Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-4839682-20131003142941/@comment-23906605-20131012002907

TNOandXadric, I apologize for taking longer than usual to reply your comments. I'm currently juggling two research projects and some exams, which has been very time-consuming. I would have answered you last night, but I remembered OUAT in Wonderland was premiering and I was really excited to watch it :) But anyways… My comments on some of you points from "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter":

''3. Regina in this scene is genuinely distressed, but not the kind of heart-wrenching sorrow/agony we see when it's Henry hurting her or someone she loves dying. ''-- And what kind of distressed would you say it is?

(can we take a minute to say Lana Parrilla is a phenomenal actor?) -- She is :) I really wish they hadn't killed her character in "Lost" in the same damn episode we met her. For me, she, Jennifer Morrison and Robert Carlyle are the best in that cast. I wish they'd all just win an Emmy.

5. Why would the Genie possibly want Snow White dead more than the Queen did? He was just being a kiss ass trying to suggest different solutions for her problems. If Regina wasn't so invested in the conversation, when the Mirror said "perhaps one of your knights, your majesty", she could have said "not now. I want to think this through", but instead she said she needed someone who wasn't from the Kingdom and someone bereft of mercy, which to me, suggests she had been giving it some thought for a while.

6. Well… then we'd have no Huntsman. They writers do try whenever possible to keep true to the original story or at least to its most famous version.

7. Why? Because she doesn't like the idea of having one-night stands? She could be Christian as you pointed out. And even if she wasn't, why does it make you uncomfortable that a person doesn't like one-night stands?

8. The wall MM referred to was related specifically to the fact that Emma didn't want to admit that she might be starting to like someone. Not that Emma had a problem talking about her past. In fact, that has absolutely nothing to do with that scene. It was clearly directed to the fact that Emma didn't want to acknowledge her feelings for Graham by putting up a wall so she would avoid getting hurt.

11. What makes you so sure she knew all of her father's men personally just because she recognized the Huntsman as the only one that didn't offer her condolences? Many of those knights wore armor that covered their entire face. But all of her father's men offered her condolences. And the fact that the Huntsman didn't was what made her think he wasn't one of them. And of course she expected people to do that. Her father was the King. They were his subjects. When he died there was nothing more normal than to expect his loyal subjects to express their feelings of empathy.

14. I think it was yet another thing to fit the purposes of the episode. If the Huntsman had killed another human, the vault would have opened and maybe -- probably -- Regina wouldn't have ripped out his heart. If that had happened, she wouldn't have been able to kill him in the end of the episode in that most cruel and merciless way.

On Snow's death, Regina's hand in it, and planning:

Psychologically speaking, although a person may not be able to rationalize their thoughts, they are able to think about what's going through their mind. Psychologically speaking, again, I completely believe that people can have contradictory feelings and they most certainly can suffer from mental duality. But both of those things imply that the person is struggling to let go of one of the sides of that duality. For example, Regina, as you believe, was having contradictory feelings towards Snow. She had affection for her, but she still wanted to make her pay for destroying her happiness. What I have been trying to say is that if Regina still had those contradictory feelings by the time she killed Leopold, we would have seen her struggle in that episode. We would have seen something like her trying to fight her thoughts about killing Snow. And we saw no such thing. I am not saying she never struggled. The scene with the necklace/ring between Regina and young Snow, like you said, makes us see that she was fighting hard with the thoughts of killing the girl. But at some point, prior to killing Leopold, the "I want to make her pay" part of that duality won. She didn't plan having Snow killed by a Huntsman. She hadn't yet decided who was going to do it or maybe not even how it was going to go through. But she most definitely had been thinking about killing Snow for sometime. And that is planning. We are probably going to see more about this in the next episode, from what I could see in the sneak peek. And the fact that Snow deduced the Huntsman was there to kill her and that it had been Regina to sent him, suggests to me that Snow herself knew of Regina's desire for revenge for a while. She was just being naïve -- or foolish -- in not believing it or trying to deny it.

