follow-up: Exhilaration Cont.

the Exhilaration Continues

        Do you remember back in January when I did that blog post on sledding, and I left it with a promise of continuation and added pictures? Well, being as it's been about a month, and to see it you now have to click "older posts" at the bottom of my blog, it occurred to me today that it's about time for me to do the follow-up on that post. I finally downloaded the pictures I took to my computer a week or two ago, and now I'm finally doing the post containing them, and I'm also doing my first blog post on Wednesday this week! I'm not beating my previous record of Tuesday, but maybe I can do another post tomorrow and then make a record for earliest second blog post! That would be nice. We shall see. 

        So, the exhilaration of sledding. To recap what I mentioned in the blog post this one is following up, I went sledding one day at my grandma's, and then I wrote a blog post that turned into a somewhat technical explanation of my sledding. In it, I decided to divide my grandma's principal sledding hill into four 'sections': the long, gradual start of the slope, the suddenly steeper speedy part of the slope, the 'jump' section created by the plowed-up edges of the driveway, and the ending section after the jumps where you come to a stop. I also wrote about the experience of sledding and all the other things about which I had intended to write but didn't get around to, especially the part about how I broke my sled, which was important. It is unfortunate that it often happens that I run out of time and/or space to fully discuss everything I mean to when I'm writing, as I mentioned in my reflection on my epic blog post on Henry's family tree, which was unique in that I actually fully finished it (except now I realized I didn't fully mention Belle's parents as possible great-grandparents of Henry's, but I guess there's always got to be something, and I finished everything of which I could think at the time).
        But then, you think you can finish something properly as it deserves at a later date, but then you come back and that later date is later (much later) than you had intended and you are no longer able to finish how you had intended to because you don't nessecarily remember the details of where you were going with things and you don't remember how things happened as well as you did the day after they actually happened, and so you must simply do the best you can to add what you remember and what you know, and you sort of privately mourn for the story that now will never have the opportunity to be told. This happens to me all too often. Part of it's just that I have far too much story to be feasibly tellable, and part of it is my ongoing struggle with the aforementioned procrastination beast. You know, I'm just realizing that in nearly every one of my creative writing blog posts, I've writtten in some way about my procrastination, or the state of my writing that week. I guess with blog posts I just tend to wander off into whatever's on my mind, and it seems that procrastination and such matters are often on my mind. Well, I guess it makes sense. In any case, it's time I get to those pictures.

A general view of the hill, looking all pristine, my tracks scarcely visible. 

The "first section" of Grandma's main sledding hill

sideview showing my tracks walking back up the hill. The downhill track is easier to miss but it's in the top-middle of this picture. I give my downhill track a wide berth when I walk back up the hill so I don't mess it up or run into bumps if my sled swerves out of the normal path. 

the downhill track is on the left, the uphill on the right

looking up the hill from the uphill path. The footprints are to the left of the trail made by the dragging sled. 

a close-up on the uphill path, where a couple of paths converged.

a close-up of the start of my downhill tracks; hand marks are beside the main sled track because on the first run or two you have to push with your hands to help break the track for the sled.  The sled track is deeper downhill than the drag track uphill because I was on it. 

the starting point of the sledding at the top of the hill, where the uphill path meets the downhill path. Maimed sled shown in starting position (find out how and why it's maimed below).

Things get steeper: section 2

The "jump section" of Grandma's main sledhill 

The first jump is on the left and the second is on the right. The driveway is in the middle, and the fence is at the end.

the jumps as seen from the driveway

the first jump

the second jump and the many jump-paths leading into the last section, where you must stop before hitting the fence. 

I often ended up uncontrollably swerving on the second jump after the angle I came off the first jump. It made the run last longer, though. 

more good angles of the jumps

you can also see here how when my sled hits the steeper part, the paths the sled took started diverging, because with the increased speed the sled became more uncontrollable and unpredictable, so how and where you hit the jumps became almost random.

The Tragic Fate of My Sled:

The full tale of how this happened is one of those tales I mentioned above that I had meant to tell but lost with time. Being as I am determined to post this today, Wednessday, I fear I once again am at a loss for the time to tell this tale. Suffice to say it did not happen all at once. No, I just came off the second jump and landed and I shifted awkwardly to the front of the sled in the landing, and I heard this ominous "crrrack!" and felt it under my knee. When I rolled off the sled I saw a small but clearly irreperable crack in the bottom of the sled. Realizing that this sled was toast, I briefly mourned it before deciding to ride it 'til I could ride it no longer. I went back up the hill and went again and again. It cracked a little more nearly every time until finally the helm was cloven in two and I knew it could go no more. I then took these pictures to commemorate a good and noble sled, which was not the first to go out this way. Actually, I think it lasted the least amount of time of any of the sleds I've had. Well, I suppose I have indeed told this tale nearly in full, as I can anymore. 

 I must say, I do really really like the top of these three pictures, because it looks like there is a tree growing out of my sled. This one happened by happy accident, but it reminds me of the trick photography we did way back in digital camera, when I did my giant book. Shameless self-promotion: you should totally go back to October of 2011 to see that picture. It's under "trick photography"and it looks awesome. It took me like literally 30 tries to get that epic picture and now it's late at night and so I am shamelessly advertizing it and bragging of its awesomeness. I should finish this post now. 

There's still more I want to say and show, so perhaps I'll put another to be continued here. Of course, you never know when and whether I might continue this. But there's a whole thing about sledding out in the pasture that same day I haven't gotten to!

Beyond the violet mist, things nearly buried in the blowing snow drifts of time today were somewhat uncovered, and we discovered trees sprouting from odd blue plastic vessels quite by accident. 

the lost Rumbelle: Restored

Here is my Original Rumbelle post, precisely restored:

Rumbelle!!!!

I ship it.

        I think this post has been inevitable for a while, and now seems like a good enough time to write it. As you may have gleaned from my many references in both my blog posts and now in my monthly 'something awesome', I ship Rumbelle.
        I should now explain what this means. Of course, you people are likely more knowledgeable about the internet and terms used thereon than I am, and so you may already know what these mean, but I personally wouldn't have understood this statement not all that long ago, so for the benefit of people like me, I'll go ahead and explain my modern terminology. So, shipping is a term I learned from my friend. It's funny, because I never thought I didn't know what 'ship' means, but it's a modernized meaning of the word. I mean, hopefully, all native English speakers know that "ship" means to send or mail something, and also a boat or sailing vessel, but neither of those is the meaning of shipping we're dealing with here. This particular usage of 'ship' originates from the word 'relationship'. My friend was using it in a facebook chat with me, saying how she "shipped" Mary Murtle and Joe or something (not those two characters; that is an allusion to one of the inside jokes I share with said friend. I think she was talking about characters from some internet anime or something. I wasn't familiar with it and I don't recall the names.) and I replied, "you're shipping them where?" confusedly trying to figure out in what context she was mailing these characters. After joking with me a little, she explained that shipping is when you, "totally love and support the beautiful relationship of fictional characters", or something to those lines. (I went back in our facebook chats and looked for the exact quote, but I couldn't find it. It was some time ago.) I think this is a wonderful definition of the term, and it explains my current understanding of it.
        Rumbelle is more of a specific term and so it is more probable that you aren't familiar with it, especially if you don't watch Once Upon a Time and/or read my blog regularly. I think it's a pretty common thing, though, to do a contraction of the names of a popular couple to make an easy and simple way to refer to them. Rumbelle is simply a contraction of the names 'Rumpelstiltskin' and 'Belle', and it refers to the relationship of those two characters and/or those two characters themselves. When I was explaining this term to my mom, I believe she referred to the famous example of "Branjelina" (I don't know how that's actually spelled), which even I've heard of in passing. It's two famous people. I think their names are like Brad Parsley and Angelina Jolie or something. Anyways. I don't know or care about them. This blog post is all about shipping Rumbelle.
        So, why do I love and support the beautiful relationship of Rumpelstiltskin and Belle so very much? It's hard to pin it down. They're just so exquisitely beautiful together. I think it all started because I first liked Rumpelstiltskin, even before the episode introducing Belle came along. It's hard to say when I first started liking him. Rumpel's just so... quirky. He's fun. He has a lovely giggle ;). He's clever and mischievous and careful and dangerous but honest(-ish.) (Literally honest, but not, as Charming later points out, honest of heart, until he works on it. But he does warn people, all magic comes with a price). He always has complicated motives and a more complicated plan. He's witty in his interactions. He's amusing. Did I mention the giggle? I liked him even before he had a sympathetic backstory. Looking back, I think I started liking him circa episode four. (My mom and I have been re-watching Once on Netflix because it's such a great series it fully warrants re-watching.) I had gradually developed an appreciation for his character and thence a little crush on said character. He's just... the giggle. The clever, wittiness. The... Rumpelstiltskinness. He's fun to watch and you can't help but like his character. I suppose if you want to use another one of these modern terms, I'm kind of a "fan girl", like this little "quip" (to quote Rumpel) mentions.

hehehehehe :) 'tis true

(from http://weheartit.com/entry/48993327, found by google image searching Rumpelstiltskin and Belle)

Really truthfully, I can offer no logical or reasonable explanation as to why this is so attractive. Out of context, it probably isn't. But in the show, it just is.

