Dani-Ellie

I think it's quite clear by now that nothing is enough for this subset of fans. If Jen hadn't commented on the Emma/Regina interaction at all, she would have been jumped on for "ignoring" Swan Queen. If she had used "Swan Queen," she would have been jumped on by people who would accuse her of baiting and/or bitter fans who would accuse her of giving it a token mention and not really caring about it. The fact of the matter is these "fans" need to get their heads out of their asses, recognize how nice it was for the cast to interact with the fans in the first place (network-mandated or not), and stop jumping all over the actors for, heaven forbid, calling character interaction by a different name, for Christ's sake. (Sorry, I'm not feeling well and I'm cranky and lacking my usual tact. But ffs, enough is enough. This is why we can't have nice things.)

If I remember right, no. It was after the adventure with the egg that Rumple enchants the ring to find Snow in the glass coffin. So, Charming still hadn't woken Snow with True Love's Kiss yet.

Except that's not what they said. If I remember correctly, the exact quote was "the greatest potential for darkness." If Emma's magic is as powerful as they've said it is (and it seems to be that way to me since Rumple needed a hatful of fairies to give the hat the same juice as one Emma), it makes sense to me that her heart would have the greatest potential for darkness because her heart has the greatest potential, period. They could also say her heart has the greatest potential for lightness. Her powerful magic, used for love and protection, is light. Corrupt her heart and her powerful magic, and that same power is dark. To me, their use of "potential" here seems to be saying just that ... potential. It's not a prophecy. It's simply saying that she could be a force to be reckoned with for either side.

I kinda feel like I'm the only one who's seeing "greatest potential for darkness" as them saying that Emma has the potential to go dark, not that it's a given. But really, Emma's magic is born of the strongest magic in all the realms. What villain worth his or her salt wouldn't try to corrupt that, especially now that she's using it with a degree of confidence? If you can't beat her, try to get her to join you, and all that. So yeah, they're going to try to get her to join the dark side. There's no guarantee they're going to succeed. I don't know, maybe I'm just being naive, but I'm willing to see where this goes before I judge it. I need more of Ursula, Cruella, and Rumpelstiltskin's New York City adventures. That was hilarious! And yes, more Cruella, please. And more of Killian and Emma being cute little cutie patooties in love. They're the cutest things this side of the Mississippi.

That burgundy dress Regina wore with the Huntsman is still my favorite Evil Queen outfit.

"I had to ride a giant pickle." HA!

Blackbeard specifically dropped them in the spot Anna and Elsa's parents' ship went down. How he knew where that spot was is up for debate, but they had that bit of dialogue where Hans was gloating about how Anna's bones would mingle with her parents' (only for him to express confusion when Blackbeard brings out the trunk because "how can their bones mingle if they're in a trunk?"). So that part at least wasn't a happy coincidence.

Exactly, and that was precisely what was wrong with 4x05. Not that Regina went off on her but that Emma just stood there and let her. That is not the Emma Swan of literally every other episode of this series. How do we go from Emma "I think you're just bitter and taking it out on the wrong person" Swan in 4x03 to 42 minutes of Emma "kicked puppy chasing after her abuser" Swan in 4x05? I'm willing to reserve judgment on any Emma/Regina friendship until it airs, because if it plays out like 3x13 and 3x17 where they both snark back and forth at each other, I'll be okay. If it continues to be like 4x05, the writers and I are going to have serious issues.

I'm so sorry, Shanna Marie. I hope everything goes well this weekend.

Because the information revealed in the quoted part of the article (the quote wasn't spoilery) directly informs how the relationships on the show are being written, which then impacts how those relationships play out onscreen. I would have dragged my comments to the writers thread but with the closure of that thread, I didn't know where else to put it.

Hee, thanks! ;) And obviously, Emma owes Regina her life because Regina sent Snow on the run, allowing her to meet Charming. *rolls eyes* I couldn't let that one stand, either, because that's some gold-medal-worthy mental gymnastics. I'm going to get lambasted for it but I don't even care. Exactly. *sigh* I miss when this show remembered that.

