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The real happy endings are lost, now they are bitter happy endings.
Yes, but the writers are trying to spin it as “happy endings aren’t always what you expect.” That line from 3×11 from the flashbacks of Snow and Charming was when the writers decided to hit the reset button in an attempt to write Neal out for the sake of Hook wooing Emma. I just want to cry with how the writers have botched up the original message of hope that good can win and that the mark of true love is sacrifice (which Neal demonstrated his entire life).
And this is where they’re losing fans…you don’t tell one story for 2.5 years and then suddenly do a 180 and start spouting off different stuff that goes against everything you set up for all that time. They’ve become more concerned with showing too much PLOT and fan pandering for ships than they are about their original vision and that may be the saddest thing of all for those of us who’ve watched the show since the pilot and loved the overall theme of hope. They killed that in S3B and I really don’t think they can get that back anymore.
BTW-I did something today that I never thought I would do…I took my OUAT fandom out of my Twitter bio. It actually hurt my heart to do that this morning because it’s something I never thought I would do. I believed that this show was different from the others out there that are so dark and dreary, but it turns out that it’s not all that different after all.
Once has totally fallen into the tedious grimdark fad. As somebody who actively avoids shows like GOT, yeah it doesn’t work for me.
[adrotate group="5"]"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
My problem is that I don’t even think this episode makes Cora more sympathetic. I found TMD taken at face value way more compelling.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
I love how bison became a thing.
I feel like the conspiracy theories would be so much easier to believe if I wasn’t exposed to the articles/spoiler pics/etc. Because obviously from a story point of view, Neal’s death and the way it was handled etc….maketh no sense.
I’m coming to terms with why this so personally affected me. It was the lack of closure and emotional catharsis. The Baelfire storyline is very personal to me. I lost my father when I was fourteen, sudden and violently–and the anger and disillusionment that jaded Neal expressed was just so real to me. He really is one of the most psychologically realistic characters the show has produced….and tossing aside his story like they did offends me to my core. I didn’t get closure with my father, and there was a probably not entirely healthy vicarious element to my investment in him–both getting a chance with his own son, and resolving his issues with is father. When I think about the wealth of great and interesting Neal stories that will never be told it makes me want to punch a brick wall.
I don’t want S3 to end if only because I don’t want this group of people to scatter to the four winds, which is what I fear will happen. I already miss Marty popping in to rant about why we’re all still watching the show.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
Is it weird that I think Jonathan is going to be revealed to be Charming’s dad or something totally ridiculous like that? It would be the final icing on the cake of the family tree (mixed metaphors, woo.)
It would explain where Prince James got it from. And “there’s darkness in Charming’s family too!!!1”
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
To me the major issue is the horrible OOC-ness of Cora. I felt like there was zero about her personality in this episode that matched up with the girl we saw in The Miller’s Daughter. The delicious irony of Cora telling her future father-in-law that “at least she wasn’t selling off her own flesh and blood” is completely undercut by this whole secret backstory…which, by the way…Rumple knew nothing about??
It also felt like a desperate attempt to make her feud with Snow’s mother more “justified” at the risk of making zero timeline sense.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
Okay, so am I the only one who found the flashback in Sunday’s episode horribly shoehorned in? I didn’t think it worked at all.
For me Zelena is becoming the anti-Pan. Everything they did with his backstory integrated perfectly with the existing characters and story (or at least, was entertaining enough that I could forgive little weirdnesses.) Everything they do with her backstory feels hopelessly contrived and tacked on, and I just frankly don’t care that much about her.
Have people in the general forums been complaining about how this episode doesn’t jive with TMD, because….let’s be real, it TOTALLY doesn’t.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
I feel bad that I want to use this thread to complain about all my general gripes with the show…but I really do.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
Just finished the episode. The only things that I liked in it were Belle calling Regina out and the Snow/Regina conversations. The flashback didn’t make any sense in context of the Miller’s Daughter to me, and dangling the Neal hope only to psuedo snatch it away…I can’t even. It’s all so depressing for a Rumple fan. Blech.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
I prefer the conspiracy train to the despair fest that we vacillate between as a group, lol.
Love you guys so much.
