Rhonwen

no..lol.

I can see how they are all suited for each other.

As I was stating yesterday.. true love's but all different. as far as Snowing and Rumbelle neither detracts from the other. They don't need too, they are both special and unique.
Snowing has an open, strong, equal TL. They from the start were running and ended up running into each other.
Rumbelle is equally strong, but even though on the outside you'd see Rumple being the more dominant one in the relationship, it's really Belle. Rumple has hid his true self under centuries of darkness, and loneliness. It took Belle's courage to fight for them to break his walls.
AS much as I love Snowing's relationship, I love the tragic and unique love that Rumbelle has.


But as you said you get the love you deserve.

Were you going to submit a testimonial? I'm going to be working on them today..
along with my Croc collage.. That's a tough episode for me to finish.. I have over 60 frames to piece together.

Pomc

I agree with ya, Rhon. It seems like its Rum who dominate the relationship but in the end, really, it's Belle. I mean we all know how much she influence him with just little things that she do.

She practically have him wrap around her fingers when she hugged him in Lacey and I still can't get over how cute that scene was.
And you're right. I love Snowing and I was originally a Snowing fan, heck I signed up for FF because of Snowing. But it seems that I like tragic couples more since somehow, I ended up here

Gotta love the angst

Jan_RCFan

Sorry, I just haven't gotten around to the testimonial - can't seem to write it.

Looking forward to the Croc collage. I'm really enjoying them!

Rhonwen

Crocodile - All Mr Gold\Rumplestiltskin\Belle…

This episode is one of my favorites. Seeing Rumple from the beginning so verbally abused by his wife, her cruelty over his one mistake, that he did for love. His inability as a crippled man to duel Hook, and his being taunted and bullied, and not willing to leave his son an orphan.

Rumplestiltskin’s falter when Hook told him that Milah had died a long time ago. I always found it interesting that no one ever acknowledges what Rumple says to Hook about how it felt to be unable to fight for his wife, and that his own heart was crushed. Or that when he finally confronts Milah, it was about his son being abandoned, nothing else. That’s what Rumple cared about, how she left their son. If Hook was truly abandoned by his father there’s no way in hell that he would have let Milah abandon her son. And then Rumple left Hook to suffer like he did. After all Rumplestiltskin did suffer. His whole life was suffering, and a large part of it was caused by Hook/Milah.

Another thing that gets me is that Rumpelstiltskin has been so afraid to let Belle in. Another signal of the damage that has been done to him by others, before he became the DO.

His past shows that when he has loved someone, and reacted out of love, it has come back to hurt him. Milah never forgave him for listening to a seer, and injuring himself to be with her and their son. Years passed and she never forgave him, instead she abused him. Showing him that when he lets someone in they’ll hurt him. Everyone has defined him, told him he was unworthy of love, etc for being a coward. Which he wasn’t, but being a bully and cruel was acceptable. Which is why I don’t like Milah, and Hook for this. He bullied, knocked down a man with his foot that he thought was just a mere beggar. She thinks it’s alright to degrade another human being in front of others, to leave her son to whore around in a tavern.

And then Belle comes along and shows him what real love is. How a real person should/would treat another person. It scares him, he still sees himself as a monster, and unworthy of love.

This episode shows how only Belle really sees and can break the walls that Rumple has built.

She sees that no one hates Rumpelstiltskin more than Rumpelstiltskin and she will show him that a better person loves him, and will guide him back to the better man that he was.

There’s more of course, but I will leave it at that…

I will get started on the next episode soon..


what do you think?

Pomc

Love the collage! It's so lovely this is my fav episode too. So much about Rum past and I loved it. Although I have to say Manhattan is prob my fav about Rum's past. I can get over how he looked so happy back in his peasant days and the little jiggle dance he did.

Can't wait for more! Btw is this your summer project?

Kelaine

Although they didn't include it, we're told that there was originally going to be a scene in another episode where we would have seen how Rumple's father abandoned him and was murdered in front of his son's eyes by the men he was trying to escape.

This is suspiciously similar to the story Hook tells Bae.

Now, the writers may have just decided to give Hook a similar story--I'm inclined to think they want us to believe it because plot exposition has to go somewhere.

But, anyhow, if Hook knew the story, he would assume Bae knew the story. There's logic in using a similar one to get on Bae's good side. He gets to share in Bae's feelings as an "abandoned" son while also suggesting himself as a father figure in comparison to Rumple.

