#fantasymaven

The heart of my problem with this theory is this: What Snow and Charming did to Mal and Lily was flat-out horrible. I do not think that the narrative is going to reward them for what they did by making it work. When the dust settles, they are not going to be able to defend what they did by pointing to the practical results. That is not how this show has ever operated. Heroes or not, Snowing are going to get slapped down so hard that there will be orbiting cartoon bluebirds.

Tempting though it is, I'm going to avoid the stuff about Rumple here. :) Maybe I'll look at it again later, but we could spend a long time arguing about his balance sheet and his current motives to no real purpose-- we're coming from different places, so we'll just have to wait and see on that. 

That said, I wanted to address a few points not related to our favorite imp's curse.

What if Regina is actually right?

We already know that she isn’t, unless August was lying about the history of Authorship (is that nose spell still in effect?).

Snow and Charming, Heroes, have screwed up their relationship with their daughter, perhaps beyond repair.

Ursula, Villain, got her happy ending without coming over all heroic at any point.

Regina is wrong.

What if the writers really are challenging the story book labels that set up good and bad, Hero and Villain so starkly, and suggesting that it’s injustice?

Who is assigning those labels? The other characters? The audience? The writers?

The audience has always seen the moment someone earned their label; we know it’s not arbitrary. We have always seen that no character is all good or all bad (well, maybe Pan). Certainly Emma is not without flaws, which seems to preemptively refute the entire idea that she is filled with innate goodness.

That the label comes first is Regina's idea. In S1 Regina thought that her revenge on Snow was justified. In S2 she thought that heroism consisted of killing everyone in town and taking Henry to the EF. In S3 she decided that she gets to pick and choose which side she's on by the moment. I don't understand why the audience should take this season's delusion any more seriously than the previous ones, just because she's convinced a few other characters of it.

Everybody’s freaking out because Rumple’s goal here is to turn Emma to the Darkness. He knows Maleficent. He knows what the Charmings did to her daughter. It’s an important cornerstone of the arc. At the same time, his Curse is currently slowly killing him. What if his objective is to return Emma’s inherent darkness to her, to release Lily from the forced darkness placed upon her at birth, to restore balance to them both?

His stated objective per Ursula is to "fill her heart with darkness." Ursula is not working from complete knowledge, because no one ever knows all of what Rumple is doing, but if his goal is only to make Emma human-standard in terms of evil, wouldn't he say so to his own ally? Since Ursula didn’t know the specifics, it doesn’t seem like there would be any utility in misleading her about this goal.

And let's not forget the context. The real point of all of this is that the Author can rewrite the rules. Whatever Rumple is thinking of doing to Emma is incidental to that plan. She is not the focus; she is a tool for him.

Is that also his path to redemption? If he saves Lily from her cursed state, is he also striking a blow against his own?

That assumes that Lily is cursed, and I am dubious. She didn't appear any more cursed than Emma did blessed at their first meeting.

In order for your scenario to be accurate, they’ve also got to have scenes in which Snow accepts her mistakes with Emma, Mal… accepts… what mistakes? with Lily? AND we address Cora’s mistakes with Zelena and Regina.

I don’t know about acceptance, just that those relationships will have the focus. I do believe that "Mother" means more than Mal and Lily's reunion -- every episode includes that thematic reversal.

I think Mal and Lily will bond, but that Emma will still harbor resentment of her parents. I wouldn’t be surprised if Snow tries a “look, all better now, no harm no foul!” and gets slapped. Emma may do something in order to prove to herself that she is her own creature -- possibly with Lily encouraging her, just like when they were kids. (Just because I don’t think she’s cursed doesn’t mean that Lily is actually a wonderful person.)

Honestly, Cora's presence is a mystery to me. :) It did occur to me that maybe it's Zelena trying another disguise in an attempt to save her skin from Regina? Maybe that’s when the gun comes out?

It's that or Author shenanigans. I dunno.

That’s quite a lot to do in not very much time. In order for the Apprentice spell to be a red herring, those last few episodes must also deconstruct a new mythos that’s been a constant theme ever since Unforgiven, saying that it didn’t really happen and it didn’t really matter.

