#rumbelle deserved better than this entire arc/plot in 6a!

[gch1995]

The worst part is that I’m a billion percent certain that the main reason why both Belle and particularly Rumple were so melodramatically, illogically, triggeringly, and toxically derailed in 6A, was done in direct response by A&E and the writers to the fan outrage over the fact that Hook and Emma did and said far worse to each other as the Dark Duo in 5A. Why else was Rumple suddenly overreacting like an increasingly borderline manipulative, creepy, controlling, mean, restrictive, and threatening deranged jackass towards Belle pushing him away/trying to run away with the baby when he never had so much as considered laying a hand on her, always backed off when she asked for space, and never so much as considered using magic to “make someone love him” (he himself had said many times that magic couldn’t be used to make someone love you, so this supposed motive in 6A of his with the shears of contrived plot fuckery felt fake) in 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09?

Why else was Belle suddenly acting like she hated Rumple, treating him like the scum of the earth beneath her feet because of what a dream fetus told her how EVOL he was, staying on Hook’s ship, acting like she didn’t understand where Rumple was coming from when he brokenly and honestly tried to tell her about afraid he was to fail their son in 6x07, and atttempting to kidnap the unborn baby with Zelena, even before Rumple immediately threatened to harm her or the baby (supposedly)? I get why she gave the baby away and freaked out at the end of 6x08 and 6x09 when Rumple put the cuff on her with the OOC creepy borderline manipulative attitude, and threatened to speed up her pregnancy in 6x09 because yeah, he really was being off the rails there. I can understand why she freaked out there. But before that I really didn’t understand why Belle seemed to not understand where Rumple was coming from when he reached out to her in 6x07 when he tried to tell her he meant well, and couldn’t offer any compassion and a compromise without enabling his bad choices at the same time, even if she didn’t agree with his methods of using the shears no matter what. Just agree that you won’t take the baby away if he agrees to stop hanging with the EQ, and only uses the shears as an absolute last resort.

I didn’t get why Belle immediately believed the dream fetus to the point of wanting to stay in the sleeping curse indefinitely, even before Rumple cut off his hair, trapped her on the ship, and started being ambiguously shady with the EQ...I get being angry and suspicious about him doing/potentially doing those things, but they didn’t seem like immediately justifiable reasons to take away the child forever from him in 6x07 and 6x08 at the beginning because he locked the door. Even “suspicious” parents get visitation rights. In 6x09, I got why she gave away the baby because he was really off the rails there. In 6x04 and the beginning 6x08, it seemed like OOC bad writing for Rumple and Belle to escalate conflict in the asinine plot to prop up Hook/CS and Zelena.

I wasn’t defending the writing for either of these pod!people wearing Rumple and Belle’s faces in 6A, and in my opinion, they were both being uncharacteristically shitty to each other. I appreciated the fact that Belle said “What have we done to each other?”

However, we all knew this wasn’t who they were, and while I’m glad no one was defending it, I’m also glad that we also were seeing things as they were for Rumbelle in 6A: OOC bullshit garbage writing to prop up Crapstain Swan.

Bottom line: 99% of the fandom was now blatantly aware of the fact that A&E and these writers had been abruptly, cruelly, and deliberately derailing both Rumple’s and Belle’s individual characterizations and relationship together to look as uncharacteristically unhealthy as possible ever since the end of season three to prop up Hook/CS onto a pedestal that they didn’t deserve by romanticizing and whitewashing everything that was unhealthy about them by comparison. We all know that 6A Rumbelle was the writers direct response to 5A CS. We all know that the character assassination of both Rumple and Belle had been a deliberate move contrived by the writers to make out Hook and Emma to be this “super healthy and romantic” Rumbelle rip off. I just wish they would have stopped pretending like we were too dumb to get it, and stopped framing Hook/CS as “super healthy and romantic.”

@sieben9

Quick note: “Just because he did the right thing today-”

Emma. Shut up. Your boyfriend there tried fucking over all of Storybrooke because you upset him. (Yeah it’s a bit more complicated than that, but HE TRIED TO KILL EVERYONE.) You don’t have a leg to stand on for relationship advice.

Hook? Duct tape your mouth shut.

[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.

[violetfaust]

Season 6B as it should have been: with Belle.

I’m sorry, I just CANNOT stop with this. It would have been so easy to give Belle the presence she deserved--which the story NEEDED--in this arc. Without interfering with the other characters’ arcs or adding a ton of screentime. 

