Regina's Castle

I thought this was going to be a long post, but then I looked at my notes and realized that the symbolism is not complicated in this case. Regina's castle in the Enchanted Forest represents corruption. With the singular exception of Snow White, everything good that ventures into the place is destroyed.

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This castle is unique and strangely modern amid the structures that make up the Enchanted Forest. I suspect that its appearance is intended to evoke Sleeping Beauty, an image of thorns and spindles and skeletal trees. Metal and glass, it is not a place that looks comfortable or inviting from the outside, or particularly at home in its environment.

The land around is inhospitable wilderness (note the water view, though).

Even the garden is severe, as regimented and skeletal as the structure itself.

Castles as a rule in OUaT represent danger and temptation. They're the standard site for weddings, but they're also the place where things go horribly wrong because people make bad choices:

• 1.04 The castle represents the better life Cinderella so desperately desires, and for which she makes her rash deal with Rumplestiltskin.
• 1.06 Contrasts the simplicity/innocence of Charming's farm life with George's castle, and his abandonment of the ideal of True Love in exchange for his mother's financial security.
• 1.08 The duke's castle is where he keeps the dagger that controls the Dark One, the source of his power. (I believe it's later in the series that Rumple offers to build Baelfire a castle, an offer he indignantly refuses. Rumple builds one anyway.)

Regina's castle is therefore only the most extreme and consistent example of this usage.
In Eva's day, the place looks pleasant enough on the inside.

(Are those nuns? Do they just throw in random religious elements to annoy world-builders?)
After her death and previous to Leopold's, the place is still colorful and populated if not exactly bustling.

After his death, the shift to monochrome+red is immediate.

The following significant events take place there:

• 1.02 - Regina murders Henry in order to cast the Dark Curse, giving in to her desire for vengeance over the protests of her own wisdom (Maleficent) and conscience (Henry).
• 1.07 - Regina enslaves the Huntsman after her effort to seduce him fails; as with 1.06, there is a parallel drawn, this time between the innocent violence of animals and the corrupt ways of humankind.
• 1.09 - Regina is bewildered and angered by Hansel and Gretel's family's refusal to abandon one another.
• 1.11 - Regina plays the role of the apple and seduces the genie into murdering her husband.
• 1.17 - Regina convinces Jefferson to get her to Wonderland, thereby tricking him into abandoning his daughter.
• 2.01 - Regina sends her mother to Wonderland and begins learning magic from Rumplestiltskin.
• 2.05 - After Victor fails to revive Daniel, Regina dedicates herself to revenge.
• 2.09 - Hook is recruited (kinda) into the first of a series of villainous alliances.
• 2.11 - Belle is imprisoned.
• 2.15 - Cora murders Eva.

All represented in the darkening of the silver/white interiors to black. (Note the continuity of color scheme with the Storybrooke locations, and that the predominant color there is white -- she has succeeded, with the curse, in giving herself everything that was supposed to have been Snow's.)

After Regina's ascension we only see her receiving area, her vault, and her dungeons.

I'm going to address the vault separately, but evidently Regina does not give dinner parties as the Evil Queen.

Neal's Apartment

Another short one; there's not a lot to say about the place. We only see it three times, but I have a strange love for this set. It isn't painfully empty, like Emma's in Boston, or implausibly large, like Mary Margaret's in Storybrooke. It looks lived-in and real. Maybe it's the micro-kitchen that does it.

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They spent so little time on Neal's present-day character, this set provides the only look we get at the person he turned out to be, ten years after his encounter with August. I'm making an assumption that he lives here alone and that none of this is Tamara's stuff -- there's only one plate on the table, and nothing about the place looks to me like it matches what we see of her style. There is a heart-shaped wooden box on the desk, which is a bit odd for a man to have, but I can't see anything else that doesn't seem to fit.
Neal has an apartment in Manhattan, so he's got an income. He's moved up from janitorial work and presumably from theft (no one even mentions what he's doing for work these days, but he can up and go to Storybrooke for a week or so). He doesn't have a car, but that's not unusual in the city.

Apparently, he's a tea drinker.
I thought in 2.01 that it was an efficiency, but you can see in 2.14 that there's a separate bedroom; for some reason the couch was folded out before.

It looks like a place that's been lived in for a while. He's got a record player and a lot of books that suggest a quiet life, a collection of old radios, clocks, microphones, and cameras (no photographs), a few pieces of art, and what look like concert advertisements or similar so he's not a complete homebody.
There's a dish of apples on the table, although not Regina's trademark Red Delicious. The bed is made; the desk is tidy; there are a few dirty dishes. The dream-catcher in the window is the only visible reminder of Emma and of his previous life.
No microwave, no computer, a small and elderly TV in the bedroom, and that's a shockingly old phone on the desk. Not a high-technology guy.
He has a thing about 13 (a Lost reference? I never watched it, but I vaguely remember that numerology was a big thing with that show).

