Board Thread:Spoilers!/@comment-264749-20130218073608/@comment-6195464-20130223192457

I swear... I've posted this eighty-five times and it just doesn't seem to get through...

http://www.wetpaint.com/once-upon-a-time/articles/once-upon-a-time-season-2-spoilers-peter-pan-is-not-coming-and-other-scoop

Will we see Peter Pan this season? Kitsis: No.

It's like people hear Neverland and forget that there are a hundred other possible characters for him to be - OR... he's a novel thought, he's not -anyone- from Neverland... he just happened to wind up there.

But I beg to differ in that characterization isn't important. Yes... the writers change things - but rarely have they changed the characteristics of a MAIN character of a story so much that that character is no longer recognizable. In fact, I don't think they've ever changed someone so much that I didn't immediately know who the character was, upon reveal. Neal being Peter would essentially negate everything that makes Peter who he is, in essence, wasting the character, entirely. Yes... Rumple is also the Beast - but guess what... the Beast from the stories and Rumple happen to still have many, many things in common - including (But not limited to) their physical appearance being grotesquely altered, and their personality (arrogant, mindlessly self-serving). And the other characters that they changed were either so minor, or had such vague characterization in the first place that changing them doesn't ruin the recognition. I don't remember ever reading a story about Red Riding Hood where the character of Red was expounded upon... In changing her character, they made her more interesting. Changing Peter would not have the same effect. He was already interesting to begin with and make him Neal would dull his character, considerably.

There is literally -nothing- Neal and Peter have in common, except for their connection to Neverland. And while you may think the writers don't care about that - I would suggest entirely the opposite. They -want- you to know who characters are, without having to explain it to death. They want the characters to be easily recognized, as soon as you hear their name. Otherwise, there's no point in adapting the story. I undestand this, because I myself am a writer... You want people to -grasp- your characters. If not, you've failed your readers, and more than that, you've failed the character - And crazy as it sounds, to writers (most writers) characters are much more complex than just something you've written. They have the ability to essentially take on a mind of their own, and you -want- to do them justice, because they become something that matters to you.

That said, it's not even the theory that bothers me. It's the immediate assumption and then blatant disregard for anyone else's opinion on the matter that drives me batty about all of this - it's the "I know Bae is Peter Pan, cause Peter Pan is from Neverland!" foot-stomping, stubborn refusal to see any other posibility. Is it possible that Bae is Peter? Sure... Anything is possible - but you can't just take conjecture and present it as fact, on the terms of "Because I said so". There's no evidence, aside from a three second clip from a promo where Neverland is hinted at, and even then, all we know is that at some point, Bae spent some time there. Until the episode airs, nobody knows anything. If you have a theory, great... but until you can REALLY prove it - as in... you've seen the episode and it's been clearly decided - you should avoid definative statements.