Category Archives: Stream of Thought

Confession: I’m looking forward to season six

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(I was going to wait and post this next week but I’ve seen a few ‘season 6′ posts go up lately, so I’m going to post it now.)

The show might not always give me the canon I would like but it does give me a window into the world of the characters that I love.

When I watch something I suspend disbelief, so whether I like what happens or not, that is what happens and I deal with with it. If necessary I come up with headcanon explanations to fill in the blanks so it makes sense. I analyse everything for character motives and meanings and whether it’s angst or fluff, it’s what happens.

I’m UK based so I won’t get to watch on Sundays. I will have to wait three days until Netflix puts the episode up on Wednesdays. Which means I won’t be looking at my feed until I watch the episode. (Random note: please reblog your fanfic at the end of the week, or I and anyone else in my position will never see it). For most of season 5 I didn’t have a tumblr, I had a private blog. I wrote 15 posts with a combined word count of just over 48k … yikes I didn’t realize it was that much ooops.

Anyway, I’ll be three days late to the party every week but I’m planning on blogging season six as well. So, if you like indepth analysis of motives, speculation about what could happen next, lots of references to past seasons (especially if they do flashbacks because I try and place them in the timeline), lots of theorizing about anything that wasn’t completely explained etc. then I’ll be here most weeks. If you don’t I’ll be tagging ‘SS47 ouat season six review’ so you can blacklist.

This show captures my imagination and I love it. It’s nowhere near perfect and I’m not claiming I’ll be positive all the time, I suspect some frustration might creep in on occasion but ultimately this is my favorite currently airing show. There is nothing on TV like it and I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

If nothing else season 6 is going to be quite a ride 🙂

TMI question: What is attractive about the character of Lacey for you as a fic writer?

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timelordthirteen:

Oh thank you, I love this question! And I’m going to disclaim that if you don’t like Lacey or don’t like my theories and opinions on Lacey and Belle, do not comment on this post if that’s your only contribution. I want zero hate for Lacey/Belle on my posts and I will block with prejudice.

First it’s that Lacey is a bit of a blank slate. We don’t see much of her beyond the episode Lacey. We know she’s around, and that she’s with Rumple/Gold, but we only see her with him and in small doses. And then suddenly at the end of the season she’s back to being Belle and that’s that. Like too many things on this show she is never talked about or dealt with again. So she’s a character that has a few basic traits that I can take anywhere.

Second, Lacey is Belle’s cursed persona. I don’t care what any other arguments there are about this. I believe if Regina had let Belle out while the curse was in effect, this is the person we would have seen. Lacey is basically the dark parts of Belle, the bad side of her traits amplified, same as what we see of other characters under the original curse. This gives rise to a ton of possible cursed AU scenarios. 

But Lacey’s existence also gives us an interesting look at Belle herself. Lacey is part of Belle. Where Belle is compassionate and helpful, Lacey is selfish and gives no fucks about others. Belle is passionate and brave, Lacey is impulsive and audacious. They are similar traits, but where Belle exemplifies the best side, Lacey can sometimes be… the worst. Lacey is the part of Belle that does love the darkness in Rumple/Gold. She’s the part that is just a little bit pleased that her husband is a powerful, dark sorcerer, the part that wants a rough fuck in the back of the pawn shop and a shot of whiskey afterwards. Those things exist in Belle too, but I think because she wants to be a hero so badly, she pushes them down. We’re seeing it right now, Belle refusing the part of herself that likes the darkness, that has probably done things she regrets, things that are probably less than good.

That doesn’t mean Lacey is bad. David Nolan wasn’t a bad person, he was Charming without the bravery and conviction of being Prince Charming. Lacey is just the less great parts of Belle, and that means that Lacey can also be the good parts too. I’ve seen people say they hate the character because she’s one dimensional and shallow. Well, gee, we got about 30 minutes of her on screen on a show that isn’t necessarily known for it’s consistency of characterization and storytelling. So no wonder. Things are swept under the rug of this show every episode. That doesn’t mean Lacey can’t be a complex character, that she doesn’t remember losing her mother like Belle does, that she doesn’t remember a bad fiance she narrowly escaped marrying, that she hasn’t been abused and mistreated by villainous people.

When I write Lacey I try to write her as vulnerable but faking it. All her bravado, her give no fucks attitude? It’s a sham. Behind it all is a woman who has been hurt and who is trying desperately not to get hurt again. She doesn’t trust easily, so it takes work to get to the real person underneath the hard drinking and partying. There’s a broke girl who hustles pool to make rent. A daughter who doesn’t feel loved by her father anymore because she made choices he didn’t like. A woman who lost her mother when she needed her most. A person wants to be good but finds herself attracted to the bad. 

