Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[heatherc1275]

I got to watch the sneak peak during lunch…yay for Katie posting a link to the You Tube version so I could watch it on my phone! 😉

That was crazy emotional and I agree that this episode seems like it’s going to be a big one for SF fans. Neal was so gentle and comforting to Wendy while he was trying to get her to help them and I love how he never even thought about raising his voice to her when they found out she was lying (loved David and Neal both restraining Rumple from hurting her). His words about saving John and Michael were definitely heartbreaking (MRJ is more awesome every day <3) and I agree that something seems up with Hook. He's way outside the circle and I can't help but wonder right along with you guys if there's something to that. I noticed something else that you guys haven't talked about yet and it has to do with Emma. She's sitting in such an odd position, not location wise but in how she's sitting there. She's almost in like a fetal position while Neal is talking to Wendy and I can't help wondering what all she's found out by this point because it sure looks to me like she may have found out what Neal did for the Darlings and isn't sure how to process it. The worried look that Snow gave Emma at one point also made me wonder about her state at this point. JMo did say that Emma was going to be relearning her past and at this point in the show, I bet she's found out what Neal did for the only family he ever knew after being abandoned and is going to be conflicted on how to process it. His time in Neverland came from him giving himself up to the Shadow instead of letting it take her brothers and Emma all ready knows that he was gone for a long time and lost hope while he was stuck there. That's a lot to take in about a man you always thought the worst about and hopefully it cracks a down one of her walls for them to really talk about things soon. I'm hoping anyway.[/spoiler]

[Slurpeez]

heatherc1275 wrote: I noticed something else that you guys haven’t talked about yet and it has to do with Emma. She’s sitting in such an odd position, not location wise but in how she’s sitting there. She’s almost in like a fetal position while Neal is talking to Wendy and I can’t help wondering what all she’s found out by this point because it sure looks to me like she may have found out what Neal did for the Darlings and isn’t sure how to process it. The worried look that Snow gave Emma at one point also made me wonder about her state at this point. JMo did say that Emma was going to be relearning her past and at this point in the show, I bet she’s found out what Neal did for the only family he ever knew after being abandoned and is going to be conflicted on how to process it. His time in Neverland came from him giving himself up to the Shadow instead of letting it take her brothers and Emma all ready knows that he was gone for a long time and lost hope while he was stuck there. That’s a lot to take in about a man you always thought the worst about and hopefully it cracks a down one of her walls for them to really talk about things soon. I’m hoping anyway.

Yes, good point. Emma seems to be taking a lot in. Not only does she realize Neal is a hero to Wendy, but she’s realizing now what PP truly wants to do with her and Neal’s son: trade Henry’s life for PP’s own immortality. Emma is being hit with a lot all at once. She’s going to need Neal’s strength and steadfastness to help save their son, together, which he’ll lend her.

I was just listening to “I Choose You” by Sara Bareilles, whose lyrics make me daydream about Neal and Emma one day resolving their misconception about each other and choosing to work past their past mistakes to choose one another anew.

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[killianhookfan]

First off – I COME IN PEACE

We had someone sail over to visit our CS ship to ask a few questions which was lovely and I actually have a question of my own. It isn’t necessary a SF question as much as a perspective question maybe??

Several of us over in CS land have made the comment that we LOVE Bae but as much as we want to love Neal we have just not been able to bond with him.

I, for one, was one of the people who was convinced from pretty early on that Henry’s father was going to be Bae so I was super excited when we found out he was! And I loved the Manhattan episode and MRJ just broke my heart with the way he did the whole “Is this my son?” scene.

And so then I was like, “Yay. Bae is back!!!” even though I had really liked the initial chemistry with Hook and Emma. But then it looked like they weren’t going to have Emma and Hook pursue a romantic relationship so it made sense to have Bae show up when he did.

