Favourite legitimate couples

[MysteryKat25]

Forgot to add:

Phillip & Aurora who were also proven as TL because of the sleeping curse
Abigail & Frederick who, according to the official podcast are off together being happy much like…
Cinderella & Thomas

Again I love the idea of looking at just the actual ships on the show and not all the crackships people love (FrankenWolf anyone?) but I think we have to tread carefully.

Some I know do feel that SF is endgame but that doesn’t mean they’re a couple *right now*.

Conversely, the definition of “canon” is apparently up for debate. I agree within the show that anyone proven as TL is canon: IE: Snowing, RumBelle, Cinderella/Thomas, Phillip/Aurora. Not sure about the “will never change” aspect of the definition because some couples are canon in that they were together on the show for however long, though that may change (with the exception of anyone proven as TL).

Again, LOVE the idea and as a CaptainSwan person I am not upset that they’re not included (though I hope someday they will be eligible). Emma’s TL won’t be proven for some time and until then we’ll just have to wait. I do agree that SwanFire were “legitimately” a couple on the show because their history has shown us that. Wouldn’t argue that for a second.

I’m just not sure I’d narrow the list down to couples who are currently together & “legitimate” and only include these 3 because 1 doesn’t fit (YET, it did in the past but they’ve since gone their separate ways, lingering feelings aside) and a couple of others who have been forgotten about. (Again I don’t know that they’d get any votes, but they still technically are eligible to).

So the only slight I’m seeing here is actually for anybody who loves the side couples who have been proven as TL (and again I’m not sure how many votes Philora or Cinderella/Thomas would actually get). So it’s not really a slight to CS except that it’s once again saying something has been proven for Emma when it hasn’t but they have at least been shown as a couple in the past so I give it a *tiny* bit of leeway (especially because I accept your apology and never thought you were trying to kick CaptainSwan fans to the curb at all). I’m a bit surprised that some still don’t at least expect CS to happen or see it coming, but I do appreciate that many do love SF and want to see them get back together and that because they were once a couple, it comes across *right now* as being more “legitimate.”

Anything that puts ships up against each other is tough because it does require categorization or you get tons of ships involved with little to no basis for them to be there and it can be frustrating watching polls and knowing that a ship with a real chance is being beaten out by a ship where nothing has ever shown even the slightest possibility of being real so I do like the idea of taking a step back and looking only at what we’ve been shown. There are definitely more than 2 established, canon, TL couples though even though Snowing & RumBelle reign supreme – and with good reason ;))

[RumplesGirl]

Conversely, the definition of “canon” is apparently up for debate. I agree within the show that anyone proven as TL is canon: IE: Snowing, RumBelle, Cinderella/Thomas, Phillip/Aurora. Not sure about the “will never change” aspect of the definition because some couples are canon in that they were together on the show for however long, though that may change (with the exception of anyone proven as TL).

Re: the “will never change” bit, that is in reference to those proven to be TL. We do not have any kind of proof that Milah was Hook’s true love, for example. The only way to prove that is by breaking a curse. They are canon in the sense that they were together for a time period and have a story line, but they are not canon (in my brain) in the sense that Hook will not love again.
Again this is why–when I wrote this definition–I called it highly contentious and tried to make specific but said until A and E show us it, it’s not canon.

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

[PriceofMagic]

I did a series of Best Couple on Once polls during the hiatus before Lacey. Rumbelle won but CaptainSwan were a very close second.

I think its fair to say Once couples are divided into Major relationships and Minor Relationships. Any relationship that contains at least one main character would be considered major. For example:

Major Relationships- Rumbelle, Snowing, Swanfire and CaptainSwan will become major relationships depending on who Emma chooses.

Minor Relationships- Cinderella and Thomas, Frederick and Abigail, Nova and Dreamy

All magic comes with a price!

