Better, But Not Different

[RumplesGirl]

Just because he is the darkest of dark ones now and has all the combined power of prior dark ones? I’d expect that to amplify the darkness, not decrease it. *head desk*

Yes that! Isn’t the darkness and the evil that comes with it going to be even more tempting now that it’s all the powers of the dark ones which now includes Super Dark! Hook and Savior Gone Dark! Emma?

[thedarkonedearie]

I’m pretty sure Rumple will be the person who Merlin predicted would eventually be able to wield great power without giving into the darkness. Hence, Belle will be able to live with his status as the dark one, provided he only uses his power for good, rather than for evil. With all that being said, however, when I actually pause to consider it, I don’t see how Rumple will be able to prevent the darkness from consuming him. His heart actually turned coal black the last time. What makes him think he’s suddenly capable of not letting the darkness consume him again? What’s to keep the darkness at bay this time–just because he has all the combined power of previous dark ones now? I’d expect that to amplify the darkness, not decrease it. *head desk*

I like this a lot.  And I think Rumple could not let the darkness take over like last time because he simply has gone through this before.  He has made many mistakes over the years because of his new found power.  He was like a kid in a candy shop, and it took over him.  Now, with Belle in mind, and many years of living as the DO with the darkness, I think he can be the one person who can wield the power without giving in to the darkness.

[thedarkonedearie]

es that! Isn’t the darkness and the evil that comes with it going to be even more tempting now that it’s all the powers of the dark ones which now includes Super Dark! Hook and Savior Gone Dark! Emma?

Fair point.  This should be a struggle for Rumple.  However, if he only craves the possession of the power, and doesn’t crave doing bad things with it, this still could work.

[nevermore]

So… I too feel conflicted on this scene.

Negatives:

–  For all intents and purposes, Rumple was claiming that he understand Belle’s feelings better than she does herself, and Belle certainly doesn’t need to put up with her husband mansplaining things to her. Boo. Bad Rumple. On the other hand, he was kinda right.

– The “This is who I am, deal with it” line can be a totally manipulative jerk move — because where does it stop? It potentially completely absolves one party from any need to compromise. That being said, I don’t think that’s necessarily where Rumple was coming from in that scene, but that remains to be seen. If Belle does stay with him, they will have to establish what works for them. (Safe words, contractual stipulations about not murdering the peasants etc.) On the other hand, since Rumple’s always more or less lied to Belle around issues having to do with his power, perhaps this opens an avenue for a different type of relationship between them, one where there is more honesty, both to each other, and to themselves.

– More generally, this conversation has been long overdue, and the fact that the writers chose to do this plot line in relation to Belle’s pregnancy is pretty reprehensible. Not just for the in-story logic that Belle is now tethered to Rumple in a much more profound way (unless the baby never makes it of course), but for the mora general theme that parenthood changes you. I don’t buy the salvation by baby narrative one bit.

Positives:

– I don’t know if the show is doing this on purpose, but I find the message that “your partner is not going to change for you, so stop holding out for it” incredibly refreshing. Because, really, they’re not going to change, and the logic of romantic love as the great “taming” force, especially taken to its absurd extreme, like in the case of Twilight, is problematic. Sure, partnership is about compromise, but the frog really isn’t going to turn into a prince, no matter how many times you kiss it. This doesn’t mean that people can’t change, but short of some kind of existential crisis, in the full meaning of the term, it’s unlikely. I suppose romantic (or parental) love could be that existential crisis, but to assume that it always is can be incredibly damaging and perpetuate abuse. It also assumes that the people who don’t find romantic (or parental) love to effectuate some kind of earth shattering, tectonic shift in personality are somehow deficient in their affective capacity.  So good on OUAT for making this explicit (I have some thoughts on CS here too, but I think this isn’t a good place for them).

Questions:

I honestly don’t know if there is an ethical space for Belle to occupy moving forward unless the writers change the Darkness metaphor once again. There’s good reasons to think that this might happen: the writers have tended to shift on what the Darkness is/does. There have been three main themes, I think: the main ones were always mental illness and addiction, while in the background there’s been the “magic, both light and dark, as a force of nature/ natural phenomenon” which hasn’t been explored. Considering the Merlin prediction, and that we are now done with DO Emma (and thankfully DO Hook), I suspect that the writers might re-shift the focus/interpretation again. If I were to make a guess, considering how the narrative’s going, they might traipse into a dualist cosmology (the light magic needs dark magic as the dark magic needs light magic yaddi yadda). They will have to solve two problems: (1) the darkness being physically corrupting (the whole heart becomes coal syndrome), and (2) they have to de-personify dark magic by getting rid of its association with previous Dark One entities as hauntings/animating voices. Anyway, that’s what MacGuffins are for.

More specifically about Rumple and power: I think Rumple was retconned to remove the scare quotes from “coward,”  but I also think that the control freak aspect of his personality was there all along (as has been discussed upthread). This is a man who can’t deal with contingency (I think there’s both a psychological, and a class-related explanation for this, but it’s too early in the morning to break out the Marx.) But there is a big step from wanting power for its pragmatic benefits, and loving power. Unless we are meant to interpret Rumple’s statement as a sudden moment of self-honesty?

 

[Gaultheria]

Bravo to Rumpel for manning up! I think his talk with Belle was a huge step forward for his character development.

Gaultheria's fanvids: http://youtube.com/sagethrasher

[RumplesGirl]

I don’t have answers to Nevermore’s questions. And I have one of my own. Belle is such a non-entity most of the time and with everything else going on–Zelena, Hades, Underworld life–is Belle even going to be given room to explore what her relationship with Rumple is like and what it will entail going forward? How should Belle approach these very difficult circumstances?

