Anti-Heroes, Anti-Villains, and Fairy Tale Madness - Why Elsa Belongs in Storybrooke

NOTE: The 24 stuff is coming, don't worry. But a lot has been happening on the Once Upon a Time front and I've had some of my own theories and ideas that I want to pose before Stuff Starts Happening to make it obsolete. After all, as I said on our most recent Five(ish) Fangirls podcast - part of the fun of fandom is theorizing and speculating. And filming on Season 4 starts tomorrow, which brings the requisite set reports and spoilers, which will probably render all my ideas moot anyway.

(SPOILERS for Once Upon a Time - all aired seasons)

A little over a month ago, I squee'd myself silly over the Season 3 finale of Once Upon a Time (for those shenanigans, go here). I thought those two episodes closed up this initial character arc for Emma Swan perfectly, plus it opened the doors for some further exploration of other characters, while also adding to the Once mythos, which is what the show needs to do to stay fresh and interesting.

Also - I've gushed about Frozen in the past as well. For various reasons, Frozen has become my newest favorite Disney movie in a way that Disney has not captured my attention in recent years. I mean, I loved Tangled and Meet the Robinsons and a few others besides - but nothing took me back to the beautiful and enchanting Disney movies of my youth (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King - just to name a few). Not until Frozen, at least. I love Elsa. I love that she's conflicted about her powers and that she has to go through so much in order to learn how to live a full life and find goodness in something that is so much a part of her, even though her family and others see it as a major problem - something to be hidden away and protected against. And as wonderful as Frozen is, I felt that we were missing some core backstory from Elsa's point of view. There is some deep and interesting stuff the writers could have gone into with Elsa - but, this being a Disney movie, room must be made for reindeer and snowman antics so the kiddos can be sufficiently entertained. (seriously - look at the teaser trailer. I mean, it's cute and all, but would you have guessed this movie was based on The Snow Queen, simply by looking at this thing? Didn't think so). I did speculate what a potential Frozen 2 could be about - with more focus on Elsa's character growth and her personal journey. And while I still want that to a certain extent... I think it makes so much sense to let Once Upon a Time tackle that particular side of the story (and given that there was a certain mysterious casting announcement today - part of me wonders if that might be the way they're going with it. Which would please me to no end).

Not everyone thinks so, sadly. There have been grumblings online (who here is shocked by this?) that the creators of Once are merely trying to cash in on Frozen's popularity. That they should have waited a few years for its "classic" status to be cemented and not just jumped on the bandwagon for the sake of jumping on the bandwagon. To which I reply - if that's how you feel about it, then you don't know this show at all. Let me 'splain.

Initially, I started watching Once because I heard "Fairy Tale Characters Living In the Modern World." Dude, you don't need to give me anything else - I am there! I didn't even need to hear the qualifier that these fairy tales had Disney plastered all over them (though that was an added bonus). While the initial premise caught my attention, it was the characters that kept me there. Particularly the "villains" (and I use the term loosely, but I'm getting to that). In the first season, Rumplestiltskin was the most interesting, because there was backstory for him that absolutely no one knew about. Rumple is a trickster. He's evil in many ways, but in others - he's Loki (for all intents and purposes). He aligns himself with the side that's going to get him what he wants - some days he'll ally with the heroes, other days he's with the villains, still other days you're not sure what the hell he's doing, but you're going to sit there and find out. Through the first two seasons, I never quite knew where I stood with Rumple. Not in a frustrating or annoying way - but in a way that I actually felt sorry for him, even while I secretly hoped that he would lose because him losing would mean other characters I loved would be happy (thinking specifically about Rumple tricking Snow White into killing Cora so he could survive being poisoned - yeah, that wasn't complicated at all).