I was going to throw this out there awhile ago…for the sake of argument, let’s say that killing Neal was story-driven. Does anybody else think that that could be the fault of Eddy and Adam having a narrative…obsession (I was going to say something else that isn’t exactly swearing) with Rumplestiltskin and Bobby Carlyle? I mean, I don’t actually think killing his son improves Rumple’s storyline at all, it just completely obfuscates his motives from here on out, but I could see them seeing his redemption for the sake of his son storyline as “wrapped up” (even though grand gestures are well and good BUT ACTUALLY HAVING TO WORK ON YOUR RELATIONSHIP IN A PRACTICAL WAY IS A LOT MORE INTERESTING AND CHARACTER-DRIVEN TO WATCH ON MY TV) and just like…totally switch directions.
In which case, I’m just like…”why not kill Belle, too?” Like, at this point I almost want him to go back to being a bat-s villain, since redemptive happy ending will seem cheap.
Also, I have no idea what is motivating Rumple at this point…if A&E really were planning on killing Bae from the jump of the season, then why did they specifically have Neal and Rumple HAVE a conversation about what Rumple’s happy ending would look like, have Neal present WHAT WILL INEVITABLY BE RUMPLE’S HAPPY ENDING NOW, ie a future with Belle, and have Rumple specifically say, “no, that’s not my happy ending, YOU are. My death for your son’s sake is.”
WHY did they have Peter Pan tell Rumple that a new start and new child with Belle was “the only future” for him and present it as the WEAK, SELFISH choice if…lolol, that’s actually going to be the only choice in 8 episodes.
WHY DID YOU DO THAT? Unless it’s a “villain’s don’t get happy endings” foreshadowing, in which case, Hook better lose Emma an Robin Hood better get sucked into a vortex to Oz or something, because I call shenanigans.
I mean, if we got a sense that Rumple was motivated by Henry or something (LIKE HE WAS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE SEASON), then…that would be one thing. But he has yet to express any specific concern or interest in his grandson (I was thinking about writing a fic where memory-wiped Henry gets put in a cage next to Rumple’s or something because this absence of character moment annoys me.) I mean, granted, he hasn’t really been the focus of the last few episodes, but…I…ugh.
Sorry, this rant was incoherent.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
(Just got back from Holy Thursday Mass, and the thought that ‘dead is dead…except when it isn’t’ popped into my mind afterwards as pertains to Swanfire
I was thinking yesterday how it’s a curious coincidence (or not) that the ep that’s airing on Easter Sunday of all days will involve being in contact with someone who is dead. [spoier]And considering BTS pics of Marian, and knowing they wanted Jamie Dornan, it seems that it’s gonna be a continuing theme once they kick it off at Easter.[/spoiler] In my previous post, I mentioned how the SwanFireFamily is like the love, belief and hope. In a way, they’re like the holy trinity of this show, (and I don’t think it’s a crazy leap to consider them as such, considering A&E labeled Emma THE SAVIOUR, which has blatant religious connotations). If they’re making this show seem hopeless and dark, and they’re kicking off this idea of being able to reach out to the dead and bring them back in a way, I can’t help but think that may bode well for how this story arc will conclude, come the finale.
…as well as ‘it’s always darkest before dawn’ (as sung by Florence and the Machine.)
Henry said something similar back in S1. Things don’t get much darker than the truest believer not believing and the hope being dead. Maybe it’s just my Good Friday mindset talking, but the current state of the show does feel like a variation on the Easter theme. And the Easter story had a happy ending, even though things seemed COMPLETELY hopeless.
I think my Christianity is probably one of the things that drew me to the show in the first place. Because unlike the vast majority of what’s on TV today, Once didn’t have a fatalistic and bleak outlook on life and humanity. In a sea of Walter Whites and Don Drapers, Prince Charming and Snow White and Henry–and all of the things that the world has deemed “cheesy”–was really quite refreshing. Once has never been perfect in this respect, not by a longshot, but I loved that it actually had core values that it upheld. Redemptive love is so core to what the show once was, and it really struck a chord…once upon a time, anyway.
Now, it seems that Once has fallen into the depressing, fatalistic shock value trap of modern television, where good people die for no reason because “that’s real life.” If I wanted to get lost in some existential vacuum, this isn’t the show I’d come to. I’m looking for an old fashioned morality story with a twist, and Once has ceased to deliver.
"Death cannot stop true love...it can only delay it awhile."