So I’mma do it. I’m a little handicapped because I only watched half the episodes (which is three times as many as for 6A and more than in S5 entirely), so cut me some slack where needed. 

Under a cut because it got long as fuck. 

6.11: Keep the cut scene in which David and Killy betray Belle by siccing Zelena on Gideon, and Belle does something to save him. This is the scene referenced in Rumbelle’s well conversation when she talks about fighting for Gideon and trusting the wrong people. I’d also make this the scene where Zelena loses her magic--Gideon takes it to defeat her. I’m not sure what could have been cut to fit this in; the Boozer Hook scene in the Wish!Verse stands out as filler, but it was pretty funny. Probably some of the August stuff could be condensed. The cut scene was so important since it showed (or would have) that Belle would compromise her principles for her son, and would set up the Charmings vs. the Stiltskins (and align Rumbelle, and show Belle how much Killy is NOT her friend) right off the bat.

6.12: This was the David/Killy ep? I’m fine leaving Belle and Rumbelle out of it.

6.13: I’m honestly okay with an ep that focused on Rumple’s relationship with Gideon...considering that he had none in 6A, it needed building. But Belle shouldn’t have been left wandering in the woods for all of it. They could have fit in 20 seconds of a scene between her and Blue where Blue apologizes for losing Gideon and Belle forgives her and expresses her guilt, saying Gideon’s fate is all her fault. And then after Rumbelle meet in the woods, Belle could say she was going to the library to research, or whatever--something that made it clear she was being active in the quest to help Gideon. 

6.14: I didn’t even remember what happened in this--it was the Split Queen resolution. So I looked it up, and it was pretty packed--Rumbelle can stay out of it. My change would be to make the Queen and Robin together kidnap Zelena to hold for ransom (instead of the Queen kidnapping Robin). That allows for Zelena to have a scene where she expresses regret for what she did to our Robin, and the sisters become closer when Regina rescues powerless Zee. (And Zee does something useful, whatevs, I don’t care.) 

6.15: Killy ep. A big part of my rewrite is cutting Killy’s excellent adventure completely. In 6.14 he chickens out (no help from Gideon) and leaves with Nemo; in 6.15 he has his centric that goes pretty much the same, and he decides to go back and ~~fight for his wuv~~. Jaladdin wish him back to SB with a parting gift of whatever doohickey he eventually was handed by Tiger Lily. Emma doesn’t fall into his arms and tell him it’s her fault he lied, either. Something something (who cares), they’re not re-engaged; they’re going to work on it. (I don’t care how they get together--barf--but I’m not cleaning up the whole season by getting rid of CY altogether. That’s a bigger project.) Belle and Rumple have a tiny scene when they are also seen at the bar for two-for-one night. (It’s NOT a date, they both agree; but they’re exhausted and need to eat; that’s it; 20 seconds in which Bobby and Em have more sexual tension and longing than CY do in a year). Belle is a witness to Gideon stealing Emma’s tear for some stupid reason (was that ever explained?) and is horrified. Belle/Gideon 10-second exchange of angsty eyes. (I will NEVER EVER EVER  get over Belle not having a single one-on-one scene with her baby boy when he’s all grown up and destroying people.) 

6.16: Gideon ep. Since we’ve gotten rid of Killy/Blackbeard we have about six minutes to play with to split between Belle’s and Zelena’s plots. (So Zee helps Regina with Henry’s author problem. Mills family bonding. Zee can express remorse for killing Henry’s father.) Belle doesn’t just hang out in the shop while Rumple goes to the mansion looking for Gideon; she’s with him every step of the way and sees that Gideon is a betraying betrayer and Rumple is a Big Damn Hero who saves Emma. At the end when Emma tells Belle her kid is dead meat, Belle has seen exactly how bad Gid can be but she defends him all the same. Room for a longer Rumbelle bonding scene.

6.17: Again, no Killy gives us time for Belle and/or Zelena. Since Moe was around filming for (cut, of course) flashbacks for this ep, we finally get the (present-day) scene where Belle confronts him for abandoning her in the sleeping curse, and Rumbelle/Rumple fans get Belle’s realization that Rumple was the only person to fight for her and the baby when she was under the curse. Belle tells Moe that Rumple is a much better father than he will ever be (stand up and cheer moment). Killy does something useful to support Emma (who cares) so their engagement’s back on; Regina still saves Snowing by having the town take the curse; Belle and Moe are among the townspeople who drink the potion along with Archie, dwarves, Zee, and randos. Big but quiet beat between Belle and Regina because Belle is helping the people who are still determined to kill her child if necessary. At the end, Belle is with Rumple when he tells Fifi that he knows she has Gid’s heart; Rumbelle stand united against her, but Fi dismisses Belle and tells Rumple THEY will be a family. Belle is troubled; her face asks, Can she trust Rumple? Will he choose her or Fifi? 

