A List Of The Most Annoyingly Bad, Stupid, and/or Problematic Writing Decisions On OUAT:
1). Issues in regards to autonomy and consent-
I would run out of room in this post if I discussed all of them in depth, but A&E and these writers do not give a shit about consent and autonomy. Unfortunately, it affects every one of their main characters in one way or another, though I think they did the best of framing it as wrong and giving the character negative consequences for doing it in regards to Rumple. Even with him, there were some dubious consent issues in his character, too that didn’t really get addressed because the writers didn’t get it. Just like every other character on this show, Rumple didn’t get specifically why it was wrong to violate the autonomy and/or consent of other characters, or generally seem to feel bad about doing it. unless it endangered, hurt, and/or threatened to hurt Belle, Nealfire, or Rumbaby physically, psychologically, and emotionally. I still don’t see the logic behind why it was EVOL for Rumple to use the shears on Gideon, or how it would have seriously violated his consent/autonomy because they were shown to essentially offer free will, not to “force” anyone to love them, or to feel anything they didn’t want to feel, which were his supposed motives of 6A, but that’s what the inexcusably stupid plot of 6A kept telling me to believe, so I never bought it because it was clear that A&E and the writers clearly never put any thought into making any logical and consistent sense of the shears of contrived plot-fuckery destiny or Rumple and Belle’s motives in 6A.
2). Killing off Nealfire was the big warning sign that A&E no longer cared about developing any of these characters organically and originally anymore centered around their core themes or family, hope, and second chances, particularly in regards to Emma,Rumple, and Henry’s characters-
He was strongly tied to the central themes of organic development, hope, and family on OUAT in Emma, Rumple, and Henry’s characters. It’s not so much that killing off Nealfire was a sign that these characters couldn’t ever be strong enough to survive and develop without him on the show. It’s that it was a warning sign that A&E and the writers cared more about shoving Hook/CS down our throats inorganically by throwing away the central focus on family and hope by killing off Nealfire to bring Rumple back from the dead to undo his redemption arc to prop up Hook/CS as the new on-and-off again “big bad,” and were too lazy to come up with any new ideas on how to organically develop Rumple, Emma, Henry, and even Regina and Snowing after they had all reached the set points they had for them in mind on the show at the end of 3A in a way that felt emotionally compelling, dynamic, original, realistic, and satisfying, so 3B-onwards was just a painfully retconned, repetitive, OOC, inconsistent, character assassinating, and/or retreaded version of S1-S3A for them all over and over again, so that Hook/CS could be front and center.
3). Rumple’s cyclical role as the on-and-off-again “big bad” villain from 3B-S6, and the continual character assassination of both him and Belle as individual characters with the writers framing them as the “Abusive”/Drama Couple” “foil” to prop up the truly abusive character/relationship of Hook/CS-
In my opinion, Rumple was once the most well-written character on OUAT with the most beautiful, emotionally complex, and organic arc with the best character development/redemption arc on the show from S1-S3A, and Rumbelle was once the once most beautiful popular ship on the show. However, the writers brought him back from the dead to undo his redemption arc to frame him as their go-to on-and-off-again “big bad,” twisted up and mangled both his and Belle’s original characterizations so badly by making them uncharacteristically overdramatically cruel, controlling, conniving, deceptive, illogical, hypocritical, emotionally manipulative, reckless, and/or just plain stupid in regards to their treatment of each other from the end of 3B-6A to prop up Hook/CS. I was willing to buy S4 as a believable low point in the context of the narrative for them from the end of 3B-S4, even if it was badly written, but by the end of 5A the on-and-off-again “will they or won’t they” magical plot fuckery bs angst just felt incredibly cruel, contrived, OOC, emotionally manipulative, and too stupid to believe sabotaging writing for them on A&E and writers parts to prop up Hook/CS because Rumbelle being in a steady and healthy established relationship that fully and realistically explored and resolved all of their issues on both sides from 3B-S4 was not only something that they didn’t have the talent to do, but it also meant that they couldn’t use Rumple as their “big bad” to prop up Hook/Crapstain Swan.
At least in 4A, it was made clear why Rumple using the magic hat to cleave himself from the dagger, and keeping Belle in the dark about it, was morally wrong.
