Reply To: Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[kfchimera]

I think Hook’s character has been growing, but the problem really is that some fans are racing ahead and declaring him “redeemed” as they do with Regina.  Maybe they’re right, and both Hook and Regina are just good now, all their former selfishness forgotten.  On the other hand, with both it seems to me an open question how nice they’ll be to people beyond the person they see as instrumental to their happy ending, particularly if that person does not want to choose them and only them in their life.

Milah did that for Hook, essentially and we all agree on one thing about Emma.  She would never do the same.  Henry is part and parcel of her, but it goes beyond Henry.  She also loves her parents, and it has been said many times: She loves Neal.

People keep qualifying that love, saying it isn’t true, or it is platonic and all these things but ignoring the fact that she doesn’t view him in the same negative and super-distrustful light THEY do.

Emma is not someone who has had a lot of love in her life, so those she feels this for are likely very important to her.  Neal may not have risked his life in getting her father’s cure, but he did risk his life at the fight with Tamara.  Even if he didn’t believe her going in, he thought there might be some danger when he says “I’m not leaving you alone in this place” because the empty cannery itself had an eerie feel to it.

Then when shot, he didn’t stay huddling there despite the pain and risk of exerting himself causing the blood to flow more.  He gets up and helps Emma down from the beam where she’s clinging.  Pulling your body weight up like that is tough and he saved her from falling in the portal.  I will never overlook the plot stupid reason he puts his back to the portal, but he was making sure she was alright.  Then he lets go of her despite knowing it means he might die alone, that his chances of being helped wherever he does end up are that much less without her.

Last season, people tried to argue Emma didn’t care much about Neal because she didn’t break down much.  Never mind we saw her sobbing on the floor, saying not just that she loves him, but she needs him, next to the portal.  Never mind we saw her shut down and grim, nor that we didn’t hear how she sounded telling Henry to judge, but we could see she was upset.

This season we had her on the boat blaming Snow and David for his death!  Then we see her reactions to his cave, and the speech where she admits she was angry she found out he loved her when it was (she thought) too late for them to be together and work through everything.  We saw the way she asserted that Neal taught her certain things with pride, the way it made Regina back down.

I wonder if Regina will feel jealous/angry that Emma potentially gets this second chance when she didn’t, but not sure how they will write that.  Despite Regina’s scene with Tinkerbell, not sure Regina would be sensitive enough to offer that type of “girlfriend” advice.  Having friends is something that Regina struggles with too (just look how she reacted to Katherine in S1!).   Yet to a Regina fan, these kind of doubts about her growth come off as “hate” perhaps, because if they see everything as justified reactions to Snow’s selfishness, well then, apparently Regina’s never been anything but loving and generous!

I just don’t think I can agree with that interpretation of Regina, anymore than I can with Hook’s character (though I don’t put them in the same category of self-absorption. He never tried to destroy everyone’s happiness as a goal in itself).

So I think there’s been growth for Hook, but the fans who argued he never did anything “really” wrong, who wanted to say all along he was just a good guy in overwhelming circumstances where everyone else was evil–this is a bit much for me.

Neal stood up to Cora, despite limited odds of success, but Hook chose not to do that.  He had his reasons for turning on her, when he said Emma and friends were safer, but that’s not the same as saying “This person is pure evil and I won’t help them because I saw her murder an entire village of people.”  He wanted that compass to complete his revenge.  When Emma didn’t trust him, that angered him enough to go back to Cora a woman he thought unsafe and dangerous.  Even if he did as has been argued and debated change his mind at the well portal, and throw the fight, the problem for me is he kept on helping Cora when they got to town.

He didn’t reveal his presence to Emma, or tip her off that Cora planned her son’s adopted mother harm.  His revenge meant more to him.  He could have helped Emma even the odds by telling her Cora had “things” on his ship, but he didn’t.  Even after Cora betrayed him by flooring him, he could have gone to the Charmings, Emma’s parents, and warned them and then gone after Rumple.  Even leave a note next to the knocked out Charming, perhaps.   “Sorry mate, off to kill the Dark one, but be warned, Cora and Regina are after the dagger to control him to kill you all, so Henry won’t blame Regina.  XXXOOO Hook”.

He just didn’t care that much about what would happen to Emma then.  Then he had a taste of life after revenge and he started to realize he was going about life the wrong way.  His moment in the tower with GOAT made him think, but he did not express until in the mines with Regina.  Then again in SOTM, when he realizes he wants to change.