Keeper of Felix

[kfchimera]

There are all kinds of relationships between major and minor characters, and those are of all stages of development.
So I would divide it into:

Speculative Romantic Relationships (things we haven’t seen in the show but fans would like to see) and

Confirmed Romantic Relationships of Major or Minor Characters That are Curse Breakingly True
Snowing, Rumbelle, SleepingPhil …zzz, sorry, (yawn)….Lost my train of thought. Anyway, of those, I prefer Snowing as they are at a “mature” state of their relationship–the day to day life together in a committed relationship with daily woes like, how to sneak in some “us” time before the family gets in. Tacos anyone? Yet it still has the fancifulness of fairy tale romance to make it sweeter than the average depiction on say, a comedy show. I feel like Rumbelle still has a few things to work through. SleepingPhil….I’m too tired to talk about them.

“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

[angiebelle]

I have to admit that I’m genuinely confused as to why some of you don’t consider Swanfire to be one of the main relationships. They were both in denial the entire time Neal was back in the picture, and they each declared love for the other right before Neal fell through the portal. They are still in love. The only reason they aren’t still together at this point is because Emma thinks Neal is dead. I don’t mean to offend CSers- only expressing that I’m truly surprised.

In my mind, Snowing, RumBelle, and Swanfire are the 3 main romantic relationships that the show focuses on….although I do have a feeling we are heading into a Captain-Swan-Fire triangle in season 3 based on what A&E have said. Whether or not Swanfire end up together in the longrun, though, their relationship is still a big part of the overall story arc of the series.

[RumplesGirl]

I think it’s because even though they said I love you, and I am a Swanfire, I don’t think they would be together right this second. They have a lot of baggage to unpack before they can really be serious about being together long term. They are still in love with each other, I agree, but I don’t think it’s that simple.

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

[MysteryKat25]

@AngieBelle wrote:

They are still in love. The only reason they aren’t still together at this point is because Emma thinks Neal is dead. I don’t mean to offend CSers- only expressing that I’m truly surprised.

Whether or not Swanfire end up together in the longrun, though, their relationship is still a big part of the overall story arc of the series.

I appreciate that Angie & I don’t take offense to it at all.

I agree that their relationship is a very important part of the show – it accounts for why Emma is who she is today and affects every relationship she’s had since then.

I will argue the first point though. We know they still love each other. They have feelings left over after years of deep wounds. Emma’s every relationship since then has suffered because of it. She didn’t understand why she was left, just that the person she believed in most let her down. She has heard the reasons since then.

However, I can’t say for sure that they are currently IN love. Yes they said they loved each other but they didn’t say they were in love now, nor have they actually been a couple for the last 12 or so years.

In fact, up until the moment before Tamara shot him, Neal was still defending her, saying he loved her and needed her, even acknowledging that Emma was hurt by this. He chose Tamara until she was no longer an option – the moment he found out it was all a lie.

Regardless of how much he wished to return to Emma, he never chose to (much like Milah wanting to go back and get him every day but never doing it). In fact he chose the opposite – in Manhattan when she told him how much it hurt because she loved him, he never even said he loved her back then too. His attitude in that scene bothered me because he basically just asked her to leave after we knew he was distraught over giving her up in the first place. He asked her to go so that he wouldn’t have to deal with Rumple, and said that he would never have had anything to do with her if he had known she was from FTL.

This is all Emma has to go on: the man she loved, and trusted more than anyone betrayed her (though she now knows the reasons), chose not to come after her and fight for her to believe he had the best of intentions and that he always loved her, and chose to move on with someone else. We know that Neal knew when the curse would be broken, and that he was reminded of this by August shortly before August arrived in SB himself. It was a very short waiting period at that point, a few months if that, and he still fell for and planned a life with Tamara who he chose up until the end.

Emma is a very different person from the girl she was all those years ago and I would assume Neal is different too. Could they find their way back to each other? Yes. Do they love each other? Sure. We know he didn’t want to give her up and we know that she loved him and a part of her always will: he was her first love and the father of her son. But we also know that he has an issue with anything relating to FTL and magic & Emma’s life very much includes that at the moment. (I think this is lessened by his desire to be in Henry’s life, just saying it’s a big obstacle like all the rest).

