A bit late to the party, but it took me this long to gather my thoughts and pin down exactly what bothered me the most, and i finally figured it out – it was the lack of respect in representing a story for the LGBT community. Firstly, I would like to state that I am the very proud mother of a beautiful, smart and extremely talented bisexual daughter who i find perfect exactly as she is! and my BFF is gay (& I wouldn’t trade him for the world & am very lucky to have him in my life!) – so I know TL comes in so many forms and LGBT love & loving relationships are normal and beautiful.
RG, PriceofMagic and Phee pretty much conveyed many of the points and thoughts I had – kudos ladies. Nevertheless, I felt that at the end of the day, the point missing was that A&E did not respect the community enough to actually develop a love story just as they would have with any heterosexual couple (aside from the “I just met you, and this is crazy” yadda yadda). I totally get that Mulan is a Disney property and in the Disney-verse her arc is completed with her marriage to General Li Shang where they live happily every after (see Mulan II). So yeah, while in OUAT her sexuality has been ambiguous in the Disney-verse it’s set in stone (now with Meridad – there’s flexibility, but that’s another story). I am also on board with the “gay” associations that have been implied with Dorothy (i.e. friend of Dorothy, rainbows, etc.) I also get that Ruby is neutral as far as her story book history. BUT, the problem is that at no point in OUAT, has there ever been a hint that Ruby wasn’t straight. She had a boyfriend (granted she ate him lol), she had a relationship with Gus, flirted with Will, was hinted at as being the “town floozy” and prior to this season, last we saw we were hinted a FrankenWolf potential relationship — so up till now – not 1 clue that she was anything but straight! One does not wake up one morning and say – hey, I’ve decided I’m a lesbian or I’m bi. You are or you aren’t – it’s part of you! Through hints in the interwebs, the idea that Ruby was the “chosen one” for the LGBT relationship was almost a given. Nevertheless, at no point, did they (i.e. the writers) even imply that her search for her pack meant that she was on a personal sexual discovery path. At least they could have had 1 scene in which Mulan & Ruby have a talk whereby we as the audience are clued in as to what was really missing in Ruby’s life – this would have been epic, showing and paralleling how in real life self discovery and coming out happens. Instead what we are given is a half-hearten attempt at love at first sight passing itself off as TL, where it’s actually, at the most, Ruby being sexually curious and poor Mulan once again being the 3rd wheel. Bad form A&E. The LGBT community deserved better.