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*pats self on back*
No way! Wait… seriously?!
[adrotate group="5"]True, but both Once and Wicked were going off the (fabulous) Oz books’ illustrations, which decked out various persons in Oz in similar costuming. (The 1939 movie obviously was going from the same source material and has also influenced later interpretations. And for bonus Oz fun, Baum himself created at least four films during his lifetime–late 19teens–of his Oz series.) I saw the uniform and immediately said, that’s Oz! It’s more than just Wicked. The original books by Baum were all lavishly illustrated (John R. Niell did most of the series, though the first book was originally illustrated by W.W. Denslow and they had very different concepts of what Dorothy herself looked like), and in places the illustrations and text referenced one another in a way that you don’t see often in modern texts.
Wow! These are amazing! OK, I am absolutely convinced now that this is Oz, and not just recycling a costume from (F)London.
Rumple deals with names though. If he met Robin here then why did he need the sheriff to tell him Robin’s name in Lacey?
…
On the other hand, what’s up with the epaulettes in the still? Doesn’t that more readily refer to fictional London, than Oz?
Glazed? They bulldozed over it and are now trying to erase Bae’s existence from the show. It’s a giant elephant in the room that everyone but Adam, Eddy, and the writers are willing to acknowledge. Rumple is now evil for evil’s sake. I was so angry that Mal pleaded with Rumple to show her what happened to her child, and Rumple showed no empathy, no spark of acknowledgment of being in the similar situation with his son. It was a slap in the face to Rumple’s character and fans of the show. This is a man who worked for centuries to get back to his child. He literally moved worlds for it. And now it’s just dropped.
Not to flog a dead horse, but what I especially ‘appreciate’ about the way A&E have dealt with Rumple is that they have literally, vilified him for his misfortunes. Watching how the show has dealt with Rumple and Neal, it’s not just literal and figurative character assassination, it’s the icky feeling that it was done for “the oooh-aaah factor”, the gratuitous cruelty of it — as in, how many horrendous things can I inflict on those two before they fall apart as characters?
Like watching two kids giggle gleefully as they incinerate ants with a magnifying glass…
And that’s pretty much the answer you’d get from anyone in charge of writing media. But I will say this; at the Arrow show runner is open to conversation. A and E would just shut you down I would never be a CS shipper just because I enjoyed the poetic beauty of SF more, but if they hadn’t written CS the way the had–full of the “common” ways other couples are written–I would not have found it as distasteful as I do. Happy Monday all. Going to be out all day.
I was going to throw in a response, but y’all preempted most of my points 🙂 I just want to add to RG’s analysis that in contemporary US culture the dynamic of which CS is an example is also normalized through biological arguments (males have evolved to pursue; females are biologically programmed to be choosy etc… should sound familiar), which completely disregards the actual diversity of gender roles across cultures and epochs. But better feminists than I have written about this, so I’ll leave it at that.
But then after the first two seasons they began to TELL us things. Action, magic, special effects and “shock” became the standard. They’re more interested in telling us connections and relationships instead of showing us anything. (Belle and Will, I’m looking at you. What the what????) No time for character development? Just put in a few lines of exposition. Why talk about your problems when you can wave a sword at them or have a magic cure!
This! Although, honestly, I don’t find CS particularly offensive — bland, mind-numbingly banal, vaguely patronizing, yes, but not offensive necessarily. (Though I do think SF was more interesting, nuanced, and challenging.) But then again I also refuse to find Rumbelle quite as inherently offensive as I think I am supposed to at this point, or “Rogina” (OutlawQueen, is that the ship’s name) as ambivalent… Now, before I get yelled at here, let me explain. Good fiction is meant to show different relationships in all their messy, objectionable, and sometimes doomed glory and/or horror. The idea of romantic love (positively valenced for the most part, unlike, say, in Ancient Greece) has been around in our culture for a while, and it doesn’t look like it’s about to go anywhere, so fair enough. What I personally find deeply annoying in OUAT is the inbuilt, and often heavy-handed moralization of particular OUAT relationships, starting with S3, and therefore balk at its self-congratulatory moral economy. I think some of you have already said this: we are meant to cheer for CS, and meant to boo Rumbelle and to feel ambivalent or torn about OutlawQueen. I’m not sure what we’re meant to feel about the Charmings at this point. And I think we’re meant to have happily moved on from SF. And these emotions that are meant to be provoked are so abysmally, teeth-numbingly normative (but also mildly offensive, in the case of CS — as in, why is THAT the yardstick by which I’m supposed to measure true love?) that I can’t help feeling contrary, and sort of “hate-watching” as Josephine says, even though I also really would rather just “sink” into the show the way one could in the first couple of seasons.
But the bigger problem I think is that these characters, whether villains or heroes, no longer seem to have any motivations outside of the desire for relationships (whether familial or conjugal), or any possibility of individual growth outside of their particular social entanglements. They’re progressively being flattened out. The one notable “nod” to a character’s tastes is Belle and her books — but seriously, that’s a joke, and I can’t help feeling that it’s actually not an innocent or well-meaning joke on A&E’s part. Belle’s SB outfits and the whole “sexy librarian” thing, in combination with how her character has been written seems to suggest “Oh yes, and here’s the cute girl who likes books, she’s sort of dumb as a board despite this, but she’s nice, and most importantly, boys and girls, she’s eye candy.” #headdesk
Even in something as seemingly straight-arrow as Marvel’s Agents of Shield, there’s a sense of depth behind the characters (like, they might have hobbies and interests outside of the action/missions, they might have thoughts about the world, and while we might not be privy to them, they’re there). The problem, with OUAT, is that I think lazy writing leads to the show’s deeply problematic “politics” and morality.
