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@MysteryKat25 wrote:
I was asked about my issues with it not too long ago and after giving them saw that the person asking the questions told someone that CSers only like it cause we think Colin is hotter than MRJ
Well for the record, SwanFire may be my endgame, but I’m in lust with Colin, not MRJ, so there goes that theory. 😉
We’re all entitled to our opinions and preferences but nothing is set in stone yet and as long as it is still up for debate, it should be up for *civil* debate as well.
We are all Oncers and want our favorite characters to be happy! We just have different ideas of how to get them to that point, that’s all.
Very true!
I will agree that Emma does wait til the last second to say how she feels and I’m not discounting those instances and I’m not saying she doesn’t have feelings for Neal. They share a past and a son and he has clearly affected the rest of her life. The only question I have about that declaration between them is how much of it is real and how much of it is the idea of it based on what it used to be. After such a long time, either could be true. H&K keep reminding us that they do have feelings for one another, but it is entirely possible to love someone without being in love with them, especially when lots of time has passed. I understand why some celebrate Emma saying ILY at the portal and others aren’t phased by it because she does love him but it could be closure and not that she’s in love with him and will never love again. Everyone has a different filter and I understand both arguments as she does love him (& H&K remind us of this a lot).
Even as a SF shipper, I don’t believe that that ILY was cut and dried. I just happen to have faith that their initial falling in love all those years ago is enough of a basis for them to build on. It’s not really either of their fault that their time together was interrupted. They were in a bizarre, unique, magically influenced situation, it wasn’t just a standard breakup where someone in the relationship screws it up and it ends. Their relationship was manipulated by outside forces, (which I’m now thinking ties back to THO, (and therfore to PP’s plans to get Henry), because I think they’re the ones who sent August to break them up), so I can’t apply real life breakup rules to their situation. IRL, if a guy allows his girlfriend to go to jail for him, I’d think he was an A grade irredeemable douchebag, but this situation is entirely different IMO.
I look at it more as though they were put on pause, and only now is the time drawing near where they’ll be able to move forward again. They won’t be able to pick up directly where they left off, because they have baggage galore, but given the uniqueness of their situation and their breakup, I believe they’ll be able to reconcile what happened, understand that it was unavoidable, and finally fully explore the possibilites of their love, moving forward.
I’ll agree that Neal has a huge mixed bag of emotions and has put himself into a rotten place. He didn’t believe that Emma could forgive him and right when he was about to have a chance to try and fix things he chose to move on. Regardless of his reasons or lack of confidence, he didn’t choose to go after Emma and he didn’t say he loved her until after Tamara was an option so I feel like from EMMA’s point of view after that, he chose Tamara over her – against his real feelings but in that case the situation was bad for all three of them.
Emma absolutely would have felt like he was choosing Tamara over her. But I also believe that that whole time, part of her believed that he had to still feel something for her too, because she knew her own heart and how connected she still felt to him, so surely he must still feel something for her in return. And after all that intense hoping of her part, finally, “I love you.” If I were in her position, I wouldn’t be holding a grudge against him, I’d just be elated that the truth was finally out there.
I guess I’m mostly disappointed because he learned from Rumple’s mistakes but not Milah’s. He wants to be a better father to Henry because his wasn’t good, but he knew centuries ago that Milah regretted leaving him and never did anything about it. The fact that he did that to someone and chose not to do anything about it when he knows exactly how much it hurts grates me. He had the option, he was reminded of the option, and he chose to walk away.
In not going after her because he was afraid, he didn’t take into account her feelings and wonder how much damage he had done to her.
I think he undoubtedly knew that he’d damaged her, and feared that if they made contact again, it would only serve to damage her more, which is the last thing he wanted to have happen. Maybe when he found that pic of Milah back on Hook’s ship, it ripped that wound right open for him and hurt like hell as though it had only just happened, and he was trying to spare Emma that same pain. Easier to leave wounds like that scabbed over and in the past.
Speaking of children being separated from their parents and that meaning that they should be compassionate enough to not do that to other people…let’s not forget that Emma had no intention of reuniting Nealfire and Henry. She was 100% prepared to let Henry go on thinking that his father was dead, without even giving him the choice of getting to know him if he wanted to.
The fact that it took her finding him I think is what bugs her the most.
I also think it would have been particularly frustrating for her to find him like this, because she spent two years in Tallahassee, no doubt looking for him, and she never found him. But now THIS is how they run into each other again? Like, c’mon, are you serious?!
Which is what brings me back to the conversation in Manhattan where he did tell her what happened with Pinocchio but still wanted her to go and quickly so that Rumple wouldn’t find him. I suppose at this point he had already made up his mind about not going to find her and had chosen to move on and I commend him for sticking to that even though Tamara is EVIL, but he didn’t even confirm that he loved her too back then but just felt that it was the right thing to do, even when she told him how much it hurt because she loved him so much (and she was so obviously hurt and pouring out her heart about her feelings from back then and he never backed that up).
