[Keb]

Wishlist for 4B:

–Lots more Belle, especially having her actually interact with people who aren’t Rumple. Like Henry. Like her good friends the Charmings who actually trust her with their precious baby. Like Emma who calls her (and vice versa) the moment there’s trouble. Like Archie, Ariel, Leroy, Ruby, and Blue–all those people she’s supposed to be good friends with whom we hardly ever see her talk to afterwards. Like Hook whose life she just saved at the cost of her own True Love and marriage (for the second time, too), even though he’d tried to kill both her and her beloved. Like being involved in finding an author for a BOOK (yanno, kinda her thing?). I will scream if they never let her even acknowledge to another character that the queens of darkness kidnapped her once.
–Learning what all happened in the six week jump.
–Explanation for Will and an actual purpose for his being present in Storybrooke.
–Bring back George, Keith, Ella, Ariel, Aurora, and Maurice (all of whom have major connections to major characters right now), and Storybrooke People Who Should Be Around like Archie, Red, and Whale.
–Actually show us how the fairies get out of the hat. And yanno what? Let Belle be the hero who gets them out, too. Cuz you KNOW they’re gonna get out. So let her be the hero.
–Regina finding a love interest that isn’t ethically cringe-inducing.
—Since August is returning, fill in some of the bits that his reboot left hanging, and make clear how heroic Neal’s sacrifices were even if he doesn’t come back.
–Emma, Henry, Rumple, Belle, and Hook on an epic quest to the underworld to bring Nealfire home. (This is 100% wishful thinking but dangit it’s what I want.)
–Rumple attempting to win Belle back. Rumple finally succeeding in a beautiful, satisfying way (but not till the very end of course–drag this out but SHOW IT. LIKE ALL THE TIME).

[Keb]

If they actually focused on Henry they’d have to deal with the fact that they killed off his father (along with just about every other relative besides his mothers and three of his grandparents).

Honestly, I can forgive a low screen time for Henry most of the time because he IS a kid and child actors have restrictions on them. But one of my favorite moments this whole season was when he FINALLY got to have a word with Belle…Henry is the thing that ties this crazy family together and forgetting that makes everything feel like just ships.

One of my biggest complaints about where the show is presently is that they’ve been driving for so much action that they’ve forgotten to have characters interact if they’re not being violent or snogging…tying up Belle’s story arc as they did with The Gauntlet of Plot instead of having her actually interact with Rumple, Hook, Emma, and Anna was SUCH a let down. It meant that we didn’t get to see any of those characters’ develop through relationships and we didn’t get to see any of them using the talents and strengths that the show has imbued them with.

Henry is a natural person to pair with just about everyone on the show for some character development, and they’ve been wasting that potential. Along with a lot of potential. I realize they’ve got serious limits on time, budget, etc, but it hurts to see so clearly how things were set up for one thing and then just abandoned sometimes.

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 they very carefully hedged with Henry learning magic.

I think Henry IS a kind of magic–his belief is, anyway. So he may not need to be taught magic the way Regina was to wield it.

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]

You’re not getting home?

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, RG, that’s beautiful! Your aunt is very lucky.

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]

How about an L?

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’ll buy a letter t please

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 it’s reasonable, given that Rumple found Ursula outside of Storybrooke, to believe that The Dragon will come back into play somehow. He was the first hint we had that magic had crept into The Land Without Magic beyond Storybrooke’s invasion. All we really know about him though is that he had magic and a link to another realm somehow…and that he knew who August was.

But with Ursula in this realm outside of Storybrooke, there’s good reason to think that SOMETHING is going on. The Home Office front that Pan was using to find Henry did seem to be sussing out magic in other places…it would be kinda cool if they connect all these dots they’ve laid out.

I don’t completely trust A&E to do that…but sometimes they do lovely things like that.

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]

Yeah, it absolutely matters whom you most identify with/like/want to cuddle…because you’re more willing to see things from their perspective, explain away things that others can’t accept, look for the good in them etc.

