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gch1995 · 6 years ago

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The Big Problems With OUAT’s Writing:

My favorite characters were Rumple, Belle, Emma, and Nealfire. Once Nealfire got killed off though, their characterizations and their relationships, as well as everyone else’s thereafter, went to total shit in canon. Adam and Eddy obviously couldn’t come up with any more than two-and-a-half seasons of organic or satisfying character growth for the original main cast, and it should have ended in 3x11, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure that Damon Lindlelof helped them out with the writing a lot for the first two-and-a-half seasons, which is why the story is at least coherent enough to be enjoyable up to 3x11.

But after 3A, Lindlelof’s plans for the show were butchered, Kitsowitz completely took over the show with Captain Fuckboy, PLOT, and making money their main focuses, so they kept it on air for the next four-and-a-half seasons not knowing what else to do now that they had run out of new story. Thus, it got to the point where it essentially devolved into such badly written crack!fic soap opera on screen by the end of 5A where the writing for everyone’s characterization had become so unbelievably OOC, annoyingly self-contradictory, changeable, hypocritical, illogical, melodramatically problematic, and toxic in favor of the PLOT that I had to quit to preserve my sanity.

I enjoyed reading Rumbelle fanfic moreso than the actual show because it made sense and felt more satisfying, well-written, in-character, and entertaining than the nonsensical toxic garbage the show had devolved into.

After 5A, Eddy Kitsis said in an interview that he thought “good storytelling” was making sure the audience goes “WTF? This makes absolutely no sense! This isn’t fair! This totally contradicts everything that I was shown before, and feels too stupid, too contrived, and too OOC to even believe possible.”

It wasn’t worth getting emotionally or mentally invested in this show or any of the remaining characters as written in canon anymore post 3A because A&E and these writers formula kept becoming more and more of “We’re doing our jobs if we can trick our audience after deliberately teasing them by dangling the carrot of organic growth of character that we’re too lazy to follow through on by yanking it away from them as soon as they start making logical predictions abruptly, cruelly and inorganically with constant twist of ’HOLY SHIT, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED?”

When Eddy basically said that at the end of 5A, I realized I was done with having any hope for this show, and I decided to finally quit watching after 5B because I knew every time something started to seem to make sense and go in a direction of organic growth for the characters, A&E and these writers would deliberately pull the rug out from under them and their audience for trying to get invested in them with some inorganic contrivance that ruined everything in an unfair way that made no sense and never would make any sense in canon from what we were led to believe would happen beforehand on this show by them because that was the whole point: A&E and these writers so often didn’t want you to make sense of their show because they were lazy hacks who didn’t know how to write a cohesive plot or organic character growth/realistic characterization after 3A.

They admitted that they liked whiplashing their audience for using common sense and logic in regards to fans whenever the story and the characters would seem to be potentially headed in a way that would make sense. They considered that “genuis” storytelling with their overinflated egos, rather than just very cruel, mean, lazy, and low bad writing that ultimately destroyed most of their main characters’ credibility and their fans willingness to stay emotionally invested in their canon show that the creators/writers refused to let unfold organically in a way that made consistent sense long term.

Instead, they used a constant series of contrived magical macguffins and twists of “WTF just happened? This makes no damned sense from what was just previously established on screen, and does not at all relate to it! This is unbelievably absurd! The characters would never do or say this shit in real life!”

It destroyed the credibility of most of their characters’ in canon and their fans willingness to stay emotionally invested in their show, and it was insulting, especially when you had showrunners like Eddy Kitsis admitting to the fans “As always with this show, once the audience gets onto what we’re doing, we have to change it.”

When they said “We hope things will be ‘fun’” for the character assassinating, wildly OOC, nonsensical, and melodramatic garbage writing of 6A for Rumbelle with the Morfetus bs twist or in 5A of the Dark Swan arc, they didn’t mean that we would necessarily be legitimately entertained as an audience when they threw in a character destroying inorganic magical contrivance or bizarre twist out of nowhere that forced the characters into weird directions that made no sense from what had been previously established.

Adam and Eddy meant that they would be having fun pissing those of us in their audience off by insulting our intelligence and common sense by constantly giving us inorganic contrivance of OOC characterizations, magical macguffins, and bizarre PLOT twists and contrivances that didn’t consistently, logically, and thus satisfyingly add up with what had been previously established, rather than entertaining us with organic character growth that made satisfactory sense by letting our predictions for characters come true in their sheer laziness to slow down and write organic character development.

There were even hints of this problem before 3B-S7 that I was seeing potential for in 2B. OUAT could have gone strong for longer than two to three ish seasons if A&E and these writers had slowed down from 2B, not gotten obsessed with Hook, not gone to Neverland, and not gotten so obsessed with the next big, bizarre, and contrived magical PLOT twist or macguffin that, oftentimes inorganically forced their characters to 180 regress in ways that made no sense for moments of “HOLY SHIT! WTF JUST HAPPENED?”

I have no problem with characters regressing when it’s done organically, slowly, relatably, and realistically. The problem with OUAT was that they used inorganic contrivances to push them back-and-forth between increasingly bizarre extremes that made no sense, rather than focusing on human or realistic motivations to get them from point A to point C organically. It felt fake, and it felt forced. I know it was fiction, but it felt like lazily badly written fiction when the characters swung back-and-forth by the writers playing God with them on the strings of their asinine PLOT twists inorganically.

It had gotten beyond exhausting trying to invest in a show run by petty hacks who were never going to allow their audience’s common sense and intelligence lead them through an organic path of growth for these characters with the writers dangling the carrot in front of them for a story that actually could make sense, and then abruptly, cruelly, and inorganically yanking it away from them with an absurd twist because they were too lazy to come up with any more ideas for organic character growth after 3A.

Let’s talk about Hook and CS becoming such a main focus on this show, and the romantic male lead/couple.” It’s not that Hook couldn’t have been organically developed into a sympathetic character worthy of redemption in his own right. A&E couldn’t write that, though. He also didn’t fit together with the ensemble main cast in the place of Nealfire as Emma’s main love interest. He and Emma had absolutely no chemistry. Hook’s sudden interest in her was bizarre and creepy.

Then, they killed off Nealfire through absurd means for Hook to take his place in the picture where he didn’t fit in the family circle, so they could have CS. They broke their own rules to bring Rumple back from the dead to turn him into the wildly OOC on-and-off-again “big bad” scapegoat cartoonish villain PLOT twister “foil” to Hook, even after having been given two-and-a-half seasons of the most well-written and well-earned sympathetic reforming anti-villain/tragic hero backstory and redemption arc from S1-3A. They destroyed Emma’s, Belle’s, Snow’s, David’s, and even Henry’s original sympathetic characterizations by obliterating their self-respect, intelligence, self-awareness, and moral integrity, so that they could inorganically force this bullshit narrative of Hook/CS being the “best hero” ever in a world of now meaningless, shallow, and simplistic black versus white hypocritical morality that Nealfire and the common goal of family balanced out with a sense of realism, common sense, organic growth and emotional depth that got lost with his death in favor of contradictory character destroying magical PLOT-twist driven Drama™️ soap opera “hero versus villain” fuckery and Hook/CS.