The thing with the author in 4B to save his ability to love was sort of objectively morally gray, though he was vilified for it.
In 5x11, I didn’t understand why he was so EVOL for taking back the curse. Yeah, it was a huge disappointing character assassination for Rumple, especially after what started out as the one promising arc left in the mess that was the rest of 5A in all this Dark Swan/Hook bs that sidelined and/or ruined Emma Swan and Regina (the other two main leads) to prop up Hook/CS, and yeah, he should have immediately come to clean to Belle about taking it back before falling into her arms. However, taking back the curse actually saved Emma’s life, and Hook was already doomed to die with Excalibur’s wound, anyway, so he didn’t take away anyone else’s sacrifice.
I guess the reason why Rumple so EVOL for taking back the curse was because it meant that Emma and Hook couldn’t go through with their plan to destroy the darkness, but Emma still created this huge mess by bringing back Hook as a Dark One against his will, and mindwiped everyone to cover up for his crimes. In her quest to reforge Excalibur to destroy the darkness, she still hurt Rumple, Belle, her parents, Henry, Zelena, and her friends in ways that I can’t excuse. Hook still cast the curse that brought them to this point by crushing Merlin’s heart, challenged a magicless Rumple to a sword fight to get his blood, and used it to bring back the Dark Squad to mark everyone for hell to get revenge on Emma for bringing him back as a Dark One, and only was considered a “hero” because he cleaned up his mess at the last second. Still, not being able to destroy the darkness because Rumple took back the curse still doesn’t seem all that bad because it saved Emma’s life in the process, and gave her the ability to save Hook from the Underworld, so I don’t really understand why it was so EVOL.
In 5B, it was much of the same deal of Rumple getting framed as the “big bad” villain, but not really doing anything that was distinctly evil in nature.
In 6x04, 6x08, and 6x09, Rumple was an increasingly wildly OOC, inexcusably blindly controlling, cruel, erratic, borderline manipulative, stupid, threatening, and reckless dick in ways that I couldn’t excuse in regards to overreacting to Belle’s own triggering wildly OOC, inexcusable blind cruelty, emotional whiplash, refusal to let him get word in edgewise, stupidity, and attempted kidnapping of their unborn child with Zelena. Like, I understand why she was wary about Rumple using the shears without her consent, I understand why she was angry at him for trapping her on the ship to protect her from Hyde, though she herself was being quite reckless, I understand why she was wary of him when he was working with the EQ, I get why she freaked out when he threw that magic tracking device cuff on her to keep her from kidnapping their unborn child with an uncharacteristically creepy and controlling bad attitude that I can’t excuse, and when all was said and done at the end of 6x09, I couldn’t totally blame her for initially thinking that Rumple sped up her pregnancy with no other clear perpetrator after that scene where he threatened to do it in the library because then it really did seem like Rumple looked like an immediate threat to both her and their unborn child, though I definitely think she should have listened to him when he asked for their baby’s name and told her that he would never hurt her afterwards, considering the fact that he had just backed down by just assuming shit without asking questions first based off of what her dream told her.
However, I also never understood the logic behind why it was so EVOL and unsympathetic for Rumple to use the shears on Gideon from Belle’s perspective in 6A. First off, if it was Gideon’s fate to hate his dad, which Rumple had every right to fear may have been true from what the dream of Morphetus said about him destroying the family, then no amount of Rumple trying to be a decent person and not being shady would have changed that, so how did Belle not get this? Secondly, Rumple’s supposed motive of wanting to use the shears to “force his son to love him,” and the shears “hurting” their son, never made any sense because that’s not how we were shown the damned things worked on screen.
Not only did the shears have multiple functions that never consistently or logically added up, but “forcing someone to love you” was not one of them. They made the courses of birth fates more difficult to take course, not impossible. Using them was only presented to be a problem in Rumple and Emma’s cases because cutting away their light magic savior powers gave them/would have given them a sense of purposelessness, indecision, and fear in their personal values, roles, and destinies in life, unless they tried really hard to fight it back.
