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Belle is all over the place in this episode. It's a bit of a train wreck. I do think flashback Belle was into something when she told her father that the war is their fault for how they've been treating the ogres. However, the way she was shoving this fact in his face didn't help the situation at all. What I see in Belle in this instance is she's being assertive and standing up for what she believes in, however, she's only one person and it can't be possible for just one person to settle the disputes with the ogres. Maybe it would have helped the situation as a whole if she tried to win her kingdom into having a different, more positive and non violent opinion of how to have peaceful relations with the ogres. Rumple giving Belle a hard time about when she thinks it's ok to use dark magic vs when it's not ok is a fair point. Belle doesn't want him to use it to hurt people, yet she's fine with him using it to help her search through someone else's belongings. That's almost like telling someone not to lie but that it's ok to lie in some situations or for so and so reasons. I was thoroughly shocked that Belle ended Gaston. In the aftermath, my interpretation of her reaction is that she was shocked she went that far for Rumple and their baby. She seemed resigned and horrified that she had it in her to do something like that when push comes to shove. The key emotion that led her to make that decision (killing Gaston), I think, was selfishness. She cared about Gaston and was insistent about helping him to move on, but I don't think she ever thought she'd be caught at the sidelines having to choose either Gaston or Rumple, and only being able to save one of them. In fact, I don't believe she fully thought about it. It was a heat of the moment decision where there was no time to carefully figure a calculated solution. I'm not in favor of Belle's actions, but I am definitely trying to understand where her mindset was when she did those things. I hated Rumple hugging her after it though. I don't even know how to verbalize it right now, but the scene rubbed me the wrong way. And I knew from the minute Belle told him about the deal (the one she turned down from Hades) that Rumple was definitely NOT going to keep his promise about not hurting Gaston. Ugh. I enjoyed Gaston and the anger he showed towards the book Belle took from his locker. I felt like there was still more to be explored with his unfinished business and what exactly could have helped him to move on. Belle only theorized that his unfinished business was her, and I honestly think it would have been interesting to have seen it. He hated the book because it represented the ideology of a compassionate and forgiving hero, which Belle looked up to, and I suppose that's something he once wanted to be in order to win Belle's affections, but trying to be a hero is what killed him in the first place. I do think he regretted what he did with the ogre, and perhaps that's why when he had another chance to face a monster (Rumplestiltskin after he took away Belle as a servant), he tried to be honorable about it by facing Rumple alone rather than with a whole army by his side. This is the part I don't get. How is facing Rumplestiltskin alone honorable? Did he seriously think facing the Dark One by himself was going to secure Belle's safe release?

Two (mild parts) of the episode I did not like: Zelena defeated by a dog. Yeah, ok... Henry's sleep trance writing. This just makes no sense at all. Is this supposed to be something all Authors go through in the beginning or is Henry reacting to the quill in a different way from the prior Authors? I'm in agreement the whole "You're gorgeous and I love you and we could be together if you just give me true love's kiss" was a bit too fast of a declaration for Hades to make towards Zelena. It looked like they literally met on the same day and he decided he was in love with her hours later. The only way I can imagine him being that hasty and quick about the matter of love is if he seriously spent centuries feeling absolutely nothing and finally feeling a smidget of something with Zelena. Still, damn, he sure makes up his mind fast lol. I still don't trust Hades though. I'm a little disturbed at the realization of how back in "Mother", Zelena used the baby as a sort of bargaining chip to keep Regina from killing her or she'd have to live with knowing she made a child motherless. The whole idea of Zelena being pregnant with Robin's baby was messed up because I felt Zelena didn't care about the baby and the baby was just another excuse to get revenge on Regina and force her apart from Robin. Then in "The Dark Swan", Zelena seemed to have grown into the idea the child was her only chance at unconditional love, but again, it was all about her and her needs again, with little care about who she hurt in the process to get what she wanted. Now in "Our Decay", I was relieved she gave the baby back to Robin with the understanding she did more harm than good by trying to use magic to forcibly take away their daughter. I do see potential for redemption in Zelena, but I would have to see it done in a realistic way without it being a cliche of "oh and then she has a baby and she became a good witch who was devoted to raising her child and never did another horrible thing again". A child can change a person, but a child is not a magical fix for everything that is wrong with the parent. Regina and Rumple are both good examples of being flawed and doing questionable things even when they had children.

