Some thoughts on Once Upon a Time

I haven't been around much lately.  As I mentioned in the comments, Dad's been going through yet another skirmish in his battle with cancer.  Also, I've been trying to do more story writing.  So my Internet presence will be a bit spotty, like that's something new.

This morning I was catching up on Once Upon A Time (keeping current with the TV shows I follow is another one of those things that has kind of gone by the wayside these past few weeks).  The show has these big themes going about parent/child relationships and abandonment and lost love and all that, but another theme that really keeps the tension going is the question of fatalism.

See, the basic premises is that all these storybook characters got sent to our world because of a curse.  There's this cool back-and-forth between the past in the story world and the present in the real world.  But since these are story characters, there is a constant question of how much control they have over their own lives.  Is it really the evil queen's fault that she's evil when every time she tries to change, something comes along to push her back into her old role?  What happens if someone's true love dies?  Is that it?  Are they destined to be lonely forever?  

It's the old Oedipus question, really.  (Not to be confused with an Oedipus complex.)  If the gods of the Greek Pantheon for-ordained that Oedipus would kill his father and marry his mother, was it fair of them to punish him for it?  Did they force him to commit those acts and then destroy him, or did they just know what was going to happen?  And why couldn't the Star Wars prequel trilogy have grappled with these questions? 

Well, all that's for philosophers to settle (or not.  I had Philosophy in collage, and discovered that the old philosophers mostly just make cryptic remarks so you won't notice that they're getting paid not to tell you anything).  But you have to admit, it makes for an interesting TV show.