Can I *definitively* say that without working out their issues and without getting to know each other as the people they are today (especially since Emma is strong and independent now and has a lot of walls up) that all of that will just melt away and they are 100% still IN love right now? I just don’t feel comfortable saying that at this point. With all the lies and the fact that Emma doesn’t really know the real Neal at all, they have a long way to go. I’m not sure if it can be real when the person you think you’re in love with doesn’t actually exist. Also not sure how much of a crash-course in Baelfire she’s had since then and they haven’t really talked and gotten to know each other much as the people they are now (a lot can change in over a decade – remembering feelings of a high school sweetheart can change when you spend a few minutes with them at a reunion).

If Neal hadn’t waited to tell Emma he loved her until he thought he was dying, AND until after the woman he was going to build a life with was no longer an option, then perhaps I would feel differently. If Tamara had never been in the picture and the residual feelings were just as obvious and he wasn’t making Emma feel like a 2nd choice? I’d feel TONS better about it. But the fact remains that he did that.

I’m trying to look at this purely from an Emma standpoint: they haven’t been together in years, she went to jail for his crimes, he explained why but then moved on and defended this person he claimed to love and need so much…and not only was it someone that was replacing Emma in his life, it’s also the person who tried to kill him, send him through a portal, and kidnap their son to take him to Neverland and hand him over to PP. If I were Emma, I’d be even MORE hurt about what just happened than about the earlier stuff which is explained away under the “for the greater good” clause. Emma is very much a person who fights for what she loves (in fact, she fought for him to stay with her and ended up in jail because she didn’t want to let him leave her all alone when he ran off to Canada).

So when Neal does come back, they MAY be able to work through things and get past it. I’m not saying it absolutely won’t happen and be endgame just like I am acknowledging that they do have a very important relationship in the show. What I am saying is that I can’t buy that they are “in love” right now because that just makes Emma look like a cheap 2nd choice – she always should have been 1st and was until he chose to defend Tamara and insist on marrying her and bringing her to SB etc etc, rubbing Emma’s face in his new relationship. He can say he always loved her but he didn’t act like that. Not only does she have to buy that and forgive it for all the time they were apart. She now has to believe that, knowing he chose Tamara in front of her (and of all people too).

If they’re reunited and she just falls into his arms and wipes everything under the rug and they’re just madly in love I’d feel cheated out of their redemption story because it is unrealistic to think that after all of that pain and torment Emma has been through because of Neal, and now directly because of his fiancee, that she’s sitting there thinking “I’m so in love with this guy” right now. Was she? Yes. Can she be again? Possibly. Is she right this very second? If she is it’s only because she thinks he’s dead and it has made her temporarily forget all of the other stuff and remember what it was like to be young and in love with him…but she isn’t that teenage girl anymore.

So that is why I take issue with them being included on such a short list of couples when other proven TL couples aren’t on the list. I take no issue with CS being excluded (for now) and others that haven’t been shown as couples either. I just think that if we’re going to narrow it down to current couples, we can’t include one who 2 mins before he thought he was going to die, was still defending his fiancee. So the way I see it is that they haven’t actually been a couple for ~12 years. Can that change when he gets back? Yes. Immediately? No.

I hope I haven’t offended anybody. I’m sure it will rub SF fans the wrong way. I’m just attempting to explain why I personally don’t feel like they should currently be included in a shortlist of couples who are currently couples / have been proven as TL. I’m not excluding their importance or any possibility for the future.

Ultimately I’d like to see Emma happy and have her make a choice as she is very big on that. So I don’t take offense to the CS comment other than I’d like to think that if CS does happen it won’t simply be that “well she thought Neal was dead” – there’s so much more potential there that it would be a slap in the face to any CS fan were that to be the case. The idea is kinda sickening actually, that the only reason someone else has a shot is because he’s “dead” when there are plenty of other reasons that Emma could choose to look at, but I understand that her residual feelings and not having tons of closure make it difficult for her to move on at all, where thinking he’s dead may help her do that. I just don’t see it as the only reason she would ever go for someone who isn’t him after what she’s been through.

As it stands right now, I think seeing Neal again has given Emma some closure on the PAST issues – she’s heard that Pinocchio was at fault, she’s heard him say that he loves her and regretted it every day, but she hasn’t SEEN that from him in present day yet. I’d love for him to actually fight to get back to her for once and show that he’s learned from his mistakes. Do I think she will get closer to Hook right now on their quest to save Henry? Yes, but that is because the focus is on saving Henry.

