From Tumblr: Ask - Will Gideon become part of the ABoT!verse?

[nym_wibbly]

A Tumblr user asked: Will Gideon become part of your BOTverse Nym? You always find a way to retcon new canon like that even though the ‘verse is so different now

I don’t see why not. My Belle doesn’t have the blind hero complex driven by Her Handsome Hero and her survivor’s guilt, but she’d still want that ideal for her children, I suspect – and be just as blind to the realities of actually living it as canon Belle has been. Underworld-Gaston practically thwacked her over the head with the book, pointing out that emulating it the way she recommended got him totally and pointlessly dead, and she failed to take his point. That’s a trait that ABoT!Belle does share – the tendency to view the world through the filter of… well, fantasy fiction, and to have trouble accepting that real life carries more nuances and fewer just deserts. I can see her naming their first son Gideon, and loading him with those same wishes and dreams the second he’s out of her womb; giving him a story book name that he feels he has to live up to in some way – that he struggles to live up to. To that extent, yes, I think he’d belong in the A Bed of Thorns universe, somewhere down the line, as their firstborn son.

Gideon the angry adult with the fuckwitted Saviour plan, on the other hand, is very much a product of his parents’ rocky relationship in Storybrooke; of the lies, of the disappointments, of the betrayals and the lack of trust. The wannabe-hero thing is just the icing on his personal cake of self-destruction. Gideon’s the symbol of canon Belle and Rumple’s slither down the slippery slope, separately and together. He’s the consequences that they finally can’t ignore. Would Gideon turn out the same way if he’d been born to contented parents with a solid relationship? Could they have prevented him being snatched, working together instead of separately to protect him? Would they be able to prevent this outcome entirely by trusting one another, or would they still go through parts of it regardless? A lot of other players had to be in place for this to happen to Gideon; Regina, Charming, Aladdin, Blue, Emma… all of whom are only in the picture because Rumple manipulated Regina into creating Storybrooke.

Those are the types of questions around which I build an AU – cause and effect, what decision led to what consequence, and what follows logically from that? And if I yank out this little brick here, does the entire canon timeline topple over, or does it still stand, only subtly changed? In Gideon’s case, and in Baelfire’s too, I think I’ve set them both up for a very different future than they got on the show. The fact that I kinda really want it to be a better one does have some influence on the outcome!