Hey Santa *waves*

I will try and answer your questions. Hopefully the answers will be ok. I want to help you if I can but I don’t want to box you in, so please like I said last time take what you like from my ramblings, ignore what you don’t. What I want most is for you to have fun 🙂

I would up writing probably far more than I should and I am sorry for that. I was trying to answer your questions and I rambled on.

What I love on the show, what characters I love
Regina is my second favorite character, after Rumple. I know she isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, although I suppose in an AU her crimes against Belle wouldn’t be a factor. I like her snark and the half friends/half enemies thing she has with Rumple. They can verbally spar with one another and still be friends. In my headcanon they understand one another and respect each other and that doesn’t change whether for the moment they are working together, or against one another.

I don’t really dislike any character on the show. I have my clear favorites (Rumple and Regina) but I think everyone has their place. One of my frequent comments when I discovered the show was that each episode should be 3 hours long so everyone had enough screentime. I don’t begrudge screentime to anyone, I just want more of it to go around.

I don’t root for all the characters, there is some ‘love to hate’ because some characters are watchable but I despise their actions e.g. Zelena. She really should have stayed dead at the end of season three because there is no way to keep her around as a villain, it makes the heroes look inept, so they have wrecked her with this instant-redemption and now she isn’t the same character. It’s a bit like why bother? Some things are good but aren’t supposed to last. Zelena was a very watchable villain, genre savvy, fun lines etc. but she should have faced justice for killing Neal and for what she did to Rumple etc.

Generally I think season five didn’t do any of the characters any favors and actually to a slightly lesser extent season four. I don’t think I will ever forgive the show for the author plotline, I hate that concept more than anything else that the writers have concocted.

I like Neal and the estranged son angle, well I don’t like it because it’s sad but I like the motivation and layers it gives Rumples character. His death on the show has to be one of the most tragic TV deaths ever. I really wish he hadn’t died, or that they could have brought him back. It seems Rumple was more prophetic than he knew with his chilling “no more happy endings” because the right ending would have been a reconciliation, as time-consuming and difficult as it would have been with so many years of pain to overcome. No father should outlive their son, especially if their son died for them. I suppose that is what made it so tragic but quite how Rumple managed to go on afterwards, well him going a bit nuts with the mat seems quite restrained really.

I also like the idea of the Rumple and Henry grandfather and grandson relationship. We haven’t got to see that on the show really but they are family and family is what matters most to Rumple in my opinion, it’s his reason for everything. Although this would be a bit of a trick to include in an AU because of the age issue.

I have always thought that Rumple was probably early-forties when he became the dark one and got ‘frozen’. So if he’s early-forties then having a 10 year old grandson (Henry’s season 1 age) would be technically possible I suppose but not likely. I head canon Belle to be in her mid-twenties, so there’s about 15 years between them (no more than that) but you can do what you want of course.

Maybe Henry could be no blood relation, just Regina’s adopted son and Rumple is very fond of him? I do like the Regina and Henry relationship too. I’ve kind of left the Charmings out of this list, I don’t dislike them, they just aren’t as important to me I guess. Especially lately their hypocrisy, and their prejudices and their unwillingness to take responsibility for their own actions have really irritated me. They aren’t heroes, they just take care of their own, which I don’t blame them for but I wish they wouldn’t claim it was a more noble purpose than that.

What do I love most about Rumbelle?
“No one, no one, could ever, ever love me”
“You’re not a monster.”
“You were lonely, any man would be lonely”

He thinks he’s unlovable. He has put up walls and pushed everyone away. He believes that everyone will leave him, he think’s it is his fault. He has really low self esteem, he has bad self-loathing and then Belle is like a dream. She gives him faith in himself because she can see him for who he is, she can see his actions for what they are and not the negative light he casts on everything. She knows he’s not perfect, she knew him before she jumped in and loves him anyway.

It’s not one sided either because he gives Belle what she needs. He gives her respect, he lets make her own choices, “no one decides my fate but me”. He values her mind, her intelligence, her bravery, all aspects of her that everyone else wished she didn’t have because that didn’t fit the role that she was supposed to play. He lets Belle be herself and he loves her for it.

True their relationship on the show isn’t perfect because Belle has a bad habit of emotionally blackmailing him. I don’t think she realizes that she is doing it, saying that if he does what she wants then they “can be together.” and don’t think I’m blaming Belle because it’s not one-sided. Rumple does things he knows is wrong because he isn’t used to having to please anyone but him. He thinks he can have it all and has forgotten how to compromise.

Partly could blame the curse because having that darkness chewing on you has to have an effect but I am a big believer that people should take responsibility for their own actions. Rumple might be more prone to “being a man who makes wrong choices” because of the dark one but he is capable of making the choice. At least he can now, I think maybe at first when he took the curse it had more hold of him but I think he learned over the years to control it. It might give him a slight impulse control issue but he still knows right from wrong.

Also, Rumple is terrified of being anything less than perfect and doesn’t realize that Belle doesn’t need him to be perfect, she just needs him to be honest. He always thinks that he isn’t enough, perhaps because he struggles to understand what she sees in him. In his mind she is easy to love but who would love him? He doesn’t want to confide in her because he doesn’t want her to think him weak. Belle walks out to get space and that feeds his fear that she will leave him if he’s not perfect (abandonment issues) and the cycle just continues. Those two really need to learn to communicate.

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Again, I’m sorry if I wrote too much. I hope I answered your questions. Just use what you would like and ignore the rest. I know I keep saying that but I really mean it.

You haven’t said but if I am allowed to specify, considering it’s an AU and his name will be Gold not Rumple .. could Rumple be Nicholas Gold? That’s just what I headcanon for him (likely because I love Rush off SGU) and yeah. You can use a different name if you want. Please, do whatever you wish. I just thought I would drop this in here and then you can choose. I really don’t want to annoy you.

Anyway, again I hope this is all ok and please just have fun. I know I keep saying that too but I really do mean it. Fun is the priority.