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scribbles-by-kate · 6 years

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Series rewatch thoughts - 1.8 “Desperate Souls”

I think this is the best back story reveal the show ever did, to be honest. For the first seven episodes, Mr Gold/Rumplestiltskin is a very shadowy figure. You don’t know what his deal is apart from knowing he’s got some animosity against Regina, that he gave her the curse, and that he’s considered very dangerous and very powerful. Then suddenly we get all this information about this character. He was once a very different man. He had a son he loved dearly. He became a very powerful dark sorcerer. Rumple does clearly become a villain at times during the show’s run, but he also has a very sympathetic back story, and they never fully lose sight of that, even when they want him being the bad guy. He’s one of the most compelling, layered characters on the show. He’s a complicated guy, and that all starts in this episode.

Having seen the whole series, I’ve seen the struggle Rumple underwent choosing between love and power. Watching this episode again, I see that desire for power very clearly. I don’t know if I noticed it the first time, or if I got caught up in the pro-Rumple fandom bubble, but power is clearly presented as something Rumple lacks and would like to have. Hordor mentions his lack of power: the beggar talks of a way he can get power. And Rumple is very interested in what the beggar has to say. When the beggar asks how he thinks an idiot like the duke has power over the Dark One, Rumple says ‘Tell me’. And you can see his eagerness to have power when he says to Bae ‘Imagine me with that power’. So, when he tells Belle in season five that he craved power, he wasn’t lying: he did.

But I also know that the craving for power is, on the surface, related to his lack of power. He’s poor, lame, friendless. As Hordor points out, he’s got no money, no land, no title, no power. There are no fairies coming to grant his wishes, and you can bet he made them. But his craving for power also has a magical cause. What his mother did in cutting away his destiny as the Saviour left him with a hole he didn’t know how to fill, until he found out about the Dark One. You cannot read Rumple’s character and his relationship with power independently of what his mother did to him. The weakness for power is instilled in him first by Fiona and intensified by his poverty and low situation. In his situation, anyone would take the kind of power that’s being described to him: that’s human nature, with a little magical direction thrown in.

So it’s a sympathetic back story. It’s even more so when you see how Rumple was tricked. Now, I do think, had the beggar not been the Dark One in disguise, the outcome would still have been the same: Rumple would have gone after the dagger and still become the Dark One. I think that was a foregone conclusion. Rumple wanted power: he was going to take it. And I think that’s what he means when he says that becoming the Dark One was the act of a coward - he views it as cowardice that he didn’t find a more righteous way to save his son. I think he viewed it as cowardice that he craved power too. So, no, he wasn’t tricked into summoning the Dark One, or killing him: he was considering murder when he talked to Bae about having the power, and it didn’t actually take much persuading by Zoso to get Rumple to kill him.

The real essence of where he was tricked was that Zoso didn’t tell him the nature of the bargain he’d made. Rumple didn’t realise it wasn’t possible to do good with the power: he didn’t realise he was getting a soul-destroying Darkness. Cue four hundred years of battling that Darkness for his soul. Cue loss and pain and bad choices. Cue the Darkness feeding on his insecurities, whispering into his ear, encouraging him to choose it over love. Cue Rumple, at different times, feeling like all he has is the power. Cue an ultimately very satisfying journey of growth and redemption for this particular viewer. Cue Rumple becoming the Saviour he was born to be, and choosing that. He was also the longest lived and last Dark One, the Dark One who ultimately destroyed the burden of the Darkness. Did I imagine I was going to get a story like that when I saw this episode? No, I don’t think so. I did become aware at some point that the task of destroying the Darkness should ultimately be Rumple’s, but I don’t think I foresaw how epic that journey would be. Rumple’s one of my favourite characters ever, this episode is the start of why. Thank you very much Once Upon a Time and Robert Carlyle for that!

I think the reason that Rumple is always so clear that there’s a price for magic is because he was tricked. He made a deal he didn’t understand, so he always makes sure to tell people the price. There’s always been something honourable in Rumple: he doesn’t want to trick people as he was tricked, and he’s always angry if someone doesn’t tell someone about the price, or if they try to avoid paying it.