THOSE THINGS ARE ALSO BELLE.

The one thing I’ve always liked about this show is that there isn’t a firm line between heroes and villains. On any given day, a hero can fuck up and a villain can be selfless. Belle can be Lacey as much as Lacey can be Belle. I hope this season we see at least part of that, and see Belle opening up to the parts of herself she doesn’t maybe like so much. I hope we see her accepting the darkness in Rumple and loving him for who he is. I think that more than anything will be the catalyst for Rumple becoming who he needs to be and fulfilling the prophecy Merlin spoke of. I’d kill to see Belle remember being Lacey and possibly the things she did with Rumple during those cursed days. I’d love to see her struggling with the things she did and felt as Lacey, but I know we won’t get that.

Ultimately, I like writing Lacey because she’s closer to the real me than Belle is, even some of the parts we see on screen. I relate to a lot of her traits when I write her, and yeah maybe I project a bit. So when I see people hating Lacey, I feel some personal offense. Because it feels like I’m being hated too. Her existence also make the Belles I write more complex because I can use those “bad” traits of Lacey to flesh out Belle.

*jaw drops* This ^^

I love Lacey, precisely because of all those layers she does have. People knock the show a lot and not fully exploring storylines (like Lacey’s) is kinda irritating, there is so much potential and then it’s forgotten. However, at the same time, it gives us amazing storylines – like Lacey, which writers can take and do something awesome with.

The whole ‘we are both’ thing, I just love it. I agree with all of this post, hence why I’m reblogging it because well this ^^ which remains relevant through to season 6 because people aren’t just one thing, people are complex creatures who are lots of things. We’re also illogical, we sometimes want one thing and do another. “The heart wants what it wants, and does things for reason that reason does not understand.”

Oh and I have to quote you now because this – “On any given day, a hero can fuck up and a villain can be selfless. Belle can be Lacey as much as Lacey can be Belle.” – is just so true and I believe this so much. Nobody is all good or all bad, life isn’t totally black and white – we are both.

War Within Question To The Heroes: Thoughts on Don Quixtoe? (Crap I hope that’s how you spell it!)

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Yup you got it, Don Quixote 🙂

David: He took the ‘hero’ thing to uncomfortable extremes. He didn’t believe he could do any wrong and as we’ve learned lately, that line of thinking is dangerous. However, he did save Storybrooke so misguided though he might have been, he was a hero.

Emma: His sacrifice meant no-one I loved had to die.

Regina: All he wanted was to be a hero, perhaps this was his ‘happy ending’. I think to borrow a phrase from one of Henry’s TV shows, he was a ‘few fries short of a happy meal’ but then I would have once said that about any hero, especially one who sacrificed themselves. Also, he ended a mess I made so I can’t think ill of the man.

Snow: He was a murderer and dangerous, even if he thought his motives were good. I’m grateful that he ended the cauldron attack and I’m sorry he died, but I’m glad he’s not around any longer. He would have hurt more people.

California Solo (Review)

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That is all.

No seriously, I don’t think I have any intelligent comments to make. I’m fairly certain he filmed this in between SGU and Once Upon a Time, so he’s like half Rush and half season one Gold and oh sweet merlin he’s attractive.

I mean Lachlan is a drunk which isn’t attractive, so I kinda get why his ex-wife kicked him out of bed. I’m not sure if he did his kid a favor or not by staying away, I can kinda see both sides of it. Maybe it would have made him grow up a bit if he’d stayed in contact because I think deep down he didn’t want to disappoint his daughter. Although then again, his guilt over his brothers death would possibly have made him self destruct anyway. Poor guy 🙁

Oh and I can’t believe they spent the entire film with him fighting against being deported, only to end with presumably him getting deported. I hope he apologized to his boss, he was a decent guy who only ever tried to help him and wow how expensive was that guitar? If he gave his kid $600 and that was only a few bills off the clip that was an awful lot of money.

It’s what I call a ‘slice of life’ film, it just sort of ends. I would have preferred either something coming up so he wasn’t deported, or seeing him actually going back to the UK and a little bit of the consequences of that. I would have liked more of a definitive ending anyway. This kind of movie isn’t my cup of tea at all.

So once again I don’t recommend this as a movie, but I do seriously recommend it for fans of Robert Carlyle. Excuse me while I go find all the Lachlan gifsets on tumblr and add them to my queue. Oh and I make no apologies for the gifspam at the start of my post, I think it makes my point most eloquently.

