[ SECRET POST #2523 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2523 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Carnivale]


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03.


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04.
[Madame LaLaurie from American Horror Story: Coven]


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05.
[David Duchovny/The X-Files]


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06.


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07.
[The Lorax]


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08.


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[ ----- SPOILERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]





















09. [SPOILERS for Blacklist]



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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]





















10. [WARNING for rape?]



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11. [SPOILERS for Once Upon a Time]
[WARNING for rape]



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12. [WARNING for incest]

[The Raven Cycle]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #360.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

DA--Nothing like what Regina did to Graham. I'm assuming you've watched the show at least enough to know who they are, if not, BIG-ASS-SPOILERS follow:

He made a deal for her to come clean his castle so she'd never see her friends or family again, he locked her in a dungeon for her first few days or weeks (not sure on timeline) there. He vanished a book she was reading after she released a thief he was torturing, then threatened to make her watch as he killed the thief after he caught him (he ended up not killing said thief and also let her have her own bed in a library instead of a dungeon.) A couple months later they kissed, which started to break the curse that was the source of his power, and he freaked out. He literally threw her in the dungeon after screaming at and shaking her, and kicked her out. Post curse-break, he made sure she didn't see the missing person posters her father had put up, so she didn't know her father was looking for her. He lied by omission about a lot of magic-related stuff, and also his personal history, which included the tidbit that a couple hundred years prior, he'd killed his estranged wife in a fit of rage.

That's about it for specific icky stuff between the two of them; the iffiest thing about their relationship is that he expects the people he loves to be his moral compasses, and that Belle is okay with that. Not thrilled-- she'd prefer if he'd figure out how to be a decent human being without prompting--but she puts up with it.

I ship them, so I might be missing something, and I can see why people would kinda squint at them as a pair. Like lots of Beauty and the Beast variants where the Beast is a socially maladjusted ass to start out with, it can look like an abusive relationship at first glance. But what makes it more interesting than that is that Belle is not going to put up with his shit when he aims it at her. She's disappointed when he's a dick to other people, but she gets up in his face when he tries anything with her. In Beauty and the Beast stories, the reason the Stockholm Syndrome and abusive relationship stuff doesn't fit is that Beauties are always holding the metaphorical leashes of their Beasts. If the Beast has all the power in the relationship, it's not really a Beauty and the Beast story. On the surface, since Rumpelstiltskin is so powerful, it looks like he's in charge. But he's not.

You probably didn't want an essay... er, sorry.

[(Anonymous)]

sounds like phantom of the opera with the erik/christine shipping

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT--Sort of? I mean, they're both on the darker end as far as BATB stories go, but I'd say Erik/Christine is nastier, in that their relationship was built on an enormous lie, not, like "no honey that dress doesn't make your ass look fat" but "oh by the way that angel that your dead dad said he'd send to teach you? That's me. Deformed mass-murderer? What deformed mass murderer?" Whereas Rumpelstiltskin basically cackled his way into Belle's life and played up his reputation as an insane sorcerous boogeyman, and the ogres that were threatening Belle's village weren't (so far as we know) provided by Rumpelstiltskin to make the deal necessary. Erik threatened to kill not only Raoul, Christine, himself, and the Persian if Christine didn't marry him, but a sizable chunk of Parisian society by blowing up the Opera. Rumpelstiltskin never lied about being a monster. He lied by omission about having once been human.

[cat63]

"That's about it for specific icky stuff between the two of them"

You forgot the part where he dated (and possibly, although it's never explicitly stated, slept with) the amnesiac version of her after she fell over the town line and defaulted to her Storybrooke persona. That version of her was attracted by his dark side and got off seeing him beat people up. The normal Belle would have been horrified by that.

He apparently believed at the time that there was no cure and was settling for any version of Belle he could get, but I'm not sure that speaks too well of him either, if he'll take a person with the same face but completely different personality in lieu of the woman he supposedly loves.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't blame Rumple for dating "Lacey" when Belle lost her memories... I didn't see it as any different than "Mary Margaret" falling in love with "David." Granted, Snow and Charming's personalities weren't as radically altered as Belle's, but they fell in love with each other anyway because they still were, deep down, themselves.

One could make the argument that "Lacey" was a complete departure from Belle's morals and personality, but I don't know, I saw the "Lacey" persona as more of Belle's own attraction to danger amplified. For all that Belle pushes Rumple towards "good," she obviously likes his darker side, if only a little. She laughs at his off-color jokes, and she was never ignorant to how brutal he could be... She was the one who cleaned the blood off of his clothes, after all.

Guh, sorry, I didn't mean to rant so much. I just personally wasn't bothered by the "Lacey" storyline because I think that Rumple still saw Belle underneath the new persona, and when he realized that a part of her still loved him, he did whatever he could to keep it.

[cat63]

I didn't see it as any different than "Mary Margaret" falling in love with "David."

The difference, IMO, is that both "Mary Margaret" and "David" were in the same amnesiac condition - neither of them knew any better at that time, so no blame attaches (except for going behind "David's wife's back).

Rumple does know better, so I'd say the two situations aren't completely analogous. I'm not saying it was as bad as what Regina did to Graham by any means, but I think it was morally dubious all the same.

You're likely rtight about the "Lacey" persona being a part of Belle (where else would it come from, after all?), but it's not a part she'd be proud of or want to see encouraged, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

Well Rumple had flat-out told her numerous times that he knew her as Belle, so he wasn't misleading her. She just didn't care.

He was also trying to get her to love him again because he believed that's how the 'curse' could be broken.

[cat63]

Well Rumple had flat-out told her numerous times that he knew her as Belle, so he wasn't misleading her. She just didn't care.

That's quite true, but she didn't care because she was in an altered mental state - not quite like being on mind-altering drugs, perhaps, but having the same effect of doing things she wouldn't do in her usual state of mind.

I don't blame him for trying to dig Belle out of the Lacey persona you understand, nor am I actually against the pairing - I just think there are issues in there that may come back to bite later (or would if they were acknowledged by the writers).