It’s striking how decent a man Rumple was too. Although poor himself, he didn’t hesitate to give a few coins to the beggar, and then share his food with him. That’s a generous, decent soul. And we see that generosity again throughout the series. He can be very selfish with the Darkness, and, of course, he did commit murder at the least provocation here, which suggests he was always capable of that if pushed, but there’s a lot of generosity and nobility in him too. I think he wanted to be good, and I think maybe Zoso knew that, and, along with the desperation, that’s why he chose Rumple to pass the curse onto. Maybe he knew he could deal with it better than someone starting with a dark heart, and Rumple did. He wasn’t setting out to open a portal to the Underworld anyway. He caused plenty of destruction, it’s true, but he was guided mostly by love. If he hadn’t been trying to get back to Bae, he’d probably have gone darker much quicker. And if he hadn’t met Belle, he’d probably have been lost to the Darkness when Bae died. He had a massive selfish streak, it’s true, but he did always come back to trying to conquer that, and he succeeded in the end.

Something I thought was interesting was that, related to the Rumplestiltskin fairytale, no one seemed to know the Dark One’s true name, apart from the one controlling him. The power seemed to be in the name, rather than his soul being tethered to the dagger, initially. They changed that later, though, and we know that Rumple gave his name out freely. He possessed the dagger himself, so the power in his name was people knowing it so they could call on him for help.

This episode is very much about choices we make when we’re in a difficult situation. Rumple chooses power to save his child, while Emma chooses to be truthful, knowing that she might lose hers, or the child she’s deciding she wants to be a mother to. She wonders what she is to Henry if she’s not a hero and not the Saviour. Rumple wonders what he is without his son. In fact, Rumple knows he’d turn to dust without Bae. It’s very interesting to see these two paralleled like this, especially knowing that those parallels continue. Both are, at different times, Dark One, Saviour, hero, villain. I don’t know that it was initially intended that Rumple and Emma would be paralleled as much as they came to be later, but this episode you can certainly see that they’re connected.

They’re connected as parents too. It’s interesting that Emma thinks in terms of what she is to Henry, while Rumple thinks in terms of what Bae is to him. Emma wants to be everything to Henry: Rumple sees Bae as everything to him. And when Rumple tells Regina not to underestimate someone who’s acting for their child, he’s talking about himself, though of course Regina believes he’s talking about Emma.

The idea that good loses because good has to play fair is important here too. And it’s interesting because, again, Rumple, Emma, and Regina do duty as heroes and villains through the show’s run. I don’t think anyone could have foreseen that that would be the case at this point. I love how good sometimes needs a little helping hand from someone in the grey area. Rumple knows human nature well: he knew Emma wouldn’t be elected without him orchestrating a situation where she would let her natural sense of right win out. So maybe it’s fair to say that good doesn’t win without a little helping hand from someone walking the line between good and bad. And, again, what Rumple does here allows Emma to become more part of the community, thus keeping her in Henry’s life.

We get a little sense of Enchanted Forest politics in this episode as well. The Duke of the Frontlands is clearly a war profiteer, sacrificing his people so he can make money off the war. He could easily get the Dark One to end the war, but he doesn’t. The only explanation for why is that he’s making money off it. Rumple is quite right when he says the law wants Bae to die, not fight. Even the press release for this episode calls this a meaningless war. It’s actually interesting to think of how Rumple and Belle are aligned in relation to the war. Belle views her father and his men as to blame for the ogres attacking them - their cruelty is causing the ogres to retaliate in defence, while Rumple is openly critical of the law calling for children to fight. They both have a sense of humanitarianism. And don’t get me started on Hordor having Morraine ride with him. Did that girl get home from the war with her virginity in tact?

Another thing that was interesting is that this is the first episode where we get a different edit of the opening ‘In a town in Maine’ sequence, and it focuses heavily on Rumple. There’s a shot of Rumple with Emma’s voiceover saying ‘How the hell did you get like this?’ We’re about to find out… Also, it struck me how evil they made Regina look in that sequence. The voiceover guy says ’She’ll stop at nothing until someone breaks the curse’, as we see Regina crushing Graham’s heart.

Rumple and Regina’s animosity is clear. What’s also clear is that Rumple enjoys it. Well, he enjoys Emma being pissed at him later too. He gets very gloaty when people come to him annoyed about something he’s done or his interference in something. He’s what we like to call in Ireland a shit stirrer :)

The idea that subtlety is not Regina’s strong suit is something that holds true for the entire series. She learns to temper her rashness, but she’s always direct. It works for her. Well, it does when she moves from being the antagonist to working with the heroes, and then being one herself. At this point, she’s like a bull in a china shop, and Rumple clearly enjoys her frustrated rage, even joking about making space for it. Cheeky little shit!

