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And I think she enjoys being free of Hero Regina. She can’t stand her.
I think she probably sees Regina as as sanctimonious as she finds the Charmings at this point. As much as Regina became the evil Queen because she was in pain over Daniel, she ended up hating her younger self for being so good and weak (synonyms in her p.o.v. probably), as love was a weakness.
Oh Holy I hope not…. That would be too repetitive. I will hold my money on a remerging. Its the only thing that works, in my opinion. If we want Regina to survive that is, and I definitely doo.
I just like chuckling at the idea, I don’t actually want it to take up air time 😀 It would be funny and charming for a brief moment 😉
The revenge on Snow was always Regina projecting her pain and anger to something she could understand. That is why it gives her no form of satisfaction. But it was what motivated her. Perhaps revenge as a motivation is now gone, or perhaps she is now going to direct it elsewhere —say Emma! Going forward Evil Queens other motivations are presumable still- Trying to become Real. Trying to get her son Henry to be hers. Trying to fill the hole inside her, which is what she needs love for, but this is not understandable for her, she is incapable of getting this.. Regina did, but it took her years and that understanding must have left Evil Queen when Regina left.
This makes sense to me. So EQ thinks she got what she wanted with Snowing, but after that was going after Rumple, willing to kill her sister… She is going to have to direct or channel that pain-filled hole somewhere/somehow. Does she have enough smarts to do so in a way to benefit her, even to her definition of benefit? Because having affairs with Rumple and alienating your sister and son, really don’t do much. And she hasn’t really solidified power and/or seemingly worked on getting independent of Regina, at not on screen.
[adrotate group="5"]This doesn’t accord with her ideology, for sure, but in practice, the more Belle is being portrayed as an irrational, hysterical shrew — as she is in this season — the more her more positive qualities (seeing the best in people and forgiving them) recede to the background or just come across as whimsy, rather than actual moral commitment
Her positive qualities, possibly only quality, is that she’s smart and that only occurs when the writers need someone to explain “the thing” and they can’t get a supporting actor to do it. She’s Google. The issue is also that that singular positive quality is becoming increasingly hit or miss. One of the biggest issues is that Belle has never really been a consistently written or fleshed out character. She’s a device through which the writers explore Rumple and his redemption, or lack thereof. I think this is why while everyone agrees that Rumple is basically a crappy person, everyone gets on edge about Belle and her “abusive” nature (or call it what you want). It’s because she’s never really felt like a solid character.
This is exactly right. I could still write lots about Rumbelle, but I am going to leave that aside to talk about a meta/macro issue, that trickles down into a lot of culture and our fiction.
We have all these stories of women and girls trying to redeem “bad” boys. Because they are worth it, I guess. But never the way around. Heck, it is hard for men to even fall in love with them. Women are somehow not worth the effort, or are irredeemable (at least by a lover’s love, kids is a whole other story). Men that do fall in love with these women are dupes and weak and not going to be loved back. But boy do we love a story where the woman preservers against such difficulties.
It is even easy to demonstrate that with this show. Most of the major villains are female. So, all the villains, and all the couples in which one half was either a villain (or considered a bad person even by their own measure), from my imperfect memory:
Villains never known to be paired with lovers, IIRC: Snow Queen and Ursula
Villains with inadequate details: Pan, Maleficent
“Baddie” couples: Cruella and James, Zelena and Hades, (Killian and Mila?)
Male “Baddies” with female love interest:
– Rumple with Belle (6 seasons of trying to redeem him)
– Killian’s father and his 2nd wife (redeemed)
– Robin and Mariam (by Robin’s own statements, redeemed bad boy)
– Killian and Emma (redeemed)
– Arthur and Guinevere (fall out not shown on screen)
– Jekyl/Hyde and Mary (complicated – Jekyl had unrequited love and Mary died before any conclusion)
So of the 4 we know for certainly the status of, 3/4 guys redeemed, and based on effort on Rumple, 3.5/4
Female “Baddies” with male love interests:
– Milah and Rumple (was not redeemed before death. She is very much demonized by cultural standards.)
– Cora and Henry Senior (was not redeemed before death. He probably loved her, at least in the beginning)
– Regina and the Genie/Sidney (Genie had unrequited love. Regina is redeemed but because of her own efforts, not because of Genie)
– Tamara and Neal (not redeemed before death. Similar to Cora and Henry Senior, but less established)
– Cruella De Vil and the Author (not redeemed. At the time they had their relationship I wouldn’t have characterized the Author as bad. YMMV)
– Nimue and Merlin (not redeemed. The one time the usual gender roles were reversed, and the guy never gave up trying)
– (leaving out King Leopold and Regina, since not much of an illusion of love on either side, and it could be argue her first evil act was killing him).
