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Law, Chaos, and The Great Balance: Or, What Is Going On With Emma and Lily?
I want to pick this back up based on some more thoughts that have passed through my brain, some comments made by other posters (particularly @Nevermore) and other threads started, like Fate, Free Will and The Author and the kind of conversations had there.
I want to continue to look at Emma Swan through a literary lens. We’ve looked at her role viz a viz the Bible, specifically the New Testament Savior Jesus Christ and more broadly at Campbell and the Heroes Journey. For the next phase, I want to stick with a more modern reading of our ONCE text and look it in regards to Michael Moorcock’s “Eternal Champion” character and the series of books that make up this mythos. For this, you need not have read Michael Moorcock (though, you should at some point in your life) because I’ll give a brief overview.
Overview
If I asked you to name the biggest name in fantasy literature, most of you would probably say Tolkien and that’s absolutely right. Tolkien cast one heck of a shadow with his LOTR and Hobbit books and every fantasy writer since has had to stand in that shadow and decide if they will play nice or if they’ll try something new. Moorcock was one such guy who decided to break the shadow because, on the whole, he’s rather anti-Tolkien. He saw Tolkien as safe and reinforcing the status quo and writers who follow in Tolkien’s footsteps are merely repeating the same safe tropes and cliches laid out by the modern granddaddy of fantasy writing.
The reasons I mention this in the beginning is because it’s important to know that Moorcock’s stories of Law and Chaos and the Eternal Champion try to distance themselves from that long Tolkien shadow by taking well worn tropes and messing them up. Aragorn, the Promised King, and Frodo, the little hobbit, reach the end of their heroes journey and, literally in the case of the latter, end up back where they started, wiser and having seen the world but with the status quo reinforced and the world righted.
That’s not how Moorcock saw the world. He saw the struggled between Law and Chaos as eternal. It never ended. There was no Big Bad that you could defeat. It went on for eons with neither Law nor Chaos ever getting the upper hand, and if one of them did it was the job of the Eternal Champion to try and “fix” it so that there was a harmony, not one above the rest. Moorcock recognized that while we might associate Law with “good” and Chaos with “bad” one gaining victory over the other would lead to a static environment (Law winning) or “total formlessness” (Chaos winning). As such, the Eternal Champion never really fought for one side, but rather for cosmic balance between the two forces. This meant that the Eternal Champion was less “good guy in a white hat” and more “morally grey guy who is straight up anti-hero and does questionable things because abstract concepts like good and evil are just that…abstract.”
Allow me to explain. The most famous of the Eternal Champions, IMO, is Elric of Melinbone and White Hat Good Guy he is not. He’s not exactly a bad guy, but he, as the Eternal Champion and as Emperor of his civilization that is faltering and failing, is often forced to do things that would make us raise our eyebrows because of our “heroes don’t do that!” mentality that stems from the way stories are told and have always been told–ie, heroes do good, villains do bad.
In order to save myself some time and finger typing, I am going to quote Wikipedia on what kind of guy Elric is:
Physically weak and frail, the albino Elric must take drugs (special herbs) to maintain his health. In addition to herb lore, his character becomes an accomplished sorcerer and summoner, able to summon powerful, supernatural allies by dint of his royal Melnibonéan bloodline. Unlike most others of his race, Elric possesses something of a conscience; he sees the decadence of his culture, and worries about the rise of the Young Kingdoms, populated by humans (as Melniboneans do not consider themselves such) and the threat they pose to his empire. Because of his introspective self-loathing of Melnibonéan traditions, his subjects find him odd and unfathomable, and his cousin Yyrkoon (next in the line of succession, as Elric has no heirs) interprets his behaviour as weakness and plots Elric’s death.
As emperor of Melniboné, Elric wears the Ring of Kings, also called the Ring of Actorios, and is able to call for aid upon the traditional patron of the Melniboné emperors, Arioch, a Lord of Chaos and Duke of Hell. From the first story onwards, Elric is shown using ancient pacts and agreements with not only Arioch but various other beings—some gods, some demons—to assist him in accomplishing his tasks.
Elric’s finding of the sword Stormbringer serves as both his greatest asset and greatest disadvantage. The sword confers upon Elric strength, health and fighting prowess but must be fed by the souls of those struck with the black blade. In the end, the blade takes everyone close to Elric and eventually Elric’s own soul as well. Most of Moorcock’s stories about Elric feature this relationship with Stormbringer, and how it—despite Elric’s best intentions—brings doom to everything the Melnibonéan holds dear.