The back of Rumple’s shop is clearly just a corner of the studio at this point - the floor is different, and there are no windows along the side, as there are later. I’m sure they weren’t sure at that point how much they would use the back room of the shop (a lot!), or hadn’t had time to build the set.

As sympathetic as I am towards Rumple’s back story, the character I feel most sorry for at the end of those flashback scenes is Bae. The camera is positioned from his point of view as he’s watching his previously gentle and loving papa kill men with the dagger. You can tell that Bae knew his father going off alone was a bad idea, and he was right. I can’t imagine how frightening it must have been for Bae to see that transformation. We know that Rumple began to get a handle on the Darkness, and we know that he protected Bae from it after the encounter with Beowulf, but imagine you’re fourteen years old - it’s your birthday, even - and the father you saw last night is now gone, replaced by a killer. Of course Bae, hundreds of years later, was reluctant to have anything to do with his father. It says much about how much he loves him that he was able to forgive him, that he didn’t let the trauma of his father’s transformation keep him from reaching out to him in the end.

#watching fairytales #ouat full series rewatch #1.8 desperate souls #sorry this is a long one #rumplestiltskin

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khoumele-blog · 7 years

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Breathe, just breathe

07:00. I wake up. Breathe.

Congratulate myself on making it, I try. Truth is I wake up and I stare at the ceiling until either Cat or Dog notices I am awake. One will meow loudly and stretch and walk over to me the other will look at me with soft brown eyes assessing my mood and will slowly wag her tail and yawn. Her sharp white teeth gleening in the morning light.

My beacon in life.

I will linger in bed dreaming of leaving, packing my bags and leaving it all behind. I dream of coconut tree and melanated people. I dream of a simple life style, I dream that my heart beat follows the ancient rythms of drums. I dream of strong black arms and soft kisses that taste like mango. And then my snooze alarm drags me back to my current situation.

07:40. I extricate myself from my bed and mechanically head to the bathroom where I avoid looking at the daily mantra that I nailed there to remind me that life is beautiful and life is worth it. And I turn the hot water faucet to the max. Test the water.

HOT, too hot.

I lightly, cautiously turn the cold water faucet, small doses, like white fragility I can only take so much. I chuckle, I test the water, sigh, it's perfect, almost unbearable. I stand there and wait for the heat to wash away the night's angst, to wake me up and prepare me for the constant reminder that we live in a society that praises bullies, rewards them with positions unsuited to their characters. I prepare myself for a day filled with incoming attacks, disparaging remarks. I prepare myself to face men that repeatedly abuse their employees. I prepare myself, I try. No one can be prepared for this, it's insiduous. Workplaces where white men are praised for their agressive deameanor where women are scared to come forward for fear of retaliation. Workplaces where manager can scream and lose their temper, demand respect while being loathsome. Repeat their abusive behaviors and hide being company policies. As the anger rises again, I realise I have to go.

08:10. I rush out, pour the food for my companions, head out. Damnit! my windshield graduated again, 53$. The white and red paper the lenght of my full arm is gloriously displayed. Well it'll go in the glove compartment with the two others. I drive and curse as detours, police, workers hinder the already heavy traffic.

I arrive to work in the nic of time, 09:01, and ready myself for the storm of negativity from clients and management. It gets to me. Whithin 30 minutes I am turned into an angry version of myself.

10:00. I just want to go home, cuddle up, enjoy some petflix, maybe scream at the top of my lungs, call out my manager for his biggoted, narcisistic behaviors. I want to tell him Karma is a pitbull and she is coming for him to deliver her kind of justice. Instead I use what little power I have, I never acknowledge him. Not after he was verbally abusive to me and another employee. Not after he lied to HR, not after he sought to fight another employee, not after he called an employee stupid for wanting a gastric bypass and the list goes on. I don't believe in rewarding bullies, respect is earned, not automatic. If you terrorize people and you revel in it, you loose any respect I had for you and I refuse to acknowledge tyrants in the name of some fake decency imposed by the same kind people that kill and rape without impunity. I am not your average bitch nor am I your negro. I. JUST. WANT. TO. GO. HOME. this is what I think while customers are relating unecessary facts, are requiring me to be more than just an operator, are arguing all the meanwhile I have 200 seconds to answer their request, within the first 60 they need to provide their password before I move on to authorities.