I don't believe they were ever gonna go with my suggestion of killing Snow in her own room or yours of using heartless pawns to do the job. They were never gonna take the easiest way or the collest way or the most convenient way. Taking Snow into the woods, getting a Huntsman to do the job, asking for her heart, all that came from the original story and its most famous adaptation (Disney's).

When did I ever mention Scar's approval rating or why he stayed in power? The point I was trying to make is that it would have been easy for Regina to convince the peasants she had nothing to do with Snow's death, much like Scar convinced everybody that Simba and Mufasa had been killed by a most unfortunate stampede.

You are misinterpreting me. I'm not advocating that things that are contradictory can't coexist. I'm not saying Snow's emotional honesty couldn't coexist with her political savviness. Like you pointed out, she was raised to be a political leader. However, I am advocating that she didn't save Wilma only for political purposes, which is what you had been saying up until now when you said, I believe for the first time, that Snow was being honest. Before, you were saying that the whole thing came off as very calculated to you and that Regina's belief in Snow's genuineness was not proof that Snow was actually being 100% genuine. I am also advocating that Snow saved Wilma because she honestly believes in the selfless connection between strangers that young Regina taught her, which does not exclude the possibility that she was aware that her actions would make the peasants like her even more.

Now, the triangle:

I think:

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">In the event that a woman has an affair with a married man and advocates that the truth should come out, it is antifeminist and chauvinistic [there's a slight difference between male chauvinism and misogyny] for the option of the woman telling the wife to be on the table, because it's the woman doing the husband's "dirty work" for him—the husband should step up to the plate and own to what he did wrong.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">You think:

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">The woman is advocating that the truth should come out and the husband is not. It is antifeminist and misogynistic to deny her the option of telling the wife herself because to do so would prioritize the husband's comfort over the woman's convictions that what they are doing is wrong and the only way to correct it is honesty—the woman should have the agency to tell the wife if she chooses to do so.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">We (seem to) agree:

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">The woman should not be denied the option of telling the wife. Being denied of anything to prioritize the husband's comfort would absolutely be antifeminist and chauvinistic.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">We (seem to) disagree:

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">For me, the woman should not tell the truth to the man's wife, because of all the reasons I already mentioned. As for you, you said you see absolutely nothing wrong with the proverbial "other woman" coming clean to the wife in this kind of situation.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">''If the two parties visiting and exchanging a letter believe wholeheartedly that they are so deeply in love that the breaking-off of the relationship necessitates a complete memory wipe on the part of one side and a desperate quest on the other, yes, I would constitute that an affair. ''-- Wow, so basically every couple in the world that has had extremely strong feelings of love/passion for each other was in fact having an affair even before they decided to act on it? Geez, not even the most religious people I know believe that. But that's ok, I don't even think we should get much deeper into that. We just also have different views on what having an affair means. And we have other much more interesting topics to discuss.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Again, I say that the fact that Charming said he wanted to keep being both David and Charming, his weakness and his strengths, makes me believe that he, himself, believed David and Charming were different. But ok… they act differently on some situations, can we at least agree on that?

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">I acknowledge your points on OUAT's portrayal of relationships, but let's just clarify one thing… Rumple didn't choke Belle and also not for the reasons you mentioned. He choked what he thought might be a vision of Belle conjured up by Pan. As for the unhealthy part of the relationships, I'd rather believe they're doing that do try and make things more "real". Bring things to our reality. Although their love is strong to overcome obstacles, they do have problems -- ugly problems -- like every normal people do. Problems in communication, problems with honesty, respect, boundaries… As for being held up as ideals, I think that's a very personal thing. That's not up to the writes to decide, it's up to who is watching. And love is portrayed as a thing that can be found in OUAT because it is considered as the most powerful magic of all, that's just the direction the writers decided to take.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">The original fairy tales were indeed meant to be cautionary tales. But there are usually more than two versions of the same story, written by different folklorists, from different nationalities. Some versions are lighter, and do put love as a main element of the narrative, while other versions are just completely disturbing and indeed meant to teach people a lesson or two on how to take on their lives. But it doesn't matter which one it is, because all the elements in the tales (even the most disturbing ones) were sine qua non for most of the stories to end with "and they lived happily ever after". Look at Giambattista Basile's version of "The Sleeping Beauty". Talk about a creepy and unsettling little story! It should give you a lot of inspiration for your novel. If I remember correctly, his version is named "Sun, Moon and Talia". It's one of the most eerie tales I have ever read, but everything that happens leads to "she lived happily ever after".