(from... somewhere on the internet. I couldn't find the site again.)

        Belle is even easier to like. I can relate to her and envy her. I am similarly a bookworm and I constantly attempt to relate things in the world to things I've read in books. Like her, I look for adventure and dream of seeing the world. I can't say I've ever agreed to go with a semi-malevolent "imp" to save my kingdom from the impending doom of Ogres, but I admired her bravery in this moment (though it's hard to say what I'd do in her circumstance, never having been in it). I once sang Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage" for my drama class. I was called brave for that (though it's hardly a comparable action). I also envy her hair. It's so beautiful. I've always loved red hair and I want my imaginary red hair styled like hers, too. I recently did an experimental sketch of one of my characters--the protagonist and first person narrator in Avgir Lys, who is not yet named, the excerpt from which I posted this Tuesday, as it so happens--and I couldn't help but model her hair (which I described as "scarlet" and wavy, long before I ever saw Once) on Belle's hair. While I was at it I gave her a coat based off of Belles' beautiful purple-blue coat (which I also want) that she wears in the scene when Rumpel is leaving on Hook's ship to go to Neverland. Like in these pictures:

here it looks bluer.

Don't ask me what the caption means 'cause I don't know. The ship is a good background for a kiss, though. They are soo cute together :)

here it looks purpler.

(both from http://whyweloveonceuponatime.tumblr.com/archive, a very nifty Once picture site)

        I like that coat. And I love that scene. Even though he thinks he's leaving forever, she knows they will see each other again. Because that's one of the themes of the show--true love always finds a way. So even though they've made us think Rumpel's dead for now, he'll surely come back, because you just can't keep Rumbelle apart. This is still Belle's paragraph, though. She is a relatable book nerd, she is a girl looking for adventure, and she is a strong heroine who always sees the good. And of course, she is enviable in that she gets to be with Rumpel. When my little cousins watch movies, they often point to a character and say, "I'm that one!", and in this same way, if I was to be someone in Once Upon a Time, I would totally choose to be Belle without hesitation. She is epic, and she is the hero of book nerds everywhere.         And when it comes to the two of them together, well... it's simply beautiful. Belle brings out the light in Rumpel. She helps him be good. He is filled with darkness--he is the dark one, for badness's sake (because goodness just doesn't work in this context)--and yet she knows there is still light in him, she sees it when no one else will, and she helps him see it too, and she helps bring it out. They are so beautiful because they make each other so much better. They are so very much deeply in love, and it's beautiful. They both needed to find love. Yes, Belle had Gaston, but like she said, she didn't really love him; she was only being forced to marry him by societal expectations. In a very ironic way, the man (or not man at the time, as he says himself he hasn't been a man for quite a long time, and he doesn't become a man again 'til the curse strikes) who locked her in his dungeon set her free and helped her achieve her dreams, to see the world (more or less, through the library, at least) and to have adventures and be a hero. They're so very cute together. He makes the weirdest little jokes and she laughs at them. They balance each other. They never forgot each other. Belle finally got to go on her adventurous quest and free a man from being a... whatever that fire-lion was called again... aha, the internet has reminded me that it is called a Yaoguai, and she still decided to come back for Rumpel. He still cherishes her cup. 
        Beyond the violet mist, we're romantics, and we're in love with our Rumbelle, and we've spent entirely too much time shipping it and now have run out of time to write this blog post. 

TO BE CONTINUED

State Speech

State Speech:

a day of assorted theatre

(and, yes, continued procrastination)

       Remember this Tuesday, how I was so excited because I was getting my first blog post done early this week, and thus, I figured, doing better overall this week? Well, it was good to get a blog post done and out of the way that early. Yet here I am. It is Saturday, it is 9 o'clock, and I have two blog posts to write. Always. Although I did also get my first official creative writing II piece done this week, on the upside! But somehow, this always happens, finding myself at the end of the week with blogging to do. Well, there's always next week. Tuesday seems very long ago now, oddly. 

       So, brief commentary on the state of the week and procrastination aside, I am writing this blog post about state speech, which I attended today. I did not perform, as my group at districts did not qualify to move on :'( but it's always fun to go along and support my team and whatall. I love the feeling of being a member of a team like this, too. Just in general it's nice to have a group to be a part of, and it feels good to be involved in an activity again. It's always fun to see all the great performances at state speech, too. There are a lot of very good ones.

       The morning of state speech has a different feel to it than district does, at least for me. Perhaps this can be largely attributed to the fact that I know I'm not performing; as yet, I have never made it to state, though I did start speech a little late in the game, you could say. Freshman year, I was in Virginia, of course, and I don't think the speech system there is the same as it is here. Even if it had been, I never thought of myself as a speech person, and I didn't seek it out. In fact, when I came here to Iowa and found out that I was required to take a speech class, I somewhat dreaded it. I never thought of myself as a person who liked talking in front of other people. I've always been socially awkward and I've never been great at just... talking in front of and with people and communicating and such. I have, however, always loved reading aloud. Whenever a story was being read in class and the teacher asked for volunteers, my hand was the first one up. Reading aloud was just something different than speaking. It just seemed more... literary. I am socially awkward but madly in love with words, with writing and reading, and I guess in the course of reading aloud, the putting of dramatic emphasis on things developed naturally. And so, Sophomore year in speech class, we had a unit that was reading storybooks aloud, which was pretty much my favorite unit ever. I read the ever-classic "Where the Wild Things Are" and I really enjoyed it, and apparently I did rather well because Mrs. Day mentioned to me that I should try joining individual speech, and that I should do storytelling. And so it began. 

       But it didn't begin as soon as you may think. I didn't get into it that year, Sophomore year. By the time I got to Mrs. Day in January to sign up, storytelling was full, as were all the other categories which interested me. I made some fuss about understudying but in reality I didn't truly do anything that year. Junior year I was more on top of it, and I did storytelling. I performed, I loved it, and I didn't go to state. Now this year, I even joined group speech, which performed just a couple of weeks ago, and also didn't go to state. Now for individual state, I've signed up for two categories, storytelling again and literary program for the first time. Which reminds me, I really need to practice and all that. 

      I love tangents, don't you? I just came to a point where I went, "wait, where am I going with this again?" and I looked back and I realized that I was writing about this morning and in so doing I somehow digressed into a summary of my entire speech career thus far. I do love that blog posts allow me to do this. However, I kind of wish I had just gotten to my point, because it's getting late and I should post this soon. At least I have my next post close-ish to done in another tab. I was mostly aiming to summarize what I watched today, and here I am, going over my life relationship with speech while you are all waiting to hear about the rest of my morning. 

