#Rumple and his loved ones always deserved so much better than A&E and this trash show

[gch1995]

I wasn’t really emotionally invested in this version of Rumple and Belle getting their happy ending after how much A&E and these writers had more or less eviscerated what originally made them both such emotionally complex, bittersweet, cute, relatable, and heartwarming individual characters/relationship by reducing them both into such abruptly and increasingly OOC, inconsistent, illogical, exceedingly distrustful, ridiculously gullible, emotionally manipulative, and mutually toxic hollowed out puppets on strings that the writers loved to play God with by deliberately destroying them for their PLOTs to prop up everyone else on to pedestals they hadn’t done much to deserve themselves either. I was angry. Oh, I still loved Rumple and Belle as individual characters and a couple as they were originally characterized on the show from S1-S3 ish, and I’ll always love them in canon-divergent/AU fanon scenarios. However, I didn’t defend either of their the wildly OOC, and mutually toxic PLOT driven characterizations from S4-6A. I was willing to get over most of S4-S5, but I just don’t know how anyone could ever come back from how awfully they treated each other in 6A. I don’t know how anyone could possibly forgive someone in a relationship who treated each other like they did in 6A.

And honestly, they were seriously starting to go too far with Belle already as it was from S4-S5 with Rumple. Would I ever forgive someone from exiling me from my home? No, but I actually don’t think that was too out of character for Rumple to immediately forgive Belle for doing because he doesn’t believe he is worthy of love and doesn’t generally hold grudges against loved ones. But Belle’s lack of expressed remorse to Rumple felt really OOC for her in the narrative there in that scene of “Operation Mongoose (Part 2).

Then, it just got worse in S5 when Belle almost immediately left Rumple laying there in a magical stasis coma that she was told he very well may never wake up from for seven weeks in the care of Blue and the rest of Storybrooke who she knew didn’t give a fuck about Rumple when she got that stupid BATB Rose in a jar product placement, so that she could go off to Camelot to save Emma from the DO curse as a walking library and free babysitting service. I know that they wanted for Belle to be heroic and strong, and I’m not saying that her entire life had to revolve around Rumple, or that she was obligated to get back together with him if he woke up. But it would have been nice to see Belle more concerned about her true love in a coma on the brink of death than going to be a free babysitting service and walking library to save Emma from the curse for seven weeks with that stupid rose in a jar that she could only talk to Rumple through when he was in a coma, even though she would have been able to do nothing to save him if that last petal started to fall. It just made it look like A&E and these writers didn’t care about Rumple as anything more than a PLOT twist device, so it was projecting through Belle’s seeming lack of concern on screen for him now.

She shed a few tears over his banishment towards Hook in 4B in one library scene, but she never expressed remorse over it in the crucial scene where it would have made sense for her to start sobbing over him dying in front of her, and say “This is my fault! You’re dying because I banished you to a world with nothing where you couldn’t protect your heart from being consumed by the curse with magic for six weeks.” Of course, it was not truly Belle’s intent for Rumple to die from a heart attack when she banished him with nothing, she didn’t know it would happen to him, but the main idea most fans had was that it never would have happened if she hadn’t needlessly banished him for his crimes to a world where he couldn’t save his heart with magic from the curse, and kept him there as a prisoner with the dagger until she knew she could trust him not to go back to being shady with that damned hat? Why she wouldn’t have felt seriously guilty if Rumple had died because he couldn’t save his heart in a world without magic where she banished him to where he couldn’t have saved himself is such bad writing that I just can’t understand these writers.

They were testing waters by making Belle do and say even worse things from there in 4B too that I was seriously wondering how Rumple could forgive Belle for doing, such as handing over his dagger to him as Hook, his worst enemy in disguise, like it was no big deal (it was OOC for him to disguise himself as Hook too, but at least you can kind of attribute it to Rumple’s extreme low sense of self-worth)...Standing there passively in his shop as her “friends” openly talked in front of her about wanting to kill him. Rumple wasn’t there for that one, but I was honestly gutted by the fact that Belle did not speak up to protect Rumple in 4B in that shop scene where Emma and Hook were casually talking about wanting to kill her true love and husband like she just didn’t care about Rumple anymore. Then, there was that well scene...Belle wasn’t obligated to take Rumple back, but giving him borderline emotionally manipulative false hope like that was awful and ooc. Why didn’t she just say that she wasn’t ready to take him back before that scene where he went off to fight Hook without magic and he easily could have died? She contradicted her own statement to Rumple of “Running never made anyone a hero, you know” in the middle of a town crisis with the Dark Hook/Dark Swan because she was having relationship troubles with Rumple, and actually agreed to take his car and magic when he sent her off to save her life from the Dark Hook. She came back because Henry told her the truth before she could cross the town-line, but the fact that she was seriously about to go through with it is so wildly OOC. This was not Belle, and I’m not just saying that because she wasn’t being nice to Rumple from S4-S5. I’m saying that because she was being a self-contradictory hypocritical coward, and the narrative did nothing to acknowledge how unheroic that was of her.

