[Keb]

I’m just hoping that Belle gets LOTS of development next season. Her and Neal both. We’ve seen quite a bit of little Bae and quite a bit of FTL Belle development at this point, but both of them have only had a couple episodes in Storybrooke/present time to explore who they have become. We’ve had lots of past & present development with the other members of Henry’s family at this point, but not these two (Hook also needs more development! And yes, TLs regardless of marital status count for me in this world re family).

Season 1 was largely about Snow, Charming, Emma, and Regina; Season 2 focused more on Rumple and Regina, but Hook, Belle, and Neal are all core cast now, too, and all part of the family. So I’m hoping that S3 will really delve into their characters a lot as well as further developing the rest of Henry’s family.

[Keb]

No, but he could have argued that way and probably would have if anyone acted like they cared more about Belle’s welfare. But yes, it was more about hurting Rumple than anything else.

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

[Keb]

I think for Hook, Belle is an extension of Rumple. And when he hurts her, it’s to hurt Rumple, yes, but he does try to reason a bit with Belle on the ship (from his perspective). I think if she had agreed to help him in the tower, he would have rescued her rather than trying to kill her (and at that point, killing her was probably more self-defense than anything else–she could have warned Rumple if she got out, and she could have told Regina who’d been there if not), and if she had not defended Rumple in the ship, but had been willing to see things from Hook’s perspective, he would have protected her, or at least left her unharmed–he had the chance to kill her right away and didn’t. Even when he did shoot her (and yes, that hurts), he says immediately after that she’ll live–so he intentionally did not kill her. He only removed her memories, which is no worse than her own father tried to do (even if it is pretty horrible). It was cruel to Rumple and eventually cruel to Belle, but Hook could easily have argued, like Regina or Moe, that he was sparing her a lifetime of misery there.

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

[Keb]

I think that the TL relationship trumps the marriage relationship in some sense in Once. But I also think that by just about every understanding of marriage, having a non-dissolved marriage with someone else preempts the possibility of marrying someone else. Hook and Milah were definitely lovers, and definitely had TL, but they were not married. In at least one sense, their being together was better than Milah staying with Rumple–because of the TL thing–but that doesn’t mean it was morally the right thing. We don’t know what annulment/divorce proceedings were available to Milah (though to say those things didn’t exist in their world is a bit presumptuous–they’ve existed in our world since the earliest written records at least, even if, during certain periods or in certain places, they were socially unacceptable or more difficult to obtain than they are now). What we do know is that she left Rumple without telling him or Bae that she was going, without offering them any sort of closure (and we see how important THAT was to Bae, in Manhattan). It was wrong and she acknowledges as much, at least where Bae’s concerned. Within the moral structure of the show, Milah is not in the right for what she did, though it is somewhat mitigated by her desire to be with her TL. The only thing that seems to equal TL’s value in the show is family (which we’ve seen has as much TL power as romantic TL), and she did break up her family through her choice to go with Killian.

But I think that reflects more on Milah than on Hook, in the end. He wanted to provide Bae with a family, apparently before and after Milah’s death. He was even willing to suspend his quest for revenge to give Bae that–or to honor Bae when he found out what happened to him. Killian’s not innocent in Milah’s affair and decision to leave her family, but he doesn’t bear the same moral burden to keep her family together that she does.

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

[Keb]

@RumplesGirl wrote:

@Keb wrote:

But see, they had Neal himself, IN THE SHOW, say he would be a couple hundred years old. (Also the slightly contradictory “this wasn’t my first stop” statement…) So it’s canon that Neal was born a couple hundred years ago, whatever that means. (Adam himself has said that only what’s in the show is canon, though I’ll accept statements from him that don’t contradict canon as canon-enough. Of course, he’s also said that the comic and Wonderland will be canon…so…gah.)

Those two quotes are going to kill this fandom and we’ve analyzed the heck out of them. Maybe Neal was exaggerating? Maybe he doesn’t consider this his first stop since he was only here for about 7 months?