     Right. So. There's less anticipation when you're not performing. It's both good and bad; there aren't any nerves, nor is there any worry about messing up, but it is less exciting, and you don't get to perform, which you want to (or I. Whatever perspective I'm using). But it still has that fun, adventurous feeling. I was better packed today because I've learned more what I do and don't use and so have narrowed down what I bring into the contents of one, albeit rather large and over-stuffed, bag. I was also dressed in clothes that were more me. Last time I wore dark, imperial clothes, or at least clothes that struck me as decently qualifying as such, which was fun and helped my character, but this time I wore a short purple dress and tights with kitties on them, which I like very much and would wear anyways. I had a very yummy apple turnover from my grandma for breakfast, and as we sat out, soft, light snow was falling, gentle flurries like little down feathers, making a thin, smoothing coat on the ground. It was very pretty and it sparkled like glitter in the light of the fair morning sunrise. I wasn't as tired as normal either, not only because it wasn't as early but also because I had somewhat miraculously made it to bed by eleven, which is an early bedtime these days. It's not happening tonight. Speaking of which, o gosh, it's 11:50. I need to hurry up and finish this thing, plus my Rumbelle thing. So, yes, a nice morning. I guess maybe I'll describe the rest of today, tomorrow. 

      Beyond the violet mist, our peoples remain locked in an ancient struggle that has lasted through the memory of all living, with a fearsome and terrible beast known only as Procrastination, a beast that gobbles up time with its abhorrent transdimensional dagger-teeth. 

The Curse of Lake Avgir Lys

The Curse of Avgir Lys

or, a clever way to get my first blog post done early this week, and maybe to just generally motivate me.

        I feel very clever right now, and so on top of things. It is Monday (well, Tuesday now), and I have decided something I have not done yet in Creative Writing II: post my first blog post of the week today. How do I intend to achieve this monumental feat, you may ask? I have come up with an inspired idea. All right, so it's not really that clever nor unique nor remotely original, as far as the concept itself goes, but still, it's Monday (again, now Tuesday, but still early, and it's even still morning. Imagine that! I'm finishing this up in study hall, in the morning), and I'm doing a blog post.
        I've decided to post an excerpt from a story on which I am currently working, which bears the same title as this blog post. Well, it's a working title. It's gone through several titles, as a matter of fact. The original title was, "Forbannelson av det Sort Innsjø", which I got from sticking "the Curse of the Black Lake" into google translate and putting it in Norwegian. (In case you may not have noticed, I kind of have a thing for Norwegian stuff.) I just thought that the curse of the black lake sounded a little mundane in English, and so I just put it in Norwegian and fancied it a creative title. In seventh grade (or was it eighth? No, I think seventh. I think. I don't know if Pavo was there yet or not.), when I published the beginning of this piece in our Creative Writing Club Anthology, our teacher, Mrs. Matthews, decided to put it under its English name, so it has also gone by that.
        Recently, when I picked up working on it again in GAT, I decided I wasn't particularly fond of either of the old titles, and so I came up with a mixed-language title that built off the two prior. Being as I now have two Summers of Norwegian Camp under my belt, I have a better comprehension of the Norwegian language and thus, I don't have to rely entirely on google translate as much any more. Which is to say that I know one or two greetings, a handful of numbers, and the basic colors, as well as a quirky children's rhyme or two. I did find it interesting to note that the word for black google translate used (sort) is different from the one we learned at camp (svart), though I was still able to recognize it. We did also talk about dialects at Norwegian Camp, and apparently there are many such variations within the Norwegian language, so I suppose google translate must simply favor a different dialect than our Norwegian teacher grew up with. Going the other way, Norwegian to English, google does indeed translate svart as black, so it's not like google doesn't recognize the other dialects. But in any case, I decided to use the spelling of black in Norwegian with which I had become more familiar, svart, and I used it as the new name of the lake, throwing an e on the end for good measure (even with it, google translate still recognizes the word. I add an e to the end of many words to make them more fantasy like. You may have noticed the Lande beyond the violet mist, for example. It's just, like, olde fashioned, like a shoppe. Though I should note, I've heard some people say olde like old-y, and I believe this is incorrect; in any case it is not my intention to have people pronounce Lande as land-y; the e is just a visual thing I like the look of. Anyways,) and because I used the Norsk for a place name, it gave the Norwegian some actual purpose--one can imagine that the area in which the tale takes place is of Norwegian origin--so it goes beyond just making the name sound cooler. Thus, I named the lake, "Svarte Lake", (which struck me as very catchy) and I retitled the short story/potential novella/probably not a novel "The Curse of Svarte Lake", a title I liked very much.
       But then, as time went on, it occured to me that the whole basic premise of the tale was based upon a lake that was very radiant and beautiful and shimmering with magical light which fell under a curse that turned it an illuminous ebony. So, it occurred to me, having the lake named the (or a) Norwegian word for black wasn't actually logical, because the lake was certainly named before it fell under the curse, so it would have been named something light, not dark. Back to the google translate drawing board I went, this time putting in light-related words and phrases. I sifted through a whole list of their Norwegian counterparts, finally selecting "avgir lys", which is simply Norsk for, "emitting light". Again, I liked the sound of it, and it became the new title of the lake and thus the story. I have the story itself under the title of "The Curse of Lake Avgir Lys" presently, but I titled this blog post "The Curse of Avgir Lys", without the word lake, because I've been thinking about that becoming the title of my story. On the one hand, Lake Avgir Lys makes more sense because it's a lake, and Avgir Lys makes you think it might be a kingdom or something, which I've also toyed with the possibility that Avgir could refer to the land as a whole and not just the lake, but basically so far, the title including the word lake makes more logical sense and is more accurate. On the other hand, without the word lake, I think the title flows perhaps more smoothly, and maybe has a catchier sound, and it might not be so bad to leave it for the reader to wonder what Avgir is until they read the story. So, really, I'm not sure.
        This is another good example of me. I sat out last night to briefly introduce my short story and then copy-paste an excerpt from it so I could get a post done right off, but then my "brief" introduction (you may have begun to realize that nothing is really brief with me) became a history of the name of my piece. I didn't even talk about the inspiration of it or the concept of it or why I'm working on it in Gat now (in hopes of getting it publishable and published before I graduate) or any of its other history. It's funny how that goes. But I do like this blog posts very much for allowing me to do that--to just go off on whatever tangent I feel like going on, and to explore it and write about it however I want to. But I'm still posting an excerpt of my story with this.
       The bit of my story I'm going to post is the bit I wrote first. I think it and the second part both appeared in the CWC Anthology way back when, but for now I'm just going to post the first part. So, without further of my abundant ado, I present to you, my blog readership, the opening of my work in progress, The Curse of Lake Avgir Lys. Oh, and just FYI, this is all copywrighted to me, and it's my own, original writing, I am an author and I do intend to publish this at some point, and so by reading this you agree to not "reproduce in whole or in part" (as they say in those copywright notices) any of this without my express permission and proper citation. As stated in an earlier blog post, thieves shall be cast into the violet mist with no circles available. So, right, no stealing. No.
        And now here is a snippet of my tale.

*     *     *

        I stood on the weathered wood of the dock in utter blackness, save a few far-off lights from the village. The lake stretched ahead of me, vast and deep. Though the village, lit up and almost flickering, came to the far shores, no reflections danced on the still, near-invisible water.
        I felt the cool, smooth stone in my fist. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, feeling the weight of the moment pressing on me, readying myself. I opened my eyes and pulled my hand back far behind my head and threw with all my strength. Hope rose in my chest as the beautiful light-pearl lifted into the solidly black air, cutting through it like a gleaming, noble blade. The moment it left my hand, the crisp white glow, like that of the moon, shone. As it flew away from me, out over the lake, it somehow illuminated the waters without a reflection, as though it were drifting over stiflingly thick black satin. The stone began to descend toward the enchanted waters, its potent healing power drawing swiftly nearer to the grievously ailing lake.
        This was it. Surely the moonstone would work and the lake’s curse would be lifted, its splendid light returned.
        But a split moment before the sheer white stone touched the dark surface, it stopped, hovering, motionless over the surface. The pure white faded as a flaming, vibrant orange crept into it, creeping up from the side towards the lake and crawling over its surface with tendrils like miniatures flames. The angry orange stone was flung upward, its powerful light repelled by the apparently more powerful dark. It swiftly sped, racing faster and faster toward the shore. Toward me.
        I couldn’t react quickly enough, and the stone soon collided with my hand, burrowing into my palm, burning like a flame. I winced, momentarily powerless against the rebellious, darkened stone. But the stone’s glow shortly faded and its fire cooled. Soon, I was standing alone in the darkness with a colorless pebble clutched in my hand and hope sinking in my heart like soft grey ashes drifting to the ground beside a bonfire.
        I groaned and sank to my knees. Another failed attempt at healing the lake. At healing the place I loved. At healing my home. I sat in the darkness and wept for another hope lost, in a place that had once been my sanctuary. A splinter from the dock dug into my palm.
        Someday, I vowed, this place would be right again.