So here’s my question. I was assuming that I was going to love Neal as much as I loved Bae. But I didn’t. When I try to figure out why I can’t bond with him it’s because I find him kind of “flat” or something. And it honestly has nothing to do with being in comparison to Hook, because like I said, I was assuming I was going to like him. So I have been trying to figure out why I find him “flat.” We have talked about this over on our CS ship as well and many of us think that he has been purposely written flat because we don’t think it is MRJ who is causing him to be flat. But since you are all happily sailing the SF ship you must not find him flat.

So do you feel like Neal gets the same caliber of writing and attention that the rest of the cast gets? And I am not talking about in comparison to Hook because I know there are a lot of people who feel like he gets way too much attention. If I were to completely take Hook off the show I still feel like Neal is flat compared to the other characters. I think everyone agrees something is odd with how ABC publicity leaves him out of the show synopsis and can’t seem to spell his name correctly. So that makes me wonder if he isn’t supposed to be considered one of the “important” characters?? But that doesn’t make sense considering how important Bae is to the entire curse and the entire show and the fact that MRJ is at all the publicity events.

My difficulty bonding with Neal actually started in Tallahassee. I didn’t find Emma and Neal’s relationship at all romantic or appealing (and again – it had nothing to do with Hook). But when we found out he was Bae I thought I would somehow come to love him because, well . . . he is Bae!

So I am just wondering, do you SF shippers see Neal being given just as much depth of character as the rest of the cast? Because I honestly feel like he doesn’t get much to work with and I don’t feel like he has been given much of an emotional connection to the other characters. And I have a very difficult time not separating Bae and Neal into two completely different people even though I don’t mean to. I didn’t have that problem with Rose playing young Cora and Barbara playing older Cora – I saw them as the same person regardless of which actress was on the screen. And even with Dr. Hopper, he’s still Jiminy Crickett. But I just can’t seem to keep continuity between MRJ and Dylan – they always feel like two completely different characters to me.

I would really like to enjoy Neal more as a character even if I do prefer Hook for Emma.

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

[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.

 

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

[killianhookfan]

By the way, my reason for asking the above is that I am both looking forward to and dreading the upcoming episode. I loved Bae, Wendy, and the Darlings. And I loved how much he wanted to go home to the Darlings when he was on Hook’s ship in NL. So I would expect Bae to be overcome with emotion at finding that Wendy has been held captive by PP for 100 years when they are reunited. So I am concerned that I am going to be let down by the reunion between Neal and Wendy. I am really hoping that they give Neal some good material to work with in this next episode.

[Slurpeez]

And so then I was like, “Yay. Bae is back!!!” even though I had really liked the initial chemistry with Hook and Emma. But then it looked like they weren’t going to have Emma and Hook pursue a romantic relationship so it made sense to have Bae show up when he did.

Thanks for posting. In response to this first point, I don’t think it would’ve made sense for Emma and Neal to pick up right where they left off, romantically speaking. There are too many unresolved issues and misconceptions for them to work through first. Plus, in typical TV drama fashion, the writers decided to give Neal a fake fiancé, yet another hurdle for Emma and Neal to work through. Yet, as Jane Espenson said in an interview: “Fiancees are like walls. They can be moved,” which is surly what happened when Tamara shot Neal and he sacrificed himself by going through the portal so that Henry wouldn’t have to grow up alone. Sending Neal to another land and having Emma and Hook hook-up are yet more hurdles to work through.

Yet, what couples on this show don’t have a lot to work through? Rumple turned Belle out of his castle when her kiss would’ve freed him from his curse, and they were separated for over 30 years since Belle was Regina’s prisoner. Then Belle got amnesia when Hook shot her, and then Rumple left her behind for NL. Yet, their love endures. David and Snow had to face Prince George’s threat for Snow to tell David she didn’t love him so that he’d marry Abigail, resulting in David’s broken heart and Snow drinking a potion to forget Charming. Plus, they were cursed for 28 years, had to deal with fake memories and and a fake fiancé. They found each other again when Emma broke the curse only for Emma and Snow to get sucked through a portal again, resulting in them being trapped across worlds. Every couple has obstacles to overcome.

