I saw that tweet and I had to take a deep breath. First, I get annoyed at the collapsing of a complex situation to “he hurt her”. Then I hate the “as a woman” she should know better than to take him back.” Does that mean it is ok for Charming as a man to take back Snow who broke his heart and forgot him? Really, most people were ok with it because gender aside, Snowing both LOVED each other still, and realized that Snow had hurt him only because she was forced into it, and then couldn’t handle the pain so she took a potion to deal with it. Snow had magic, Neal didn’t. 11 years later after waiting for Emma he met a conniving woman who preyed on all his insecurities and fears and he thought he should do the equivalent of a magic potion and try to move on with another.
PREACH!
Honestly, it makes me so angry when people tear apart Neal for having been horrible to Emma, and meanwhile they completely excuse or romanticise things that Hook has done to her. I love Hook, he’s one of my fave characters, but he’s done some douche things to multiple people, including Emma. He left her to rot and die in Rumple’s cell for crying out loud. In a cell in an abandoned land, with no food or hope of escape. But Neal leaving Emma to give her her best chance of getting back to her family, and her ending up in jail in the modern world where she was clothed, fed, and would only be there temporarily before being set free again, oh no, THAT’S unforgivable!
I just…I don’t understand the double standard that some people have when it comes to things like this, and it’s not just the jail cell comparison, I’m just using that as an example here. BOTH of those situations, with BOTH guys, HURT Emma in different ways. You can’t classify everything Neal has done to hurt her as EVIL, and at the same time look at everything Hook has done to hurt her and declare it LOVE. The history and relationships she has with BOTH of them are complex, and when someone tries to just simplify it to one of them having been all bad for her and the other being all good, they are really missing the point and ignoring the layers that make the story so interesting.
If people wanna ship CS, that’s fine, they can ship CS. But when the love of your ship makes you so completely one eyed that you end up actually publicly hating and insulting anyone that might get in the way, that’s just poor form!
I feel like a woman or man is not made stronger by lacking compassion and love. Love is strength, and Emma is strong. IF she forgives Neal, he will have earned that forgiveness by his actions within the story, and they don’t want to spoil what those things are.
THIS! Honestly, if she has the love, compassion, and understanding to forgive her parents for sending her away as a newborn, if she can not completely write off August for how he left her, if she can keep wanting to give Regina chances instead of just shutting her out of Henry’s life whenever she does something dangerous, if she can still feel it worthwhile to appeal to Hook’s compassionate and caring side that she knows is buried in there somewhere even though he’s outwardly selfish and untrustworthy, there is absolutely no reason why she won’t be able to forgive and understand Neal as well as they work through their issues, and she has her questions answered and has a proper understanding of their situation.
Adam is pretty sensitive it seems to accusations about his open mindness and misogyny, and the last thing I want him to think is they have to drop the Neal storyline because the public would never accept Emma going back to him. In fact, I think it’s horrible that people think its ok if Snow treats Charming like dirt but not if the other way around. People should be good to each other and the gender ought to have nothing to do with it. Maybe I will tweet that later.
I feel so bad for Adam when people attack him and call him names. It doesn’t necessarily help when he responds to it, but it’s totally understandable why he does. Right now I’m feeling the urge to spam tweet him a thesis on all the beautiful things I see in SF’s story, so he knows that there are people out there who see it, and get it.
One of my biggest peeves is when people try to make the other one look like a martyr.
“Hook belongs with Emma because Neal did X Y Z”
“Neal belongs with Emma because Hook did A B C”
Agreed, because neither guy has been a freaking saint! And nor should they, or anyone else on the show be saints, because it’s everyone’s flaws and struggles that make for an interesting story.
He made an impossible choice for the betterment of thousands and, yes, to EMMA herself. Is there a lot of forgive? Of course! But in what relationship isn’t there a lot to forgive? Rumple threw Belle out of his castle! Snow took a potion and forgot Charming! David Nolan thought Mary Margaret killed Katheryn! MM slept with Whale! Relationships are not easy. “If true love were easy, everyone would have it.”
THIS! Seriously, people act like Neal is the freaking anti-Christ and because of that there’s no potential for the relationship, but look at the other imperfect relationships they’ve written between imperfect people, and look at how they overcame because of love!
Just because people are the loudest, doesn’t make them the majority. This is what I have kept telling myself:
Over 11 million people watch Once Upon a Time. (Right? #s from last season?)
a few of the SAME people stating their opinion over and over and over on twitter is just a super small fraction of that number. What, 10 people harassing him over and over again? I know that Adam and Eddy see the big picture. They have to. They’ve been doing this long before people had the gall to harass them on twitter (and as Adam confessed tonight, THREATEN his family). They did this before they got harassed. Before the internet made everyone crazy and self-important.
I have to have faith they can keep their head up and tell their story.
*sigh*
This is what I believe. K&H briefly considered changing their story because people had guessed about Nealfire, but they ultimately decided that this was the story they’d planned, and this was the story they were gonna tell. They’ve had this story planned out for YEARS, they know how they want it to play out, and while some things may need to be changed along the way, I think that something a major as the endgame for the hero of their story is something they won’t waver on. So I’m hopeful that whatever happens, it’s not being influenced one way or the other by the vocal minority.