6.18: This is the big one. Sorry, Zelena. It’s a Belle centric in which she finds a way to get to the Dark Realm, and she and Rumple go to try to rescue baby Gideon, or get some deus ex mechanism that would allow them to save him (maybe his heart’s back in this realm? I dunno; I can’t plot worth crap but no one is paying me $$$$ to do it either). Flashbacks: Baby Belle and her mommy, and why Belle can speak/read fairy. (Maybe the BlF made a play for Belle when she was a child.) We also find out the plot of Her Handsome Hero: the knight Gideon faces an evil sorcerer; to defeat him he has to go on a quest for a lot of doodads; he’s aided by a woman who turns out to be the evil sorcereress; Gideon and the sorceress respect and forgive each other for the past; he saves her from vengeful and misguided villagers (a mob with a Gastonish lead) by talking them around, and thus becomes her handsome hero. (This is my version of reconciling what Belle said about the book in H3 with the bit she read to Jack and Jill’s kid in 6.9.) Present: Rumbelle work together all the way, but whatever they try to do fails (of course) and Belle basically loses it and has an “I failed” breakdown, blaming herself for everything. This is the big apology scene that some people want, but it’s more about Belle’s long-term inferiority complex finally coming to the fore. Rumple supports her completely, takes the blame for what he did, and tells her that she’s his hero (echo of the Miller’s Daughter phone call). At the very end, Rumbelle realize that some random thing they discovered in the Dark Realm can protect Gideon from being controlled, but only in his dreams. (This fixes the plot point of whether the BlF can control Gid in dreams, and if she can’t, why he was being such a dick in the first place, trying to break up Rumbelle and engineer his own kidnapping.) Belle thanks Rumple for not giving up, and he says, “When you find something worth fighting for, you never give up.” (Cue sobs from Belle and us.)

6.19: Plays out almost exactly as it did. Belle giving Rumple her trust has much more weight now, though, because we’ve seen him earn it back onscreen. (And maybe they both decide to “kidnap” Emma to the dream world because they can’t trust her.) The main difference is that Belle is the one who saves Regina from the BlF by running out into the street (the fight takes place ten seconds from the pawnshop) and braining Fifi over the back of her head with Her Handsome Hero. (Stand up and cheer moment.)

6.20: Snow mentions at the bachelorette party that Belle sent the dresses but couldn’t come because she’s spending time with Gideon. Two seconds of communion between Snow and Emma how weird and hard and yet somehow cool it is to have a child your own age, and how they hope that Belle and Gid can become as close as Emma and Snow are. (Or a little more bittersweet, acknowledgment that maybe Emma and Snow have not always been as close as they want to be. Big hug. Uses Belle and Gid as a springboard for a Snow/Emma beat.) Cut the Rumple/Killy scene, which only served to make Killy into a vengeful asshole on his wedding day and make his vows to Emma look like lies. Replace with Belle and Gideon on the Jolly Roger, packing up Belle’s stuff because they are both moving into the Pink Palace. We can leave the mystery in this scene about whether Rumple has filled them in on his plan, or whether he’s actually working with the BlF and is a betraying betrayer who is keeping them in the dark. Belle shows Gideon some of the stuff she bought for his baby self (the teddy bear, some little onesies), and plays him the tape Rumple made of the poem. They are so happy to be together now, but aching because of what they’ve lost and what Gid’s childhood turned out to be. Very very bittersweet; ends with Belle singing a few lines of a lullabye (her contribution to the musical; maybe she starts singing along with Rumple’s voice on the tape). Cut to Gideon’s tears and mine.

