Fate VS Choice

[Keb]

Virtually every single time Rumple’s made a deal, he’s offered people a choice. While he manipulates things in the background and tends to deal with desperate souls anyway, he doesn’t generally deny people their agency (important exceptions: Baelfire in 304, Belle when he made her leave the Dark Castle & when he left her in Storybrooke in 222–with a nice interlude in 211 when she THOUGHT he’d deny her a choice and he didn’t–, Milah wrt leaving the town and starting over…and most of the people he’s killed, though sometimes, like with Smee, they were already on their second or third chances with him).

But when it comes to deals, he says over and over, “Everyone has a choice.” Yet he clearly believes in destiny and fate, a belief he passed on to Baelfire. This is most relevant in Manhattan, when the influence of the Seer on Rumple is made most obvious. He believes he can fight destiny, but he also believes it exists–that the boy will be his undoing, for example.

So…how much choice do people really have in Once? Is Rumple being completely honest when he tells people they have a choice? Is Swanfire a fate thing instead of a love thing–and if it’s fate, does that mean the love they had/have is less real/true?

[Phee]

Fate talk tends to twist my brain in knots and make it hurt, but as far as SF goes, I believe they were destined/fated/manipulated into meeting and making baby Henry, but it doesn’t require love to make a baby.

The timing of their meeting was manipulated. Pan kicked Bae out of NL at the right time so he’d meet Emma. Emma ended up in our world where she was able to meet Neal, due to the Curse having happened. I think that the conception of the one Pan was looking for had been foretold to happen at a specific time, so Pan knew that Henry was a fetus before Emma and Neal did, and that’s why it was at that particular point in time that they were separated in such a definite way, with contact severed, so that Neal couldn’t know about the baby, because if he knew, he’d have stayed, they’d have kept baby Henry for themselves, causing headaches for Pan, and the Curse wouldn’t have been broken, and terrible things would have happened, (Adam’s words), and maybe he’d have tried to keep the secret of it all from Emma, which would have torn him apart, but if he did try to tell her, she’d never believe it, and it would have torn them apart anyway. Basically, they were pawns in the grand plan for Pan to get Henry, and their relationship was doomed to be torn apart.

Like I said at the start of the post, it doesn’t require love to make a baby. The part where they fell in love, and still love each other 11 years later, even though fate forced their heartbreaking separation, that’s all on them. They love each other despite the way they’re connected, not because of it.

[Slurpeez]

So…how much choice do people really have in Once? Is Rumple being completely honest when he tells people they have a choice? Is Swanfire a fate thing instead of a love thing–and if it’s fate, does that mean the love they had/have is less real/true?

Rumple strongly believes in fate after his encounter with the seer, and he taught his son, Neal, to believe in fate. Regarding Emma and Baelfire, they’re sitting in a bar in “Manhattan” and Neal says to Emma:

You know, there’s not a ton about my father that I remember that doesn’t suck. But he used to tell me that there are no coincidences. Everything that happens, happens by design, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. Fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it. The point is… Maybe we met for a reason. Maybe something good came from us being together.

Fate, thy name is Peter Pan! He orchestrated Baelfire, the spawn of the dark one, meeting Emma, the product of true love. Hence, together the produced the heart of the truest believer and the savior of magic, Henry. PP even tells Henry he arranged events such that Neal met Emma at the opportune time so that they would produce Henry. Yet, no one, not even magic, can make people love each other, since love must be freely given. Emma and Neal still freely choose to love each other. PP merely took advantage of what that love created: Henry. Just like Rumple arranged for Snow White and Charming finally to end up together to harness the product of their true love (e.g. magic and Emma), so did PP arrange for Emma and Neal Cassidy to meet that the prime moment to create a child who is the product of both light and dark magic (e.g. Henry) and then further manipulated events which led to the dark curse, making Henry have the heart of the truest believer.

"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

[RumplesGirl]

s Swanfire a fate thing instead of a love thing–and if it’s fate, does that mean the love they had/have is less real/true?

Not gonna get into a ship debate thing, but is Snowing’s love any less true because it was engineered wholly by Rumple? He made sure George was broke, he suggested David as a replacement, he put them together many times.

Personally I think we always have a choice. But with these writers, these former LOST writers, people make choices and the universe course corrects. You’re supposed to die today getting hit by a cab. But then you decide to take the subway. So the subway is robbed and you shot. The universe–fate, destiny, whatever you wanna call it–intervenes to make sure that certain events play out. At the end of the day, I think all our characters are just puppets on strings. If Rumple had gone to battle instead of running, the universe would have presented another choice that would have led him to his ultimate fate. But the choice he made were always his alone.

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

[kfchimera]

Coincidences happen as the writers need them to happen.  They are all characters in a story, so the real question: do they know of these other plans and are they acting as they are to fulfill or frustrate these plans?

At one point in time or another, in a fairy tale there will be people who try to separate the true love couples, as well as people who support and try to help them.  Other characters might express opinions to genuinely say what they think or to manipulate, whether that is positive or negative.   Yet it doesn’t negate the choices the characters in the couple make for themselves with regard to each other.  So PP, Rumple, or BF, whoever is trying to pull strings to get people to meet, spend time with each other, (whatever within story reason it happens), ultimately we still see it as a matter of choice for the characters to love or not as we know magic does not control that.

 

 

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

[Slurpeez]

So…how much choice do people really have in Once? Is Rumple being completely honest when he tells people they have a choice?

Keb, in case you’re interested further in the topic, I wrote a meta-essay called Can a Person Change His Fate? which focuses on Rumple and the prophesy which was introduced in 2×14 “Manhattan.”

"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

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