Is it just me or are the comments in response to the OUAT Twitter posts full of less annoying one word shippy replies than usual?

I'm still somewhat skeptical about Mulan previously having feelings for Phillip. Has that been confirmed at all? Aurora was upset that Mulan and Phillip seemed close and even called out Mulan for being in love with Phillip (with the reasoning that she knows love, and knows what it looks like). I'm not for or against Mulan having feelings for Phillip first before she fell for Aurora, but the way it played out on the show, the writers made it very vague and open to interpretation.

Hmm.... I never thought that Mulan could fall into the category of a stereotypical butch lesbian, but after reading everyone's points, I can see that's a very real concern. I liked Mulan in season two, but my one gripe about it is she felt very out of place in the Enchanted Forest because her backstory is kinda unexplored. Even the episode, "The Outsider" delegated the place she came from as some random village, and then her saying a throwaway line about serving in the army for the emperor.

I was surprised by the outrage some had over Mulan being a lesbian. I do think it was a bit of a cop out for the writers to strongly imply she was going to confess her feelings for Aurora, but leave it so open that people still argue that she was going to tell Aurora that she had feelings for Phillip. At the same time, I felt affronted that some took Mulan being gay and kept wanting her to her Disney incarnation instead. I think that's problematic because the Disney characters are widely recognized, and I don't mind the writers taking some of characteristics from the Disney incarnations and putting them on the OUAT characters, but to expect a Disney replica would defeat the purpose of the show's characters that have their own OUAT spin to it. i don't really watch the show through the lenses of being conscious of what race is being represented. My thought process upon first seeing an episode of OUAT was that some of the most well known fairy tales are European in origin, so it's kind of to be expected that most of the main cast is Caucasian. When Mulan came onto the scene, I was definitely interested because I only know Disney Mulan and I was curious about seeing another interpretation of the character that was bound to be different. Her character did resonant with me on a personal level since I'm asian (chinese), and I recall the voice actress of Disney Mulan (Ming Wen Na) expressed disappointment on Twitter that the character wasn't being portrayed by a chinese actress. I could understand her point of view, but at the same time, I felt Jamie Chung represented OUAT Mulan well without the character becoming an Asian stereotype.

Don't forget about the rumor floating around in some circles where people actually speculated Emma might be pregnant. LOL.

Oh my gosh. Now that KingsofHearts mentioned it, I actually remember the script tease about Rumple confronting Belle for playing with one of his toys. I blushed very hard seeing that on Twitter. Awkward...

Yeah... I'd say Adam definitely knows what's up with the fandom because of the queer-baity script teases. I'm not really sure what his motivation for that is. Is he trying to get people interested in the show because he knows the script teases can leave much to the imagination if the context is not given? And when I say "people", I mean everyone in the fandom, regardless of who is being shipped. Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm reading too hard between the lines of a script tease and seeing some LGBT implication in those few script words without the proper scene context of what is going on, or what.

SwanQueen is not and has never been canon. Meaning as far as the writers are concerned, all the interactions Regina and Emma have had on the show have never been to give the impression they have some underlying secret sexual chemistry going on. Fine, I will acknowledge SwanQueen is a very popular ship, but it's still a non canon ship, as much as FrankenWolf (Ruby and Whale) or MulanRouge (Ruby and Mulan) are at this point because those relationships haven't been written into the show as romances. The characters have chemistry and have bonded with each other on screen, but that's all. I'm not too happy with Adam's most recent script tease because it's obviously going to be taken by the Swen shippers as some romantic implication between the women. I don't think it's wrong for Jen and Lana to show support for SwanQueen because it's a ship born out of the fandom, and this isn't the first time in any fandom that a non canon ship has been formed when the characters on the show aren't actually romantically interested in each other. However, I think some people take it too far by demanding SwanQueen happen on air. I remember the hashtag "We Want SwanQueen" and that it was being tweeted at Adam by numerous Swen shippers. That was really the most "wtf?" moment for me. It's a non canon ship! You people badgering Adam and begging him to write it into the show as LGBT representation is pathetic and ridiculous. This is another thing I dislike very much about some Swen shippers. They use SwanQueen as validation as a "real" LGBT couple that should happen in OUAT. I'm not against LGBT, I'm against people pushing for a ship when that's clearly not the direction the characters are moving towards on the show. Especially after Adam's comic con answer towards a fan who asserted that SwanQueen was in the writing and acting. I'm all for the writers doing a LGBT couple and have been looking toward to it, but for OUAT's sake, it is not and will never be SwanQueen.