6.21/22: Since Belle has had so much more presence through the REST of the season, it’s actually okay with me if she’s offstage for most of 6.21 (as she was).to keep the mystery of whether Rumple has his memories. But it feels as if their scene in the murder house was definitely cut short; so weird for Rumple to just nope out with a  “Okay, sorry to bother you, just keep cowering back there, never mind me.” So continue it for a minute or so, with Rumple gently coaxing cursed Belle out, giving her the courage to come meet her son. He takes her to the pawnshop with him, to Fifi’s horror. Angsty moment and tears between cursed Belle and cursed Gid. (Possibly she kisses him and breaks his personal curse, the way he did for her in 6.1?) Fifi then shows the whole family that Gid is under her control, with agony for all that he is being forced to blacken his soul despite everything they’ve all done to save him; maybe Gideon actually says something like he wishes he’d never been born. (Or something else so we know grown Gid is okay with being rebabyfied.) Fifi poofs him off to kill Emma, and makes her offer to Rumple that he can have this family and also Baelfire. Belle witnesses Rumple choosing reality and killing his mum. Then everything proceeds as in the real ep. Rumbelle go to the mines to find Gid’s heart. I’m a little torn here because I love the fact that Rumple (like Regina and UNLIKE a certain other someone) always resists temptation and does the right, heroic thing WITHOUT someone pointing him in the right direction and waving pompoms to cheer him on. So keeping his scene between him and his DO imp private would be good. I guess Belle doesn’t sprain her ankle, but they split up because the mines are labyrinthine and they’re trying to cover more ground. Rumple does the right thing, but it fails. He goes back to meet Belle, they comfort each other in their darkest moment, and then baby Gideon appears--only this time there’s some callback to SOMETHING they did in the Dark Realm rather than it just happening out of the clear blue sky. And we’re back to the episode as written.

(via @belle-gifs)

See? WAS THAT SO HARD? With the exception of adding Belle’s centric, most of these changes would give her only about a minute or two more per ep--but they are significant minutes. 

[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]

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Congratulations! You have reached season sucks! Aside from the Rumbelle and Emma Hook propping OOC stuff, it was enjoyable, right?

Sadly, it wasn’t fun, if the whole reason you were emotionally invested in this show was for Rumple, Belle, Rumbelle, and Emma. That’s why I quit watching after S5. I didn’t want to see any of my faves, or my otp destroyed for Hook/CS anymore. My mental health couldn’t handle it anymore

This was also the arc where a lot of people in the fandom started saying that Belle was ruining Rumple’s redemption arc. In my opinion, I don’t think that’s really true for Belle in regards to Rumple. At least not when she was in character.

Were A&E and the writers misusing Belle’s character as an annoyingly OOC plot device to tear down Rumple in 6A? Yes. Were they using this Morfetus/Rumbaby as an annoying plot device to tear down Rumple’s character in 6A? Also, yes. However, I really think it all goes back to Eddy’s obsession with “redeeming” Hook inorganically by having him take Nealfire’s place in the family circle that he didn’t fit as Emma’s main love interest, so, of course, Emma, Rumple, and by extension Belle, were the most character assassinated because the only way to “make Hook look better” was to have him steal their storylines with Nealfire.

By 6A, which I didn’t watch, a lot of people were thinking that maybe Belle was ruining Rumple’s redemption arc. Personally, I don’t think that Belle, or Rumbelle ruined Rumple’s character. I actually think that, organically written, healthy, and both in-character, they are pretty perfect for each other. Look at S2-S3A Rumbelle! Look at “The Outsider” Rumbelle! Look at “Bear and the Bow” Rumbelle! That’s who they really are! These characters wearing their faces right now were mostly hollowed out OOC shells to prop up Hook/CS.

I think these are the issues with the writing for Once post 3A that made it roll downhill so quickly, and I’m not just talking about for Rumple and Belle, but everyone on this show.

1). A&E and their team of writers had one set endgame in mind for every main character from S1 (and Belle) that they all reached through mostly satisfactory and organic means at the end of 3x11, and they didn’t know what else to do with any of them afterwards. They one-dimensionalized the main character, retconned their original characterizations, retreaded, and kept doing an inorganic back-and-forth yo-yo of the same arc that they had already achieved organically, consistently, and satisfyingly by the end of 3A because they didn’t know what else to do-

How many times was Rumple’s redemption arc undone and redone back-and-forth inorganically from 3B-S6?

As for Belle, she was always more of a support system/cheerleader for Rumple, rather than much else, so when Rumple’s original characterization got thrown under the bus from 3B-S7, so did hers. I wish she could have been more than just Rumple’s support system/sidestory, but that was the only role that A&E and these writers wrote for her in canon, so when she wasn’t supporting Rumple, she was being used to vilify him to make Hook look better, and the writers were destroying her one main role in canon and her one character development in S2-3A of being willing to learn to understand him and listen by “loving all of him” by having him mindlessly and hypocritically vilify him in a way that was annoyingly regressive and OOC with this yo-yo shit she did by playing with Rumple’s feelings.

