It is Emma giving birth to Henry *------*
By "other media", they mean the Disney animated films.
Yes, I know. Sorry, should've been more clear—I mean I want to see how they deal with the implication of the Disney films existing in the OUaT 'verse IN ADDITION to the characters themselves being real people. Obviously, the Disney films + things like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein  aren't exact autobiographies of the OUaT cast, and it wouldn't make sense for them to be since the show's premise means that no one or almost no one in our world knows that the FTR exist.
In reality, Disney's version of Mulan exists because it is based on the legend of Hua Mulan, and many of the Disney princess movies are watered down versions of extant fairytales. Frankenstein exists because Mary Shelley had an idea and wrote a novel about it. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were Charles Dodgson's critique of new ideas in the field of mathematics (he was basically the square to end all squares). And so on.
However, in the Once 'verse, Cinderella and Snow White and Victor Frankenstein and the Queen of Hearts actually exist. They aren't just fictional stories; they're real people. It follows that for them to be stories about them in our world, which has never been exposed to the real versions of the characters, there has to be some reason for it beyond "someone, somewhere, told a story, and then it got written down and that's how we know about it today."
To put it another way: the musical Wonderland was is inspired by Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, but it dealt with an adult Alice who lived in New York City in the modern day. The play begins with Alice's mother-in-law reading from the actual book Alice in Wonderland to Alice's daughter, Chloe, and after going to her own Wonderland, Alice exhibits knowledge about how the books work. Thus, it's a modernized version of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, but it's one that takes place in a universe where the books still exist.
Compare this to the BBC's Sherlock, where Sherlock Holmes and John Watson et al are put in modern London. In this universe, Arthur Conan Doyle's original Sherlock Holmes stories were never published—this Sherlock is the original Sherlock, and no one makes any references to either the books or the fifty gazillion other adaptions of them in the course of the show because, in this version of our world, none of those things exist. This is a common convention in these types of adaptions, and it's one that we as the viewers accept without question.
Once, however, is in a position similar to Wonderland, in that it's a modern setting where the stories are still stated to exist in our world. The difference is that the Alice of Wonderland is explicitly not Alice Liddell and we aren't expected to believe that she is: she's explicitly a different, unrelated modern woman whose name is Alice and who has a dream where she goes to Wonderland and goes on a journey of self-discovery similar to, but different than, the Alice of Lewis Carroll's books. Once, on the other hand, IS trying to get us to believe that their Snow White is the Original Snow White, and so far they've done a handy job of convincing us of that. Now that they're acknowledging other versions of the tales in-universe, though, they need to justify their existences in order to maintain the illusion that their version is the Real, Original, True version.
Does that make sense?
Once, on the other hand, IS trying to get us to believe that their Snow White is the Original Snow White, and so far they've done a handy job of convincing us of that. Now that they're acknowledging other versions of the tales in-universe, though, they need to justify their existences in order to maintain the illusion that their version is the Real, Original, True version.
OUaT has acknowledged the original versions of all these stories, from the start. Emma grew up reading the Grimm tales, and watching the Disney films. She implied this many times.... or did you miss, all her snarky quibs?
Snarky throwaway lines are different from what sounds like an actual conversation about how such-and-such is different from the way Disney portrayed them. And OUaT's nonexplanation about this is something that has always bugged me; I'm excited about the possibilities now because, if it's enough for a preview review of the first episode to mention in a list of just seven significant things about the first episode, then it's probably more than a quip. (Worldbuilding is one of my favorite things about fiction, which is why questions like this fascinate me)
Once, on the other hand, IS trying to get us to believe that their Snow White is the Original Snow White, and so far they've done a handy job of convincing us of that. Now that they're acknowledging other versions of the tales in-universe, though, they need to justify their existences in order to maintain the illusion that their version is the Real, Original, True version.
there was a deleted scene where Henry implied he's read Peter Pan.
David says this about Mad Hatter in We Are Both:
David:Â No. I mean, yeah. I mean, the prince-me doesn't know him, but David had memories of reading "Alice In Wonderland" in school.
Other media has been mentioned before.
I'm not arguing that other media hasn't been mentioned before (it has), I'm saying that I'm hoping that the fact that it was mentioned in a preview review means that it shows up in the premiere significantly to be worth mentioning, i.e. as an actual discussion rather than throwaway lines. (F'rinstance, if this were We Are Both being reviewed, the writer of the review would absolutely not have included a "and David talks about reading Alice in Wonderland!" bullet point. It's ONE LINE and not worth mentioning—all the talk in the linked article and elsewhere about how Neal brings up the Disney movie of Mulan to real Mulan's face implies that it's going to be an actual conversation)
I want to know HOW and WHY these stories exist in the Once version of our world. In the real world, they're fictional stories that came from people's imaginations; in the Once 'verse, they're accounts of actual real people, albeit inaccurate ones, and in addition to that, they're not historical accounts, they're stories of people who are alive now. Which gets even messier when one considers that all of these stories have been around for centuries in our world.
The implication there is that there's a lot of timeline weirdness going on between our world and the various other realms. The show already has vehicles for the information crossover in place—there's the portal jumpers, a plethora of things that transport people between worlds, however the Home Office does its thing, and so on—and I'd be really, really excited if this got examined in the show itself.
Another possibility is that the causality is reversed and the FTR/Land without color/Wonderland/Neverland/whatever came from the stories themselves, like fiction becomes real and takes on a life of its own in a parallel universe. Which would also be super cool and have the added benefit of justifying why the Once version of things is so different from the source texts and so interconnected and crossover-y.
Or: David saying he has memories of reading Alice in Wonderland as a kid does not explain how Alice in Wonderland exists in a world where Wonderland is real and the Carroll account is a close but not perfect version of events. Compare to the Looking Glass Wars trilogy, where the reason the books are so different from real!Wonderland and the events that took place there is because Charles Dodgson took severe liberties with what Alyss told him because he thought she was making it up and accuracy didn't matter.
Basically I don't want more proof that other media representations of these stories exist in Onceland, I want justifications for that fact.
David:Â No. I mean, yeah. I mean, the prince-me doesn't know him, but David had memories of reading "Alice In Wonderland" in school.
Other media has been mentioned before.
I thought that was a false memory from the curse.
David:Â No. I mean, yeah. I mean, the prince-me doesn't know him, but David had memories of reading "Alice In Wonderland" in school.
Other media has been mentioned before.
It is, but the false memories are there to make these EF characters fit in with our world in their new personas, which in turn, implies that Alice in Wonderland exists in the "our world" of OUaT.