No wonder they lost more and more viewers as every season passed...Getting emotionally invested was no fun when the writers deliberately pulled the rug out from underneath your favorite characters whenever things started to seem making sense by totally ruining it with some bizarre magical contrivance or characterization that doesn’t add up to what we were shown before, and your logical predictions for stories that made organic and consistent sense for character growth were mocked by these writers because they refused to slow down and develop the characters after S1-3A. You were punished for being smart and using common sense, and that’s why most of these main characters’ credibility and integrity got completely destroyed in one way or another by this very lazy, petty and unfair bad writing technique of theirs that made them mostly feel like pod!people after just the first two-and-a-half seasons of the series.

tldr; You could only suspend your disbelief by turning off your brain to disregard the bullshit writing choices on OUAT and just blindly enjoy the show by getting invested in the characters for so long as written in canon without asking any questions before the writing became too infuriatingly repetitive, too contrived, too OOC, too character assassinating, and too stupid to believe. Also, Captain Fuckboy ruined the show after 3A, and he should have died and stayed dead back in early S2. It could have been different if A&E were good writers who could come up with organic character growth, and not shoehorned him in as Emma’s love interest in a way that ruined the whole show’s dynamic and sense of emotional depth by replacing Nealfire with him.

Nealfire’s death was the metaphorical death of the show’s canon, though. My personal headcanon was that the real show ended with “Going Home” (3x11) because that’s the last time there was any sort of compelling, consistent, organic, realistic, or relatable characterization or growth. After that, it all went to hell (literally), and I had to finally quit watching after S5 to preserve my sanity before anything got any worse, and on this show, it only would because A&E and these writers never learned.

A&E didn’t trust or respect their audience, so after awhile it felt like why should I respect their shitshow’s canon if it doesn’t make any consistent or well-developed sense, and they don’t care that it doesn’t themselves anymore either?

#anti ouat #anti kitsowitz #anti ouat writers #anti ouat 3b s7 #anti hook #anti cs #rumplestiltskin #belle #nealfire #emma swan #swanfire #rumbelle #snow white/mary margaret #prince david/david nolan #snowing #henry mills #I think trying to watch this show after 3A started eating away my brain cells with its sheer ridiculousness!#Mindfucking your audience with bizarre and stupid ass contrived twists is NOT good storytelling!#You don’t punish your audience by changing the plot out of nowhere just because your audience uses logic to predict where it could go #because your fragile egos and lazy asses are too lazy to write organic character development #since you’d have to slow down and do something NEW then instead of recycling the same old storyline by going back to the status quo #and fans would recognize that your creator pets/self-insert ship suck anyway #You don’t outright destroy sideline and/or kill off other characters/ships because they could be competition #for the characters/ships YOU want your general audience to like as a creator/writer of a work of fiction #because you’re too fucking lazy to actually organically develop Hook as a likable individual character!#That’s so fucking petty and unprofessional!#I’m NEVER going to watch another movie or show with A&E’s or ANY of these writers names attached to it EVER AGAIN!#I’m so bitter about how much they abused and misused their main characters for PLOT fuckery and Hook/CS ESPECIALLY the Goldstiltskin family #I’m pretty certain Lindlelof outlined most of S1-3A for them. It’s probably why 3B-S7 feels so ooc cheesy shallow repetitive and stupid

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gch1995 · 6 years ago

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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.

• 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.

#looking for new tv shows #anti ouat #anti kitsowitz #anti ouat writers #anti cs #anti regina #anti zelena #anti hook #anti twd #anti scott gimple #anti twd writers #anti game of thrones #anti d&d

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gch1995 · 6 years ago

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I finally quit watching OUAT after season five because A&E and these writers kept deliberately destroying the beauty and integrity of Rumple and Belle’s individual characterizations and relationship together to prop up Hook/CS. I kept up with spoilers for S6 and S7, and I still just felt angry and bitter with the writing. Even if Rumple and Belle did get a contrived, cheesy, and unhealthy sort of Romeo and Juliet happy ending together, it still didn’t make up for all of the systematic damage A&E and these writers had done to Rumple and Belle’s individual characters and relationship together from the end of 3B-S6 to prop up Hook’s “redemption” arc and Crapstain Swan by bringing Rumple back from the dead after his selfless sacrifice in 3x11, killing off Nealfire, undoing his original redemption arc, butchering much of the beauty of both his and Belle’s original, complex, likable, intelligent, and sympathetic characterizations from S1-3A, and deliberately destroying them for roughly three seasons to turn the audience against them.

I know Adam and Eddy and these writers probably never cared or realized it, but Rumple really did have the most believable, beautiful, consistent, organic, sympathetic, and well-written redemption arc out of their main reforming anti-villains on this show from S1-3A before they brought him back from the dead to deliberately destroy it, so that everyone else could get half-assed ones instead, just because the actors who played them were conventionally attractive, while CS got to become the center of the show.

I know that Adam and Eddy and these writers were ableist, misogynistic, insensitive, deliberately cruel, and shallow vile little men who didn’t understand what Rumbelle meant to so many of us in the fandom because they didn’t think that Robert Carlyle was conventionally attractive to be an antiheroic male lead like Colin O’Donoghue. I know they didn’t care that they had lighting in a bottle with Robert Carlyle and Emilie De Ravin as Rumbelle in “Skin Deep” to the end of 3A, and such a natural organic GA response that CS never got without them deliberately shoving them down the audience’s throat by killing off Neal and systematically destroying every other character remaining to prop up Hook/CS.

I know Adam and Eddy didn’t care that they were deliberately hurting the Rumbelle fandom, the fandom with the most fragile hearts with all of the spitefully OOC character assassinating writing for Rumple and Belle from the end of 3B-S6 to prop up Hook/CS. I know they didn’t care that they were deliberately hurting the fandom full of the outcasts, the “difficult to love,” the abused, the misunderstood, the downtrodden, the mentally ill, the neuroatypical, the traumatized, the bookworms, and the disabled, who saw themselves in Rumple and Belle, and looked to them to find hope in two outcasts bringing out the best in each other in a fairytale world, with their OOC character assassinating toxic bs writing to prop up Hook/CS, and it makes me bitter.

