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I disagree. I think Rumple knew exactly where to find Milah because she’d pulled the same stunt before. I think Rumple wanted to keep up the illusion of a happy family for Baelfire and so did Milah hence why, once Baelfire entered the scene, Milah stopped being mean to Rumple and went home quietly. Rumple had told Baelfire to wait outside the tavern but Baelfire went in anyway. Rumple wasn’t being condescending, he was trying to encourage Milah to come home rather than embarrassing her in front of her drinking buddies.
I guess I can’t speak for anyone else, but if I were out with others and my husband (not that I have one, but hypothetically) came in and told me it was just “time to go”, just like that…I’d be very embarrassed. He could have gone up to her and mentioned privately that he had Bae waiting outside or whatever instead of announcing that her playtime was over.
A couple of things:
1. Rumple couldn’t just have a private word with Milah because Milah was in no mood to talk to Rumple. She openly disrespected him in front of a group of pirates who could’ve quite easily turned on him if they felt like it and Rumple knew that. Afterall, pirates aren’t known for their friendly nature. “No-one, just my husband” is very dismissive of Rumple. Rumple only went there because of Baelfire. Had it just been Rumple and Milah then Rumple probably just would’ve waited for Milah to return home when she was ready.
2. In your hypothetical situation, you forget to mention that you’ve got a kid that you decided to leave at home alone just because you wanted to go out. You also forget to mention that you’ve not even told your husband that you were going out, he just comes back from work to find your kid home alone and you gone, no note or anything.
[adrotate group="5"]All magic comes with a price!
Keeper of FelixBut you and I agree on the most basic point: that it would be incredibly hard to pick up and move, but you’re going into more detail than what I think the writers are even interested in. If were you to ask A and E “why didn’t Rumple just move” they’d likely talk about Rumple’s psychology but also “they were poor. It would be hard.” But they aren’t going to give the questioneer a full length dissertation on the subject, specifically the feudal system. They have to reduce it down to something that translates well on TV in less than 60 mins since our show isn’t a time period piece for the most part. If ONCE was set in the past of the EF permanently then I would expect them to take greater care with their historical understandings. But boiled down: Rumple and Milah are very poor, can’t move cause poor.
Writing is more than putting words on a computer screen, it means a lot of research and thinking background through, otherwise you get stories full of plot holes, illogical development, flat character, distracting lack of coherence in the world you’re building. Being poor and can’t move because of that is a quite different explanation than being the sole spinner of the village and every village has only one spinner. Likely A&E haven’t give it more thought than being poor and in fairy tale fictional “medieval” society people just couldn’t move that easy, but the Once universe lacks plenty of solid world building, maybe because they might give things like that little thought and trust more on whatever the audience already imagine. (Aside that being poor was not the main point of mobility being a tough thing in Middle Ages in Europe, but societal structures and politics. Even a rather wealthy dependent farmer wouldn’t have had a chance to legally leave his landlord if the landlord didn’t agree.) But on the show they don’t bother to give much of any explanation, it’s just a “We’ve talked about it” – whatever it was, is left to the audience’s imagination, could have been economical reasons Rumple gave her, bonds to landlord, fate, whatever. But we know by now, Rumples biggest problem was, what his father did to him. Did he tell her that, was he honest in all accounts with Milah or holding back, ashamed? We don’t know that, a lot of the judgment of Milah is based on a few scenes seen from Rumple’s view and plenty of assumptions based on whatever imaginative ideas people have of society of the Enchanted Forest. It’s wide open for very different interpretations.
I don’t expect A&E to be able to write a full dissertation about the Middle Ages in Europe, but I expect them to give the worlds their story takes place in some thoughts. If people wonder, why a book like Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has such an attraction over the years, then look at how much thought and love for detail he put into it – and he did that pretty much alone, not with a team of writers and assistance around. Now I don’t see a quality work like Lord Of the Rings in OUaT, it’s just some entertainment good for a few season of TV, but still if you want to make the psychology of characters work you should pay IMO a bit of attention, that the world you have around your character doesn’t work against the psychology you want to be driving your story.
I honestly have no clue, what the writers might have thought, Rumple’s reasoning, to not be able to leave and start somewhere new, could have been, aside his bad experience with such attempts. I don’t even care that much, because I don’t need to give Rumple any good reasoning, don’t bother if he was right or not, right or not to feel hurt, because he obviously felt hurt. To me that doesn’t at all change, that he committed a serious crime when he killed Milah years later, after having lived apart some time, after having become a different person as the Dark One.
