Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[dontstopbelievin]

I only have a minute, but

1) RG, you are betrothed to an awful lot of posts around here. Quick engagements? 😉

2) Phee, I am pretty thoroughly convinced we share a brain around here.

I really wanted to reply to touch on this that Corbin said on the last page –

Now, if they do decide to make CS canon, I am going to be angry. Why? Not only because they put CS together, but because they killed Neal to make it so.

I assume by ‘make CS canon’ you mean make them canon TL/show TLK. If they show that, I will be angry too – but honestly? It’s not because of shipping. Forget SF, heck, forget Neal altogether. They have NEVER shown me why these two should be TL. There has been NO character development that makes them a true love story. Hook ‘fancies’ her, he is a pirate who ‘pines’ and ‘yearns.’ He even says she broke his heart. Cool. But they have never had Emma reciprocate. Yes, she kissed him in NL – but she has said repeatedly, “It was just a kiss.” We know from her history (S1/Mary Margaret and Whale) that she’s a girl who is not a stranger to one night stands – I floated a thought the other night that for Emma, sex has been yet another way to tamp down her emotions. When you have someone as emotionally screwed up as she is, there is often drugs or alcohol in the mix. Although Emma is a drinker, she’s far from an alcoholic, and I suspect that in the ten years that we did not see in life, she had plenty of flings as coping mechanisms. So a kiss because she was “feeling good,” as a way to deal with the emotions of 1) having Henry kidnapped, 2) having Neal “dead” and 3) having her recently-found father almost-dead and then not – yeah, she’s got a guy coming onto her, why not revert to that old crutch? Anyways, I am going off-course.

Aside from that kiss, Emma has never shown signs of reciprocation. For her to suddenly give in and be like, “Oh yes, Hook is my true love” – from a girl who took 22 episodes to state she loved her CHILD – would be so out of left field. If they want to go CS, fine. (Well not fine, I still have issues with the lying/manipulating/abuse, but just for the moment let’s set even that aside.) If the writers want to pursue the Hook-Emma relationship for the long term on the show, let’s SEE it. Let’s have Emma be conflicted, let’s have her consider it. “Damn, Neal’s dead, and I loved him for a long time, and I know I should be sad, but really – what I am feeling is attraction towards this pirate. Holy sh*t, I think I love him!” Not, “why are you mopey? Here, let me take your body part and hang it up over here to show off my new magic skills!” That scene was the first time we ever saw him annoyed with her. She is often annoyed with him, but I can’t recall him ever being annoyed with her. That was obviously really key to Hook – she clearly crossed some sort of line with that, he objected as if she had violated some code – and she didn’t know that. Emma is many things, but callous is not one of them, and I can’t recall her being trivial with something that was important to someone else… ever. So she didn’t know that would be a Really Big Deal to Hook?

Someone said above – and I hadn’t even realized with respect to our canon true love couples – they want the same thing. If Hook has decided the seas are no longer for him, and a quiet life raising a pre-teen in Storybrooke or NYC is what he wants – then that needs to be shown. Yep, he’s said he can’t go back to who he was. Cool. Why is he still in pirate garb? Wearing, you know, pants and a shirt would go a long way to say, “THIS is who I am now.”

There are SO MANY things that, from a GA standpoint, would make canonical TL between the two of them out of left field. In the triangle, we have seen SF express feelings both directions, and we have seen Hook express love for Emma enough times that it is a canon fact (even if I don’t feel they illustrated it accurately.) But we have never seen Emma even lean that direction. So if they want to go canon CS tonight, it will be like whiplash. If they want to go canon CS on 322? They have a lot of work to do. As a die-hard SF, no, I won’t buy it. But if they illustrate WHY Emma is falling for him and what she sees in him, that makes her love him despite his misdeeds (as they have done with others – Belle to Rumple being the key example,) then I can at least understand it from a general viewer point of view.

I have more to say about the posts on the last couple of pages but I really need to go for a run (yay half marathon training… can I tell you how much I would rather stay here and fanbase?) I’ll try to get to it tonight, before the show airs, since as usual I will be on lockout from when the Canada spoilers roll in until roomies and I watch and often the points are irrelevent after the next episode. LOL.

More later…