This show should have just ended with “Going Home” because nothing ever made sense again after that episode, everyone’s original characterization/development was undone to prop up Hook/CS, Neal was killed off, and there was no new, compelling, organic, or satisfying growth in these characters after that ever made me feel like this show was worth coming back after 3x11. All the characters just devolved and re-evolved to the exact same point they were at by the end of 3x11 in a way that felt so much less worth it after how much the wildly OOC inorganic character assassinating toxic bs writing tainted them all in canon now.

#ouat s1-3A #rumplestiltskin #belle #rumbelle #anti hook #anti cs #anti ouat 3b-S7 #anti ouat writers #anti kitsowitz

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gch1995 · 4 years ago

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This is why I finally quit watching this show after S5, and I honestly wish I had quit watching after the Neverland arc. Rumple’s my favorite character from the show, but he should have just stayed dead after 3x11.

Yeah, I’ve seen that trope of resurrecting characters work well in fanfiction written by fans who actually care about the characters, and who have time and creativity to come up with a compelling story that makes sense in the aftermath. But professional show-runners and writers of fantasy and drama TV shows with sympathetic anti-villains who they have redeem themselves by selflessly sacrificing their lives should just stick to their own rules and let their sympathetic redemptive anti-villain stay consistently redeemed by leaving them dead after they have them die to save people selflessly because they only usually have two to three seasons of story actually planned out, and they don’t know what else to do with sympathetic anti-villains who they have redeem themselves selflessly by dying. They’re too attached to forcing characters into the same narratives and storylines after running out of story, so they just retcon their development, flanderdize their worst traits, make them unnaturally worse, and turn them into cartoon parodies of their former selves before they died to do the redemption arc.

And frankly, on OUAT, it’s really not just Rumple who’s original characterization and storyline got butchered and made repetitive after the Neverland arc and Neal’s death, but everyone’s, including their favorite characters to “redeem,” such as Regina, Hook, and Zelena. They only had two-and-a-half seasons planned out, and then when they ran out of story, they stopped trying to write any sort of coherent, consistent, complex, meaningful, dynamic, and relatable characterizations, developments, and storylines at all. They just derailed the characters in increasingly cheaply shocking, contrived, ooc, flanderdized, nonsensical, horrifying, and repetitive ways over and over and over again to keep re-railing them back to the same development they had already achieved back in “Going Home.” Unfortunately, by the end of S5 and S6, most of us no longer cared about the “happy endings” and “redemption arcs” the remaining main characters and relationships got in canon anymore because the writing had become too inexcusably awful to justify anymore.

I Want Justice!!!

Justice for Nimue, whose only crime was killing a mass murdering psychopath who stabbed her 60 seconds beforehand

Justice for Merlin, who was killed because he tried to help and was immediately forgotten

Justice for Rapunzel, who was inserted because “Representation? Here, have a black chick who will never be seen or mentioned again.”

Justice for Nealfire, who never got to know his son

Justice for Liam II, who was orphaned for reasons he doesn’t know by the older brother who never spares a second to think of him

Justice for Sydney, who was probably murdered by Regina because he dared try free himself from her

Justice for the LGBT characters, who will be paraded out and then never be seen again “You wanted gays? Here’s your gays! Aaaaand…. there they go.”

Justice for Robert Carlyle and Emilie de Ravin, who manage to squeeze every last drop of emotion out of a sub par script

Justice for JMO, who researched her Dark Swan role like a professional only for it to be tossed aside

Justice for the children on this show, who are merely props and morality pets

Justice for Emma, who acts more and more like an abused spouse every minute

Justice for Rumple, who died in 3X11

Justice for Belle, who did too

Justice for the fairytales I grew up with. Your meaning and essence have been destroyed. It was like watching my childhood memories die a slow a death

#anti a&e #anti hook #anti regina #anti ouat #anti everything #anti ouat 3b s7 #as far as i’m concerned there was no ouat after the neverland arc #anti zelena #Emma Neal Rumple and Belle deserved so much better!#I’ve seen fanfic writers pull off amazing stories for a resurrected Rumple but Kitsowitz should’ve just left him dead after 3x11 #in fact they should have just let the whole show die after going home because that’s clearly all the story they had planned out #after that it was just one disaster after another with such a cheesy forced and half-assed redemption arcs and happy endings in 6B and S7

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gch1995 · 6 years ago

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@we-built-the-shadows-here

Oh, boy...Rumple was the whole reason I got so emotionally invested in OUAT in the first place, but he was unfortunately ultimately afflicted with the same curse of being destroyed by ridiculously character assassinating plot driven bad writing that almost every other main character on this show was subjected to in one way or another after the first two-and-a-half seasons in general really because Adam and Eddy ran out of story after that, and didn’t know what else to do, so they just kept undoing and redoing these characters developments and regressions over and over again in increasingly unbelievable, contrived, and OOC ways until they all became mostly hollowed out shells of the fantastic characters they once were.

Yes, Rumple/Gold is is easily the most emotionally complex, consistently relatable, well-written, and well-developed character and reforming anti-villain/tragic hero type character on this show with an arc that actually felt organically well-earned and fun to root for, rather than just something that I was being inorganically forced to root for by A&E and these writers because the actor who played them was conventionally attractive, so they were handed redemption on a silver platter like many of the other villains on this show were in the first two-and-a-half-seasons. Unfortunately, the show’s overall sense of emotional depth, consistent and realistic characterizations in the main cast, relatability, integrity, continuity, credibility, and organic sense of growth, and the rules of magic take a major nosedive in 3B of total nonsense in favor of a certain guest star that Eddy Kitsis went gaga over in a way that he compromised the entire original theme of family on the show for a ship, his laziness to write organic character development, and wildly OOC, contrived, cartoonish, hypocritically, simplistically, and pettily black versus white morality, melodramatically mutually toxic, and ridiculously shocking soap opera character destroying bullshit twists of “HOLY SHIT! WTF just happened? This makes no sense! This totally contradicts everything I was led to believe would happen before! How could this or that character actually do or say that? Why are they acting so bizarre? This is so out-of-character! They would never do or say this in real life! How could they be so stupid? This is so unfair! Where the hell did this come from? This feels like a Disney sponsored crack!fic on screen that I’m watching! Why are the characters not growing or learning from their mistakes? Why has everyone become so fucking awful to each other? Who are these pod people wearing my favorite characters faces? ” *HEADDESKS* From the end of 3B, or really maybe even S2where we start to see the plot holes in magic and the contrivances pushing characters back, but particularly after 3A to the end of the series everyone in the remaining main cast got seriously destroyed multiple times in one way or another with the lazy character derailing bad writing tropes of Aesop Amnesia, moral dissonance, compressed vices, designated hero, designated villain, flanderdization, romantic plot tumor, yo-yo plot points, the Chris Carter effect, chickification, demonization, most writers are male, die for our ship, cheap shock value, shocking swerve endings and beginnings, deus angst machinna, unfortunate implications, and the idiot ball for idiotic contrived plots, particularly Emma, Rumple, and Belle in favor of propping up Eddy’s Gary Stu.

