Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25926288-20160321010032/@comment-24674051-20160328162531

Just to put my 2 cents on the subject.

First, Rumple made the cowardly choice, but it wasn't in sparing Fendrake. It was Not standing up to Milah. Once he acquieced to her demand that he go and kill Fendrake, there was no way that any choice was going to be good. Sure, he made what I would consider the morally correct decision to spare Fendrake, but followed it up with the morally grey decision to sell his unborn (and unconceived) child to save Bae.

Here's the problem at it's root. The brave option is not in taking the black and white, either/or choices laid in front of you (kill or not kill Fendrake, Let Bae Die or Trade unborn child, etc). Those are Devil's choices (and they are called that for good reason). The Brave option is to seek the 3rd alternative, and that is something that Rumple just doesn't seem to grasp. He always looks for the easy way out. The closest that Rumple ever got to taking the brave option was when he stole the DO Dagger. The action was motivated by his desire to save Bae, so in that sense was selfish. But the action did require putting his life on the line (he could have died in the burning castle, the owner could have returned, there were any number of things that could have gone wrong). Where the action ultimately failed is what he did with the Dagger once he had it. The Devil's choice given Rumple was to either Control the DO himself, or Kill the DO. There was a third option that was available, which would be to give the DO back the dagger. who knows what might have happened in that situation. and I think THAT would have been the brave option.

Point being that being brave and courageous means eschewing the Devil's choices and finding the alternative path.