which characters you hate? (no flaming or bashing allowed)

[surayya]

Oh & I forgot to mention- Cora had to rip out her own heart:
Rumple grew to love Cora deeply (as evidenced by his question of her before she died, I have no doubt he loved her), she did it because she loved him- they could have had TLK moment & he then would no longer be the dark one etc if she had kept her heart 😉
Of course he then could have used her heart to create the curse etc or we’d have no series to watch, so it had to go down the way it did 😉

[obisgirl]

Hmm, interesting point Surayya.

[thelonebamf]

Ah, apologies surayya, I may have been unclear in my meaning. I agree with what you said about the blue fairy. My point was simply that that scene with August and Gold at the abbey is an early example of the writers manipulating the dialogue to make the Blue Fairy seem as though she has an ulterior motive, or knows more than she does, when actually she is telling the truth (although perhaps not the whole truth- because she doesn’t know it as in this situation). The dialogue, plus her expression and attitude (which is an understandable reaction to Mr. Gold as he makes no attempt to pretend he likes the nuns) makes it seem as if she’s hiding something, but she’s not. It’s just a very tidily written scene that takes the viewer exactly where the writers want them to go.

I also agree with your interpretation of good vs evil magic and the way the work, respectively. In a way I think that good magic is very much about giving people tools and helping to influence them to make the right decisions. Evil magic (and Rumplestiltskin is a great example of this) is about tricking people in to taking what is offered (whether it’s what they need or not) and manipulating them into acting the way you want them to. Last night’s episode was a fantastic illustration of this.

Regarding Cora and the concept of true love- I think that this show makes some interesting contrasts between the different kinds of love. Sadly, english doesn’t have as many words for love as other languages say… Greek, so we’re restricted to one word that covers such a wide variety of feelings. Do you love your pet? Your child? Your friend? Your spouse? Are these feelings even remotely the same to one another? Even romantic love has many different colors. No two relationships are the same. (Even two different relationships between the same two people can vary greatly based on when they occur and who those people are at that time in their lives.)

I think this concept is very relevant to Rumplestiltskin, because he has had several lifetimes worth of experiences and has three distinct relationships with women that I think can all be classified as love. I’m sure that if you asked pre-war Rumple and Milah “Do you love your husband/wife?” the answer would have been “Of course I do!” We don’t know a lot about how the two came together- but they did and for a time they were happy. Why wasn’t this true love? Because in the end Milah wanted more than he could give her and that desire eventually destroyed the feelings she had for her husband. She wanted adventure, she wanted power over her own life- things that being the wife of a reviled coward would never award her.

So this brings us to Cora. Again, I believe that their feelings for one another were genuine. I don’t even think that it’s Cora’s liklihood to have brought out the “darkness” in Rumple that makes their love different from “true love”. Her situation was almost the opposite of Milah’s. She could have had nearly limitless power and control if she had left with Rumplestiltskin, however her father-in-law made it clear that she would be giving up other things, namely peace of mind and the comfort of living amongst others. It was actually a desire for the more domestic comforts that kept her from leaving with the Dark One. Again, she wanted something he could not give her.

So that brings us to Belle. Why is Belle’s love true? She clearly has her doubts about the man as evidenced by her frequent departures. However, Belle- unlike the other two, doesn’t desire Rumplestiltskin for what he can do for her. She wants adventure, she wants love, but she is also smart enough to know that these things must come from within oneself. Belle makes her own opportunities (like agreeing to go with the Dark One to save her people as an act of bravery that might not have been afforded to her otherwise).

In the end, I don’t think “True Love” should be confused with “Real Love”. I think that all of these women had real love in their hearts at one point, and I think “real love” is all around in their world, while “true love” is so much rarer. Instead, I think that “true” refers to the people themselves who have love in their hearts. Belle is true to herself. All she wants from Rumplestiltskin is for him to be true to himself.

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."

[RumplesGirl]

^This. *have a cookie*

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

[PriceofMagic]

Perhaps true love is willing to give up the thing you want most for the person you love.

For example, Belle had dreamed of adventure and willingly gave that up to be with Rumple after he had let her go the first time. Rumple desired to find Bae, but maybe in that brief moment when he kissed Belle, he was willing to give up the search for his son. When he thought Belle was tricking him, Rumple was able to undo true love’s kiss because he wasn’t willing to give up searching for Bae for something that wasn’t “real”.

Milah and Cora weren’t true love because they were unwilling to give up what they wanted most for Rumple. Milah ran off with Hook because she wanted adventure and Cora ripped out her own heart because she wanted power.

At the beginning of the season, weren’t Mulan and Aurora talking about how “Love is sacrifice”?

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[RumplesGirl]

Perhaps true love is willing to give up the thing you want most for the person you love.

Which makes me think that in order for Belle to come back, Rumple has to give Lacey (and the darkness) up because he’s doing it for Belle and for Bae. When Lacey sees him doing that, she kisses him, being so moved by this demonstration, and it’s TLK.