So here’s my question. I was assuming that I was going to love Neal as much as I loved Bae. But I didn’t. When I try to figure out why I can’t bond with him it’s because I find him kind of “flat” or something. And it honestly has nothing to do with being in comparison to Hook, because like I said, I was assuming I was going to like him. So I have been trying to figure out why I find him “flat.” We have talked about this over on our CS ship as well and many of us think that he has been purposely written flat because we don’t think it is MRJ who is causing him to be flat. But since you are all happily sailing the SF ship you must not find him flat.

Firstly, MRJ is a fantastic actor, and if you’ve ever watched season 1 of True Blood, you’ll know what I mean, since he nailed his role. He studied a Cajun dialect and accent just to perfect that role. So, it certainly isn’t MRJ’s acting chops, which are top notch.

Secondly, Neal is Baelfire, just a grown-up version of him. In 2×21, we saw Neal sacrifice himself by letting go of Emma’s hand so that Henry wouldn’t have to grow up alone, which was a clear parallel to how young Baelfire scarified himself for the Darling family. His same self-sacrifice instinct is still predominant in Neal just as it was in Baelfire. He’s a man who is long-suffering and a survivor, too. The last time we saw young Bae was when he’d only first arrived in NL; we’ve yet to see a flashback of young Bae’s long time in a NL. We’ve caught glimpses of it, seeing Bae’s cave full of tally marks indicating days spent there, which Emma recognized he’d stopped counting because he’d lost hope. Neal told Rumple in 3×4 that he’d used to dream of his father coming looking for him, but then he’d wake up and realize it wasn’t going to happen. Yet, somehow, despite all of that, Bae found the fortitude to get off the island. He’s the only lost boy ever to have escaped, and even though PP said it was with his permission, we know now that PP is a liar. Neal may have found a way to really escape PP and his shadow by his own initiative.

Now, back to my point. Neal is a man who has to relive nightmares of his father releasing his hand and sending him to another realm, forcing Bae to become a street urchent in Victorian London, and later Neal had to steal to get by in 20th-century America. It’s remarkable that Neal is as well-adjusted as he is, and despite all of his abandonment issues, he hasn’t turned into a villain or a hardened criminal. He’s kept he same, pure heart, despite all the crap that life continues to throw at him. By the time we met Neal in “Tallhassee” Emma was the one person who had loved him in over a century. Imagine how hard it was for Neal to walk away from  her, from the dream of “Tallahassee” when he discovered that Emma was destined to break his father’s cruse, a curse which had been created to locate him. So while Neal is mainly criticized for this decision, Adam and Eddy confirmed in the official podcast for “Manhattan” that this not was done out of any malice, but rather, it was done out of love. Neal made the same decision that Charming and Snow made to send Emma to our world: they wanted to give Emma her best shot. And Neal realized that he’d be standing in the way of Emma fulfilling her destiny and saving her family if he selfishly kept her for himself. As both Mulan and Charming have said, sometimes love means sacrifice. Again, I see the same self-sacrifice tendency in Neal as I saw in young Baelfire, a desire to let Emma get home to her family ahead of his own hopes and dreams for forming a home with her, a home he’d been denied since he’d left the Darlings to save them.

That is why we SF shippers put so much stock into Emma meeting Wendy, because Wendy sees Neal as the same boy who saved her family all those years ago. By sharing the story of how Baelfire tried to save her brothers, Wendy will help to inform Emma about Neal’s true motives and what kind of a family man he truly is. Neal would do anything for Henry and Emma, as he did in 2×21 by falling through the portal, just as surely as Baelfire would’ve done anything to spare Wendy and her family from any harm of magic.