* * *

         We from beyond the violet mist are weavers of words and tellers of tales, and here we have displayed some of our newest yet most ancient handy-work. And we did it on Teusday morning :)

Venting

Venting

     You may have been wondering, after reading my previous two posts, whether I have seen season three episode eleven yet, as I intended to watch it last night. On the other hand, you may also be wondering whether I'm done with my obsession over Once Upon a Time yet, and whether I might do at least one blog post this week about something other than said amazing fantasy T.V. show. Well, yes, I did watch the winter mid-season finale last night, and no, I am not over my obsession yet, and no, while I was originally intending to do a blog post on another subject this week, I'm not going to, because... I just can't now.

     I watched the mid-season finale but I almost wish I hadn't. I don't know. I mean, I needed to watch it but... I wish it had been different. Well, immediately after I watched it, I was so overwhelmed and outraged and afraid and mad and distraught, that I sat down and I just had to write out what I felt. I wrote a hypothetical letter to the writers of Once Upon a Time expressing my... utter exasperation. Then, I looked at it and thought, well, maybe this will work as a blog post, being as I already have it written and all. 

     I more or less wrote it from the perspective of me being the Wicked Queen (but not Regina, closer to the one I played for speech, but not exactly that, either). I let my anger at the writers for doing what they did with the storyline out in this letter, and I was basically creatively threatening them throughout if they wouldn't fix all the things they messed up. So, be forewarned, I am copy-pasting the letter here in uncensored form. It contains my uttermost rage and despair at the show. It might be kind of graphic, but I needed to write it. 

     You know what, it's actually maybe too graphic. I may have to censor it first. For now I'll just post this introduction and anticlimactic conclusion as my last post of the week, because I think I've done enough writing to suffice this week. I'll just call this my fake-out post or something. 

     As to my unpublished letter, suffice to say, it involved me threatening to come after the writers of Once looking like this  

if the writers didn't listen to me and obey me and fix things. A censored version of the letter may or may not come your way next week. I found this picture from a google image search, and when I searched by image to find out from whence it came, this site came up: http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/Rumplestiltskin, though I didn't see the pic there. Beyond the violet mist, we almost posted a letter of rage on our blog, but didn't. 

Henry's family tree picture post

Follow-up Post: Henry's Convoluted Family Tree

from Once Upon a Time

You're probably still trying to recover from my last gigantazoidal blog post, so I'll try and keep this one a little briefer. Actually, you're probably still not done with my last blog post, which will likely take you months to read and to riddle out, and you were likely drawn to this one because it starts with a picture, which is the first picture I've had in a blog post since May of 2012 when I posted pics of my bunnies, and a post with a picture probably looks quite refreshing to you after all those words in my last post.

But that last bit of writing (well, more than a bit) shows pretty well my writing style when I'm left unbounded. It's so fun to write these blog posts because it's like getting to do a paper with no guidelines or parameters whatsoever besides the ones I set for myself. I simply sat out to write about Henry's intricate family tree, and that I did. Because it wasn't a school paper, I permitted myself to run off on pretty much all the tangents I thought up, and because I found some time for it, it got to be as long as I wanted it to be. It's really rare for me, actually, that I get to fully and completely write something in the way and the depth I intended without being limited by the time I have to write it and the length my paper's allowed to be. It was really nice. I even had time to go back and edit it today! I'm pretty proud of it. Not to say it's perfect, but I'm really glad I did it. It was fun to write and it helped me mentally process the things I've seen in the show. For me, this is exactly what I love to do: to write lengthy and unbounded pieces of writing about things I love, like a spectacular fantasy show with which I have become obsessed. I threw in random notes of humor, and I used a semi-casual writing style, and in the end, I really wrote it for myself. I mean, when you think about the audience of a piece of writing, people who haven't seen the show won't be able to read that blog post and understand it, and people who have seen the show will already have known some of the stuff I went into explaining, so it doesn't exactly fit either of those audiences; I just wrote it as part of my own thought process.

Out of curiousity, I actually copy-pasted it into a word doc to see how long it really was. I knew it was long, but I must admit, even I was surprised to find out that it was twelve and a half pages long, nearly 13 pages. Somehow that lucky number fits for Once, though. But to put it in perspective for myself, I realized that's even longer than the 10-page research paper I wrote freshman year on Art in the Viking Era for World History. The word count is 6,848 words, including the title and footnote. But considering I pretty much wrote all of that in three days, I divided it by three and found that that means I wrote an average of about 2,282 words a day. That really blew me away when I thought of NaNoWriMo, because I struggled to write not quite a thousand words a day during the school week, and I wrote this during the school week. Yes, I have more study halls this semester, and I could justify working on it in class because it was for creative writing, but still, I don't know why it was so much easier for me to write this than it was to write my novel. Well, I guess with this, I wasn't making anything up, and it was better planned. Going in, I knew pretty much everything I was going to write about, and how I was going to organize it. I didn't ever have to think anything up and I did very little research. But still, it amazes me when I think of this in terms of NaNo.

Well, I don't want this little reflection to get too out of hand. I should probably actually explain what this post is meant to be about, right about now. I did intend to reflect a little, but mostly I just wanted to show you all this picture. It's a drawing of Henry's family tree I did in my notebook. It really helped me to draw it all out, which I did as I was writing the blog post on his family tree. Actually, first I just did a sloppy one for myself, but then I thought I could put a picture of it up on my blog, so I went back and did the one pictured here. Henry's adoptive family tree is above his name and his biological tree is below. I color-coded members of his family that show up twice. For example, Rumpelstiltskin's name is embellished with gold spirals. Because, you know, he's Mr. Gold. And he spins gold. Hehe. I just thought it would be helpful so you could easily see all the members of Henry's family that show up twice in his family tree. Each member is labeled with their relation to Henry in the place that their name is. For example, in the adoptive side of the tree, Regina is labeled "mother", but on the biological side, she is labeled "step-great-grandma". You'll probably notice that the picture is edited at the bottom, and I must admit that it's a little bit poorly done. This is because I made an error on the original family tree, so I fixed it then took another picture, but the second picture wasn't as good, so I just took the fixed parts from the second picture and copy-pasted them onto the first and tried to match it up as best I could. The tree's not really that easy to read from this far out, but I tried really hard to get a clear picture so you can zoom in on it and scroll around it and look at it close in order to examine it. If I were you I'd probably just save it then open it and zoom in to read it all. I think it's a fairly good illustration of Henry's family tree and I think it's a good follow-up for my lengthy previous post. I even did some leafy-viney decorations on it with my pen just to make it look nicer. I like that you can see the pink tint to the paper that comes from my pink lamp in my bedroom and the way it's complimented by my silky bedspread, which I used for a background. Well, I hope you find my little illustration helpful, and I hope you like it!

Beyond the violet mist, we concluded our genealogical endeavor by illuminating a tree-shaped diagram to streamline and simplify a convoluted but amazing family's relationships to one lucky and magical little boy, enshrouding the lines of connections in emerald vines and embellishing names with colored spiralwork, as is the style of art in our Lande.

