Once Upon A Time

Even the most powwerful sorceroress is vulnerable to a knife in the back. Not Charming or even Snow's style, Rumple? Oh most definitely.

That is what you get when you chose a class that has fewer hit points

It's Evil!Snow's style.

edited 10th Oct '12 6:09:31 PM by Maridee

I love this show, but it's really got a style of "never imply anything if you can just state it outright", hasn't it? Regina actually saying "I want to redeem myself" is only the most recent and blatant option. There's not even an attempt at subtlety. The plot's not trying to be subtle either, what with introducing Cora right here. I really don't see why people draw the connections with Lost - that one has a reputation for being insanely convoluted, whereas this one is fairly simple.

Still, I like it at lot. I like its innocence, compared to the dominance of primetime television by reality TV and "what horrible ways can we kill people this week" crime dramas.

Now that Charming knows the fairy-tale world still exists, hopefully we can turn from "how do we get Snow and Emma backto Storybrook?" to "How do the rest of us get back to the Enchanted Forest?"

I like it too, but I wouldn't call it innocence, after all the show can get pretty dark at time and has no delusions about how bad life can be, but their's a optimism to it that's unique as well. I would say the show is more on the far idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism.

Yeah, the characters, while a strong attempt, are not what I'd call all too perfect attempts, especially in terms of subtlety.

The high level of idealism is what I was referring to.

... Have you paid *any* attention to the bits of the story set in farietale land at all? As a place to live, Uncursed storybrook has it beat 9 ways till Sunday. Amazon does not deliver there, and it has no toilets, no electric lights, no broadband, no freezers, no rule of law and no CPS. It does have ogres, wraiths and horrors galore, however. When Regina said that this world is the fairest of all the ones she has visited- I completely believe the lying witch on that score!

Among other things, while electricity has a cost, it is a small amount of money, not your firstborn child or other member of your family.

edited 11th Oct '12 11:59:46 AM by Izeinspring

It's nitpicking, but...

Amazon doesn't deliver to Storybrooke(no one does), there is no rule of law in Storybrooke(beyond "what Regina/Gold says, goes"), and there is no CPS in Storybrooke(since those kids would be sent to Boston)...

Actually, while storybrook never got visitors, we have no idea whether deliveries happened and the truck drivers just really did not want to spend the night because the city just felt horribly wrong, or if the curse just conjured goods into being ex-nihilio. Let alone how that changed with the breaking of the curse - Ordering a pile of books from amazon would be a nicely low-profile way to test how the barrier affects people from the outside now.

edited 11th Oct '12 12:53:59 PM by Izeinspring

Does Storybrooke has internet? Internet > Magic

But would the citizens or charming want to test that?

edited 11th Oct '12 1:21:46 PM by Bluelantern2814

Storybrooke has the Internet... That's how Henry found Emma in the first place. I dispute the idea that Storybrooke has broadband access though(and it certainly doesn't have 3/4G access)...

And if Storybrooke only has dial-up capabilities, then magic would definitely be better. Mostly because not having the internet is better than dial-up.

edited 11th Oct '12 1:34:28 PM by Swish

Wait... is there a difference between no internet and dial-up?

Certainly. Dialup makes your phone busy, after all.

here's the question. Assuming the curse magically provided things like food, internet and toilet paper, will it now that it's been broken/crippled?

No 3G does not mean dial-up. ADSL is decent. I mean, I live in a country where we are at awful 192kbps, but it is still better than magic.

The one bad thing about Storybrooke is the curse about the no happy endings, but the curse was broken. It seemed that many characters actually like their new selves.

edited 11th Oct '12 3:32:38 PM by nairoxev

Storybrook is modern. Fairy-tale world isn't. That doesn't inherently mean than fairy-tale world is a worse place, or that it wouldn't be a good place to live if it was well-governed.

I'd pick magic over internet any day.

edited 11th Oct '12 3:37:14 PM by WarriorEowyn

I'd pick magic (even if it was new and had to be adapted to) and internet and indoor plumbing and electricity and central heating over just magic.

edited 11th Oct '12 3:54:24 PM by rikalous

I can accept the curse magicking in food/gas/toilet paper to the town. I can accept the curse creating homes and buildings to begin with...

What I cannot accept is the curse being able to magic in the infrastructure needed for an ADSL connection for Storybrooke... Especially since it wouldn't occur until about halfway into the curse(28 years ago was 1986, after all)...

The whole "town in 'stasis' for 28 years" bit hurts the general premise of Henry's that no one ever comes to the town... But accepting Henry's premise as fact, and thus being forced to accept that everything "modern" has been magicked there at some point during those 28 years, hurts the entire idea that magic didn't exist in Storybrooke before Emma showed up...

The curse was active for those 28 years though, tweaking reality to mold around it's central purpose: keeping everyone nice and miserable. The thing is, like Emma, Henry wasn't born in Storybroke, in order to maintain the Masquerade the Curse had to keep re-tweaking reality to make it seem plausible that this was reality. That's what Emma brought to the town more then anything: skepticism, the Curse had to expend more and more energy to keep her from believing and to reverse her effects on the town (Keeping Mary Margret and David apart primarily), that's what was really weakening it.

Interesting theory. It fails once you realize the curse never "tweaked" itself(or reality) after it was cast...

All the curse did initially was send everyone to Earth, wipe their minds, and replaced their identities with new ones. It then ensured that everyone was in a form of "stasis" — in that no one subject to the curse recognized that time was passing in any significant way(with only Regina and Gold immune). And once Emma showed up, only the "stasis" bit ended...

Keep in mind that everything about the curse is just speculation by everyone... Since the only thing we know about the purpose and design of the Curse is it was created to allow Rumplestiltskin to be sent to a realm with no magic, and have magic enter that realm after the curse is broken 28 years after it is cast...

One thing I thought was kind of interesting is how Charming/David commented on David having "memories" of reading Alice in Wonderland as a child- which obviously were part of his false memories (which sort of suggests that yes, Storybrooke people have actually heard of fairy tales).

Kind of seems like a magical version of The Matrix as far as memories/the reality goes- which is why I figure that as technology advanced, people in Storybrooke suddenly "always" had it/"remembered" getting it.

It also seems likely that Storybrooke gets deliveries/communicates with the outside world, even if no one leaves (while she may have been lying, I believe there was mention by Regina of bringing in big city or state police when Katherine "disappeared").

They were some signs of them being stuck in the 80s last season, though, so that's another wrench in the works.

Except that keeping a entire town brainwashed/locked is tweaking with reality, just because it is inside someone's head it doesn't mean it doesn't involve changing (vastly complex) chemical structures that forms memories and free will.

Quite honestly, I think people take too literally the entire concept "no one can leave, no one can enter", Henry himself manages to leave the town to quickly return in the first episode, it is entirely possible the same applies to pretty much everything and everyone.

I think that it's just the characters originally from the Enchanted Forest that can't leave, and people looking to stay that can't enter. Delivers and the like are probably fine.

Time didn't start ticking until Emma chose to stay, remember?

edited 11th Oct '12 7:13:44 PM by LMage