That oddity aside, like Neal himself, the place looks... normal. There's nothing magical, nothing larger-than-life going on here, no towering symbolism. For all of his bizarre upbringing, years in Neverland, street life, etc., Neal appears to have made a complete and successful transition to life in the Land Without Magic. He never wanted to go back.

Mary Margaret's Loft

I started this series with Emma's apartment, so it seems appropriate to finish with Mary Margaret's.

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The main symbolic use of the location is to represent home/family, where it works alongside Snow's role as matriarch. Over the course of 3 1/2 seasons, the apartment has steadily accumulated people as Snow's shattered family reconstitutes itself. Season 1 brought Emma, all unknowing.

Season 2 added Charming and Henry (and briefly Pongo), and the first suggestion that perhaps the place was getting crowded.

Season 3 brought baby Neal. Season 4 had Emma's "sister" Elsa as a guest, and strong foreshadowing that the nuclear nest will be breaking up soon. Emma has found her home and is secure with her family; she doesn't need to stay under the same roof to reinforce that. Her life doesn't fit in a couple of boxes anymore. 

It would be exhausting to compile a list of all of the times it's been used -- I could, that's what the note cards are for, but it would be kinda dull to read. Next time you do a rewatch, count how many times someone refers to "home" and they cut to the apartment.

There is one moment in particular that I want to call out from S2. When they rescued Regina, they didn't take her to her own house, or to the hospital. They took her to the apartment, where she could be looked after by the Blue Fairy. Out of all of the interactions among this group, I consider this completely unremarked moment the most strongly indicative of the fact that after everything, Snow still thinks of Regina as family.
The space itself is obviously designed as the opposite of Regina's strictly modern aesthetic. Mary Margaret's space is open-plan; areas merge into one another freely. The lines are soft and rounded, largely composed of antiques, and idiosyncratic in their combination. There is distressed paint and mismatched chairs, a wood-burning stove and a general air of things that have been made by hand. Family photos appear as the seasons go on. Even the quilts are simple, and look as if they were actually made as a thrifty means of recycling old fabric rather than showpieces.

For a contrast, just look at their kitchens.

And of course at the general lack of mirrors. There are birds everywhere, those being Snow White's primary symbol. They appear as pillows, figurines, and the BLACKBIRD ghost sign on the wall.  The place is not messy, but it looks very lived in. The other obvious contrast is to Emma's empty apartment in Boston. There is no TV. (The only set in the entire bunch that includes a visible TV is Neal's apartment, and it's in the bedroom.)
We had to wait until S4 to see the upstairs, and I'm still not sure how there's room for everyone.

So that's it (for now). When I started this project, I thought that it might be vaguely useful to have some kind of set catalog, for fic reference and so forth. Umpteen hours later.... There are a few locations I didn't get to, and I might continue adding to this as the series goes on.
I appreciate the thoughtful comments I've gotten from so many thoughtful fans along the way.

Maleficent's Castle (aka The Forbidden Fortress)

I am deeply excited by the prospect of learning more about Maleficent in 4b. Season 1 treated us to two visits to her humble abode, book-ending the season-long Dark Curse plot.

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(Note the beach. Every major castle site in the Enchanted Forest except for Rumplestiltkin's is shorefront property. "Water is a very powerful thing. Cultures as old as time have worshiped it. It flows throughout all lands, connecting the entire world." - August
Even within the Enchanted Forest, which is already marked as "unreal" vs the Land Without Magic, the presence of water serves as an additional signifier that whatever is happening has mythic import.)
What do we know about this castle? First off, the place has got a name, the Forbidden Fortress; that's rare. Other than Regina and Rumplestiltskin, Maleficent is the only magic-user whom we see maintaining a castle of her own, which puts her among the elite powers of the region. Even Regina puts on her manners and gets out her coach rather than poofing in for her visit.

We know little about Maleficent herself. She cursed Philip and Aurora, was briefly in possession of the Dark Curse, which she was sensible enough not to use, and is attached to her pet unicorn. Regina refers to her as a "friend" -- not without irony, but they have known one another for some time.

Other than her pet, Maleficent appears to inhabit this enormous castle in solitary splendor. Unlike Regina, she has no guards, servants, or sycophants. Unlike Rumple, she has no vast collection of magic objects. She appears content with this existence.

She's a minimalist decorator, and she likes her rooms large -- convenient for her other form, perhaps.