And . . . I know this is the Rumbelle spot, not the say-what-I-think-of-Hook spot. Still, I think the writers are doing the same thing with Hook that they've done with Regina. It's not so much that Regina can be ready to do mass murder one week and ready to die saving SB the next--I can buy that Regina would do that to save Henry--it's that the characters seem to forget it all, too. And the writers seem to expect the viewers to forget as well. I think I'm now expected to shrug and accept Hook as a nice guy (or a nice guy till they need him to be a bad guy again).

However, I think the logic is that Hook knew about Rumple's father because Milha continued to badmouth Rumple from time to time after leaving him. She brought up the story of Rumple's father because it was "proof" that Rumple had "bad blood"--small villages are great places for remembering the sins of the fathers and blaming the kids for them.

And, no, I don't think Milha ever saw the irony in "proving" Rumple was worthless because he had a father who would run away and abandon him when Milha herself ran away and abandoned her son.

Also, just to say it, the glimpses we see of Milha's parenting make me think she didn't have too hard a time dismissing Bae as nothing more than his father's son.

Betsybelle

LOL I think I might be the only one in the world not to have seen it - and it's on tv quite a bit. I just have so much DVRing to catch up on and I still want to see my Bobby DVDs that have been waiting.

Kelaine, I know you weren't trying to be insensitive and I got what you were trying to show by using that as an example.

Yes, I sort of think this is like looking at an impressionist painting, where you need to step back to get the perspective. If you look at it up close, yes you can see the details, but you miss the bigger picture. In the overall scheme of things, Hookah had run off and a mother had run chosen a pirate over her son. In the casting call for this role, it described her as being "bored with being a mother". Sorry, that's a lifetime role........and you don't get to come back to it later when the "boring" part is over.

Rumple was mother AND father to Bae - and by not badmouthing Milah, he was protecting Bae. When parents divorce and tell the kids bad things about the other parent, you know what that does? It hurts the children because they internalize things; children are half of the mother and half of the father and if either or both of the parents are bad, are nasty, then the kids are going to think they are bad and nasty, too.

Hook is a sociopath and Colin says this repeatedly, so I don't buy it. He's a pirate - he is what he is, cruel and vicious. You truly see what people are made of by how they treat people weaker than they are - and Hook was a mean bully. No, this doesn't go for cursed, DO Rumple.....because he's cursed. Real Rumple, original Rumple, didn't he help a beggar? I read that (sorry, I haven't seen some episodes in ages, since they first aired). If so, that says so much about the goodness in his heart

I just can't buy Hook's story - he's a sociopath, a liar, a manipulator. If we are supposed to feel sorry for him, well sorry - I DON'T. He laughed at Rumple and Bae in the tavern, with Milah encouraging him.

Oh and I just don't buy Hook's epic love for Milah. He keeps using her memory as a driving force to commit murder and other bad acts (oh and let’s not forget the guy was a cruel and vicious pirate even before Milha was killed). On the other hand, Belle’s name and love is enough to inspire Gold to be the best he can be. Hook is generally an angry person whereas Gold is not. He has a temper, yes, but that’s not the same thing; and anyway, his temper is most often directed towards those who would hurt his loved ones. In his soul, he is Rumple from Manhattan, kind, gentle, loving - and a real spitfire (I saw Gold in that version, so much, lol)

Hook can pretend this is all about Milha, but it’s not. The man undoubtedly had plenty of women before her - and when we saw them, they were drinking in a tavern and living the high life. That doesn’t really indicate intense and undying love - and I’m not sure how capable this man is of that kind of love. As Colin has said often, he’s a sociopath and uses people to get what he wants; you don’t just turn into a sociopath - you either are or your not. Loving someone means loving them as much if not more than you love yourself; it requires a certain selflessness - among other things. These are things Hook is not known for, lol. I suspect he and Milha bonded over a similar mentality and he loved her as far as he was capable, but his vendetta in her name was, to me, an ego trip. He was bested by a formerly lame spinner and he had to take him down.

Back to better things, lol : Rumbelle




Frankly, Rumbelle is starting to remind me of the romance from the movie SOMEWHERE IN TIME, with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. CR plays a man who time travels to be with the woman he loves. It’s a gorgeous love story with about the most exquisitely beautiful music ever written. It’s also completely heartbreaking……….but the overall point is that true love is transcendent.

The thing is, when Gold gets emotional, he doesn’t think logically; he really is a man whose heart rules his head. All he’s been thinking about since the prophecy is his undoing - and since he believes that life is basically always going to leave him a lump of coal in his stocking, he can’t believe that that could mean anything less than his death.

