Hey, honestly I’m enjoying the debate. Thank you for coming back and sending another message 🙂

Rumple’s deal with Cora was void for two reasons. 1) He changed the deal so it would be his child, Cora actually says this on the show “any child I have won’t be yours” and 2) The deal was for Cora’s firstborn but unknown to Rumple at the time her firstborn was Zelena, who as far as Cora knew was dead. It was a very clever deal Cora made, one she had no intention of ever honoring.

Yes I suppose you could argue that Rumple “took” Regina anyway. However, he never forced Regina to do anything. He gave her the tools and she made her own choices. Yes I suppose it was a bit like giving a pyromaniac access to matches and gasoline. Rumple knew what Regina was going to do – he was counting on it, and he definitely manipulated the situation to prompt her to choose the path he wanted. Anyway, whatever happened with Regina wasn’t anything to do with a firstborn deal.

In regards to the “more than they can pay” comment. I said that about the deals Rumple had made with Snow and Charming. I also questioned what he had done to them specifically that would have Charming label him as the ‘scourge of the realms’. From everything I saw about Rumple’s interaction with Snow and Charming prior to the Dark Curse, he only ever got them what they needed. They actively sought him out on several occasions. Then once they had ‘taken back the kingdom’ and didn’t need him anymore, that was it.

I would have thought that given their own interactions with him, talking would have been a good first response with the Cinderella situation but then I guess Rumple knew they wouldn’t do that. He specifically engineered the situation so that he could be locked up, it was part of his grand plan. He needed to be locked up, perhaps to present as weak to Regina, or something else but either way it was where he wanted to be. He knew they wouldn’t treat him fairly – he was counting on that in fact, which I find quite sad to be honest.

Re: the Cinderella deal. 1) It was the height of foolishness for Cinderella to sign the contract without reading it, or asking him what he wanted. She made an assumption and that’s on her. She agreed to the deal without knowing what it was. However, we can excuse foolishness I guess. 2) Rumple never wanted her child. He changed the deal, something he never does so he got something he actually did want (which was far more useful) a favor from Emma. He was never going to take the baby.

Now you could successfully argue that nobody knew that Rumple never had any intention of taking the baby. You could also, as I said, excuse Cinderella’s foolishness. Then there was Rumple’s trademark “nobody breaks a deal with me” which yeah would be scary. I just do think that given how much Rumple helped Snow and Charming, to call him the scourge of the realms and lock him up with the rats, feeding him worms etc. was overkill for a first response.

Surely – given their experience with him – they should have tried something along the lines of “Rumplestiltskin, Cinderella made a terrible mistake, she should have read your contract and didn’t. She is sorry for that. Any chance we can make another deal, so she can keep her child and you still get what you need?” – sounds reasonable to me. After all that’s what Emma did.

Given Rumple wanted to be locked up he probably would have cackled evilly, said a deal was a deal and forced the situation anyway. I just think that tackling it like that would have reflected much better on Snow and Charming.

Hey, thanks for your message, you raise a couple of interesting points.

First, I’m pretty certain you are being sarcastic which raises the first point. I find it fascinating that two people can watch the same show and see completely different things. I love Agents of Shield, and actually that’s one of the few shows a real life friend watches, but we couldn’t be more different. Every character I love – they hate, and vice versa. We’ve actually probably spent longer discussing that than the actual show, trying to work out why that is.

It leads to us having completely contradictory opinions. The best part about that is, we both usually have justification for our theories/opinions. We just have different ways of looking at the situation.

Which brings us back neatly to your argument. You are not wrong. Rumple has done some terrible things. Trying to put Emma in the hat was beyond the pale – it was very wrong. That’s the mother of his grandchild, I can’t fathom what he was thinking. Except I’m fairly certain he wasn’t.

I can list reasons for why Rumple made that choice. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but maybe it explains it. He’d lost his son, his reason for being, and had given into despair. He was losing the battle with the darkness thanks to his time in the vault, and his subsequent year of imprisonment/torture. None of that gives him a pass. Rumple should still work for redemption, forgiveness, get back on the path he was on before he died to save everybody. Basically Rumple backslid, and wound up revisiting his more villainous days.

So why am I not just blaming Rumple full stop? Because every single character on the show has done bad things. Even if we just take into account acts against one another, there’s still a lot. I’m a big Regina fan, I think she’s had one of the better, more consistent and thorough redemption arcs. She’s earned her redemption but she still tried to kill David and Snow so many times that she lost count. They forgave her, they call her family because of Henry, why don’t they extend the same ‘second chance’ to Henry’s grandfather?

Please don’t get me wrong Rumple would still need to earn it. He shouldn’t be given a pass, but I think he should get the same chance as others. Hook while consumed by darkness (just like Rumple) tried to kill everyone, to send Emma and her entire family down to the underworld. Nobody ever blamed Hook for that because it was the darkness. I don’t think they can have it both ways. Either the darkness makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do, or those people need to own their actions and earn forgiveness for them.