Next on my list of Villains-Who-Aren't-Villains (not really), there's Regina (the Evil Queen from Snow White). In Season 1, she was the Big Bad (though Rumple was pulling the strings, unbeknownst to... pretty much everyone). Her motives were pretty simple at first -  she was out for revenge and anything she could do to ruin Snow White's happiness - even when Snow White didn't remember who she really was - was fair game. Regina was the stereotypical Big Bad, for the most part - villainous plot, gonna enact revenge on the good guys, looks like she's winning half the time, but then stuff happens in the end to foil her magnificent plans. Season 2... well, things get a little murky from there on out. We've learned that Regina, at her core, is a good person who just wants her own happy ending but she's a little fuzzy on how to go about doing that (happy endings don't come easy to her and I can understand her being a little jealous of Snow White, who's seemingly had happiness and joy served to her on a silver platter on a near-daily-basis. That's not the case, but look at it from Regina's point of view). The problem is that Regina only knows how to use dark magic to get what she wants. She almost doesn't trust light magic, because honestly - what's it ever done for her? Better to stay with something she's familiar and comfortable with using. She even appoints herself The One Who Will Do The Dirty Work during the #SaveHenry in Neverland story arc because Snow White is too squicky about doing what needs to be done. Like stealing the heart of a Lost Boy so he will deliver a message to Henry that his family is coming to get him so he doesn't give into despair and lose hope. I mean, Snow White wasn't pleased about the idea, but to be fair, her unicorn stickers and sunshine lollipops weren't doing a damn thing and I was getting a bit bored at that point in the season. But give Regina the freedom to do her thing and Shit Gets Done. And the fandom rejoices (that moment came during an episode that I count as one of my favorites, but for other reasons that I'm going to expound upon in a bit).

However, Regina's dependence on dark magic doesn't last forever. In the second half of Season 3, we meet Regina's heretofore unknown half-sister, Zelena, who is known as the Wicked Witch of the West (given what the Big Reveal was in Season 3.1, this was a bit of a letdown - but it got better). Regina and Zelena's character arcs are pretty comparative, except that where Zelena had the chance to give up her anger and jealousy and reclaim her innocence and become more powerful that she could ever imagine (which, Glinda gives the All Too Telling Line that "innocence reclaimed can be just as powerful as innocence born"), Zelena ultimately loses that battle and becomes even more corrupted. Regina is given a similar choice when her son, Henry, suggest that she try to use light magic to defeat the Wicked Witch toward the end of Season 3. At first, Regina says that she can't because dark magic is all she has. But in the middle of the Final Boss Battle, Regina suddenly starts using light magic, even asserting that she has finally changed who she is and is well on her way to getting rid of the darkness in her heart. Even more powerful statement on her character - she refuses to let Rumple kill Zelena because that's not what heroes do.

Of course, character growth is not true character growth if it's not tested. And at the very tail-end of Season 3, one HUGE development came that looks like is going to test Regina's newfound morality. Some wonder "Why do that to her? She just found her happiness - why can't you give her a break for a bit?" Well - it's time to see if the new Regina is really here to stay. Will she make the same choices that she did in the past that led her to become Evil? Or will she choose another way? How much of that changing was because it was convenient? Personally, I'm thrilled with this opportunity that Regina has to prove that she really is one of the good guys. Maybe not 100% squeaky clean like Snow White (I can't live without Regina's snark), but she can be better. And I'm eager to see where that goes.

