Lady Business

I would really like to see if someone could make say a town hairdresser, baker, or accountant an evil female characters and have them feel effectively evil. Now that would be different.

Yes, that's pretty much what I was clumsily trying to say. The fact that she functions so well as an evil character is tied in with cultural tropes about single powerful women, and while that isn't solely this particular show's fault it still makes me so sad. And I agree completely that the bits that any creator chooses to keep or discard from fairy tales (or any other source material) speak volumes about the kinds of cultural biases that continue to the present day.

I totally see what you mean about Regina's house - there's this scene in particular that I remember really well. It had her sitting at her desk in her really stylish back and white house with this bowl of perfect blood red apples, which were the only note of colour in the whole room, right in front of her. The thing is, I'm really drawn to this kind of thing aesthetically (and I remember you saying pretty much the same about Irene Adler and Sherlock), but I hate that it's always used in the same way.

There had been nothing about the Fairy Godmother and nothing yet about Ruby by the time I stopped watching... two more reasons to go back I guess :P Like you I'm sure Ruby gets her own episode at some point, but not so sure about the Godmother... fingers crossed that it happens.