I don’t know how I would ever forgive someone for emotionally whiplashing me twice with borderline manipulative false hope to get me to do what they wanted only to drop me cold after that to start bitching at me, and even go to my far worse mortal enemy who still continues to express no remorse for enslaving and torturing me or killing my son to “protect” our unborn child without my consent first because I’m apparently less trustworthy to my true love than a woman who remorselessly molested me for making a mistake of keeping them in the dark by lying about being shady to try to free myself from control because I was afraid to lose them. This was not Belle. I was fine with Belle having flaws, but these didn’t really seem like flaws that were true to who she was, but a PLOT device. Belle could be proud, she could be self-righteous, and she could be naive. But this was just petty, stupid, insensitive, hypocritical, and cowardly. I was angry they weren’t going to be acknowledged as flaws. They just seemed to be a way to trigger Rumple back to the dark side, and bring out the worst in him sooner or later.

I was hoping that canon!Belle would come around for Rumple’s sake at the beginning of 6A, and I hoped that they would be able to do it without tainting the purity of his love for her, thus, ruining his one last consistently emotionally complex, credible, and relatable, and sympathetic original characterization trait from S1-S3 of canon to try to make Hook/CS look better after (still) doing and saying far, far worse to Emma in 5A anyway. Sadly, I was wrong from the spoilers I read, and they completely tainted Rumple and Belle’s true love in 6A to make CS look better after 5A.

Canon!Belle only got far worse than I could possibly imagine in 6A...She was being a stupid and horrible mother-to-be, who was actually willing to stay in a sleeping curse of eternal hellfire forever with their unborn child to “protect” them from his EVOL daddy where he surely could have and would have died with her because of what a dream, who I was just supposed to believe was the Rumbaby, said. I know that wasn’t Belle’s intent, I know it was OOC bad writing for the PLOT, so I know it wasn’t worth it to blame her for it, but it still made her look like a blindly cruel, cowardly, delusional, petty, selfish, and stupid bad mother-to be because the whole thing with a future version of Rumbaby as a the God of Dreams being able to be in his mom’s dream with a fully formed opinion about how EVOL his dad was, and being able to wake her up with TLK never made any fucking sense, so canon made it so we just had to accept that this wildly OOC, needlessly cruel, cowardly, delusional, petty, and stupid af bad mother to be was just who Belle was for the sake of PLOT . And as for canon!Rumple in 6A...Well, they officially tainted the purity of his true love for canon!Belle just as badly if not worse than they already had hers by having him overreact to her OOC cruelty and delusional bitchiness like a completely OOC, increasingly awful, arrogant, borderline manipulative, creepy, disrespectful, deranged, restrictive, reckless, stupid, and threatening jackass in 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09 in response. Yeah, he backed down just like I knew he would, but too much irreparable damage had already been done to both his and Belle’s original characterizations for needless suspense and Drama™️ in the PLOT for me to forgive the writers for doing this time around.

I didn’t hate Rumple or Belle for 6A because it was blatantly obvious that this wasn’t who either of them really were or something that had anything to do with either one of them being inherently bad people for each other as characters in a relationship. They very obviously were now just two hollowed out puppets driven by blatantly contrived, OOC, inorganic, and character destroying externalized PLOT-driven conflict that was contrived by Eddy Kitsis and his malicious lazy ass team of writers who were playing God with both of them, Emma, and the rest of their characters to prop up Captain Fuckboy because they didn’t want to take the time to slow down and actually write character development organically to make him a more likable character. It was all just cheap emotional manipulation from S4-S6 to prop up Hook/CS, and/or shock the audience by destroying characters to have “fun” in the PLOT. I

I found the best way to still continue loving Rumple, Belle, Emma, and all of these other characters through thick and thin, no matter what A&E and these writers did to destroy their likable and relatable characterizations for their PLOTs in this piss poor excuse for canon OUAT from the end of 3B onwards was to completely detach from any sort of blindly subjective emotional investment in them whenever they were bizarrely characterized in ways that initially would make me feel angry, annoyed, confused, disgusted, horrified, frustrated, and/or hoping for more answers to justify the weird writing choices for their characterizations that I learned soon enough never came.

