Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1916997-20150312220054/@comment-26159109-20150826183032

DigificWriter wrote: Maybe it's the Joss Whedon and JMS fan in me, but I look at what Adam and Eddy and the other writers are doing and have done thus far (both in terms of the things they have said and the things that they have shown us) in a far different light than many others, and just do not see the justification, in many instances, for the criticism and mentality that I see a lot of fans of the series expressing both here and elsewhere, and firmly believe that there is an erroneous perception out there that there are far more issues with the series in terms of its overall continuity and mythology than there actually are.

A good example of this erroneous perception (as I see it, anyway) is the narrative transition between the Cora story arc of Season 2 and the 'endgame' Season 2 arc involving Greg, Tamara, and Peter Pan that led into and dominated the first portion of Season 3.

It seems to have been taken for granted amongst the fandom that Cora was originally supposed to be the "Big Bad" for the entirety of Season 2, but that Adam and Eddy changed their minds 'midstream' when they found out that they had the rights to use characters from Peter Pan, but the truth of the situation (as can be demonstrated by comments that Adam and Eddy themselves made) is that, fan perception to the contrary aside, the Cora arc played itself out exactly as it was intended to, with the Greg/Tamara/Pan arc being introduced exactly as intended and exactly on schedule.

I firmly believe, based on their comments and on the things that we were shown, that Adam and Eddy were intentionally emulating something that Joss Whedon had done years earlier with the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is to lead the fandom to believe that their storyline was going in one direction, only to intentionally reveal that it was actually going in an entirely different direction.

It is unfortunate that this intentional emulation of Joss' storytelling technique for the fourth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I believe to be much better than fandom perception says that it is, being the fourth-best season of the series behind Seasons 6, 5, and 3) was received by the fandom in much the same way (with criticism and the erroneous idea that things were changed 'midstream' even though it can be demonstrated that such is not actually the case), because if you actually sit back and analyze what was really happening, the way in which the storylines from both BtVS Season 4 and OUaT S2 play themselves out is actually quite brilliant and inspired. Im sorry but the two are not comparable at all. In S4 of Buffy, you can see that it was planned that way. Prof Walsh was a build up to Adam and the problems with the Initiative, so it wasn't that off-plot that they killed her and brought Adam. Whereas in Once, it was "oh yeah we have Pan so it's time to let Cora go and have the two normal human characters that no one cares about as the big threat of the second season finale.

I'm actually surprised that you as a Buffy fan fail to see the problems with Once. I get that they both have the same concept of fantasy series of good vs evil. However, on Buffy, it was always about the characters, their lives and Buffy's relationships with her friends ans her relationship with her family. It was never about the villains, they were just the obstacle, and how they affect the core characters life. Even the most minor characters were well-rounded and flashed (more than main characters of Once). In Once, it's always about the plot, always how are going to defeat this and that. You rarely see characters have a talk about emotions or just a normal every day conversation. The Villains are not about how they affect their lives they are their lives.