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[captainblack089]

Black Fairy and Changes I wanted

I have very conflicted emotions on the episode Black Fairy. On one hand it reminded me of why I love the character of Rumpelstiltskin, but on the other hand it had the character rehash his never ending recycled storyline. I swear the character stopped growing after the third season and just goes through the motions of seemingly learning from his mistakes just to make them all over again. You can time when Rumple is supposed to be the villain again and move the plot forward at this point. While there was some hope for him to be a triple crossing Black Fairy I didn't share that hope. What made this increasingly frustrating to me is that Gold acknowledged his flaws and how constantly choosing darkness has made things worse, yet he goes around and does it again. To get my frustrations out I decided to write about changes I wish were made to the episode. 1) Belle goes with Gold inside Gideon's dream. Nothing against Emma. She is the main character and her going into the dream was supposed to have her learn what makes Gold tick, but I don't think she needed to be there for that to happen. Since the mission was meant to save Gideon Belle should have been part of it not Emma. The excuse that Belle needed to protect Emma and Gold was weak. I'm not saying Belle is uesless or she can't defend herself, but there isn't a whole lot she can do against the Black Fairy if she does come to the shop. Her mother-in-law was able to materialize Rumple's dagger in her hand despite it being on Rumple's person. She is stupid powerful. It makes more sense for Emma to stand guard, since she has light magic. Tensions between Rumple and Emma have been high the last few seasons that it is doubtful he could get Emma to promise not to rush after BF, but it would be very in character for Emma to listen to Belle. If Belle asks Emma to not do anything until she and Gold come back Emma should listen. Now that she knows BF has Gideon's heart and Hook is back the Savior shouldn't be so gun-ho anymore. Emma agrees to stand guard over the estranged couple for Belle's sake, possibly Neal's sake, since Gideon is her baby's daddy's half brother. The Golds go to the dream world or realm whatever its called to rescue their son. This puts Belle in a position where she can have a heart to heart talk with her son. Her real strength of being emotional support could come into play for both Gideon and Gold. At the same time both Gold men could be there for her. I'm not saying this needs to be big ship teasing or love heals all trip to reunite Belle and Rumple. This could be a good way for them to move past the pain and become a team for Gideon. 2) Gold acknowledges his faults in 6a The sixth season went overboard with the drama for Belle and Gold. Gold started using scare tactics should never have been crossed. There is a reason some long time fans of the couple abandoned the ship or felt the show runners broken them beyond repair. The key to Beauty and Beast relationship to work is for Beast to let Beauty go with no expectations of her returning, because he wants her to be happy. That is what shows the audience that his love is genuine. That is what Skin Deep succeeded in doing. The second, third, and part of the fifth season succeeded in keeping this idea alive. 6a had Gold cross some lines with Belle he never did before. It felt hard to believe he was doing it for her own good when they had him making out with the Evil Queen. The damage was done for better or for worse this what A&E gave us. If they want us to believe Gold can really change then they need to have Gold acknowledge he went too far this season and apologize to her. It would fit with the episode. Gold acknowledged how his family always seems to fall into the trap of using darkness to solve problems and unintentionally making things worse. If Gold apologize to Belle and make a promise to himself that he will end the dark cycle his family has been in for the last couple of centuries. He stops taking the easy path. He makes this promise to himself, so we the audience know this isn't just another false promise he is telling Belle to get her back. The promise would feel more sincere. 