That might seem bad from a magical perspective on OUAT where fate must be magically predetermined, but really, searching for a purpose, struggling to stay true to your personal convictions by fighting back indecision, dark temptations, and fears are just how human beings find their purpose, personal values, and roles in real life. That’s what’s called free will in real life, though. We might hate it sometimes because we don’t just wake up knowing who we are, fully convicted in our personal beliefs without getting bogged down temptations, fears, indecision, or a sense of purposelessness when life gets rough because figuring out who we are isn’t easy amidst all that. However, we also look at it as a blessing because it doesn’t mean that anything about our fates is decided by anyone else, and we get to decide who we are by finding a purpose, and fighting back all the fears, indecision, insecurities, and temptations.
So if Rumple had used the shears on Gideon in 6A, he would have made it more difficult for him to hate his dad, and likely saved him from a horrific fate of getting kidnapped from his parents, abused, and brainwashed to be a serial killer/anti-Savior by his psychotic grandmother for 28 years? So EVOL…
Also, don’t me get started on how it was too stupid to believe that Belle immediately started seriously believing in what a dream of her and Rumple’s unborn child told her to the point where she was seriously talking about staying in a sleeping curse with them forever to avoid Rumple, even before he started fucking up in 6A…I could see if she had been hypnotized by Morfetus/the Black Fairy, but whether she actually was or not was never made clear.
So yeah, I loved Skin Deep to the end of S3 Rumbelle in canon before all the stupid Hook propping drama started. 3B-S5 was painful and badly written Rumbelle angst, but it was still possible to fix it in a somewhat realistically salvageable way that made sense. There was no justifying the stupid OOC toxic plot fuckery that was Rumbelle in 6A, though. It was just done to piss off the Rumbellers one last time to facilitate a stupid plot twist, and to prop up Hook/CS after they did far worse to each other in 5A yet again, not because it made sense. And then when all was said and done, and they got their happy ending at the end of 6B and in 7x04, none of it really got resolved in a way that felt realistic or earned at the end of 6B because none of their issues got fully addressed on both sides from 3B-6A, or made total sense. It was just felt like it was tacked on as an afterthought to appease the Rumbelle fandom with less than the bare minimum for a resolution.
4). The Problems With The Writing For Belle’s Character, Both Individually and As Rumple’s True Love-
This goes all the way back to 2B with the whole amnesia/Lacey plot to give Rumple man pain, to “motivate” him somehow, and/or to put her in the dark about his good deeds or his shadiness when the writers needed Rumple to be shady with her at odds with him because Drama™️, while her “friends” all got off the hook for treating her and her true love like total shit in later seasons. She was also fridged in 3A, much of S4, 5B, and 6B in various ways with her being sidelined, unconscious, indisposed in a sleeping curse off screen, and/or used as a tool by other characters to get something from Rumple. But the most offensive fridging by far was the fridging of her character in 7x04 (“Beauty”) in which she was killed off by the writers in a “happy sacrifice,” so that Rumple could go on a suicide mission to break the curse, even though he had already been ready to give it up long before she died, and their son Gideon was completely discarded from the narrative.
She never found out how no one but Rumple gave a shit about waking her from the sleeping curse in the Underworld, or how Emma used her to blackmail Rumple. Emma never expressed any remorse to her for hurting her and her true love in 5A. Regina never apologized for stealing her heart to control her to blackmail Rumple by using her to hurt him as leverage. (Belle has been cruel to Rumple before in moments of OOC writing in ways that I can’t excuse, particularly in 5B and 6A, but she never would have been as cruel as she was to Rumple at the well in 4B when he ripped out his blackened heart, and tearfully told her why he needed to save his ability to love for her with the author, or agreed to be used as leverage by Regina to hurt Rumple, and she definitely was all Belle at the beginning of their conversation when she tearfully told him that she was “Worried that she had thrown out that chipped teacup too soon” right before Regina abruptly had her twist the knife by saying those cruel things to Rumple, so her heart was definitely stolen by Regina in 4B, and Adam and Eddy never addressed it because Belle wasn’t a person to them, just a plot device in Rumple’s storyline). She and Rumple never got to work out their mutual issues in a realistic and organic slow-burn way that made sense from 3B-S6.
