Armed with cigarettes and innocence, you went down, down, down

[sovay]

My poem "Acceptable Documentation," originally published in Sycorax Journal #1, has been nominated for the 2019 Rhysling Award. I am really pleased.

I dreamed about what I don't quite want to characterize as a haunted museum, presided over by a false and baleful moon. It had a dry chalky light. I remember the sea rolling in over stone steps, but it feels too pat to say the moon had brought it. Awake, I'm just flatteningly tired; I am trying to do very little with my afternoon. It's raining outside in one of those soft grey wandering ways. There's still snow under the bushes. Couple of links.

1. Courtesy of kate_nepveu: "The Clandestine Cultural Knowledge of Ancient Graffiti."

2. Not a late Valentine's comic by McNostril: "Be My Valenstein."

3. I strongly suspect that I don't really want to watch all seven seasons of Once Upon a Time for the sake of this gifset, but it's surprisingly tempting.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

List! For you to use or not at your leisure. I have bolded the fairy tale retellings I think are work as standalones (with the caveat that it is quite serialised so it's hard to be sure when you have watched the whole thing), ditto starred other episodes, the rest are significant Regina or Rumple episodes and the ones in brackets are key episodes that explain a lot & are also very good, so if you did get even casually into it, it would be more fun watching them than reading the summaries. But if you don't and you do chase up the Regina and Rumple stuff, those are the ones where you probably do need to read the summaries!

It should be noted that I am entirely biased in favour of episodes that have a lot of Regina, and Regina & Emma, and Regina & Snow & Cora. I looked at this list and then had to go back and find the Rumple ones I'd missed off because I forgot them. Which is not to say one is generally better than the other, just that I'm dazzled by Regina a lot.

S1:
[Pilot] (If you don't watch this you do need to read the summary before you watch anything else, because the set up and flash-back format is ongoing. And pretty weird!)

The Thing You Love the Most (Regina casting the curse)

That Still Small Voice (Jiminy Cricket & Gepetto backstory. Jane Espenson's first ep. I don't think it works quite as well as the bolded ones but it's very good, too, and the modern day stuff with Jiminy Cricket/Archie Hopper & Henry is great & it has the advantage of being earlier than the others.)

Desperate Souls (Rumple & the loss of his son)

Skin Deep (Rumple, Beauty & the Beast retelling)

Red Handed (Red Riding Hood, also shades of Rose Red & Snow White; in the Storybrooke sections Regina is trying to frame Snow White for the murder of Prince Charming's fake/cursed wife.)

* The Stable Boy (Regina; starred because it's also a key episode in which we learn the origin of the hate between Regina and Snow, and meet Cora for the first time. In the Storybrooke sections, Regina continues to try and get Snow locked away for murder.)

The Return (Rumple)

[An Apple as Red as Blood] (Regina & Snow; as the curse fails, Regina makes a last ditch attempt to get rid of Emma that ends up backfiring, & Henry & Snow in the two storylines make parallel acts of faith.)

* [A Land Without Magic] (season finale; Emma & Regina have to work together, the curse breaks & Rumple brings back magic. I saw half of this one after a few false starts and knew I was going to have to watch it properly.)

S2: (For the first half of S2, Cora is the main villain, so if you like her she's in it a lot & it's a good run generally.)

[Broken]

We Are Both (Rumple & Regina's first meeting; in Storybrooke, the fallout from the curse breaking continues, while Emma & Snow are still trapped in the Enchanted Forest)

The Crocodile (Rumple, Hook & Milah backstory)

The Doctor (Regina's first love comes back from the dead, courtesy of Dr Whale who's actually Dr Frankenstein)

* [Tallahassee] (Emma & Neal, Emma & Hook, Jack & the Beanstalk)

* Queen of Hearts (Regina & Cora, Regina & Cora & Hook; in Storybrooke David & Henry try to get Emma and Regina back from the Enchanted Forest while Regina & Rumple team up to stop them in case they bring Cora back with them)

* Manhattan (aka the episode where everybody finds out that everybody is related to everybody else; Emma & Neal, Rumple & his son & Henry.)

[The Queen is Dead] (Snow & Cora; in New York, Hook tries to murder Rumple)

The Miller's Daughter (retelling of Rumpelstiltskin; Cora & Rumple. Possibly the best episode.)

* Welcome to Storybrooke (Regina, STorybrooke under the curse.)

Lacey (Belle/Rumple)

The Evil Queen (Regina & Snow; in Storybrooke, Emma wants to give Regina a third chance, Snow's been there before.)

* [And Straight On Till Morning] (series finale; Neal & Hook backstory, while agents of Peter Pan try to destroy magic in Storybrooke & Regina steps up to sacrifice herself to save the town]

S3: (First half takes part in Neverland on a quest to rescue Henry from Peter Pan & is very strong except I don't like it because Neverland is always night. I am a very irrational & biased list maker.)

Quite A Common Fairy (Regina & Tinkerbell)

Nasty Habits (Rumple & Neal)

* Think Lovely Thoughts (Rumple & his father)

* Save Henry (Emma & Regina & Snow race to save Henry from Pan; Regina & Henry adoption backstory.)

[Going Home] (Mid-season finale - to defeat Pan's new curse, Rumple sacrifices himself and Regina undoes her curse, sending everyone home and Emma & Henry to New York with no memory of events in Storybrooke.)