They should have just let Rumple’s character Rest In Peace after 3x11 because they clearly didn’t know what else to do with him when they brought him back. The other thing they could have done was have him not die selflessly to save his family to redeem himself in 3x11, and slowed down his character development by doing all this dark stuff first. However, they wanted to do both, which is a sign of bad creative writing.

As a Belle fan, I was so fucking outraged by the writing for her in 6A, not just because of how they wrote her in regards to Rumple (my other fave, who they also destroyed in this arc with Belle as an OOC plot device to break him), but in regards to how they were writing her as an individual character, too.

They took away her sense of intelligence, compassion, selflessness, emotional depth, and sense of self-respect, so that they could prop up Hook, and make Rumple look bad. They were making her a gossipy hypocritical mean girl with Hook about Rumple for no reason to vilify him, even when he hadn’t actually done anything. They were making her act like a wildly OOC horrible and stupid mother to be for this stupid magical dream twist with the unborn baby to vilify Rumple. Finally, they weren’t even letting her have the chance to find out about the fact that all of her “friends” were willing to let her die in a sleeping curse, and that Rumple was the only who gave a fuck about saving her, so that they could vilify him.

The writing for Rumple in the next six episodes didn’t really do much to prove her wrong about her fears and suspicions, and it didn’t do much to endear him to me as a Dearie either, which is why I didn’t watch. It was too OOC. However, it didn’t really do much to endear Belle to me either when she was accusing Rumple of shit, and staying on Hook’s ship before he even did anything, before she found out anything from him firsthand, she was needlessly pushing his buttons first in every scene they had together from 6x04-6x09, too.

Yeah, I did not like or recognize either one of my favorite characters or ship in canon as written from 6x04-6x09, but that didn’t mean I stopped loving Rumple, Belle, or Rumbelle as individual characters or a ship. I just regarded 6A as badly written Rumbelle crack!fic on screen, tried to ignore it, and continued living in fanon! Rumple and Belle deserved better than this shit writing in 6A, and the fans deserved better than this shit writing in 6A for them because these pod!people were not who either of them were. This arc for them was about deliberately trashing them to make them look as uncharacteristically unhealthy and unlikable as possible to make Hook/CS look better after 5A. That’s really the only thing about this OOC garbage arc for Rumbelle in 6A that made any sense to me because this shit in 6A for Rumbelle felt less fun to endure than the episode of Game Thrones where a sweet, kindhearted, and innocent little girl got burned alive at a stake by her dad as a meaningless sacrifice for the asinine Lord of Light on HBO! Yeah, 6A Rumbelle really was that bad, and it was all Eddy Kitsis doing to prop up his self-insert fuckboy pirate out of spite because it certainly wasn’t helping the dying ratings...But anyway...

How many times was Emma’s arc about learning to let down her walls for love? At least in S1-S3A, it was meaningful and compelling character development that centered around growing true love for her son, but from 3B-S6, it got repetitive, and they started pretending like it never happened, so that they could redo the development around Hook in a way that actually destroyed both characters.

How many times was Regina trying to fill the hole in heart, rather than actually trying to change without shortcuts? She actually seemed to be making a legit effort from S2-3A, but from 3B-S7, she wasn’t really trying anymore. She just got away with being shitty better than Rumple because the Charmings approved of her.

How many times was Henry trying to bring everyone together as the peacemaker? He got sidelined from 3B-S6 so much that I honestly forgot about his character.

Hook was always rehashing his rivalry for vengeance with Rumple and anyone else who wronged him over and over again. The only difference between him and Rumple was that Hook was being whitewashed, while still being a shithead in his desire for vengeance. Even self-respecting Belle, who constantly defended herself and her loved ones, was now sitting therletting Hook be nice to her to piss off Rumple with his half-assed apology, living on his ship without a toilet, and trash talking Rumple with him when he hadn’t even done anything that bad yet ever since S4 aside from taking back the curse.

Snowing went back to keeping dark secrets from Emma in S4, they kidnapped and harmed a baby to “save” Emma in an OOC soap opera move, and pretty much got sidelined after that.