I commented on that article. I couldn't just let it sit. It won't do any good but I just can't anymore. This. I'll forgive them a lot if this ends up being how the storyline turns out. The Author's all, "Dude, Y'all make the story, I just write shit down." Because the only true ending in life is death and there's a lot of life that's going to happen in between then and now. Sometimes shit happens. It's learning to deal with life's obstacles in a healthy manner that makes happiness.

From 4x01: Robin: My feelings for you were ... are real. But Marian is my wife. I loved her and I made a vow until death do us part. And it did, and then it didn't, but my vow remains. Regina: So you made your choice. Robin: I may be a thief but I have a code and I have to live by that code, otherwise what kind of life am I living? I hope you can look into your heart and understand. Right there, he tells Regina, "I love you but I am staying with her." It may have been out of duty but he made a choice to stay with Marian. As far as Marian was concerned, she and her husband and son were a family. Then, as she's lying frozen, dying, he's off sleeping with another woman. I completely understand if Robin has moved on, if he's changed and grown and he's no longer the person he was when he was with Marian and if he's no longer in love with her because he thought she was dead and he's mourned her and grieved. But he made a choice to stay with his wife, whom he then betrayed by sleeping with another woman. And frankly, it wasn't fair to Regina, either, that he kept running to her while still planning on staying with his wife ... as long as she didn't die from Frozen Heart Syndrome in the meantime. He was stringing both of them along. This is why I'm saying he should have owned it. If he'd had the "I love you, Marian, and I always will but I'm in love with another woman" conversation with her, it would be less squicky to me. If he hadn't told Regina, "I'm going back to my wife" and then continued to run to her for crypt sex, it would be less squicky to me. Because the honorable thing would have been to be honest in the first place. If he wanted to honor his vows, he should have done so. If he wanted to stay with Regina, he should have done so. But going behind Marian's back while she was, for all intents and purposes, on her deathbed was a gross betrayal of those vows he wanted to honor.

My issue with Outlaw Queen wasn't so much the adultery because as far as Robin was concerned, Marian was dead and she was never coming back. I understand it's not as simple as flipping a switch, especially if he'd mourned as appropriate and was beginning to move on with his life. My problem was Robin himself. He tells Regina he has a duty to Marian, he made vows to her, and he needs to stay with her. But he doesn't stay with her. He keeps going to Regina because that's where his heart is taking him, and you know what, I get that. I really do. But own it, dude. Don't sit there and make Regina second fiddle to your wife, whom you can't/don't love anymore, and don't confess your love of someone else over your newly alive wife's frozen, dying body. It may not be strictly adultery, but it's still rather squicky to me on his part.

I'm personally loving the slow burn with Captain Swan, and I think the slow burn makes sense for both of them as characters. Hook held onto his anger over Milah's death for what, at least a couple of centuries? And Emma has trust and abandonment issues galore. The two of them just throwing caution to the wind and leaping into something together wouldn't strike me as authentic to their past experiences. This show has a lot of issues with characters and authentic reactions but this is one instance where I feel like they're doing things right (emotional payoff or lack thereof notwithstanding).

Oh, ffs. (Not you, Selina K. The Twitter users.) This just kills me. Hook is Captain Innuendo for a season and he might as well have been a perp on SVU. Regina is an actual, canon rapist ("you're now mine ... my pet," "if you ever disobey me, if you ever try to run away, all I have to do is squeeze," and "guards, take him to my bedchamber" don't leave a lot to the imagination) and she's just totally misunderstood, you guys.

Thank you! My apologies. :)

Thanks, guys. I did end up telling her that I don't like Regina, yada yada, and she finally sent me one about the Charmings getting a dog. I can write a cute one-shot based on that (that more than likely won't carry over to the rest of my stuff the way my stories usually do because, like, they don't have a dog :P) so I put it in the queue. I now have another prompt that's future fic/AU so I'm going to have to turn that one down, too. I will offer to post that prompt on my Tumblr, though, because it's a great idea, I just don't think I'm the writer for it.