I believe Gold is stronger than he thinks, but he thinks Belle is the most heroic and strongest person (not just woman) he’s ever known. She’s made it clear how much she loves and needs him, and I think after the Outsider he finally realized it; in the phone call scene, he even said she “really, really” loved him. The issue is that because he thinks he’s weak and because he believes Belle to be incredibly strong, he doesn’t necessarily think of her as needing him in order to be happy. I honestly think if Belle had died at the line, he would have just completely collapsed. We saw even in Lacey that the idea that she was gone forever (seemingly) led him to give up and give in to his darkness. IF he had gone truly down that path, it would have been like him dying, for then his humanity would have disappeared; he may even have been a worse DO than he’d ever been before.

We know Belle is going to be devastated by his absence and she will continue to feel that way as long as he’s gone, but she’ll channel her grief and be productive; she has a task to perform, people to take care of - and she’ll thrive…….but she won’t and can’t be truly happy until her Rumple returns to her.

Gold was so overwhelmed at parting from Belle that he couldn’t even speak; his last words were about how he had to honor Bae. After that, Belle did the blubbering while he just could hardly get words out; if he’d tried, I think he would have broken down. He, too, as a task to perform, but even if the writers don’t show it, he will also be devastated to be parted from Belle.

The challenges actually make their love for each other grow deeper and more profound, I think because they so desperately need and love each other that when they are not near each other, they are like drowning men/women without life preservers. They have a miraculous emotional and spiritual bond, but their intense need to touch and be close is equally as strong. When they touch each other, they are touching each other’s very souls. Their love is a shared force that is stronger than any other force - no one or nothing can ever break it. It transcends time, places, curses, other lands…….

Kelaine

I've begun wondering if Hook isn't under the Curse of the Empty-Hearted. Maybe Zoso, having pegged Rumple as his "heir" and willing to work a few years to get his ducks in a row, decided step one would be remove Milha in the most crushing way possible. After all, if he believed he had completely failed Milha, blaming himself for being weak and a coward, he would be that much more willing to do whatever it took to save Bae.

Taken this way, Hook was telling the truth when he told Rumple what he and his men were going to do to Milha. The curse made him change his mind.

The problems are that--

1. I am willing to believe that Hook's one good point is the protectiveness he felt for Bae and now for Henry (even if it obviously had limits). I don't know if it could survive finding out he'd never loved Milha.

2. Whose heart? I'd have thought Rumple was the person Milha despised the most. Is that close enough to hate? Other than that, she may have hated herself. While there may be a way to use your own heart for this without destroying it--essentially storing it in the other person, the same way Cora stored hers in a box--that begs the question of what Rumple ripped out of Milha. Even if it was someone else's heart (Hook's?), why would Milha be the one that died?

Although, as I've heard her family opposed her marrying Rumple, I can believe they did enough "I told you so's" to make her hate them more. So, there's a heart.

Betsybelle

I saw this quote and Tumblr, and as one blogger said, yes, it's SO Rumbelle:

Even without having made love , or if they have - then before they did - love transformed them. They have been tested, been put through a crucible of fire, and emerged as one - but then they’ve always been that. I'm blown away by the imagery of that quote; it is just so beautiful and evocative. If they’ve made love, then I think the writers did them and fans a disservice by not showing (whatever they could show) that momentous moment. I will always be annoyed at this.



We’re supposed to identify with Snow, that’s the worst thing. Snow has, for some reason, a high tolerance for anything Regina does just because of their past. Well, I loved young Regina as well and her relationship with Snow, but that was a LONG time ago and many people have died and suffered. Not only that, but Snow feels terribly guilty about having killed Cora even though not doing so would have meant Gold’s death and the eventual torturous deaths of everyone in town.

I appreciate that Adam and Eddy keep saying she’s evil, and they have made that clear that she is, but on the show, Regina has Emma and Snow tolerating her because she’s raised Henry. Who is there to take Gold’s part? Belle - and she always will - but most of the time she’s been incapacitated and he has no one. Yet, compared to Regina, he’s been a saint in SB

Once Rumbelle is reunited, I want Belle to make it perfectly clear that just because Regina helped stop the town from blowing (after she initiated it) up doesn’t mean she’s redeemed, it doesn’t mean her past doesn’t count. I would love for Belle to tell everyone just what she went through when she was imprisoned, not for revenge, but just so people don’t forget what this woman is capable of. I want Belle to make it plain that she won’t put up with attacks on Gold, the man she loves, the man who is her hero.

crazy_diamond

Lovely work once again Rho

Met Jane Espenson today, what a sweetheart and I'm sure I heard Rumbelle Season 3, got a few things planned

Kelaine

I tell myself that Snow has a messed up relationship with Regina. Although she doesn't act this way in other matters, with Regina, she's like an abused child who continues to believe any bad things her stepmother does are her fault.

