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Okay, beyond being a giant ball of sadness, Quiet Minds was also like one giant here’s why i love Neal Cassidy manifesto for me, and this moment is really important to me and I need to talk about it. Here’s what’s going on: Neal just showed up out of nowhere in the woods, collapsed on the floor of his father’s shop, can’t remember the past year or what he did, including an ominous scary mark on his hand and how he got it, and the father he just watched die is apparently alive and missing. So: 1. Neal’s first thought is immediately about the son he can’t remember fighting to get back to. Because the one constant about Neal Cassidy since the moment he found out he had a son is that Henry is the first thing, the most important thing. Because so much of this episode, about Neal’s entire arc since Manhattan, has been about his desire to be a better father to Henry than he ever had. And I have plethora of problems with how they chose to let that play out, but the important part to me? Neal loves Henry more than anything and Henry is always always always first. 2. He actively recognizes Henry and Emma had a whole life without him. He’s had, what, five minutes to process that a whole year passed? Emma and Henry have memories together that he’s not going to be a part of. They had a whole year of reality, and in that first gif—he’s letting it sink in that he missed another whole year of his son’s life— he’s probably taller now, more of a teenager, likes and dislikes a whole new set of things and Neal missed all of it— and I’m sure that absolutely wrecks him. He wants to see him. But he’s not going to push. He’s not going to force his way in as Henry’s father in whatever thing the two of them have going— he wants to be Henry’s father more than anything, but he knows it’s not just about him. He doesn’t get to slot himself him, but he wants more than anything to work to find his place there. Neal hasn’t really had a family since he was 14 years old and it’s all he’s ever wanted. He’s capable of making really impulsive decisions when it comes to Emma and Henry. They make him beyond desperate. But there’s a line to that, and what’s so interesting to me is that line is only ever drawn by Henry and Emma’s best interest. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to get back to them, to be there when they need and want, but on their terms. Because his love for Henry and Emma is about Henry and Emma, not about how badly he needs them. tl;dr neal cassidy, ultimate family man who never got a chance to be a family man my tears could fill oceans goodbYE.Omgosh. all of this. And now I have tears again
You know what I’ll REALLY miss about Neal? How normal he was. How he reacted to the absurd crap that happens in this show like an actual human being would. He’s pretty much the only male character (besides, ironically enough, his memory wiped son) that did that.
His reaction to Lumiere!!!! What the —-? I love that. It’s like with Emma when she encounters something Fairy Tale.
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
The thing that breaks my heart so much about Bae/Neal is that — just like his father — he really just wants to be loved. He wants that unconditional, fight-to-the-death, give-up-everything-for-you love that he demonstrates so well (trying to save his father despite the horrific things he’d witnessed, giving himself up to save the Darlings, even letting go of Emma in ‘Tallahassee,’ and definitely falling through the portal in ‘Second Star To The Right’), but he doesn’t think he’s ever received it. His mother left him for her own selfish happiness, his father let him go for power and fear, his adopted family allowed him to sacrifice himself, Hook betrayed him from the very beginning to the end of what we’ve seen of their early interactions, and through it all, he’s come to want that love even more desperately, so he covers up that want, that desire, with snarky comments and sarcastic chuckles and slow smirks, just so that no one sees what he wants and lets him down.
And then Tamara comes, and maybe he doesn’t love her as much as he thinks he should and maybe some things seem a bit off, but it doesn’t matter because SHE CHOOSES HIM. She chose him above anyone else and she’s — he thinks — standing by him, and so he tells Emma that he needs her, because he needs to see someone who chose him, who loves him, needs that reminder that he can’t dream about Emma anymore and he has to ‘put childish things behind him.’ Even when she finds out about the messed up place he came from and the even more messed up town they’re currently staying in, she — he thinks — chooses him again. She accepts it and still wants to marry him, and so maybe Emma is there, but he can’t think about that because he let her go and he turned into her father where she and Henry are concerned and he has someone who chose him for once and he can’t let that go.
So this moment, when he realizes that she didn’t choose him, that she NEVER chose him, that once again he is a pawn for bigger forces than himself, that he’s been used and discarded just as before…he can do nothing but ask over and over again, like the abandoned child he is, if she ever loved him (so reminiscent of Rumplestiltskin’s explosion after Belle’s first kiss, and again, gotta love the parallels).
But when it comes down to it, Bae/Neal ALWAYS chooses the ones he loves over himself, so even when he’s shot by the woman he thought was his something new, even when he’s bleeding out and hurting — and surely terrified by the sight of this green portal he’s been running from for centuries — he makes the leap for Emma. And I am so beyond happy that before he fell, before he gave himself up once again for family, he saw someone REALLY, TRULY choose him — and not for the first time, but for the second time. She still loves him, and he still loves her, and they both chose the other’s happiness over their own, and that’s why I love their story so much — and yes, I even love the Tamara angle, because it makes sense to me that Bae/Neal, trying to decide if he should throw off his assumed cynicism and hope he could make amends with Emma though it meant facing his father…he clutched desperately at this ulterior woman who offered him what he wanted. Tamara is Bae/Neal’s Cora, but Emma is his Belle.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Something delightful for you this Thursday morning
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Soooo, I started writing out the details of my end of season headcanon…and it sorta became a four page fanfic thing? I’m not a “writer” by any means, it’s rather pedestrian in style, but yeah, anyway, at least now if it doesn’t happen on the show, it still totally happened because I wrote it.
(Never attached a file to a post before, so let’s see if this works.)
@Phee’s head canon for the win!!!! I LOVE IT. Thanks for sharing it with us and ignore my request on Twitter to read this someday since I had no idea that you’d all ready posted it here when I tweeted you, LOL 😉
#MoreBOOMLessGloomI just read it as well. It makes *so much sense*.
And after we learned Zelena’s plans, it’s pretty obvious WL was a set up for this half of the season. A test run, if you will.
Your headcanon keeps within the themes of the show, namely–messing with fate. Surely Nyx has to be against Zelena and what she is doing!
Who knows, maybe Zelena and Jafar end up sharing a bottle.
I love the entire thing and if it comes to pass—10000000000000000000 cookies to you
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"YAY COOKIES! Now I hope even more that it happens. 😉
Seriously though, that’s why I started writing it out in the first place, (before it morphed into an actual fanfic thing), to show how I’ve used actual canon themes and logic to come up with the crack headcanon. It’s not just random musings, it’s musings based on what the show has actually given us, because I love me some context.
@Phee !!!!!! Oh my goshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh that was brilliant!!! Everything was perfect. SO PERFECT. <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
Keeper Nealfire's/Bae's scarf, Henry and Neal's bribery ice cream sundae, Baelfire's sword, the coconut map, and more.
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