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Maybe Henry went with Neal to the “Other Side” and was chilling while the heroes did their saving Hook thing. Not that we’d see it.
I’d watch that.
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"https://www.instagram.com/p/BBDkH68HoKP/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BBDkhspnoK_/
This is creepy, i asked about Jared and there is a Jared pic.
LOL
At least he’s there finally. Haven’t seen him in awhile.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"It’s okay, everyone. @MatthewPaul and I just tend to get a wee bit nervous about discussion of ships. We’ve been holding this place together for 4+ years mostly with duct tape and glue and often times…BOOM. Bad things. Things that make me twitch internally. And when he and I start texting each other with “we probably need to keep an eye on this…” then we like to nip things in the bud. Again, because of past BOOMs.
Anyway onwards…to address a few things.
Yes, everyone cares way too much about shipping, but it also this goes back to what I was saying upthread about OUAT version 2.0…it generates more interest in the shipping and emphasizes that the ships (or at least the romantic love) is more important than anything else. Think back to S1. People shipped, to be sure, but you didn’t have the almost violent on-line cyber wars that are far too common with the OUAT fandom now. There was a strong GoldenSwan vs Rumbelle presence but certainly nothing (nothing!!) compared to CS vs SF. Why? Because the show didn’t focus on romantic love to extent (and place such emphasis upon) romantic love. It worked in tandem with family love to show that both are just as powerful and meaningful but what made OUAT so fresh was that it focused on that family love as being given equal weight as romantic. That weight is now given to romantic ships almost exclusively. Whether or not you think that’s bait or appeasement isn’t really the point; it’s the shift in narrative and what the show upheld at its core.
I agree with something Bar said upthread and have said so myself a few times in other places: I would have been okay (well, more okay, I guess) with Neal’s death if it had any sort of emotional weight. Yes, I wanted SF together and I wanted Emma and Neal and Henry to find Tallahassee inside SB with their fully healed family of Regina, Snow, Charming, Rumple and Belle, but the hardest part of Neal’s death is really two fold and nothing to do with shipping: 1) the signal in the show’s direction to uphold “sexy” romantic love over family–the show could easily have had Neal and Emma NOT reunite but had Neal be a father to Henry and thereby break the ‘Stiltskin clans history of abandonment. and 2) that the death mattered for all of 5 seconds when death can be a powerful motivator in narrative. If anyone watches Arrow, think about Sara’s death in S3. It carried the show through the entire season. Whenever anyone talked about their motivations or their impetus for what they were doing, it all came back to losing someone they deeply loved. That’s how how you tell a death-of-a-character story in media. But because the show shifted thematically, Neal’s death was never given any sort of meaning or weight.
The shark jump is an irritating side affect of the show rebooting and rebranding itself.
A lot of times people who are angry with OUAT and the writers get labeled as bitter shippers and nothing more. Sure, I don’t like that SF didn’t work out but my main complaint has always been that change in tone and thesis. From a show that was fresh by virtue of strong women, female focused, and centered on family love (and thus a deconstruction of most modern day fairy tales) to one that makes women all about the men they are dating/love/married to and centers on romantic love it went from fresh to cliche.
My complaints and deconstruction of this show doesn’t stem from a place of deep unabated hatred. It stems from disappointment.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"[mod]
Let’s keep it polite and centered please. This thread has been a nice almost scholarly approach so far but history has shown on this site and the fandom at large that any time ships come up (which is better, who is being appeased, who is not, who needs to “get over” something ect and ect ad infinitum) things get hairy.
Let’s stick to what’s working with the narrative, what’s not, where things went awry, what’s a shark jump, what is not a shark jump, themes, and so forth. If you have a claim, back it up.
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"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"but I’m curious about what you (and others here) think that original “formula” was, and how it’s changed.
The original formula is much what you said: familial ties and how those nebulous and complicated ties inform much of who we as people are. Ties being both those that are by blood and those that are not.
At the end of the day, OUAT is largely Emma’s fairy tale story and it’s not one about her finding her romantic smooshy-face true love, but her finding 1) her place in the world and 2) her family. Hers’ is, at least at its bare bones, a typical hero story in which the hero is removed from their home at the beginning–where they were misunderstood, lonely, an orphan, alone, damaged or anything combination thereof or even all of those hallmarks–go on some sort of adventure of self-discovery, and then come back home a fully realized person with a purpose but importantly some sort of family, be it of blood or other. Sure, sure they’ve fought some sort of cosmic evil or whatnot, but it’s all in service of their inner journey toward selfhood.
Emma’s journey literally starts with her being removed from her home. Her ending is about coming home–not a literal home as I’m not convinced that A and E will ever give up SB in favor or the EF–but a metaphorical one. The metaphorical home the characters build together in SB as one big, slightly messed up, family. The original formula was about a family that has hurt each other, fought with each other but been bonded through fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it until a new generation can heal the breach. Snow and Regina can’t really heal what happened between them without Emma and, really, Henry. Rumple can’t enter the fold of humanity again without Baelfire and, again, Henry. (Henry, for those paying attention, really was rather important until the writers got distracted by shiny objects).