As much as I always loved Rumbelle, and always wanted Belle to be an integral part of Rumple’s storyline and redemption arc from “Skin Deep,” I also wanted her to have real friends of her own, besides just Rumple that were developed, such as with Leroy/Dreamy/Grumpy, Ariel, Merida, Mulan, Nealfire, Henry, Snow, Charming, and Emma (before they ruined them from 3B-S6 by turning them into herocrites to prop up Hook and vilify Rumple at least), and Jefferson. Regina could have been palatable friendship for Belle with me, if Regina hadn’t unrepentantly screwed her over again in S4 after apologizing for locking her away and making her Lacey.
But instead, we didn’t get much of Leroy/Dreamy, Ariel, Merida, Mulan, and Nealfire friendships for Belle. Instead, they forced Belle to be “friends” with her and true love’s openly unrepentant abusers, such as Zelena and Hook, and ruined Emma, Snowing, Regina, and Henry too much to prop up Hook for me to want her to ever be friends with any of them either to prop up Hook from 3B-S6, and shit on Rumple with them, anyway. I wanted to see Belle go on more adventures that had nothing to do with Rumple that enhanced her individual character, such as when she helped Mulan defeat the Yaoguai by using her bookworm brain power to be sassy and badass. I wanted to see her trauma/PTSD from being locked up for 28 years with no memories get explored realistically in depth. But I didn’t want to see her go on “adventures” to babysit baby Neal, and act as a walking library to a bunch of ungrateful “friends” to help save Emma from the Dark Curse in Camelot for seven weeks, not at all looking to find a way to save Rumple that was shown on screen, even though her true love’s life was clinging to life by an incredibly fine thread in Storybrooke, and she had no way of being able to get back to him. I didn’t want to see her constantly getting fridged to motivate Rumple to do something, getting used by other characters to hurt him, or getting used to vilify him in the narrative from S4-6A.
5). The Systematic Character Destruction of Emma Swan and Every Other Major Character on OUAT Who Was Once Truly Heroic In Nature from S1-S3, Such As Snowing, Belle, and Even Henry To Prop Up Hook/CS And Vilify Rumple From 3B-S6-
• Brave, badass, compassionate, and selfless young woman who was a champion for the underdog, and was willing to help other people out, even if they were strangers, or new acquaintances who she didn’t trust.
• Learned to open up to love with Henry, Nealfire, and her parents.
• Consistently put familial relationships with Henry and parents above romantic relationships.
• Gradually devolved into Hook’s stepford wife, who enabled all his shitty choices, and who abandoned her personal values.
• Essentially rapes Hook by proxy by bringing him back as a Dark One against his will, and then chains him underground.
Harms/threatens to harm Henry, Snowing, Rumple, Belle, Zelena, and the rest of Storybrooke to reforge Excalibur to destroy the darkness, and cover up for her and boo’s crimes.
• She does this by mindwiping them all, and emotionally manipulating Henry by stealing the heart of a girl he likes to break his heart (we can talk all day long about the inexcusably shitty and selfish things that Rumple did to Belle as the Dark One in 4A and 6A, no matter how well-intended and/or justified the means he used may have initially felt to justify the worthy ends because he got blinded by his deep self-loathing, but at least he never used someone else to intentionally hurt Belle and break her heart like that).
• She does this by kidnapping Rumple when he’s no longer a Dark One, and by stealing Merida’s heart to force her to chase after him and Belle as a bear to “motivate” Rumple to be “brave,” as if he wasn’t already before, at least in the physical sense of the word when it comes to protecting his loved ones. even if he didn’t realize it at the time because the plot demanded that he forget it. Never apologizes to them for any of it, or expresses any sort of remorse.
• Blackmails Rumple to go to the Underworld to save her worthless boyfriend by threatening to tell Belle that he is the Dark One again to force him to go with her.
• Forces family to go to UW on dangerous quest with her to save her abusive boyfriend, including her son. • Acts like a hypocrite for telling Rumple that he can’t keep cleaning up his son’s messes, even though she is ignoring the fact that Gideon’s heart has been stolen, and that she, herself, just cleaned up her abusive boyfriend’s messes in ways that were far more objectively immoral a week or so ago.
• Violently beats up abuse victims.
• No longer interested in saving anyone else, but Hook, including her parents and son.