I’m not going to go into detail about what happens, but generally speaking, those of us in the fandom accept canon as legit all the way up to “Going Home” (3x11), and try to detach ourselves from all the bullshit crack!fic AU spin off on screen from 3B-S7. Not that there aren’t genuinely good moments and episodes from 3B-S7 here and there, but yeah, try not to get too emotionally or mentally attached to canon after 3A when your favorite characters start to do and say wildly OOC, ridiculous, and fucked up things to each other that make no sense, and don’t hold it against them because it’s not really them. It’s A&E and these hacks bad writing and show-running inorganically derailing them for Drama™️ in their laziness to write organic character development and their big egos ruining them.

i’m watching once upon a time for the first time and:

i know i have a soft spot for shitty bad evil fuckboys about ten miles wide but the amount of people i saw very into Rumplestiltskin / Mr Gold when this show was originally airing was a lot and now i am watching the show, just passed the episode where Belle shows up, and it’s

it’s so much more deeply fucked than i originally thought and i am both shocked and delighted that people were stanning so hard for this? damn! look at this overflowing Evil Feelings Monster! what an interesting backstory and tragedy to make him how he is! absolutely delightful! thank you show! damn!

#this show was genuinely fun to watch up to 3x11 then it went to hell with bad writing tropes #rumplestiltskin #rumbelle #anti hook #but not so much as a character as originally written but because he became a gary stu for eddy kitsis

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gch1995 · 6 years ago

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As far as I was concerned, the real Rumple and Belle had more or less died with the rest of the real OUAT back in season three ish, and lived on in Rumbelle canon-divergent/AU fanon scenarios. These pod!people wearing their faces on this awful crack!fic on screen from the end of 3B-S7, occasionally reminded me of the great characters and ship they once were and should have still been on screen all the time, if Adam and Eddy hadn’t deliberately fucked them up for illogically OOC toxic plot fuckery Drama™️, and repetitive arcs when they ran out of ideas after 3A, and got a boner for Hook/CS. I still shipped them in principle because I loved what they once were and should have still been, but I wasn’t really emotionally invested in either of the characters they’d been reduced to in the shitshow that canon had become at this point, or any of the other remaining main characters for that matter. I stopped watching after season five, and kept watching the spoilers from the sidelines waiting for this trash show to just fucking die already!

Yeah, Emilie De Ravin and Robert Carlyle had such amazing organic chemistry when their characters weren’t being deliberately derailed to prop up everyone else, and redo/undo Rumple’s redemption arc. However, even the happy and cute moments between Rumbelle in canon at this point still reminded me that the writing was inexcusably and inorganically contrived and godawful. At this point, nothing A&E and the writers did, could or would make up for the irrevocable damage they’d done to Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, Emma, Hook, Henry, Snowing, or really any of these characters, unless they took the time to slow down, logically explain why it had happened, stop deliberately retconning previous character developments, and slowly and consistently build them back up to an organic slow-burn mutual resolution with no magical plot fuckery, Drama™️, or quick fixes. Sadly, this show was all about PLOT now, so I knew that wasn’t going to happen on screen, and I was finally emotionally numb to canon.

@sieben9

@sarashouldbestudying

I think OUAT was the first show I watched on television that taught me the difference between hating a fictional character and hating the writers/creators behind them.

I used to be one of those people who thought, “Oh, people who ignore canon writing for their favorite problematic fictional characters when they do or say fucked up things, are just being babies! They signed up for a problematic fave, so they should know better!” After dealing with the clusterfuck of OUAT for seven seasons, though, I completely have come to understand the concept of rejecting contrived, character destroying, and nonsensical bad writing in canon.

The main problems with OUAT were that:

A) It was only ever a big melodramatic deal of “OMG, SO EVOL” when Rumple so much as considered committing crimes and/or abusing magic in ways that violated autonomy or consent for, generally speaking, good reasons. But Emma, Belle, Regina, Snow, David, Zelena, Hook, and Henry could abuse magic in ways that could/did hurt other people all the time by violating consent, or committing crimes whenever it suited them, and the narrative often acted like we shouldn’t have cared, or felt seriously pissed off about it when they easily got away with it. Rumple shouldn’t have been excused for wanting to do the same with magic for family either, but character assassinating him with contrived magical macguffins, then framing him as an OOC cartoon mad villain who was “too EVOL” to understand, even while everyone else got away with doing the same things with magic for similar, if not far worse reasons now, didn’t make me feel like Belle, Emma, Regina, Hook, Zelena, or Snowing were any better than him in the situations. It just made them look like self-righteous hypocrites.

B). There’s a difference between a well-written problematic character and a badly written problematic character.

A well-written problematic fictional character is not necessarily redeemable, but even if they aren’t, you’re audience still sympathizes with them, even if they don’t like them because they see and understand how and why they got from point A to point C consistently and realistically, and they suffer realistic repercussions.

A badly-written problematic character may suffer from abuse, mental illness, trauma, grief, and loss, but those things are more of plot devices for Drama™️ or shock value, rather than for actual story. On OUAT, rather than acknowledging that those issues existed in their characters, they used them for shock value, pretended they didn’t exist in “good characters,” and/or demonized those issues in “bad guys” as one time characterizations by inorganically forcing them from Point A to Point C with bizarre SHOCKING twists, inexplicable magical macguffins with multiple functions, magical prophecies, and through bending and breaking previously established rules of magic and characterizations inconsistently. Then, once the characters did the right thing, and the writers were done with the stupid character destroying twist for Drama™️, they went “back to normal” with little to no repercussions, and it was like it never happened. That’s not how people work in real life, though. I know this show was about fairytales, but I was initially given the impression that these characters would react like realistic human beings, and use some common sense.

Then, you had the fact that rather than actually dealing with realistic issues between characters in relationships, such as Rumple and Belle on screen from S4-S5 in S6 that were actually obvious, relatable, and understandable, the writers actually went there by fucking up the unborn baby like they did with Leo and Piper’s babies Chris and Wyatt from Charmed because “fun.” But it wasn’t fun! That’s the worst storyline you can do on any show! No one likes stories about magical pregnancies, evil fetuses, evil future babies, or babies with magical powers!

