It’s funny, I wrote a similar thing quite awhile back if you remember, talking about the reasons Neal gets disliked, and Screwball, wonderful as she is, didn’t really acknowledge the biggest reasons: He’s in the way of two ships.
Yeah and that bothers me because Screwball has always maintained a careful aloofness about CSF in particular, refusing to “pick one”
A few Rumbellers were NOT happy that Rumple was all “You’re my Happy Ending” to Neal. Screwball seems to be annoyed at Neal for not comforting Belle–yet, its funny because I haven’t seen anyone annoyed at Belle for not comforting Neal. That tells you something right there.
I haven’t had my morning coffee yet so I’m going to try and make this as intelligible as possible. I think both Neal and Belle suffer from “lack of archetype” syndrome. Everyone else on the show–The Princess, The Knight, The Queen/Witch, The Wizard, The Savior, The Pirate–falls rather neatly into certain archetypes and we more or less know what to make of them. Neal isn’t an archetype because, again, he’s so human. So people just don’t know how to respond to him. Belle also doesn’t really fit into any archetype–she’s not a princess, a warrior, the savior, a queen, or magical. In fact, if I had to pick the two characters who you either love or hate..it’s Belle and Neal. A lot of people see Belle as useless or a prop or a crutch for Rumple. But she get more love than Neal because her story is tied up in a very classic archetype of The Wizard (Rumple) and her story is a tale as old as time. I really want Belle and Neal to comfort each other because to loose your father isn’t greater than to loose your true love, but to loose your true love isn’t any worse than to loose your father.