3) The Gold Family Work Together Belle and Gideon convincing Rumple to find out why his mom abandoned him would have been perfect. It would show that despite all the damage inflicted on them, both internally and externally that they can recover from it and be a family. Gold facing his past with his family by his side would be touching moment, but also show him how much stronger they are as a unit. That would go a long way in convincing him to not try to solve problems alone and fear failing them. When they leave the dream to tell the others what happen they can discuss what they should do. Here is where Emma can empathize with Gold here. Even though she wouldn't have been there to see it she can still understand what Gold is going through and she could support him by telling him that he can decide what to do with BF. This way Emma's way of acknowledging Rumple could have been a savior and seeing hope he can change for the first time since season three. The Golds can discuss what they should do. Rumple decides to end the darkness in his family tree once and for all. 4) Gold takes a page from Belle's book. Gold understands his mom better than anyone else. He has done what she has done with both Baelfire and Gideon. Now this episode finally puts him in the shoes of his loved ones. Sure Pan technically put him in that position before, but with Pan he knew his dad was doing what was best for him and not Rumple. With Fiona he can see how well meaning parent can lose themselves to darkness and mistake what they want to be what is best for their child. To this end Gold should have confront his mom, but not to kill or banish her. He should have come to her, tell her he understands her, and offer her a chance to help him put an end to their family's dark history. Gold proposes that they use the shears to get rid of their dark magic. No more Dark One and no more Black Fairy. They become Rumple and Fiona again and get a fresh start with their family. He gives his mom to night fall to decide. He warns her if she refuses his offer that he will help Emma defeat her to save his family from being hurt by darkness anymore. Gold's resolve shows us the audience that he has finally learned from his mistakes and is resigned to not be tempted by darkness anymore. To hammer this point in Gold would turn down BF's suggestion that they work together and keep Gideon and Belle in the dark. 5) The Ending All the main characters wait at the shop to see if BF will come or not. Rather she comes or not Belle and Gideon tell Gold they are proud of him and they all resolve to get a fresh start with or without Fiona. When it looks like BF will not come she appears at the door. She tells her son that everything she did was for him and their family. BF returns Gideon's heart, apologizes to her grandson, and uses the shears to become a normal human again. She gives the shears to Rumple with a smile. Rumple uses them and watches as his name disappears from the dagger. The Charmings and Captain Swan thanks Gold like they did in the actual episode. For once neither side is hostile to each other. They all agree to a fresh start. Everyone is just happy. Unforunately things are too good to be true. We see Fiona carrying the special wand and the dagger. She goes back in the mine where Mother Superior is still imprisoned (and looking worse for wear). Fiona reveals she still has her magic and that she switched the shears out with fake ones. BF brags how she will get a fresh start with her family without anyone having to give up her power. She ends the glamor around the dagger, exposing Rumple's name is still on it. She goes on how Rumple will thank her for stopping him from getting rid of his power, how she will build a new life with her family once she defeats a unsuspecting Emma on the day of her wedding when her guard is down. Everything else more or less stays the same. The episode doesn't change too drastically, but it gives all the Golds time to shine, Rumple finally gets character development to stick, it allows BF to trick the heroes into believing she is no longer a threat, and deprives the heroes of the Dark One's help without having Rumple go back to villainy yet again.

