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Brief and optional mini-rant about haters: What the heck is up with the obsession with this show if you hate it? You know what I did when Lost killed several of my favorite characters? I stopped watching. Or when another show I used to watch went it what I thought was a really stupid direction? I stopped watching. I didn’t/don’t harass people who still watch(ed) those shows. I didn’t/don’t harass any of the cast or creators. I just pretty much forgot that those shows were/are on TV. It’s not that hard.

On the bright side, less than 24 hours! Woot! 😀

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Two more days until we can throw ourselves back into the full-on, fantasy fun. Even with all the spoilers floating around it will be good to have the actual story being told outside of speculations and *they should have*, *how dare they* discussions. Characters I love will most likely remain loved.

I prefer just letting the story they tell lead the way. As long as I am entertained still, there will be no channel hopping, remote throwing and message board defensive uber drama. It is and never will be my story to tell…just going to go along for the ride and escape, or not. I intend to enjoy the heck out of every moment that speaks to me. .

Agreed…I’m sure I’ll have some nitpicky things that bug me (like Emma and Henry feeling responsible for babysitting Regina…lol) but the mere fact that I care enough to notice little things and remember what’s happened in past seasons (because I’ve rewatched them recently)…that just goes to show how much I love it!

I’m so looking forward to the premiere–less than 48 hours to go! 🙂

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3) I dont think you can change a “fan of a characters” mind, by bashing said character to death- if anything their love of the character usually deepens because they feel the need to protect them more, but the people doing the bashing become resented & respect for them declines. However, I do think you can change how other fans feel about certain character’s by doing the opposite- totally ignore his/her flaws, put them up on a pedestal & it tends to eventually drive people to distraction- they tend to start disliking the character, as well as resent those doing the OTT PR for them.

Totally they can. I’ve been put off Neal and to a certain point Regina by the viciousness I read by the toxic part of their fan groups – and obviously I don’t include all fan in this, because by and large like with everything, there is always a small faction that spoils things for everyone.

I definitely agree with both of you–when hard-core fans of other characters say ridiculous, exaggerated, and/or completely false things about my favorite characters (usually Hook draws the most hate of course, but also Emma), it makes me like those first characters less and less.

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Thanks for the link, @MatthewPaul, interesting view in that article. There is more I would comment on but will keep it to the relationship related stuff here:

1. Don’t have affairs. We get that Captain Hook is a swaggering sex-bomb who could woo any woman, so it makes sense on a hormonal level for Milah to ditch Rumple for the pirate. But her decision not only got her killed but sent her beloved down the evil path and caused her hubby to become the Dark One. For the sake of mankind, keep it monogamous people.

Not the lesson I see in that, reading it this way misses the point even IMO. Monogamy is no guarantee that people are honest with each other – but if there is something in Milah’s and Rumple’s story I think it is: Be honest with yourself and with others and particular your partner(s), friends, family. And accept that not every relationship works out staying together, sometimes it might be better for all involved to part in time.

Aside that there is a very different message in it, Milah was not the least bit responsible for Rumpel turning Dark One, he likely would have done so even if she’d stayed with him, after all he did it to protect Bae from being made a soldier – and the Ogre war was sure raging regardless what Milah did. But interesting to see how Milah is in the eyes of some responsible for what her husband became, and seen as solely responsible for the failure of their marriage. Pin the scarlet letter on Milah and shame the witch, she got herself killed and might have even deserved it. That is victim blaming in the worst form. Not saying what Milah did was right, but neither was what Rumple did, and meaning not just what he did in the end to her. But while Milah left him alone with his son but giving him a chance to still find a happy life, Rumple murdered his wife. Thanks for repeating the centuries old view, that women are the ones messing things up, are the original sinners (maybe you remember that thing that allegedly happened in paradise). That is such an empowerment of women. Not.

I apparently have a lot to catch up on in this thread, but I had to stop and say how much I agree with this–I couldn’t take the rest of the “lessons” seriously because that was the first one. Ugh. Come on, staying in a miserable marriage is not going to help anyone! And taken in the context of today’s society it’s especially irrelevant since we have options like divorce and legal custody arrangements. I did get the impression that viewers seem(ed) to think of Milah as the “villain” in that whole situation, and that ticks me off. Just like @Myril said, blaming the victim in a situation like that sends an absolutely terrible message about relationships. And of course there’s the lovely stereotype that Milah’s decisions were made based on hormones instead of the fact that her husband’s actions made her miserable and he refused to make any effort to improve things.

[Sidenote: This is actually one of my biggest problems with the show, that this murder was never addressed except briefly by Hook (who seemed over the whole thing in season three anyway–although since apparently he and Rumple will be antagonizing each other again soon, maybe that’ll come up again?). I mentioned earlier that Belle should really have been more concerned about that, and the other thing that really gets me is that while Neal was (rightfully) very angry at his father for not following him through the portal, but he never mentioned how Rumple murdered his mother. I know she left him too, but (a) she left him with a parent, not all alone in a strange world and (b) he didn’t want his father to die even after the abandonment, so why would it have been okay for his father to kill his mother?]

I’ll just get off my soapbox now…

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Finale question: Soooo I haven’t seen the finale in awhile. When Regina threw her flame ball at Snow, and Snow flew off as a bug, did Regina ever find out? Because if not, then Regina spent some time not knowing Snow was alive, correct? If so. When did she find out?