Oh, and one last note, does anyone else find the accusation of irrational “shipping” (i.e shippers gonna hate) weirdly gendered?
[climbs off the soapbox]
Happy Monday.
Michael Moorcock and the Eternal Champion.
Oh, that’s a great parallel! The interesting thing here is that because the point is maintaining Balance, the Champion (a) doesn’t know the effect of his actions and (b) their cumulative results have to, in the long run, “come out even,” so getting ahead~failing make no difference as long as the great karmic checkbook balances itself out. (Also somehow reminds me of Planescape: Torment. But that’s neither here nor there.)
As for Emma having the heart with the greatest potential for darkness, I think she still has it. The Chernabog going after Emma in 4×12 confirms it. I’m starting to think the apprentice either deceived Snow and Charming into believing he could cast out Emma’s darkness so as to send Lily to this world, or the apprentice only succeeded temporarily in casting out the potential for Emma’s darkness and that she regained it as she grew up an orphan without anyone to guide her (she was a car thief after all).
What’s odd about this is why the Apprentice then proceeded to yell at the Author to the effect of “why did you make me do this, it wasn’t very nice!” Unless he meant sending Lilly to this world, not the casting out darkness bit.
I suppose it would also depend on how A&E define “potential.” Here’s another “meta” theory 🙂
If potential has to do with the degree of agency any given character has in a story (i.e. the degree to which their actions are capable of changing events and affecting others) — which is what I think maybe they’re thinking — then one could imagine a situation where the two aspects of this agency could be split between two people. So, if the Apprentice’s exorcism actually did something, we might speculate that Emma’s actions (no matter the intention) are skewed to have, always, in the long run, a positive impact on the heroes, but negative effect for the villains (for example, bringing back Marian = interferes with Regina’s HEA). By contrast, Lilly’s actions might be skewed to have a negative impact on the heroes. So we’d have Emma as agent of order, and Lilly as agent of chaos. Now, that doesn’t change the “amount” of agency Emma has. BUT. There’s this saying in creative writing that a convincing villain is one who thinks he/she is the main protagonist. So by turning her “evil”, Rumple would be shifting the universal/narrative odds in his favor, because positive/negative are then relative to who the protagonist(s) of the story are. If you will, this relies on a play of words between Heroes (white horse, shining armor, square jaw…) and heroes (the person from whose perspective the story is told), as well as villains=antagonists.
I don’t think Dark Ones can self terminate. The DO is immortal unless stabbed by the dagger in which case the curse is then transferred to the person who did the stabbing. However, if the DO tries to stab themselves, the curse is flowing out of them only to flow back into them thus continuing the cycle. When Rumple stabbed himself through Pan, he was only sent to the “vault of the Dark One” which isn’t actually proper death but more like stuck in limbo waiting to be released.
That explanation makes a lot of sense – yes, I was thinking that he might have gone into the pit of goo. Now, why did Pan’s body disappear along with him, I’ve no idea.
Which makes me wonder, theoretically speaking, what would happen to the whole DO lineage/DO curse if any given DO stabbed themselves with the dagger?
Rump stabbed himself with it and died. Zoso was enslaved and didn’t have the dagger in his possession at the point where he had Rumple kill him. When he did have it, I assume that he, like Rump, wanted to keep the power but the not enslavement bit so he went after the Sorcerer’s hat. So my answer as to why Zoso didn’t stab himself with it was A) he wasn’t suicidal when he had the dagger and then B) When he was suicidal he didn’t have the dagger to do it himself and so had rump do it.
Wait, yes, but he stabbed himself via Pan. My point is, Pan introduces an unknown variable. Did the curse transfer to him, however briefly? And then back to Rumple, however briefly? Unless, of course, Cora was right, Rumple’s curse lifted and disintegrated them both (was that A&E’s explanation?). Alternatively, if self-stabbing doesn’t kill the DO, and nothing happens, it could also explain Zoso’s manipulations. Seriously, if Zoso could manipulate Rumple to get the dagger and then get himself stabbed, couldn’t he cut out the middle man and get the dagger himself? I mean, he had time to wander around pretending to be a beggar, it’s not like he was on the clock 24/7. And he seemed like a clever fellow… Anyway, there are two scenarios: DO curse broken because DO dies (according to Cora, it poofs out of existence) or DO curse broken because of TLK… in that case, it apparently goes back into the dagger, which then goes ballistic. Ugh. This makes my head hurt. I’m probably missing something obvious here.
Yes you’re right she does say that in Miller’s Daughter. However 1) Cora could be lying 2) Cora could be wrong 3) The writers changed their minds
I think it’s probably 2). Seemed more like she was theorizing. I mean, prior to then, had any Dark One died outside of the typical getting stabbed with the dagger method? Rumple was only dying otherwise because he was mortal when he got attacked by Hook, since he was outside Storybrooke limits with no magic.
Which makes me wonder, theoretically speaking, what would happen to the whole DO lineage/DO curse if any given DO stabbed themselves with the dagger? I’m sure this has been asked before, but it seems like a bit of a hole in OUAT’s world building. If being DO is such a lousy job, why hasn’t anyone put an end to it? I mean…Zoso essentially committed suicide by Rumple, so it’s not the whole morality of taking one’s life that’s at stake here.