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rowofstars:

still-searching47:

rowofstars:

I still really want to organize a Rumbelle Big Bang but there’s no good time to schedule it that doesn’t overlap with all our other events. 🙁

What’s a Rumbelle Big Bang? The way it’s capitalized makes me think it’s a thing I should know about, perhaps because ‘big bang’ in other fandoms but I’ve never heard of it. I’m curious, hope that’s ok.

Also, leaving aside the events that stretch year round, do we really have events that cover every single month? That’s kinda impressive and really cool!

A Big Bang is a fic and fanart challenge that lasts 2-3 months. It works like a lot of our other events with a list of prompts sent out for fic writers. Alternatively, you can pair up people and have fic written for someone’s prompt. After the first month, the writers post a short summary of their fic, much like what you’d see in a summary on AO3 or a fic post. Then artists are paired up with a fic and they make art for the fic, based on the summary. The fics are intended to be longer (at least 10K words) and then fandom gets a deluge of longer fics and art.

I know this fandom has no problem with writing longer fics and we have some incredible artists. But we have so many events I have no idea when we’d ever fit this in. A lot of fandoms back on LJ days did this over the summer or winter hiatus for their shows. It was a way to fill in the time and then have a huge celebration a week or two before the show came back.

Oh that’s cool! What about in between Mantis Menagerie and RCIJ? We had Rumbelle is Hope in May this year so it might just sneak in. Hmm I seem to recall there was also a bit of time between RCIJ and Rumbelle Revelry. I did the OUaT Positivity event but that wasn’t a Rumbelle specific event. Does anything happen after RSS in January/February time?

This is hard, I can’t think of what to suggest, but it does sound like such an awesome premise. I can understand why you’d like it to happen. To be honest I don’t know the schedule of events well enough to work out when there might be time or not. You are probably right that there is no good time which is a shame. It sounds like fun!

Thanks for explaining what it is anyway 🙂

The War Within (Chapter Fourteen)

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woodelf68:

still-searching47:

Synopsis: Alternate Season Six. Storybrooke is visibly under threat once more from Hyde and the Evil Queen. However, not all threats are visible as an old forgotten foe has been manipulating events from behind the scenes. The very nature of darkness is revealed as everyone struggles with the most difficult beast of all – acceptance.

Note: You are either going to love me or hate me for this chapter. There’s a lot of Rumbelle goodness but … well no spoilers 🙂 Anyway, chapter fifteen (the final chapter) will be on Tuesday as normal. Enjoy!

Warning: Spoiler alert but there’s basically what amount to zombies in this chapter. There’s no really disgusting descriptions because I personally don’t like that but the dead do walk Storybrooke.

On Tumblr: Chapters One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen

AO3 Link

The mirror room
shuddered again. This time Belle barely flinched, it seemed to happen with
alarming regularity and no harm had come to her, so she was trying not to be
scared by it. There was no way to know what it meant, it had happened far too
many times to be her body passing through a realm. Belle shivered, suddenly
feeling acutely vulnerable. Hades couldn’t steal her child under a sleeping
curse, but anything could happen to her body.

Belle sat up, from her
prone position on the floor, and stretched. A sad wry smile crossed her face,
she had to admit that wasn’t entirely true. So long as she was with
Rumplestiltskin, no harm would come to her, her husband would protect her. The
only problem she had was the means that he might use to achieve that protection.
She couldn’t condone the darkness.

Light bounced around
the room, in swirling patterns as another mirror came to life. Belle sighed and
twisted to look at it, wondering what piece of her past it would show her now.
It seemed to be choosing memories based on what she was thinking. However, she
had no idea what memory it would choose, to reflect her firm belief, that she
couldn’t condone the darkness.

Keep reading

What a great ending to the chapter, it would make a perfect episode cliffhanger. I liked the explanation of how the books and the grail came to be at the library; it didn’t make any sense that they’d been there all along. And Don Quixote came in handy! That was thinking ahead, if you knew you were going to have him sacrifice himself all along. Also, I just wish the show would fully utilise the sleeping curse as you’ve done, for Belle to reflect on her life and her choices up to this point. It’s very satisfying and I know we’re not going to get anything remotely like it in canon. 

I did know that was going to happen to Don Quixote actually 🙂 I planned out the entire story before I wrote it, so I’ve always known exactly what was going to happen. To be fair to the show, it’s hard to show somebody ‘thinking’ on screen so they wouldn’t be able to do what I did. Maybe they’ll do something with the sleeping curse, I don’t know what but I’m glad you liked my take on it, thank you 🙂

I agree with you, it didn’t make sense that the grail and the books just ‘conveniently appeared’ unless somebody made them appear.