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Keb]

I want to see her not rushed…and I want to see Rumple back down slightly from his take me or leave me stance. He needs to SHOW her he’s truly a better man. The way this show is going, it WILL be rushed (you have a man who has an eternity to fall in love with Zelena and they got 20 minutes together…real time). But what I mostly want to see is for her to have a chance to accept the harder truths that Rumple has asked her to face. YAnno, maybe talk it out with, say, her good friend Killian? Or David?

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Slurpeez]

The show seems to be suggesting that it’s okay, and even good, for Rumple to love his drug and his wife the same amount and that Belle needs to face facts, accept him as he is, or leave him forever. Yes, it’s a way for the show to have its cake and eat it too–keep Rumple the “interesting” dark one and have Rumbelle get their HEA but I find it to be disquieting that the show is encouraging us to root for Belle to accept her lying, drug addicted husband as is and not root for evolution of character and redemption.

I agree. Here is my big issue with this development. Belle gave Rumple an ultimatum before: her or the dagger. Belle said it best, “your true love is power.” Rumple basically echoed this sentiment when he said he “loves the dagger” (or rather, what it represents, I gather). By refusing to give up the dagger (despite being free of it) he rejected her ultimatum. On top of that, he countered with his own ultimatum: take it or leave it. I don’t see how Belle can honestly live with that without sacrificing her self-dignity. Rumple is basically manipulating her. He knows that Belle deeply desires a happy family life with him, but he’ll only give it to her if she allows him to remain a happy addict. Moreover, Rumple is basically telling her that she fell in love with the beast, but I hope she doesn’t buy it, because it’s totally false. Trying to convince her how she feels or felt is red flag. Additionally, that retcon just flies in the face of what we saw in “Skin Deep”.The entire point was Belle saw through the mask, and fell in love with the man behind the beast. Belle spoke truly when she said his power did not mean more to him than she did. At least, that is how it was originally portrayed.

Rumple is still declaring that they can have it all, power and love, but that just goes to show he has learned nothing since 4×11, when Belle sent him over the town line. If Belle takes him back under the condition he has just set out, then she has to live with the knowledge that maybe she was wrong in 1×12. Maybe his power does mean more to him than she does. He just said it means at least as much to him as she does (probably more, according to the gauntlet in 4×11). Does she really want to live with the knowledge that her husband’s addition to power is his true love and that her kiss will likely always be unable to free him? Now that she is carrying his child, she might end up settling the way Milha thought she had to for the sake of Bae. Then again, Belle might not, since she might feel Rumple’s addiction wouldn’t be a good influence on an impressionable young child. I suppose this ought to be viewed as a cautionary tale that love isn’t always enough and that it doesn’t always help someone to become free of addiction/love of power/whatever issue.

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[Keb]

I’m hoping that the point they get to (we ARE still in the middle of their story) is that Belle cannot make Rumple change for her. If/when he gives up the dagger/power, he must do it for himself, otherwise it will never stick, no matter how much he loves her or his children.

His love for them may be part of why he chooses to give it up, but it ultimately has to be a decision he makes freely to better himself. Anything less, and the moment he doesn’t have that outside support, he will fall right back into his hole. That’s exactly what happened when he took the power back–he’d become a hero, he’d shaken off the darkness, and Belle left him anyway…so he took it back the first chance he got. Likewise, in S3, he’d become a hero, died to save his son and true love, and he got resurrected and lost his son anyway (and wound up Zelena’s slave for a year)…so he fell back into manipulating, lying, and clinging to his power.

I do believe that the only way for Belle and Rumple to move forward in a way that works for both characters is for him ultimately to surrender the power in some way, but it has to be HIS choice. Just as Belle now has to make her own choice about what she’s willing to live with to get what she wants.

I don’t think Rumple was wrong in his observations, at least not completely. Belle DOES like the darkness, and from his perspective, she dumped him again as soon as he was exactly what she SAID she wanted…and took him back when he had the darkness again (even if she didn’t know that). He also knows how the Curse affected people’s personalities/alter egos, having experienced it himself; I think that Lacey represents a part of Belle that a) was always present, if suppressed and b) is almost certainly still in her somewhere, as We Are Both was supposed to suggest. She’s said herself that she loves all of him, including the darkness. But she’s not wrong to want him to stop murdering the peasants, either; I think she’d be happy with his having the power to do so if a) he wasn’t choosing it over her and b) he wasn’t murdering the peasants. Those were the two breaking points for her in 4A.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[thedarkonedearie]

Now that she is carrying his child, she might end up settling the way Milha thought she had to for the sake of Bae. Then again, Belle might not, since she might feel Rumple’s addiction wouldn’t be a good influence on an impressionable young child. I suppose this ought to be viewed as a cautionary tale that love isn’t always enough and that it doesn’t always help someone to become free of addiction/love of power/whatever issue.

It will be interesting to see how Belle continues to react to this whole dilemma, because now that a baby is involved, I do see a scenario where she settles for the sake of her child, allowing them to be with his or her father.  Or, she might not settle.  I think we’ll start to see Belle try and control Rumple a bit in what he uses the power for in the next episode.  She’s going to at least give it the old college try and see if Rumple is being sincere when he says he doesn’t want to use it for bad.  Because I do think it has been made very clear, that Belle only really cares when Rumple does something bad with his power (like hat sucking, or murder etc. etc.).  If he can prove to her that he’ll only use the power to protect the one’s he loves and not for evil, that may be enough for her.  But she’s going to put boundaries up right away and make sure he knows she’s the one in control and that she will leave him if he doesn’t bend a bit for her.  But if I were her, and Rumple said he loved the power and myself equally, but then only used the power for protection and not for evil (plus I’m carrying his child), I would probably accept that and at least see if it could work.

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