There are times when she breaks through this, but they're messed up by the times when Snow sees the other side of Regina.

Yes, Regina's mother severely messed her up; yes, Regina is driven by a need to fill emotional voids that aren't going to be filled; yes, it's possible Regina's inability to see why the stuff she does is BAD is because she really can't see the truth, she lacks the ability rather than choosing to ignore what it tells her.

You can say a lot of the same about the dragon Charming fought. Do you let a monster burn down villages and eat people because it can't grasp that this is not socially acceptable behavior? Frankly, the dead deserve justice. So do the living people she's hurt. And her future victims deserve protection.

What I'm afraid of is that someone will tell Belle she's evil for not being able to get over what Regina did to her. Fine. How about if we let Regina off with a fine? Regina imprisoned Belle for maybe two years in FTL and 28 years in SB (probably going on 29 by the time Belle got out, but let's leave that).

I'm sure Rumple could find a magical way to skim off 30 years of Regina's life and give it to Belle. Or should we just go with the two years in FTL and the one year in SB where Belle was aging and aware of the passage of time? Perhaps with interest?

Jan_RCFan

Love the collage - just perfect! And I agree with everything you say about Hook and Milahs' abuse and bullying of Rumple and how Belle came along and showed him what real love is. It breaks my heart to know that he thinks of himself as a monster, someone unworthy of love. The fact that he would even think this makes it clear that he is not one. I really need to see this episode again. Thank you!

Betsybelle

delete

Pomc

officially done with the OP
all i need is for Karen to finish up testimonials

thank you so much for those who participated! It's a lot of work but it should be worthwhile. Hope you guys will like it

This is the last thing we do before we're officially ready for the 100th

Pick the title!
You can only vote ONCE

{the book worm & the spinner}- 100 threads of hamburger dates, chipped cups, enchanted roses, phone calls and libraries. 3 votes

{the warrior spirit & the sorcerer}- 100 threads of " a flicker of light among an ocean of darkness."

{the beauty and her beast}- 100 threads of house keeping, daggers, magic and adventure. 2 vote

{the caretaker and the dark one}- 100 threads of curse breaking true love's kiss

{the librarian and the pawnbroker}- 100 threads of earth shattering kisses, mind blowing hugs, heart racing speeches and loving gesture 2 votes

thank you everyone!

Betsybelle

Snow feels guilty for revealing Regina's secret to Cora, that's probably at the root of it. I think she must feel somewhat responsible for Regina's descent into evil - which is ridiculous. I love Snow most of the time, but for those who think Belle is a goody-goody and too perfect to be believed? When you compare her to Mrs Charming, that's just not the case. Snow is portrayed almost as if she's saintly, constantly turning the other cheek when it comes to Regina. It's annoying.

I definitely think Regina is clueless; she's completely self- UNaware, unlike Gold, who has an extraordinary understanding of himself (though his insecurities actually make him TOO hard on himself, I prefer this to Regina's state. At least Gold desperately feels guilty about his past)

Nah, I'm not worried about that. If Belle has the screen time it appears she's going to get, I think she is going to be truly beloved in SB for protecting the town and making people safe again, for bringing a sense of normality back into their lives. Unfortunately, nothing that can be done to Regina will ever make up for the time Belle lost (and Rumbelle, I might add; Regina lying to Rumple about Belle and making him feel as if it was his fault she'd killed herself was the cruelest thigns she's done, IMO, because she set out to destroy him from within).......At the very least, Belle deserves to tell Regina and Hook what she thinks of them.

I suspect Gold is not going to be so free with his magic upon his return.....and I'm not sure that Belle would want anything like this. It's why I wonder about the immortality issue. I think if Gold could, he would rid himself of that. In any story where someone is immortal, that person always ends up being exhausted of living, exhausted of outliving those he loves. I think Gold certainly couldn't bear to see Belle age and die - or their children - and I think he would appreciate being mortal as it would make life have more meaning. If he can't rid himself of that, then the question is whether Belle would want to be immortal. If not, she knows he will live forever in a state of despair and misery. Since he can be killed even as an immortal, I suspect that Gold would find a way to end it all once Belle dies......

Yet I love this about him because even as the DO, he knew what he did was wrong and he hated himself for it; there's a real sense of humanity and decency buried within the layers of the curse. Why? Because Rumple was a GOOD person, a KIND person. He was a gentle, compassionate and loving person and the curse did NOT destroy that in him. I think he's such a beautiful soul -and Belle's faith and love brings that out in him.