Again, I do appreciate that he was in a bad place and didn’t think he had a shot but it’s that lack of faith in them as a couple that is so infuriating to me.
Nealfire had had approximately 5 minutes to process what was going on at that point in time, so I can’t fault any brain meltdown he may have been experiencing during the conversation in the bar. Frankly I give him props for not having just been curled up in the corner, rocking back and forth, because that’s totally what I’d have been like. There was much stuttering and stammering from him right after Emma said she’d loved him. I imagine that his inner dialogue in that moment went something like, (except with every second word being an expletive): “Oh crap, she said the L word, it’s been so long since I heard her say that to me, I wanna say it back, because Lord knows I’ve never stopped loving her, but Tamara, I can’t go throwing around words like “love” with Emma and dredge all of that up when I’m supposed to be 100% committed to Tamara now, ohcrapohcrapohcraaaaap what do I say to that?!” and it came out like a feeble, “I… I was, um… I was… I was trying to help you.”
Not long after Emma left him there, when he’d had a few moments to actually collect his thoughts, he was able to man up and go after her, knowing full well that he’d also have to face his father, which was the absolute last thing he wanted to do, but he did it for her.
Other couples on the show have proven to us that they would do whatever it takes for the ones they love, where he continues to leave (or sacrifice himself in some way) absolutely everyone. It’s all he knows and he hasn’t had the best role models, but every time someone offers him a family, he ends up leaving it one way or another.
And considering that one of the few things he remembers about his father is him saying, “Everything that happens, happens by design, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Forces greater than us conspire to make it happen. Fate, destiny, whatever you want to call it,” maybe after all this time, he believes he’s doomed to always end up alone and it’s squeezed almost all of the hope out of him.
Emma has a hard time letting anyone in because she’s been abandoned and it took her a long time with Snowing but she got there so there’s definitely hope. I think one of the uphill climbs will be that she IS back around Snowing. She knows their story and saw them fight (and continue to fight) to be together no matter what. Charming’s “What’s 28 years when you have eternal love?” and “I will always find you” and watching her parents fight SO hard to be together makes anybody who hasn’t fought pale in comparison. Whether that’s fair or not doesn’t change the fact that that’s what she’s seeing in front of her. She’s surrounded by and is the product of TL and sees how it works and in some aspects, it’s the exact opposite of her relationship with Neal.
If 28 years is nothing when you have eternal love, then what’s 11 years? 😉 Seriously though, Snowing would have been separated under similar circumstances to what SwanFire were: Emma had to be the Saviour, there was no choice in the matter, in both cases, there had be a separation between people who loved each other in order for Emma to fulfill her destiny. Her parents were willing to suffer it, and Nealfire did suffer it. So if she can accept that her parents would have been strong enough to survive it if they’d had to go through with it, then why couldn’t the same apply to her and Nealfire?
This is why I’m so looking forward to seeing how SF deal with their issues, because on the one hand, it’s a valid point that he ran away from her instead of staying and fighting(*), but at the same time, what I’ve said above holds true. There is no black and white with these two and their relationship, there are all sorts of factors and points of view and decisions good and bad that need to be considered.
* “Fighting” can be defined in different ways. It can certainly mean that he should have told August to get stuffed, because he was gonna stand by Emma no matter what and no one and nothing would tear them apart. But it can also mean that he was willing to make the impossible decision to leave, because he was fighting for her to ultimately get back to her family.
David screwed up but got his Charming memories back right before leaving town. He could have sat there and said “well, Snow will never forgive me for the Kathryn/Abigail thing, better leave now” and instead chose to have *faith* and *trust* in their relationship and that they could overcome anything.
Well, I can’t personally draw a parallel between these two circumstances, just because the breaking of the curse and them all getting their memories back was such an exceptional circumstance. He and Snow had already been interacting for quite some time as David Nolan and MM, they’d been carrying on a romantic relationship, and suddenly he understood why they’d been drawn together, despite Kathryn and his desire to be a decent man. So of course he needed to see her again immediately, if not sooner. He needed to see his Snow, instead of seeing MM.
Emma witnessed all of this. She even says way back in 1×06 “It’s one thing to say that he wants you but it’s another to actually make a choice.”
If she’s big on people who make tough choices…well, Nealfire did that. Granted, his choice complicated her life greatly, but he did have the balls to make the impossible choice and follow through with it, for the greater good of everyone in SB.
Emma fights for those she loves, just like Charming does, and I think she’ll have a hard time accepting this so quickly with him saying that he was too afraid to try so just didn’t. That’s not how real, true love looks to her at this point in her life because she’s seen it and knows what it can be.
Emma hasn’t had anyone to fight for except herself for most of her life. Same could be said for Nealfire. They were fighting for each other when they first met, before it all went to crap. Emma has now become integrated into the SB community and her family, so now she has a bunch of people to fight for, and yes, she’ll get the job done no matter what, coz she’s the hero, and that’s how heroes roll.
