Reply To: The Captain Swan thread!

I’ve seen people posting about how the show is no longer about hope and happy endings and basically the rest of Neal’s family should end up dying because they can’t have their happy ending with Neal gone and I just wanted to vent.

It’s depressing to read how all the other characters should die horribly and not get their happy endings, just because Neal is dead. The show doesn’t revolve around Neal. Yes it was a shame Neal died and in the way he did, and it would be fair to say that nobody wanted Neal to die, because he did deserve his happy ending, but I disagree with saying that the show is no longer about hope and happy endings.

To me, SwanFire were a “real” fairytale. They weren’t about slaying dragons, recuing princesses, or going on quests. They were about 2 people in the real world, finding each other despite the odds and loving each other. They’ve had to go through crap, childhood abandonment, breaking up, separated parents to Henry. Whilst Snowing and RumBelle deal with the more fantastical issues, curses, witches, etc, SwanFire always dealt with the more “real world” issues.

Unfortunately, a real world issue is death of a loved one. How many children have to go through the death of their parent? How many parents have to go through the death of their child? How many people have to go through the death of their partner or death of their friend? If a family has a member in the armed forces, then that is a very real possibility for them. They may not see their loved one again.

To say that, just because of the death of that person, that family is destined to never ever feel happiness again and the rest of their lives they’re screwed to misery is an absolutely horrible and depressing message to give out.

Once is still about hope and happy endings, not in the idealized terms that everyone gets a happy ending, but in the real terms that despite all the tragedy and heartbreak that befalls these characters, they can still pull through, it does get better for them, they can move on without forgetting what they lost.