• Abandons immediately endangered orphans, so that she can be with Hook.
• No longer gives a fuck about anyone or anything that isn’t Hook, or Hook-related.
• No longer a decent, compassionate, kindhearted, or selfless person.
• Brave, compassionate, loving, intelligent, perceptive, open-minded, and selfless young woman, who sees the good in the darkest of people, and who agrees to live with a “monster” forever to save her people.
• Strictly anti committing murder in favor of revenge, but would never be so reckless, stubborn, and stupid to be so against it to try to save someone who refuses to be saved, and who is putting the lives of her, her true love, and/or her other family members in immediate danger like she did with Gaston in the UW in “Her Handsome Hero.”
• Never enables Rumple’s dark choices, or toxic behavior, and stays with him if he continues to make them. However, she also tries to understand why they are wrong, or the sympathetic reasons behind why he makes them by asking him to be honest with her. If he refuses to be honest with about why he makes the dark choices he does, and he continues to make them, only then does Belle walk away and refuse to compromise after 2x01 when she realizes that she can’t force him to change throughout the rest of S2-S3 by giving him ultimatums because that was toxic behavior on her part.
• Calls out anyone who fucks with her, her true love, her friends, or family, and would never team up with anyone who unrepentantently hurt them, and/or used her to hurt him, such as Hook and Zelena.
• Would never let everyone else in Storybrooke, besides Rumple, treat her like footstool
• Would never refuse to let Rumple get a word in edgewise, or refuse to understand the reasons why he’s using magic when he tries to honestly reach out to her about why he feels he needs to use magic to protect her and their son, or understanding why it’s wrong. Even if she didn’t necessarily agree with the ways in which he was going about it, or she got angry about it because he’s going about it in all the wrong ways that were endangering her and their child (I still don’t understand why using the shears on Gideon would have been EVOL in 6A because we never were really shown that they could work for his supposed motive of “forcing his son to love him,” they seemed to grant free will more than anything, though I did get her anger at him for shortsightedly and arrogantly with the trapping her on a ship to protect her from Hyde, though she was being pretty reckless herself, and her fear of him with his reckless threat to speed up her pregnancy in 6x09), she would try to understand why it was, if he reached out honestly, and she would understand the concept that Rumple was in a Catch-22 in 6A where he felt he had to use magic to win his son’s love him and protect him from the threat of himself by doing so because it seemed to be their son’s fate to hate him when he told Belle that Rumple would destroy the family, so no amount of trying to just be a decent person and not being shady would have been enough to necessarily win that love of his son without magic.
• Would never attempt to kidnap her and Rumple’s unborn child like she did in 6x08 with Zelena. Yes, it was attempted kidnapping in that case because the only “proof” that she had that Rumple was a “legit threat” to their son with the shears, were based off the premise of what her unborn dream adult child of the zygote in her womb told her, and what Zelena told her, nothing concrete yet, though.
• Badass bookworm in times of danger. Not a damsel-in-distress who meekly runs away in fear, cowardice from immediate danger without putting up a fight. She literally pushed a bookcase over Hook in self-defense.
• Would never immediately hand over the object that ccontrols Rumple’s very soul, and had the ability to kill him, to his worst living enemy aside from Zelena.
• She might have abused Rumple’s dagger once, like she did in “Family Business” because it reinforced a toxic demanding ultimatum habit that she had in her relationship with Rumple in 2x01, but it would never go so far as her banishing Rumple with nothing, then never feeling bad about it again afterwards. S1-S3 Belle would immediately insist that Rumple take back the dagger after the events of “Family Business” because she would realize that it reinforced her to revert to old toxic relationship habits with Rumple.
• Would never be so hypocritically blind-sided as to not realize that she has resorted to darkness to be a hero.
• Would never blame Rumple for her problems, or make him feel guilty for having to darken her heart to save his life.
• Would never lead Rumple on with false hope for their relationship.
• Gets written with a mix of increasingly abusive traits in regards to Rumple sometime mid season four when she started using the dagger, and enabled everyone else’s bullshit.
