Once upon a time and the real world

I am totally loving the television show "Once upon a time". 

I can't really think of a more "Belinda" like premise.  I love fairy tales, I love stories, I love writing, I love TV.  And this idea, of fairy-tale characters trapped in our real world with no "happily ever after" is pretty cool.

And they are doing it well.  When I saw the show trailer I knew I could love it.  But there is nothing worse than hearing the premise for a show, getting all excited, only to find out that it is less than I originally dreamed it to be.  But so far I am really happy about it.  I look forward to every episode and after each episode ends I think "I can't believe I have to wait a whole week for the next one!"  Not since the first two seasons of "Hero's" have I felt like that.

But as much as I am enjoying it, there are a whole lot of things that I feel very uncomfortable about.

For those who haven't seen it, the main story sit around three characters: Regina the major of the town (who was the wicked queen from Snow White), her adopted son Henry, and Emma, who is Henry's biological mother.  Emma put Henry up for closed adoption when he was born.  Emma is also Snow White and Prince Charmings daughter, although she doesn't know it.

Every character has their fairy-tale backstory, and their real-life reality.  But the problem is, these two realities often clash, and we end up with these strangely morally abigious actions from the "good" characters that are justified by their past.

For example, Henry is constantly disobeying his mother, running away, and spending time with his biological mother.  This is somewhat justified, because he knows (though no one believes him) that Regina is actually an evil queen.  But Emma, who does not know this, lets him do it.

If I adopted a child, did my best to bring them up, and then their biological mother came along and helped them lie to me and disobey me, I would be rightfully angry.  If I was a biological mother who met up with my child and believed my child was being mistreated, I would go through proper court processes to make sure my child was safe and well.  It would do no good for me or the child if I was deceptive.

Of course, for the sake of the story, this can't happen.  And WE know that the Regina is evil, and that it is good for Emma to help Henry stay away from her.  But Emma doesn't know that, and so I think she is actually a less apealing character because of her inappropriate "parenting".

And Henry's therapist, who keeps encouraging Henry in his beliefs, also seems a little bit strange.  Of course, Henry's theories are true.  But again, the therapist doesn't know this and so should be doing his best to showly pull apart Henry's fantasy, in a gentle and loving way.

But the killer one at the moment is "Snow white" and "Prince charming".

SPOILER ALERT IF YOU DIDN"T WATCH LAST NIGHTS EPISODE

In the Fairy tale world, Snow white and Prince charming are Happily married

In the real world, Snow white/Mary Margaret is single, and Prince-charming/David is a coma patient, who has woken up to find himself married to a different women "Katherine"- though he has great feelings towards Mary Margaret that he doesn't understand.

And as watchers who know that Mary Marget is David's true love, we are manupulated into hoping that David will leave his wife to be with his true love.

But how terrible is that! While we might know the backstory, that character's do not.  So again, we have the "good" characters acting in ways that are totally inappriopriate, given their understand of the world.

In the end, David made the call to stick with his wife and to try to make their marriage work.  And I was torn, both happy that he was behaving well, but also sad that he was kept from his true love.

COMPLICATED :)

As a writer there are all kinds of things that I write that I realise later are inconsistant with the rest of the story, and the premise of my world.  I am constantly making changes to the story to make it consistant, and I know a perfectly consistant story is the impossible dream (afterall, if CS Lewis, JRR Tolkin, and JK Rowlings haven't always be consistant all the time- what hope do I have). 

And I realise there are a certain level of dramatic licence that writers have in order to keep the story going  and interesting that can sometimes mean that "happy ever afters" don't last very long.  And none of my characters always act rightly all the time, in fact, the concept of no one being morally perfect is a key idea in my novel.

But writers and TV produces have a way of messing with our minds.  Of making us want things to happen because they will make a character happy, not because they are the right thing to do.

And so as much as I love Once Upon a Time it makes me skwerm.  Because the king of that show, the greatest good, the overaching priority of every character is "Happily Ever After".  Not "Doing what is right and loving".

And in the real, real, world?  My world?  God's World?  That is called Sin.

BG