Witch Hunt (Regina; in the current storyline, everyone is back in Storybrooke with a year of missing memories.)

[Quiet Minds] (Ensemble, but Neal & Rumple & Belle)

It's Not Easy Being Green (Regina & Zelena; Wicked Witch of the West from Oz)

* Bleeding Through (Regina & Snow & Cora - Regina & Snow try a seance to reach Cora.)

[Snow Drifts & There's No Place Like Home] (Emma & Hook wind up back in time in the Enchanted Forest & have to make sure events play at as they should, while Emma gets to see everyone she knows in their Fairy Tale personas for the first time. Emma accidentally brings back Maid Marian, ruining Regina's new romance with Robin Hood.)

S4: (First half focuses on Anna & Elsa from Frozen - Elsa turns up in Storybrooke via Emma & Hook time travelling, but Anna is missing, and Elsa's long lost aunt the actual Andersen Snow Queen is also in town. She's been running the ice cream store there for years & has known Emma for even longer than that. The second half involves the search for the Author, a duff storyline for Snow & Charming, and Cruella de Vil, Ursula the Sea Witch and Maleficent returning to town with Rumple who's fed up with trying things the heroes' way & they're all out to rewrite the story.)

[White Out] (It has an evil Bo-Peep)

* [Shattered Sight] (The Snow Queen shatters the distorted mirror from the Andersen fairy tale, turning everyone against everyone else, and it's unexpectedly funny.)

Heroes & Villains - Rumple/Belle (mid series finale)

Sympathy for the De Vil (Cruella backstory, unexpectedly great.)

S5: Emma becomes the next Dark One and everyone goes to Camelot. It is a silly place but the costumes are particularly fetching. Hook dies. In the second half they go to the Underworld to get Hook back and have a lot of cameos in time for the 100th episode. Everything is orange (not as bad as when everything was night in Neverland, though). Hook dies again.

(I'm noting less episodes now because at this point you probably do need some background to keep up with the fairy tale soap opera crack. The above isn't even the half of it. And so I'm including less episodes, but I was still having a lot of fun throughout personally. But given your casual interest, if you get more hooked, you can always look up or ask me for recs here for whatever characters took your fancy. :-D)

[Ruby Slippers] (Red Riding Hood/Dorothy Gale, aided by Mulan & Snow. It's the first actual femslash True Love's Kiss (because sweet & canon as they were Mulan/Aurora ended up not getting together in the end) which is shot in a very traditional Disney style.)

Sisters - (Cora & Regina & Zelena)

S6: (Hook's death didn't take, but Robin Hood's did, so a grieving Regina has split herself into a good and evil version a la Jekyll and Hyde, also now in Storybrooke. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to be a really bad idea and she has to spend the first half of the season fighting herself. Meanwhile Emma is getting Savior-itis, first experienced by Aladdin and is prophesied to die in battle. In the second half, everyone fights Rumple's mum in the ultimate battle & the main story ends.

Strange Case (Jekyll & Hyde retelling)

* [Wish You Were Here] (Evil Queen Regina wishes that Emma Swan had never been the Savior, creating a whole Wishverse. Actual Regina goes off to save Emma & they get a Disney meet cute as a final gift for the Swan Queen shippers.

* The Black Fairy - (Rumple & his parents)

* [The Song in Your Heart] (The musical episode, as Emma gears up to fight the final battle and get married to Hook, who is still not dead, while back in the Enchanted Forest Snow & Charming make a wish that causes everyone to sing as a magical gift for their daughter.)

* [The Final Battle] (The Black Fairy casts a curse, and the main show comes to an end.)

S7: is a soft reboot (they called it a 'Requel'! 0_o)/sequel set a number of years later in a different realm and in Seattle in the past (i.e. our present) in which Rumple, Regina and Henry are the only continuing characters and are all cursed again. Wishverse Hook has got out of the Wishverse and joined them, and finally canon is way more diverse at last and also Robin/Alice are possibly the most adorable fairy tale lesbians anywhere.)

However, I love the Cinderella-Rapunzel-Alice mash-up that provides the backbone of the season (particularly in "Eloise Gardener" and "One Little Tear") a lot. Also "This Is Henry Mills" (Henry & Regina) and while the finale ("Homecoming" & "Leaving Storybrooke" are a bit of mess, I do like everybody's endings very much, too (and appreciate that Regina's is not romantic.)

But it is a separate thing, like the spin-off Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, which you can choose to explore or not - should five minutes not prove too much for you! (Five minutes of OUaT has proved more than enough for many people.)

[sovay]

List! For you to use or not at your leisure. I have bolded the fairy tale retellings I think are work as standalones

Thank you for all of this! I am charmed that the Cruella de Vil retelling is actually great.

I side-eye both the concept and the term "requel," I think.

[thisbluespirit]

Cruella de Vil is played by Victoria Smurfit, who was definitely a highlight of most of the eps she was in.

Btw, I should be clear that, of course, the whole thing is nothing but fairy tale retelling; it's just that a lot of them play out in installments over a season or half a season (like Snow White, Peter Pan, Oz, Frozen etc.).

I side-eye both the concept and the term "requel," I think.

I think everybody else is calling it a soft reboot (although, really, it's basically a 1 series sequel piece), but I got the DVD for Christmas and listened to the (one!) commentary and they kept calling it that and I objected a lot. Smushnames have a lot to answer for!