mEaWIL QUEEN DIARIES

I’d like to talk about this scene for a second. Let’s imagine you are Maleficent. You’ve been hiding out in your castle for a decade or two (depending on how long it’s been since Stefan woke Briar Rose and they had Aurora), self-medicating to ease your depression and basically hating the world.

And then in comes this sassy, stupid little girl with her eagerness and her pathetic fireballs and her annoying hope speeches. And she won’t go away. She keeps pushing and telling you that you can have your revenge, that you can be more than what you’ve become, that you can find that fire you lost. And as irritating as she is, her sheer enthusiasm and refusal to admit defeat has you thinking that just maybe she is right.

So you go to the tree and you inhale the fire, but then stupid Stefan shows up and you still can’t turn into a dragon and he is taking you back to his kingdom where he’s going to kill you, but certainly not before humiliating you first, and the stupid girl is still talking about escaping. So you point out to her that there are too many men and she says…I know. She acknowledges that she pretty much doesn’t stand a chance, even if her fireballs have improved. And then she says “Not without a dragon’s help.” Before snapping the rope and turning to face her captors. Because she is absolutely convinced that the dragon is still inside you and you not only can find her again, but you will and you will do it in time to save her. And she is foolish and reckless and…right. 

Because this girl has faith in you. She believes in you, and no one’s done that in so long and it feels scary and overwhelming and so good that you have no choice. You have to believe in her like she believes in you because you can’t let this young, stupid, glorious girl die when she has just come into your life and made you feel more alive than you’ve felt in years. So you reach inside and oh the dragon is there and the dragon is you and you are powerful and strong again and it is wonderful.

And you owe it all to her.

In which Emma wakes up at her home in New York, after a terribly vivid bad dream, to have a Sunday breakfast with her wife and son.

[twitter link part 1 | twitter link part 2]

idk who told them this was ok, but that person needs to be fired.

they compared Emma to jesus.

But almost everyone including the actors have been schooled to see every opinion of the show through the lens of shipping. Pretty much the only comment you can make without being assumed to have a shipper agenda is about the cgi, and even then not always (seriously). Look at the current discussions about Emma’s wedding dress - if you think it weird that a woman who’s borne a child is wearing a virgin’s veil and a Grace Kelly knock-off that belongs in the 1950s Vatican, you must be a “bitter” shipper.

All critique is assumed to be shippy in origin. So “you don’t like [character] because you [ship a/b]” is the easy rationale, and the actors who have little understanding of fandom buy into this as much as anyone. Shipping is the currency of the networks who seek to monetise a creative force that used to be the property of fandom. Official accounts have siezed upon it as their mechanism to generate buzz on social media, through their own posts/tweets and those of “entertainment journalists” who co-promote the shows. And “shipwars” are an engine of that promotion, because the rivalry generated, no matter how toxic, regardless of whether it’s powered by bigotry, is internet traffic they enjoy to raise their profile and push those hashtags that they stole.