Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

None of my family or friends really watch it, I have friends who watch mostly don’t care about shipping, only one liked Emma and Hook because hook was hot as per her words but even she didn’t take it to the serious shipping level.

Only a few of my friends really watch the show, or did, back in S1. Most of them were oblivious or indifferent to things like couples, with the exception being they all loved Snow White and Prince Charming in S1 (but disliked David Nolan). The only family member of mine who actually likes Emma with Hook said her reason for doing so was admittedly superficial: because he was hot. When I asked her though about how he treats women, she agreed he wouldn’t actually make a good boyfriend in real life. At least her appreciation for the pirate was merely skin deep–which I honestly, don’t have a problem with, since she admitted that was her rationale. However superficial that may sound, she wasn’t all that invested in the story or the details. She remembered that Neal had left Emma, but she’d honestly forgotten that small, yet oh so important detail why he left — because August told Neal that he would keep Emma from her destiny. I kindly reminded her why Neal left Emma in the first place–to get her home. I think some of the GA who watch this show do so for aesthetics, rather than for a good story, and that they tend to forget about details that we, the more critical and heavily invested fans, have embedded in our memory. That’s why it appears some of the GA seems to have forgotten that Hook was ever in a romantic relationship with the grandmother of Emma’s son.

My best friend liked CS. He said that they were fun and flirty and steamy. But he also said that it was obvious that the story was Neal and Emma. Emma and Hook could have a little romance before she chose Neal but that it was clear the writers intended to put Emma and Neal back together because it made narrative sense.

Yeah, it doesn’t take SF shipping glasses to see where the writers were going to with Emma and Neal. Why else have them admit their love and need for each other in the present day? Why else have Neal say his boy and Emma were his second chance? Why have Neal survive a gunshot in S2, promote MRJ to full-time cast, only to have him be killed in a sloppy, and rushed way only half way into the season and then continue to pay him like full time cast member? Because the writers CHANGED THEIR STORY so that instead of happy endings being about who or what we expected (e.g. Emma and Neal reunited like Anastasia and Will), we get Emma romantically partnered with Neal’s quasi step-daddy! Yep. That is the “happy ending” practically none of us expected.