Henry's family tree

Henry Mills/Swan/?

and the most interesting family tree ever

       All right. I'm obsessed. I've been watching too much Once Upon a Time and now I keep analyzing and re-analyzing it in my brain. After all, there are so many things to analyze! On the upside, it motivated me to write my first blog post of the week before Friday this week! (Well, at least I started Wednessday. I was almost ready to post this last night, but I decided to take another day to fully explore everything. Yes, I know, it's Friday again, and this is still my first blog post, so the exclamation point no longer applies. But I was so close to posting this last night!) I think one of the easiest ways to analyze many of the relationships in the show is to analyze Henry's unspeakably convoluted family tree (because almost everyone in the show is somehow related to Henry). That boy has just about the weirdest, coolest, most messed up yet epic family tree you could ever dream up. I'm not sure of his last name, actually. I suppose it's probably Mills, because he was raised by and is legally the child of Regina. I think that's right. Oh, by the way, in case you didn't read my previous blog post on Once Upon a Time, I'm just putting a disclaimer right up front that this thing is going to be rife with spoilers, and so you should probably just not read it unless you've watched as much of the series as I have. Presently, I have one episode left of season three, part one (which would be episode eleven). For some odd, crazy reason, I somehow decided at the beginning of the week to save it for Friday. Why did I ever decide that? (But hey, that's tonight now. Heheheheeheee....)

       But anyways, Henry and his lineage. So, we have Henry Mills. He was raised by his adoptive mother Regina Mills, also known as the Evil Queen of the fairy tale land, the woman who cursed nearly all of said land, bringing it more or less into our world. In doing so, she created a hole in her heart, which Henry filled, and he is the only person she has truly loved since she killed her dad to enact the curse (we'll get to her dad in the grandparents' layer). She isn't necessarily the most adept parent, and she has been rather strict and at times has come off as uncaring, but she does truly care for him, and he is really all she has. She has sacrificed a lot to care for and protect him. Regina is not married (see later note on King Leopold) and so technically Henry has no adoptive dad, but Regina has had several different "romances" of varying degrees. She controlled both Sheriff Graham/the Huntsman and newspaper writer Sidney Glass/the Magic Mirror/the Genie with false romances, but she didn't truly love either, and of those two only the Mirror voluntarily loved her. She did truly love Daniel, a stable boy, but he was killed by her mother many years before Henry was born. Actually, Daniel was killed when Henry's grandmother (Snow) was still a young girl, as a matter of fictitious fantastical fact. If Tinkerbell is correct, then Regina was meant to fall in love with Robin Hood, in which case he is perhaps closest to being the adoptive dad figure for Henry. If Regina and Robin did get together, it would make Robin's son Henry's half brother and the deceased Marian Henry's step mother. Sort of. Oh, and I nearly forgot one of the most important ones: Regina was forced to marry Snow White's dad, King Leopold, by both her mother and societal expectations. So, yes, she was married, though not of her own volition, before she convinced the Genie, with whom she sort of had an affair, to kill Snow's dad. Can't believe I forgot that! And that's important, too, because she is Snow's wicked stepmother. Which means she will be popping back up in the great-grandparents' layer. 