2) Because they ran out of story after 3x11, and killed off Nealfire with their core theme of family, they completely threw out continuity and character/storytelling integrity in favor of cheap, convoluted, nonsensical, toxic, OOC, and “shocking” magical soap opera plots and plot twists that often destroyed their fantastic characters and their credibility-

This problem with plot versus character driven writing was showing signs of potentially becoming a problem all the way back in S1, but it just kept getting worse and worse as every season passed.

But at least the character development mostly was satisfying and dynamic for our mains from S1 from S1-3A. By 3B it got to the point where they completely ran out of ideas for organic satisfying character development, so they were now just destroying them for shock value, especially Rumple, Belle, Emma, and Hook. At least, no character was getting outright destroyed for “shocking” and stupid soap opera magical fuckery from S1-3A. From 3B-S7, they all were, though, and at this point the writing had gotten so bad for everyone that it was laughable!

3). Neal died and the core themes of family values, unity, true heroism, equality, compassion, empathy, and moral integrity were all mostly lost with him-

If you watch closely, and don’t allow yourself to be emotionally manipulated by the hypocritically bad writing from 3B-S6, you’ll notice that it’s not just Rumple who got worse, but everyone, including Snow, David, Emma, Henry, and Belle definitely.

Don’t get me wrong, Emma, Belle, Henry, and Snowing all had their flaws to begin with on the show from their introduction, but they were still objectively good hearted heroic people from S1-S3, who had self-awareness, and who employed strongly rooted bravery, empathy, compassion, equal opportunity, forgiveness, mercy, acceptance, intuition, open-mindedness, perception, and kindness in regards to even the worst of people, unless they had absolutely no other choice but to hurt those who had hurt them, or protect their loved ones and themselves in the heat of the moment for self-defense. They were easy to relate to, and sympathize with in the early seasons.

After Nealfire died, however, Belle, Emma, Snow, David, and even Henry, all gradually devolved into annoyingly OOC herocrites, who I felt less and less sorry for, even they were the victims in the present day storyline because they now dealt with others, who wronged them, or who they heard bad things about, particularly Rumple, with blind hypocrisy, self-righteousness, naïveté, a lack of empathy, narrow-mindedness, an almost total lack of self-awareness in regards to their own flaws, and sometimes needlessly cruel, abusive, and/or triggering criminal behaviors that got framed as “heroic” in the narrative because they were “only hurting the ‘bad guy,’ who hurt them first.” acted “holier than thou” than the “bad guys,” or at least Rumple.

The formerly heroic main characters resorted to OOC abusive behaviors and sometimes objective criminal activities themselves that they condemned in the “villains” to justify “worthy” ends all the time now post S3 in the present day storyline, and got away with it all the time now, even when they didn’t techinically didn’t need to. They were essentially villains wearing sheep’s clothing, so I didn’t really feel too sorry for them anymore, even when they were the victims.

The difference between “heroism” and “villainy” became null and void when all of the remaining main characters devolved into toxic fuck ups after Neal’s death in one way or another in the present day storyline. It didn’t matter how much they one note vilified Rumple, and character assassinated him by making him look like the “worst” to me anymore to make Hook, Zelena, Regina, Belle, Snowing, Emma, or even Henry look better when all of them were easily getting away with being so toxic and fucked up themselves as characters in one way or another now as means to justify “worthy” ends on this show now in the present day storyline too.

That’s why I quit watching after S5. A&E and these writers were never going to call out anyone else on their shit, but Rumple, and because they were incapable of making anyone else self-aware of their problematic behavior, they would destroy Rumple’s character by one-note vilifying him to “absolve” all of them of their by making him the scapegoat to ruin now that Nealfire was gone, and Hook was the “romantic” lead.

4). Eddy’s obsession with vilifying Rumple to make Hook look like the “hero,” and replacing Nealfire with Hook as the male lead/Emma’s main love interest-

If you notice that Rumple (and by extension Belle) Emma, and Hook himself were the most egregiously character assassinated from 3B-S7 that’s because A&E and these writers never organically redeemed Hook as his own character. Emma and him actually brought out the worst in each other, and she, Rumple (and by extension Belle’s), and Hook’s organic character development arcs and storyline opportunities with Nealfire were thrown under the bus to make Hook look better as the new “romantic main lead” in his place

.

5). Whenever it’s “needed,” fuck remaining consistent and true to the timeline and the rules of magic! We’ll retcon them whenever our plot of the week demands it, no matter how little sense it actually makes!-

They’ve pretty much obliterated most of the rules of magic, and the timeline by 3B. It just kept getting worse and worse after S1, tbh.