Okay - I blathered on about that more than I intended to. Because I've got a third sort-of-kind-of-not-really villain to wax lyrical about. Well, I've talked about him before, but of these three anti-villain characters (and as much as I adore Regina), my absolute favorite is none other than Captain Hook. To start off - just the imagination and creativity they've taken with this character impresses me to no end. I love his backstory (what little we have of it - here's hoping we'll get more in Season 4!), I love that he's a romantic at heart, I love his sarcasm and his snark, I love how he looks (okay, I admit, I'm kind of shallow), I love how earnest and honorable he is, I love that he's more villainous by reputation than by actual villainous deeds (again - still waiting on that backstory, guys!) Like Regina, Hook didn't start out as a bad person - circumstances and events led him to become a villain. One of my hands-down favorite episodes in all of Once is "Good Form," where we find out that, before he became the infamous pirate, Hook was once a Lieutenant Killian Jones in the royal navy under his brother and they were quite the awesome little heroic team for king and country. Until the king sent them on a mission to retrieve a deadly poisonous plant that they were told actually had magical healing properties. In the course of their mission, Killian's brother was poisoned by the plant and eventually died, which lead Killian to steal the ship he now has command of and become a pirate and steal from the king. His transformation in that episode from bright-eyed, idealistic (and, frankly, adorable) Lieutenant Jones willing to follow his captain and his brother into whatever danger as long as it's honorable, to the broken, betrayed, and untrusting pirate captain is so remarkable and compelling to watch. Conversely, watching the fearsome Captain Hook, who once loved and tragically lost and vowed to enact revenge on the demon who killed his love, come back around and realize that there's nothing left after taking revenge and learn how to be an honorable and heroic man again is just as compelling and exciting to see (also - doesn't hurt that he's falling in love with Emma Swan, who I've been cheering for to find True Love since the pilot episode, and the pair of them just work together). So, yeah, by far the character that I think has been done the best by Once is Captain Hook. Between the backstory and the characterization and the story arc - man, there is some great stuff there. And I doubt that they're done with him, which thrills me to no end.

So, there's those three main villains in Once. And they all are "villains," but they're also heroes in their own way. They've been misunderstood and mistreated, but they've all come out looking... not 100% shiny and clean, but better than traditional fairy tales have given them credit for. And, after looking at these three, how can you say that Elsa doesn't belong in Once Upon a Time?

To outsiders, Elsa is a mystery. Heck, Arendelle is a mystery. The gates have been closed against visitors for so many years that people wonder what they're hiding. As the film progresses and Elsa's powers are revealed, many people see her as a monster or a villain - that she purposely cursed Arendelle with eternal winter. Anna's the only one who really sees the good in Elsa and believes that Elsa isn't so much a villain as she has lost control and is frightened of what she could do to hurt somebody.

Man, if Elsa doesn't belong in Once Upon a Time, then I don't know who does. With that kind of backstory already given her by the Disney film, I can only imagine the people in the Once writers room chomping at the bit to weave her tale into their narrative. There is so much space to play around with for Elsa and I have no doubts that they're going to do her story justice. She has a lot of complexities that Frozen wasn't able to explore because of what kind of movie it was - but Once could go with a darker, more mature tone that I think Elsa's story needs to have to have it be done right.

(Never mind the fact that we never found out how Elsa got her powers. I mean, I know her parents said she was born with them - but neither of her parents had magic, so where did it come from really? Did she have a grandparent with powers who was forced to hide them? Maybe Once is going to explore some of that - though I do hope that they're going to keep that family tree separate from the already-convoluted family tree that Once already has established. Lemme just say that if Elsa turns out to be Snow White's mother's cousin's sister's former roommate or something equally absurd, I'm going to throw things).

There Is Not Enough *headdesk* In The World...

They're splitting Allegiant into two movies. Sweet Mother of Rassilon - WHY?

And yet... no one can muster up the gumption to do a Wonder Woman movie...

I swear I read something a couple a weeks ago that said unequivocally that this was NOT going to happen (Can I find that article now? Of course not!) And I was quite relieved. Apart from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which actually had enough material to warrant a split (Goblet of Fire also should have been split, but let’s not open that wound today - since I already did it here), none of these YA novel adaptation movies have needed that extra film to tell the whole story. But I guess someone changed their mind. And I am really tired of this trend. It was good for the first one, but now it’s just stupid. I mean, they might as well just trot out promotional materials that say “We don’t give a shit about your favorite stories - we really just want all your money!” Usually I’m happy to give them my money if the product is good and I feel like I'm getting of quality in return. But when it’s so blatant that this is what they’re doing, it makes me nervous about the kind of movies they’re going to put out.

Let’s just break it down here - like I said, Harry Potter needed the split (more than it actually got, if truth be told). Breaking Dawn (fourth book of Twilight)... well, we could have a whole conversation of whether the fourth book was even necessary, let alone an extra movie (Full Disclosure: I only saw Breaking Dawn, Part 1, with the caveat that I would watch it with RiffTrax commentary. Even that couldn’t salvage the sheer awfulness of that movie and I didn’t even bother with Part 2).