It was much easier to move on from the fucked up nonsense the writers made these characters do when you viewed the show’s writing for them through an emotionally detached, self-aware, and completely objective lens of the harsh reality: The writing had gotten so inexcusably and unbelievably toxic, illogical, inconsistent, self-contradictory, and stupid for every remaining main character on this shoe that they would never do in real life if they existed, and had simply become mindless puppets I. strings of PLOT in A&E and these writers total laziness. This show was ultimately being written in a way that was obviously trying to emotionally manipulate an audience to blindly feel the way they wanted them to, and as soon as you accepted that it didn’t want you to ask any questions about why what the bizarre things they made their characters do for their asinine PLOTs, made no sense the better ofmove on from the infuriating painful character assassinations in canon, and move on to fanon.

I’ve never seen two such beautiful complicated fictional characters played by such fantastic actors with fantastic organic romantic chemistry get so eagerly embraced and beloved by their fans end up getting so deliberately abused, misused, and trashed by their show-runners/writers as Rumple and Belle played by Robert Carlyle and Emilie De Ravin on OUAT. I really hope I get to see those two work together as actors who play a couple in a romantic comedy/Dramedy television show that is not written or run by petty hacks like A&E and these idiots who deliberately treated Rumbelle like trash because they had some egotistical and childish creative grudge against them and/or another writer who helped fleshed them out in a way that made their individual characters/relationship a lot more emotionally complex and lovable than they originally intended for them to be by their fans. Also, Eddy Kitsis seriously just seems like some sort of abusive, creepy misogynistic, and sleazy prick with an inferiority complex and superiority complex that he self-projected on these characters and their fans.

You don’t like that Gideon was de-aged? See, I deeply love that. I know some said that he didn’t vocalize it, but (a) I doubt he thought that was an option and (b) it’s clear how much pain he was in. He deserved to grow up with parents who loved him - and Rumbelle deserved their sin.

Oh, I get you, anon. If you’ll read the post, my exact words were:

Ihave such mixed feelings about this?

Because onthe one hand: Gideon had a life that nobodywould want. He was kidnapped, imprisoned, kept in the dark and abused for allof his twenty-eight years, and even if he got free, he would never get thattime back. Nobody would ever choose that for themselves.

At the sametime… Gideon died. The person I got to know over the last half-season is nomore. He’s gone. And he never had any say in the matter. Hell, he didn’t evenget to say goodbye. It’ just such a messed-up way to get a wonderful thing.

So I totally see your position.

And I just want to say that “vocalising it” doesn’t have to be Gideon showing up and going “yes, I would like to be made into a baby again without any of my memories so I can have a good life this time around.” But at least something like “I wish we could just start over” (maybe in a quiet moment with Belle hint hint) would have been nice.

[gch1995]

Hook/CS Fan in response to me on Reddit that CS ruined this show: As I recall the writers gave plenty of support to CS, even before Nealfire died. You can’t blame one ship for everything that the characters end up doing later.

Me: I do think that a big part of it was A&E and these writers sheer lazy inability in coming up with any sort of new organic character development after two-and-a-half seasons (the Neverland arc), and their total inability to stick to their own rules of magic in favor of their contrived magical prophecies, macguffins, and twists. Recycled arcs (Aesop’s Amnesia) via cheaply shocking, forced, nonsensical, and/or wildly ooc derailment to achieve re-railment through bizarre contrivances and plot twists became a major problem in the writing for every remaining main character that lasted on this show past season three ish. It was not just a problem in the writing with Rumple and Belle post S3 ish, but Emma, Regina, Snow, David, Henry, and even and even Hook, Kitsowitz and these writers favorite, as well. They clearly ran out of story to tell after the Neverland arc, and they didn’t know where else to go from there after they achieved the ultimate endgame arcs they always intended for these main characters to have in a relatively consistent, dynamic, and relatable way from S1-3A. Instead of letting the story unfold in a way that incorporated compelling, organic, and relatable growth from there, they kept trying to retread the stories they had already told for Emma, Regina, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, Henry, and even Hook throughout 3B-S7 over and over and over again in increasingly contrived, repetitive, and ridiculous ways.

However, I also feel a lot of the injustice done to Nealfire, Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, Emma, and even Hook himself from 3B-S7 had to do with the writers wanting to prop up Hook onto a pedestal since they were too lazy to actually develop him into a better person, who was genuinely worthy of redemption.

You just cannot convince me that there was any other reason why Nealfire “had” to die than the fact that the writers “needed” for Hook to be in the place of Emma’s main love interest and Rumple’s son in the narrative because the writers were too lazy to develop/redeem Hook organically as an individual character without demonizing Rumple and/or getting rid of Swanfire competition.

If they were good writers then they could have found a way to easily keep Bae alive, while also having CS at the same time. Rumple could either RIP on the show after his well-earned redemption in 3x11, and/or Rumple could have had more time with his son and Belle, while also struggling with this whole “love versus power” thing in a more consistent, in-character, organic, and sympathetic manner from 3B-S6, rather than having him die selflessly to save everyone in the 3A finale.