Yeah, that’s about the only thing that makes sense (for now). As detail oriented as the creators are, they DO every now and then throw us a wrench that makes timelining virtually impossible. Of course…how much of the fandom is as obsessive as I am?

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

[Keb]

Oh, and I’m attempting to account a bit for seasons now, which is easy in years that don’t coordinate with actual dates but really tricky in years that do. If we’re doing math by curse years, then the first day of a curse year is October 22nd or 23rd depending on how you want to count it (22nd for me). That means that it doesn’t synch up at all with American calendar dates in our world. I may be able to math out a way to make it work at some point. The software the site is using for its timeline is okay with curse years, but puts months in jan-feb-etc format. So I’m still thinking through what the best way to handle that would be.

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

[Keb]

But see, they had Neal himself, IN THE SHOW, say he would be a couple hundred years old. (Also the slightly contradictory “this wasn’t my first stop” statement…) So it’s canon that Neal was born a couple hundred years ago, whatever that means. (Adam himself has said that only what’s in the show is canon, though I’ll accept statements from him that don’t contradict canon as canon-enough. Of course, he’s also said that the comic and Wonderland will be canon…so…gah.)

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

[Keb]

I actually like Hook almost as much as Rumple, and other than how he’s treated Belle and Rumple (the latter with some justification), he’s been the most lovable villain of the show. Maybe it’s just that he’s adorable and has a cute accent, but: he’s not nearly the killer that Regina, Cora, or even Rumple have proven to be (Rumple’s actually not killed a whole lot of people on screen–Regina and Cora have), and isn’t particularly cruel when he does hurt someone–he doesn’t toy with them as Rumple does (he doesn’t even want to stick around to torture the queen), or destroy their happiness like Regina and Cora, and he calls people out on it when they do those things. He returned Aurora’s heart, offered Bae a home (oh no, Rumbelle feels just hit–that’s what Rumple wanted to give Belle…), and he did come back with the ship in the end. He’s definitely as complex as Rumple and Regina, and his shifting alliances are part of that complexity–he shifts both to protect himself and achieve his goals, and out of sympathy with the various parties. And that last bit is what makes him so lovable.

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

[Keb]

So Adam, lovely man, has tweeted that Bae did in fact land in our world’s real Victorian England. That means that Bae came through the portal sometime after 1858. Gah, what this does to the timeline if time is all linear between the worlds that aren’t Neverland…

One reason why I’m sticking with the slightly younger Rumple–300 as of Emma’s arrival in SB rather than the time of the curse. I’m thinking it may have to be moved even more to make things synch up properly, but whatever. Of course, if everyone’s spent time in Neverland–Rumple and Bae specifically is who I mean by everyone–then that could explain things, since time moves differently there. (and apparently faster?)

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

[Keb]

It’s interesting that we do not yet have the words we need for the possible relationships between people who are almost-but-not-quite-married, considering how many people now live in such relationships. There are people who say that Regina isn’t Snow’s stepmother anymore because Snow’s father is dead, and I don’t think THAT counts, but I do think that Belle and Hook qualify as almost-step-parents to Bae. (Here’s hoping Belle & Gold get the chance to make it official someday.)

But I don’t think that Milah and Hook could ever have been officially married under their circumstances. They had between 5-10 years together, though, while Bae was growing up, and it’s pretty clear that their relationship was one of true love as Once defines it. That’s been shown over and over to trump any legal entanglements (David & Abigail/Kathryn being a key example where True Love is shown to be better than any other kind of romantic relationship), even if there are ethical issues with pursuing it under those conditions. Milah was a jerk to Rumple over it, no question, and she shouldn’t have abandoned her son, either. Of course, if we’re going to compare her to Rumple, the Dark One, who by the time he killed her had squished random cart owners for skinning Bae’s knee and mute maids for overhearing a few words about his dagger…New Dark One Rumple is one scary dude. And of course by that time he’d abandoned Bae in a moment of panic as well, and his killing Milah was less about her lack of love for him than about his own guilt over letting go of Bae (just like his beating Moe was less about what he believed Moe had done to Belle and more about his own guilt for letting Belle go to face what he believed had happened).

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

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