So yeah, it’s not that Rumple or Belle are inherently bad for each other as characters. It’s not really that any of these characters, or actors were the problem anymore. They all had fantastic potential, and at this point I didn’t really hate any of the characters anymore.

No, it was all A&E and these writers faults for ruining them with bad writing. I hated A&E and their team of writers behind these characters for destroying them and wasting them in favor of illogically OOC, toxic, and stupid magical soap opera plot fuckery, character/ship pandering, and cheap bad writing tropes

OP is Spoiler Free!

“a bitter draught” 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!}

Dear OUaT,

you can’t keep doing this. Seriously, I’m already busy trying to get one horribly camp musical score out of my head, you can’t just go and add another one.

::”Hell To Your Doorstep” plays in the distance::

Though I call shenanigans on Edmond’s age. This babyface is NOT old enough to have been of an age to take over a captain’s position before being arrested and spending fourteen years in jail.

…yes, I have very specific niche problems. It happens. Anyway, short version of this one: fantastic character episode that was not-quite buried under somewhat mediocre pacing. More under the cut.

Keep reading

[gch1995]

Yeah, I really did not like much of the writing for either Rumple, Belle, or Emma’s characterizations and relationship for most of S4-S5. Don’t even talk to me about the ridiculously OOC horrifying pod!people wearing Rumple and Belle’s faces in 6A! Those characters weren’t really them. That was Eddy’s attempt to “bring them down to Hook’s/CS’s level” after 5A. There’s absolutely no logical or in-character reasons as to why Rumple or Belle would ever be that fucking stupid, reckless, or horrible to each other, and freak out over a dream. The Golden Queen “affair” was obviously just Eddy being gross. There’s absolutely no way in a million years that I would ever buy that Rumple would so much as consider laying a hand on Belle, even at his worst, especially not when he was still treating her like a China doll and a gentle puppy dog when his heart was almost pure black and consumed by the curse in 4B. Like, if they ever wanted to pick a time where it actually would have been believable for Rumple to treat Belle like a deranged asshole, then it would have been in 4B, but this shit in 6A just felt fake.

That’s why I quit watching after 5B. I knew that Eddy was going to fuck up Rumple and Belle in a way that made me feel too sick to my stomach to justify anymore after how over the top OOC, melodramatically abusive, and toxic they went with Hook/CS in 5A. I knew Eddy Kitsis really was that petty, and I didn’t need to see it happening to my ship on the show. They’d already ruined Belle for me in canon by 5B by turning her into a herocrite who treated Rum so sanctimoniously. I didn’t need to see them fuck up his character to try to put them on an even playing field, especially because I knew that he was the only one who’d ever get vilified for being mean to Belle, or violating autonomy/consent to do what he felt was best with magic, while she’d still be “blameless” for doing the same on many occasions.

Damn it I’m going to miss this show.

This season was different. Different in a good way, because it wasn’t just about CS and Snowing anymore. We got to see other characters. I got attached to these new characters (Jacinda, Lucy, Alice, and Robin) and I would have liked to learn more about them. I even liked Hook this season! 

Anyway, I complained a lot about Once in the past seasons, mainly because of A&E’s mistreatment of Belle and Rumbelle in favor of guest characters (e.g. Frozen, Camelot…). Still, we got a beautiful love story out of it and I’m forever grateful. 

[gch1995]

It’s more than just a “merely misguided plot line” for Rumple and Belle in 6A. It’s completely and utterly nonsensical systematic character destruction of every element that makes them who they are. 4A was a “merely misguided plotline.” This shit in 6A was unforgivable writing for both of them, though, it was obviously Eddy deliberately trying to make them behave as uncharacteristically and overdramatically unhealthy, stupid, and unlikable as individual characters and a couple in direct response to all the fan outrage over the Dark Swan/Hook arc last season.

I’m 100000% percent sure that is why they made Rumple and Belle act so off the rails OOC, unlikable, unrecognizable, and toxic towards each other in 6A, particularly from 6x04-6x09. Nothing about this arc felt at all fair, fun, or well-earned to watch as a Dearie/Rumbeller. It felt like an awful Rumbelle crack!fic on screen, actually. Most of us weren’t really buying either of these pod!people as Rumple or Belle. The only ones who bought it were the ones who didn’t care about Belle unless she was being made OOC to vilify Rumple, and prop up their faves. The only ones who could have bought it were the fans who questioned nothing about the bizarre OOCness of Rumple and Belle in 6A, or the nonsensical nature of the plot and the Morfetus shit. The only ones who could have bought it were the fans who had always outright hated Rumple/ Rumbelle just because the plot told them too.

