Emma + Baelfire = Swanfire

[heatherc1275]

Glad I’m not the only one still emotionally wrecked from last night’s episode! After an emotional night at youth group, this insanely emo episode of OUAT, Revenge’s crazy wedding (which was massive WTH all over the place), and then getting only four hours of sleep last night, I’m definitely not in the best frame of mind today. Is 9:34 AM too early for a drink???! 😮

#HopeforSwanFire

 

[RumplesGirl]

God, he just lost everyone all at once, didn’t he. Father, creepy grandfather, son, and the woman he loves, all in the space of a few moments. That poor bugger! Yet he managed to keep it together enough to put on a brave face for her, and for Henry. He’s so resilient and brave, I can’t even!!!

I love the way he just had his arm around Henry the whole time. Last few moments, trying to be a father until the end.

Glad I’m not the only one still emotionally wrecked from last night’s episode! After an emotional night at youth group, this insanely emo episode of OUAT, Revenge’s crazy wedding (which was massive WTH all over the place), and then getting only four hours of sleep last night, I’m definitely not in the best frame of mind today. Is 9:34 AM too early for a drink???! #HopeforSwanFire

LOL. Yeah I didn’t sleep much.

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

[Slurpeez]

As for the promo, yay for the dreamcatcher. Love the idea that it could act as a type of tailsman/emotional touchstone for Emma. And going on that last scene and the swift kick to Hook’s special area, I’m probably not the only one who get’s a perverse sense of joy and entertainment of the idea of Hook running around New York harassing Emma and her knocking him back at every opportunity

It’s actually quite funny to think that the circumstances in which Hook shows up are so awkward. He has to become a stalker to Emma, who is now cursed to forget everything she learned about Neal in “Manhattan” and to forget all of the scummy things Hook ever did to her. As unintuitive as it may sound, the writers have given SF fans a gift by not only making CS come first, but also by making it happen when Emma is not in her right mind. She can’t remember anything about the fact that Hook left for her dead in the Enchanted Forest and while believing Neal had no good reason to let Emma go to jail. In other words, the only way Hook even has a shot with Emma is by wiping her new memories of Neal which showed why he left her. In my estimation, CS would never get off the ground as long as Neal were in the picture. Emma and Hook have shared a kiss, but only when Emma thought Neal was dead. By making Emma think of Neal as the loser who left her for selfish reasons, the writers are effectively taking away Emma’s newfound understanding and empathy with Neal. They are also taking away Henry’s special relationship with his father. It’s painful, but also shows that Hook is Emma second choice, not her first.

Also, I laughed out loud when Emma kneed Hook in the gonads! It was seriously a funny way to end the winter finale. And while CS fans are quick to draw parallels to Snow and Belle not remembering their respective men, I have to wonder if the writers just threw in the forced CS kiss to pacify the loud fan base. Also, I still think Emma, who embodies true love, should have had her memories jolted when Hook kissed her, not because they’re true love, but because Emma embodies true love. Yes, she doesn’t remember him or believe she’s the savior, but that shouldn’t matter to someone as inherently powerful as Emma. She didn’t even have to try to awaken Graham; she just did it even before she accepted her true identity or believed in magic in S1 . The CS kiss not working at the end of 3×11 doesn’t necessarily mean Hook’s kiss would’ve worked under different circumstances (like he gets Emma to fall in love with him). It could just mean that Hook and Emma are in fact not true love.

I now am fixated on the idea that it’s Emma’s talisman which will awaken her. It would be a direct parallel to 2×22 when Belle’s talisman, her chipped cup, awakened her. The writers are being oh so clever by allowing CS to think the parallel is Snow and Charming in 1×16 when Charming had to try and get Snow to remember him. Yet perhaps the real parallel isn’t the CS kiss not working, but rather, the fact that it’s Emma’s talisman, her SF dreamcatcher, which connects her to her real identity, just as it was Belle’s chipped cup, representative of Rumbelle, which stirred her real memories. There were so many other Rumbelle parallels like Belle saying to Rumple she would see him again being compared to Neal saying he would see Emma and Henry again that I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how the writers have crafted it to be.