       Next we have Henry's birth parents. His birth mother is Emma Swan, the unwitting magical connection between the fairy tale world and the 'real' world and the breaker of the curse (which she does by kissing Henry's forehead, which is true love's kiss--it's nice that they included that, because true love can be found between parent and child and not just between romantic couples). She's a woman who's been somewhat confused and lost her whole life, but when Henry finds her and brings her to Storybrooke, things get better not only for the town but also for her. In a way, Henry fills her heart almost in the same way he does for Regina. Emma's heart's not empty in the same way Regina's is, but she's more lost as to who she is in life and what she's doing. 
       Then we have Henry's biological dad, who was revealed in one of the most epic moments of the series so far to be not just Neal, Emma's old partner in crime from her misdirected youth, but also Baelfire, the long-lost son of Rumpelstiltskin (once again, we'll get to him in the grandparents' layer). Goodness, that was such an epic moment! Oh, that moment when Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin has cashed in the favor Emma owes him (which he held onto for nearly two seasons, since season one, episode four) and had her track down his son, and then she finds him and there's this huge moment when everything clicks into place and she realizes that Neal, the man who heh-hem led to Henry, is actually Rumpelstiltskin's long-lost son, Baelfire. It's just like, everyone looks at each other and realizes everything and how they're all connected and a family and it really couldn't have been a better moment of realization for all four of them (Emma, Bae, Henry (who doesn't get it at first because he was under the impression that his dad was dead), and Rumpel). Plus, they get to be a family! And it makes for a really neat branch on Henry's tree. I think we all love that moment dearly. 
        Henry's dad Bae grew up in the fairy tale world but had a childhood he worked hard to forget because it was kind of ruined by his dad Rumpel becoming the Dark One, which kind of led to his dad manipulating and even murdering random people (well, basically anyone who threatened his son in any way). When he and Emma first got together, he didn't have any clue who she was. It was just "fate" (a term used by the characters to refer to the cunning plots of some very clever writers who carefully weave their wondrous, intricate tale) that two magical people from the same magical world happened to find each other when they were accidentally both stealing the same car. 
       Because I went through all of Regina's relationships in her paragraph, I suppose I ought to go through all of Emma's and Neal's as well. I think their lists are a little shorter, but still worth mentioning. It is particularly worth mentioning that Emma had a brief... something... with Captain Hook. Well, he was basically hitting on her, practically since they met, and she was ignoring him until after he saved her dad's life, after which he was able to convince her to kiss him once. Hook is now madly in love with Emma, which he admitted in the Echo Caves (where everyone had to admit a deep, dark secret in order to get Neal out, and Hook's was that Emma was the first woman he had loved since Milah, Rumpelstiltskin's wife. Which, by the way, means Hook will also crop up in the relationships of the grandparents' layer.). This makes him Henry's mom's... vague associate? Well, anyways. 
        And because I mentioned Emma's little mini-relationship, I should probably also mention Neal's "fiancé", though she's actually less relevant despite having been with Neal longer than Emma was 'with' Hook. Tamara was just a dirty snake of a woman who felt no love for Neal and was manipulating him the entire time she knew him to get what she wanted, a chance to destroy magic, and the whole time she was also closely seeing someone else, a dude named Greg. She's sort of Henry's wicked not-quite-stepmother, or the closest thing he has to a classic wicked stepmother. She also kidnaps Henry and somewhat unwittingly gives him to Peter Pan (who we will see in the great-grandparents' layer. There's good reason to work through all this mess.) The lost boys shoot her with an arrow to take Henry because she and Greg aren't happy when they find out they don't actually get to destroy magic. She's laying on the beach slowly and painfully dying when Rumpel comes up and questions her about Henry. Afterwards he kindly puts her out of her misery. Well, after he heals her so she can answer his questions. But really, nobody's sad when she dies. Besides, haven't people learned not to mess with Rumpelstiltskin's son by now? And Emma and Neal belong together. I know some people feel like Emma and Hook should be together, but I disagree. Emma and Bae are Henry's parents, after all, and they just need to be together. They're meant to be, in my opinion. So, I think that's all the relationships Henry's biological parents have had that are mentioned in the show. 
       Which brings us to the grandparents' layer, where the real mess starts to show up. You didn't think that the parents were the most convoluted part, did you? Well, if you did, you didn't realize that the parents' layer was just setting up for the intricacies of the grandparents' layer. I suppose we should go in the same order we went with the parents, though it is tempting to start with Emma this time, because we find out about her parents being Henry's grandparents first. Na, we'll start with Regina, to help things stay in some vague semblance of a logical order. 
         So, Regina, Henry's adoptive mother, was the child of Cora, a wicked woman of magic--more wicked than Regina--who clawed her way up from being a miller's daughter to becoming queen through her cunning, her literal heartlessness, and a deal or two with Rumpelstiltskin. Regina's dad was the not exceedingly intelligent but rather kind prince who was promised to Cora by his dad if she could spin a tower-full of straw into gold in a night. Regina loved her dad dearly, and in fact he was pretty much the only person she loved after Daniel died and before Henry became Regina's, though she kind of treated him as her servant. She sacrificed his heart to unleash the curse and in doing so created the hole in her heart which was later filled by Henry. Oh, and did I mention she named Henry after her dad, the late Prince Henry (well, I guess king, because Cora became queen and all)? So, Henry senior was the hole in Regina's heart and Regina named her child Henry (junior) because he filled the same spot her dad left open. So Henry's mom killed his grandpa and then named her child after his grandparent she killed. 'Nyways.
        Cora obtained Prince Henry, the man she never loved but took to gain power, in the classic tale of the miller's daughter and Rumpelstiltskin, that tale I think we were all waiting to see for pretty much the whole series up until then. I had begun to wonder if the closest we were going to get to the original Rumpelstiltskin tale was that episode where Cinderella promised him her child, but I was glad they brought in the tale more truly this way, though I was mildly disappointed when Rumpel told Cora his name practically right up front rather than making her guess (which was really the whole point of him having such a lengthy and odd name in the first place of the tale), but the relationship they had more than made up for that in terms of coolness of the storyline. That's right, Rumpelstiltskin had a relationship with Cora, the mom of Henry's adoptive mom. Which means that, because I'm doing all relationships, Rumpelstiltskin gets to be in Henry's grandparents' layer twice. While Rumpel was teaching Cora to spin straw into gold, they fell in love. Cora didn't really know any magic before she met Rumpel, and he taught her magic, but really, in a way, she was more evil than even Rumpel, even though he was (and still is, though now he's less dark) the Dark One. 
        The deal Cora made with Rumpel promised, in keeping with the classic tale, that she would give him her firstborn child in exchange for him teaching her to spin the straw to gold (though I still haven't figured out why Rumpel wants to collect babies. He wants his son back, yes, but I don't know why he wants all these random people's children). However, after their romance, Cora planned to not marry Prince Henry and to instead run off with Rumpel out of love, and as a romantic gesture, Rumpel amended the deal to say that it was his own child she would owe him. Cora was truly in love, but she was also overcome with a dark, yearning love for the power of which she had been deprived as a poor miller's daughter. (Both Cora and Rumpel had a good bit of trouble with nobles looming over them. Then both of them killed the nobles who had loomed over them, and each took power in their own way.) Because of her desperate lust for power, Cora magically tore out her own heart so she couldn't feel her deep love for Rumpel. She chose not to elope with him and so instead married the prince she didn't love for power, and these became Henry's grandparents via Regina. Rumpel would have been owed Regina as his daughter through the deal if Cora had not tricked him and invalidated the deal, so he is almost Henry's grandpa that way, but he's more so Henry's grandpa the other way. In a way, Rumpel sort of still got Regina, because she became his magical student. He seems to be in constant pursuit of her and they are both constantly trying to manipulate one another and get the better of each other. They're continuously trying to spite each other. 
        Anyways, while I felt bad for Rumpel getting stood up and all, in the end I'm rather glad he did because he's so much better with Belle. Cora shared his darkness, but Belle brings out his light. While I came to understand Cora's reasons for her malevolence through this episode, I still wasn't really sad when she died, because she truly sank her own ship, sawing hole after hole in its deck with her own hands. She had opportunities to make better choices but she didn't, and her choice to become heartless and her choices made out of that heartlessness led her to her depressing, lonely, and cruel life, and it was really no one's fault but her own. It's just unfortunate how her bad choices hurt Regina and Henry sr., and briefly Rumpel, but he got even in a way that I didn't necessarily approve of but one that worked to get what needed to happen done, because we need Mr. Gold to stay alive and we needed Cora to die. It was a little sad, though, for that split moment when Cora had her heart back in when she realized that it would have been enough to have love in her life and not gobble up power like a ravenous wolf. Her choices particularly hurt Regina because not only did Cora make her childhood beyond miserable and kill her true love, she also turned her daughter evil and caused her to cause hurt and pain and in so doing hurt and damage herself, and it took her a very long time to repair her life and she's even still trying to repair and improve things, and really some things in her life might be irreparable. But, yeah, Cora was, well, heartless. 
        Well, that's one set of grandparents covered. Now for the other... well, just two more sets, really, because I don't know anything about the parents of any of Regina's "loves", not Daniel, nor King Leopold, nor the Magic Mirror, nor--oh, wait, I do know the Huntsman's in a sense. He was raised by wolves, if I recollect properly. So Henry has a few wolves very loosely involved in his adoptive grand-parentage. Hey, maybe he's even related to Red Riding-hood, for all we know. I also don't know anything about Robin Hood's parents. 