You just cannot convince me that they suddenly started framing Rumple as a wildly OOC bizarre cartoon mustache twirler villain, who supposedly wanted power for its own sake “because it’s who he was” and “world domination” when he was sitting besides Hook the whole time in 4A, and his big schemes with magic had always been framed as family oriented and sympathetic beforehand, even if they were selfish and shortsighted.

Rumple had just gone through a horrific ordeal with Zelena, and he’d just lost the son he spent three centuries searching for, and A&E the writers pretended it never happened because it didn’t matter to them as writers since it got in the way of how terrible Rumple “had” to be made to look to make Hook look better.

Even more than that, the entire remaining main cast, including Belle his true love, just suddenly began to get away with treating Rumple as less than a human being, but a monster who was unworthy of compassion, emotional support, empathy, mercy, and understanding, even when he reached out for it from S4-S6 now when David used to be buddies with him, and Belle used to tell him that he could tell her anything back in S2.

From S4-S6, no one cared when he reached our for understanding and emotional support about his fears on Once Upon A Hook, including Belle, who was suddenly such a “hero” for needlessly making a choice to recklessly endangering her true love’s life by banishing her crippled husband with nothing for what was supposed to be forever to make Hook look better when just in the episode before of “Family Business” the narrative had made it clear that it was morally wrong for Belle or anyone else on this show to use the dagger on Rumple when it was used in a needlessly cruel, controlling, reckless, and hurtful manner. So why was it suddenly “okay” now for Belle to get deemed as “heroic” and “strong” for needlessly making a choice to recklessly endanger Rumple’s life by forcibly banishing him from his home with nothing when he could have, and almost did, die out there because she left him without any means to protect himself? Why?

Belle forcibly banishing Rumple from his home with nothing was not heroic and strong of her to put Rumple through because she was angry he deceived her. It was a needlessly cruel act that would technically qualify as an act of domestic violence via reckless endangerment of his life by forcibly throwing him out of his home with nothing in real life. She could have even gotten charged with manslaughter via reckless endangerment of his life/abandonment, if Rumple had actually died out in New York because she left him with nothing in real life. So yeah, it was wildly ooc and incredibly fucked up for Belle to banish Rumple with nothing like that. Sure, Rumple deserved to be dumped by Belle for being a shady shit behind her back, and not letting her in on what he was planning to do by taking her and Henry from SB, only to leave behind the rest of the town under a curse cast by Ingrid that made everyone else see the worst in each other. I was expecting and even hoping Belle would dump Rumple for awhile after he deceived her like that, even if Rumple was my favorite character, and Rumbelle was my favorite ship. But to recklessly endanger Rumple’s life by forcibly banishing him with nothing, and then to get written off as “heroic” and “strong” for it in the narrative? Completely fucked up and wrong.

And why was it suddenly “okay” to for the other characters to mistreat Rumple from the end of 4A onwards, including Belle? Was it because Hook became Rumple’s victim in 4A after getting away with being a douche, so suddenly treating Rumple with this bizarre and unfair set of moral double standards was “okay” now.

Hook was literally being no better in this situation than Rumple in 4A when he was the one who needlessly blackmailed Rumple to give him his hand back by threatening to tell Belle about the dagger when a true friend would have just told Belle the truth either way about her newly wed husband being a shady little shit.

You cannot ever convince me that Rumple would disguise himself as Hook to get the dagger from Belle, and that Belle would give it to him, just like that, as if it was no big deal that she could have sold out her true love and her own safety to one of Rumple’s worst enemies.

You cannot ever convince me that Belle would just stand there passively while her “friends” insensitively talked about killing Rumple in 4B instead of defending her true love.

You cannot convince me that Belle would just stay on Hook’s ship when she was fully convinced that it would hurt Rumple if he found out the truth about Hook letting her stay on his ship, sit there and trash talk about him like it was no big deal because of a dream, and refuse to hear him out when he initially tried to reason with her gently when she was in danger from Hyde by verbally bitchslapping him with needlessly bitchy, cruel, and spiteful belittlements about how she and their child didn’t need his protection because she had her “friends” protection because of what a dream said. She basically was acting like his say didn’t matter in their child’s life, so he could fuck off, even before he started losing it. Rumple overreacted with the ship spell, Belle had every right to be wary of him after that in 6A, but she was not a needlessly cruel, petty, spiteful, or stupid bitch.