– (leaving out Regina and Robin, because by that time, she was already redeemed, there wasn’t much heavy work for Robin to do on that front)
So, no female baddies had a good guy stick with them through thick and thin to try to help them work on their redemption. Maybe Henry Senior, off screen? And often the guys were duped. So, despite having more characters to work from, 0/6. I will give them 0.5/6 for Merlin’s effort. Still now where near the 3.5/4
I am not saying any of these specific relationships are problems in and of themselves, but how often they repeat themselves across our fictional universes compared to stories of women going to the ends of the earth to love and redeem bad boys…..
To people who saying Belle is being abusive, what does Belle *not* being abusive look like? While still protecting her from Rumple’s abuse, and protecting her safety, personal agency, and basic-dignity?
Wow, I went to bed early and look what happened. I am going to give one example but could give many more. Belle not being “abusive” could look like this 1. Text Rumple “Hey Rumple you are really scaring me, how about opening up the shop so we can talk” (non abusive) 2. Knocking on the shop door really loudly and saying “Rumple I know you are in there open up so we can talk” (non abusive) 3. Using a key I am sure she has and unlocking the shop door finding Rumple and saying Hey we need to talk (non abusive) 4. Asking Emma to unspell the door (if it is magically protected) and then finding Rumple and saying Hey we need to talk (non abusive) Running to the woman who KILLED his son and working with her to steal a wand to take her and their baby to a place that he will never find them because he locked the shop door while he was in there(ABUSIVE)
That might have made sense when things hadn’t gone down that far along this path. At this point she feels her (and her child’s) well-being are at stake. To the extend that she sent her child off.
A loving parent doesn’t send their kid away when in a custody dispute unless one of two things: 1) They are extremely worried about their child’s well-being, and/or 2) They are doing it to spite the other parent.
When you are that frightened you think the time for talking is over.
He forcible / unlawfully confined Belle.
One could call Belle an enabler, or their relationship unhealthily co-dependent, and maybe she needs to own her part/half in that. But that doesn’t mean she has to stay in the relationship and/or still take care of Rumple in some shape or form.
The thing is the show probably thinks most healthy relationships are boring and not good-story telling or something.
I had a lot more thoughts about this, and maybe I will share those thoughts once I figure out where I put them 🙂
I’m sorry, but no. I don’t think Belle is being in any way abusive. She is setting boundaries to protect her son and herself from an abusive man. Boundaries can also contain conditions, and her conditions are perfectly normal and reasonable. At least by saying ”if you do x then you can have a relationship with your son and maybe me too” she is giving him a chance. If she said, ”I don’t care if you change, from now on you can’t see your son or me” then that would be less reasonable because she would be giving him NO chance. Going by your logic, every time we lock up a criminal (and crime doesn’t have to be just actions, it can be emotional abuse, too) or tell them that they are free but on certain conditions, or that they will be but on a restraining order, then the law is being abusive!!!
More or less agreed. To people who saying Belle is being abusive, what does Belle *not* being abusive look like? While still protecting her from Rumple’s abuse, and protecting her safety, personal agency, and basic-dignity?
Unfortunently, due to how this show is set-up, they need (or feel they need) to play out this relationship, and keep these two characters interacting, which, in previous seasons, meant it ends up with Belle ignoring her boundaries and forgiving/taking back Rumple, then setting boundaries, then getting mad when he broken them, then over again. So she ends up like a stereotyped abuse woman who keeps going back to her abuser.
Belle can’t solve this on her own, even if she was the perfect partner with the perfect response to Rumple’s abuse, whatever that means or looks like. She has tried working it out in the past, however imperfect it was done. What do we expect of her?
The only think I can say, is she shouldn’t have married him when she did, and/or she should have left sooner. She can’t fix him, he needs to fix himself.
With this switcheroo, or blurring, of Hyde and Jekyll’s roles of good and bad… Could we see the same thing happen with Regina and Evil Queen? I don’t expect a full switcheroo, but a blurring would be interesting. It also could lead both of them to decide to voluntarily re-integrate, that would be I think more interesting then Regina forcing it, or them figuring out a way to kill just the Evil Queen.
The Evil Queen basically originally saw herself as betrayed, and mis-understood, and having such feelings can be normal and even healthy. Along with the pain of loosing a loved-one basically under the direction of another loved one (her mother). Where she went over-board was when she decided what revenge/justice for her looked-like, and the lengths she went to try to obtained it. Maybe the Evil Queen is still that person, but maybe her revenge doesn’t look the same as it did before. Heck, her revenge could be aimed at her ‘better’ half for doing this to them.
