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A new promo aired tonight during the Bachelor (of all things….)
We’ll get it posted once it gets online
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Is that a more or less fair assessment?
Yup.
A and E don’t like criticism. They don’t like being confronted with the knowledge that there are swaths of people who are genuinely unhappy and, more to the point, disturbed by their show. And people who don’t claim these things are “true fans” and A and E respond to them instead of any thoughtful but also respectful conversation. And by contrast the people who are disturb and want to have these kind of frank conversations are haters, bitter, judgmental, and need to either stop watching or just go with the ride.
In a way, it’s understandable. No one wants to be told that they are coming across as racist/misogynistic/homophobic/ageist, ect. It’s an uncomfortable thing to hear and our natural reaction is to balk at that. But A and E don’t even stop to hear the problems; to get the other perspective.
There’s a great example of Arrow on the CW. There was a lot of dissent in the fandom during S3 because of Ray (the A.T.O.M) and how he was pursuing Felicity. The show runner heard some of this and tweeted something about how “that {meaning Ray’s stalking and possessive qualities} were how romantic comedies go.” As you can imagine, this did not go over well with many in the fandom. So, realizing this, the showrunner told the fans to explain it to him. Someone wrote a very long explanation of *why* Ray made them so uncomfortable. I don’t know if he saw it or if it informed anything for Arrow through the rest of S3 or even into Legends of Tomorrow. But at least he was willing to listen.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"To ease some tension….or maybe get a chuckle…this is something I found on Neil Gaiman’s tumblr today.
But what I loved more than the chuckle was what he had to say: “I worry that people might fail to write good books because they think these warnings are real rules. There are no real rules. Tell good stories and tell them well and don’t leave the reader feeling cheated at the end.”
That’s the only real rule in writing (Gaiman said so, so it must be true. #GaimanIsThatGood). I had no problem with CS having a time together and even remaining friends afterwards even if I strongly disliked Hook–all relationships help us grow as people even if they don’t last forever. I wasn’t rooting for Hook’s death back in S2 and actually had some truly great headcanons–Hookriel! But…
Now I, the reader of this text called OUAT, feel cheated. (Wait, this was supposed to get a chuckle. Eek. I’ll walk away now)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"ARG! I just lost a whole post. The forums ate it–TWICE. *breaks out hammer*
I am going to have to disagree that Rumpel didn’t murder people. The mute maid and cart guy six months after he became the dark one, Milah a few years after he became the dark one, Gepetto’s parents 60 years before curse, Cinderella’s fairy, Gaston, in the years right before the curse.
Milah I’ll grant and recoginze that I rather forgot about her.
The mute maid and the cart guy are within the pre-losing-Bae time period I already stated was the “murdering” time
Gepetto’s parents and Gaston were cursed, not killed. The former can be uncursed if someone chose to do so. The latter we only recently learned was dead
The Fairy I’ll also grant as I forgot about her.
Rumple is not a good guy. He’s manipulative, and can be cold and cruel. But he also recognizes his own villainy–“I’m the villain. And villains don’t get happy endings” (and then dies to save the town without having first tired to kill them all). That to me is a big difference. It certainly doesn’t make him a saint and if anyone has listened to the podcast this season OR read anything I’ve written, they know that I’m really struggling to still like/defend Rumple like I did in seasons past.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Daniel and I doing a podcast this Wednesday, reviewing the entire season!
So for anyone who wants their opinion heard, answer what you want:
–Favorite moments?
–Favorite Songs?
–Overall impression?
–Theories on S3 if we get it?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"So while murder is terrible, it is television, not real life
And there it is. Your overall argument in a nutshell: it’s just a TV show.
Sure. Of course it is. It’s a TV show. I am well aware of the fact that there is not a town in Maine that houses Snow White, Rumplestiltskin, and a Savior named Emma.
But dismissing the moral and ethical implications because “it’s just a TV show” rankles me, right up with “why do you keep watching?” It is a TV show but TV shows hold mirrors up to society and tell us what we value, what we should value, how we treat everyone from men to women to PoC to the LGBT community. It is not sui generis. It does not exist in a bubble. It has a context; and that context is our own society and morals.
Which brings me to….
But in that particular moment, I don’t think we were supposed to think of it as romantic, Emma certainly didn’t
And yet so many CSers do/did. I can assure you of that. They found it swoon worthy, made sexual jokes themselves and even manips in which Hook and Emma were having sex with the lines being repeated. I take it you don’t have much of an inroad with the fandom at large? Or are just now getting your feet wet? I can assure you that much romanticizing was made from that line. It still is. Everything Hook does gets romanticized, right down to beating Belle and jumping off roofs.
And you’re right; Emma didn’t find it romantic. But she doesn’t seem to remember that–or any of the other heinous and repugnant offensive things Hook has done in his time as a villain. She never talks about them, never questions what kind of man she’s really dating. She’s just goo-goo eyed.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I’m simply saying in the moment, when these bad guys do or say these bad things, I’m not offended.
I think you’re definition of offensive is a little too narrow. It doesn’t just mean that you feel personally attacked by an action. It literally just means something that’s very unpleasant. Synonyms include: abhorrent, abominable, appalling, awful, disgusting, distasteful, dreadful, evil, foul, fulsome, gross, hideous, horrendous, horrible, ect ect ect.
Rape and murder are all of those things. So when we say it’s offensive, it doesn’t mean to the personal you–your very self as if the action has been perpetrated on your. It means something *insert synonym of your choice*
I don’t think you’re trying to say that rape and murder–and any actions taken by the villains–aren’t any of those *synonyms* but that’s what offensive means, not just something that you personally take as hurtful.
ETA
And just so everyone is on the same page, when I said offensive three pages ago to describe the Hook/Emma moment that is my “moral event horizon” I used it as an adj: “it was one of the most offensive thing I’d heard on this show.”
Insert a different synonym if you want, but my usage there grammatically used to describe the noun (thing) which is clearly incapable of feeling hurt or angry, and I was not the subject there until the second clause.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Still think we’re going to see her, Jerome, Firefly, and Galavan resurrected as a result of Strange’s experiments.
Yup I think you’re right.
Also, it’s Wrath of the Villains now? I missed that.
I wonder if that means S3 is “Rise of the Heroes” and we get a time jump + more grown up! Batman
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"How are you supposed to write villainous characters if they don’t do villainous things?
Of course villainous people do villainous things in narrative. Voldemort killed Harry’s parents to drive the narrative but that doesn’t negate that it’s murder.
The things Hook does are still villainous things that are getting turned into romantic moments and never brought to bear. You (and the show) are giving them a pass from ever having to face the consequences of those actions. Simply by saying “oh he was a villain then” doesn’t cut it. That doesn’t lessen his actions nor mean that he doesn’t have to pay for them in some regard.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
