Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
What if Emma learns that the only way for the Savior to have a happy ending and avoid her destined death is for her to cast the Savior title onto someone else. And maybe the second half of the season could probably be the repercussions of Emma throwing away her role as a Savior and much like Regina will have to learn and fully accept her dark side
That’s a pretty interesting idea and it has its roots in Savior mythology. Henry told Emma in S1 that the hero always doubts at first but this extends beyond that, to wishing the task would literally be given to anyone else because the burden and what is to come is too heavy to bear. Here in the western world, the word “Savior” comes equipped with one Savior in particular, Jesus, and it would be pretty impossible for two American screenwriters to escape the legacy of Christianity since the Bible/New Testament informs, uh, a lot. This exact same crisis follows that particular Savior until he must accept his own destiny.
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done”
Luke 22:42
“Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”
Mark 14:36
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Matthew 26:39 (in Matthew, Jesus actually goes and prays 3x, each time asking the same thing)
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Oh gosh, you’re right. Sorry! I wrote his name down wrong in my notes.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Is baby Neal a Saviour too, being born of true love? If that is the only parameter then surely any child of a True Love marriage would be a Saviour?
Short answer: no. A and E and even Jane have said that not all babies born of TL are Saviors or even magical. Emma is the Savior because of a nifty little equation:
Snowing Ultimate True Love Put On The Dark Curse + Dark Curse Cast = Emma Swan, Savior
If any one of those things is taken away, Emma essentially changes. So maybe Aladdin was born of True Love but because there was no curse, his Saviorhood is less than instead of equal to Emma’s. OR maybe Aladdin gained magic and broke a Curse and is proclaimed a Savior but because he was not born of True Love, his Saviorhood is less than Emma’s.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"One of the laws of magic that the genies had to follow was that they couldn’t change the past
Hm. That’s right.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"1×03 thoughts
–The costumes are on point
–Whatever/whoever Rittenhouse is, I suspect they are the true baddies, especially if whatever they did/do/are going to do is bad enough to make a principled man like Rufus’s colleague team up with a man he clearly doesn’t always agree with. I think the show is going to make Flynn an incredibly grey antihero (cause I don’t have enough of those in my TV life!)
–So Lucy broke up with the fiancee. If Flynn is her son (seems like a popular theory?) then who is the father? Will they get back together? Is this the “better” story for Lucy? Who decides? Lucy? The Universe? Circumstance?
–Was Jennifer destined to die so history course corrected after Wyatt sent that note or did Jennifer just not listen to it? Can we be sure she got it? Why does she HAVE to die if the universe is dictating this sort of stuff?
–BOMB
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"So…..being the opposing force to the curse makes Emma a savior? Or being the opposing force AND a child of True Love? Does there need to be a curse at all for a savior? Did Aladdin have to break a curse? Was it a dark curse or any curse in particular? Is he also a child of true love?
A lot of these questions we can’t answer yet. But like I said, I think Emma would still be magical and probably special in some way but she can’t be the Savior Rumple set out to create if there is no Dark Curse to save people from, no happy endings to restore. I mean, what is she the Savior of? Casting the dark curse is the final catalyst that locks Emma’s Saviorhood into place. Rumple needed a Savior to break the Dark Curse so he created one but if the Curse is never cast, the Savior portion of Emma never gets created. (god, this is complicated)
As for Aladdin, we don’t know because this is the first season we’re exploring the very idea that there is more than one Savior. Maybe there are varying degrees of Saviorhood with Emma’s Saviorness the highest order?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"One small problem in that theory, Regina may not have casted the curse, but Emma would still be the savior, bc Rumple wanted that way, bc he wanted to get to this world to get to Bae
Mmm. Not exactly. Emma would still be born of true love but her saviorhood is dependent upon breaking there being a Dark Curse and restoring the happy endings; if she can’t do that (because there is no Dark Curse) then she loses the part of her Saviorhood that Rumple wanted. In order for Emma to be the savior, several things are vital: 1) Snowing must have a child and 2) Regina must cast the Dark Curse; the Dark Curse Rumple put a drop of True Love on. Emma, born without the dark curse, would still have magic and probably be special but her Saviorhood becomes something different because the entire circumstance of her Saviorhood has changed.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"1×03 “The Stray” thoughts!
Holy MOLY that was a good episode. There is so much to unpack that I’m going to do this stream of conscienceness style (I think Albert would approve!)
ETA: for clarity’s sake, I’m going to keep using the word “uncomplex” instead of uncomplicated because I think the world “complicated” has a different connotation and I don’t want to muddy the already extremely dirty waters.
If the first two episodes were essentially about being real then I think this episode is tackling the idea of “are you complex?” The two ideas feed into one another, I think, but it’s not as easy as you might imagine. For example you might say that you can be real but be uncomplex–a newborn baby is certainly real and perhaps physically complex but he is not complex in an emotional, internal way. He has no self awareness, no complex language or ideas to be able to express who he is, how he feels, how he interacts with the world around him and how it turns interacts with him. He has no ability to create metaphors or discuss or even think about higher order concepts like art, life, religion, politics, aesthetics. We wouldn’t say the baby is un-real, mearly new and untrained in the ways of complex thinking. He must be introduced to complexity through growth and interaction. But is your realness dependent on your complexity?