The next one on the chop is Mockingjay, which is still baffling to me. I mean, they got all of the necessary material from Catching Fire into one movie. In terms of essential plot elements, Mockingjay does not have anything more than Catching Fire does. In fact, I would venture to say that Catching Fire actually has MORE in terms of story and would have needed the split far more than Mockingjay does. But it’s Mockingjay that gets the split, simply because the studios don’t feel the need to go out and find something else to fill that release date with. Or whatever the thinking is behind this stupid fad.

If The Hunger Games films don’t need this trope, the Divergent trilogy needs it even less. While Divergent the book and Divergent the movie were so good that it hurts - there is still a long way to go with these movies. Insurgent as a book suffers the most from being over-long (I’m right in the middle of re-reading Insurgent and I’m already finding places where the story could be edited down to be more interesting. It’s not a terrible book by any means - there are some very excellent scenes and character moments in this story. But material around them is padded down with a lot of excess that isn't needed and I’m hoping that gets worked out of the screenplay). Allegiant returns to the greatness of Divergent, but that ending is a sore point of contention with many of the fandom (personally, I see why it ended that way. I may not like the way it ended from an emotional standpoint, but from a storyteller’s standpoint it was a gutsy call and I applaud Veronica Roth in taking such a risk. And it doesn't bother me the way it bothers other people. Hell, I’m re-reading the whole series, aren't I?) Now that I think of it, Insurgent could probably be pared down enough to give some of Allegiant’s story to that movie! (There is precedent for such things - some of what happened in the book The Return of the King went into the movie for The Two Towers and vice versa. But that was a situation with timelines and plot-threads running through the whole series. Still - it works out in the long run).

The Divergent series does NOT need four movies. But it’s going to get them anyway. And the storytelling is going to suffer because of it. That makes me sad. Because the overarching story is SO good and SO worth your time, but the executives and the accounting eggheads just see dollar signs and want to bleed these franchises dry until there’s nothing left to enjoy anymore. Part of the fun of these things is that there is an ending and they don’t go on and on forever and they don’t overstay their welcome. We as fans may say “it’ll be sad when this whole thing is over” because we’ll have to say goodbye to our favorite characters and we love them a lot - but there is such a thing as too much. And if you had an endless supply of just one thing, it would become stale and boring and you’d get sick of it. And there is nothing more tragic than having something you once loved so much become stale and boring.

Obviously YA fiction is a viable market for filmmakers - maybe these efforts would be better suited to finding other YA properties that would lend themselves to good film adaptations. Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier comes to mind, as does Matched by Ally Condie and Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. In fact, I would sacrifice my left kidney for a good Shadow and Bone movie. As much as I love Divergent, Shadow and Bone is in the same class. But no, we have to keep beating the same franchises to death instead of trying to find something new and interesting.

C'mon, Lionsgate! You know you want to!

Well - at least we’ll always have the books. They don’t disappoint as easily.

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Seeing as how a lot of my initial reviews of a lot of these books are on my now-defunct book review blog, I really need to keep up with my "Throwback Thursday" thing that I've let lapse AGAIN! (argh)

A Few Words on the Lower Missionary Age

Wish I could have found a pic of a young lady with this, but I'll take what I can get.

The Saturday Morning Session of General Conference is over and the big bombshell is that the minimum required age has been lowered to 18 for guys and 19 for girls.  The lower age for girls (from the previous minimum age of 21) is the biggest adjustment because, as far as I'm concerned, there isn't a lick of difference between an 18-year-old male and a 19-year-old male.  Heck, I'd venture to say that there isn't a lick of difference between an 18-year-old male and a 30-year-old male (I jest, of course.  Sort of.  Kind of.  Not really. Not at all).

Speaking as a female who served, I'm just going to say that the timing of when you actually decide to go - if you go at all - is a very personal decision.  My 19-year-old-in-three-weeks sister just informed me that she has zero intention of ever serving a mission.  That's fine.  Plenty of girls (and guys, but I'm focusing on the ladies here) don't go.  Six months before I left, I still had zero intention of going on a mission.  Oh, the idea had occurred to me before, but I dismissed it for a variety of reasons.  But, as so often is the case, things happen, life changes and you are allowed to re-make your decision (shocking, I know).