So do you feel like Neal gets the same caliber of writing and attention that the rest of the cast gets? And I am not talking about in comparison to Hook because I know there are a lot of people who feel like he gets way too much attention. If I were to completely take Hook off the show I still feel like Neal is flat compared to the other characters. I think everyone agrees something is odd with how ABC publicity leaves him out of the show synopsis and can’t seem to spell his name correctly. So that makes me wonder if he isn’t supposed to be considered one of the “important” characters?? But that doesn’t make sense considering how important Bae is to the entire curse and the entire show and the fact that MRJ is at all the publicity events.

While I find it annoying that ABC doesn’t promote Neal enough, I think it’s mostly because the marketing likes to give fangirls what the want. Yet, I don’t think Adam and Eddy have written Neal in a “flat way” because he is so integral to many characters: Rumple, Emma, Henry, Hook, and probably will be with Belle. I think that we need to see more of Neal’s own backstory after he got out of NL, and also after he left Emma. We need to know more about Neal to help in the continuity of his character to see how Baelfire grew into Neal. Neal has anything but an easy time. In fact, we Neal fans think of him as fate’s punching bag. Yet, Neal got his degree in the school of hard knocks. Even when fate deals him a rough hand, he tries to overcome it. He’s going to have to work hard to forgive his dad, but when he does, the payoff will be that much greater. The same goes for Neal having a lot to do to make up for being absentee to Henry (which wasn’t his choosing), and also he has many miles to go to try and resolve things with Emma. Yet, that doesn’t mean he won’t or can’t. It just means that like Emma must forgive her parents, so Neal must forgive his father. And when they do, they will be able to start to dismantle their misconceptions about each other and to learn the truth of what took them apart from each other so that they can begin to form new, hopefully positive conceptions of one another. Neal’s greatest regret in life was leaving Emma, and he must learn to believe in second chances, just as Emma must learn to take the hard road of revisiting her past in order to move forward. Emma said it’s easier just to burry her own emotions in the past, but then, that just means she’s not dealing with her past and not really moving forward. She’d just be standing still, with a closet full of skeletons. Likewise, Neal must deal with the skeletons in his closet by dealing with his own abandonment issues. Yet, when they do, both Emma and Neal will find the payoff is somehow worth the pain of revisiting painful memories. Because then they’ll truly be able to move on and set healthy patterns for Henry going forward.

My difficulty bonding with Neal actually started in Tallahassee. I didn’t find Emma and Neal’s relationship at all romantic or appealing (and again – it had nothing to do with Hook). But when we found out he was Bae I thought I would somehow come to love him because, well . . . he is Bae!

It’s a matter of personal preference. When “Tallhassee” first came out, Neal and Emma were open to interpretation in my mind. From what we’d seen, Neal and Emma were two young people on the run, sealing to survive, but still living outside the law. Emma became pregnant with Neal’s child and ended up in jail for assisting in a crime Neal had committed. That seemed like a really negative light to cast Neal in, so it’s understandable why many people didn’t take to him. Personally, I started out actually preferring Hook, but then after 2×9 when he told Emma he’d jab her with her sword and nearly killed Belle,  I stopped because I found that demeaning to women. Anyway, I just decided after that to be open-minded about Neal, figuring he could be Baelfire and that we didn’t have the full story yet. When I saw “Manhattan” I fell in love with the idea of Neal and Emma. It clicked for me, because I realized that Neal never wanted to leave Emma and that he’d never stopped loving her. I suddenly understood his side of the story. His leaving her was not done out of any malicious intent, as Emma had believed for 11 years. It was done to give Emma her best chance of getting home, of saving her family, which is the same choice Snow and David had made when Emma was just a baby. I started to love Neal as a prospect for Emma too, as I realized how much they still love each other, despite everything. By 2×21, when Emma and Neal declared their undying love and need for one another, I recognized that at being true love-love which doesn’t keep record of wrong but rejoices in the truth, endures all things, hopes all things, and a love that never fails.