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">''Snow knew David was a former peasant, as did the dwarves and presumably the rest of the inner circle, but did the general peasantry? -- In "Lost Girl", Regina said, for all the peasants present to hear, "Why? Because you and the shepherd'' broke my sleeping curse?". I assume it didn't take long for that to spread through the peasant grapevine.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Again, the point I'm trying to make now is not whether it was culture or the curse itself that made them distinct. My point is that they act differently. Abigail confronted Charming and he told the truth. Kathryn confronted David and he lied.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">As for Mary Margaret being unhappy… you know, I was reading a book by French philosopher André Comte-Sponville, titled "Le Bonheur, désespérément" (something like "Happiness, Desperately" in English) and I was extremely vexed by some of his ideas on what consisted what we call the state of being happy. I think this is also a very personal matter regarding what I consider to be happiness and what you might consider to be happiness. You said MM was lonely and I completely agree, no argument there, but jumping to conclusions that her life was unhappy because of that is a little farfetched to me. Like you said, misery comes in a lot of forms, but happiness is a combination of many many things. Generally speaking, just because one aspect of your life is not doing so well, it doesn't make you perpetually unhappy.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Your point: Got it. But it doesn't change the fact that we still haven't seen the littlest bit of indication that that (being bullied in school) might have happened to Mary Margaret.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">I asked you "so women need 'additional status' to overcome the fact that they are not treated well?" and you said "Yes: Women need certain advantages in order to be treated equivalently to men". In addition, you basically said that MM was insecure because she's a teacher, not a Princess, and you said the reason she couldn't fight the oppressions she was suffering is because she didn't have any of the monarchial privileges Snow had. That means to me that you're saying women are always going to feel inferior to men, unless they have some sort of social "privilege" to make them look past the judgements of society. To me, it seems you are undermining the position that black women, or hispanic women, or gay women, or basically every women who isn't white, comfortable financially, well-educated or straight, achieved in our society.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">That sociopaths cannot feel emotions is not, strictly speaking, accurate. What IS true is that they cannot feel emotions in the sense that a non-sociopath does; -- Uh… and what did I say? "sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion" and "whatever emotion they say they have is shallow and insubstantial".

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">That a sociopath can thoughtlessly stab someone just because does not mean they are not also capable of purposefully taking vengeance over even the tiniest slight. -- Again... and what did I say? "Basically, sociopaths have no problem in harming others just for the sake of harming others -- which does not rule out the possibility of hurting others to achieve personal goals [such as vengeance]."

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">''That sociopaths are incapable of love does not mean that they cannot develop obsessions with particular people and call it love as part of the manipulation process […] That sociopaths do not feel regret or remorse does not mean that they won't grovel and beg and cry and apologize at length in order to cajole their victims into forgiving them and allowing the sociopath to win once more and continue manipulating. ''-- You are saying that to validate your premise that Rumple is a sociopath?