Now I’m not saying 100% that Hook poisoned Emma and her family against Rumple. To be honest it was a little tongue in cheek that “Hook got his revenge!” because well like I said in the actual post, a lot of characters have never given Rumple a fair shake anyway. Rumple did dozens of deals with Snow and Charming, they would be dead or not together if it wasn’t for him, but because he never did anything for free (though he never asked for more than they could pay either) he was the ‘scourge of the realms’.

I really don’t know, and I would like somebody to tell me, what exactly Rumple had done to them when they helped lock him up over the Cinderella situation. I found their actions appalling the first time I watched that episode, and it was only episode 4, so I hadn’t learned the full extent of everything he’d done for them at that point.

So it probably isn’t Hook’s fault that everybody hates Rumple. I was just saying pre-Hook Emma was willing to at least hear Rumple out, and afterwards not so much. The timing makes it a possibility, but we can’t definitively prove cause and effect. Other things happened at the time, for instance Neal dying. That didn’t only affect Rumple, that affected Emma as well.

Basically yeah you aren’t wrong. Rumple has done some terrible things. Do I think Emma et al would have got over it without Hook? Not sure, probably not, but I think they should have given him a chance. Rumple is family through Henry and this reminds me of a fanfic I read just last night. In that it said that the best way to defeat a villain was to bring them in from the cold.

They defeated the Evil Queen by calling her family and being there for her when she needed help. Rumple has a couple more centuries of trust issues to work through, but wouldn’t the same thing work with him? A lot of what he’s done in more recent times has been a direct response to everybody’s mistrust and hatred, making him feel like he doesn’t have another option.

I had a thought earlier about Hook. It’s a bit random and not my usual because I do try and stay away from anti-character posts. However…

It occurred to me that “revenge is a dish best served cold” – Hook spent several lifetimes searching for a way to make Rumple pay for Milah’s death. For most of that time this took the typical form of “I will kill you!!!” but then think about what he’s done lately?

Successfully romanced Emma – who not only did Rumple’s son love, but is also the mother of his grandchild. Emma and Rumple used to have sort of a frenemies thing going on. Rumple had respect for Emma in season 1-2 (pre-Hook) and Emma was never 100% sure that she could trust Rumple, but she was willing to work with him/give him the benefit of the doubt sometimes. Since Hook has been on the scene, it’s everybody hate Rumple all the time. Hook has successfully poisoned not just Emma, but also Henry and her entire family against Rumple. I mean admittedly Snow and David were kinda fair weather about him before, happy to use him when they needed something but would jump at the chance to imprison/control him if possible. Emma wasn’t like that though, not back then.

Formed a friendship with Belle – or at least made Belle consider him a friend, to the point where Belle lived on his ship and looked to him for protection. Now it was only ever strictly platonic but still it must have been eerily familiar, having another wife leave Rumple to live on the same ship. That must have really hit Rumple where it hurt.

So I’m thinking Hook got his revenge after all. He could only kill Rumple once and then dead is dead (well sometimes) but stripping away everything and everyone that Rumple cares about? That’s going to cause years of suffering for Rumple, with Hook smugly knowing that he won in the end.

The first episode after the hiatus and rather predictably I’ve gone on a bit. Honestly, this cast deserve all the awards. Anyway, there are spoilers obviously for the episode under the cut.

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Oh sweet merlin. I’m writing the final chapter of Fall All Over Again so I have the transcript of 2.15 The Queen is Dead open and wow, seeing this in black and white really hits home.

Emma: Here’s the thing. You’re dying. And right now, we are your best hope. Time’s come for you to start trusting someone. And, if I were you, I’d start with family.

So Rumple tells her where he’s hidden the dagger. I’m doing something different in the fic because I always thought that was stupid. Cora would never have found it, if they hadn’t led her to it, and Rumple is smart enough to know that Snow and David would fold if Cora threatened people’s lives. However, that’s beside the point. The point is that Rumple trusted Emma exactly how she asked. She said that they were family, which they were through the newly discovered relationship with Henry. So Rumple took a chance and trusted her with his very soul.

David: It’s here! A clever hiding place for a very clever man.

Snow: We did it.

David: The Dark One finally can be controlled.

What really hurts me actually is that it’s David that says it. I’ve always thought better of him, and perhaps my memories are skewed because black and white doesn’t lie. The very first thought they have upon laying hands on the dagger, isn’t that they have saved the dagger from Cora. It’s not that they have the dagger now, and they can give it to Rumple when he gets back because it belongs to him.

No, their very first thought is that they can now control him, like he’s not even human. They’ve just learned he’s their co-grandparent for crying out loud. They accept Regina as family and she tried to kill them countless times (and I say that as a Regina fan). Really what has Rumple done to them at this point? Helped them at least a dozen times, but had the audacity not to do it for free? Honestly I’m sickened. Well I was driven to write this post. My jaw dropped reading that in the transcript. I guess I’d forgotten, I haven’t seen the episode in getting on for two years probably.

Rumple reached out, he trusted them and look what they did! I’m appalled.