Now, while the emphasis might be on family and savior actualization, it does not discredit romantic love. It can (and did in S1) work along side the family themes rather fabulously; hence the show opens with Charming TLKing Snow and that arc ends with Emma TLKing Henry. Romantic love working in tandem with familial love. Both of them being “true love.” What happened was that over time, one of those types of “true love” got picked up and placed at the forefront of the story, made to be more important. It wasn’t familial love, in case anyone was wondering. They still occasionally pull out that old hat–like Regina breaking the curse in 3B with Henry or devoting one episode per arc to Emma/Henry/Regina (always with hints of Neal, by the way…405 and then 505)–but it’s not given an equal weight at romantic love. As I’ve said before, for example in S5A, we got countless scenes of CS kissing or having big romantic moments but very few (like almost none) of Emma and her parents or Emma with Henry.
A lot of that, for me, started with the love triangle in 3A which was the truly bad part of what I though was an otherwise great arc. But it really got going when the writers rebooted the series after 3A finale, Going Home. The set back to square zero and made the drive more about romantic love over family love–so while Regina and Henry had a “break the curse” moment, it was in the middle of the season and the season ends with the three big couples all having moments, Belle and Rumple get married, Regina and Robin acknowledge their feelings and being in earnest, while Hook and Emma make out on a bench. In order to do that, the writers had to remove pesky obstacles that would stand in the way of romance working in tandem with family–so Neal (a son before he was ever involved with Emma) died and Henry (always a son and never a love interest until the writers suddenly realized he was no longer 9) became a side character who only pops up to give his two mothers motivation or encouragement.
None of this is a true shark jump. It’s a reboot and a retooling of the series. The shark jump, for me, is still Frozen because, essentially, it became a whole new show after S3A finale and 315. In order to sell this new show to audiences who are getting frustrated by plot holes, inconsistency, character backpedaling and ect ect and moreover, have expectations about what OUAT is supposed to be about, the writers had to have a gimmick that would bring in (say it with me now!) eyeballs and money. And ‘lo, Elsa did pop out of an urn. Frozen is the shark jump for OUAT v 2.0, a version that emphasizes romantic love over familial love and is more invested in the ships than it is in ties of family.
The great irony here, by the way, is that Frozen is one of the few Disney movies that actively places family love over romantic love. This is why I said 5 pages back that while it’s an obvious shark jump (money, ratings, eyeballs) it’s one that makes a modicum of sense with the OUAT version 1.0.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Maybe the exit from the Underworld somehow led them to Storyrbrooke’s graveyard?
It’s fairly logical that the “off ramp” for the Underworld would be a graveyard. I could buy that. The bigger question would be how Ruby is in SB and why she’s in a graveyard.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"What if someone, perhaps Cruella, wants to make some new wolf footwear? Hence the title “Ruby Slippers”
It’s also the most unlikely reference of the ones posted so far.
Also, so far no Victoria on set. Not saying it couldn’t change, but thus far, she seems to be in the beginning of the arc, not the middle/late.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"If the LGBTQ relationship is Dorothy and Red, does this mean Mulan is being brought back for more than just a possible relationship?
I suspect the reasoning is something like this: while Dorothy and Red are coming to terms with their new relationship, Mulan is deciding to be more open about her sexuality. To openly say that she was in love with Aurora and that she prefers woman to men (or, more likely, that she likes both men and women since we’ve got her history with Philip to deal with). Dorothy and Ruby go off as a new ship to hunt witches in Oz (and elsewhere) and Mulan decides to travel back to her land, more confident in herself because she “came out.” And that’s probably the last we’ll ever hear from them.
Speaking of people we’ll never hear from again….still no sign of the Camelot Crew. I wonder if they’re going to insert the footage (some of it, at least) shot from 511 into this episode? Or something?
Also, you’re forgetting that we have 12 episodes in 5B this time around, not 11. So yes, we should be getting a 523 this Season.
Yup. Totally forgot that. Or maybe I blocked that whole nightmare from my head because it caused brain pain.
So 519: (probably) Jane and Brigitte
520 or 521: David H Goodman? He hasn’t had a solo yet this arc.
520 or 521: another writer going solo. Tze Chun?
522/523: Adam and Eddy
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Oh, btw: this must mean that the new writer Brigitte Hales is writing 519. I’d lay odds that Jane is doing 520 with A and E doing both parts of the finale (521, 522) like they did last season with 4B
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Dorothy’s “ruby slippers” are trademarked, right? So this must have to do with Red…
Yes, but I think the writers are trying to be clever. The term ruby slippers instantly calls Dorothy to mind because of the cultural cache the 1939 movie has. But the first word is also the first name of a character on the show. That’s why I think they are having a bit of a laugh with ship names. We know Meghan is on set and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Dorothy is Red hook up.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
