Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[kfchimera]

Oh so many wonderful feels and thoughts!

Ranisha: Wonderful parallel you spotted with that Leap of Faith for all 3 of SF family.  I hadn’t caught that, and while it is true that’s not necessarily “SF” romance, as a shipper we can see how parallel their journey has been made to be.   I’m seeing a pattern that Neal and Emma keep being put through the types of experiences that would lead them to truly understand each other on a deep level.

Every time the show draws parallels between Hook and Emma though, it comes across to me as somewhat of a shallow thing.  They’ve both been on the outside.  They’ve both lost hope.  They’ve both needed that second chance.  Yet that is true of so many characters!

When we dive deeper into their experiences there is not as much in common.  He lost hope in a fell swoop it seems, over the loss of his big brother who raised and loved him until he was a man with a stable career.   Compare this to Neal and Emma who both felt constantly rejected by those who ought to love them as children.  They were at one point or another on their own, trying to fend for themselves and became criminals out of a need to survive, not a need for revenge.

Even with their loss of hope, they never became so angry and jaded against the entire concept of society.  They were more petty criminals, and realized it wasn’t what they wanted to be.  They didn’t take pride in it.   Contrast this to Hook who definitely prided himself on being a pirate.    He points it out a lot, and as well had a huge grin on his face when seeing all the gold in the giant’s halls in Tallahassee.  He wasn’t until recently ashamed of his choice of lifestyle and then only because it is something Emma looks down on.   Up until then, he was actually proud of himself.  Remember, he complimented Emma that she would make a good pirate at one point.   In his mind, her willingness to steal the compass was not a desperate act justified by the need to get back to her son, it was, you’ve got skills, that’s awesome, you’re a survivor just like me, and you take what you want, when you want.  That’s not Emma or Neal at all!

They are survivors, but not JUST like him.  Their  loss of hope was gradual but not so complete.

Neal expresses quite a bit about taking the watches for example.  He is never proud he did that.  He says he resisted 3 times, mentions the store has insurance (no excuse, Neal/writers…but so many people think it is…sorry, its a pet peeve every time I see my insurance rates go up :P)  and then tells August not to judge him for having fenced the money as he’s giving it all to Emma.  He knows it was wrong, and doesn’t delight in it.  While he and Emma get a kick out of the Bonnie and Clyde routine, at the same time, both of them really want to put that behind them and get real jobs and settle down.  They haven’t lost faith in humanity itself.   Even after Emma ends up in jail she becomes a bail bondsperson which is a legal profession (except in a few states 😛 and maybe peculiarly American as a thing–many countries do not permit the whole bail bond thing for various reasons that it can be exploitative of people but that’s way off topic).  The point is, it is not the most honorable of careers maybe, it is a bit fringe, a bit outlaw, but it is still within society’s rules.

Historically pirates are not bound by society, that’s kind of the point, though there were “privateers” who were sort of hired pirates like mercenaries who would work for any country.   Hook was most definitely portrayed as “on his own” though, not like a privateer for hire, or a mercenary like Lancelot.  They could always “embroider” a more noble flavor to him though, more of a revolutionary than a complete renegade, but still it doesn’t come across to me like they were showing how he would truly understand Emma’s past from his own.

This leads me to one other question from the Sneak Peek.    Rumple knows you cannot trust Pan’s deals.  Does Hook?  I agree about the whole speculating about Hook being so nasty to do something to the Darling kids as being distasteful and I really doubt the writers would do it.  I don’t want them to do it.  I do think however it might be that part of the reason Hook wouldn’t take Pan’s deals wasn’t just he wanted to do the right, honorable things, but also because, he didn’t trust Pan to keep his end of the bargain.  What good is working for someone when you know they’ll just betray you?  Hook’s done it before with Cora, Regina and GOAT, but in those cases we saw if he had a way to go around them he tried to do that first, the moment he could.  Hook’s not stupid, he plays all the angles and while I do think he’s kind of developed a new sincere attachment to Emma, I doubt he’s lost all his pirate-senses either.  These writers love complicated characters who often have conflicted motivations for things.  That’s why it is so easy to read them different ways. 

I do wonder about Hook and Regina parallels too.  Regina was sincere about loving Henry, making him her new priority in S2 despite having had a more sincere priority of having Snow suffer in S1.   Henry was part of her concerns but far from the biggest part.  Now S3 we saw Regina realize it isn’t just the “form” she needs but the substance of caring for Henry.  At one point she thought it was ok to kill his other family, so long as he didn’t know she had a hand in it.   I wonder if that’s sort of where Hook is.  He couldn’t let Charming die, he couldn’t keep Neal a secret because there was too much risk that Emma would blame him as he knows he’s still earning her trust.   If Pan offered him a deal, what good is it if he cannot trust Pan and would be blamed if anything went wrong?

I need to rewatch the scene where Emma confronts Hook about his words to Neal in the cave.  What does Hook say when she says Pan could offer him a deal? Does he reveal that already happened twice, or does he keep that secret and try to focus attention on his desire to win her without tricks?  Something about that scene just reminds me of Emma and August where she says “I’m not a liar” is exactly what a liar would say.  August wasn’t lying about the particular thing she accused him of that time, but he had lied and was sort of covering up some things at the time about the role he had played in her life.  So while I think Hook is trying to be above board now–there could be some very dirty laundry he hasn’t shared (well besides the Milah/Bae stuff) that might relate to Emma.  At the same time, I do think it cannot be too bad since Hook is so heavily promoted.  They are not going to reveal something that makes him like King George–not family anymore, stuff in cave and forget.  He is still going to be on their side, but how closely they think of him, well as it is with Rumple and Regina, it may be something that fluctuates with how dire their circumstances.