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What is that weird prop in the indoor group photos to the left of Hook? A miniature factory chimney stack? The bottom half of a rocket?
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Exactly. I’d say there’s an interplay between potency/fertility in a very broad sense. Consider, for example, Hades’ statement that “nothing grows here” alongside Rumple’s genuine surprise/awe when he tells Belle “It happened.” This seems to have a lot to do with infertility as the lack of capacity to nurture new life: Charmings not being there for Neal, Rumple potentially not being able to beget and subsequently protect his child; Hades — a god, and hence literally a creature capable of poiesis, or world-making — incapable of engendering a world that can self-regenerate, and isn’t doomed to only decay.
But it is the most logical response.
It is only logical if (a) she doesn’t want the baby OR (b) having the baby always results in Hades taking it. From the in-story perspective, (a) does not appear to be the case and (b) is not inevitable. (Hades, as you recall, is this season’s antagonist. All things considered, we have no reason to believe that he will get his way in the end.) We also have no reason to believe that Hades actually intends to take this particular baby — beyond using it for leverage against Rumple.
Apart from the touchy subject of abortion more generally, having Belle terminate the pregnancy in anticipation of Hades succeeding goes against OUAT’s alleged message of hope (it seems a rather pessimistic jumping the gun, if you will). Nor would the show propose a “punitive” abortion — terminating the pregnancy to punish Rumple for his bad behavior is not something that jives with Belle’s character.
Edit: It boils down to what Belle wants. Period. We are lead to believe through the acting that she wants the baby. Parents can develop strong feelings of attachment to a fetus, even very early on in the pregnancy. And while there is certainly some cross-cultural variation, having to do with, say, family size, there is really good ethnographic and psychological evidence to suggest that people don’t think of their offspring as “fungible.” So the “she could just have a baby with a non-sociopath” is a reductive argument.
Maybe the simple in-story answer is that she wants the child, and that she actually loves Rumple, no matter how misguided the sentiment might appear from the audience’s perspective. Additionally, if you recall the episode, she essentially tells Rumple to go and fix his mess with Hades — which suggests that, for all intents and purposes, Belle actually trusts Rumple to put up an effective resistance to whatever Hades’s plans for the baby might be. Since we’ve seen Rumple literally move heaven and earth for his offspring, I’d say that trust isn’t entirely misplaced.
I think your question conflates two things: Rumple’s viability as a partner/father, and the likelihood of Hades getting the baby. I don’t see the latter as a foregone conclusion.
You can have another child with a sane, non-socio-path who doesn’t fraternize and make deals with demonic forces whilst bringing havoc on innocents and constantly putting you and your family at risk while you claim to “love” him.
On OUAT, “bringing havoc on innocents and constantly putting you and your family at risk” seems to be something that every single main character has done at one point or another. This doesn’t seem to hurt their reproductive chances. In that logic, why didn’t Robin and/or Regina force Zelena to terminate the pregnancy? She’s certainly a danger to herself and others.
I thought Rumple threw Milah in the river of souls AFTER Hades told him that Belle was pregnant and that he had the contract for the second born?
Actually, that’s not the case. Hades got Rumple to dispose of Milah and the boat in exchange of sending him home. However, in Rumple’s defense, at this point Rumple had discovered that Belle was pregnant via the crystal ball spell, so the stakes were presumably a bit higher — obviously having Hades find out that his wife is with child was probably not something Rumple wanted, contract or not contract, precisely because children in the OUAT verse are a primary source of leverage. So he was presumably eager to hoof it out of there, and willing to toe the line set by Hades. At least that’s how I understood that scene (well, also they needed to get Milah out of CS’s way, but details).
The scene with the contract came at the very end. Here’s the transcript if you guys want to take a look.
I remember Belle mentioning that others had tried time travel before but it never worked. The one thing they all had in common were the ingredients of courage, heart, wisdom, and innocence. I think the only reason why Zelena’s spell worked and the others didbt was because Zelena found the perfect ingredients or the perfect representation of each symbol.
Ah, interesting about Belle’s comment… but I’m still confused. What’s a perfect symbol? First, symbols/signs don’t have a predetermined relationship to the thing they signify (or symbolize), which is why multiple languages/systems of representation are possible. And second, signs don’t exist outside of an interpretant (for simplicity’s sake, the person or community of people who agree on their meaning). Are you saying the spell is the interpretant of the symbol? I suppose that’s possible (as with the Dark Curse and Regina’s horse), but there’s this whole additional degree of separation with the time travel spell, where a replica of Rumple’s brain (rather than the actual thing) could function as a symbol of intelligence or wisdom. That’s a different type of representation than a straight up symbol in the vein of Owl=symbol of wisdom; baby=symbol of innocence; or red rose = symbol of romantic love.
As a side note, Murdering the Peasants (TM) is actually more of a Regina trait. Rumple if I recall tends to mirder the middle management.
Tangentially: Someone please explain to me the necessity of a live baby as a time travel spell ingredient. If the spell relies on symbols or signs (baby as a symbol/representation of innocence, brain as a symbol/representation of intelligence/wisdom), couldn’t any other representation or symbol do? How about a lamb for innocence? How about an owl for wisdom? How about some color symbolism? How about simply writing “innocence” on a piece of paper, and use that? This makes no sense to me.