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Why are you jumping to conclusions already that I'm not the kind of person who likes extrapolating far from the text? Didn't I say Cora was a sociopath because she ripped her own heart? Didn't I say I believe the Dark One curse turned Rumple into a monster? I just still think there are elements in his post-Dark-One-curse behavior that would make it improbable for him to be a sociopath.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Rumple has tried to change his ways because of his love for Belle and Bae. He keeps failing because magic has become indispensable for him, but that doesn't mean he doesn't at least try for a while. When Bae wanted him to change back into the man he was before, Rumple said he would, if Bae found a solution. Back in Storybrooke, when he was dying, he called amnesic Belle and told her "You make me wanna go back to the best version of me. And that never happened before." Immediately after that conversation, Neal says "I didn't know you had that in you" and Rumple says "I'm full of love. I spent a lifetime looking for you. For a chance to say I love you." Rumple has always loved his son, and in a way that only non-sociopaths can. In "Lost Girl" when conjured-up-vision Belle says "I thought you didn't dress like that [the Dark One] anymore. I thought that was your past.", Rumple answers "This is not my future". He wants to change for them, he wants to be better for them.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">We've been through the choking thing. He was not choking Belle. And he didn't say he was seriously considering sacrificing his grandson's life to save his own. He said Pan gave him that option and that he generally takes wrong choices, which suggests he is afraid that he might do that again this time. That is mental duality, by the way. But he has already given his final answer to Felix, hasn't he? Which suggests that the "I'm going to do right by my son and save my grandson" part of the duality has won for now.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">To me, all you said about theater just reinforces that literature analysis is more subjective to the reader's point of view than film analysis. In literature, you have what the writer wrote interpreted by you. The reader's point of view over the writer's point of view. That's it. In films/TV shows you have: the writer's script interpreted by the director and the actors; the acting of the actors directed by the director; the music score created by some musician's interpretation of the scene; the editing team's choice of takes and angles that would look better to fit the purposes of the scene; and then, finally, what you interpret of the scene. And what I'm saying is that your interpretation should not overlook all of that other interpretations that the scene went through, because that would be putting your personal preferences over everything.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">I have an interesting anecdote to go along with that. My brother has a friend who doesn't "agree" with homosexual behavior. Apparently, she has gay friends and she respects them, but her personal beliefs are in conflict with that. One day, my brother invited her and another friend over because they had to watch "Fried Green Tomatoes" for a school project. I had never seen that movie, so when they finished, I asked them what it was about. Her answer couldn't have been more different from the one my brother and his other friend gave. While they (the boys), said it was a movie with lot of implicit lesbian content, she said it was merely a movie about two friends who liked each other a lot, but just as friends and nothing more. A while after that, I watched the movie myself and I could not understand how the girl hadn't seen the implicit lesbian content until my brother told me about her beliefs regarding homosexuality. Basically, she overlooked what was shown (the acting, directing, editing, scoring…) and interpreted something else to fit her likes and dislikes.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">I've already addressed the Snow and Wilma scene somewhere in the beginning of this text. But let me just explain what I meant by "Lana acted emotionless and indifferent when she hugged Snow". There were two hugs. In the first one, she was crying and lying, saying "I loved him, too", "you can always count on me", etc. In the second hug, she made a face and acted in a way that, to me, read "yeah, right, keep thinking I'm on your side, you stupid little girl".

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Snow

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">2. But it was Pan who said she need to stop being in denial about who she really is. Because he wanted her to feel hopeless again, he wanted to break her. I don't think the writers see Emma the way Pan wants her to see herself. But it's too soon to be taking conclusions based on only two episodes since Pan showed up and Emma started feeling hopeless again.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">3. Yeah, like I said, I didn't like the sword solution as well, but what can I do… I just thought "sexist" wasn't the correct word to describe his actions in that episode. But I did wish the writers had found another way for him to convince that she had it in her to fight for what was hers.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">Regina:

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">I don't think that trying something new when the only viable option is not working is a bad trait in a character. I do think that trying this something new without thinking things through is most definitely bad. Specially in this case, in which her son's life is at stake.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">If you think Regina acting without thinking on what could happen to her son if Pan got mad as being competent, all right, have it your way. I'll keep thinking it was a most reckless thing to do.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">At the end of "Lost Girl," [Emma] says something along the lines of "It's time to stop playing Pan's game and start making him play ours," -- That was after she realized Pan's game was rigged. Before that, she only had what Hook said about how breaking Pan's rules is unwise. She didn't know how he was going to react if she decided to cheat. He could keep playing with her, like he did, but he could as well have been mad at her to the point of hurting Henry. Statistically speaking, in most abduction cases, you have to follow the abductor's rule, you have to play their game, because if you don't, they will hurt the person they abducted.

<p style="margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:13px;line-height:normal;font-family:Helvetica;">I was not the one to say breaking Pan's rules is unwise. Hook was. And not following them when she didn't know everything was a game to him would be imprudent. But after he implied he wouldn't hurt Henry because they broke the rules, she understood his game and said that now it was time for him to start playing their game.