[captainblack089]

I really think a large part of this is that the writers don't treat Belle as her own character and just think of her as an extension of Rumple's character. As a result they forget she is her own character with separate relationships outside of Rumple. The way the Charming family treated Belle in fifth season really doesn't mix well with their characters. For example when Merida kidnapped Belle and no one seemed concerned to me felt more like the writers forgot about Belle and didn't write a scene to explain why the heroes weren't concerned or looking for her. I know that is a cop out answer, but Snow and Charming they crafted in first and second season I don't think they would ignore Belle the way they do. It sounds like a cop out answer, but I really do feel a lot of the problems we have with characters is that characterization sometimes gets ignored for the sake of the plot. It's like that time in 4a when Gold wanted to take over the world that came out of nowhere, but the plot needed Gold to revert to villainy again and taking over the world was a reason to let us know he went full on villain again even if he never expressed an interest in world domination before or since 4a. That makes it difficult for us the fandom to truly discuss these characters and how much of their questionable actions are intentionally meant to show the flaws the characters have or if they are meant to be in the right. Without being able to make that distiniction certain characters like the Charmings can come off as uncaring or even hypocritical at times when they may not be the writers intent.

Maybe because I still have issues with Rumple from s4 and 6a but I don't think the Charmings mistreat Rumple. In s4 they seem to trust him emma went to him to get rid of her powers and they invited to neal name ceremony. Then they found out about hat shenanigans making emma dark for ink so I don't blame them for being weary. In s5 he was trust worthy again he was at the lets get dark hook pow wow and then became dark one supreme. So I don't think they mistreat him when he is on their side

I typed up a long reply but it got really ridiculous in the Emma/Rumple back-and-forth, Mistreated!Anon– HE tried to shove her into a hat, SHE tied him up in her basement and tried to hurt his ex-wife via red-haired Scottish archer, HE robbed her boyfriend of a hero moment, SHE blackmailed him into opening a door to hell for her family … What a nutty show!

But in general and especially in S6 I think it’s fair to say the Charmings really don’t think about helping the Gold family. Emma and Snow seem okay with killing former-fetus-last-week Gideon, they don’t care about Belle being imperiled on the regular or being stuck in the hospital with amnesia in S2, they didn’t really bother themselves trying to rescue Rumple from Zelena in 3B, they didn’t even help Belle off the ground when Rumple died in 3A, nobody bought Belle a drink after she banished her husband in 4A, nobody was too concerned about helping Belle out of her sleeping curse in 5B, etc. etc.

The most charitable explanation is the Charmings are just too busy dealing with their own drama to jump over one branch in Henry’s family tree and help the Stiltskins, especially when the Stiltskins sometimes are the ones CAUSING the trouble in the first place. It’s a Shady Hatfields vs. Callous McCoys situation, I think.

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I really, really, hope you are right on Rumple pulling a triple cross. I'll admit I took the scene as face value that Rumple once again decided to betray everyone, lie to his family, for his own twisted benefit. After the crap the writers pulled in 6a I've been expecting Gold to go dark again. The episode was love and hate for me. On one hand Black Fairy was fleshed out and her being foil to Rumple worked well. Peter Pan/Malcolm got a bit more depth by showing us he didn't always hate his son and was once a decent person before Fiona's obessession drove them apart. On the other hand I firmly felt Belle should have been the one to travel with Rumple to the dream realm and Emma stood guard over them, since Emma is better defense against a magic user than Belle is and since Belle has more personal connection to Gideon. That would have been perfect time to have the Gold family have a heart to heart and have Belle act as emotional support for Rumple and Gideon, Rumple could apalogize to Belle for his actions in 6a. That would give me more hope that this a family doublecross on Fiona. I do agree this does setup Rumple will sacrifice himself to redeem himself, which is fitting end to his character. If that is the case it just means Rumple's story season 4-6 was just a rehash to get him to sacrificing himself again when he already did that in season 3. As much as I love his character if this was the final stop they should have let the character go in 3a.

Screwball Ninja’s Mini-OUAT Review: 6x19 The Black Fairy

“I wouldn’t say a word that could be reckoned as injurious But to find a mother younger than her son is very curious … “ -Iolanthe

This was a great episode, thematically speaking. It had a plot twist and Zelena being relevant and Rumple bringing his A+ acting and lots of Jaime Murray, which is never a bad thing. Here we go!

The price for casting the Dark Curse is the Heart of the Thing You Love Most– which for the Black Fairy would be either Malcolm or Rumple, right? Even if the Black Fairy and Tiger Lily had a hot affair (no indications so far except for sharing clothes), Tiger Lily would come a distant third to Malcolm/Rumple in the line of Things Black Fairy Loves. But the flashback made it look like the BF was going to cast the curse herself, only required “wolfsbane”, and was only going to crush Tiger Lily’s heart because she was in the way. So did the O.G. Dark Curse NOT require the Heart of the Thing You Love Most and that got added in UAT to make it work? Or is the show saying the BF loves Tiger Lily more than Rumple? Or did the BF add a “you have to be THIS TALL to get your heart crushed on this ride” clause to exempt babies from the price of the curse to spare Rumple? Beta testing this thing must be a bitch. 

If being willing to kill to cast a Dark Curse makes you a “Great Evil,” then are Regina, Snowing, and Hook ALL “Great Evils” ‘cause they cast Dark Curses? Was Hook’s Dark Curse 3.0 even broken?