"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]

Also, I laughed out loud when Emma kneed Hook in the gonads! It was seriously a funny way to end the winter finale.

I said this last night in the chat but it was a nice comic moment to relieve the tension from ALL THE THINGS THAT JUST HAPPENED.

Also, I still think Emma, who embodies true love, should have had her memories jolted when Hook kissed her, not because they’re true love, but because Emma embodies true love. Yes, she doesn’t remember him or believe she’s the savior, buy that shouldn’t matter to someone as inherently powerful as Emma. She didn’t even have to try to awaken Graham; she just did it even before she accepted her true identity or believed in magic in S1

Excellent point

There were so many other Rumbelle parallels like Belle saying to Rumple she would see him again being compared to Neal saying he would see Emma and Henry again that I wouldn’t be surprised if this is how the writers have crafted it to be

:'(

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

[tiara_rose]

Rumple is a shipper of Swanfire, so I Swanfire rules. The Stiltskin deserves their Happy Endings.

Heros don't get their Happy Ending!

[heatherc1275]

I am still so emotionally spent over last night that I am completely and totally useless at work today. Seriously, I haven’t accomplished anything of value yet and it’s all ready noon, LOL 😆

FYI: There were actually some nice SwanFire comments in a few of the OUAT reviews I read this morning and that surprised me since normally they’re mainly CS related so maybe we’re not totally alone out there guys! =) #HopeforSwanFire

 

#MoreBOOMLessGloom

[RumplesGirl]

I’m so emotionally spent too. I can’t bring myself to go into the CS thread and check to make sure everyone is spoiler-ing their stuff. I don’t wanna read it. (free pass day over there…don’t tell on me).

I do believe that this isn’t over yet, to quote Neal. And we’re all gonna have to wait for 312 to just how this all plays out but I think we’re gonna have to hunker down here for a bit.

#HopeForSwanFire

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

[Slurpeez]

Phee wrote: Maybe I’m just being naive, but I’m really not convinced that they’re actually gonna end up being an actual relationship. I mean, if they’re gonna end up back in SB, then Emma has to remember, right? Whether it’s the potion, or seeing the dreamcatcher, Hook WILL get Emma to remember somehow. And it may well happen in 312, because that shot in the promo can only be from 312 or 313, because it’s all they’ve shot, and as far as we know, they were only shooting NYC stuff for 312. So, Hook’s gonna spend time around her and Henry, observing how they get along with fake memories and no Neal, and then he’ll likely also be there when they both remember, and Neal is gonna be one of the first things that both of them remember, and then it’s gonna smack Hook in the face that not only does Neal love Emma, but she loves him right back, (he’s been cocky thus far because he doesn’t think Emma would want Neal back), and though he’s made a comment about “doing it for the boy”, he’s gonna be smacked in the face by exactly how much Henry’s dad means to him.Hook’s gonna witness that single parent family, which he didn’t get to see that other time, because Milah left with him, and he never saw what the single parent family left behind was like. But this time he can’t ignore it, can’t ignore the emotions involved for everyone, can’t ignore how his actions would affect them all if he insists of pursuing Emma.

Dare to dream! That is something I’d love to see for Hook: real character growth. I want to see him really choose to put his son figure’s happiness ahead of his own, just as Rumple and Regina sacrificed their own happy ending with their respective sons, Neal and Henry. There was this reoccurring theme in 3×11 “villains don’t get happy endings.” Yet, we saw that Rumple and Regina found their redemption, though a huge personal costs to themselves by letting go of their hope for a happy ending with their sons, Neal and Henry, respectively. And Hook? Well, some CS fans are arguing that he found his redemption, but has he experienced real personal sacrifice yet? I’d argue no. Even though Hook had to go an entire year of separation from Emma, he still carried the hope that she’d somehow feel the same way about him (um dude, she’s cursed). Anyway, the kiss didn’t work and Hook got kneed where the sun doesn’t shine. Perhaps Hook’s true redemption has yet to occur yet, in the sense that he’s yet to experience real personal sacrifice. Could Hook’s sacrifice be to let Neal have a real second chance with Emma, not because Hook expects Neal to fail, but because he actually wishes his quasi-step-son real happiness with Emma and Henry, as Rumple did?

