confessor_meggy

I agree with everything on your post but this. Not that him staying out of SB wouldn't have solved everyhting, but I don't blame him for wanting to find another option besides dying. In S2 he still tried to get back, and he made Snow kill Cora to save his life. He had option 1-die or option 2-survive. O1 would have been more honourable, but also OOC. When he killed Pan his choice was either to let Pan win, maybe survive as Mr.Gold but without Belle and Bae or die and let them live. He had no other option, as he would never sacrifice any of them to survive. After his heart attack he still had an option to survive. Just like in S2 it wasn't the most honourable, but again, had he chose to die would have been very OOC.
I can't really blame a guy for trying to stay alive instead of dying.

Hope so

I have to agree with Jinzle on the Charming versus Sir Rumple's actions. Partially. The action per se I think killing a child is worse, but the reason behind it are important. The Charmings did it for the 50/50% chance that their child would become evil. Rumple did it because he believed not stopping Henry would cause the end of his family. Reasons are important, and I'm sorry but I don't think the Charming's were even remotely good enough.

Well that again depends on how much we think it was Rumple and how much it was Isaac. My opinion was that what Rumple did was telling him "Give me a HE, meke me a good guy and let me think i did good to Bae", the author wrote the rest, what he thought was a good story. You clearly think otherwise but there's no really a point in blaming him for the whole AU if we don't know the truth.

Austenphile

Rumple said he wanted the villains to win (or the heroes to lose). He could have said write me a HE but leave everyone else alone. But he didn't. So in my book he is a co-conspirator for everything that happened. And going back to the comment about how was he supposed to act when his humanity was almost gone, well he himself said that his humanity was gone because of all the dark and villainous acts he'd done. It wasn't a curse brought on him out of nowehere. He contributed to it. He had Belle but it wasn't enough. But instead of getting her back, he not only tried to cheat for a happy ending, he did it at everyone else's expense. Emma specifically said Rumple punished her by having her memories, not Isaac. But we will have to disagree on how much he was responsible.

I think what the Charmings did was wrong. But if my child had a 50/50 chance of having a birth defect or special need (please note that I am speaking as a mother of a child with special needs so I know you still love them), I would transfer that defect to a baby dragon in an instant. I would want to spare my child the pain of having that disease, defect, etc. They believed she was a dragon and were planning on returning the egg so it's not like they knew they were cursing a child.

koodles

I agree with everything but the bolded. To be fair Emma doesn't know. Isaac was pretty proud of his creation and said so often enough.

Since the AU was primarily done for fun by the writers and the heroes seemed to not care much about it once they got out, I doubt A&E are ever going to really address this and asign every aspect of the story to either Rumple or Isaac. They would probably just respond the same way Patrick did, this was a shared story between the two. So I think until we get an a completely comprehensive response (which I highly doubt we ever will) we shouldn't blame one character entirely for how the characters suffered in the AU. The heroes don't even care anymore.

Tbh, since really nothing came out of the AU except Henry becoming the new Author (a role he immediately rejected by breaking the quill) and Emma getting that push to admit her feelings to Hook, A&E probably didn't think too much about the debate that would arise in the fandom on whether it was Isaac's or Rumple's creation. I think they just wanted viewers to enjoy it for what it was, accept that both Rumple and Isaac were at fault and move on.

Austenphile

Actually that was my point. They were both at fault. Rumple is just as much to blame for everything as Isaac. I keep seeing Isaac did it and Rumple should be blameless. I do believe Isaac targeted the Charmings in particular and made their life harsher than anyone. But I don't think that was meant to be a throw away line by Emma or a misunderstanding by her. The writers put it in there for a reason. But you're right that the characters will just move on.

confessor_meggy

I'm not saying Rumple was blameless. I'm just saying he didn't care what would happen to the others, as long as he got to live (of course by others I don't mean Belle)

We'll have to agree to disagree on both I guess And I honestly can't say what I would do if the 50/50 of my child was what you said, I'm not even close to be a mother, so I can't say which direction I would take.
The reason I agree to disagree, and I'll leave it to that, is that I don't see it as the same situation at all. Since it was stated many time that "Evil is not born, is made" Emma having that 50/50 would have meant her having more free will to do the right or bad thing IMO. That 50/50 is what everyone is born with, the ability to choose whether to choose to do the right or the wrong thing. I simply think that if they didn't do what they did, Emma could have chosen to be evil or good. It would have been up to her, like it's up to everybody. But I'm completely fine to agree to disagree

Just out of curiosity, did he said "I want the heroes to lose"? I mean, of course it gets sort of implied if villains win, but that's not what we saw. We saw some villains being turned into heroes in the AU (Rumple, Zelena) but the fact they were heroes in this story didn't imply that the heroes were villains. Only the Charmings were, out of the heroes group, the villains in the story. Emma wasn't., Robin wasn't. And the "Villains" Regina/Hook didn't get a HE. Or, if you prefer, the "Heroes" Regina/Hook weren't bad.
That's the main reason I think it was Isaac. It was way more grey than just heroes vs villains, except for Rumple and the Charmings. That's why I don't think it was Rumple. He would lean on hurting/make full villains out of Hook and Regina than the Charmings. While Isaac, plainly said he hated the Charmings and what they represented.