C) When you kill off a character, especially a redemptive anti-villain/tragic hero type character, kill them off once and then be done with them for good. Don’t bring them back from the dead and try to have it both ways. Don’t break rules to bring them back from the dead. I’ve seen it work in fan fiction because fan fiction writers, but in TV shows resurrecting characters never works because show-runners and writers don’t know what else to do with them, so they fuck them up instead.

D) “Foil” does not mean that you destroy one character to fool the audience into thinking that the other one is better. Foils are parallel opposites to create a similar opposites narrative contrast, not an excuse to completely destroy one character to prop up another. A good example of well-written “foils” are Mr. Rochester and St John Rivers from Jane Eyre who represented fire and ice. Jane was more attracted to the fire and the passion with Rochester, while St. John was far too cool and formal for her liking in regards to her feelings for her. St. John saw her as a business partner in his proposal for their marriage, while Rochester saw her as his true love. However, St. John’’s integrity, credibility, nobility, or goodness of character was not completely destroyed to prop up Rochester. Even Jane admitted that he loved another woman, and that he was a better man than Rochester.

At this point in OUAT, Rumple/Rumbelle mostly still existed to be destroyed to prop up Hook/CS, and Hook/CS could only exist with Rumple/Rumbelle being destroyed to prop them up. It’s like they’d created a symbiotic parallel between Rumple and Hook at this point, and that’s not good writing.

E). Stop with the “Evil is sexy” in female villains and Rumple, a feminine-coded anti-villains, no he and the EQ didn’t have sex in 6A, no I don’t think he was in to it, thank god, and he and Belle were more or less divorced at the time, so I think the cheating accusation is unfair. But it was still gross because of all the incest, manipulation, consent issues with the split!queen bs, and initial sexual assault of Rumple on the EQ’s part.

F). Female “empowerment” and “feminism” does not mean being a control freak, refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, interrupting them, belittling them, walking away, and/or being a petty bitch every time a man so much as slightly disagrees with you. It does not mean giving men ultimatums, or leading them on with borderline emotionally manipulative false hope to get what you want from them, only to drop them afterwards/if they don’t do exactly what you demand 100% of the time. It does not mean being emotionally, verbally, physically, and/or sexually abusive of men. It does not mean needlessly kicking men when they are already down by knowingly using their emotional vulnerability against them to deliberately lord over them about how “weak” they are for expressing their very real fears to you in a desire for your emotional support and understanding. Being abusive, bitter, needlessly cruel, controlling, emotionally manipulative, hypocritical, self-righteous, restrictive, violent, or controlling towards men, treating them like “projects to fix” are not signs of feminism, strength or empowerment in female characters. I think it’s actually a really misogynistic and insulting portrayal of women, actually.

I get that Rumple, Hook, and hell, even David and Robin were far from the ideal and perfect, or innocent husbands/boyfriends, but at the very least if or when they were problematic on the show, it was generally framed as wrong, even if I think Rumple and Hook were vilified in ways that felt exaggeratedly cartoonish, flanderdized, and/or ooc in 4A, 5A, and 6A. I get that most of these women had every right to be angry at their men, distrustful, leave them forever, or defend themselves against them at one point or another. But being and doing those things to men who have hurt/threatened to hurt you as a woman, or who have fucked up, whether intentionally or unintentionally in the past, present, or future does not require you being needlessly cruel, emotionally manipulative, consciously pushing all their buttons when they try to have a normal conversation with you, being mean to them even when they do or say nothing wrong, leading them on with false hope, refusing/withholding emotional support, even when they do reach out for your honest understanding, or refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, being hypocritical, treating them like “projects to fix,” giving them ultimatums, blaming them for your own problems, trash talking them behind their backs without actually knowing the truth about them first hand, stealing their autonomy/consent, being hypocritical/self-righteous, and/or walking away every time they disagree with you, or do something you don’t like without trying to understand them first. The writers made it look like they were apologizing for the one-sided rape and abuse of Graham, Robin, and Rumple on Regina and Zelena’s parts. While Emma and Belle certainly did not deserve to be lied to and/or abused by Hook and Rumple in 4A, 5A, 6A, and while I am in no way blaming them for breaking up with them, or for reacting in understandable human self-defense in the rare moments they lashed out aggressively, I will blame them for all the times they were playing the roles of the triggering aggressors in their relationships with Rumple and Hook. Rumple shouldn’t have lied to Belle in S4, and he and Hook were definitely unjustifiably off the rails in some wildly OOC moments in 5A and 6A in which they played the role of the aggressors to Belle and Emma in their relationships, and I could see where the girls were coming from at the end of 5x08 to the end of 5x11 for Hook with Emma and at the end of 6x04, the end of 6x08, and 6x09 for Belle. However, they were also aggressors in their relationships with them by victimizing them through being needlessly disrespectful, inconsiderate, controlling,cruel, self-righteous, selfish, and hypocritical by stealing Rumple and Hook’s autonomy/consent, banishing them, insulting them, treating them as so beneath them, refusing to let them get a word in edgewise, and shutting them down and walking away every time they did try to reach out to them when they didn’t like what they had to say.

I get that mutually toxic relationships are very rare, and I know how people often use that as an excuse to minimize the damage abusers cause in real life to apologize for them. However, at this point, Rumbelle and CS were mutually toxic relationships on the show, and both partners in both relationships deserved better than each other, or at least better writing that wrote them healthily in character. I can’t excuse Rumple or Hook for lying in 4A or for overreacting scarily in 5A and 6A to Belle or Emma. However, I can’t really excuse Belle or Emma for hurting Rumple and Hook either because it wasn’t framed in a way that merely looked like they were reacting to them in self-defense. Reacting in self-defense to a toxic person/“abuser” in your life, does not mean that you consciously become an abuser of them by overreacting to them with needlessly cruel, deceptive, emotionally, verbally, mentally abusive, or manipulative toxic tactics right back. Besides, in Rumbelle’s case, even when Rumple wasn’t being toxic towards Belle in their relationship, doing or saying anything that required her to lash out in response, and/or trying to reach out to her, she was overreacting by walking away from him, belittling him, and/or giving him ultimatums from season two of their relationship.