You cannot convince me that Belle would actually let it slide when Hook let it slip that it would be an “added benefit” for him to get back at Rumple. Belle has self-respect. This was not self-respect or strength. This was Belle deliberately enabling a douche who didn’t respect her or her loved ones, and being a petty bitch to Rumple. Belle is neither of those things when she is in character.

Rumple had lied to Belle in 4A, which was awful, but you cannot convince me that he would ever so much as threaten to recklessly harm her in a needless panic over a dream zygote for a pair of scissors he plotted to use that he’d never been seen using before on the show in the past FTL flashbacks before without looking for any concrete evidence first, doing research, and asking obvious questions about how bizarre and stupid his whole thing was with the baby before losing his shit over it. This was even more ridiculously ooc and stupid than that dumb hat plot he had back in 4A, and at the very least then there was legitimate concrete evidence in flashbacks that he had used it before, and so it was easy to believe he knew what he was doing with it. At least, it made some sense that he wouldn’t want to be controlled again after the fact that Zelena controlled and imprisoned him with the dagger for a year, though the framing of his motives came off as very bizarrely and uncharacteristically cartoonishly evil and unsympathetic.

In 6A, he just decided, “I’m going to take these random scissors from the EQ to brainwash my son to love me to save my family, even though I’ve legitimately never been shown using them before in the past, and this is probably the most bizarre and stupid idea the writers ever forced me to have for the PLOT with magic to cartoon vilify me?”

You cannot convince me Rumple would ever say shit to Belle like “Call it what you will, but everything I do, I do out of love for you” in response to her getting angry over him putting that bracelet to trap her to keep her from attempting to run away their unborn baby in 6x08.

Rumple seemed just fine in the UW after taking back the curse a few weeks ago in the timeline, he had never so much as considered harming Belle even when his heart was almost pitch black and we were supposed to believe this was literally the same dude who wept over her calling him a “Pathetic dog, begging for scraps” in 4B when Regina pulled out her heart to get leverage over him.

Rumple had never tried to use magic to “make someone love them.”

His entire thing was that “All magic comes with a price, but love is free.” He had never been cold or scary to Belle in their present day relationship, and even back in the Dark Castle, it had been increasingly obvious that it was a playful joke the more he fell in love with her, but now they were suddenly framing him as a wildly OOC cold, controlling, restrictive, reckless, threatening, and borderline manipulative deranged jackass? This was literally the entire opposite of five previous seasons and three episodes of established characterization for Rumple, and it was obvious A&E and the writers were deliberately tainting the one last consistently credible sympathetic thing about his characterization in the narrative that they hadn’t ruined yet from S4-S6 with the purity of his true love for Belle from 6x04-6x09 to make Hook/CS look better after 5A.

And I do get that Rumple’s biggest flaw is that he believes he’s unworthy of love, but the writers had flanderdized it to ridiculous lengths now that made him seemingly oblivious to all common sense and obvious solutions to bizarre magical shit and problems when he was supposed to be a mad genuis. Now, he was just acting like a deranged and reckless idiot in 6A.

Yet wasn’t it convenient that they were having Rumple suddenly go off the rails in 6A after how far they had taken CS in 5A the season before, and now Hook was the “good guy” in a “healthy” place with Emma a season later, in spite of still being a douche himself and getting away with it?

And Emma...Don’t get me started on Emma...She started out being a badass, compassionate, selfless, and empathetic heroic young woman who stuck up for the underdog, helped people out, even if she didn’t trust them, and put Henry and her family before everyone and everything else in her life...By the end of 5A, however, she was selfish, petty, and only interested in Hook.

In short, I don’t think that CS was the entire downfall of this show. However, I do think it was a part of it, especially in regards to the character assassinations for Rumple, Belle, Emma, and even Hook himself from 3B-S6 (and even S7), and Nealfire’s death.

[gch1995]

I want to watch new Drama/Fantasy TV series on Netflix and Hulu to get the bad taste that OUAT and TWD left in my mouth.

Here is what I want:

• A show that is more strongly driven by the characters consistently and believably, rather than half-cocked convoluted plots, and/or the creators/writers abrupt, blatantly biased, hypocritical, petty, and unfair preferential treatment of their favorite characters/ships, who they destroy other great characters/ships that they don’t care about as much to prop up their pet characters/ships up onto pedestals that they don’t deserve-