Any trust that is built up there will definitely fuel the triangle and eventually Emma will have to choose, but I don’t think it’ll just be because Neal is “dead”. After all she met Hook before Neal came back into her life and they’re already kindred spirits. If she were just going to NL now and meeting Hook there I’d say there’s a point. But she wanted to trust Hook when they were up the beanstalk and was too afraid to trust her instincts because of her past with Neal. It didn’t stop her from starting something with Graham, nor did it stop her from bonding with Hook along the way to the point where she’s the only one that can get to him and he already reads her like an open book.

Hence a triangle is born.

I hope I haven’t offended anyone (especially Angie since she had such a lovely comment!) – I’m simply disagreeing on some of the finer points because there are a lot of other reasons that they’re not currently together right now. If Tamara hadn’t sent Neal through a portal I don’t think they’d be together right now either. They’d be looking for Henry together yes, but he JUST broke up with Tamara (or rather, she just informed him that their love was all a lie). If Emma were in a relationship with him right this moment I’d be rather disappointed in her because I love her character and she’s better than that & deserves better than to be treated that way.

I hope that answered some of the questions about why it’s such a surprise that CS fans would see it that way. While I have a preference I’m open to whatever they throw at us and I try my best to look at it objectively. There would be no point in holding out hope for a couple (and getting lots of hate for it) if it wasn’t at least mildly realistic and if SF is ever proven to me then I’ll have to take CS off the table and just reminisce about the missed potential – just as I’m sure any SF would have to do if the reverse happens.

To each their own. I love my Oncer friends even when we don’t agree and I hope that I was able to answer that question in as nice a way as possible without bashing or spewing hatred. I like Neal. He’s growing on me and I certainly have hope for him in the future. Not sure I’m ready to buy into his relationship with Emma because they have a lot of baggage, but my issues with Neal only relate to his relationship with Emma. I adore young Bae and have hope for Neal in the future so please don’t take this as bashing. I love everyone (ok, minus GOAT) and want them all to find happiness, truly!

Keeper of Hook's Trenchcoat.

[angiebelle]

Yes, of course they have baggage to work through- Rumple and Belle don’t exactly have it easy either. That’s what makes them interesting. 🙂 Only Snow and Charming are actually a married couple.

I think *Tamara* was the 2nd choice. Neal didn’t think Emma was an option any longer…he thought she would never forgive him and was trying to move on. Emma was also trying very hard to convince him that she had moved on herself.

You are right, though- I shouldn’t have talked definitively. We don’t know for sure that they would have been back together, although I’d like to think that had Neal not fallen through the portal, they would have tried to make it work.

I don’t really see CS myself…I see a connection between them as kindred spirits, but not a romantic one. I’ll admit though that some of that may be my own bias. I spent most of season 2 not caring for Hook’s character at all. He has only just started to grow on me in the season finale when we saw him finally take a step in the right direction towards being empathetic. If we continue to see that side of him, I’ll be far more open to a CS relationship. I’m not thrilled with the idea, but if the show decides to take that direction, I’ll go along for the ride.

(See, everyone? It IS entirely possible to have a discussion on opposing ships without attacking each other and being disrespectful!)

[Phee]

@MysteryKat25 wrote:

However, I can’t say for sure that they are currently IN love. Yes they said they loved each other but they didn’t say they were in love now, nor have they actually been a couple for the last 12 or so years.

In fact, up until the moment before Tamara shot him, Neal was still defending her, saying he loved her and needed her, even acknowledging that Emma was hurt by this. He chose Tamara until she was no longer an option – the moment he found out it was all a lie.

Their situation and Nealfire’s emotions are so much more complex than that.

When they were in Manhattan, he was nervous and unsure and feeling like he had to push Emma away because he’d gotten himself into the Tamara situation and didn’t know how to deal. He hooked up with Tamara to distract himself from the possibility of trying again with Emma, and potentially hurting her all over again, because Nealfire is a compassionate person who doesn’t like to hurt people. Tamara was the easy option, until suddenly Emma was right in front of him and from that moment nothing was easy and it was doing his head in.

