#idk I feel like the PCs HARD picked a lane far before I would have

[jq37]

Twice Upon a Time - Neverafter Mid-Season Questions

Hey Y'all! A LOT has happened in Never After since my last recap. School has had a stranglehold on me. But I wanted to pop in with some questions and observations before the next episode drops on Wednesday.

(1) I wonder if the PCs were supposed to leave the Lines Between so quickly? There was information implied to be there that they never got and they didn't really mean to leave so much as they started a chain of events that led to them being shunted back into their world.

(2) Speaking of, where are Scher and Muffet for that matter? Muffet was mentioned to have come with them to the Lines Between but they never asked about her so she never spoke. And they haven't asked about her since. And Scher is presumably still in the library, right? Wild that Tim hasn't tried to contact her yet.

(3) Even though we've gotten several lore dumps this season, there's still a lot we don't know about what's going on. Some of that info was prob in The Lines Between. Some of it is probably locked behind actions that the players just aren't pursuing (like those of them who have their books but haven't looked inside of them yet which is lowkey driving me crazy! Please play with the toy your DM gave you guys! Not backseating playing or anything, I just wanna know what's in there!) 

(4) I think the thing that probably gives me the most pause is the nature of the Times of Shadow. Because the "wrongness" in the stories of the PCs kind of fall into three distinct categories. You have Red and Roz, whose problems are that their stories did NOT go as planned. Red is supposed to be saved by the woodsman and that didn't happen. Roz is supposed to be saved by her prince, but he doesn't come. But then you have Ger and PIB, whose stories go exactly to plan. The problem isn't their stories. Their problem is what happens AFTER their stories. It's more an Into The Woods Act 2 situation with them. What happens after happily ever after. Consequences of their actions, you know?  You don't put work into your marriage? It frays. You put a miller's son on the throne with no expertise in statecraft and politicking? When trouble comes, he's useless. Their stories went off fine. It was outside forces (the war in both cases) that caused the problem. And then you Pinocchio and Tim who had their stories more or less--Tim doesn't really have a story--and then just kind of witnessed the darkness around them until their lives were made worse by outside entities--the stepmother and the Gander. So their lives were not all made worse in the same way, you know? It was different mechanics for all of them. So I'm wondering, is this all the same thing? Is ALL of this the Times of Shadow? Or are the T.O.S. and ill defined phenomenon caused by SEVERAL things going wrong that they haven't really parsed yet? Where do the authors fit in? To which degree CAN the characters have agency?

(5) OK, so the princesses. As characters, I am very pro princesses. I love Cindy, Snow's first appearance was great, and I'm excited to see everyone else, esp Elody (sidenote: I think it's a VERY good move that Elody is being brought over from the OG timeline so it's not gonna be Ger talking to AN Elody it will be HIS Elody). HOWEVER, these are rebellious and  zealous teen girls messing with cosmic forces without full knowledge of the situation. *I* remember being a zealous and rebellious teen girl without full knowledge of the situation. I had a LOT of bad takes. Free will is good obviously. But what is it that they actually WANT, you know? Do they want to get rid of magic so there's no more interference from the authors? We don't really know to what degree the characters are controlled by their narratives. Are they trying to prevent the Never After from being split apart like it was implied it was previously? And how are we defining "agency" and "story". Let me make this its own point. 

(7) Ok, so say you wake up and your house is on fire. And you can't get out. And a firefighter come in and saves you. Would you say your life is a story without agency? I wouldn't. I think it's perfectly valid to be saved from a threat that's beyond you. I don't think it's weak for a witch or a fairy to put a spell on you that requires another party to break. It doesn't mean your life didn't have agency as a whole. It means that you needed help one time. Everyone does sometimes. 

(8) And it feels kinda wild to have a small faction of people (some of them fully teenagers) being like yeah, let's make the world harder for EVERYONE because I don't like that I had a damsel moment one time. Which isn't necessarily what they want. We just haven't really gotten full details on what it is that they actually want yet. And there hasn't been a lot of asking of clarification questions. Closest was PIB last ep being like, "Hey can I vibe check Snow to see if she's on the level? It seems like she's REALLY hungry for this info." And they way Brennan plays the princesses makes me think he is aware of all of this. I'm just like, waiting for the other shoe to drop lowkey I guess? I would NOT be surprised if in a few episodes it's like, "Yeah you blindly followed this very flawed plan, here are the consequences of that." Just the fact that the stepmother and the princesses seem to have somewhat similar endgames from the little info we have would give me enough pause to make me want to dig deeper. 

(9) I'm not saying I'm team fairy either, for the record. I don't like that Turq was like, "We need to *fix* Elody." I'm just saying, this feels like a situation where everyone has a quarter of the info and there's a middle ground to be found. I would want more info before I went hard in on, "Let's burn the system" Like, I'm sure at least parts on the system do need to burn but you have to be so so careful before you set a fire in a BUILDING YOU'RE STANDING IN. 

OK, that’s where my head’s at right now! I’ve really been enjoying this season so far. I am just curious to see how the pieces of this puzzle fit together because there are a LOT of pieces and some of them are very meta. It’s a very ambitious story and I’m excited to see where it goes!