Personally, I actually didn’t really think that Rumple was an abuser of Belle in their present day relationship, aside from a few wildly OOC badly written moments of fucked up, overparanoid, controlling, threatening, restrictive, and borderline manipulative erratic behaviors, attitudes, and dialogue choices in 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09. The worst he had done to Belle in their present day relationship before 6A was lie to her, though, and that’s not abuse. I could understand breaking up with him for that, and feeling hurt, distrustful, betrayed, and angry over that. However, he wasn’t being mean to her, threatening her, or overreacting to her badly by doing that in 4A, so it didn’t require her abusing the dagger, banishing him, being needlessly cruel to him, leading him on with false hope, or emotionally manipulating him. In 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09, I got where Belle was coming from when she lashed out at Rumple in response to his wildly OOC cold restrictive behavior and threats when she lashed out in response. I’m not trying to say that she deserved it, or blaming her for reacting in self-defense. But it’s also hard to believe that she was a “blameless” victim in this whole scenario of 6A with Rumple, and that she wasn’t consciously and deliberately hurting his feelings by being needlessly and triggeringly cruel, disrespectful, hateful, petty and spiteful at the beginning of 6x04, 6x07, and 6x08, even when Rumple was trying to appeal to her brokenly, gently, and honestly, and he wasn’t immediately doing anything that required her to attempt to kidnap their child, or to treat him like filth beneath her shoes. It’s probably an unpopular opinion, but as far as canon!Rumbelle goes, while neither party was blameless for their issues, I kind of thought that Belle was more often the abusive one in their relationship in the present day storyline with her controlling ultimatums of Rumple, emotional blackmail of Rumple, her walking away when he so much as hesitated to tell her the truth because he was nervous about opening up in 2x04 when she didn’t like his “cowardice” without asking any questions why he wanted magic or trying to understand him first, and her presumptions about what she thought was best for him, rather than asking what Rumple wanted for himself, going all the way back to S2 in small doses. It went off the rails and got flanderdized beyond belief from S4-S6, though.

I liked that Belle said that line to Rumple about “What have we done to each other?” However, I feel like it would have made a lot more sense for this sort of development to happen back in 5A or 5B, rather than the on-and-off bs with Rumple, her going to Zelena to get the sleeping curse, and both of them driving each other insane for Drama™️ over a dream zygote in 6A. But that would have required good writing that was actually logical, in-character, and satisfying. I wasn’t getting the impression that this show was willing to give us that anymore.

G). Male characters should progress and regress with more than just the solely emotionally manipulative force of a female love interest. Female characters should be able to progress and regress with more than just a male love interest’s emotionally manipulative force. I’ll always love Rumbelle, Snowing in the early seasons and in fanon scenarios, and even CS wouldn’t have been that bad, but the writers either destroyed both halves of them with contrived ship war Drama™️, and/or sidelined them and made them unhealthily codependent. I think killing off Nealfire killed that core theme of family, especially in Rumple and Emma.

But basically, Rumple, Belle, Snow, David, Emma, and Hook should have all been more developed as individual characters who could grow and progress as more than just love interests.

H). Stop this trope of using female love interests to vilify their male love interests by turning them into OOC emotionally abusive plot devices to trigger them with on-and-off-again bs to drive them insane. They did this with CS in 5A, Rumbelle in 6A, and Phole on Charmed in season five. It’s not fun to watch. It’s actually really misogynistic writing that does not make either halves of your couples feel blameless, likable, or sympathetic in anti-heroine/redemptive anti-villain couples. It ruins and limits both of them actually.

I). Write for characters first, then for plot.

J) When you “have” to kill off, and/or destroy other characters to get rid of competition for your favorite character or ship, it doesn’t make you a good writer. It just makes you look like a biased and petty hack with a Gary Stu/Mary Sue or a creator’s pet.

K) “BOLD STORYTELLING” does not mean making your characters OOC and/or destroying them for cheap shock value and gasps, only to pretend it never happened afterwards without explanation. That’s just bad writing.

L). If your goal as a writer is to mindfuck your audience with inexplicable melodramatic twists that you pull from your ass inorganically in characterization with no lead up whenever things seem to be headed in a direction that actually feels interesting and starts to makes sense, then we will lose emotional investment in the story for these characters you’re not interested in telling, and catch on to a pattern the more often you do it because we’re a lot smarter than you think we are.

M). Take time to develop characters from point A to point B. Unless you’re writing a pulp fiction novel or a thriller, accept that character growth and/or regression takes time, and can’t just happen right away because this or that PLOT device or twist demands it.

O). Guest characters should be fleshed out, and well-developed. Don’t use them as discardable plot devices.

P). If you’re really a bold storyteller, then stop going back to the status quo every time, and do something interesting! Do something new, and stick to it! Let the characters evolve! (Rumple was the Dark One. Emma was the Savior, Hook/Neal was her boyfriend. Rumbelle are separated for reasons x, y, and z. Rumple does something stupid with magic to try to fix a problem in all the wrong ways, and only makes things worse. Belle’s a failure hero. Hook wants to get revenge on someone who wronged him, particularly Rumple. Regina has a hole in her heart she wants to fill by artificially absolving her guilt. Zelena fucks over Rumple. Emma has to learn to open up her heart to love. Female villain rapes male storyline. Snowing keep dark secrets from Emma. Etc., etc., etc. This show became such a soap opera.

“ill-boding patterns” impressions

{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}

This episode hurt me! In a good way, mind, but still. Ouch.

And you get exactly one guess whose fault that is.

could you not with your face?

If this storyline goes on like this, I’ll have to bring that defibrillator back out. More under the cut. (Sorry, it got long again, but you know what Rumple-centrics are like around here…)

Continua a leggere

#ill boding patterns #anti ouat canon writing for everyone on this show after 3x11!#anti ouat crack!fic on screen from 3b s7 because that’s what it was #it’s not even anti rumple anti belle or anti rumbelle because I love them #but i was rejecting most of the writing for their characterizations and choices in the piss poor excuse for canon at this point

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gch1995 · 6 years ago

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@sarashouldbestudying

@ellen729

@sieben9

@tariella

@0ceanofdarkness

@besiderunningwaters

@salty-rumbelle

I’m going to be honest, as a Dearie/Rumbeller who quit watching the show after S5 because I couldn’t deal with the potential of OOC character destroying bad writing anymore for anyone in the main cast anymore in favor of nonsensical plot twists, Aesop’s amnesia, cheap shock value, and Hook/CS fanservice/writer favoritism, but who still kept up with spoilers for the sake of Rumple and Belle because some part of my heart was still emotionally invested in what these individual characters/couple once were back when the show was genuinely fun to watch from S1-S3A, and all those little moments that showed us the wasted potential for the beauty that they once should have been, I was still very angry and bitter about the irrevocable damage that had been done to both Rumple and Belle as individual characters and as a couple in favor of Drama™️ in 6A.