Phee wrote: And if he’s been hanging out with Neal for a year, he’s probably got a new perspective on just how much Emma means to him as well. It seem that Emma, Hook and Henry, are gonna drive back to SB, and you know what I’d love, a scene where Henry’s fallen asleep in the back seat, and Emma tells Hook the story of where the Bug comes from, and when he realises that and how she kept it because of her love for Neal, that could impact him too. I dunno, like I said, maybe I’m being naive. but they’ve shown him try with the kiss at the door, and seemingly admit defeat, and he’s gonna be helping Emma and Henry to remember Neal, and how can that NOT affect him? And maybe I’m also naive to hope for that sort of character development from Hook so soon, but it just seems like a great situation where he ends up getting a reality check, and he LEGITIMATELY backs off after the NYC stuff.

I wonder too if Hook’s words were admitting that he was hoping Emma and he would be together in the end but realizing that is not going to happen. Yet, I still think Hook is going to try to woo Emma while she has no memory of him, which could actually be to Hook’s advantage, since then he’s have eliminated his competition with Neal since Emma has forgotten the real reason Neal let her go was to save her family. Yet, I think Hook will probably succeed in helping stir Emma’s memories (e.g. perhaps by showing her Neal’s dreamcatcher), in which case, you could be right. Maybe Hook is there as a favor to Neal to get Emma to save him, along with her parents? Perhaps over the course of a year, they’ve discovered their friendship means more than anything. I’d love to see this be the case!

"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

[kfchimera]

I felt frustrated with the episode and it was further fueled by my internet dying out.  Even getting a $14 discount is not cheering me up over it, because the feeling are now somewhat solidified in my mind, both for the show and the quality of my internet company.  Since we cancelled cable our service has been consistently intermittent.  I cynically feel they are doing this to keep making us call them so they can try to upsell us (as they do EVERY time).

Ahem, rant aside, I am getting the same taste I had with Heroes Season 3.  It felt like a cheap device to hit a reset button on all the development, combined with a giant sidestep for a lot of mythology questions in the show.

What happened to the Darlings?  They are hundreds of years out of time but were not (Adam said) from a fictional land.  They met Emma.  Would they not during an entire year call or write or try to find out a thing about how Neal was doing?  Wendy spent hundreds of years in a cage for Bae.  They suffered enough, I know but it bothers me as a loophole.   Not even a postcard (even August “selfish puppet” Booth did that much)?

I also disliked the flashbacks as unnecessary rather than present day development of those same points, which would have been more meaningful.  Why did we need to see Smee, only to make it seem confusing as if Hook and Smee just got off the boat, even though we know Tink arrived hundreds of years later timeline wise?

Then we already knew Hook’s driving motives about his love or revenge–we saw him almost die for Milah, and we saw him willing to die for his revenge.  So all we learned there was that Tink knew that about him, and that could have come up in a present day scene, with Neal overhearing it.  Then Neal could have pulled Hook aside, and it would have been a bonding moment between them.  That Neal, even though he loves Emma and always will, wants her to be happy and if Hook loves her that deeply, he just wants Hook to know that either way, Henry is going to have Neal in his life.

That “the sake of the boy” doesn’t mean anything far as who Emma’s romances will be, because in the 21st century, we’ve worked out things like visitation–I don’t know, they could write better dialog on the point.  I just feel it could have reinforced the idea that if CS is what is to happen, that on some level, Neal and Hook actually respect and care about each other, as well as Emma enough that all three can manage to see past the awkward twists of relationships in the past.  So if they don’t mind then I don’t mind, because it is no longer this character “winning” by making the others unhappy–it is that on some level, they all want each other to be happy –just as with Regina loving Henry, despite all the messed up things that happened, she is sort of at peace and giving Emma this gift of forgetting all the pain, rather than wanting her to be miserable or even in the least happy about Snow being separated from her daughter again.  That was character growth for Regina, and wonderful to see, if painful, but the ONLY character who I felt really had that.