I left on my mission three months before my 23rd birthday - well after the then-required minimum age of 21.  I had a mission companion who was 25 when she left on her mission.  All of the elders (young men missionaries) and many of the sisters (young women missionaries) in my mission were a lot younger than me.  It's a funny thing, but at home, age is such a huge consideration in so many things.  On the mission, it didn't bother me.  Not even when someone brought up that my district leader or zone leaders were three or four years younger than me.  There is a spirit about the people called to leadership positions in the Church - whether locally or in the mission field - that supersedes all other considerations.  That is a downright fact.

There will be much made of this development in the coming days and weeks because, quite honestly, this kind of stuff doesn't happen very often and everyone gets fluttery when something new comes down the pipe.  We Mormons are a lot like chickens in that regard - throw a rock in the coop and we all go nuts (bless our hearts).  But also there are some girls who are graduating high school whose male peers are leaving and they want to go too and they'll take that chance.  Good for them.  Also, good for those who choose not to.  Everyone is in a different stage of life and it's up to you and God to determine what is right for you.

Just as an example (and the statute of limitations on this story has run out, so I don't feel weird about sharing it): When I was nineteen, I was a freshman at Snow College and it hadn't even occurred to me that marriage was an option for someone at my age.  To compare, I had a roommate who was also nineteen and practically thought of nothing else and very nearly drove us all crazy with it.  Her goal was to be engaged by the end of the school year.  Two days before the end of Finals Week in spring semester, she was engaged.  Mission Accomplished [insert balloons and banners and fireworks here].  As far as I know, she's happy with her decision and I wish her and her husband and kids all the best.  But I was not ready for marriage at nineteen (and I don't know if I'm even ready now, though nothing has happened to make me confront the subject of my readiness for marriage, so I just leave it alone).

I have one more thing to say about this then the next session of Conference starts - there was a press conference from the Church Office Building to talk about the changes with the media.  One media chick - some dippy feminist from the Salt Lake Tribune with a really nasally voice - got all huffy and kind of disrespectful because the Brethren hadn't adjusted the duration of service for the sisters (sisters serve for 18 months and the elders serve for two years).  Elder Holland had a great line - always in his gracious-yet-firm way that makes me wish I could give the man a high-five (if it's even appropriate to give an Apostle a high-five, of course) - and that was "One miracle at a time."  Who knows - maybe if this a success, they will give the ladies an extra six months to serve.  Geez, lady - keep your hair on and let's see where this goes.  Personally, I've never felt short-changed because I served a shorter amount of time.  Actually, I've never felt short-changed for any kind of differences in Church responsibilities between men and women.  That could be its own blog post, honestly.  But I had to comment on that because that chick's question and her attitude ticked me off.  And that's the point where you shrug your shoulder and go "Eh, it's the Tribune.  What d'ya do?"

Anyway - missions. Serve if you feel like it's something you want to do.  Serve with all your heart and mind.  If you don't do a mission, serve where you are with all your heart and mind.  Don't feel pressure to do anything that you don't feel is what you need to do, but don't discount your own feelings.  As with every major decision in your life, pray about it and be honest with yourself and with God.  Trust Him - God will never lead you astray.  Missions are hard.  I would be a dirty rotten liar if I said otherwise.  When the statute of limitations runs out on those stories (for posting them online, I mean), I'll have to tell you all about it.  But if you feel that it's something God wants for you, believe that He's guiding your life and trust that He wants you to be happy.  My mission accelerated my own spiritual growth and prepared me to deal with some of the tough stuff I've dealt with since then.  And probably prepared me for tough stuff that I haven't even begun to think of yet (and here is where I do a mental-side-note of "Awww... crap...")  For all it's difficulty and toughness, it is worth it.

Well, I've rambled enough on this topic.  The next Conference session starts in eight minutes and I'm sure one of my sisters has stolen my seat, so I have to go relocate myself.  Enjoy the day, everyone.