crystalwearer

Well, he *did* agree to serve under the Carrier Council. And he admits to them that they highlighted the flaws in his leadership by a) existing without his knowledge and b) successfully raiding his camp. I forget - did he also list "keeping secrets" as a flaw or just concede that an organization like SHIELD needs oversight? Either way, I saw it as proof of character - he admitted they got him and doesn't seem to be holding a grudge over it. Coulson's certainly suffered generally at this point. I agree very little of his suffering is directly related to Real SHIELD, but that's largely because of his choices - he was careful not to hurt any of them badly enough to prevent reconciliation.

That would be good for Belle. Unfortunately, Zelena knows all about the vault too. Although there is that. I wonder if the "sacrifice" has to be willing or if it's just whoever has their hand magically forced onto the key. ("Hiya, Sis! I got a stuck door I need your help with.") I would like some use of the well, though. Camelot is an implied part of the Enchanted Forest so it'd be convenient to go there. Maybe they can use the vault as a safe place to put a Dark One.

Funny thing about that, I was wondering if my monitor color was off: Rumpel's heart looked white/clear after the darkness was removed, but pure/good hearts on this show are usually done as bright *red*. Maybe it means something else, like Rumpel's heart is a blank slate now because the darkness was all there was to him at that point? The AU looked like fun for the actors but my biggest problem was lack of internal plot. What is the plot of Heroes and Villians? We have an Ogreslayer/Light One who life consists of ride->ogre zap->ride->kiss wife and kid->ride->repeat, an evil queen nominally ruling the realm, a bandit the queen's hunting, and another bandit who decides to get married, but none of these connect. And Henry jumped into the final chapter -- isn't that supposed to be the point where all of the plot elements come together? For comparison, I could see Regina interfering in Robin's wedding because a) he's a thief and she's always had a law-an-order fetish and b) no one gets happy endings until she gets hers. I could see Light One Rumpel stepping in to save bandit Regina from Snow's lackeys (cause he's a Hero[tm]) thus forcing Snow and Rumpel into direct conflict. Or even Rumpel teaming up with Snow to hunt Regina and Robin because a Hero[tm] doesn't want bandits having free reign. Not sure what it says about Heroes & Villians fans if Isaac's book really is just a bunch of disconnected characters. Unless the point is they love it because they've all projected their own imagined plot onto his characters? ETA: Thanks, Mathius, you saw it too!

Er, no, that was the good Samaritan. Luke mysteriously disappeared before he got to write about any of the others. ;) Curious thing about those Thornhill Industries boxes: we were watching them be installed throughout the episode. So whatever they did, they weren't integral to the Machine's current operation. Were they actually destroyed by Samaritan's temper tantrumpower surges? If not (or if Thornhill Industries already has replacements ready to install), and they're meant to serve as nodes for an AI living in the power grid, maybe Finch doesn't have to work as hard as we think to get the Machine back. The network might be ready and waiting for when Samaritan looks the other way.

"By a landslide" has new meaning regarding battles with Skye these days. :) Jiaying's method of starting a war bothers me. Why waste a Terrigen crystal, which they need and presumably have a limited supply of? She could have had almost anything ready to go if she just wanted to off Gonzalez (or wanted an insurance policy). Maybe it was just Lachman's delivery, but I felt like she really *was* experimenting on Gonzalez, in a "let's see what happens when I pull the wings off of *this* butterfly" kind of way. That makes her just like Whitehall.

I think he can. What's curious is that he's giving Rumpel a full-on sword-and-sorcery AU live-action novel instead of just scribbling "and then Rumpel's heart magically undarkened and he spent the rest of his life doing charitable works for the poor and helpless to keep it that way". I'm wondering whether this is a mechanism for healing Rumpel's heart (because alt-Rumpel performs six heart-lightening acts of heroism every day before breakfast) or a power play by the author. "I'll make you a hero in a story where all your favorite heroes are villians ... but all of you are also slaves to my magic quill!" sounds like a standard Rumpel deal to me.

More evidence for my headcanon that Cora put a subtle enchantment on Regina to keep her from plotting to attack Cora directly. Something that flushes away the intellectual thought process but leaves the emotion behind the impulse intact (i.e., leaving Regina with a lot of directionless anger to pour into her magic or her hapless targets -- including herself, apparently). This isn't the first time we've seen Regina flip to Cora's side on a dime for no good reason and the only time Regina did attack Cora, Rumpel was there and could have suspended Cora's spell temporarily.

I was waiting for him to stand up to Stark too, since he obviously wasn't on board with the lab work. For what it's worth, I saw it as more evidence of Banner's fear: he's so afraid of a personal confrontation getting out of control that he backs down even when he doesn't want to. Stark and Romanoff each point this out to him, sort of.

Actually, I think I know this one. Lily wanted to find Snow White and David ever since she met the Apprentice, but the curse kept her from ever entering Storybrook (or even locating it - her map had 2 circles indicating possible locations). So she kept tabs on Emma up until S1, hoping to be led to her real targets. Problem was, once Emma entered Storybrook, she disappeared off Lily's radar. Even when the curse dropped, Lily didn't have a way to pick up the trail because Emma didn't leave Storybrook until the end of 3A - when Regina's spell wiped all trace and memory of Storybrook (and its residents) from existence. Lily didn't bother looking Emma up in NYC because she didn't remember why she wanted to find Emma until Emma went *back* to Storybrook (which Lily can't find). Lily didn't seem like she had the resources to keep an investigator on retainer for years and, regardless, probably realized she just wasn't getting anywhere. Of course, if she'd just reconnected with Emma during Emma's bounty hunter years, they'd probably be close enough friends for Emma to have invited her to Storybrook during one of those windows when entry was possible. Another of Lily's bad decisions.

Well, Skye's papers were a fiction created by a self-sustaining program buried on a SHIELD server somewhere, and one of that program's rules was "move this baby to a new location every 6 months". Could the documents have been changed with each move? Maybe change the birthdate by a month or two each time until she's been artificially aged a year? She couldn't challenge it herself, the new family wouldn't really know anything beyond what the papers said, and most child services agencies are a bit too overtaxed to dig into documents that are only a little off. And a constantly changing birthdate would make it harder for someone to follow the paper trail.

Jefferson and Isaac might just have different perspective. Jefferson's a traveler who knows there are other realms but, being a native Enchanted Forester, has no reason to recognize another realm as "real". Isaac has a broader perspective and recognizes the non-LwM realms as, effectively, child-realms of the LwM. To me this actually enhances the work of the various authors: Carroll didn't just create a story about Alice's adventures, he created 2 entire realms populated with distinct societies (one of which was based on his own). The "timeless" quality isn't so much about time not moving forward as about society not moving forward ... ... which means that these story realms are all basically S1 Storybrook with different architectural styles. Which I guess makes Regina her own author.