Malcolm turning his grief about losing his wife into hatred of his child is unfortunately a common trope in fairy tales where mothers frequently didn’t survive childbirth. And I laughed that he thought the best way to hurt his kid was to name him “Rumplestiltskin.” Ouch.

Both Rumple’s parents are peasants who turned themselves into immortal, magical creatures who rule over realms of kidnapped children (mostly boys) where time is screwy? You’d think the Blue Fairy would have tossed Pan in the Dark Realm just to cut down on the kidnappings.

Speaking of which, does the Blue Fairy just not give a damn that kids are disappearing all over the Enchanted Forest to go to Neverland/the Dark Realm for hundreds of years? “Welp, lost another one! Move to the next baby on the list, girls!” Also, didn’t she care that all the kids of Rumple’s country were being massacred by ogres? What good, pray tell, is a fairy’s protection?

Points forever to Zelena for being relatable hating IKEA furniture and running over the Black Fairy in her green Ford pinto (with bonus monkey key-chain). The show has finally found Zelena’s narrative function: comedic relief and back-up Mills assistance. I’m actually looking forward to Zelena scenes– good job, show! But flag on the play for Regina saying Henry can “raise Zelena” in case Storybrooke goes up in flames. Not only is that not fair to Henry but Zelena did help kill Henry’s dad. But I guess Regina killed Henry’s grandfather and great-grandpa and Hook killed Henry’s other great-grandpa and Snow killed Henry’s grandmother and Rumple killed Henry’s great-grandfather and … yikes. This family!

Emma was more like her S1 self in her one-on-one scenes with Rumple– showing empathy and self-reflection and bonding over growing up orphans. As long as she acts like this all the time I don’t care what she wears or who she dates– she can wear a potato sack and date the cursed puppet people for all I care. 

The World’s Most Insensitive Person Award this episode goes to Snow, who when Rumple says he’s killed his long-lost mother to protect everyone, immediately says: “Good, we can have the wedding tomorrow.” Damn, Snow. That’s cold. Also impractical, considering Granny’s not going to bake you a cake when you’ve just wrecked her restaurant.

This episode introduces Rumple’s most obvious triple cross of all time. Don’t see the body? Then they ain’t dead! Of course Rumple’s going to play along with mom to get Gideon’s heart back and learn her Evil Plan, only to shiv her to rescue Belle/Gideon/everyone else in the finale. What bothers me is that he gives a general disclaimer to Belle and Gideon that “it may not look like at the time, but everything I do is to protect you” but doesn’t actually let Belle into his triple-cross scheme. There’s only three episodes left– can’t he go one episode without lying to Belle? Isn’t lying to “protect” her part of the reason he got banished in S4?

To the list of Things That Have More Screentime Than Belle in 6B we can add: Random wand parts, Rumple’s cradle AND an IKEA crib, Blue Fairy’s cleavage, the BF’s sparkly tiara, Zelena’s green pinto, Emma’s dream beanie, and Granny’s jukebox. If Belle, who’s Gideon’s mother and wants to be a hero, doesn’t have at least ONE kick-ass moment in an arc whose theme is heroism and motherhood I’m going to flip a table. Tick-fucking-tock, show.

Belle’s happy about Rumple’s Savior past because she’s always emphasized that he’s a good person who “makes bad choices”, as opposed to Rumple’s opinion of himself as just a bad person. This is an important distinction because bad people can ONLY do bad things, whereas if you dislike someone’s decisions they can always make better ones. (I gave the same speech to my toddler the other day.) This is similar to Zelena and Regina kissing and making up in 5B when they had their memories returned of being happy that one afternoon as kids; knowing that reconciliation was possible in the past gives them the confidence to try and love each other in the present. So Rumple knowing he COULD be a savior might give him the confidence to shine out a hero in the finale.

They pulled a Captainswanus Interruptus again, with Hook sleeping elsewhere before the wedding. Are Hook and Emma ever going to get confirmed boning before the season ends?

I love that in the final BF/Rumple nighttime scene the moon is a crescent moon, just like the BF’s tattoo. What a nice little touch.