That Yyrkoon figure, by the way, is Elric’s main enemy. He’ll be important when I come back to OUAT in the end so keep him in mind. And yes, Stormbringer, is a nice way to break the overly used trope of “hero and his magic sword” because the sword itself is actually an agent of Chaos. While the Eternal Champion is more concerned with balance, Elric does, I think, fight more on the side of Law, though obviously with some serious dire consequences, like the toll it takes on him by using the sword.
What I find interesting when we look at Lily and Emma is that they have a shared connection, the darkness that the Apprentice put into baby Lily before sending her to our world. Elric and Yyrkoon have something similar in that they have “brother blades” that come together in battle in a very literal clashing of the gods (Stormbringer vs Mournblade). Now, obviously, we won’t have blades in OUAT but we do have light and dark magic and the understanding that both came be found in the same person, just like while Yyrkoon might be a “bad guy” he is also seen as the better ruler for Melinbone by its people because of Elric’s quirks. Or: an agent of Chaos can be seen as preferable to Law while the Eternal Champion can toy with chaos in order to bring about balance.
Ok, what am I getting at: well, first, OUAT is slightly more hopeful than Elric’s story. In the end, Stormbringer is his downfall.
In Stormbringer, Elric learns that the representatives of Fate, which serve neither Chaos nor Law, recovered Mournblade from the netherworld. They present it to Elric and explain that the runeblades were designed to be wielded by those with Melnibonéan royal blood as a check against the might of the Dead Gods of Chaos. Elric gives Mournblade to his kinsman, Dyvim Slorm, and the two men become embroiled in a confrontation between the gods. Elric summons others of Stormbringer’s demonic race (also in the form of swords) to fight against a number of Dukes of Hell, brought to the Young Kingdoms by Jagreen Lern, theocrat of Pan Tang.
Ultimately, Elric’s reliance on Stormbringer proves his undoing: after the utter destruction of the Young Kingdoms in the battle of Law and Chaos, just as it seems that the cosmic Balance has been restored, Stormbringer kills Elric, transforms into a humanoid demon, and leaps laughing into the sky, to corrupt the newly-remade world once more. The sword-spirit says to the dying Elric “I was a thousand times more evil than thou.”
Back to ONCE
I think it rather plays out like this:
Emma Swan, is Elric…the Eternal Champion. She is capable of using Chaos to bring about the happy endings if that is what is needed but mostly fights on the side of Law. She is striving for harmony between the parties of villains and heroes because she can see the value in both, whereas the heroes often see the villains as morally bankrupt and the villains see the heroes as the source of all their problems.
The Stormbringer figure here is the Dark One’s Dagger–something that seems to feed on the souls of those that it curses. It almost literally is eating Rumple’s soul (and maybe his heart) and while Rumple’s choices are still his own, he is almost weighted under the influence of the dagger (which is not to say his actions are excusable and that he isn’t the Temptation in this story, but that there DO’s curse and its physical and psychological effects must be brought up).
just a note in passing, but it’s reported that when Emma sacrifices herself in SB at the end of S4, there is a storm brewing, I do believe. Get it? Storm. Bringer. Cheeky
Lily is a Yyrkoon-figure and mostly fights on the side of Chaos, perhaps seeking to overturn the balance between heroes and villains (if she should learn about her true parent someday and the steps Snowing took to put Darkness into Lily). She’s the antithesis in the sense that she’s chosen a side, but you can understand her motivations given her earliest moments in the…egg.
What we are going to see are the forces of chaos meet a mostly-force of law in an epic battle for the souls (read: happy endings) of everyone. The result of which, if OUAT is going to try and be mold breaking, wondering what happens to Emma AFTER she’s completed her heroes journey. There are stages in between the “sacrifice” of the hero and the finale master of two worlds, the HEA–something we all know this show will end with.
Emma’s role is more than just savior, it’s the bring the balance between the heroes and the villains. To ensure that they both get their happy endings, that one set getting their HEA does not mean the other loses theirs, something that has been thought to be the case since the very pilot of this show in which Regina told Snow that THIS (The Original Dark Curse) was her Happy Ending.
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Why can’t the other characters actually give Neal’s things to his father instead of palming it off to whoever they choose. Seriously, the lack of compassion from the “heroes” towards Rumple after Neal’s death is staggering. I know Rumple’s done some less than stellar things, but at least have the heroes attempt to reach out even if it’s to try and dissuade Rumple from a course of action with a “What would Baelfire want you to do?”