My point in bringing up the ratings wasn't so much to be all, "Regina is dragging the show down" but to just point out that the show's ratings took a sharp nosedive in season two that it hasn't really been able to recover from (and hold onto ... the Frozen effect gave it a great bump but the show couldn't retain that new/returning audience). 2x10 was 3.1 in A18-49, 2x11 was 2.8, 2x12 was 2.4, 2x13 was 2.2. Almost an entire ratings point down in 4 episodes, and it didn't hit above 3.0 again until Frozen. That's empirical data that a good chunk of the audience tuned out all at once. I could understand and even anticipate a downward trend as viewers lose interest and whatnot but a drop that drastic indicates a problem. I would think it would behoove them to try to figure out what that problem was.

I don't know how scientific this is but I have seen more and more fans on Tumblr/Twitter/comments sections coming forward and being all "enough with Regina." People are getting tired of her, even people who used to like/enjoy her. Which, maybe instead of trying to appease one loud group of fans and/or confusing loud with popular, they should look at more empirical data like the big giant drop in ratings in the back half of season two. It may or may not be coincidence that the ratings dropped off when Regina backslid and spent half a season trying to kill the Charmings but one would think it would be worth looking into, simply from a longevity standpoint. I mean, its ratings aren't dire but a sharp drop-off like that indicates to me that there was something going on within the show that made a whole bunch of people tune out all at once.

This. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want her to be the most evil evil who'd ever eviled because it's fun and you can love to hate her, but they also want her to tug on everyone's sympathy nerves, and it's like, no. You cannot have a character who's crossed the moral event horizon dozens of times over and then play the victim card. Those are not the same character, and it doesn't work without making the writing crap. They're treating the Evil Queen and Regina as two separate characters, but within the construct of their own story, she's not two separate characters. Mayor Regina was always the Evil Queen. Mayor Regina is not a cursed persona because Regina never lost her memories. I'm not saying that Regina couldn't have grown past the Evil Queen, but in order for her to do so, she needs to face her past actions. She needs to stare her darkness in the face and be properly horrified by it. I need to see that she wants to change, not to get something out of it but because being evil is wrong. They've swung her too far and too many times in the evil direction because it's "fun" to make any kind of reconciliation among the core cast at all realistic. Because I'm sorry, but Regina spent half a season of this show trying to kill Henry's entire family so she can have him all to herself. That's some horrifying shit and the fact that it's all brushed under the rug because she's Regina is crap, in terms of story development. And really, I could deal with tentative alliances, like in Neverland, where they all work together because they have to and do not at all enjoy it or fully trust each other. But this happy let's all be friends and family nonsense, without any kind of work done by Regina to make any kind of amends to these people (not even a token apology!!), is utter crap.

I've legit got a countdown going. Sunday nights are so boring for me now, and I want my little fairy tale show back.

I think season 1 to season 4 comprises roughly a year and a half, give or take and including the missing year. The whole of season 2 was like maybe three months, 3A was a week, then we had the year time jump. 3B was at most two weeks, and 4A can't have been that long, either. I'd buy that baby being a small 18- to 20-month-old (girl, as I have a friend whose daughter turned 2 in November and she still doesn't have a lot of hair).

This. I liked that Snow was torn up about it, but I also think she did what she had to do because it was kill or be killed and you can bet I cheered for her. I just hate that the show/some fans have boiled it down to "Snow's no better than Regina now because she's taken a life, too." Intent and circumstances matter. Regina killed innocent people because she could. Snow killed someone who was an immediate threat to her and her family. And she used Regina to do it because what the hell else could she have done once Regina caught her? I don't believe she ever intended, out of malice, to use Regina to kill Cora. But does anyone really think Regina would have let Snow walk out of that vault if Snow told the truth? So again, kill or be killed.

I certainly cheered her on. And no matter how much the season three finale ended on Poor Regina, I cheered on Emma saving a woman's life and reuniting a family. (Basically, I have no sympathy for Regina and no matter how much the show tries to shove sympathy for Regina down my throat, I'm not going to change my mind.)