thedarknessoftheendlessmaze replied to your post ““beauty” impressions”
I have a lot of negative thoughts on this episode & fridging & Belle, Rumple, & Gideon but I will leave those off as requested.
I will say that I love Alice so much and she might be the best part of season 7. Did you catch the remark she made about an ex-girlfriend?!! Her rabbit mask was amazing, also I love how in the background of scenes you can see people in Disney Halloween costumes walking around. Yes it may be shameless self-promotion but it’s fun shameless self-promotion!
Oh no, we can totally get into it here. I wrote that paragraph at 2am in the morning, and it’s now 10. I’m good to go. I just didn’t want to put on my critical audience pants (they go well with the analytical hat) while I was still running high on all the fan-emotions. No need to rain on my own parade, as it were, I know I’ll come down by myself sooner or later.
I’ll be tagging negative/critical discussions of the episode with “#beauty discussion” so people can filter them out if they so choose
I’ll start, shall I? Because I’m really torn on the whole thing. I think my ideal Rumbelle-ending would have been Rumple ditching the curse (somehow), and the two of them riding off into the sunset. In a perfect world, so to speak.
At the same time, I do think there’s a place for stories about death and loss, and this show has both hit and missed on those before, but it’s always been an interesting journey to watch. I don’t mind them telling one of these stories about Belle and Rumple, but I still get an iffy feeling about it and I think it’s less because of this specific episode and more because of how Belle’s character has been treated throughout the rest of the show.
She was never really “allowed” to have her own arc or goals, for one. For the most part, she was an extension, catalyst, and sometimes obstacle in Rumple’s story. And I think that’s what makes this so grating for me.
As an aside: while Belle’s death clearly has the goal of motivating Rumple into action, I don’t think it fits the “technical” definition of fridging. She didn’t die for shock value, and no emphasis was placed on her suffering (because she didn’t suffer, obviously; she just died of old age after a long and happy life). I’m almost certain that if she’d been a fully fleshed-out minor character in her own right, my personal problems with this development would vanish.
By the way: if it’s unclear what I mean by “fully fleshed out minor character”, please compare and contrast the way the narrative and the camera treated Zelena vs how it treated Belle. And I’m not saying that to dump on Zelena, she just makes for an excellent example. She started out as a foil for another character (Regina), but the screentime she had gave her a fleshed-out backstory, explored her issues and motivation (”Where Bluebirds Fly” is a good example), and let her have other relationships. (Granted, she’s maybe not a great example for that, because… well. The whole Robin disaster.) Belle, on the other hand, had most of her character development centred around Rumple, and a cynical person might say that the only time she existed as a separate character was when the narrative wanted to tell us that Rumple was unequivocably in the wrong, and had her yell at him. It wasn’t the best way to flesh out Belle’s character, in my opinion.
re: the bolded part–I thought I did and then I couldn’t find it again! Thank you for letting me know it wasn’t just a representation-starved hallucination! : D
And yeah, the costumes were a lot of fun–I spent a good bit of the episode scanning the background to see if I’d recognise anyone.
{Quick request to anyone reading: I’m watching OUaT for the first time, and I want to avoid spoilers. So, if you want to discuss something spoilery, I’d be grateful if you could start a new post for that. Thank you!}
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