The dragon's lair as a literal setting has been used sparingly in the series so far. In 1.02. Regina ventures there, defeats Maleficent, and acquires the curse -- disregarding the warning that came with it. In 1.22 Charming emplaces another treasure with her, and Emma retrieves it.
Maleficent's guardianship parallels the Fortress with the caverns beneath the Storybrooke library, where Emma makes her own heroic descent. One must first pass through a forbidding portal -- the library, as I was delighted to find made explicit in 4.08, marking the boundary between the "real" world and the world of story.

The cavern contains Snow's glass coffin, a tangible link to the sleeping curse that originated with Maleficent and to the Enchanted Forest itself.

That coffin later proves to contain the Storybrooke self-destruct gem. And of course the cavern contains Maleficent herself, bound to Regina's service, and from whom Emma must retrieve the vital potion, even if it's not for the reason she thinks -- an action that explicitly parallels Emma and Charming, as both of them emerge from their dragon encounter and go on to break the sleeping curse on their true love.
The symbology of dragons has grown complicated, as everyone has gotten self-conscious and meta with the poor things. The three encounters here are quite different, and probably immune to such interpretation, though I am going to note that all were engineered by Rumplestiltskin, and that True Love was physically present at all times in the form of the potion.

• 1.02 Regina's conflict in this episode is not actually with Maleficent but with herself, her own decision to to cast the curse and damn the cost. Maleficent in this episode acts as Regina's wisdom if not her actual conscience (I think that's Henry), informing her that the price will be even greater than she knows in the end.
• 1.22 For Charming, this is an annoying delay in rescuing his true love, a challenging encounter but one free of psychological weight, another day in the life of a seasoned adventurer -- he has gone through his heroic tests, already faced his own inner dragon. He stands now as a fully integrated character, ready to finish his journey and to undertake partnership with Snow.
• 1.22 Emma is therefore like and unlike her father at this point; this is a critical moment of self-definition. Picking up a sword and fighting a dragon is the first step to accepting her heritage; this is her reality; this is who she is. Maleficent could be read here as her own skepticism, which has kept her from believing the truth all this time.

Difficult to say yet what kind of role Maleficent will have in S4, especially in company with a covey of additional villainous characters, but I love dragons and I love her style, and I'm looking forward to it.

The Library

I am running out of hiatus! Who ever thought that would actually happen. I am also running out of locations to ramble about, but one of the ones I really want to get to is the Storybrooke Library.
If you've been reading these, you've seen me banging on about liminality, transitions, and stories as containers. Well, what is a library but a mammoth container for stories? There is a thing in fiction called "literalizing the metaphor." It is one of the OUaT writers' favorite tactics, and the library is an outstanding example. It also has recurring links to the villains in the series.

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That clock tower is CGI. They could have put it on any building in town, but they chose to put it on the library, to make that location the centerpiece of the first and last symbol-laden actions in S1. When Emma first spends a night in Storybrooke, the clock begins to turn. When she faces the dragon, she does so under the library.

Like the well, the library stands on the border between Storybrooke and the Enchanted Forest, and it functions on multiple levels.
"We may sit in our library, and yet be in all quarters of the Earth," Rumple quotes John Lubbock to Belle. There is a natural link of course to the Disney Beauty and the Beast, but in this case it is also literally true.

The library contains infinite worlds in book form, but is also a physical connection to the tunnels under Storybrooke. Those tunnels hold a dragon -- even in a land without magic -- and Snow's coffin, giving them a symbolic if not actual link with Regina's vault and to the Enchanted Forest. They connect to the beach, and so ultimately to other realms via water. They contain the diamonds that (however inconsistently) provide Storybrooke's magic.
Regina is mentioned at one point as having closed the library. The Dark Curse created, among its many other effects, a fully stocked but shuttered small-town library; it's other worlds were inaccessible, and its prominent clock never moved. This is Regina trying to stop the universe again, to close all avenues of escape for those subject to the curse, even mental ones. Perhaps a town that is entirely closed-off and lost in time cannot afford to have people read too much. Just as with her vault, however, she prefers to save things for future use rather than destroy them. Hence the existence of the fail-safe spell and its unique guardian.
Appropriately enough, events at the library tend to be heavily weighted with symbolic importance.
Emma has the most iconic visit to date in the S1 finale. She takes a leap in her individual Hero's Journey with a literal descent into the underworld to fight a monster and retrieve nothing less than the essence of True Love. This makes for a nice parallel with "Desperate Souls," as I consider it Emma's knighting, and cognate with her accepting the office of sheriff, keeping her dual self in balance.

