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http://www.blogtalkradio.com/barbara-barnett/2012/11/06/jane-espenson-and-team-husbands
Sounds like she loves this episode. A lot. I’m thinking it’s the Belle-centric episode.
[adrotate group="5"]I wonder how inheritance works in FTL. Technically, Regina’s only Queen Consort and Snow would be the heir to her kingdom, making James a prince by marriage.
It also just occurred to me. Are we ever going to find out what happened to Midas?
As did I. As sad as I was for her, I nearly cheered when she confronted David about how his lying caused all three of them unhappiness.
Also, Geppetto. So sad how he was trying to find his son after the curse broke 🙁
CrackParing, but a Game of Thrones fan pointed out that if Mulan and Hook were to pair up, they would be the OuaT version of Jamie Lannister and Brienne. Darn you, crack pairings!
^This. Also I think I’ve figured out why Regina’s arc this season bugs me so much. In Season 1, she was mesmerizing. She was evil, yes, but powerful, confident and self-righteous in her own conception of justice and vengeance. This season, her flashbacks make her seem weak-willed and easily controlled. Rumple/Jefferson/Whale are wrong to use her, for sure, but her naivety was irritating. She walks into a den of thieves and expects them to play nicely.
The final scene nearly made me laugh. She goes from a heartfelt “I will -never-use magic for evil” to ripping a girl’s heart out, all because Whale couldn’t bring Daniel back in an experimental procedure. That doesn’t make me pity her, it makes me think that she is an extremely weak, easily changeable person to do such a 180. I’m sincerely hoping that something occurred between those two scenes that further explains this but until I see that, I’m getting very tired of the “Regina was a poor, sad girl manipulated by horrible men” mindset that seems to be emerging when she has made all of these choices for herself. She chose to go back to Rumple, knowing what sort of magic he practiced, knowing that she couldn’t bring back the dead. My head canon imagined her to be a stronger person than she’s turning out to be. Ironically, her backstory is actually doing the opposite of making me interested in, or sympathetic for her, and that makes me sad. I want my strong, self-assured Regina back 🙁
Also, why did Whale and Jefferson even need Rumple? Couldn’t they bypass making a deal with him if Jefferson were to just bring Whale in through his hat/ Whale could attempt the procedure on Daniel (thereby getting an additional test subject to experiment on) and extract an additional heart from the vault as payment from Regina. Jefferson would still get the immunity passport.
Bleh. I’m an idiot, but I’m actually tempted to have Rumpelstiltskin around me, after I’m done with law school. -Not- because I’m romanticizing him, but because the stupid, overconfident pre-law student in me would like to try to out-deal, or gridlock him in a bargain. There’s something about the way he plays on every single word in a contract that makes my geek heart happy. I predicted that he was going to equivocate on the word “tragic” regarding Kathryn in Season 1 and I was surprised Regina didn’t see it coming a mile away:) Granted, he’s had 300 years on me and I’d most definitely lose. (This is a terrible idea :roll:)
Other than that, Belle and Red would be great to have as friends. And… I guess Baelfire. That kid is a much more adorable version of Henry and I want to babysit him and feed him cookies and milk 😀
Well, I’ll give you that. The women on the show are all incredibly attractive, but this includes the witches and monsters. Regina, Cora and the Siren are all gorgeous women. To be fair, most of the men are pretty attractive as well, though. They seem to keep casting pretty people 🙂
No. What makes Heathcliff a Bryonic hero is that he fits that set of aforementioned traits, not how or why he became that way, evidenced by the fact that other figures that fit these archetypes have completely different story arcs that don’t involve unrequited love and might involve letting a woman go. Also, just wanted to point out that if murder preluded a character from fitting the archetype, that would knock off a large handful of the classic Bryonic heros: Dracula and the Phantom for a start.
Interesting that you mentioned he twice chose power… and then regretted it and literally tortured himself over it for years. Yet, he still struggles between power and love. That, to me, fits the aspect of self-destructiveness mentioned above.
Also, I think that we’ve pretty much moved beyond a discussion of his character to a debate over the meaning and application of the literary term itself. There’s virtually nothing about how you’ve characterized him that I disagree with. It’s just that, from my understanding of this trope, none of those misdeeds bar him from fitting into this literary type, which again, is not to say that those actions were good, or justified.
(In looking up various figures in this archetype, I’m beginning to see very strong parallels between Manfred and Rumple. Thoughts?
“In Byron’s poem, the hero, a superhuman character, is doomed by fate to destroy those he loves. In vain he undertakes to find Astarte, his ideal spirit who alone has the power to assuage the feeling of guilt with which he is obsessed.”)