It’s why Belle was the last one who could see Rumple as a beast and why Emma’s willing to overlook Hook’s villainous deeds and why Robin saw Regina as reformed and not as his wife’s murderer, too. We’re all willing to cut the ones we love a little more slack than sometimes we even should.

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 in part we see different facets of Regina & Rumple because they’re in different places in their stories. Back in S2, I saw a lot of people asking the reverse question: Why is Regina vilified and Rumple isn’t? But they were in different places then, with different motives.

It’s VERY true that they seldom showed us the sympathetic, softer side of Rumple in 4A, and I think that’s problematic from a storytelling POV. They wrote it. It’s in the cut scenes they showed us. It’s in bits of Bobby’s performance, and echoed in how the characters react to Rumple’s character. It’s paralleled in Hook’s development over the season (and perhaps even a little bit, though less obviously, in Regina’s). And without Baelfire as a primary motivation, Rumplestiltskin as a character does feel like something is missing; it took us time in S1 to figure him out, and now I think the character himself (and possibly Bobby playing him) is trying to figure himself out.

But why we saw Rumple as evil in 4A when his driving forces were sympathetic? Because he was doing evil things, and he knew it. His goals may have been understandable–given what he’s been through, getting free of the dagger without losing his power totally makes sense as a driving goal and irresistible temptation. But in the process he was willing to let the Snow Queen destroy everyone else in Storybrooke, just so he could get away with the slightly less horrific things that the Great Cleaving required (hatting enough magical beings, and presumably sacrificing them as well as the heart of the person who knew him before he was the Dark One). Getting away with that also required betraying Belle and lying to her, as she never would have supported hatting the fairies, putting her own father at risk, or letting DQ destroy Storybrooke, which means there was literally no one that he didn’t find himself willing to betray in the process of trying to get free of the dagger. He’s self-aware enough that he knew he was doing it the whole time, and there WAS guilt when he was betraying Emma and Belle–you can hear it in his speech to Emma at the mansion, and you can see it in his expression when Belle’s apologizing to him in Family Business. That’s the bit of the softer Rumple that we saw. You can even sense a bit of guilt in how he reacts when Hook talks to him about what he’s doing: his impatience, his look of horror at the suggestion that he’d let his grandson go down with the rest of the town, and his assurance that Emma and Storybrooke will be safe from him once he leaves town with his powers intact…those tiny bits are the bits of the good man that’s left in him, the bits that have pretty much given up the fight against darkness.

As he told Regina, what good did fighting it do him? He lost his son, the one thing that truly mattered to him, and nearly killed Belle under Zelena’s power. For their sakes he was willing to surrender the power briefly–he DID switch the daggers–but he couldn’t resist the temptation and couldn’t come up with a good reason to even try. And the more he let himself give into the darkness that plan required, the darker he went. He embraced the vengeance it allowed him to wreak (and we KNOW vengeance does a number on your heart), got caught up in what felt like a series of lucky strokes and believed things were finally going to go his way for the first time in a long time, and as I pointed out earlier, even attempted to drag others down with him (Hook & Regina both really) as a way of helping to justify what he was doing as okay.

He looks evil even with understandable motives because he IS being evil. He’s embracing it as a way to get what he wants. It requires hurting people and he’s okay with that, as long as it doesn’t drive Belle away from him and his grandson is safe. Unfortunately for him…Belle is a hero and and she can’t support hurting people that way. Just like she tried to tell Neal when she realized that something wasn’t right about how they were trying to bring back Rumple, she would have told Rumple they’d find another way if she’d known what he was trying to do–she’d have supported the goal, but not the means. The means matter as much as the goals when it comes to villains and heroes, I think.

And having said that, I’ll acknowledge that not all the means the heroes have used have been good ones. Heck, even though it was quite likely the only way to stop him at that moment, a lot of people I’ve seen on Tumblr are actually angry with Belle’s using the dagger to control Rumple. S1 Emma was certainly willing to use villainous means to her ends a few times. On the other hand, when she recognized it, she often came clean and acknowledged she was wrong to do so–because that’s what heroes do.

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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