So I am just wondering, do you SF shippers see Neal being given just as much depth of character as the rest of the cast? Because I honestly feel like he doesn’t get much to work with and I don’t feel like he has been given much of an emotional connection to the other characters. And I have a very difficult time not separating Bae and Neal into two completely different people even though I don’t mean to. I didn’t have that problem with Rose playing young Cora and Barbara playing older Cora – I saw them as the same person regardless of which actress was on the screen. And even with Dr. Hopper, he’s still Jiminy Crickett. But I just can’t seem to keep continuity between MRJ and Dylan – they always feel like two completely different characters to me.

I know that Neal has a long way to go in fighting for Emma and proving that he’s still the same Baelfire who tries to sacrifice for others. Yet, I have faith that as Neal reconciles with his Papa, more people will see that Neal really is Baelfire who only ever wanted his father and family to be whole.

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[RumplesGirl]

We were conditioned not to like Neal. Emma told MM in S1 that he was a bad man and Henry didn’t need to hear about his father. Then the show used classic “riff raff” clothing and tropes to reinforce this idea: the “wife beaters”, the hoodies, the rough accent. But what most people forget is that the first time we saw Nealfire, he was in a gorgeous 3piece suit. KFC actually has more to say about this than I do.

Nealfire is my second favorite character, after Rumple. I find him completely compelling. He is a tragic soul who has had nothing but misery for pretty much his whole life. He was abandoned and forced to give up his happy ending for the sake of people he did not know and also knowing that his father would come looking for him. I love every second he is on screen. The three min convo with Rumple in Manhattan remains my favorite scene of S2, beating out Rumbelle phone call and Rumbelle reunion (and coming from me, that should say something)

As to the writing Neal is a more reserved character because instinct scares him. His instinct is to run and that means he is like his papa, his biggest fear. Hook’s instincts are to be loud and brash and that’s part of his pirate makeup. As far as marketing goes, totally and completely different from writing. The marketing has a different job and a different agenda.

And I know that you said you’re not comparing him to Hook, but let’s face it: that is what happens.

Hook is, to me at least, I won’t speak for my ship: loud, brash, in your face, sexual. He’s the quaterback of the football team who knows that every girl wants to be with him and he relishes it. He uses his looks and his sexaulity to get he wants.

Neal is quiet and contemplative. He can’t make waves or noise because every time he’s tried to make wave, something bad happens to him: he falls down a bean hole, he gets taken by a shadow. He has to lay low. He’s the kid in the back of the class who no one ever gets to know because he doesn’t open up.

So these are big differences, for me. It’s easy to say that Hook is more compelling but I think that’s because he is more loud. He makes the bigger jokes. He makes the puns.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Slurpeez]

Nealfire is my second favorite character, after Rumple. I find him completely compelling. He is a tragic soul who has had nothing but misery for pretty much his whole life. He was abandoned and forced to give up his happy ending for the sake of people he did not know and also knowing that his father would come looking for him. I love every second he is on screen. The three min convo with Rumple in Manhattan remains my favorite scene of S2, beating out Rumbelle phone call and Rumbelle reunion (and coming from me, that should say something)

Yes, Neal and Emma are ranked neck and neck as my favorite characters to date. They both have so much pathos and depth as two orphans both searching for a home and yet torn asunder by a dark curse. I just want to take both of them and hug them deeply and then mediate for them so they can work out their issues to rediscover that everything they’ve ever wanted could be theirs if they just did the hard thing and opened up. Home is within their reach, if only they’d choose it. The title “Going Home” is giving me hope that they’ll start on this road to reconciliation in the not-so-distant future.

Hook is, to me at least, I won’t speak for my ship: loud, brash, in your face, sexual. He’s the quaterback of the football team who knows that every girl wants to be with him and he relishes it. He uses his looks and his sexaulity to get he wants. Neal is quiet and contemplative. He can’t make waves or noise because every time he’s tried to make wave, something bad happens to him: he falls down a bean hole, he gets taken by a shadow. He has to lay low. He’s the kid in the back of the class who no one ever gets to know because he doesn’t open up.

