Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-6252544-20160213233306/@comment-25926288-20160214141308

Farerb wrote: Dues ex machina is not similar to Chekov's gun. It's quite the opposite actually, and it something that stories should use.

I'm not saying that OUAT does it all the time, especially in earlier seasons (true love potion, magic wardrobe, compass), but but they do it A LOT in later seasons (a potion Regina gave me, the blood of the people who wronged her most, a vial of magic). It is similar. Deus ex machina is what we already know it is, chekov's gun is Deus ex machina, mentioned beforehand.

I'll give you that, but it does help that they do give specifics too, like blood of a ressurected man and etc. But I do give you that 5a was amongst the worse offecders.

The magic wardrobe wasn't deus ex machina and it tied to the magic in different forms explanation Rumple had inseason 4, but the magic compass was a literal macguffin, but one could say that portals need direction.

One of the bigger offenses is how wishy washy everything is. Regina tells Emma that using the dreamcatcher is dark magic, yet Emma used the dreamcatcher in season 2. Even worse is the fact that Reigna uses Dark magic (she used the dreamcatcher a few times in 5a) and she gets slack for using it, willl everyone else is like "Bad Rumple! Bad Emma!"

The Apprentice is a DM user because the wand contained "all the light magic", but then it gets confusing as Merlin says the Dark One started Dark magic, so how would the Apprentice have a wand made with both light and Dark magic when DM didn't exist yet. So, if Appreny uses DM, then DM must not be all that bad, so there was no need to badger Emma about it. Even worse is when we saw Emma use her light magic while Dark One (more notably of her own volition when Nimue attacked Henry).

In essence, magic in Once is still poorly defined and I think it would be best for them to drop light vs dark magic as we can't even tell the difference anymore (Plus, Merlin and Regina have almost the same magic color, can't say light and dark magic is color coordinated).