I could understand having fun and forgiving the writers for it, if it were realistic, in-character, relatable, character-driven, and organic angst that actually addressed relevant and meaningful angst that organically led Rumple and Belle to a better place by resolving their obvious issues that already existed from 3B-S5. However, I’m not sure how there was any realistic way to forgive most of the wildly OOC, illogical, and triggering toxic bullshit that the writers had them both do and say in regards to their poor treatment of both each other and their unborn son’s safety, even before Belle woke up from the sleeping curse. I could understand forgiving it if it made any sense or felt like at all fair or justifiable writing for Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and their baby, rather than just another (frankly nonsensical, toxic stupid, and wildly OOC) way to pit Rumbelle against each other inorganically by vilifying Rumple and making Belle a petty and hypocritical bitch to needlessly push his buttons to break him further as a plot device, so that they could prop up Hook/CS.

I could understand if abusing magic whenever it suited them, no matter the intent, good or bad, was correctl addressed as a seriously problematic and objectively wrong consent issue in every other remaining main character on this show too, including Belle, Emma, Henry, and Snowing, our “heroes,” rather than only ever making a big deal for Drama™️, reprimanding, and punishment when Rumple so much as considers doing the same to protect his loved ones or to protect his autonomy with magic in all the wrong ways. But it wasn’t.

I could understand if they hadn’t already had enough of a rock bottom for Rumbelle in S4, and Rumple weren’t also part of the BATB with Belle with Disney product placement included.

But on this show, there were no more stakes, or satisfaction in the writers giving Rumbelle Drama™️, or vilifying Rumple by giving him and Belle’s Aesop’s amnesia and character derailment ad nauseum anymore to try and make him out to be the “big bad,” and teach him that “the ends don’t justify the means” with magic because everyone else blindly, hypocritically, and shamelessly got away with abusing magic to justify “worthy” ends in awful ways that violated consent whenever it suited them, and committed crimes to justify worthy ends, too, anyway, including Emma, Belle, Snowing, and Henry, our “heroes.” Character assassinating Rumple by making him out to be “the worst” for so much as considering abusing magic to protect his autonomy and loved ones in all the wrong ways that could potentially endanger/harm them, didn’t change the fact that every other remaining main character on this show was also an objectively horrible toxic trash person infected with magical rape culture, choices that would land them in prison in real life, sexism, and all so morally backwards in one way or another, even if the writers still pretended that “heroism” and “villainy” still truly meant anything anymore like it hadn’t since Nealfire died in 3B to the point where this show was now a shell of its former self.

Also, this is probably an unpopular opinion, but I hated Gideon. I hated that name because it was name based off of a “heroic” knight who defeated a dark sorcerer from Belle’s stupid character destroying plot device book “Her Handsome Hero” because it just another subtle dig about how much A&E and these writers now seriously hated the beauty and complexity of Rumple, Belle, and Rumbelle’s individual characters and relationship and wanted for the audience to resent them too.

I hate the way the writers misused the Rumbaby to create a bizarre magical shady baby pregnancy time warp plot twist like the writers of Charmed did with Phole’s baby, and Leo and Piper’s babies Chris and Wyatt.

Don’t writers get how infuriatingly desperate, far fetched, unfair, and stupid fans feel about this who magical pregnancy, evil fetus, evil future!unborn baby, and magical baby anything, is as a trope every time, even on fantasy/drama TV shows? Maybe, that was the whole point of these ridiculously contrived, melodramatic, and character destroying bizarre magical Drama™️ storylines and ship wars between Rumbelle and CS from the end of 3B onwards after Neal’s death, though. A&E killed off their organic and original core theme of family with Neal, and no longer knew what the fuck they were doing with any of these characters or ships as a result. They just looked to Charmed for inspiration, and pandered to CS/Hook by destroying Rumbelle because they were desperate to still make money, even though they no longer gave a shit about storytelling/character integrity, the fans, and just threw whatever SHOCKING thing they thought of on screen without thinking deeply about their choices ahead of time.

The worst part is that Gideon isn’t even that bad of a name in and of itself. It just means “destroyer.” However, Kitsowitz and these writers deliberately tainted the Rumbaby and that name they had Belle give him by adding in that unnecessarily hateful detail about how she named her and Rumple’s son Gideon after a knight in shining armor who defeats a dark sorcerer from that silly character destroying plot device book of hers, “Her Handsome Hero,” which subtly implies that she at the very least named the kid out of spite for Rumple, even if she had every right to suspect that he sped up her pregnancy after he threatened to do it in a reckless psychotic panic, and even though he backed off and swore that he would never hurt her.

I think that’s where a lot of these ideas that Belle was being a needlessly spiteful bitch towards Rumple, came from in 6A. She legit wanted to stay in a sleeping curse indefinitely in an eternal hellfire because of what her unborn dream zygote told her immediately, even before Rumple started going off the rails for no reason in 6x02. She refused to hear Rumple out, even when he did try to reach out to her honestly and gently in 6x04 and 6x07. She teamed up with Zelena, and said that she and Zelena were alike. Then, she gloated to Rumple about how she “almost won” when he caught her attempting to kidnap their unborn child with Zelena across realms because he was acting kind of bizarre and locked the door to his shop, which she could have easily knocked on to demand he let her in, so they could talk, and while she had every right to suspect that Rumple may have sped up her pregnancy after threatening to do it, even after backing off and swearing that he would never hurt her, and I think it’s unfair to say that she gave the baby away out of spite for Rumple, it certainly seemed like she named their baby after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer from her silly fairytale out of spite for Rumple.

I truly can’t believe so many people in the Dearie/Rumbelle fandom were just willing to let the fact go about how Belle, or the writers behind her, seemed to name the Rumbaby Gideon out of deliberate spite for Rumple/Rumbelle, even though he was named after a knight in shining armor who defeated a a dark sorcerer like his father! It infuriated me, I just wanted Nealfire back, I wanted for the entire Rumbaby/Gideon adult dream baby storyline to be retconned from canon’s existence and to be given a redo of this that actually did Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and the Rumbaby the justice both they and the fans deserved, and I wasn’t even watching anymore.

Rumple could be toxic trash too, he was far from innocent in his relationship issues with Belle, but at the very least the narrative owned it when he was, rather than framing it as “romantic,” “cute,” “sexy,” “empowering,” or “feminist” whenever he was. They portrayed Belle, Emma, Regina, Snow, and Zelena in those whenever they were toxic towards male characters on the show all the time, though, and this backwards “feminism” really offended and unnerved me on OUAT.

Honestly, the way that the writers romanticized Belle as “strong,” “cute,” and “romantic” in her tendency to give ultimatums, and her increasingly OOC/flanderdized needless cruelty, hypocrisy, chronic problematic hero complex, self-righteousness, almost total lack of self-awareness, lack of empathy, pettiness, verbal/emotional abuse, and spitefulness in regards to her treatment of Rumple and as a mother to be, bothered me a lot more than his wildly OOC toxic behavior with Belle in 4A and 6A because at the very least, it was never framed as “cutesy,” “strong,” or “romantic” when he was being a toxic little shit to Belle in their relationship, no matter his good intentions. With Belle it sometimes was, though, even when she was being needlessly cruel and spiteful to Rumple for no reason, especially as it became increasingly obvious that A&E and these writers had turned her into a plot device to act as Rumple’s OOC “blameless” and narrow-minded judge, jury, and executioner who shit on him to remind the audience how “horrible” and “hateworthy” he was just like everyone else on this show from S4-S6, even when it didn’t make sense for her to be so pettily spiteful of him to the point that she would actually name their kid after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer.