I’m not saying that Rumple and Belle won’t ever get through this mess, but I didn’t really care about what happened on canon anymore after what A&E and the writers did in 6A because it made no sense.

That’s why I was done watching after S5. I couldn’t stand the character assassination of all my faves to prop up Hook and even Zelena (BLECK!)

Good luck making it through the train wreck of season sucks, though!

emospritelet reblogged your post and added: ““a bitter draught” impressions”

Oh boy…You know, ignoring stuff in 6A is an…

I managed to ignore certain characters I don’t really like for three solid seasons, I think I can manage one measly misguided plotline *g*

And I will be keeping an eye on the wardrobe. …whether I want to or not, I guess.

{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!}

[gch1995]

@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?

{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!}

[gch1995]

I mean, I don’t really think S6 was any better for Rumbelle. I mean, I guess in the end it was, but the damage to the individual characters and the ship had been done. I could have moved past it if either Rumple or Belle’s bizzare characterizations, and problematic behaviors, or choices made any sense in 6A, and they had gotten there through organic means, rather than being forced to the worst possible extremes because the asinine character asssassinating plot and plot device of the arc demanded that they be, not because it made any kind of realistic sense. I could have gotten over it if they had talked about the logical, sympathetic, in-character, and human reasons behind why it all happened in the first place, there had been a slow-burn resolution between them, and the plot and big magical doodad™️ of the arc had any sort of continuity, clarity, or common sense behind the way in which they functioned, but they didn’t. They did whatever the plot demanded they do with no sort of consistency, or coherency. A&E and these writers seemed determined for nothing to make any sense about the writing for Rumple, Belle, and Rumbelle. It really felt just more like Drama™️, and cheap shock value, not organic character growth, or common sense.

Yeah, basically the whole point of 6A Rumbelle was A&E and these writers attempts to try to bring them down to CS’s level in 5A because they realized they went too far with that arc, and who always gets punished for CS to look better? Rumbelle.

While I’d argue that, objectively speaking, what Rumple and Belle did to each other in 6A still doesn’t even come close to the horror of what Hook and Emma did to each other and the entire town in 5A, it’s clear that’s why they did what they did to Rumple and Belle in 6A, and what makes it even more painful is that it felt like A&E and the writers wanted for us to hate Rumple and Belle in the narrative. While what they did to CS in 5A was grossly romanticized abuse that was still objectively far worse, in my opinion, at least it didn’t feel like A&E and these writers were doing it to the characters, the ship, or their fan base to be needlessly cruel, mocking, or petty.

What they did to Rumbelle in 6A felt very deliberately and needlessly abrupt, cruel, mocking, petty, and spiteful, though. It mad me angry, not at the characters, because in order to blame them for fucking up, the writing for them in canon would have had to make realistic or consistent sense, and it never did. But I was angry at A&E and these writers because there was absolutely no reason to do what to do what they did to Rumple and Belle in 6A. It was just nonsensical badly written magical soap opera plot fuckery drivel that wasn’t even about either of the characters, their fears, or their relationship together, but about enabilng a twist that was just too fucking stupid to believe, and a magical macguffin. Those characters may have worn their faces in 6A, but they weren’t Rumple and Belle’s characters. They were mindless and hollowed out shells of their former selves meant to create stupid plot twists, meant to prop up everyone else onto pedestals that they didn’t deserve some more, and meant to irritate the Dearie/Rumbelle fandom with their erratic OOC behavior. They got a “happy ending,” but what little remaining character credibility, emotional complexity, and purity their love had was tainted by 6A with what A&E and these writers did to them, and I couldn’t get past that. And I’ll be honest, they had already ruined canon Belle for me by the end of S5, but 6A ruined Rumple too.

OP Is Spoiler Free!

findingtallahassee reblogged your post and added:

S6 is better. I promise. I mean, as a Rumbeller,…

Chocolate and The Fluffiest blanket. Also some wine for the really bad bits. I’m ready to go, I think.

…well, as soon as next week rolls around, because I can’t get the next season earlier than that ::cough::

Yeah, that scene on the roof was just… ouch. And I cannot believe nobody went “wait, this is a terrible idea” at any point. I mean, I can totally believe it, because nobody in this cast would recognise a healthy coping mechanism if it punched them in the nose, but still.

{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!}