       So, now we come to Emma's parents, who were lost to her until the curse was broken at the end of season one, when, much to her surprise, she found out that they were Snow White and Prince Charming. As it so happened, she had already been living with her mom. And they also happen to be about the same age as her, as a result of the curse. Henry's got some of the youngest grandparents ever, who are still in their twenties. Actually, they're thinking about having another child, which would be Henry's aunt or uncle if they did. 
         Several of these people are of the age that they could still have children if they wanted, and many of them are thinking about it. Hey, even Rumpelstiltskin, who's, like, hundreds of years old or something, is still thinking about it, being as he's not aged since his (first) son was in his early teens. Oh, and his son, Neal/Bae, Henry's dad, is also like hundreds of years old because he stayed young in Neverland. Henry has a lot of old/young/abnormally aged relatives. But we're still on Princess Snow and Prince Charming, or Mary Margaret and David, or Snow and David, since his real name actually is David. Henry has a lot of royalty in his blood, too. Regina's a queen by marriage, her mom, Cora, was also a queen by marriage, her dad was a king by birth, Emma's hereditarily a princess, Snow White is a princess who should have been a queen--and was briefly, after she married Charming--Charming/James/David isn't actually a royal by blood, but his brother was adopted by king George, and he took his place after he died---then Rumpelstiltskin was never actually royal, per say, but he did live in a pretty awesome castle, Charming was betrothed to Abigail, the daughter of King Midas... But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, we have Princess/Queen Snow White, and Prince/King David "Charming", and they are the first grandparents Henry ever knows of or meets, because his adoptive mother's dad was dead and her mom was still in the fairytale world until she came through a portal to attempt to take over everything and got killed by Rumpelstiltskin, Henry's other grandpa. 
       Henry's family kills each other a lot. His mom, Regina, killed the Huntsman, Henry's almost-adoptive dad, and King Leopold (albeit by manipulation of the genie), who was her husband and so would've been Henry's adoptive dad, and she killed Henry sr., Henry's grandpa and her dad, and she more-or-less 'killed' Snow, and she even technically killed Henry himself, because his heart did stop after he ate the apple turnover Regina had intended for Emma, and her royal guards killed Ruth, Charming's mother, Henry's great-grandma. Then we have Rumpelstiltskin, Henry's grandpa, who killed his own wife Milah, Henry's grandma, and Cora (albeit by manipulation of Snow White), Henry's other grandma, and he nearly killed Hook multiple times, Henry's almost step-grandpa, and Tamara, Bae's treacherous fiancé, and at one point, Lacey, who's like the anti-Belle (antebellum? No, just anti-Belle, hehe), convinced Rumpel to attempt to kill Henry himself, but obviously, he stopped. Then there's Cora, who killed Eva, Snow's mother and Henry's great-grandmother, and also Daniel, Regina's first love and a plausible adoptive dad for Henry, and she nearly killed King Xavier before he convinced her not to, but he's Henry's other great-grandpa. Then we have Hook, Henry's mom's associate and his almost-step-grandpa, who nearly killed Rumpel, Henry's grandpa twice over. Then we have Snow, Henry's grandma, who killed Cora, Henry's other grandma, to save Rumpel, Henry's grandpa. Yep, they're all just one big happy family. 
        So, anyways, we have Snow White and David Charming and they're the most warm-and-fuzzy of Henry's grandparents, probably, but somehow what was meant to be their paragraph kept getting preempted by a plethora of digressions. So, here is a new paragraph to help me focus. They probably also do the most grandparently things with Henry, like when Charming starts giving Henry "prince lessons", because Henry's a prince, and even when Snow was being Henry's teacher under the curse, she made birdhouses and such with him, which is rather grandmotherly. 
        As to their relationships, neither of them ever really, truly loved anyone besides one another, but since I'm nitpicking every relationship I can think of, here goes. When Rumpelstiltskin made a deal with David to have him impersonate his twin brother James, he became inadvertently betrothen to Princess Abigail, the daughter of King Midas (which puts another famous gold-maker in the family). While they never actually married, after the curse struck, and after David awoke from his coma (which he was in because Regina's guards nearly killed him, too), Regina made it so that David was married to Kathryn, which was Abigail in the 'real' world. 
        During this curse-stricken time, Snow had her own thing, which was perhaps a little more than Emma's thing with Hook but which was less than Neal's thing with Tamara. The thing that makes her thing really weird is not only that she had a thing while she was married though she didn't know it and she never would have had a thing if she had known that she was married, but also her thing is extra weird because it was with Dr. Frankenstein. I can't say I particularly like him. Well, actually, I just plain don't like him. I mean, the whole "I want my name to be associated with life!" thing was nice, but just, the way he went about it, and all that, it's just... creepy. He's really a pretty creepy dude. He got his brother killed, accidentally, yes, but unnecessarily still, and then he let his brother's zombie kill their dad. But he does bring some not-at-all-much-needed-but-still-rather-interesting diversity to Henry's family tree. He is, after all, the only character, albeit only marginally included, from the Black and White World, or whatever you want to call his little realm. 
       So now we get to move on to the character who is probably my favorite of Henry's grandparents, Neal/Bae's dad, Rumpelstiltskin! Yes, I guess we touched on him before, because of his relationship and near-elopement with Cora, Regina's mother, but this is where he fits most concretely into Henry's tree. This is where he is actually Henry's relation by blood, because he actually parented Bae, who actually parented Henry. In this same way, Milah would be Henry's biological paternal grandmother. 
        While Belle is probably the main driving force in Rumpel's self improvement (one could say that, at times, Belle, and even Lacey, has more power over the Dark One than his dagger, for good, or, in the case of Lacey, for evil (after all, Lacey very nearly drove Rumpel to kill Henry)), and Bae is a factor as well, Henry also significantly contributes to Rumpel becoming a good, kind, and caring man. Rumpel does genuinely care for his grandson Henry, despite the fact that all the while he's wrestling with the prophecy stating that Henry is to be Rumpel's undoing. I wonder if that prophecy's done yet or not. You could make the argument that Henry's already inadvertently been Rumpel's undoing in several ways. Really, the term "undoing" is very vague. It could be said to refer to Rumpel getting trapped in Pandora's box, or to Henry's being part of Rumpel's family leading him to be good and use his evil magic less and in better ways, thus making him less so "the Dark One", or to Rumpel's quest to save Henry causing Rumpel to stop constantly thinking only of how to save himself and making him willing to actually sacrifice himself, making him less the coward he always was, which is part of his former identity, or just simply Henry being Rumpel's emotional undoing because he, like Belle, made Rumpel feel and care and make a choice to follow love more than his own powers. 
       Rumpelstiltskin/Gold's most significant romantic relationship is without question Belle. In fact, I think they might get married at some point in the show. If Belle and Rumpel do get married, which I very much hope they eventually do, and even have a child, which I also think would be lovely, then Belle would be Henry's kind step-grandmother and their child would be Bae's half-brother or sister and Henry's half/step (I'm not sure which) aunt or uncle. In this case Rumpel's second child would only be a few hundred years younger than his first. Gotta love magic! 
       Then, we have Milah, Rumpel's wife. She ran off on Rumpel with a pirate while Bae was young, and this pirate is named Captain Hook. In case you forgot in the fifteen or so paragraphs in between, Hook was listed in the Parents & Such paragraphs as Henry's biological mom, Emma's vague acquaintance/thing, and here he is once more, in the grandparents' section, as Milah's... boyfriend is the nearest term. Or "affair" if you prefer. I should also note that Hook is among the characters who is a few hundred years old, having been in Neverland a while, and he actually even knew Rumpelstiltskin before he became the Dark One, which was quite some time ago. They weren't very nice to each other, to put it lightly. To put it not lightly, when Hook first took away Rumpel's wife Milah, he challenged him to a duel over her, which was cruel and unfair because Rumpel was hobbled and could hardly stand on his own without his cane, much less have half a flaming snowball's chance at winning in a sword duel against an able-bodied pirate. Rumpel, like any sane, not-honor-obsessed, healthily afraid man, refused, and Hook, cackling malevolently, ran off with Rumpel's wife. Later, after Rumpel became the Dark One, he, like any insane, magical-power-obsessed, rather unhealthily vengeful (but still loveable,) man, came after Hook, challenged him to a duel Hook couldn't possibly win against a magical, unkillable being, and Rumpel was about to rip out Hook's heart and kill him when Milah awkwardly walked in. After some thought, Rumpel left Hook be, then ripped out his not-legally-but-practically ex-wife's heart and crushed it in front of the man who stole her to make him live with the pain of losing her, and it worked, because Hook was empty and lonely for many years, much like Rumpel.  
      I think that covers all of Henry's known grandparents. So, before moving on to the further-intricate layer of Henry's great-grandparents, I think we all need a quick, short recap. So. Henry's adoptive mother, who raised him, is Regina. He has no definitive adoptive dad, but sort of's include King Leopold, Sheriff Graham, Sidney Glass, Robin Hood, and Daniel (in no particular order). His birth mother is Emma Swan and his birth dad is Neal/Baelfire. His biological grandparents are Snow White, Prince Charming, Rumpelstiltskin, and Milah. His adoptive grandparents are Prince Henry and Cora. That's just in brief, minus the extraneous relationships. So now, for his great grandparents, following the previously established order. 