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

[thelonebamf]

@RumplesGirl wrote:

^This. *have a cookie*

For me? ^_^ Now the question… to eat it up, or become THE KEEPER OF THE COOKIE? XD

Sacrifice is definitely interlaced with true love, or at the very least the willingness to put the other person before yourself, but I think that it’s maybe not the defining characteristic. Emma and Henry’s relationship is “true love”-y enough to break the curse, but only Henry made much of a sacrifice by putting his life on the line. Emma simply realized she loved him as her own. We could get really technical and say that Emma is sacrificing her solitude and making herself vulnerable by admitting she cares about others, but that seems a little grey. We could just as easily find sacrifice in more or less any relationship in the show and a lot of it would be more clearly defined even in cases of “not exactly true love”.

Another interesting relationship to poke at is Milah and Hook. Their relationship is defined in the show as being true love. Milah does make a sacrifice in leaving her son behind, although strangely we see no regret in her at any time. (I’ll just assume she made her peace with this behind closed doors.) Hook on the other hand has yet to make a sacrifice for her. He fell in love with her, they ran off, end of story. He did lose his hand, but I hesitate to call that a sacrifice *for* Milah. Losing his hand wasn’t a choice he made in her name. It would be interesting (if say, we go to Neverland and get a closer look at Hook, his backstory, and his relationship with Milah) if we discover that the two of them did deal with Milah’s guilt over leaving her son, and perhaps that influences his actions in the finale. Maybe he ends up seeing something of Milah in Bae, and this influences him not to kill Gold after all. He could sacrifice his revenge and leave with the satisfaction of being the “better man”.

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."

[kfchimera]

@thelonebamf wrote:

Milah does make a sacrifice in leaving her son behind, although strangely we see no regret in her at any time. .

We see regret when she says there is not a day she isn’t sorry for having left Bae (but not so sorry that she came back, then again, it is not like she could work out visitation and a divorce. Sometimes I see a parallel to Belle if I think of Milah as a forward thinking woman hampered by the feudal culture they had. Only you know, more selfish and way less heroic than Belle.) If you want a plot bunny, think about what it must have been like to be Milah–pregnant and alone when the whole town turns against her because of rumors of what Rumpel did on the battlefield. Even after Bae is born, I imagine a scenario where she had a rough time and Rumpel’s return seemed like cold comfort since it confirmed the rumors. Ah angst….

Any way we get so little of her side of things, that she seems more awful.

“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

[thelonebamf]

@KFChimera wrote:

@thelonebamf wrote:

Milah does make a sacrifice in leaving her son behind, although strangely we see no regret in her at any time. .

We see regret when she says there is not a day she isn’t sorry for having left Bae (but not so sorry that she came back, then again, it is not like she could work out visitation and a divorce. Sometimes I see a parallel to Belle if I think of Milah as a forward thinking woman hampered by the feudal culture they had. Only you know, more selfish and way less heroic than Belle.) If you want a plot bunny, think about what it must have been like to be Milah–pregnant and alone when the whole town turns against her because of rumors of what Rumpel did on the battlefield. Even after Bae is born, I imagine a scenario where she had a rough time and Rumpel’s return seemed like cold comfort since it confirmed the rumors. Ah angst….

Any way we get so little of her side of things, that she seems more awful.

Ah, thanks for correcting me. I haven’t gone back to watch “The Crocodile” so I completely forgot about that. She seemed perhaps… not sad enough to leave much of an impression on me, I guess. (But maybe that’s just up against Rumplestiltskin who is a wreck about the whole thing and isn’t lucky enough to escape his troubles on a pirate ship. Every day he saw Bae was a reminder.) I can kind of imagine the struggle Milah must have had upon leaving. She just left without a word, thinking it better to let her husband and son think she’d died. She could have left something behind for her son, a note, an explanation etc- but she chose to let him think her dead rather than himself abandoned. Ouch.

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."

[obisgirl]

maybe we’ll get a backstory that focuses strictly on her one day, when it’s relevant.

I agree it couldn’t have been easy hearing all those rumors about Rumpel did to get away from the fighting and come home. That, coupled with being the son of a coward, probably did not help matters.

And the first time we meet her, she is 👿 to Rumpel (whom most of us love), so that makes those of us who love Rumpel, want to hate her because she’s so mean to him. The first time I saw her in a sneak peak (from The Crocodile), first word that came out of my mouth was a five letter word that started with a B.

@thelonebamf wrote:

In the end, I don’t think “True Love” should be confused with “Real Love”. I think that all of these women had real love in their hearts at one point, and I think “real love” is all around in their world, while “true love” is so much rarer. Instead, I think that “true” refers to the people themselves who have love in their hearts. Belle is true to herself. All she wants from Rumplestiltskin is for him to be true to himself.

..not only to be his true self, but the “best version of himself.” Before he became corrupted with power. 😀

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