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Writing is more than putting words on a computer screen, it means a lot of research and thinking background through, otherwise you get stories full of plot holes, illogical development, flat character, distracting lack of coherence in the world you’re building.
I am well aware. But I don’t think A and E or their team put that much effort into it. For example, Jane once gave an interview where she was talking about the process of writing one of Rumple’s stories. She said that she and her team sat down, read the really short Rumplestiltskin story, and said, “ok, now how do we twist this.” According to this interview they didn’t do anything other than read the original fairy tale, including doing any sort of outside reading or research.
Being poor and can’t move because of that is a quite different explanation than being the sole spinner of the village and every village has only one spinner
I think you’re misunderstanding what I was getting at originally so here: Rumple and Milah are poor. They could pack up and leave town and try to set up a new shop in a little village but all of that is extraordinarily expensive and they will be in direct competition with whatever spinner is already set up in whatever tiny village they come to. And when push comes to shove, humans are more likely to go to the shop they’ve been going to and have a relationship with. I said it’s probable that Rumple is the only spinner in the village given it’s size, and Adam and Eddy needing to get across that THIS village is a really poor tiny one that the audience understands. I am not saying that Rumple and Milah cannot move simply because he is the only spinner int he village and the village needs their spinner.
But we know by now, Rumples biggest problem was what his father did to him, did he tell her that, was he honest in all accounts with Milah or holding back ashamed? We don’t know that, a lot of the judgment of Milah is based on a few scenes seen from Rumple’s view and plenty of assumptions based on whatever imaginative ideas people have of society of the Enchanted Forest. It’s wide open for very different interpretations.
We don’t know how much Rumple told but we do know that Milah knew about his father leaving Rumple.
Rumpelstiltskin: Oh, Milah… I-I know, I know. I… I can’t say that I… I won’t be frightened. But… But this is the chance I’ve been waiting for…all my life. You know, I’ve lived under the shadow of my father’s actions for too long now.
Milah: Just because your father was a coward, it doesn’t mean you are.
And from later in the same episode
Milah: Just like your father!
Rumpelstiltskin: I am nothing like my father! He tried to abandon me. I will never, ever do that to my son. That’s why I did this. For him. All for the boy. To save him from the same fate I suffered – growing up without a father.
Milah: You sentence him to a fate much worse – growing up as your son.
I don’t expect A&E to be able to write a full dissertation about the Middle Ages in Europe, but I expect them to give the worlds their story takes place in some thoughts.
Well of course I expect the same. But I don’t have any #hope that it’s going to work out that way. Their world building leaves a lot to be desired as does a lot of their writing in more recent seasons.
To me that doesn’t at all that he committed a serious crime when he killed Milah years later, after having lived apart some time, after having become a different person as the Dark One.
Of course he did. I said the same thing. No one deserves to be killed and die an unnatural death.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"And the reason I have more sympathy for Milah than Rumple is that Milah, as a woman, had no power, no control over her life or what the family did. She was mean to Rumple, sure, but she didn’t have the power to make his life miserable (at least not without leaving completely like she did) like Rumple had done to her. And if he’d wanted to pick up and leave her, he could’ve done so without consequence. And of course, she didn’t kill him, so that’s why I’m being harsher on him than on her, and why I see her as the victim in their story.
I think the only thing that stopped Milah from leaving him earlier was the fact that she was a mother (and, perhaps, a bit too concerned with what others thought of her). Not Rumple himself. As we saw in the bar scene, Milah didn’t give a damn about him and his begging, but when Bae popped in, she left immediately.Rumple was an outcast, so probably nobody would’ve cared if Milah had left him. They could have even understood (as the soldier in Desperate Souls seemed to do). But she had a son too, so she couldn’t just leave. That would have looked horrible. But when Hook arrived, she got her chance: pretend to be kidnapped by pirates, and people see you as an innocent victim instead of a mother who abandoned her child.
I’m almost 100% sure that if it wasn’t for Bae, Milah would have left Rumple soon after he returned from war, and I’m also sure Rumple would have let her go if being with him made her so unhappy. After all, in The Crocodile, he only asked her to try. Not for him, but for their son.
