Heartlines: So this is incredibly random but...

keenquing:

betsypaige22:

keenquing:

amuseoffyre:

keenquing:

Have either Snow or Charming ever explicitly said they trust each other? Because if not, it just seems incredibly interesting to me that the ‘bad’ guy has had a conversation with his SO where he explicitly states the importance of trust in…

I don’t think Rumple ever got enough credit for being a thoroughly modern man, the way Belle was a thoroughly modern woman.  What man in that medieval world of Skin Deep would have fallen for a woman who didn’t want to stay home and be a good wife, raise a family? Belle wanted to see the world, have adventures. She wanted to be a hero. Most men would say, “hero? Please - that’s my job; you just take care of the kids and clean the house”.  Most men would sneer at her intellectual curiousity and discourage it. Rumple not only didn’t, but he encouraged it.   He encouraged her to live the life she was meant to live - and so when he released her, I think he hoped she’d do just that. He would be so proud of her Yaogli adventures.

Rumpled loved and loves Belle, not just as a woman, but a person

And the thing is, it hasn’t just been with Belle. I can’t help laughing at the portion of Milah fandom that calls him a misogynist, after seeing his interactions with Milah, Cora, AND Belle. What attracted him to Cora at the start was her insistence that he TEACH her, that he give her the means to control things on her own, not just letting him spin the gold and take the child and leave her totally beholden to him. The flashback in Manhattan makes it clear he respected Milah (and that at some point she wanted a family, so he wasn’t ‘tying her down’ with that), and KNEW she wanted more out of life but just couldn’t give to her (I think his trying to get Milah to stay and how that blew up so spectacularly is part of why he tries to push both Cora and Belle away with various phrasings of ‘I can give you nothing’). He’s always been attracted to women with a bit more spunk and drive than they were encouraged to have, and I have to think part of this was his being raised primarily BY women and being in a ‘female’ profession himself.

Precisely this!!! Rumple doesn’t manage to avoid all of the misogyny — he still has his moments, but he doesn’t let himself be a monster in that way. He helps Belle when Hook attacks her, but she is at the library by herself when it happens, and she takes him out on her own and gets into a safe room on her own and THEN calls Rumple for help. He asks her to stay safe, because he worries for her, but she fights back because she wants to help. He tries to protect her, but she is strong. I want to call on the scene just after where they’re in the shop, and he tries to tell her to stay put, and she calls him on it.

“Would you use magick against me to make me stay???”

There’s a defiant challenge, there. Would you beat your wife into submission just so that she obeys you? For all the manipulating he does, he is not a controlling husband. You can see his expression, he goes through the whole spectrum: panicked, at a loss Spinner, over-powering Beast!Dark One, and then she snaps him back into realising this is Belle he is attempting to threaten, and he is cowed by her. Because that’s not what he wants to do. He doesn’t want to control Belle — she’s a powerful woman, and her strength is something that draws her to him. He admires strong women, and he’s not going to squash that, not just for his own brutish, learned behaviour that the damsel in distress must be kept out of trouble. Rumbelle is better than that — they’re truly a modern couple, as you’ve stated. She is his strength when he is weak, and she can tame the beast, tend to him, remind him that he has a heart. But she also has a fire and courage that he admires. He is blessed beyond measure to have her, and he damned well knows it.

Cora? Cora was playing him from the beginning. Imagine, in her position: she could stay and be a poor, disgraced miller’s daughter (and attempt to keep the business going under her father’s drunken neglect), attempt to win the Prince’s hand and get killed for her boldness, or she could try this thing with the Dark One. Odds are good she’ll end up dead anyway (which might be a relief from her shitty life), but there’s also a chance she could do something greater with herself. Rumple sees a fearlessness in her, and her request to be taught, to do this for herself rather than just ask him for a favour, impresses him.

“Rumplestiltskin!” “What’s that?” “It’s my name. I think you’ve earned it.”

Even Milah had fire! She wanted more than her own provincial life, but he wasn’t sure he could do more than he was doing. The War was a chance out of it, but that backfired tremendously when he met the Seer. I get the feeling she’d always been a bit frustrated with Rumple, and that he was struggling, but when he comes back from the war a coward, she loses all respect for him. She never seemed to understand that it was important to him that he be there as a father if not as a brave man, but at the same time he never gave her much of a chance to get out of the bindings he’d made for himself. If you watch Crocodile, she asks him if they can please get out of this place. She’s willing to try again, try to start afresh, but he doesn’t have much hope for them. While the leg could have been a sign of great personal sacrifice, he also lets it lame him, and she gets fed up with his insistence on just making do with their meagre existence. She’s tried to get him to move, but he won’t.

“If a woman comes to you and begs you to take her away, is that stealing?”

Milah was trapped in a dead end marriage. Because the Spinner was a coward in so many ways. There are so many thing they might have done to fix their marriage, but neither of them had much faith in the other to encourage and get it done. Instead it was a lot of accusation and defense, and not a lot of teamwork.

Cora was an equal, and she matched him for all of his nasty, vindictive ways. But Belle was his better half. She was clever and astute and brave and most of all kind. For all his cynicsm, she gave her optimism. For all his work, she insisted on play. She could brew a mean cuppa and keep the house clean and keep up his straw, but the most important thing she did was keep him company. She smiled at him in the mornings. She laughed at his jokes, twisted and dark as they were. She listened to his fears. She was a rock he could cling to, a lighthouse to beckon him home from the storm.

“She was… a glimmer of light in an ocean of darkness.”

Belle was his salvation. She believed in him, when he didn’t believe in himself, and he found himself in awe of her.

“You made me want to go back… To that best version of myself.”

It was never about the housecleaning. It was never about the damsel. Even when he had Baelfire, he had house maids, but they were expendable creatures merely there to keep up the house and serve the meals. Milah didn’t even do that — he was serving her tea at night. Belle is so familiar with him and with his things, that she moves around them like she’s been there for years, not months. She’s taken the time to get to know him, and that makes her exemplary.

There’s a line between a partner and a good partner. And one that is made for you. One who can anticipate your every whim, and baffles you with her kindness and forethought. To where you are both of the same mind and same track. I’ve met Belle, and she is truly a wonderful creature. Unequaled. Any man would be blessed to have her, and any woman, too. But that she makes a mean cuppa and helps keep the house clean is not what makes her so wonderful. But it’s a damned nice perk.

#RL Rumbelle