Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-24018644-20150228155751/@comment-5106672-20150410135132

Avatar Beta wrote: I'm fine with Mulan being gay but I don't get her feelings for Aurora. They didn't get along at all at first and Aurora clearly wanted Prince Philip. Where did this love for her come from and what did Mulan expect? For Aurora to run into her arms just like that? She was honestly setting herself up for rejection. Actually, the way they built up Mulan and Aurora's relationship is one of my favourite things in the show. They started off with Aurora being that annoying girlfriend Mulan's best friend kept obsessing over, then she took on the duty to protect her to honour his memory, but genuinely grew fond of her in the process. I loved how genuinely distraught she was when Aurora was kidnapped – that wasn't duty, that was actually caring for a dear one. Even though most of their time together happened off-screen after Emma and MM returned to Storybrooke, the writers still got to show us how their relationship (as in friendship) came to be before Mulan fell romantically in love with her.

Bonus points to the writers for throwing us off track with Phillip's first line: "If this works, we don't tell her everything. Not right away." The implication was that a) something happened between him and Mulan, and b) this could lead to TLK not working on Aurora. In hindsight, he was most likely referring to the aftermath of the Dark Curse, the Ogres returning and stuff (he didn't want to scare Aurora by telling her she woke up to a completely changed world), but that was a very clever writing move.