Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-11058666-20141228031222/@comment-26033121-20150824165013

I wish I didn't ship Rumbelle, realistically I never would, but it's those sort of toxic couples that draw me to couples in fiction. I got bored and forgot about Captain Swan, Outlaw Queen, and Snowing after one season of them together, but Rumbelle is the only one that really always makes me FEEL anything all of the time because they are broken, Rumple was cursed, and Emilie as Belle and Robert as Rumple do such a great job of making realistically impossible true love look possible and able to be overcome, no matter how many obstacles they face; Rumple with his power addiction, and Belle with her naïveté. I shouldn't want them together, but my heart can't help it because they make angsty bittersweet true love look so good. Granted,the angst was a bit too much, but the curse actually did seem to be taking over this past season with his heart almost coal black from the curse. While I don't condone Rumple lying to and guilt manipulating Belle in 4A, I totally understand why he did it, it wasn't right, but it wasn't abusive to me, either; and I don't think that the hat thing was just for power alone, though it was part of it, but to save Belle from breaking the curse and getting sucked up by it's darkness, herself, after seeing the season finale. It doesn't excuse lying to Belle, but it seems like Rumple really was just trying to get the author to write the dark curse out of the story by the season finale. Of course, A&E never decided to explain that with Rumple after everything he went through in 3B with the loss of Bae and Zelena controlling him, but they just decide to focus on stupid Frozen characters and Regina's overblown and hypocritical character development as a "hero," instead. This show loves to ignore exploring the obvious psychological and emotional issues that its characters have, and it's frustrating.