#operation-out

[anothershadeofpurple]

The second car accident i mean, its a parallel with Emmas first one(s1), in s4 E and R went to search for Lily so the wolf shows up again, linking the accidents. If they both were in the accident this explains why R doesnt kiss E (a hand kiss would do, no?), and that her feelings are not just Es projection, and also explains why they are equals, and why we have two books, two minds. So E wakes first and R destroys the curse (their connection) so E could to be with H (my gift to you thing).

Me again, thank you so much for your reply, maybe this theory is insane but makes too much sense. Ouat is linked to Lost, and in Lost we have all this people connected, so this can be a thing, two people in a mind place, both in a comatose, so we see E wake in season 1(breaks the curse, we see the mirror in season 6 with Henry kissing her), and R wakes in season 3 (breaks the curse 2 we see the mirror in season 7 with Henry kissing her). So we have two couples of animus and anima. Fits, right?

Hey you again! ;)

I don’t think Regina is in a near-comatose state like Emma, but I do think they communicate. I think Emma, Henry and Regina all represent different states of consciousness, as written about here.

I do think Regina and Emma are communicating through dreams (I still have to watch Lost, but the writers did say they couldn’t have told this story before working on Lost, so we know that show influenced their concept.)

Not sure when I’ll have time to finish my post on this subject, though. I wanna write more, but then this reply is gonna be stuck in my Drafts forever and I don’t wanna do that you!

(Also, me having different thoughts, doesn’t mean that I’m right. ;) )

[onceuponacoma-blog]

Regina Anna Mills?

It’s very blurry, not easy to see it but Regina’s middle name could be Anna or Anne. 

Based on @operation-out the psychology has an important role on Once Upon A Time. 

Anna Freud  was an Austrian-British psychoanalyst. She was the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contributed to the field of psychoanalysis. Alongside Melanie Klein, she may be considered the founder of psychoanalytic child psychology.

Emma Jung  was a Swiss Jungian analyst and author. She married Carl Gustav Jung, financing and helping him to make him the prominent psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology that he became, and had five children with him. Enduring his infidelities and mood swings, she was his "intellectual editor" to the end of her life. After her death, Jung described her as "a Queen".

Only coincidences?

[onceuponacoma-blog]

David’s scar

Back to season 1 something strange happens to David. 

We saw David in the pilot. He has been in a coma for 28 years. 

1x03 “Snow Falls” 

Snow punched David’s face with a rock 

After this flashback between Snow and David we saw David at the hospital 

with a fresh scar. We can see his blood in the present and that doesn’t make any sense. 

Emma’s subconscious created it after she made the flashback. 

[merlin-of-gallifrey]

Swan Queen and Op OUT

Building off of the information I’ve learned from other brilliant people of Swen, particularly the theories of @anothershadeofgreen​ and @operation-out, to name a few, when rewatching 5x11 Swan Song I found this scene:

The first time I watched it, I over looked it. It was simply a backstory in the Enchanted forest, I didn’t think it held that much significance, but watching it a second time the dialogue struck me. 

There the metaphors surrounding Emma giving into death and Killian Jones preparing for life (before the sword (scalpel) chose its miracle, and Emma lived. 

I think that metaphorically, Brennan Jones (Killian’s father) represents Emma and likely foretells her future and past. Killian’s words represent both Emma’s perception of Henry and symbolize the heart recipient Killian Jones. 

“We both found a way to cheat death.” 

Emma has been in a coma, maybe on life support, she survived a car crash that she shouldn’t have. She cheated death.

Killian is a transplant patient, and if the heart transplant went according to plan he would live despite his own failing heart. 

Next is what I found most intriguing, Brennan’s tale of his sleeping curse: 

“I ran. I didn’t get far. Not long after I left you and Liam, I got caught and put under a sleeping curse.” 

Emma was likely afraid of becoming a part of Henry’s life when he first brought her to Storybrooke, and she ran. She drove away despite her instinct to stay -the moment she paused and looked back up at Henry’s window as she left Regina’s house. But then she crashed and she fell into a coma. She was put under a sleeping curse.

The next bit I think could definitely play a key role this season and for Swend Game, “A sleeping curse? Well how the bloody hell are you awake now?”

“How does anyone break a curse? True Love’s kiss. 

My nurse. I could hear her speaking as I slumbered. Her voice was so kind, so gentle. She made me see the error of my ways. I fell in love with her. And she with me. She changed me. I just… I just wish I could have known her when we were together, you could have had the father you wanted. The father you deserved.”

Replace father with mother, and reading this, all I can see is Swan Queen, Swan Mills Family. The writers have already written a mini version of the plot of their show and put in an episode. 

Emma is beginning to work through issues by apologizing to a projection of Henry, apologizing for not being there for him. The writers alluding to Emma waking up from her nurse’s (Regina’s) words, forming a powerful bond with both Henry and Regina despite being in a coma, accepting herself as one of Henry’s mothers - and her love for him, and finally falling in love with Regina and waking with a true love’s kiss. 

That quote seems to describe the show and the current season, Emma working through her issues, accepting things about her reality, and finally waking up. The fact that they have introduced us to Morpheus, the God of Dreams, this season seems to indicate that Emma will be waking up soon. This quote really just sold me on the coma theory, and gave me hope that Swan Queen will be canon in a profound way.  I hope this gives hope to others too.

[anothershadeofpurple]

How do you separate the two mentally and figure out where to draw the line? It’s going to be complicated like it always is.

