#makes it interesting bc it's not a foregone conclusion they will be evil

[ssaalexblake]

Twissy wasn’t a redemptive story, it never was, it was a tragedy the whole time. Missy was not redeemed, Missy wasn’t trying to make up for past wrongs, she was trying to be the doctor’s friend again. The doctor who was, the whole time, saying that being rewarded for goodness voids the action. So if missy is trying to be good for him, to be his friend, then it doesn’t count because of his rules. 

The story was a tragedy the whole time, it wasn’t a redemption arc because Missy’s trying to be his friend, being a better person is a consequence of that, it is not the active motivation in her arc. She even tells him, quite bitingly, that her idea of goodness is very much contrary to his, which tells us that in following his lead she is genuinely not trying to be a good person, merely his friend. 

The doctor did in fact shoot himself in the foot here with his arrogant and short-sighted views on virtue, true,  but nothing can ruin Missy’s redemption because she never once got redeemed and even she’d agree with me on that one, imo. 

#dw shit #not to say she didn't improve as a person but it was still a consequence!!! of her separate goal! #not her actual goal! #if it were her goal to genuinely be a better person #she'd act against him #and we know that bc she tells us so #being sad at something you once did is not redemption #it just means you feel regret #basically if the show wanted me to view it as a redemption arc they should have written one #and not what they did #Mostly i'm sick of the shortsightedness of fandom being??? surprised??? they didn't stop the master being a villain #like... did you Honestly think they'd do that? or did you honestly think they'd killed them off for good? #that's some doctor level self deception. the master is a fan favourite. them being capable of goodness #makes it interesting bc it's not a foregone conclusion they will be evil #All the time #keeps it from being boring #but the master ending as missy would be the. Worst. the Worst. ending for the character yikes #dw meta

[vamppeach]

Ok I was already planning on sending you an ask saying "sell me on eah bc I already like mh and fashion dolls but generally am not that interested in Disney adjacent things but me and my student watched 2/3 of a YouTube video clip of it today and I am mildly intrigued" but then I saw your meme that's like "please ask me about eah" so now I Have to ask you about it

AASSAASBAHHAS AHIIIIIIII BADGER HIIIII I'LL TELL YOU ABOUT EVER AFTER HIGH AUDIFGAWDWH. i'm just going to focus on what intrigues me personally about ever after high and hope you can parse my ramblings i just have so many thoughts about eah. head full.

the basic premise of eah is the children of fairytale characters attending a high school where they learn how to fulfill their fairytale capital D Destinies, where their parents attended before them, and their parents' parents, and so on -- culminating in a coming-of-age ceremony where they sign the Storybook of Legends and pledge to follow in their parents' footsteps. Just, an entire society BUILT on the FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPAL that we follow in our parents' footsteps and we know EXACTLY the path our lives will take from THE MOMENT WE ARE BORN. like HELLO??? Imagine you are the daughter of Sleeping Beauty. You live your life knowing someday, without warning, you will fall into a 100-year sleep and when you wake up everyone you know and love will be GONE they will be DUST and you won't even get to say GOODBYE and you KNOW this from the moment you make your first friend!! THATS SO!!!! eah doesn't delve TOO hard into the fridge horror of their setting but they don't ignore it either. knowing that she will someday sleep for a hundred years is foundational to briar beauty's characterization and you can see it in everything she does it's fuckin. bro. what. christ.

or imagine you are Cinderella, and you have your first daughter, and you know from the moment you hold her in your arms that someday in the near future you are going to die. and your death will doom your daughter to a childhood of abuse and servitude. what the fuck.

anyway the story kicks off when Raven Queen, daughter of the Evil Queen, refuses to sign the storybook because hey actually she doesn't WANT to be evil and poison her bestie Apple White (daughter of snow white) and this shakes the entire school. Apple White is so MAD at Raven for refusing to sign but she's not really mad. she's terrified. Apple's future was so CERTAIN and she knew that so long as she did exactly as she was told for the rest of her life, she would have a happy ending. obey the status quo and she'd be FINE.