After their encounter with her on the bridge, we saw those trolls go to Regina’s castle and tell her that Snow was alive…and then she got really mad that they hadn’t captured her, so she turned them into bugs like Snow originally did with her dark fairy dust in “Snow Falls”, so they still ended up as bugs and didn’t change the timeline.

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is going to help his other mother, Regina,

Wait a minute….wait a minute….somebody’s playing a joke right? Did they….I mean seriously….this is exactly what the Evil Regals were talking about! How can you refer to Regina as the “other” mother….such a dismissive term. She just couldn’t be his mother….she had to be the other mother, the mother who raised him single handily from birth for ten years through holidays, colds, fevers, sickness, school years, baby years with diapers and spit ups! And they call her the “other” mother!!!!!! “

While my first instinct would be to point out some issues with Regina’s parenting, we’ve just been through something similar in another thread, so setting that aside…I really don’t think that wording was meant as a slight against Regina. They simply mentioned Emma first in that sentence. If they’d said something about Regina first, I don’t think they’d hesitate to call Emma his “other mother” later in the sentence.

I was going to reply to another post, but I think I’ll wait till I have my computer because the iPad keyboard and I are not getting along tonight…

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Not CS related, but thought it worth the share- since there’s so much general Once negativity what with this site being heavy on the sour grapes train over story direction.

ABC’s Once Upon A Time is consistently one of SpoilerTV’s most popular series. IMDb users also rate it, with 117,907 ratings equating to an 8.1 average. Once Upon A Time has been on the air for three seasons, and its last season saw a strong increase in its episode ratings, with the season finale garnering the highest episode rating yet, a 9.5 averaged from 855 votes. All of its premieres and finales sit higher than their respective season trendlines too.

The IMDB stats seem to telly quite nicely with the actual viewer/rating numbers in this case.
It drives me nuts when I see people harping on about how S3 had lower ratings than S2- bollocks! S3′s later eps (after Neal’s death- from memory), were that time slots & day’s most watched show for 3weeks in a row & rated higher over all across the season. As far as viewership & ratings goes, S3 has been the strongest yet- hardly the downward decline those with sour grapes want to believe it was :/

Needed to get that off my chest- sorry. Rant over

While that is definitely nice to see, those aren’t what people are usually referring to when they mention “the ratings”, the ones that keep a show on the air–those would be the Neilsen ratings. As far as that goes, there was a definite drop between seasons one and two, but in general two and three were about the same…the average actual numbers dropped a little, but its overall ranking went up.

It was also really encouraging to see it on the cover of TV Guide this week though–I just hope they do an amazing job with the Frozen stuff since it’s getting so much attention. Also fun for us to note, of course–a lovely CS picture was the only non-Frozen-related picture in that TV Guide article. 😉

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I came across this on Tumblr…I definitely agree. 😉

Edward Kitsis: You want to see Emma and Hook rent a movie and stay home?

CSers: 

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2) I also think the idea that you can overcome your past is complicated when it comes to the HOW. ONCE would have us believe that there is no work involved; your “issues” are swept aside simply by love. Whatever deity you might pray to, when you seek its forgiveness, you must first ASK for it. And if you are of a particular faith, you may have to work for it. Just because you’ve fallen in love, doesn’t mean your past is erased. It doesn’t mean that you don’t owe your victims recompense. It doesn’t mean you don’t have to stand before the universe and say, “I have erred.” Regina and Rumple have never apologized, for a start, to the town of Storybrooke. The every day peasants who’s lives were so rudely uprooted for 28 years. Some can say, “well they both saved SB too,” and that’s true. But they haven’t acknowledged that they’re the reason SB exists in the first place and they haven’t regretted or at least recognized that their actions HURT a great many people.

Agreed ^^. The idea of having the villains get their happy endings without even at the very least acknowledging that they were wrong and apologizing to those they’ve hurt sends kind of a lousy message. Love doesn’t erase past crimes, and in the real world, no matter how much and how sincerely someone has changed, I generally don’t think murderers should be able to escape justice.

(And on that note, regarding Will and Ana…I watched Wonderland while it was on, but only once since it’s not out on Blu-Ray or Netflix, so I don’t remember exactly–what were the worst things that Anastasia did? I remember what she did to Will himself of course, but other than that, I can’t recall her specific misdeeds or crimes. Does anyone else have a better memory?)

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Just saw this spoiler-
“”Any scoop on Emma from Once Upon a Time? I’d like to know if we’ll get any flashbacks on her past? — Alex
We will! In fact, we’re going to get a lot more information about her childhood. “In the first half of the season, we’re going to see more of Emma’s past than I think we’ve seen in all the other previous seasons combined,” executive producer Adam Horowitz tells me.””
I’m so HAPPY! Cant wait to see this

http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/09/12/spoiler-room-svu-agents-shield-blacklist-spoilers/

I’m so looking forward to seeing that stuff too! And I think this definitely adds credence to the theory that Emma started exhibiting signs of magic early on and that’s one of the reasons she kept getting bounced around to different homes, especially because of the obvious parallel to Elsa and her magic. I’m sure it’ll all be really sad though!

Also that picture is really cute @Bo-Peeps. Thanks for pointing that out; I probably would have missed it since I haven’t looked at Twitter in a while. And the tea thing is cute too–I’d definitely have to try some if it weren’t for the coconut. I really don’t like coconut, unfortunately. Does that make me a bad CS shipper? Haha. 😉

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