So he has had growth, but how far along this path is he? The people who never saw him as unjustified in anything he did, who looked to limit his agency or never considered what other actions he might have done if a more honorable man, are now doing the same thing.

He is a man of honor when giving him credit for good things (saving Neal and Charming), but a pirate with low standards to surpass if he says or does something less than honorable (hinting for a kiss, flirting constantly with a woman on a mission to save her son who just lost someone she loves, not apologizing for starting a silly fight over a lighter).

I feel like Pan’s tests of character were soft-ball pitches.  He does not trust Pan, so why kill Charming and hope he keeps his word?  He’d be in worse shape to return to camp and face an angry Snow and Emma.  Regina might be annoyed to the extent she thought Charming was useful to help get Henry, or that it might make Henry blame her.  Or she might go volatile and feel no one should hurt them but her!  So not a good deal versus saving Charming, impressing him and Emma.  He did not go out of his way to bring it to her attention, but when she came to him to confirm the story (maybe sensing there was something he was not telling about it), he hints for more than a thank you.  Emma chose to respond the way she did so he did not force, but still, he was not honorable enough to refuse knowing her father’s life was not as saved as she thought.

Then the next soft ball, is the reveal that Neal is alive.  If we stick with Hook does not trust Pan, it makes sense he wanted to confirm the secret, but why not tell Emma and let her choose?  This idea of sparing her false hope rings false for me after he is doing that very thing with Charming’s life not fully saved.  Whatever his reasons though, at the end he is still revealing a secret that at worst gives him a way off the island, makes him look good for helping a guy he has been claiming as a friend, and gives him a rival for Emma.  Given his confidence in himself and love of challenges, not sure why that would be the same as choosing friend over love as for Ariel, who much more selflessly helped Snow even knowing she might not get a second chance at love at all.  She thought she’d miss her window to be with Eric at all, not have to compete for his love with others.  Eric didn’t know or care about Snow, so she wasn’t helping him by helping Snow.  All she had was risk from helping Snow.  Risk that she couldn’t save Snow, risk that Regina would kill her, risk that she’d be too late for meeting Eric, and finally, risk that he wouldn’t understand her being late even if she caught him somehow, because again, Eric has no love for Snow like Emma has for Neal.

So while the two situations were playing out in parallel, as happens in the show, they sometimes show contrasts, a dramatic parallel, rather than trying to say two situations are equivalent in other moral ways.

I do think Hook did good things of course in NL, that he is trying to be, as Molly said, honorable but it is still in his own concept of honor that might be sort of warped by the life he’s led.

So I ‘m not as confident that Emma sees everything in as positive a light as the fans who excused his sooting Belle in the back, after she spared his life, might do.  All that stuff he did before hasn’t really been on Emma’s mind lately, because she wasn’t thinking about a relationship and what type of person is he.  She was thinking about how to get Henry, how not to feel unhappy in this horrible place.

If I tune out all the fan noise, and the media and the spoilers out of context, and just concentrate on the story, everything looks much better.  And as to the spoilers, well, it helps to come up with SF-centered context too if we can, because obviously, people who want something else to happen will  only suggest other outcomes.
As RG mentioned–we’re usually way off no matter what we come up with, even if we get the occasional right guess or partially right guess.

No one is ever “right at every turn” as some claim.   Looking back, there were CSers who claimed Tamara was Neal’s real love, and he’d ride off into the sunset with her, that she wasn’t evil or on a mission.  Then they claimed Emma didn’t really care about Neal, didn’t still love him.  Then that his death didn’t mean much to her–she wasn’t affected much.  Then we are shown how devastated she was.

While there are issues with Neal, the show isn’t running from them.  They are showing how much Neal means to Emma, and how far he will go to ensure her happiness even at risk to his own.  The Tamara storyline showed us they don’t think they need to be together for Henry’s sake.  The Hook storyline is showing us they don’t need to be together because Emma has no one else who’d want her.  It’s showing us Neal doesn’t view Emma as property, or as someone who ought to be with him just because of how strongly he feels about her.  He isn’t telling her she’s his “Happy Ending” but just wanting so far to see her be happy, to get her to that home, whether she will allow him to be part of that in her life in a romantic way or not.