Even if Rumple and Belle miraculously made up after this mess, and got a “happy ending,” the damage had been done too deeply to both characters this time to just “get over” because it was never going to make sense as to why it all happened in the first place, or be realistically, organically, consistently, and healthily resolved and explained in a slow-burn way on screen, just like with CS after 5A. Plus, the fact that they had Belle name her and Rumple’s son after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer (Rumple) in her asinine plot device fairytale book, told me everything that I needed to know about Adam’s and Eddy’s true feelings about Rumbelle at this point.

They resented the individual characters being happy together, and they resented the fact that they ever made Rumbelle a main thing on the show because it got in the way of their EVOL Rumple cartoon tragic plot twister device who they could deliberately destroy to prop up all of their faves without feeling guilty about it. Thus, I didn’t think they deserved my support or viewership anymore.

Btw, I don’t think that Rumple would ever be okay with that name Belle chose for their son, just as I don’t think it would ever cross Belle’s mind to unilaterally, inconsiderately, and cruelly name their son after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer like her true love and their son’s father, even if she was angry at Rumple and/or hateful towards him with good reason because she’s not a needlessly petty, or spiteful bitch who would want to constantly be reminded of how much she and Rumple fucked each other over by getting involved because he was an EVOL “dark sorcerer,” and they refused to communicate.

But this is a “family show” about “true love,” “hope,” “forgiveness,” and the most important thing was “being the bigger person” by not being needlessly petty or spiteful towards those who have wronged you in the past, right? There was nothing that proved to me more that A&E and these writers seriously despised Rumbelle at this point than the fact that they actually had Belle name their kid after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer. Like, they might as well have written “We hate Rumbelle, and even if we give them a ‘happy ending’ we always will resent ever creating them in the first place” on the Rumbaby’s forehead in permanent bold ink because naming their baby after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer seemed to be a deliberate betrayal of everything beautiful about true love, depth, empathy, acceptance, forgiveness, peeling back the layers, understanding, and unconditional love for the outsiders that Rumbelle originally stood for before A&E and these writers fucked them both over for stupid, biased, and melodramatic character destroying plot twist fuckery and Hook/CS propping. I can’t believe that more Dearies/Rumbellers didn’t notice how fucked up, petty, cruel, inconsiderate, mean, spiteful, and wrong it was for Belle to deliberately and knowingly name both her and Rumple’s son after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer from her book. Yeah, she had every right to be seriously pissed off at Rumple for threatening to speed up her pregnancy, even if he backed off, she wasn’t obligated to ever forgive him, or to even allow him rights to their child without supervised visitation at this point (not that she was winning any Mommy of the Year trophies for her parenting skills in 5B and 6A either, the kid should have been taken away from them both by social services with this bad writing for them both at this point, tbh), but to deliberately name their kid after a knight in shining armor who defeated a dark sorcerer like her true love and the the father of their son, seems needlessly and uncharacteristically cruel, petty, mean, grudge-holding, and spiteful of Belle in regards to both Rumple’s feelings and their kid’s.

But maybe that was just me, and Belle was an “empowered feminist” had “every right” to be this uncharacteristically bitchy, grudge-holding, cruel, petty, and spiteful, even in regards to someone who she loved who she had every right to suspect harmed her and possibly their son?

I hate what this show had become.

tldr; I’m glad how most of us in the fandom agreed that the real OUAT “officially” died on screen after “Going Home” (3x11), and almost everything that came after that from 3B-S7, was a badly written nonsensical awful crack!fic soap opera on screen that no one was really buying anymore, except for Adam and Eddy, and the only part of their fandom that they hadn’t completely isolated at this point with their character destroying bad writing, the hardcore Hook/CS fans. I’ll always love Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma, but I reject all of their OOC, toxic, and badly written characterizations/storylines in the piss poor excuse from canon from 3B-S7, and try to keep the memory of their real selves from S1-S3A alive in canon-divergent/AU fanon scenarios.

OP is spoiler free!

thatravenclawbitch reblogged your post and added:

I’m so excited you’ve gotten to Gideon! We called…

I mean, she did look kind of beat up, but you can fake that… Also, can I take a stab at the fan theory: The Black Fairy is the split-off dark part of Blue? (Because I know that’s not the case, because I know Blue isn’t meant to be evil, but it would be so cool!)

Seconding the Regal Believer feels. And even Emma commented that “that was… dark”. I mean… yikes. My current understanding of the metaphysics of the wishverse is that it only started to exist when the Evil Queen made her wish, but from that moment on, it’s entirely real, and so are all the people in it. The show can come fight me on that. (ง •̀_•́)ง The specifics of the ‘verse were probably a mixture of the Queen’s intent, her subconscious wishes (hi, Robin), and magic filling in the gaps, similar to the Dark Curse. …that’s what I’m going with, at least. (Because the alternative is even creepier: that this world existed beforehand, and Emma just… took over the life of the resident version of herself, which in turn got deleted from existence)

And I feel I’ve earned all the good Rumbelle scenes in the world right now. Not to use the same joke twice, but I’m still pretty proud of that tar pit metaphor for the last nine episodes: dark as hell and highly acidic.

that was true of the first half of the season too if they’d just spoken to each other for more than 5 seconds

Literally what everyone has been saying since the first moment. And it’s not even that they tried communicating and had irreconcilable differences, they never really talked about the issue at hand in the first place! Ugh. Just. Glad it’s over. And bless Rumple’s awkward attempts at starting a conversation. It wasn’t the most graceful save, but at least he tried *g* (Belle holding that teddy bear broke my heart, though. Where did she even get that from? I doubt she had been planning to give birth any time soon…)

As for those last lines: I am… concerned. Though I guess did say I was looking forward to seeing more of Rumple’s mother, didn’t I?

#i’m glad most of us agree that the REAL ouat ended with 3x11 and the rest was a shit show that most of us stopped taking seriously #anti ouat #anti ouat canon writing for everyone on this show after 3x11!#anti kitsowitz #anti ouat writers #rumbelle deserved better than this entire arc/plot in 6a!#these characters were NOT Rumple and Belle!#and I DESPISED Gideon!#anti hook #anti cs

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