Her connection with the place is otherwise slim, however. In Season 2, Rumple is instrumental in re-opening the library, just as he was in bringing a more literal form of magic to Storybrooke. He has nothing to fear from anything within; if anything, the Dark One has more experience with and understanding of how stories are shaped than any other character.
It is Belle who has the key to the place, and by first forming her connection with the library in 2.04, they draw a subtle connecting line between Belle and Milah, both of them looking for worlds beyond what they know. "The Outsider" makes a further parallel between Belle's encounter with Hook in the library and her first encounter with the Yaoguai -- at that time, seen as an uncomplicated monster. (Which makes Rumple Mulan for that moment? Sometimes the structural parallels in this show get weird.)
The library is at one point the cursed dagger's hiding place -- both the map and the thing itself reside there, and the clock tower is where Cora acquires it. It is also where Rumple attempts his ritual to free himself from the artifact's control. Tunnels and stars connect there; the library touches heaven and hell.
When Regina goes to face the dragon of her own creation, to retrieve her own tool for ultimate destruction, she does not go alone or bearing a sword; she brings someone expendable.

(I am tempted to read something into the fact that so many events at the library to date have involved Hook. Rogue characters tend to be comfortable with borders. Which brings us to our next point....)

I could not have been more excited than I was when they directly addressed the unstable nature of reality in this particular library with Will and Robin. The fact that it was there, surrounded by the paper-bound incarnations of worlds we have been told are all literally real somewhere, that they found the alternate page of the book, made me squee as much as anything ever has.

And one of the things I'm most dying to know is whether this is just an Easter egg, or whether Will finding a picture of a brig with a yellow stripe in this exact moment -- when it seems like reality blinked long enough for someone to slide a page into Robin's pack -- is meaningful.

The Jolly Roger

Since we now know that our beloved Jolly Roger has survived and is in competent if not loving hands, I thought I'd make the next post about her.

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The Jolly Roger is made from enchanted wood. She is described as “the fastest ship in all the realms” (Rumple, 2.15) and given the heavy emphasis is presumably unique. Given that, it seems logical that she was built specifically for that mission to Neverland and with the stresses of inter-realm travel in mind.

She has or had cannon on board, referred to in the dialog in "Good Form", but gunpowder doesn't appear to be in use in the Enchanted Forest except for fireworks. She may at this point only have the small gun used against the mermaid in 3.01.

I spent a long while squinting at backgrounds trying to figure out the internal layout, and then the amazing scapeartist found and sent me a link that includes an actual schematic and cleared things up.

Doesn't seem to be big enough for the number of crew we generally see on board, but that's what we've got.

There's direct access to the captain's quarters via the hatch near the helm, which seems useful if not terribly conducive to privacy.

I don't remember who it was who pointed out that among other minor changes, Killian got rid of that mirror, but if it was you, let me know.

When I did my original post on places in OUaT, I thought the JR stood for "change." I think now that I was wrong about that. The JR is certainly the site of many important events for Killian:

• Liam's death
• Milah's death
• Losing his hand
• Baelfire
• Returning the bean to Storybrooke
• Message from Neal about the curse

However, for everyone else, it's a neutral site, so I don't think it can be read as a general symbol that way. (The exception to that is Belle. Episode 2.11 parallels her approach to the JR with her hunting the yaogui, which is itself further paralleled with her agreeing to go with Rumplestiltskin. The ship there is equated with the lair of the beast she tracks down. The beast in that episode turns out to be a transformed prince, in a further nod to the Beauty and the Beast story and the broadest possible hint about Killian's future change of allegiance (and if you like winger-hawk's theories, to his true identity in the show's broader mythology).)
On the other hand, it's obviously not a coincidence that all of these incredibly important events take place on board the JR. Taking a step back, therefore, to the fact that Rumple and Killian are consistently positioned as opposites, I have to conclude that the ship is Killian, the same way the Dark Castle and the pawnshop are Rumplestiltskin, a physical manifestation of an identity that is partly assigned, partly claimed. Rumple draws much of his power from his collection of magical artifacts; to the extent that Killian has any power, it's because he captains a ship.

The contrast between a community (and even in some ways a family, per Rumple in "The Crocodile") based on a notably swift vessel vs the massive, immobile isolation of the Dark Castle -- one of very few Enchanted Forest locations that is clearly nowhere near water -- is typical of the distinction drawn between the two characters. Largely via the Jolly Roger, Killian has done more inter-realm traveling than any other major character in the show, while Rumple has remained largely stuck in place.
Each of those turning points on the JR represents either a significant change in or (in the case of Blackbeard) a reaffirmation of Killian's identity, right up through the moment he gave up the ship herself in exchange for the bean that would take him back to Emma. Throughout 4a, Killian's identity has been in a visible state of flux, called out by the change in costume, the conflict over his hand, and getting to grips with the physical environment of Storybrooke. He's coping (or was until Rumple, anyway) but other than Emma he remains relatively isolated and aimless. If we're going to get more of his back-story in 4b, his identity may remain in an uncertain state until then -- at which point I'm pretty certain we'll see the ship again.