Raven refusing to sign the book creates a kind of schism in the school: Royals -- those who benefit from the status quo and don't want to change it; and Rebels -- those who agree with Raven and want to change their stories, or simply don't want to sign the book.

personally this whole premise speaks to me as a kid who grew up non-cishet in a cishet culture. like. you begin life with the foregone conclusion of future heterosexual bliss (even if Daring Charming basically uninteresting to you and you don't have anything in common and you're more like acquaintances but yeah you're gonna get married someday obviously!). then something comes into your life that shows you WAIT BEING GAY IS AN OPTION? and for some people that's relief (like for raven) but for you that's terrifying because now there are OPTIONS. also later on in the story, it's revealed that even some of the adults in the story have been bucking their Destinies for years but ONLY BEHIND CLOSED DOORS BECAUSE WE HAVE TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO NO ONE CAN KNOW WE ARE GAY CHANGING OUR STORIES. i think this could also speak to growing up neurodiverse in a world built for neurotypicals but i haven't lived as much of that experience so i leave that for you to go insane over in your own time.

i think ever after high is also neat as like. a very self-aware look about the cultural DNA present in the stories we as a society tell and re-tell and how those stories kind of shift with the times but the DNA remains? it's baked into the setting! Snow White and Apple White don't fulfill the story of Snow White in precisely the same way but they both fulfill the important story beats. how far can you push that basic story until it's unrecognizable as Snow White? pretty far it turns out! because it's in our literary DNA!

in addition to the fairytale characters, there are also children of alice in wonderland characters, and they attend the school but they are, in-canon, distinctly culturally separate from the rest of the cast and i think that's neat. Raven Queen is best friends with the daughter of the Mad Hatter (probs my fav character she is soooo. audhd. daughter) & she is literally the outside perspective which is neat. also she can hear the story's narrator (who is ALSO a character). no one else can. just her.

finally, it's just like, a really charming show, not too heavy and still engaging? like, all those themes are 1000% there and you don't need to dig very hard at all, but it's equally enjoyable as like. a show designed to sell toys. kind of like mlp: fim? it's a show meant to sell toys but the themes are meaningful, it was clearly written with so much care. and also it's a show for kids, so it's never gonna be too intense.

anyway. it's a story about refusing the status quo. it's a show to sell toys. it's about not wanting to become your parents. it's about gay people. there are even cute dresses.

#I'M SOOOOO NORMAL I'M SO NORMAL #ever after high #eah

[djemsostylist]