Jennifer Morrison, SDCC 2016

[rafstein]

Adam doth protest too much, methinks.

[rafstein]

I once saw a movie -- it was long ago and it was about a con man. Stop reading if you’re concerned about spoilers.

Anyway, the way I’m remembering the movie (which may be wrong), the audience knew the main character was being conned, then the character figured out that she was being conned, then she made friends with the con man, so she and the audience thought they were in on everything, and then at the end we learned that the con man had been continuing to con her the whole time -- along with the audience. 

This kind of thing is hard to pull off, which is part of why Season 1 of Ouat is brilliant, and I’m guessing it’s the part A&E needed the most help with. How to get us -- the viewers -- to take on Emma’s perspective to the point that we get things completely backward. We see Emma get into a serious car accident. But we’re so taken by the magical world that we miss the obvious. We think it’s Emma who’s in denial -- looking right at August’s wooden leg and not seeing it. But it’s us, looking right at a woman who wakes up in jail the morning after a serious head injury without a scratch on her, and we believe a child’s fantasy that we want so badly to be true.

Season 1 was spent showing us who the characters really are -- or so we thought. Now that needs to gradually be undone, so we get to see who the characters really are, and which parts of them are actually parts of Emma (in a sense, everyone’s been “Emma-ed”), and how the story we’ve been shown reflects Emma’s thoughts and Emma’s past, as well as Emma’s present, which includes Regina’s story and Henry’s.

[rafstein]

What does the coma theory mean for Swan Queen?

The coma theory suggests that everything we’ve seen after Emma’s car crash in the pilot is her comatose dream. My sense is that this idea tends to make Swen uncomfortable. Certainly, the coma story could be bad for SQ. It could be a terrible storytelling ploy in general -- the plot continues to be an incoherent mess and then everything turns out to be a dream. And it could be a new disgusting way of dashing the hopes of LGBT viewers, teasing a relationship only to have it all be unreal. But there is a way it could work well for SQ, even beautifully, if it’s done well. Just like the non-coma version of the story, or more so, the coma story really only makes sense with SQ, since Regina and Henry are the only actual SB people Emma met (other than Graham and Archie). 

I’m not trying to argue that it will be done well -- I’m not convinced of that myself. But I think seeing the potential for the coma story will put us in a better position to evaluate it as it unfolds. I’ve made a list of the questions I’ve had about how the coma story could work out well for SQ and how I’ve answered them for myself (with help from @anothershadeofgreen​).

1. We love Regina and we love her character and her character development. And Emma loves that Regina. Won’t all that be taken away, both our love for Regina, and Emma’s love for Regina, if it’s not real?

The EQ part will be. The EQ would represent a part of Emma, whose subconscious would have mapped different parts of herself onto all the dream characters. But the real Regina could have been talking to Emma during the coma, could have confided in her. Emma could have gotten to know her this way. Talking to Emma and dealing with the tragedy and helping Henry deal with it could have led to character growth in Regina that Emma would have perceived and that would have been reflected in dream!Regina. The real Regina could in fact be very similar to the Regina we -- and Emma -- know and love. Emma also would sense the care Regina has for her. That would be real as well. And of course Emma’s attraction to Regina is real -- that started when they met in real life before the accident.

2. How can the real Regina be in love with Emma when she doesn’t even know her? And isn’t it disturbing that she’s attracted to someone she hardly knows who’s now in a coma?

Regina may not be able to be in love with Emma, but she can feel intimately connected to her. If she’s had Emma’s health at the forefront of her mind, dealt with medical and legal issues, learned all about Emma’s past in order to do these things, helped Henry deal with what’s happening to Emma, and maybe most importantly gotten in the habit of talking to Emma when they’re alone, revealing her most inner thoughts and feelings, and noticing Emma’s subtle reactions to what she’s saying, caring for Emma, occasionally touching her gently on the arm or holding her hand -- that could create a very intimate connection. As far as attraction, I would think in this situation that Regina would suppress those feelings until Emma was awake again. Dream!Regina’s attraction to Emma reflects Emma’s desire as well as Regina’s real attraction to her before the accident.

3. What about their relationship development, starting with hate and gradually becoming love/trust?

It is likely that Regina would initially have felt apprehensive. She didn’t want Henry’s birth mother involved in his life. She may have at first refused to allow Henry to visit Emma. She would also have initially been afraid to get too involved herself. That would gradually have changed. She would come to fully embrace Henry’s connection to Emma, and Emma would become the person she cared most about after Henry.

4. But it still doesn’t make sense for SQ to just happen when Emma wakes up and realizes it was a dream.

That’s true. But it would make sense for their relationship to continue to develop. People sometimes recover gradually from comas, waking up and falling back into the coma again. It seems like this would make sense in Emma’s case, since she would be invested in the dream, where she had found her parents, as well as Regina and Henry. It would take some time for her to see that Regina and Henry are there in the real world as well. During that time, Regina and Emma would gradually bridge the relationship they had developed during the coma onto a relationship with Emma awake.

5. This isn’t specific to SQ. But what about magic? Losing that feels like being cheated.

This is one of the things viewers have in common with Emma, one of the reasons she doesn’t want to wake up. But real life can be perceived as having magical elements. It’s likely that Emma really did wish not to be alone on her birthday when she blew out the candle, the exact moment before Henry knocked on the door. It’s a miracle that Emma survives and wakes up. Henry’s book, as the catalyst, seems magical, as it guided Emma through her dream. Emma and Regina’s relationship, which developed in such an unusual and powerful manner, feels magical to them as well.