@Faux Pax wrote:
As for them “Shamming” Emma by turning her into a thief, i’m not going to comment on that until later tonight when i have more of the story.
Along this topic, though, there was one thing that did kind of erk me. I was always bothered by how much the whole town turned on MM after her affair with David came to light, but no one really seemed to say anything to him. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, perhaps it only seemed that way. I’ll have to watch the epp again to be sure, but the best sign that everyone was against her seemed to be the slut-mobile, another construction of Regina’s.
Emma’s troubled past is part of her backstory and character. Just because she is an out-of-wedlock mother and a thief doesn’t mean that all out-of-wedlock mothers are troubled people. Ashley, for example, is for the most part a perfectly lovely person. Also, I think the show did a good job showing how unfair it was that MMB and not David got the lion’s share of the shaming, making the viewer sympathize with her rather than judge her.
@Elle wrote:
I have to disagree with the article. He is not a hero, an anti-hero, or a Byronic hero. He has done so much wrong and harm, and the few redeeming qualities he has are not enough. He may be arrogant, disrespectful, intelligent, suffering from a past mistake, and often moody, but he is also a murderer, manipulative, cruel, vengeful, bitter, destructive, and often does not learn from his mistakes.
^And you could have been describing Heathcliff, one of the most iconic Bryonic heroes, right there. Except that you’d probably have to expand the list of bad traits for Heathcliff to emotionally abusive husband, abusive caretaker, mean to children, and ambiguously suicidal 🙂
I apologizes for going into English-major-mode, but I can’t resist 😀 A character being Bryonic hero doesn’t require that they are good, justifiable, or heroic in any traditional sense. You’re not supposed to be able to excuse all of their actions. The term itself is specifically somewhat of a play on the term “hero”- it was coined to describe the growing literary phenomenon in the Romantic era of these awful male characters who have so many of the standard villain traits and in many ways, drive the plot as an antagonist, but are haunting in that they are written to be so alluring, passionate and tortured at the same time. As characters, they dipped into that Romantic era fascination with passions, emotion-driven characters, the macabre and the gothic aesthetic.
I find it interesting that that the author compared Rumple to Heathcliff because the latter is vindictive, cruel, angry and especially after Cathy dies, essentially the character who causes all the problems, all while being mesmerizing, tortured and somehow alluring to the reader.
Of course, these characters draw a huge range of reactions from the readers. Like with Heathcliff, some readers adore him, some are fascinated by him, some despise him as an individual. Actually I think it’s so fascinating that despite the time and place these characters keep drawing the same reactions. Critics of the era argued over whether the book was a masterpiece, or morally depraved, because Heathcliff (and Cathy, in this case) were such awful, yet magnetic individuals.
For what it’s worth, some literary scholars describe Dracula, Frollo from “Hunchback of Notre Dame” and the Phantom of the Opera as Bryonic heros as well. All men who are safer on the pages of literature than in real life, but oh-so-fun to read about. And then of course, there are the milder Bryonic heroes like Rochester and Eugene Onegin. Easier to love, perhaps, but still very difficult, at times questionable men.
List of traits, pulled off Wikipedia, for everybody’s reference. Not an all-inclusive list, but indicates the types of things that are common to these figures. I went through and noted some traits I thought particularly applied to our dear Rumple/Gold.
Arrogant
Cunning and able to adapt
Cynical
Disrespectful of rank and privilege
Emotionally conflicted, bipolar, or moody (Emilie de Ravin’s comment that Belle is partially drawn to his tortured soul)
Having a distaste for social institutions and norms
Having a troubled past or suffering from an unnamed crime (and from my research into this topic, the crime can be either a crime the hero himself committed, or a crime committed against him)
Intelligent and perceptive
Jaded, world-weary
Mysterious, magnetic and charismatic
Rebellious
Seductive and sexually attractive
Self-critical and introspective (This one is key. Rumple is so very self-critical. “I’m not a man.” “I’m still a monster,” “I’ve been a coward my whole life.” His tendency to constantly project his own failings and self-hatred when accusing others, whether it be with Charming, “You hurt her. You drove her to take that potion,” or Moe “You had her love and you shut her out” or Milah “How could you leave Bae?”)
Self-destructive
Socially and sexually dominant (Socially dominant, for sure. And as for sexually dominant… there are Rumbelle fics I wish I could unsee)
Sophisticated and educated (Gold certainly is, at least. )
Struggling with integrity (Yup. So much that.)
Treated as an exile, outcast, or outlaw
(Both before and after the Dark Curse)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byronic_hero