Because that would fly in the face of all the Neal erasure they’re doing.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"If the AU is designed to ensure that the former villains get their HEA then Rumple’s HEA would include:
money (he was once a poor peasant)
power
immortality
Belle (and Bae, but who am I kidding)
but NOT being linked to the DO and the dagger.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Just occurred to me: we won’t be seeing the DC at all, even in the season finale? An episode(s) in which we know we are going back in time to an AU….so, is Rumple not the DO at all in the past now? Is someone else? Is Rumple even alive in the Past AU since he would have died centuries beforehand without becoming the DO?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"From Matt’s latest Inside Line
Bound as I am by the strict rules of May Sweeps Scorecard Intel Gathering, I can only tell you this: Once has an entry in four, possibly five, of the categories.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"It might also suggest that the only reason the Enchanted Forest, Wonderland, and Neverland exist at all is because people in A Land without Magic believe in them.
Interesting, though it’s a bit of a circular question: we believe in them because they were written about. So chicken v egg, which came first, the writing or the land. Did our collective gestalt somehow magic those lands into existence post hoc of the writing?
Did Barrie dream up Neverland and then write about it, instilling a belief in NL which in turn caused NL to spring into existence?
The answer to that is of course no because NL existed long before Bae fell into our world and met Wendy Darling.
Either way, I think the Authors’ job is to keep people believing with the stories they record.
Like any good prophet!
think it could be as simple as he didn’t like his job, but he was stuck with it, trapped in the Enchanted Forest with no way to escape thanks to the Sorcerer or Apprentice. This would mean that the Author wanted to be trapped in the book, or at least maybe it was part of a plan.
Possibly. Though I think he was pretty honest that it was because he thought what he wrote was a better story. That’s the thing about writers: they’re egomaniacs, and I mean that lovingly. They are zealously possessive of their works and their characters to the point where characters lead them down path the writer never intended because the writer realizes that it would be “better” than the original idea or plan. The writer might have had X in mind for Snowing–simply telling the tale of their life and love–but having met them or spied on them or even just read previous stories about them he realized that a better story would be Y. He was informed by his characters, like most writers.
I like the idea of the Sorcerer being OUAT’s Jacob actually. Then who would be the Man in Black?
That’s pretty much where I stand at the moment. I think the First Author would be the MIB, if we’re going to draw some really drastic parallels. We still don’t know anything about the Sorcerer and how long he’s been…Sorcerering. But if A and E are going to play up the God v Devil/ Light v Dark aspect here, then the First Author and the Sorcerer are older than time itself and there is a battle of wills being played out between then. The Sorcerer can appoint the Author to have control (almost wrote dominion…) over the earth and its inhabitants, but the Sorcerer can easily remove the Author at any time.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Concerning the belief aspect, sounds very similar to Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
I’ll respond more properly to the thread at large in a few minutes but until then I just need to *drool*
Easily one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Ok, it doesn’t matter what explanation they cook up. Here’s the thing that’s offensive.
The first time we get a Nealfire reference in HOW LONG and it’s from people who could care less that he’s dead, not from people who should actually be upset by his death (Rumple, Henry, Emma..) and instead of it being meaningful and heartfelt, to show that these characters have actual human emotions and aren’t just caricatures and robots only focused on shiny shiny magic and PLOT….it’s to hint at what is to come plot wise–brief and uneeded outside of shiny shiny plot.
That is what is offense. He is mentioned in passing for PLOT not because the characters on this show should actually want to talk about him as if he was a meaningful part of this story because guess what–HE WAS.
That is what is offensive. I don’t care what excuse the show has for why Regina had the keys. No explanation changes their treatment of Nealfire and how is being used in the most offensive and horrifying way possible.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"SOMEONE BETTER HAVE A REALLY GOOD FREAKING EXPLANATION FOR WHY REGINA HAS NEAL’S KEYS AND IS WILLY NILLY GIVING THEM TO ROBIN HOOD AND HIS FAMILY TO CRASH IN
Now…now…I’m sure Emma offered them to Regina first.
Oh well that totally makes it 100% okay. No it doesn’t. It’s offensive. The ONE Neal reference we finally get after an entire season of erasure is that with absolutely ZERO explanation someone who maybe spoke FIVE words to Neal in his entire life is randomly handing off HIS KEYS TO HIS APARTMENT to a perfect stranger!? But OH NO LETS NOT HAVE RUMPLE GO TO HIS SON’S APARTMENT, HE ONLY SPENT 300 YEARS LOOKING FOR HIS CHILD BEFORE HE LOST HIM FOR GOOD AND HAS YET TO GIVE ANY KIND OF INDICATION THAT HE CARES. BUT NO NO NO. LET’S HAVE REGINA OF ALL PEOPLE GIVE THEM TO ROBIN OF ALL PEOPLE.
Please. It’s offensive and it’s wrong and it’s flat out stupid.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