Anyway, thank you very much for all your really nice comments.

The next chapter will be posted on Tuesday. I hope you will enjoy it!

Marilyn Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School (Review)

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I just watched this and I have some thoughts to share:

1) The casting of Foggy as a kid blew my mind. I kept thinking to myself – that smile is familiar but I’d seen him as a grownup in the bakery so I figured it was a kid brother/son or something. The whole ‘old footage’ thing was weird and cool but mostly weird, especially as adult him was a whole different character.

2) The sex in the bakery couldn’t have been hygienic. Feel free to laugh at me but that was my … second thought on watching that scene.

3) The second half was much smoother than the first half, the first half was kinda like a crack film and I was thinking “man I watch some weird stuff for Robert Carlyle” but it did get better and make more sense.

4) Frank Keane’s smile is adorable and I wanted to hug him when he looked sad or was crying. It reminded of that recent tumblr post that was going round about when Robert Carlyle cries, we all cry.

5) I liked how the whole grief group wound up going to the dance class.

6) The whole Lisa thing was sad. What if that guy had made it? He’d been holding onto that promise for 40 years and then bam, that’s some disappointment.

7) The trailers before the movie on the DVD were epic long. I have never heard of such long trailers ever.

As movies go I wouldn’t recommend it on it’s own merits but then it’s not my genre at all. For fans of Robert Carlyle though, yeah I’d recommend it on that basis 🙂 I’m watching California Solo tomorrow so I’ll see how that compares!

OUaT and the Rules of Magic

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whitesheepcbd:

Esp as it relates to Rumple’s death (3×11) and Hook’s (5×11).

So I started my rewatch of OUaT in Wonderland yesterday, to be a little ahead of the @ouat-rewatch schedule. And the scene where Cyrus (he’s a genie, for those who haven’t watched Wonderland) tells Alice the rules of magic caught my attention. According to Cyrus, they are: 

1. Can’t kill anyone

2. Can’t bring anyone back from the dead.

3. Can’t make someone fall in love.

4. Can’t change the past. 

I think that first one might apply only to genies and which wishes they can grant, b/c we’ve seen plenty of magic practitioners commit murder on OUaT. But the other three, I think, are pretty consistent with the other times that the limitations of magic have been mentioned on OUaT.

Now, I’m coming at this from the perspective of having just finished a rewatch of OUaT s5, with Hook’s death and then return from the Underworld. I had literally watched Robin Hood’s death and funeral just two days before, with the emphasis from the show that he can’t come back. So it was fresh in my mind that they obviously broke rule #2 with Hook. 

But…didn’t they already break it with Rumple in 3×11? He came back from the dead too. 

Now, I’ve enjoyed fantasy and sci-fi since I was a kid, and I’m willing to suspend disbelief and accept any number of fantastical things happening in a book, movie, or TV show. The one thing I ask, is that the creators of the fictional world play by their own rules. And if they break their own rules, there better be a damn good reason for the exception. 

So…what’s the exception for both cases? Was Rumple able to come back b/c he was the Dark One? Did the fact that he killed himself, with the Dark One dagger, having anything to do with it? It’s been established that the only way to kill the Dark One is with the dagger, and the murderer becomes the next Dark One. So…I guess Rumple was both the murderer and the victim, in this case? If the Dark Ones were numbered on some list, I guess he’d be #247 and #248? 

And what was the exception for Hook? That one’s trickier b/c he wasn’t a Dark One at the moment of his death, so I’m not sure. 

Any theories, opinions? I’d really like to have a conversation about the rules of magic as stated on OUaT, and how they’ve bent those rules in certain cases. Can we have that conversation without bashing either Hook or Rumple, please?

Ok *dons tinfoil hat* I think this thread post could potentially get long with back and forth and I’m probably going to go on a bit, so under the cut for length 🙂

Rumple’s survival
Pre-underworld arc, my theory on how Rumple “came back from the dead” is that he was never actually dead. I thought that he had banished himself to the vault, where he would remain until someone let him out, it was sort of a way of containing the darkness.

He was the dark one and that curse tethered him to life. It’s sort of like in Warcraft, there’s this expression of “there must always be a Lich King” and I figured that perhaps there was a similar thing of “there must always be a dark one” and so Rumple couldn’t die because he hadn’t passed on the curse.

However, by respawning him in essence, that magic carried a hefty price – the death of the one that summoned him. So by not technically being dead, and the price of his ‘new life’ being the death of someone else. I was comfortable with that as fitting with the rules of magic. “Magic can do much but not that. Dead is dead.”