Not quite. Snow and Charming kidnapped a child and intended to do something terrible to her. They accidentally got her sent her to another world, where she might easily have died. Those parts are true and they remain.

The only part that's being nullified is the part that lets them claim they were justified in doing it, and that kind of blowback is 100% consistent with the existing narrative. 

It seems to be that they went to an awful lot of effort to set up a cursed situation for Lily that turns out to be nothing but a red herring.  It means they’ve spent most of the season setting up a false conflict that has no meaningful bearing on the real problem.  If that’s the case, somebody ought to knock some heads together for wasting our time like that.

Except it does have bearing, if the real issue is "how do we fill Emma's heart with darkness". What Snow and Charming did is absolutely a problem; it's just not the problem they think it is.

By solving a problem that didn’t exist (how can we make sure Emma is totally good), they created a huge new one (Emma, who is half composed of perfect hair, half trust issues, will be so angry at us that she will make a Bad Decision). That’s Fairy Tales 101, the price of magic right there.

It’s also possible that the OUAT writers will try to have it both ways, saying both that the manipulative, rogue Author has set certain irresistible temptations and fates up for the characters while also simultaneously saying that everybody makes their own decisions. In which case, it will just be a confused, muddled mess. Do you doubt for a moment that they might not end up doing just that?

Yes, I do. They screw up on occasion, and they should hire me, :) but I don't actually think they're stupid, and they have been extremely consistent when it comes to the show’s themes.

I'm secure in believing that the Author actually forcing anyone's action was limited to that single event, precisely because anything else makes utter hash of the story. When you reveal new information that affects how events in the past are perceived, you have to limit the scope, or the audience gets confused and gives up. Nobody in the general audience is going to want to go through all of past canon and guess which events were “real” and which were not. Even I don’t want to do that. :)

As for why the characters love Emma…. You are asserting that she has a large group of supporters because of whom she is innately, that her essential goodness has garnered her support, and it’s something she’s earned. If she then becomes the Dark One, she ceases to be the person worthy of that unconditional love.

That is not quite what I meant, so I will try again. Yes, they love Emma for who she is -- I'm not so sure about the innately part; I think she works hard at it. The way we know who someone is through what they do. But if all of Emma’s choices, if everything she has ever done in her every interaction, has been because of this spell, what do they know?

It’s not that she is “unworthy,” it’s that she does not exist in the human sense. If she became the Dark One and the curse really does control its host, she would continue to not exist. There is no Emma; there is a vessel used by one force or another. No credit for the good, no blame for the bad.

Like I said, revolting.

How about this? Maybe, with all the manipulation on either side removed, with or without the darkness being magically whooshed in and out of her, there’s a being who is just Emma?

There might be, but since the spell was in place before she was born, no one has ever met her.

She is Snow and Charming’s daughter. She is Henry’s mother. She is Regina’s friend. She is Hook’s lover.

All of those relationships would be destroyed at a stroke. They would have to start over from scratch, to find out who this "just Emma” is.

(The writers are not going to do this.)

Maybe the condition of their love for her need not rely solely on what she does for them? That the human soul is a sacred thing in and of itself, worthy to be cherished outside of all this magical madness? That they should love her because she is Emma, period, and that Emma does exist as a being of intrinsic worth simply for being a person, as an entity beyond the manipulation imposed upon her?

Maybe once free of magical manipulation, she won’t love any of them.

Regardless of that -- if we are good people by certain theological definitions, we may love a perfect stranger. We don't kiss the stranger when they leave for work in the morning. We don't go to them for a parent's comfort, or confide in them as a friend. There may be "love", but there would be no trust, none of the earned intimacies of the past four seasons.

Emma’s entire story has been about negotiating trust, about finding love in herself and in those around her. They are not going to reset that to zero point.

She has gotten audience investment by not being essentially good, but by being a complicated, uncertain, scared, brave, angry, loving person, who puts herself on the line for other people and works hard. Saying that none of that matters would introduce a massive retrograde development in what has been an otherwise steady character arc, going into what may be their final season. Not going to happen.