       Cora's mother is not yet identified, so far as I know, and her dad is known only as the Miller. Henry's first great-grandpa is a lazy drunk, as far as we've seen, and he leaves Cora to deal with his messes. He seems careless. His family is impoverished and makes their living selling flour to the royals, and Cora detests this life--she is filled with bitterness. Then we have Prince Henry's parents. We also don't know his mother, but we do know his dad. Henry sr's dad is the King to whom Cora boasts of her ability to spin straw into gold. He is named King Xavier and he is quite manipulative and devious. After Cora makes all the gold in the tower and earns the hand of Henry sr and makes her plot to run off with Rumpel, she goes to Xavier to rip out his heart and kill him (a two-step process), but he tricks her with his words. It is from him that Cora and later Regina got their line, "love is weakness". He convinces Cora to rip out her own heart so she can have the power and wealth of being Queen. If one really wanted to play the blame game, one could trace much of the evil in the antagonists of the series back to Xavier in this moment. Going all the way back, Xavier, Zoso, and Rumpelstiltskin's dad can be pinned as the three primary sources of evil of which we know in this series, though obviously things go even further back, and we can't just blame these three figures, though it is tempting. But one of the huge themes of the series is that no villain is purely evil and that everyone has motive and some good inside them that has been twisted and hidden by something. Still, thus far, Henry's great-grandparents aren't really that great. It doesn't get much better, I'm sorry to say. 
        Well, in the interest of fully exploring all extremely tangential relationships, I can go on with the huntsman's family briefly here. In the grandparents' section, I cited that this 'love interest' of Regina's was raised by wolves. I don't precisely know who the wolves' parents were, in case you were wondering, but I'd wager it was more wolves. (To quote Rumpelstiltskin in one of his very sweet, earlier romantic moments with Belle, that one was a quip, dearie ;) 
       Next, we have Snow White's parents. They are perhaps the best documented of all Henry's great-grandparents. Snow's mother was Queen Eva, who grew into a kind, gentle, fair, and much-loved queen, teaching her daughter to always do the good, right thing and to strive to be "guided by love", yet who I think was also the same as Princess Eva, the snarky, stuck-up young woman who meanly tripped Cora when she was carrying sacks of flour into their castle, causing Cora to lose wages her family desperately needed and humiliating her in public, which did not sit well with Cora's ego. Really, this early Eva could be traced as a cause in the evil that filled the main antagonists of the series along with Xavier. She learned from her mistakes, though, and became kind and gentle, teaching her daughter Snow the same after she rudely snapped at their servant, Johanna, who became something of a mother to Snow after Eva died. Despite this change, Cora never stopped hating her, and eventually she murdered her and tried to corrupt her daughter Snow in the process. In a way, she succeeded, though her success was much delayed, and it lead to Cora's own death. You see, Cora tried to corrupt Snow by giving her a candle that could trade one life for another, which she could use to save her mother, but in doing so she would murder someone else. Snow doesn't give in to the evil and use it on her mother, but many years later, after the breaking of the curse, she uses the candle to trade Cora's life for Rumpelstiltskin's, putting a dark blemish on her heart. Henry's family has a lot of conflict within itself. Then, Snow's dad was the benevolent but perhaps misguided and somewhat oblivious/rather insensitive King Leopold. He was basically a kind man, as we can see when he frees the genie, but he is insensitive, for example, in the way he speaks of his deceased wife in front of his new wife, making Regina feel much less special to him, which she is, but he shouldn't rub it in her face like he does. Oh, but by the way, here's Regina again. That's right. She's not just Henry's adoptive mother, she's also Henry's step-great-grandmother, because she's married to his great-grandpa. Yup. Told you Henry's family tree was convoluted. 
        On Charming's side of things, we again get the two-family effect brought by adoption. David was raised on a humble sheep farm by his mother Ruth. I don't think his dad is ever named, but we know he was Ruth's true love, and that he died while David was young. David isn't necessarily adopted, per say, but he's... taken to be a replacement child in some form. Well, a long time ago, King George made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin because his wife (who I believe is also unnamed and is dead by the time the action starts) was infertile, and so Rumpel went to David's family farm. His parents gave up his twin brother James to be the king's son in exchange for the success of their faltering farm. So then, when James dies, King George gets Rumpel to make another deal, and so David comes in to be the replacement James. Thus, Henry's great grandparents here are Ruth and her deceased husband, as well as King George and his deceased wife. This is also why David is mainly known as Prince James, even to the dwarfs, because that's who he's had to impersonate. Which means when he becomes King, he will be King James. I wonder if Once is going to go there, but I think it's probably too historical for them to do. That would make him a real-world king of England, but he's not in the real world.
     From David's forced betrothal to Princess Abigail, Henry gets to have King Midas thrown into the tangential relationships of his family tree. Strictly speaking, he's not exactly Henry's great-grandpa, but he's the dad of the betrothed of Henry's grandpa, so that's a relation of some sort. Plus, this way, Henry gets to have two family members capable of magically producing gold--Midas and Rumpelstiltskin. Oh, wait, and Cora can, too. Or could. Before Henry's biological paternal grandpa (Rumpel) goaded his biological maternal grandma (Snow) into tricking his adoptive mother/step-great-grandmother (Regina) into killing her by replacing her heart, who was Henry's adoptive maternal grandmother (Cora). Cause that's just how things go on Once. 
      Lastly, we have the person we were probably all the most surprised to find out was related to Henry. Peter Pan. I think every single person watching the show was just thrown off their seats in awe when it was revealed that Pan is Rumpel's dear old dad. I mean, maybe you had half an inkling when the two of them showed up in Neverland, but I sure didn't. I think that as the shadow was pulling poor little adorable kid Rumpel away and as Rumpel's dad started to transform and was shrouded in a cloud of dark magic, my mom said something to the lines of, "he's not Peter Pan, is he?" but that was the soonest we guessed. My mom is very clever that way; she definitely put it together before I did. But man, when you see Peter smirking up at the innocent little Rumpel, you just go, "oh my GOSH!" and it's just like... woh.  It's crazy. Man, Rumpel's dad was a selfish idiot. Poor little Rumpel. Little Rumpel was just so cute, wasn't he? 
       At least as a grown-up he did better than his dad (though he still didn't do great, but he's improving), and now he's got his son back and they're all happy again and he's learning to be not evil like he used to be and I love them as a family, Rumpel and Bae and his hopefully-soon-to-be (definitely non-wicked; rather, kind and good) stepmother Belle. And maybe Bae's younger sibling shall come along. 
       But Rumpel's dad, well, he is a piece of work. Sure people in Henry's family kill each other with abnormal frequency, but Pan is the only one who has ever knowingly and intentionally tried to kill Henry himself with no regrets or hesitation and very nearly succeeded. He is a manipulative, evil, man-turned-"child"-but-really-a-hundred-year-old-teenager-or-whatever-age-he-is-or-pretends-to-be-person, and he takes advantage of Henry's innocent belief and gullibility to convince his only-slightly-younger-than-him (or so it appears, because they are actually hundreds of years apart) great-grandchild to remove his own heart and give it to him so he can continue on living, not caring that he's stealing the life of his amazing and exceptional great-grandson. Pan is almost more heartless than Cora. I mean, he still physically has a heart, so far as I know, though I guess it needed replaced, but he acts so emotionlessly. Well, he does have emotions, anger not the least of them, he's just completely and utterly self-centered. At least Cora, in her own messed up way, tried to help Regina; everything we have ever seen Pan do has been for his own benefit. He even locks Henry in Pandora's box (after his son Rumpelstiltskin escaped from having been locked there by Pan) by switching bodies with Henry. So, if Henry swapped bodies with Pan, does that make Henry his own great-grandpa?? 
        Well, at least, as far as I can think of, the convolutedness of Henry's family tree ends here. I don't know anything about Rumpel's mom or any of Pan's relationships. It is interesting to note that we don't know Peter Pan's real name; we only know that he's going by his son's doll's name. He tries to say that it's out of nostalgia, but I think it's just a further example of his manipulativeness. I think Peter goes by the name he does purely to get in Rumpel's head. After all, it is a very devious branch of Henry's family. I think Pan is that manipulative, that he would choose a name with the sole purpose of messing with his son in mind. Well, and it might also serve to make him sound less scary and intimidating and instead more familiar and approachable to the lost boys, especially if his real name is anything like Rumpelstiltskin's or Baelfire's. Just my theories. 
        Well, is that really all of it? I don't know. That's all that occurs to me at the moment, at least. My goodness this is longer than I thought it would be! But that's why I love Once Upon a Time so much. It is so cleverly done and so intricately woven and so carefully and precisely written with such immense attention to detail that crazy people like me can write lengthy and superfluously detailed analyses of just one character (albeit the most central character, besides Emma) and spend this much time and write this many words on thoroughly examining all that character's vague and tangential familial relationships. But really, I think we all kind of wish we had Henry's family tree. I mean, who else gets to have the Wicked Queen, Rumpelstiltskin, Peter Pan, Snow White, Prince Charming, King Midas, Dr. Frankenstein, Belle, Captain Hook, Robin Hood, the Magic Mirror, Rumpelstiltskin again, the Wicked Queen again, Captain Hook again, and even more magical and royal and mysterious and plain-out awesome people in their family tree? I mean, all of those fantastical people, somehow or another able to be put in your family tree. That's pretty darn cool. Henry is a very special little dude. I believe Pan said something to Henry that was something like this: "you come from the best of light and the worst of dark, Henry." Of course, Henry's great-grandad said this to him in an effort to manipulate Henry in order to steal his life, but it is nonetheless a fairly good sum-up. All the fairytale characters seem to be somehow related to Henry, good and bad, and it's just so expertly done by the writers of Once. It's amazing, and it's a wonderful, addicting series. I think it's obvious I'm a wee bit obsessed with it. Beyond the violet mist, we've been doing some genealogical research, finding ourselves wrapped up in the glorious piles of aged pages of historic recordbooks amidst vast libraries betwixt towering expanses shelves filled with volumes of ancient knowledge, all to comprehend the remarkable family tree of one very special young boy from another realm.

Thanks to http://ouatv1.blogspot.com/ for minor details I couldn't recollect, such as Sherrif Graham's real-world name and Snow White's dad's name. and http://onceuponatime.wikia.com/wiki/ for other things the first one didn't have, like Snow White's mom's name and Prince Henry's dad's name, and the original Dark One's name. I believe those are all the sites I utilized for research. I may have made errors. Feel free to comment with any corrections or details I've missed!