Yes, Milah definitely became a victim when Rumple killed her. That was a horrible thing to do, I’m not denying it. But that doesn’t change the fact that before Rumple became the Dark One, he was a victim too.
I think you’re misunderstanding what I was getting at originally so here: Rumple and Milah are poor. They could pack up and leave town and try to set up a new shop in a little village but all of that is extraordinarily expensive and they will be in direct competition with whatever spinner is already set up in whatever tiny village they come to. And when push comes to shove, humans are more likely to go to the shop they’ve been going to and have a relationship with. I said it’s probable that Rumple is the only spinner in the village given it’s size, and Adam and Eddy needing to get across that THIS village is a really poor tiny one that the audience understands. I am not saying that Rumple and Milah cannot move simply because he is the only spinner int he village and the village needs their spinner.
You have a very romantic, fictionalized picture of spinning. Spinning was daily housework or work of servants, and yarn is just a step in the production of cloth. For a weaver to produce something for sale, something going beyond his and his family own needs, it took more than one spinner to produce enough yarn. Even in fairy tales spinning is usually women’s work, housework, work of servants, and unless Rumple was able to spin gold already before becoming the Dark One or over night a barn full of yarn, he would have not been able to make a living for himself and his family with that even in a fairy tale world, regardless if staying in his village or leaving it. Maybe the whole village was poor even, but that never mattered to the story, not even how small or big it was.
You make it sound like Rumple had not much of a choice, but I disagree in that. I said with medieval history in mind, it would have been tough to leave, not because people were poor that much though but because of political settings and societal structure, even a rather well doing dependent farmer would have been not able to move somewhere else legally without agreement of his landlord. On the show that is more or less reduced to economical reason then, as you read it. That is not the way I read it, they don’t bother to offer much of circumstantial reasons at all IMO, because that is not what matters much to their story.
Rumple was content as things were, he was alive, with his son and wife, had a place to live, food, no riches but a decent life – but that was not enough for Milah. Why ever she had married him, the life they were then living didn’t make her happy, she was clearly depressed at home. Was that okay, was she demanding too much? Depends on point of view, but whatever view, Milah was not happy. Was Rumple the same man Milah fell in love with when he returned home, after he had maimed himself to avoid battlefield, heard what allegedly was his fate? No, he wasn’t, he had changed. Milah even asked Rumple not to go into war, was worried, didn’t like that he was so eager to serve in the army, and she gets back a man running from fate who at the same time was believing in fate, and became driven by his abandoning issues.
I didn’t see on screen the story of a man who had no choice but to stay in his old village because of economy, if they really wanted it to be the crucial reason, they could have made Rumple say so instead of this cryptic “we talked about it”. I saw the story of a man who made choices. As David was a poor shepherd and made choices, like the choice to stand up against war lord Bo Peep.
Yes, Milah definitely became a victim when Rumple killed her. That was a horrible thing to do, I’m not denying it. But that doesn’t change the fact that before Rumple became the Dark One, he was a victim too.
The villians once were victims too trope. Besides the family relations one thing villains on Once have in common so far (well, for Snow Queen it’s more a guess at this point, we don’t know Maleficent’s life story, even Pan had a hint of victim as kid as back story). Making a villain a victim in the past is an easy way to make them sympathetic. They’re just leashing out now, are they, it’s all counterpunch, the world, or someone was evil to them. It starts to irk me. Maybe most villains had been victims before, but not many victims turn into a mass murdering, torturing, erratic tyrant, forcing their idea of happiness onto everyone, or a rather ruthless trickster murdering, ex partner and destroying worlds to counteract some huge guilty feelings. This trope is getting dangerously close to become offensive to victims, who struggle with what happened to them all their lives without turning to evil behavior. Since I can remember the question bothered me, how some people turn into “monsters”, do horrible, evil things. I grew up in a country, where in history evil became a system killing billions of people, where one could wonder, how much parents or grandparents knew about it or if they weren’t even in some degree involved. Trying to figure out, how people become “monsters” is for me not about guilty feelings, but to find ways to prevent it from happening. I am convinced evil isn’t born, nurture at least plays as much a role in it, but though having been a victim might explain how people get to some point in their lives eventually, it excuses nothing.
Right, Rumple was a victim in some way. So what?
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