• Willing to abandon her philosophy of a “hero never runs away” in the middle of a crisis when doing so in the plot, gives the writers an excuse to vilify Rumple, or make him do something shady
• Refuses to let Rumple get a word in edgewise, compromise, understand, or have a say, if his opinions or decisions so much as slightly go against her own, even when he tried to be honest with her, or tell her why he was plotting to use magic to protect her and their son.
• Attempts to kidnap her and Rumple’s unborn child with Zelena.
• Gets a sleeping curse that she puts herself and her and Rumple’s unborn child under from Zelena without Rumple’s consent.
• Is essentially “blameless” for using the dagger to control Rumple after she goes too far by banishing him with nothing in “Heroes and Villains,” though at least she was punished for it in “Her Handsome Hero.”
• Leads Rumple on with borderline emotionally manipulative false hope for their relationship in 5A and 5B, and now uses the threat of the status of their relationship as a means to get him to do what she wants all the time now.
• No longer realizes her own capacity for darkness in her desire to be a hero in H3. She literally met Rumple (the Dark One) by summoning him to defeat the ogres in Avonlea to protect her people, but now hypocritically insists that she’d “never resort to using darkness to be a hero.”
• So strictly anti-murder to save Gaston to be a “hero” in H3, even though it is immediately necessary for Rumple to re-kill him in self-defense and break the contract, and she is willing to recklessly endanger the lives of Rumple, Rumbaby, and herself in her desire to be one.
• Hands over Rumple’s real dagger to who she believes to be Hook, his worst living enemy.
• Is willing to work with people who openly are threatening to harm her son in 6B.
• Seriously is made so unbelievably gullible, insensitive, and stupid as to immediately believe what an adult dream version of her unborn fetus tells her in 6A about Rumple destroying the family without much question that she actually talks about wanting to staying in a sleeping curse with their unborn child forever to avoid him, even before Morfetus tells her that he is her son, even before she wakes up, and even before Rumple starts fucking up left and right.
• Would never kidnap and harm a baby with magic to try to protect Emma by violating their autonomy by forcibly removing Emma’s potential for great darkness and placing it into Lily.
• Would never enable Emma’s abusive relationship with Hook
• Would never joke about killing Belle’s son right in front of her.
• Would never sell Belle out to someone who was trying to kidnap her to save their own skin
• Would never be so unjust as to punish Rumple more severely than Regina for her crimes back in the EF by comparison, even though she did far worse to them and her victims on screen.
• Were always willing to protect innocents, rather than hurt them, or leave them behind, even if it meant risking their own lives.
• Kidnap a baby from Maleficent, and harm her by forcibly removing Emma’s potential for darkness into Lily to “protect” Emma from potentially becoming a villain one day
• Joke about killing Belle’s son right in front of her
• Enable daughter’s abusive relationship with scummy pirate who’s influence has notably corrupted Emma, and distanced her from her son and parents
• Sell Belle out to Hyde, which leads to her kidnapping, to save their own skins
• Unjust and hypocritical rulers
• No longer willing to protect innocents at the price of their own lives.
• No longer have much of a significant purpose in narrative
• I’m sure there are more, but I can’t remember all of them, and I quit watching most of OUAT after S5
• Hopeful, curious, open-minded, compassionate, and equally encouraging supporter of hope, family, and true love. A budding manipulator, just like his grandfather, but never would hang out with Rumple just to manipulate him by spying on him.
• Would never so callously and selfishly disregard Belle’s safety by trying to destroy magic when he knew she she was in a sleeping curse.
• Hangs out with his grandpa Stiltskin just to spy on him.
• Becomes part of the “No one gives a fuck about Belle, but Rumple” squad when he went through an wildly OOC reckless emo existential preteen crisis phase to prop up Hook/CS some more in 5B when the writers had him trying to destroy magic, even though he knew that Belle was in a sleeping curse with Rumbaby.
5). Magical Macguffins that have more than one function, and/or that never get fully explained in a way that makes sense in regards to character motivations-
For instance, why it was so EVOL for Rumple to use the shears of plot-driven stupidity on Gideon, and how it would have even been possible for him to use them for his supposed motive of “forcing his son to love him,” never made any damned sense. There are definitely many, many more instances of magical macguffins on OUAT that make no consistent logical sense, but the shears of destiny were the most recent ones on the show that made me pissed off at A&E and the writers beyond belief because they were so egregiously contrived to make Rumple look supposedly EVOL to plot to use them on his son in 6A that I couldn’t even get angry at his character for being the “villain” because they stole away so much credibility of his character in making him plot to use those damned things with no clear and consistent function of them shown on screen for his supposed motivations with them that made sense that they couldn’t even sell me on that character assassination.