11:40. My head is just buzzing, buzzing with my strong desire to scream, to leave, flee, brake things. Instead I curse under my breath, vent, rage not so silently and unwittingly let myself become overhelmed with negativity. And then it happens, the last straw, that ultimate client, hard headed, entitled most likely some manager from some retail store or some property manager. I. JUST. CAN'T.

11:55. I go hide in the bathroom where it is quiet, where I can just breath without being shouted at BURG! FIRE! HOLDUP! Silence, I sit, breathe. Try to gain control but I lose, I breathe faster, and faster, too fast, the tears stream down my cheeks, I sob quietly, my fingers go numb and my leg, the right one, start shaking, I keep thinking. No, no ,no. Please not now, I force myself to take deep breaths. Very deep breaths. I reach in my pocket and swallow a tiny little pill. Green coloured. Unnatural though. My mind wanders to sunny places, an island, I daydream of coconut trees, tropical fruits, melanated mothers with suithing voices and colorful clothes. I dream of my sunkissed skin, of my heart beating to the rythm of some far away land. I see myself, gently, unworriedly watching over my dear Dog with her floppy canine ears chasing away butterflies. No fucks given. Free. And my breathing slows. I feel my fingers again, my leg has stopped shaking. I gulp. Gulp again. Get up on shaky legs. Look at my reflection, turn the faucet, hot water rinces my hands, too hot, my cheeks are streaked with white, the plight of my life.

12:02. Damnit! Now I look like I cried, my eyes are red, my nose is, well orange is the closest hue I can use to describe this mess. So I turn the faucet again, cold this time, like my workplace management, I chuckle at the thought. I'm ok. Right...Yes I'm ok. There is worst, I come from a long line of warriors. My ancestry is legendary. I am made of resilience, it runs through my blood stream. I am the living proof that revolutions can succeed. I am the embodiement of thousands that rebelled, that macheteed their way to freedom. I. AM.

"Wash away your tears babygirl. Stand straight. You are beautiful. You are smart. You are my baby. I don't give birth to stupid. You can be anything you want"

My mother's voice echoes through my mind while I wash away my tears. Make a cold compress out of bathroom brown paper. I Can do it. Only 7 more hours to go, a third of my day has gone by. I leave the security of the workplace ladies room.

12:05 BURG! FIRE! PRIORITY ALARMS!

I get assaulted by the noise, the activity. I head back to my desk, crack some jokes, sit, apprehensively log into my phone and start working.

18:57

I. AM. DONE.

Tired to the bone, although I did nothing physically for 10 hours. I pack my stuff. Punch out.

20:00. key in the ignition I head home. Music blasting. Drowning my thoughts.

20:07. I readjust myself. My left arm, the one I drive with, hurts. Shit I was sitting too straight. Red light. I readjust how I was sitting. Good lord, I didn't realize how tense I was.

The day is over, I'm heading home. All is good. I repeat this over and over. My body relaxes, i exhale, heavily. I sing along, rather rap along.

I smile. Probably my first carefree smile of the day.

I. AM. OK

20:20. Home.

I am so happy to see them. The not so quiet mammals I share my space with. We go for a walk. Me and Dog. 7 years. My longest most fruitful relationship with an individual WHO (fuck old english, who I say) wasn't born in my family.

21:30. Home.

Laughter. Full on petflix mode. Brickleberry, South Park, Archer, The Boondocks, Family guy, I rewatch highly innapropriate satires of our lives.

23:45. I have to go to work tomorrow

MIDNIGHT

I mix watermelon juice and rhum. I chuckle. The irony of stereotypes. Wait... do I have chicken?

03:00. Shit!!! I passed out on the couch again. I pass by the glass filled with watermelon cocktail.

My shirt flies and lands softly near the dresser on the floor.

It's quickly followed by the rest of my clothes.

03:05 I drop myself onto my bed.

RESTLESS SLEEP.

07:00 Same bullshit all over.

#anxious #storytelling #livinganxious #anxiety #spilled ink #spilled thoughts #spilled stories

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