Did something happen to Jared (Gilmore) on Twitter? I'm seeing the Twitter handle Once Upon A Spoiler (@UponASpoiler) call out people for attacking Jared and his family. Edit: Nevermind. It seems people are giving Jared hate on his Twitter for something CS related he posted. People are crazy...

What's interesting about OUAT is it is a show about people who can behave like heroes or villains, but both kinds of characters aren't a perfect mold for either a hero or villain. So it has given me the chance to see the gray area in characters where they aren't completely good or aren't completely bad either. I do think Regina is trying hard on the show to become a better person, yet at the same time, I'm not in favor of some things in her past kinda being brushed under the rug and never brought up again. How they handled Graham and what she did to him has been very sloppy. I can't remember which panel it was, but there was one where Lana was present at during the time Jamie Dornab was set to come back as Graham for the episode "Welcome to Storybrooke". Jamie's return was mentioned during the panel and Lana said Regina was going to get her "sexual groove" back. Have to admit, hearing her playfully joke about it made me cringe. Graham was essentially living in a mindless stupor under the curse probably having no clue why he keeps allowing himself to sleep with Regina. Even more disturbing is thinking about how he must have thought he's in control of his own actions, and maybe he was on some level, but yet his heart is unknowingly sitting in a box in the mayor's office... The scene where she ripped out his heart and made her guards take him to her bedchamber was definitely rape implied. I mean... Why her bedchamber and not a jail cell, if she only wanted to keep him as her prisoner, unless she had other plans for him? So yeah... Regina's rape of Graham is a very touchy topic. I'd akin it to a certain scene that occurs between Jamie and Claire of the Outlander series, in both the first Outlander book as well as Outlander season 1, that calls Jamie's character into question for his controversial actions towards Claire. I won't say what it is because it's potentially spoilery for those who don't know about it. On the topic of Facebook... Ugh, I'm not even sure I wanna say this because it's so gross. There was a post a while back on the OUAT Facebook page that featured a photo of Colin as Hook laying down and he had a necklace of pearls in his mouth. One of the top "liked" comments was extremely NSFW and said something like... "I'd let Hook give me a pearl necklace any day." Wtf....? This example is exactly why I hate Facebook comments. If it's not comment threads filled with shipping squabble, it's dumb sexual comments that reduce Hook's character (or any character) to nothing but sex appeal and lustful eye candy.

That horse scene in "Devil's Due" was so out of place and was the most disjointed out of all of Regina's scenes in the episode. If she had recognized the horse as Rocinante (the one whose heart she attempted to sacrifice for the dark curse), maybe that would have made more sense.

Hello all, I'm new to the board. I've been lurking for a while reading through this entire thread, so I finally signed up so I could join in on the discussion. Realistically, I'm curious to know if you guys have ever had the experience, or seen people of the OUAT fandom divided on their ships or opinions and yet been able to talk about their disagreements with civility and respect? I don't have a lot of faith in Twitter, or tumblr, or Facebook as appropriate places for pleasant discourse without some people getting defensive or insistent that their opinion is right and insults being thrown around. I loath to look at the comments section for any post on the OUAT official Facebook page because it's very negative and childish in there. I'd say social media and the ugly side of it is a problem that isn't only particular to OUAT. As an example, I was once following a page on Facebook for another television show, and it was a fandom page of sorts, like for posting fanmade memes relating to the show. I saw someone express an unpopular opinion about liking a certain character only for several other people to basically jump down the poster's throat for it. I defended the person's opinion as politely as I could by saying there's nothing wrong with liking the character, and then I got sneered at for trying to educate people with "sensitivity training". That comment alone pissed me off so much I unfollowed the page rather than go down the rabbit hole of arguing with the person. I've seen things get ugly on Twitter in the OUAT fandom, but I don't ever jump in because I don't think it's worth it.