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I went and had coffee and took a shower and came up with a more shippy archetype essay.
Thinking about archetypes, this is another reason why I think SwanFire is endgame. Emma *is* her archetype: she is the savior. For all that A and E are creative and innovative, they’ve stuck pretty close to the heroes journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell. If you think about the most popular savior figures in the past 100 years a few spring to mind–Frodo Baggins, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter. Emma Swan fits pretty neatly with those guys because A and E don’t subvert archetype so much as they subvert gender, Emma instead of Emmett for instance. Most of you (if not all of you) have read or seen some (if not read or seen all) of the books/movies of those male characters. Similarities out the wazoo, right? Orphan, a call to adventure (Henry in the Pilot, Gandalf to Frodo, Obi Wan to Luke, Hagrid to Harry), the refusal to be part of the adventure and so on and so forth. Emma fits right in, it’s just that’s she’s a girl.
However, with that said, one of the biggest differences between Emma Swan and those other guys is that she is continuously trying to reject her archetype. She knows she is the Savior but she doesn’t really want to be and if she could, she’d get out of it. Think back to the episode Lost Girl, Emma sitting in front of Peter’s map trying to figure out its secrets. When she starts talking to the map, she doesn’t automatically go to the “savior” role even though it’s the most obvious–why would Pan care about the more mundane aspects of Emma’s Swan’s life, right? But Emma lists the things that are important to her–she’s from Boston, she’s a bail bondsperson, she’s the sheriff, she’s Henry’s mother. It’s only with prompting that she begins to go more mythic–daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, the offspring of true love. And still she hesitates before giving her archetype, “the S word” as Regina says, rolling her eyes. For Emma, being the Savior is something she has to do, not something she wants to do. And what does she want to do: be Emma Swan, mother, sheriff, daughter, normal. Her archetype doesn’t define her in her eyes and she *really* doesn’t want it to.
I think there is a reason why they keep having Hook call her in the Savior in passing. Hook is an archetype just like she is–the Sailor, the Pirate. But unlike Emma, he revels in his archetype. He enjoys it. So much so that instead of rejecting his archetype after Liam died, he simply moved to a darker version of it. Hook is at his best when he’s fighting giants, sailing the high seas, climbing beanstalks, rescuing ladies, ect. Hook sees Emma has being on par with him, two archetypes that should be working in tandem and in love. The Pirate and the Savior. When you reduce them to their archetype, it makes a lot of sense. So Hook rarely calls her “Emma,” he calls her “Swan” or “Savior, constant reminders that she’s an archetype.
But now look at Neal. Like I said a few posts up, Neal suffers from “lack of archetype” syndrome. He’s not really any specific stock character–the closest one being “the lost son,” but Nealfire doesn’t feel like a lost son after 300 years. His father, Rumple, tries to make him feel like the lost son but Neal has more or less rejected that label once he found Emma and their home.
Sound familiar? In the same way that Emma rejects her archetype of Savior, Neal no longer considers himself the lost son. He has moved beyond the mythic to the human. His main characterization now is that he’s a man in love, fighting for the woman he loves and his family. Neal can give Emma what she wants–the human life, even though Emma will also always belong to the mythic realm as the Savior. Neal never refers to her as the Savior, just Emma. To him, at the end of the day, Neal doesn’t love the Savior (he doesn’t unlove her either) but he loves Emma. And that’s what Emma wants–someone who loves plain ol’ Emma, not the SAVIOR.
(that was long) (maybe I need to stop drinking coffee)