Belle gave Rumple an ultimatum before: her or the dagger. Belle said it best, “your true love is power.” Rumple basically echoed this sentiment when he said he “loves the dagger” (or rather, what it represents, I gather). By refusing to give up the dagger (despite being free of it) he rejected her ultimatum. On top of that, he countered with his own ultimatum: take it or leave it. I don’t see how Belle can honestly live with that without sacrificing her self-dignity. Rumple is basically manipulating her.@Slurpeez, I agree with much of what you’re saying, but I think there’s an issue with the ultimatum logic. I think they are both engaged in manipulating each other, through different means. Ultimatums of any variety, on the part of either party, are not a good basis for a healthy (scratch that, even just a merely functional) relationship. Combine that with the yo-yo effect of on again-off again, and I actually think that what Belle and Rumple are doing is a variant of co-dependency. Either way, they are both participating and perpetuating an unhealthy dynamic, where they are both attempting to control the other, albeit through very different means (Rumple mostly through deceit and trying to cover his butt, and Belle by threatening to end the relationship, which, one might argue, is additionally effective against Rumple since at the core of his personality is an abandonment complex, so she’s partially playing off on that).
Either way, threatening to leave unless your partner changes — or, the reverse move, which is “take me as I am, or scoot” are both variants of the same thing, a kind of “my way or the highway” refusal to meet half way. Belle’s “Hero or Bust” is, in some senses, the mirror image of Rumple’s “Beast or Bust”.
Minimally, what they are both doing doesn’t solve anything. There’s actually quite a bit of evidence to suggest that discipline and/or punishment isn’t effective at changing human behavior. (Here’s an example, albeit related to child development rather than adult relationships, though I think the insights are meant to be portable to adults too.) So far, neither Belle nor Rumple have moved towards breaking out of the dysfunctional cycle — but as @Keb said, this is a new phase of their story, and it’s not over yet. (Either way, those two need some serious couples therapy, if nothing else, in order to help them model positive relationship behavior). I actually think that Rumple’s admission of his love for power can be a good thing. In the same way that an alcoholic must first admit he’s an alcoholic to get any sort of help.
I suppose this ought to be viewed as a cautionary tale that love isn’t always enough and that it doesn’t always help someone to become free of addiction/love of power/whatever issue
Can I just point out how profoundly bizarre the idea that you either love a person OR you love a particular state of being (which is what addiction is, in some sense) is? I think this is a logical fallacy. Addiction can certainly be inimical to a relationship and unhealthy for both the addict and his loved ones, but conflating these two very different affective states — love for a person, and the psychological and physical dependency on the thing one is addicted to — gets us into an ethical and intellectual dead-end.
So… I too feel conflicted on this scene.
Negatives:
– For all intents and purposes, Rumple was claiming that he understand Belle’s feelings better than she does herself, and Belle certainly doesn’t need to put up with her husband mansplaining things to her. Boo. Bad Rumple. On the other hand, he was kinda right.
– The “This is who I am, deal with it” line can be a totally manipulative jerk move — because where does it stop? It potentially completely absolves one party from any need to compromise. That being said, I don’t think that’s necessarily where Rumple was coming from in that scene, but that remains to be seen. If Belle does stay with him, they will have to establish what works for them. (Safe words, contractual stipulations about not murdering the peasants etc.) On the other hand, since Rumple’s always more or less lied to Belle around issues having to do with his power, perhaps this opens an avenue for a different type of relationship between them, one where there is more honesty, both to each other, and to themselves.
– More generally, this conversation has been long overdue, and the fact that the writers chose to do this plot line in relation to Belle’s pregnancy is pretty reprehensible. Not just for the in-story logic that Belle is now tethered to Rumple in a much more profound way (unless the baby never makes it of course), but for the mora general theme that parenthood changes you. I don’t buy the salvation by baby narrative one bit.
Positives:
– I don’t know if the show is doing this on purpose, but I find the message that “your partner is not going to change for you, so stop holding out for it” incredibly refreshing. Because, really, they’re not going to change, and the logic of romantic love as the great “taming” force, especially taken to its absurd extreme, like in the case of Twilight, is problematic. Sure, partnership is about compromise, but the frog really isn’t going to turn into a prince, no matter how many times you kiss it. This doesn’t mean that people can’t change, but short of some kind of existential crisis, in the full meaning of the term, it’s unlikely. I suppose romantic (or parental) love could be that existential crisis, but to assume that it always is can be incredibly damaging and perpetuate abuse. It also assumes that the people who don’t find romantic (or parental) love to effectuate some kind of earth shattering, tectonic shift in personality are somehow deficient in their affective capacity. So good on OUAT for making this explicit (I have some thoughts on CS here too, but I think this isn’t a good place for them).
Questions:
I honestly don’t know if there is an ethical space for Belle to occupy moving forward unless the writers change the Darkness metaphor once again. There’s good reasons to think that this might happen: the writers have tended to shift on what the Darkness is/does. There have been three main themes, I think: the main ones were always mental illness and addiction, while in the background there’s been the “magic, both light and dark, as a force of nature/ natural phenomenon” which hasn’t been explored. Considering the Merlin prediction, and that we are now done with DO Emma (and thankfully DO Hook), I suspect that the writers might re-shift the focus/interpretation again. If I were to make a guess, considering how the narrative’s going, they might traipse into a dualist cosmology (the light magic needs dark magic as the dark magic needs light magic yaddi yadda). They will have to solve two problems: (1) the darkness being physically corrupting (the whole heart becomes coal syndrome), and (2) they have to de-personify dark magic by getting rid of its association with previous Dark One entities as hauntings/animating voices. Anyway, that’s what MacGuffins are for.
More specifically about Rumple and power: I think Rumple was retconned to remove the scare quotes from “coward,” but I also think that the control freak aspect of his personality was there all along (as has been discussed upthread). This is a man who can’t deal with contingency (I think there’s both a psychological, and a class-related explanation for this, but it’s too early in the morning to break out the Marx.) But there is a big step from wanting power for its pragmatic benefits, and loving power. Unless we are meant to interpret Rumple’s statement as a sudden moment of self-honesty?