I dealt with six seasons of the continuity and logic of every rule of magic, relationships, storylines, and most of the timeline from S1 getting deliberately retconned left and right more and more inexplicably at the drop of a hat every season afterwards for (oftentimes disappointing) random plot twist convenience, and the writers completely stopped trying in 3B when they broke the rule of magic not being able to bring back the dead and decided “Fuck all the rules of continuity and realism in characterization and organic development in any of our remaining main characters, and fuck any and all sort of sort of storytelling integrity in writing a canon that consistently sticks to its timeline and rules of magic! We’re just going to reframe the entire narrative around Hook’s “redemption” arc and CS by ruining/retconning everyone else’s original characterization and development from S1-3A, and do whatever the hell we want with magic and the timeline on this show now because LOL, BOLD STORYTELLING! We’re really just too afraid to admit that we’re a team of horrible creative writers and show-runners, who didn’t know how to write more than two-and-a-half seasons of satisfying and original character development, who, thus, ran out of good new ideas for what else to do after 3x11, and who, thus,, would have done a lot better just ending the show with that episode because that’s clearly all we could handle before ruining everything that made this show genuinely entertaining to fans in the first place with our plot fuckery and character/ship favoritism!”

I quit watching OUAT after S5, but I still dealt with watching roughly four seasons of Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma getting made OOC, and later on, outright destroyed in favor of cheaply emotionally manipulative “Gotcha” plot twists, and A&E and their team of hacks petty and hypocritical favoritism that led them to prop up Zelena, Regina, and especially Hook/CS onto pedestals that they didn’t deserve in their favor by ruining them to make them look better by comparison without really doing much to change them, or making them sympathetic characters in their own right, especially post 3A. I still kept up with the spoilers post S5, so I know about what they did to ruin all my faves to prop up Hook/CS, Zelena, and even the dark half of the EQ some more in 6A, past the point of no return this time around, basically.

It would be one thing if Hook/CS had always been a main character/ship on the show, and Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma had always been framed/written as unsympathetic characters and a ship that the GA was supposed to consistently root against from day one. But that’s not how it was set up, no matter what A&E and these writers try to insist otherwise.

Hook was meant to be a guest villain, but A&E and these writers got distracted by him so much so that they decided to make him a regular by setting him up with Emma out of nowhere, having him take Neal’s place in the series, retconned the beauty of everyone else’s original characterizations, developments, and storylines on the show to make him look more “sympathetic” without actually doing anything to build him up that way organically post 3A, and made him the entire lead of the show.

Emma started out as a badass, compassionate, selfless, and sympathetic underdog for the little guy and the main protagonist on the show from day one until they forced her together with Hook, and ruined her to set them up post S3.

As for Rumple, he had always been written as a problematic fave from day one. I acknowledge that he had done horrible things that I could never realistically excuse, but from 1x08-3A there was a deeper sympathetic motive for why that was always explained on screen. He quickly became a fan favorite who the GA quickly sympathized with and rooted for as a sort of anti-heroic underdog, who with had a genuinely beautiful, believable, and consistent characterization and struggle for redemption that we saw, and expected to continue to see regularly once we saw his tragic and unfair backstory, and we learned about his love for Belle and particularly Bae and saw how everything he did he did out of love for them. We saw that he had a bizzarely adorable friendship with David, and we saw that he, Belle, and Neal were always willing to offer advice, compassion, emotional support, and understanding when he brokenly and honestly opened up to them for it by offering it in without enabling his bad choices, mercilessly judging him with negative assumptions without asking questions first, or giving him a chance to open up to them honestly, acting hypocritical, acting like they were so above him and incapable of having their own flaws and making mistakes, or making him feel guilty for not giving up magic for them. Belle had always had the short end of the stick on the show when they made her a regular because she often got fridged for Rumple’s man pain from S2-S3, but they outright destroyed everything that made her a great character to begin with from S4-S6 to prop up Hook/CS, Zelena, and Regina by turning her against Rumple, even when it didn’t make any sense for her to do so. When Hook/CS became the lead of the show, Neal was killed off. Rumple and Belle’s consistently sympathetic and complex original characterizations and development/redemption arcs in the narrative got so horrible butchered, and the two most important relationships in his storyline all got abruptly thrown under the bus and trashed on this show by A&E and these writers for roughly five seasons with bad writing, even in the final season when they decided not to fuck up Rumple’s redemption arc halfway through, just so they could prop up Hook/CS, Zelena, and Regina by shitting on him.

I don’t want to have to deal with watching another TV series where beautiful, complex, and relatable fictional characters and ships are abruptly made OOC, and/or outright destroyed in favor of stupid plot twists. I don’t want to deal with watching another show in which the creator(s), writers, and/or network have Gary Stu/Mary Sue pet characters/ships, who abruptly get unfair preferential treatment from the creators and writers in the narrative on the show with my personal favorite characters/ships getting abruptly, cruelly, and unfairly thrown under the bus for their benefit.

