for those of us who liked the character, it’s painful to watch what they did with him — as many have already discussed on this forum). I’ll be honest, I was never overly fond of Snowing — their particular brand of self-righteous entitlement has been rubbing me the wrong way from the start. But even I can acknowledge that this feels way out of character.
Agreed. It’s a way to make the fan favorite villains look better by showing how the heroes were really never heroes to begin with. But that flies in the face of everything we saw in the earliest seasons.
This! So, is the endgame saying that there are no real villains or heroes, and that it’s all contextual? If that’s the message, then they seem to be conflating the idea that evil and good are process-based with moral relativism of the simplistic variety.*
(* It’s one thing to espouse moral relativism à la Game of Thrones, which is largely cultural => i.e. we have to suspend our own normative assumptions about society in order to understand the morality system and motivations of different factions and characters. But lets face it, this isn’t HBO or JRR Martin, and it’s also NOT where OUAT started)
I don’t think Snow and Charming actually revealed that they knew him. Would have to rewatch the scene to confirm but i think it occurs to them who he was and he ran off before they could confront him.
Might depend on how dense Emma is… The Author says that he got the brandy from a nice couple he met on the road, followed by Snow gasping in realization and saying…”you!” I’m guessing Snowing need to tell the full extent of the Author’s involvement, though. That could be what this is
Interestingly, from the dialogue, we can’t tell how much Snowing told Emma. In fact the scene cuts right to the “you were lying” conversation, but we have no way of knowing how much Snowing filled Emma in on their little “stack the odds” ritual. It could be as much as the whole thing, or as little as “we were trying to protect you, and did something bad as a result.” My guess, though is that they fessed up, and now it’s just a question of putting the face to the name.
I think the actions themselves are open to interpretation. But I think what’s way more problematic, is Snowing’s dialogue over the mobile. Let’s consider it for a second:
Snow, it’s just a mobile.
A unicorn gave me a vision, which led to us ripping Maleficent’s child away.
I don’t want a reminder of that literally hanging over our baby.
[Scoffs] What we did is already with me every night when I try to sleep.
– I keep hearing – I know.
I do, too.
But maybe Maleficent deserved what happened.
For all we know, she lied about Regina having the dark curse.
Regina hasn’t even tried using it.
Maybe her threat was just words.
None of that matters.
What matters is what we did.
I thought we were doing something brave for our child, and we were brave, but we weren’t kind.
We were selfish.
And I think We are not heroes anymore.
How do we fix it? We can’t fix it.
Maleficent’s child is gone.
But, Snow, we’re still here.
So, how do we fix us? The people we are now, weighed down by all this is that who we want to raise our child? Of course not.
But do you really think that redemption is possible? Yes.
I have to believe we can earn forgiveness.
A chance at Grace.
But to get there, we have to be the best people we can work, spread hope and faith every day.
Because otherwise, what we did will stain us forever.
And affect our child.Now, if we assume that time hasn’t just stopped going for Maleficient as soon as we’ve switched to Snowing’s hand-wringing here, lets imagine for a second what she’s going through while these two are contemplating whether a mobile of a unicorn over their baby’s crib is offensive. I don’t know if dragon shapeshifters suffer from postpartum, but here you are, just gave birth, and then these two bozos steal your baby, and the next time you see it, it’s hurtling down a swirling vortex to who knows where, likely to smash into little smithereens once it hits the bottom of whatever that is. And then you drag yourself back to your house, and all those months of anticipation, or preparing for the arrival of your little bundle, of making a comfy little nest for it, of dreaming of how the two of you will live together is met with …cold, dead, silence. Its little crib/nest/whatever you keep a baby-egg in… empty and hollow. And on top of everything else, you have no way to really mourn it because ultimately, you will likely never know for sure what happened to it. And your last image of it is its pudgy little hand with little dimples, reaching out to you…
Right?
Now, lets read that dialogue again.1) A unicorn led us to rip Mal’s child away (unicorns made me do it?)
2) But maybe Mal’s deserved it? because, you know, she’s a liar.
3) What matters is what we did [Ok, maybe here we’ll have some genuine regret, some sincere contemplation of the horror of their action… Wait for it, wait for it…] “But none of that matters (!!!) […] I think We are not heroes anymore.”
Oh, no, that there is truly tragic.
Unless the Author was also writing their dialogue, I am a lot more reluctant to see them as all that innocent. I mean the profoundly self-absorbed litany about not being able to claim the status of heroes… And then worrying that maybe the fact that they feel bad about what they’ve done is going to be a problem and affect their kid? Meanwhile, not one thought about the impact that this might have had on Mal… while Snow herself is heavily pregnant? Seriously? I don’t even know what to do with that honestly.
What I’m curious about is whether this is intentional on the writers’ part, or if that dialogue is supposed to make us feel warm fuzzies for our repenting couple. Because if the latter, I wasn’t impressed.