What if this newborn baby grows up and still doesn’t have the ability to think and discuss complexity. Either because of a biological reason or because he was untrained or kept in seclusion. Is he any less real because he doesn’t posses metaphorical language which leads to introspection which leads to self awareness? Can you be real and uncomplex or does your lack of emotional and internal complexity mean you aren’t real???
Teddy isn’t real in the same way a birthed human is real but he was also really uncomplex for the first two episodes–in fact his character was pretty cliche and flat. But then he’s given complexty by Dr. Ford and suddenly his character has more stakes in the game (the game of life, not just the Westworld game). He’s given a backstory which “anchors” his character and gives him depth to perceive right from wrong and good from evil not only with those around him (his hunt for Wyatt) but also in himself. BUT!!! BUT!!! Can you really be complex is complexity is GIVEN to you? It wasn’t learned. It wasn’t born upon years of interacting with his world, developing a better code by way of life, but this better code which leads to complexity was literally uploaded to him! So is he still uncomplex because his complexity exists only at the whims of another?!
And then there’s Dolores! While she was obviously having some memory flashes in episode 1 and 2 but her responses to Bernard at the beginning of the hour demonstrate a LACK of complexity. “It’s about change. It seems to be a common theme” is about as uncomplicated an answer as one can give when discussing narrative. All stories are, at the end of the day, about change. That statement–that stories are about change–is as commonplace as it gets and any English teacher worth their salt wouldn’t accept it as a response. Dolores gives the appearance of complexity, hence why Bernard keeps pushing her, but she’s not actually complex until she fires that gun and seems to come into some awareness that she can control her own story, a story that like everyone else is about change. So her complexity isn’t manufactured like Teddy so is she more real than Teddy? Can you be more real than another person (but Teddy’s not even a person?! OR IS HE A PERSON BECAUSE OF HIS NEW FOUND COMPLEXITY THAT ISN’T EVEN NATURAL COMPLEXITY!!)
I’m not overly familiar with the concept of the bicameral mind so I had to do some reading up but it doesn’t actually sound like it’s been debunked but rather ignored and forgotten and I think this is where Westworld is headed, into the of idea of not only can technology mimic people but it can become consciousness. The pyramid Ford draws is the basis for distinguishing real from unreal.
Memory: the hosts have memories but they are buried and deleted during each reset. But these things DID happen and they ARE starting to remember.
Improvisation: Bernard commands Dolores to turn off scripted answers and instead use improvisation during their conversations because Bernard is hoping he’ll find conscienceness inside Dolores. But is improv in the Hosts already? I think it is. Look at the titular “Stray” host Elsie and Ashley went after. Elsie even says it best “it’s like he had an idea!” Yeah he had an idea that wasn’t part of his script and he went to follow it. I mean it ended badly for him, but that’s part of being real.
3) Self interest: Aren’t all the hosts self-interested. They all want to stay alive, to eat to drink, to sleep with someone, to go about their day. It’s manufactured self-interest though. So is it…real?
4) I think what Ford is getting at and what Albert died trying to find was metaphorical language. That you are sophisticated enough to speak complexly and become an introspective self aware individual. And I think that’s what happening to Dolores (though, again, how did this happen? It’s not a glitch or a virus. I thought it came from Dr. Ford’s reveries but in this episode he seems pretty emphatic that the Hosts are NOT real–he even slices up a face of one to prove his point. But is he lying to himself? He also spends a lot of time looking at his creation and marveling at it. He seems sad when one has to be taken out of the park and put into cold storage. AND he’s the one trying to build an overly complex, brand new narrative instead of letting the head writer create his overly cliche stories! Complex stories and interactions lead to complexity. How could they not! Whatever Ford is planning in his narrative, isn’t it going to exasperate the problem his Hosts are having? Isn’t he also chasing consciousness? )
I have some other thoughts but I’ll bullet point them
–There’s a popular theory I heard from @runaroundmacy that the Gunslinger/Man in Black is really William, the White Hat. When we see William and Logan, we are seeing the park many years ago when the Man in Black was introduced to this park. I think it makes a lot of sense except that I’m wondering how Dolores stumbling into their campsite fits because if it’s long ago, she shouldn’t be running away from the bandits at her house, right? Unless this same story (Dolores running away after the bandits kill her mother and father) has happened before?
–Soooo…who’s voice was that at the end? Who told Dolores to kill the bandit? Was it “God” (Albert who I’m gonna go ahead and say is NOT dead); was it Ford; was it Dolores’s own internal self (but why imagine the voice as male? Is it because of her interactions with Bernard? Did her mind make Bernard into God because of their conversations?)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"If they incorporate a genie (which I think they have said in the past they didn’t want to do because of Robin Williams), that would open the door to so many possibilities.
And because of WL it doesn’t even have to be THE Genie; Jafar ended his story in WL being turned into a genie. If Jafar is trying to rid the world of Saviors then ensuring the dark curse is never cast and Emma ins’t made the Savior fits into his plan.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Yes I still think it’s Emma but now I’m wondering which version of Emma is under the hood–original or the split version?
But Emma knows that trying to kill a doppelganger is pointless, so why would she try that on her own?
I’m going under the assumption that we haven’t learned everything yet. There’s some sort of twist in the Savior story that will make it okay for Emma (or her doppelganger) to be under the hood. It’s a way to connect the two arcs.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