Then in SB, he had to remain pro-Tamara because she was his fiancee, and up until she shot him he had no proof that she was evil, so even if his feelings were conflicted between the two of them, Tamara had done nothing wrong that warranted being hurt and rejected by him. He’d led her on, believing they were in love and were gonna be married, and because Nealfire is anything but heartless, he couldn’t in good conscience just drop her like a hot potato to go to Emma. He was the one who had created that situation, where he was suddenly stuck between his fiancee and his ex…a situation he’d gotten himself into because he’d been trying to run away from hurting a woman again…and now it was inevitable that he was gonna hurt one…either Tamara, or Emma. He shouldn’t have gotten involved with Tamara in the first place. In the back of his mind, he’d always known that, but his poor choice to allow it to happen anyway had led to this incredibly awkward situation and he was kicking himself for it.

When Tamara was proven as being bad, when she attempted to murder him, he no longer had to make a choice to not hurt one of them, he was free to finally just be honest and admit what he felt for Emma.

All of that is why he’d held back from her up until that moment. Why he’d tried to diffuse any situation where his feelings for Emma might have been apparent. Tried to be evasive. He wasn’t doing it to be cruel to her, he had to put her to the test, had to suss out how she felt about him all these years later. We know for a fact that he was wary of seeing her again because he didn’t think she could forgive him.

Put yourself in his position, with all the mixed emotions running through his head, wanting to be able to just reach out and touch her for the first time in a decade, but not knowing if she’d be receptive or horrified. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, or feel obligated. He didn’t want to be too full on and ruin any faint shred of a chance they might have if he made the wrong move. He knew how he felt, and had to find out how Emma felt before he went ahead and broke Tamara’s heart. He had to honour his commitment to Tamara…he’d promised her a family, someone to belong with…and he knows from personal experience what it feels like to have the promise of that and to have it ripped away…it happened with his parents, and it also happened with the Darlings…so he didn’t relish having to do it to Tamara, and if he was going to, he had to be sure that it would be for the best, he had to know where Emma stood, he had to test her, he had to have awkward conversations. It was anything but a straightforward situation where he could just say to Emma, “So, you say the word and my fiancee is history.” The fact that he was so conflicted shows his depth of emotion, not just towards Emma, but towards people as a general rule, and that makes me love him all the more.

Also, in the midst of all of those relationship related conflicting emotions, he had the burden of not wanting to believe that he’d been duped if Emma was right and Tamara was playing him. Back in the day, Hook had taken him in and been his friend, and they were getting along pretty well until he discovered who Hook really was and his history with his mother. He felt used, he felt betrayed, and if Tamara was doing the same thing, he’d have to face that happening to him all over again, and I can completely understand why he’d have trouble letting himself evaluate the situation properly, because the possibility was heartbreaking.

It was only in that scene at the portal when all three of them dropped any sort of act or pretense that things finally got simple for him. Tamara showed her true colours, so now Nealfire and Emma were finally free to do the same, without having to worry about a 3rd party getting left out in the cold, hurt and heartbroken. And any hurt over having been duped by Tamara was far outweighed by the knowledge that Emma did indeed still love him.

Sorry if that was rant-y, not trying to get on anyone’s nerves. Everyone obviously interprets characters’ reactions differently, I’m just saying, this is the flipside to how CS shippers typically see the situation between SF, and if the CS perspective was represented in this thread, then the SF perspective should be too. Basically, Nealfire was a hot mess of conflicting emotions, and far from judging him for it, I just wanted to give him a hug and tell him that in the end it would somehow all work out and be OK.

[Phee]

PS. Nealfire wasn’t the only one in the SF relationship who was being evasive with his true feelings up until that final moment, and IMO it’s perfectly in character for Emma to only reveal her true feelings in a dire moment.

She didn’t express her maternal love for Henry until he was lying there apparently dying. Does that mean she wasn’t genuine when she expressed that love? She didn’t call Snow and Charming, “mom and dad” until that moment when they thought they were all gonna die. Does that mean she doesn’t have genuine love for them as her parents? The situation wherein she admitted her love for Nealfire is the same. So if her feelings in the other two instances were genuine, (and I’d say it’s probably universally believed that they were), then it stands to reason that her feelings of love for Nealfire are also genuine.

[Author]

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