Rumple’s flashback was pointless too–just a fan service Skin Deep call-back–I would (as not a very intense Rumbeller at all, just someone who roots for them) have preferred a present day scene of Belle telling Rumple she’s worried about leaving him alone with Pan–not because he might do something evil but because he might not be able to do it.  It just would have been interesting to think she’s worried about him loving someone who doesn’t deserve it because they don’t love him in return  (as he has a history of doing, with Milah and Cora).

Then Rumple saying to her, even if something happens, he’s already had his happy ending because he has the love of people and he knows he is deserving of it.  Then Belle saying something about wanting a happy  ever after–and he could say even if he dies, he knows she will be there for his son.  I don’t know, just something connecting the dots between the fact Rumple wanted to be a good father, but even more, than having the experience of it for himself, that it was about making sure his child would have someone to love HIM–the same thing Neal did for Henry when letting go of Emma I suppose.    It would mean so much for Belle to know Rumple’s thinking of her as family to his son, and counting on her to “look after” Neal (even though yes, he’s older than her tehcnicallly and its funny).  So to look after each other and be family–it just would have been more romantic to me than the Skin Deep call-back of Belle seeing through Rumple’s brusque manner. Then Belle could have said to Rumple he’s being pessimistic, the prophecy is past.

Instead, I just felt annoyed with the scene where she falls down and no one pays attention to her in her grief, not even Neal.  He’s in shock, a mix of pride that his father conquered the selfish-self-preservation, and disbelief that he’s losing him so fast.   I understand that, but it was the writers once again not connecting dots.

Now reading through all the observations I realize there were more SF things than I thought the first time round, but it still read very much ‘CS is on deck” to me, which I knew they wouldn’t tilt the score all the way to one ship or the other.   They want to have people return in the spring, but I almost felt they’d gone so far CS that it was whiplash from the episode before.

I agree that it means a lot that Emma went to NY, that the song Charley’s Girl is playing as that is the song Neal played on his ipod in his first scene.  I also think it is true that Neal might think the reason Emma did not show at lunch was Hook, and therefore agree to let Hook wake Emma.  Yet it still strikes me as potentially letting these writers end-run around the messy history of Hook without the same for Neal.  Now Emma will get to know Hook as “an old love fighting to free her memories”, but she will have lost all the positive things she learned about Neal who is reset to “that jerk who left me holding stolen property”.

Now we know that the writers intended to revisit the reasons Neal left and how Emma ended up in jail.  I thought it would involve Pan being part of the reason he had to steer clear, blood-magic and all, plus the potential that Emma’s death could break the curse–seems anti-climactic to get into now, so doubt they will, so if it comes up, I think it will because of Emma’s memory reset.  So maybe Neal will get a second chance to explain why he left, how he never stopped loving her, but was afraid of being rejected, but how he almost died and knew they still loved each other, that they would be together–and meanwhile, far as Hook, since Happy endings aren’t what we think, his isn’t either as he thought, happiness with Emma, but something else yet to be revealed. .

 

 

 

“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

[Slurpeez]

Here is some food for thought from Schmacky on Tumblr:

Last season Emma and Neal were separated.

But they said I love you to one another.

This time they’re separated again.

But he said this isn’t over and he’ll see them again. And we see that Emma chose to live in New York of all places. Why not Boston? Why New York? A city we know only had relation to one other character… Neal. And there’s also Charley’s Girl playing. A song that has no relation to any other character but… Neal.

They always separate the Big Endgame Couple. Standard television writing 101, man. And each time Emma is separated from him, Hook is there to squirm his way in. Meaning, he is the obstacle.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this ship is angsty and is not meant for a weak-hearted shipper. So do not worry people. This separation, the fact that it’s not Neal at Emma’s door is once again… a good thing.

But you know what Separation also means? Reunions! We get yet another Emma and Neal reunion. Another Neal and Henry reunion! Yay!

#HopeforSwanfire!

"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

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