Co-incidentally I read something this week of how woman (in fiction and real-life) often change their hair when they are contemplating and/or implementing other changes, that will have real impact, on their lives…. And when I saw Gold’s hair change, even though I knew it was due to a recent role, I was wondering if the writers were going to exploit that and use it to indicate something for Gold…. Not that we saw much of that this episode, and he has had this hair for some 60+ years (before and after Rumple’s wavy locks), but hopeful, against all reason, that we will see something meaningfully different from him in the future.
CON: Mary’s entire backstory. If this was the first time the show were to have women be sexually aggressive and then be punished for it or explained that this is part of villainy, I would be willing to discuss the point but Mary is not the first case, not even by a long shot. When they want women to be “bad” and given traits that are deemed “bad” and need to be corrected, it’s aggressively sexual. From the EQ to Zelena to Lacey to Emma…it’s not…pretty. And, yes before anyone says it, I know that it’s Victorian England (well, Fictional) and that it’s upholding certain mores about that society in that time, but…again, Mary isn’t the first case where sex is used to distinguish, for wont of a better trope, Madonnas and Whores. PRO: The flashbacks felt relevant and for more than just the current plot. Again, there’s a lot there and not just about the serum. Society, science vs magic, repression, emasculation….all good thought-provoking, conversation worthy elements.
Last spring I had turned over some interesting thoughts/amateur analysis of the fictional stereotype of the evil sexually aggressive woman thing and thought about starting a thread on it, but never got around to it. I have to assume it has been brought up here before 🙂 Whether it got its own thread or not, I wouldn’t know. Usually I just see people decrying the depiction without analyzing it further, from what I’ve seen (not here, I haven’t been on this board long enough to see how it is treated here).
If they are integrated, yes. But the idea that killing an “original” is how you kill the doppelganger still split baffles me. There is no such thing as an original person or persona that has some sort of dominance over the other aspects of who you are. To quote Whitman, “I am large and i contain multitudes.” All of them are you and you are all of them. The Regina we know now has no more primacy over identity than does the EQ. That’s not original Regina at all.
I totally agree. I wouldn’t have minded it hurting one could weaken the other, but somehow their link prevented lethal killing of either separately. And one way to kill them successfully was to kill them both simultaneously (say Rumple on some suspicion decided to choke Hyde again, and watch them both die. That would have been fine. Though maybe tough for Rumple to pull off while Jekyll held the dagger).
But to suggest that their is an original, more pure or authentic version, when you split people in two?
If that was the case I’d argue Hyde, despite looking different, was the original. Mary said that Hyde acted like society didn’t influence him. Therefor could Hyde not have been more like Jekyll as a child, before social conditioning so forcefully shaped him into a particular box veneered with social acceptability?
It is that old argument of nurture vs nature.
And that argument is even harder with Regina. We knew so little of Jekyll and Hyde. But we knew Regina as a child, in the flashbacks as a young child, in the stable, married to Snow’s father, widowed Queen carrying revenge on Snow, as mayor/mother, and her development the last five seasons. I can’t contemplate either of these woman who look like Regina as being an original.
Has anyone theorized that Rumple will try and separate himself so that the “lighter” side can wake Belle?
Would he even have to separate, or could he switch between both with the same body? I had thought about him doing that, but I hadn’t expressed in on the forum. If he did I wonder if the ‘evil’ Rumple would still have enough light in him to let go and let Belle have the ‘good’ Rumple, thought considering he think Belle loves all parts of him, he might think it won’t last, plus we already basically saw that in 5A. That is, we saw Rumple wiped of all darkness with a fresh-new-blank-state heart or something 🙂
I don’t know if this is possible unless Emma has some residual darkness left in her. Didn’t her parents perform the work of the serum by transferring her darkness to Lily?
That’s a good point. I’m not sure what “other” Emma would come out. Would it maybe be S1 jaded and aloof Emma??
I guess it depends on if splitting off darkness/evil and putting it into another person actually makes that darkness another person’s, or just houses a person’s darkness in another body. If you follow 😉 As in, if they used it on Emma, would the magic ‘understand’ that Emma’s darkness is in Lily, and Emma’s darkness would split off from Lily, leaving Lily with just her own original/innate darkness and light that she had prior to birth/hatching. (and/or, what would the serum do to Lily? Could she be stuck with Emma’s darkness inside of her, unless Emma’s was also administered the serum?).
Would Snow submit herself to the serum? It seems Snow as a philosophy that doesn’t think people should be whole :p
Perhaps the most interesting story that could come from this is seeing Emma reunited with her innate/natural darkness… According to this show it appears we have never seen a whole Emma. Heck, maybe her feeling of emptiness from her childhood doesn’t all stem from her sense of abandonment from her parents.