That’s such an excellent analogy! No wonder I prefer Neal over Hook. I never went for the jocks but always for the quite, soulful, albeit slightly nerdy types. 😀

"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy

[killianhookfan]

@RumplesGirl Good point about the clothes!! Never thought about that at all!! But now that you mention it, it’s totally true!! And even when we did see him in a suit when we first saw him all grown up, if I recall his suit wasn’t exactly designer quality or fit like Gold’s suits.

And I also think you are right about his kind of rougher accent, etc. I think that is actually what makes it kind of a stretch for me in believing that Bae and Neal are the same person – he just seems so different from what I would have expected him to be like as the grown up version of Bae.

Over at the CS ship we have mentioned the lack of backstory for Neal. I mean we keep learning about Bae but we really haven’t learned about the point that he became Neal yet so that is kind of a giant blank aside from Tallahassee so we don’t know why he seems so different. I think a lot of us wonder, are we going to get that information or not? Because the long I go without it the harder time I have bonding with Neal.

I totally get it is NOT MRJ which is why this is so bizarre to me. And, for me at least, it really isn’t a matter of Hook vs. Neal when it comes to bonding with Neal because I have the same difficulty with him and his relationship with Rumple – aside from Manhattan something just falls very flat to me and I don’t know why.

Maybe it is that they are purposely trying to make him very different from all the other characters (as you pointed out with his dress, accent, etc) to make the point that he has spent so much time in the real world?? Maybe that’s why I feel like he doesn’t fit in with the rest of the characters?? Because he DOESN’T fit in with them and isn’t really supposed to fit in with them??

I get the whole Tamara can’t really be counted as a real fiancé thing because she was put there as a plot device and not as a real love interest for Neal and I can deal with him not mourning her because it is after all a TV show and they don’t have unlimited time to try make things realistic.

As far as the details of his character I do think, as others have said, that it just comes down to personal preference on who you like Emma with.

I have big expectations of his reunion with Wendy and I am hoping I won’t be disappointed because honestly, I haven’t really been happy with how they have handled the Hook/Neal reunion. I feel like they haven’t even addressed the issues between Hook and Neal and have just made it all about Emma which was what I was NOT wanting to see.

It seems like there are a lot of “reunions” that Neal should be having that he can’t really have because there are all these other life-threatening issues going on at the same time that are taking a higher priority. And that’s a bummer to me because with how pivotal Bae has been to so many people’s lives those reunions should be epic – I mean they are hundreds of years in the making!!!

[RumplesGirl]

Over at the CS ship we have mentioned the lack of backstory for Neal. I mean we keep learning about Bae but we really haven’t learned about the point that he became Neal yet so that is kind of a giant blank aside from Tallahassee so we don’t know why he seems so different. I think a lot of us wonder, are we going to get that information or not? Because the long I go without it the harder time I have bonding with Neal.

But this was in large part to Neal being the mystery man of S2. They couldn’t give the backstory of Neal because they were building the mystery of just “who the heck is this guy?” and then when it was revealed that he was Baelfire it became all about Tamara working against our guys.

Maybe it is that they are purposely trying to make him very different from all the other characters (as you pointed out with his dress, accent, etc) to make the point that he has spent so much time in the real world?? Maybe that’s why I feel like he doesn’t fit in with the rest of the characters?? Because he DOESN’T fit in with them and isn’t really supposed to fit in with them??

He is very tied to our world. Thus his constant use of “It’s NEAL!” and not Bae. His old life was way to painful. He is a creature of this world but (sorry, but you ARE in the SF thread) just like Emma he can never sever his ties to the other life fully. The exist in both realms. They alone are the original stories being told.

 

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

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