And now that my planned short answer turned into a long one

koodles

We obviously all see more of the opposing arguments.

As a Rumple fan I see a lot more people claiming that every detail in this was entirely Rumple's idea. He "clearly" dictated everything in the story to Isaac.

My point was mainly we should probably stop the debate all together. It's much like the whole "did Regina take Belle's heart without consent" debate. We'll just go in circles. A&E might come out tomorrow or reveal the truth in the premiere or we might never know for sure what happened in Gold's shop the entire time Isaac was writing.

The characters harmed in the AU don't care and frankly the AU served barely any purpose besides entertainment.

fox24

I think both Isaac and gold were equally to blame but I do think we should agree to disagree.

I think Snow also had the experience of watching regina go from a good person to evil so she didn't want the same thing to happen to Emma

Austenphile

You are 100% correct about the characters and how we are supposed to view the AU. Personally, I didn't find it entertaining at all. (Other than I loved Henry being the hero) It had several quite disturbing themes that made me want to

* Interchangeable twins as true loves. "Good" Snow loves the "good twin" so Evil Snow loves the "evil twin"

* A man's wife becomes his de facto rapist (Snow/Charming)

* A man's rapist becomes his wife (Robin/Zelena)

* A mother locks her daughter in a tower then tries to burn her child and grandchild to death with fireballs (Snow/Emma/Henry)

* A father murders his daughter's boyfriend before her eyes (Charming/ Hook)

* A woman now has memories of being the mother of a friend's child (Belle)

* A woman brutally murders one of her dearest friends (Snow/Doc)

* A man tries to kill his grandson (Rumple/Henry)

And that's what I can think of right now. Regina was the only character that didn't have a really uncomfortable storyline.

But we're going to laugh it off as a fun adventure. No harm no foul and all. It wasn't real. It was "fiction". I get that. But I am not going to ever watch it again because I would prefer to forget it ever happened.

T'Lynn

I wasn't talking about that at all, though. I was talking about the situation with Rumple in the AU. Why bring up another's character's actions that happened 30 years before? I never said that Snowing weren't to blame for what they did. But since you brought it up, yes what they did to Lily was a villainous act. Like Snow said, heroes do what is right, not what is easy.

In the AU Rumple was written as a hero. He got news from some shady character who told him that this world wasn't real. The threat wasn't to his family, it was to him. He decided to lie to Belle and then went off to make sure that he prevented Regina from getting her happy ending so that his could remain intact.

He was told he was a villain and the only way to make sure he remained a hero was to kill a child. If he were truly a hero then he wouldn't have gone after them. But he did. My point was how much is the Dark One curse leading him to these decisions and how much was Rumple.

fox24

I do think all the characters will view the au as a bizarre dream and there won't be a we are three speech lol

Austenphile

I do too. It was just a horrible collective nightmare. My problems are more with the themes it explored than the character's actual reactions (if that makes sense). Unlike the first curse, they only lived a few days there.

Seamstress90

To be fair, it's hard to say how much Rumple's behavior was "Rumple" and how much it was "because Isaac wrote him that way (to make sure rumple's "heroism" won't ruin his story)".

wild sage growing

Yes, but AU also proved that regardless of how they were written, the "real" characters were still intact. For example:

1. Hook was written as a coward who couldn't wield a sword, but he was still able to channel the real Hook and use a weapon.

2. Robin was written totally in love with Zelena, but he still felt a deep connection with Regina, and might have left his fiance at the altar if Regina had actually intervened.

3. Zelena was written as a kindly, good woman, but she was still childishly envious of a woman she didn't actually know (who was dying in front of her).

I think we were meant to view Rumple's efforts to preserve his heroism as a reflection of who he actually is. Of course, that doesn't mean he isn't capable of changing (and I'm sure he will now that his heart has been wiped clean), but the Rumple we know would go to great and questionable lengths to preserve his happy ending. And he did.

confessor_meggy

^ I agree. I think the bad decision was the result of the true Rumple coming out. The one with the DO and the tendency to make the wrong choices.

fox24

I agree they all had a part of themselves. Rumple had the part that made selfish decisions