6) Too much heavy, inconsistent, illogical, and character assassinating plot versus character driven Drama™️ of “Wouldn’t it be cool if…?”-
This was particularly evident when the writers ran out of ideas at the end of 3A, but their were signs of it before 3B, too. However, it went off the rails when they killed off Nealfire to bring back Rumple from the dead, and the writers started the ridiculously petty and character assassinating Drama™️ of the Rumbelle and CS ridiculous ship wars that A&E set up between them of RB getting torn down to vilify Rumple, so that Hook/CS would look better. Still, it affected every character on some level, but Rumple, Belle, Emma, and Hook, himself were probably the most negatively affected and damaged by it both individually as characters, and as couples (though I never liked CS because of the way Hook was framed as “romantic” by the narrative for constantly pursuing Emma, and sexually assaulting her, even though she said no repeatedly, because no “meant try harder” )
7) The Golden Queen “romance”-
I think it’s unfair for fans to demonize Rumple as having an “affair” with the EQ, “cheating,” or for committing “adultery” when he and Belle were separated and essentially divorced in 6A, especially since there is no evidence in canon that his marriage to Belle in 3B was official, or legally binding by real world terms, so they likely didn’t have a marriage certificate. Besides, there is no evidence in canon that he banged the EQ in 6A, anyway. I suppose that he implied that he would if she killed Zelena for him first when he kissed her and told her about “happy endings,” “give and takes,” and “propositions” in exchange. However, the EQ never killed Zelena for him first, so it never happened. And even if she had, I can easily make an argument that Rumple was likely never serious about going through with his end of that deal with the EQ in the way that he implied either way because he seemed to genuinely be uncomfortable with her, even in that scene where he consenually made out with her in 6x07, he told Belle it “meant nothing,” and he’s the King of Loopholes with his implications. But even if he had banged the EQ when he and Belle were separated, it still wouldn’t have technically been “cheating” on Belle in 6A, anyway. Still, I hated the whole “romance” because of the dubious consent issues of the Split!Queen, the whole misogynistic “evil is sexy” trope, the excusing of the EQ’s sexual assault of Rumple, and the marring of Rumple’s reputation by making him look like a wildly OOC scummy player who was using sex as a weapon before. He’d used sexuality to his advantage before to manipulate others before, but never in such an overtly disgusting way as he did with the EQ in 6A. Also, yeah, it did definitely sting for the writers to toy with the potential idea that Rumple would have sex with anyone but his true love in their present day (broken) relationship when they were having a baby, even though it didn’t actually ever happen, and even though it wouldn’t have technically been “cheating” on Belle if it did when they were separated, anyway. But the GQ “romance” was still super squicky, and Eddy Kitsis obviously threw it in for shock value because he is a gross misogynist, and he wants to constantly shit on Rumbelle by separating them to do stupid shit like that out of spite to vilify Rumple to prop up Hook/CS.
8) The Scarlet Beauty rebound-
It wasn’t Belle “cheating” or committing “adultery” with Will when she and Rumple were broken up in 4B either. Not they had sex, anyway. But it was still kind of OOC for her to just have this rebound out of nowhere six weeks later with Will Scarlet, who also had a true love on another show. Plus, it wasn’t even about Belle’s character, it was about giving Rumple man pain over his heartbreak over losing her when he saw her trying to move on with another guy because he didn’t have enough angst as it already was in 4B, and just like the Golden Queen “romance” in 6A, Scarlet Beauty happened, and then was never brought up ever again after it ended in 4B. We didn’t even get to see a scene where Belle broke up with Will on screen, and even though she didn’t love him, she had been trying to move on with him. Rumple wasn’t with the EQ in 6A, though. At least we got that much of a confirmation that GQ was over on screen with Rumple breaking up with the EQ, and it was clear that Rumple had no serious romantic, and likely no serious sexual interest in her, anyway.
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