They’ll speak of girls in cloaks like flame 
That flickered through the wood; 
They’ll speak in riddles, hide her name, 
As if they ever could

http://seananmcguire.com/songbook.php?id=263

bostoneris:

…of Once Upon a Time.

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My bet is that Cora is the Miller’s Daughter from the story of Rumpelstiltskin (she marries up; she knows his name; Rumpelstiltskin was supposed to have Regina when she was more “portable”).

I love Emma/Regina. I also love Rumpelstiltskin/Belle.

I want every single character (even the Blue Fairy, no matter how much she irritates and annoys me) to get their happy ending.

I am so, so tired of reading stories in which either Regina or Rumpelstiltskin (or, on rare occasion, Cora) is the grand evil and the other becomes the reluctant ally.

One reason I love this show is that nothing in it is so clear-cut. No one is purely evil or purely good. Their decisions define them. They can make different choices. They can love or feel pain and regret. They can be horribly self-righteous and inconsiderate. They can be kind. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ mingle.

Setting up a grand antagonist who is the great evil reduces the show, removing its best part. OUaT does not have a great evil, but instead has different people with different agendas and the power to see them through. The agendas conflict. In fact, sometimes their own agendas conflict. Regina wants to both win Henry’s love and squash others’ happy endings. Rumpelstiltskin wants to both make up for the mistakes of his past (Baelfire and Belle) and wreak revenge on Regina.

The real antagonist isn’t Regina or Rumpelstiltskin (or the Queen of Hearts or Cora, etc), but rather an individual’s inability to release their grievances or forgive others and themselves.

The real tension is who each person wants to be and what each person dreams vs what scares, angers, or shames them.

This is just as true for the ‘good’ characters in the show. That is why it was so very, very important for the Charmings to defend Regina. Good must forgive or, at least, try to forgive. Good must let go of pain and focus instead on the people they want most to be and the life they want most to live.

The only way to vanquish evil in OUaT is redemption. 

The real story, I hope, is going to be about finding home and family, about creating your own happy ending against all odds. And that isn’t going to be easy for anyone. 

Sometimes you have to be willing to lose or to appear the loser in order to truly win.

Fanfic simplifies though. Showing an epic battle (or ignoring the conflicts all together) is easier, I suppose. Still frustrating however.

Before the Red Queen’s reign, Wonderland was still a terrible place where no rules applied and casual cruelties abounded. No certainty in Wonderland—which made it an all-too-easy portal for some of the stranger realms. Doors once lost could still be found within its unreality.

Alice of the land with no magic falls by accident into Wonderland when the Red Queen yet remains on her chess board and no monarch reigns over all. Jefferson and his wife find her. She reminds them of Grace, of the girl Grace might one day grow up to be. Poor thing should not be lost. Her parents should not be forced to grieve. But only two may leave, and his wife cannot use the hat.

Jefferson restores Alice to her world and cautions her to never tumble through the mirror again.

Without the hat imposing sense on time in Wonderland, the years and seconds bend and stretch. When Jefferson returns, immediately returns, his wife is gone.

A chess game took place, he learns. The White Queen was winning. The Red Queen was shattered. But then a brave pawn reached all the way across the board and destroyed the game. No one would play chess in Wonderland ever again, and the Red Queen reigned. In the chaos of the aftermath, his wife had been lost, he assumes and returns home to Grace.

His hat goes into a box. Grace grows up. His heart aches daily for his wife, for all the little miracles their girl accomplishes that she will never see.

Years later, after being lost to Wonderland, torn from Grace and alone in the world that had destroyed his wife—

Years later, with a line on his throat and a workroom quarter-full with worthless hats—

Years later, he sees beneath the Red Queen’s veil and finds his wife, alive after all this time.

His hat becomes even more critical then. A hat to find his way back home, to save his wife and reclaim his child. A hat to finally save the day, rather than destroy it.

None of them work, but hope is a kind of madness. One day he’ll find the way, the trick of it. He’ll spin his hat, grab the Queen, and bring them both home, safe and in time for tea with Grace. 

He’ll get the right of it one of these days.

camelliasin:

OMG who IS this guy? I want to go with Prince Eric from Little Mermaid, but he said nobody guessed right and somebody HAD to have guessed that already. He’s kinda sorta a ginger…associated with the ocean somehow…immature yet highly intelligent…UGH! 

That end description made me think of Ariel. Now I have that stuck in my head. Doctor Whale=Ariel, they rhyme-ish? I know Whale’s a bit of a lech, but Ariel did have a thing for legs…

Note: I have not watched any of the promos.