However, then season 5 completely torpedoed that because Rumple said he had been to the underworld, because he had gone and come back, that’s why his blood could summon the ferry. Therefore he was ‘dead’ and even the swapping of one life for another, didn’t really help.

I suppose it was still his curse, that tethered him to the living world but to be honest I would rather him never have been ‘technically dead’. I watch a lot of fantasy and sci-fi and I know ‘death is cheap’ but it can get a bit silly. My favorite show is Stargate SG1 and one of the characters on that (Daniel Jackson) died so many times it became a running gag. If he had ever died for real, nobody would have believed it. Death should have consequences.

Hook’s survival
Problematic to say the least. Like you said he wasn’t the dark one when he died, so there isn’t that excuse. Nothing tethered him to life, he was completely dead. Basically I guess it wasn’t magic that brought him back – it was the gods and they don’t have to obey the rules.

I would be a lot more comfortable with this if the reason Zeus had given had made sense. Nothing Hook did had any affect on the outcome with Hades, in fact it nearly made things worse as it almost convinced Zelena that Hades was right, and they were all working against her.

Plus putting this alongside Robin’s death, which was true self-sacrifice. How about other heroic deaths? Why didn’t they get a pass from the gods? It just didn’t seem fair and that’s not bashing Hook because if it was any character in Hook’s position, it wouldn’t be fair. I have no problem with them bringing Hook back, I just want it to make sense.

I actually wrote an alternate season six fanfic, in which I theorized that Zeus wasn’t Zeus, it was Loki and he was trolling everyone for his own amusement. That theory has no basis in fact but it made more sense than what little we know. To be honest, when it comes to Hooks survival I don’t think we know enough. I think there has to be something more to it, some reason why Zeus did what he did. I wish they would explore this in season 6 but I suspect that the storyline has wrapped now and they won’t revisit it.

So my theory in the end is the gods don’t have to obey the rules, and they did it for reasons unknown. Not exactly a good explanation but what other evidence is there to help form a better theory? /shrug

Magic can’t make someone fall in love
What about that magic dust on Guinevere? She certainly became the every appearance of a dutiful and loving wife afterwards. The Camelot arc was kinda dropped and so while they said that Arthur had been arrested off screen, they didn’t say what Guinevere’s fate had been.

I mean is the appearance of love when it’s magically induced essentially the same as real love to someone that doesn’t care about the difference? It’s not real love because it’s coerced but Arthur didn’t seem to care about that. It’s really horrible when you think about it, it took away her free will and that’s really sinister and creepy. Arthur was a nasty guy.

Can’t change the past
Although they’ve never mentioned it since, didn’t they allude to the story having been changed at the end of the season 3 finale? David remembered ‘Charles and Leia’ and how Snow and Charming met had been altered.

I have some serious problems with that because the only way time travel makes sense, and someone can go back to their own reality, is if it’s in a loop. In which case they don’t change anything, they only do what they had already done. Therefore Emma shouldn’t have remembered that the story was any different from what it ‘was’.

Otherwise the timeline branches and a new reality has formed. In which case when Emma and Hook returned to the present, everyone should have been seeing double, as their counterparts from the new reality would have been there.

To be honest this bothers me so much I pretend like it never happened. They didn’t change anything /hides

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Some Saturday randomness (aka I’m procrastinating again) ….

Last night I was at home and the person I was with was channel surfing. They landed on one channel and I went “ooooh Stargate SG1. Fragile Balance, season 7, episode 3″ and they looked at me incredulous and said “it’s been on all of five seconds!” and I shrugged and said “sorry I recognized it.”

It’s not like I tried to remember, it just stuck in there.

Anyway, this morning I woke up and I don’t know what I had been dreaming about but without any prompting I started plotting a Rumbelle AU. I wasn’t even properly awake and I was picking the characters for the team. Then I woke up and shook myself “you’re not supposed to be writing that now!” because seriously I’ve already got the next couple of months fully booked for fic.

I know I’ve probably been writing too much fic when it’s the first thing I think about when I wake up. Mind you, that’s happened middle of the night before. Get up, get a drink of water, write down fic thought, go back to bed. Get back up and write down some more, take phone with me this time. Repeat the writing, phone down, new thought etc. until eventually I can stop thinking and try to get back to sleep.

My weekend plans are work, writing, attempting to write my first smut story, watching two new movies I haven’t yet had a chance to watch (California Solo and the Frank Keane one) and then probably more writing, maybe even a movie review or two.

Best kind of weekend 🙂