A Land Without Magic

[seraya7]

Reactions to A Land Without Magic

(I should point out I wrote most of this right after watching, hence the slightly hyper reactions to things)

Comments

[seraya7]

I was reading some discussion about the so-called 'price of magic' that Rumple is always talking about, and also what the return of magic means for specific characters and situations, and rather than joining the community and adding to the discussion, I will post my thoughts here where no one will ever read them. Hooray!

The price for the magic of True Love is loving someone. Look at the show-love may be this mysterious, powerful, magical thing, but it's never simple or easy. Love requires risk, and sacrifice, and courage. Love means opening yourself up to someone, supporting them and accepting their support in return. True love risks insanity-inducing pain, heartbreak, doing things you would never do otherwise. Regina, as she is right now, could never do all that-her cool and selfish variant of motherly love for Henry is as close as she can get. Emma's walls are so thick that it's kind of a miracle she opened herself up enough to Henry. Rumple may have found it once with Belle, but he's going to have to work, risk, and sacrifice if he wants to keep it without compromising who Belle is. (And let's point out that if familial love also counts as True Love, I'm not convinced that every person has One True Love and only one and if they die they can never love again. True love is rare. Romantic true love is rarer (everyone has a family, so it's more common to have familial true love). Finding romantic true love twice is practically impossible, statistically, but could happen. It's just harder to let go of a true love, and harder to be willing to make that kind of sacrifice again.)

Good magic appears to lean toward sacrifice as a price, where you willingly agree to something or give something up in order to gain something else. Dark magic tends to extract a price, with interest, without informing you beforehand. Rumple abuses this requirement of magic by deliberately asking for a price that he wants. If the Blue Fairy is right about his magic not belonging in FTL, maybe he's not actually bound by the price rules, or maybe it works differently on him, or maybe being the source of the Dark One magic exempts him in some cases... or maybe the price of turning a man into a snail was the man's death. Who knows?

[seraya7]

I don't think that the return of magic will turn everyone back into their animal forms. August was a special case: his transformation came with a condition that he failed to fulfill, which gradually turned him back into wood (and I believe his lingering ability to move that increasingly vanished was all about residual magic for his condition fading away). It didn't have anything to do with the presence or absense of magic. Jiminy's transformation was a straightforward, one-time deal; he was turned human partly because being a cricket was his happy ending and partly because sentient crickets don't exist in this world. Magic made the transformation happen, and I think someone would have to cast a new spell with the new magic to transform him again. Red was a werewolf, which obviously doesn't exist in our world, but she retained or gradually regained certain things like tracking ability. In fact, I'd guess that she is still a werewolf (as opposed to human), but she requires the presence of magic to actually transform. So, under my logic, 1. August could wind up anywhere from real man to wooden man to inanimate, depending on how exactly the condition functions, and I think it's entirely possible there will be a small quest or arc to restore him. 2. Jiminy won't have any transformation problems in this world. 3. Red will be a werewolf again and will need to locate her cloak and/or be controlled somehow. Also, 4. Rumple/Gold is an exception to any/all of these rules, because he designed the curse himself and apparently, arguably, designed it specifically to break the Dark One curse on him, not to mention that Regina would Not Want him to retain that kind of power. (I happen to believe that he just intends to make use of the new magic, and wasn't trying to restore his exact power status. Perhaps his hoard of formerly magical objects are no longer formerly magical.) and 5. It seems to me that the fairies were specifically translated into nuns as kind of a Take That from Rumple or Regina (ultimate do-gooder magical beings are now ultimate do-gooder but powerless anti-magic people), but since they are magical beings by default (as opposed to having been altered by magic), and it's purely the influence of the curse that transformed them, they could easily revert to their old forms. Or they could regain their old magical skills but remain human. It's really a toss-up at this point.