What went wrong...continued

bc apparently tumblr has a character limit

4. The characters--The problem with the characters is, well, everything. The issue is that the show itself operates like most terribly written things--it makes no sense, and their entire "be kind" mantra falls apart when it only seems to apply to the people they like. Regina/The Evil Queen is a terrible person. Not in a regular "ug she's mean" sort of way, but in a "she committed mass murders over a series of years, tortured people, stole 28 years of life, and continued to murder and destroy" and yet she is worthy of redemption. The Wicked Witch literally murdered a women and r*ped her husband, but she deserves redemption. Rumple has been emotionally abusing Belle for the entirety of their relationship and murdered his ex wife for leaving him, but he deserves redemption. But those people get to be redeemed and forgiven over and over again, where characters like Cruella or Hades or even the Snow Queen have to die. It's an interesting sort of morality that seems to be entirely predicated on family or love--Hook is fine because Emma loves him, Cruella is not because no one loves her. The Wicked Witch is fine because Regina is her sister, Hades is not because he is not of any relation. Look I grew up with Luke Skywalker trying to redeem Darth Vader, I'm hardly averse to the idea of heroes trying to redeem their loved ones. I also grew up in a world where Darth Vader died, because you can't always have both. Regina being redeemed is a stretch, but I think there's a world where you make it work--but there is a morality there that you have to then be super aware of with every villain, or it makes our heroes look...well, not so heroic. It makes it confusing, too, especially when you have Snow kill Cora (an arguably horrible person and abuser) and everyone is worried about it blackening her heart, but then Emma kills Cruella (who is a murderer yes, but also arguably deeply mentally ill) and everyone is just like, "well Emma you did what you had to do". Even Hook--he's a murderer by necessity of storyline, but a murderer none the less, and his redemption is a foregone conclusion the moment he and Emma make-out, but for others it's a toss up. Ursula gets a pass bc Hook and Triton were mean to her (although it's unclear what her villainous deeds were), and Maleficent sort of gets forgotten. The Snow Queen just erased some memories and trapped people, but she has to kill herself for the heroes. The issue is that nothing is consistent, which makes it hard to root for our heroes when all you have to be is family to be forgiven. Additionally, they never deal with the fall out of the redemptions--sure the Charmings forgive the Evil Queen, but we've got an entire country/community whos lives she ruined. Robin Hood lost his wife because of her, but he's like "well I guess you're different now". Where is the angst that comes from actually having to confront the impact your cruelty had on others? This show talks about happy endings, but it does nothing to make them work other than saying "oops, my bad, I did it because I thought it was right." Hell, Regina's mother gets accepted into OUAT Heaven bc she was like "my bad" despite all her evil cruelty, murdering, and abuse, but then poor Jekyll gets eternally damned for a single fuck up and the heroes are like "shrug".

5. The Plot--OUAT, like most network shows that are not serialized, runs in the issue of not knowing what the fuck to do once they finish the first season long arc. And, like most other terribly written network shows, they solve the problem by just doing the same thing over and over and over, in increasingly annoying ways. By the time the show closes, we have seen the same scenes about 1000 times. Snow running away in the Enchanted Forest and Regina being mean to villagers. Hook on the Jolly Roger saying pirate things and also meeting everyone somehow despite never having met anyone. Emma saying "I don't think I can do this." Henry saying "You gotta believe." Regina saying "Oh right, I'm the Evil Queen." There's a revolving door of side characters we are forced to spend endless of embarrassing moments with until they are written off or simply dropped and forgotten. There's entire seasons worth of boring storylines we endure that go literally no where. Lily is Malificent's daughter, and then she like shows up, and we have to endure endless flashbacks of them as kids, only for her present adult self to have literally 0 impact on the storyline. And every time we get a new Disney character introduced, somehow we have to have a flashback to one of our mains knowing them somehow. It's exhausting. And the McGuffins are endless. ENDLESS. This season has a wand, a crystal, a goblet, a coin, a rock, a heart, a phial...you name it, we've dealt with it. It's a neverending series of "time to defeat x evil with y mcguffin while we relieve the same character arcs from 3 seasons ago." Emma is Closed Off and Unsure, Hook is Wanting Revenge but also Wanting Love, Henry is a Believer, Snow Never Gives Up, Charming Will Always Find His Family, Rumple Is a Dark Man Who Likes Darkness, Regina Is An Evil Queen Who Can Never Find Happiness--the plots NEVER change. By the time season 6 rolled around, I'd seen the same arcs play out 100 times. Henry at 14 (lol that they expected us to believe that) still playing "Operation ______" is ridiculous. He's not 10 anymore. The story doesn't let the characters breathe and grow, it doesn't explore who they are as people. They change if the plot needs them too--sometimes Hook is a pirate who stole gold, sometimes he's a random highway robber who murders people. Sometime Snow and Charming always believe in Good, sometimes they steal a baby to be filled with Darkness. You just never know.

So. i decided on 5 instead because this getting long and I could go on forever. My point is that OUAT was BAD. Awful, terrible, no good. BUT it could have been good. It had potential, if only they had thought, just a little bit. Which leads me to...

The Changes, Part 1

#ouat #once upon a time #djem watches ouat