• A show that is run and written by a team of people, who don’t offensively enable, encourage, or casually dismiss ableism, abuse, rape culture, incest, racism, and sexism in the tropes they use in the writing for their individual characters, the relationships between them, the plot devices they sometimes make them use, especially if they let them get away with using them, and the plots they set them up in-

I had to watch every character and relationship on OUAT get tainted in canon with all of these offensively problematic issues in the the tropes in the writing for them in one way or another more and more from day one of this trash show of wasted potential in ways that disgusted me, including all of my faves, such as Emma, Rumple, Belle, and Rumbelle, just because A&E and their team of writers never learned from their mistakes, and refused to do so.

I don’t want to deal with that shit again on another show, or try to justify it, especially not in characters who often don’t get how problematic what they did or said is because the creators and writers behind them refuse to understand how problematic their writing for some of the things they make them do and say actually is in canon, and refuse to address it, no matter how many times the fans call them out for their shit.

I don’t want to have to deal with watching another TV series where beautiful, complex, and relatable fictional characters and ships are abruptly made OOC, and/or outright destroyed in favor of stupid plot twists. I don’t want to deal with watching another show in which the creator(s), writers, and/or network have Gary Stu/Mary Sue pet characters/ships, who abruptly get unfair preferential treatment from the creators and writers in the narrative on the show with my personal favorite characters/ships getting abruptly, cruelly, and unfairly thrown under the bus for their benefit.

• A show that is run and written by people who understand how to portray realistic reactions and fallouts to trauma and untreated mental illness in their characters by acknowledging that it exists and that it happened in the narrative, and allowing them to get help for it when they reach out for it. Instead of pretending that it never happened to vilify a character by refusing to allow them to get help, or emotional support from loved ones, even when they do try to reach out to them for it honestly, or work on being better to constantly make them feel like they have no choice but to revert back to self-destructive behavior, trying to prop up the character who traumatized them, or simply because the characters, who were traumatized in their narrative are the “good guys,” and the “good guys” aren’t allowed to have realistic reactions to trauma and mental illness because they are “strong” and the “bad guys” are “weak” from the ableist show-runners and writers point of view-

I dealt with watching this shit on OUAT for five seasons from season one, and from the spoilers I read about season six and seven after finally quitting, it didn’t get any better because A&E and these writers are hacks.

• A show run and written by people, who don’t make it so blatantly obvious that they are emotionally manipulating you with false hope by dangling a carrot before your eyes, only to abruptly snatch it away with a cruel “shock” value twist in their storytelling that becomes incredibly and disappointingly predictable when dealing with it as a viewer for five to six seasons-

Look, I get it, bad things happen in life. However, it becomes predictable bad writing and cruel storytelling when it becomes obvious that you are being emotionally manipulated by show-runners and writers with false hope for your faves. It becomes predictable bad writing and cruel storytelling when there is an increasingly obvious pattern in the narrative of the types of characters/ships that these writers abruptly and inorganically screw over out of nowhere after giving their fans false hope for them in the narrative, only to deliberately and cruelly screw them over for cheap “shock value, and/or to prop up their faves by displacing all of their shit onto their default scapegoat character through making him or her look bad without actually doing anything to have their Gary Stu/Mary Sue faves truly do anything to prove that they are reformed.

Were D&D and Scott Gimple too stupid to think to think that fans of their shows would ever realize that they often tended to abruptly kill off the purest living cinnamon rolls cruelly and abruptly in their show’s universe every season for shock value out of nowhere after giving their fans false hope on Game of Thrones and TWD?

Were Adam and Eddy too stupid to realize that Dearies/Rumbellers would ever realize that they abruptly and cruelly mostly turned their narrative against Rumple and his loved ones to prop up all their lame ass faves and CS after they killed off Neal and brought him back from the dead to make him an on-and-off-again trickster, even after spending the first two-and-a-half seasons of OUAT building up Rumple as a consistently sympathetic, emotionally complex, and redeemable character on the show?

• A show that is written and run by people who understand how to give their endgame romantic couples and familial relationships realistic, consistent, complex, healthy, in-character, and well-written conflict and resolution-

A&E and their team hacks often lacked the desire and ability to write realistic, consistent, complex, healthy, in-character, and well-written conflict and resolution between their characters, especially in later seasons. The only main living romantic couple, who remained mostly untainted in canon by their increasingly OOC, gross, unhealthy, and unrealistic character assassinating plot fuckery romantic soap opera angst in canon post 3A by S6, was Snowing, and that’s only because A&E and their team of writers didn’t care enough about them to give them any significany screen time, or any interesting storylines post 3A.

[gch1995]

Rumple was always my favorite character on OUAT. I finally quit watching after S5 because I couldn’t stand seeing Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, or Emma constantly getting thrown under the bus for H00k/CS’s benefit anymore.