Bonus: Why is Emma wearing a modified prison shirt?

Oh, waaaaarden, it’s time for my constitutional around the prison yard

[captainblack089]

I agree with you on that being the general message, but I also think the show is relying to much on good will for redemption being as easy as stop being an asshole. Rumple is my favorite character and I want him to redeem himself. However, even I think it is annoying that he can be as terrible as the show needs him to be than do one or two decent things before the show ends and he’ll be seen as hero and fully redeemed.

Hope and forgiveness are great messages, but at the same time I do think redemption path needs to be seen as a hard path and should be done not for instant reward. Regina’s redemption has been the best because she has had to work for it beyond just being sorry and helping. When reward isn’t in sight she still commits to being a better person because she wants to be. All the things she did as a villain still haunt her. She lost Henry in 3a, lost Robin at the end of 3b, lost Robin again at the end of 4a, and through it all, while she had some setbacks or made questionable decisions has tried to stay committed to being a better person even when it is hard. To some extent it annoys me how Rumple will give up as soon as no reward is in sight or how some of Hook’s redemption isn’t shown (never properly apologizing to Belle), but the writing treats it as that way.

I hope Zelena will have to work at her redemption even when it is hard like Regina. I am happy Arthur still has to work to bring the Underworld together before he can move on. Forgiveness and and helping people being the first start in redemption is good, but at the same time I do think the writing needs to equally show redemption is not an easy path. I want to feel like Rumpelstiltskin earned his redemption by the time show ends, not be told he is fully redeemed and a hero after he stops being a stinker in the last ten minutes of the series to wrap everything up.

OUAT and Redemption

I’m seeing a lot of shade being thrown on all sides for everyone who’s moved onwards and upwards to the giant spotlight in the sky from the Underworld, mostly because a fair percentage of those people were mass murderers (Cora, Brother Liam, Hook). What gives, goes the criticism? Can one good deed erase decades of, you know, murder?

OUAT says yes. OUAT has been pretty consistent on its criteria for redemption, which is a three-step program that goes as follows:

Realize you screwed up

Stop hurting people

Start helping people

That’s it! That’s all it takes. You can be a terrible, horrible, heart-crushing, manipulating, torturing, non-consensual up the wazoo-ing, mass murdering person up to and including five seconds ago– but the minute you stop hurting and start helping, you are on the path to redemption. We’ve seen this explicitly with Regina:

This is the message of the show– Redemption = Helping People

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[captainblack089]

I’m disappointed in both of them really. It is a shame to see both of them have stopped making an effort after an episode that gave us Rumple and Belle actually talking  and learning to compromises. That alone made their storyline refreshing. Instead we get both of them acting so selfish and stupid. For crying out loud Rumple she is so short with you because she fears you love power more than her and your soon to be child. Oh my god, Neal/Bae feared the same thing and told you as much in Neverland! Of course she is running out of patience with you. Belle I understand why you can’t trust him and panicked, but at the same time you are acting too rash and too much like your dark hubby by acting on your own without thinking of the consequences. I respect things didn’t get smoothed over in one episode, but this feels more like melodrama for the sake of drama.

I don’t expect either Gold to be perfect, but I don’t feel like they’re growing as characters anymore. I dread this plot will just be another test where Rumple appears to learn his lesson, give up his power, proving to Belle he loves her more, only for the last few minutes of the show reveal Rumple got his power back with a sinister smirk. Being the Dark One isn’t the problem. It doesn’t have to be so black and white with him. Gold can still be morally ambiguous for plot purposes, while retaining character growth, and have a normal relationship with Belle that has both good times and bad times. Being in a loving relationship does not mean perfectly happy all the time. I fear the writers think that and that is the reason we get Rumple reset button every arc. Please do better writers.

Oh man, I just saw 5x18. And I loved it except for the last Rumbelle scene, which made me cringe– but not for the reason you’d think.

I was so happy not to have to tag 5x17 things ‘anti-rumple’ but guess what I have to do again for this episode? Yeesh.

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