So I finally watched the end of Once Upon a Time (okay, more than the end; I was far behind).

My major feeling after everything is this: I want everyone, Regina and Rumpelstiltskin included, to have a happy ending.

(Though, if I were to ask for more, I’d want more ambiguous villainy and a lot more teaming up between Regina and Emma).

“Did you try True Love’s Kiss?”

“Until my lips bled.”

~James & Abigail, 1x13

I think, for a long time, curses were not something that could broken. Then someone gave their beloved one last kiss and the curse broke. Word spread, and people started to discover that many curses had the same vulnerability.

(I bet, before the Kiss was discovered, everyone swore by tears (ala Rapunzel). Tears couldn’t reverse a death or break a curse, but they had remarkable healing properties under certain circumstances.)

As the word spread, however, those who designed curses started to take the Kiss into account. They designed curses without that weakness. New curses did not break with a single Kiss. (Think of diseases and medications, in some sense).

That’s why Regina was so furious with Maleficent in that one episode. How dare Maleficent trade her an old-school curse with a Kiss weakness? 

At the same time, however, not all using curses are upgrading. For one, it probably takes additional effort. For two, true love isn’t that common. Yes, our hero(in)es are finding it, but there have been false occasions of it and arranged marriages as well. True Love is still something to celebrate and desire, not expect.

Also, the Kiss isn’t constant. Rather than rely on fate, a confirmation of some pre-determined bond, the Kiss seems to rely on emotion, knowledge/understanding, and acceptance (a combination of understanding mentally and giving yourself over emotionally).

For example, let’s jump out of OUaT for a moment and consider Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast. Belle and the Beast/Adam are true loves. They are each other’s other half. They are bound by the red string. However you want to term it. However, suppose Belle had kissed the Beast prior to the ending of the film, do you think the kiss would have broken the spell? Doubtful. They were falling in love (we get songs letting us know this), but they weren’t there yet. The emotion was there, but the acceptance of love was not. Not yet. 

Now consider OUaT’s version with Rumpelstiltskin and Belle. When Belle kisses him, she does so loving him, knowing he loves her, and accepting that the love is real and true. What stops Rumpelstiltskin’s transformation is not his lack of love for Belle, but rather is lack of acceptance. He rejects the idea of true love existing between them. He refuses to give himself over to the kiss and the kiss ceases to be effective.

Some people wonder why David and Mary Margaret’s kissing is not working when Emma and Graham’s did. My answer is this: Neither is a True Love’s Kiss.

In the case of David and Mary Margaret, they have the emotion and they acknowledge the connection between them, but they are not yet giving into it. They do not yet recognize the connection as True Love, and they are both holding back a little. The emotion is there full-force, but the knowledge of what it is they share and the acceptance thereof are lacking.

There is also the possibility that Rumpelstiltskin designed the curse to be invulnerable against True Love’s Kiss.

In the case of Emma and Graham, I believe the Kiss worked only because Emma is the curse’s weakness. Graham was already on the verge of remembering, possibly due to his continued close proximity to Emma (though then one does wonder about Mary Margaret, unless the curse just has a tighter hold on her thanks to Regina’s personal hatred for her). Then, when he interacted with the counter-curse so intimately. When Emma lowered her defenses to him (lowering the walls, letting her inner counter-curse shine through?), he remembered more.

I could be entirely off-base on all of this, but it is what is making the most sense to me currently.

1. Rumpelstiltskin taught Regina magic.

(Note: We know Rumpelstiltskin doesn’t age (compare him and Geppetto), so this isn’t too far-fetched.)

2. Regina is the Miller’s Daughter in that her father got her into a difficult situation. His resulting guilt from that and deep love for her are why he goes along with so many of her schemes.

3. Rumpelstiltskin’s dealings with Jiminy were some of his earliest. That’s one reason he keeps the puppets with him wherever he goes. They are a reminder.

4. Regina is still redeemable. Her great flaws are her need to control and her inability to separate love and possession.

5. Rumpelstiltskin is still redeemable. His greatest flaws are his cowardice and fear of weakness. Becoming the Dark One did not change this, as Belle so astutely pointed out.

(Note: These flaws are what feed what I said was the key difference between the two.)

Rumpelstiltskin designed the curse knowing that Regina would eventually seek it out, that she’d eventually get it. He designed the curse requiring a heart precisely so that Regina would have to experience the same pain he’d felt when he’d lost Belle.

ETA: I forgot— he did give the curse to Regina first. Regina was the one who traded it away. I bet he was not pleased when he found that out.

They both chose power, but

Regina destroyed her heart;

Rumpelstiltskin set his free.