I always pretend that the real show ended with 3x11 because that’s the last time characterization, development, or rules on this show made any kind of consistent, hopeful, dynamic, complex, realistic, organic, or satisfying well-written sense for all of my favorite characters and the storyline that didn’t make me want to bang my head against a desk.

I ship “Skin Deep” to the end of S3 canon Rumbelle, and then pretty much just canon-divergent/AU fanon Rumbelle after that point because the canon narrative after Bae’s death as written by A&E and their writers from 3B-S7 pretty much had systematically destroyed every element that originally made Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, Emma, Snow, and even Henry such amazing, admirable, consistent, credible, emotionally complex, human, healthy, realistic, or relatable well-written characters/ships in the narrative by butchering their original characterizations to prop up H00k, CS, Regina, and Zelena’s undeserved benefit.

Like, even this Rumple who they’re saying got a “happy ending” in canon just because he got to be with Belle again in heaven...Did he really, though? Wasn’t Bae his primary happy ending that A&E and these writers cruelly ripped away from him with his redemption in 3x11 to make him the on-and-off again villain? Why wasn’t he a part of this quest for mortality? Was it really worth all that character assassinating back-and-forth team hero to team villain bs from 3B-S7 when he already got the same ending in 3x11 with a far more consistently, realistically, healthily, organic, hopeful, and satisfyingly well-written, and well-earned journey along the way in the narrative that was always on his side?

Would the original Rumple from S1-S3A with the realistic and complex characterization, who was written as the father first and the love interest second, be okay with himself dying for his wife when one of his children or other relatives were alive? No. Would in-character Belle? No.

I love Rumbelle, I’m glad they got something of a happy ever after, but they should have been more than just each other’s love interests on the show as characters at this point. Gideon should have had more significance in their storylines, and he should have been included in S7 right there. To be honest, I’m going to keep pretending OUAT ended with 3x11 because it’s the last time the show made any sense.

Also, don’t get me started on how they had him say that “taking on the curse was an act of a coward.” No, it wasn’t, not originally when he first took it on to save his son from the ogre wars. It was brave. If he’s talking about the more simplistic second time where he took it back on screen just because, then I guess that could be considered “cowardice.”

It’s just annoying because 3B-S7 Rumple is a convoluted, simplistic, inconsistent, poorly rewritten, recycled, retconned, and redone version of his far superior consistent, original, organic, layered, human, emotionally complex, dynamic, and realistic characterization and redemption arc from S1-S3A.

They wanted us to constantly pretend that the first two-and-half seasons of Rumple’s characterization, development, and redemption arc didn’t exist after so they could constantly resell it as “Finally you were selfless,” or “For the first time you were truly selfless.” Except it really wasn’t because we saw him doing the same redemptive things over and over again, and for anyone who’s a fan of his character it gets old after awhile because we wanted for A&E and these writers to just stick to one redemption arc, not undo it, and either leave his character alone by writing him out of the show after he got it, or taking the time to show us what happened after Rumple gets redeemed with him getting to settle down with his loved ones without constantly having to prove he’s a better man by losing them to give him another way to redeem himself.

In 3A, it felt like a beautiful, bittersweet, and organic Shakespearean ending to a fantastic character on the show. In S7, not only had they ruined both his and Belle’s characters so throughly in canon from 3B-S6 to prop up Hook/CS, past the point of no return basically, but it didn’t even feel necessary after his arc in 6B. Killing off Belle didn’t really “teach” him anything, anyway because he was already ready to give up his curse in the first ten years of their happy marriage together at the beginning of 7x04, long before she died, so they should have just let him have a TLK with her, and have them run off into the sunset with Gideon. It just felt so contrived, cheesy, OOC, ableist, misogynistic, and unhealthily romanticized with the way they ended up doing it, instead thought

Like, it’s not romantic to commit suicide to be with someone who you lost that you loved when there’s no need to, and you have other family members and friends who love you to live for. This show was so tone-deaf, ableist, and gross, tbh.

I  need clarity...

I have recently just finished watching the last season of OUAT. Why was rumple only ever invested in Belle? Where was his son thru the whole season, why did it seem like Regina was the only person upset by his death and why did his friendships lack a feeling of real deepness (Hook, Alice, Regina) .Rumple has always been my favourite character, but there are to many things that I still try to understand about him.

[gch1995]

@sarashouldbestudying

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@done-with-ouat

@takingbackouat

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@bookwormchocaholic

@klorobenzene

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@0ceanofdarkness

I  need clarity...

I have recently just finished watching the last season of OUAT. Why was rumple only ever invested in Belle? Where was his son thru the whole season, why did it seem like Regina was the only person upset by his death and why did his friendships lack a feeling of real deepness (Hook, Alice, Regina) .Rumple has always been my favourite character, but there are to many things that I still try to understand about him.