Nealfire hasn’t been a part of this family for very long, he hasn’t had people to fight for for very long, but now that he does, and he’s in a desperate situation, this will be his real opportunity to prove how desperately he wants to fight to get back to her. If he manages to accomplish that, even though they’re currently separated in different worlds, that will show Emma that he’s here now, and he’s not backing away from her again.
Nealfire’s current situation may end up leaving him with a new perspective on what his father went through in the desperate search for a way to get from FTL to our world to find him. There are no easy ways out of FTL right now as far as we know, so Nealfire wanting to get back to Emma will be similar to Rumple wanting to get to Nealfire.
She’s had her moments of weakness and almost leaving (just like Charming and Hook and Neal) but the difference is that Charming got to the edge of town and Emma got to the edge of town and Hook had his ship almost out of sight but they all came back and fought for Snow and Henry and Hook came back to help save a town full of people who hated and betrayed him (on behalf of Emma and Bae). Neal knew when he could come back and fight for it when Emma would have her family back and everything would be alright and he chose not to – that is a stark difference for me.
Except he didn’t believe that “everything would be alright” if he just went back. Charming knew he was going back to Snow and all his other friends, finally remembering who they were. He was going back to something awesome. Hook knew the state of play in town, he knew who was there and how they all interacted. Yeah, he also knew he was potentially going to his death, and he was going to help people who hated him and that was a ballsy move, but the place and the situation wasn’t a foreign entity to him is what I’m saying. Nealfire would have been walking in blind, believing Emma would hate him and he’d also have to face her parents. For me, the “stark difference” is the situations themselves, not necessarily the reactions people had.
I’m not sure if she’s wired to understand people who walk away when they say they want something, especially knowing what it feels like to be abandoned. In fact I think it hurts her more because one of the things that really tied her with Neal is the fact that they were both abandoned and wanted to save each other from being alone. To have someone who knows what it feels like do that to her was excruciating and the last straw before her walls went up.
It absolutely would have felt like a huge slap in the face to her back then, for exactly that reason. But now she has more information about what happened and why. It’s not something she can instantly make sense of, but she’s now aware that it’s nowhere near as straightforward as she’d thought, so I don’t think she’ll judge him as harshly in the future as she may have in the past.
She’s seeing Neal side with Tamara on everything, even though she thinks he’s lying to her about never believing in her lying ability. If Emma truly thinks that Neal did believe in her ability, and she did call him out on that, then she is left with knowing he knows he should side with her and at least question it and is choosing to defend Tamara to the bitter end and ignore everything he ever knew or trusted of Emma. WE know that he didn’t really have a choice but this is all that Emma sees and that’s gotta hurt. So I didn’t really mean that Emma IS the second choice, but that she may feel like it even if she does believe he cared about her the whole time. His actions speak differently.
One of the things with the SF interactions in SB is that it all happened over a brief period of time. It felt like ages because of the schedule of eps airing, but in SB time it was, what, a couple of weeks max? A seriously complicated situation like the one they’ve suddenly have themselves thrust into takes longer than a week or two to resolve. Emotions were raw and minds were reeling on both sides. They needed time to get used to each other again and figure out where they each truly stood, and how to react to each other. They had not had that much time.
I realize there wasn’t a lot of time between finding out that Tamara was up to no good and the ILYs since the two events happened back to back thanks to the portal. I do however feel that it rushed everything and there wasn’t a lot of build up to that moment.
And from the perspective of a SF shipper, it had felt like an agonisingly long wait where we just wanted them to drop the obvious charades and denial and spit it out already. 😉
I didn’t see that coming and felt a lack of build up to make that moment really payoff and seem legitimate for the people they are today and not just the idea of what they once were. If anything it felt more like closure than the start of something, especially since they both basically acknowledged the idea he was about to die. It felt like they were finally BOTH admitting that they felt something for each other once and this was their goodbye, without having to address any of the issues along the way because they did genuinely have feelings and it was nice to finally hear him say that he felt that way too.
I think there’s a difference between, “last chance to say it” and “closure”. The way I saw that scene was, “I wish we had more time, but we only have time for this, I need you to know that I love you,” as opposed to, “Thanks for the memories.”
I’m sure it will be brought up to help them move forward when he returns because he’ll use that to point out she should go easier on him, like he did with the necklace (and we still haven’t seen one word about the car *shakes head*)
I really wish we’d at least got a reaction shot the first time he saw their Bug!!
Their relationship in the past was sweet, but I feel like they’re different people now and the Emma that we’ve gotten to know over the last couple of seasons isn’t the same girl she was when she was with Neal. At times I feel like Emma would be reverting when she’s so awesome as the person she is now.
It’s been a decade, and naturally, people grow and change over the course of a decade. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t still be together. Generally speaking, couples who are together for a long period of time change and grow together, and SF don’t have the benefit of that. They each need to rediscover who the other is now. But even couples who grow and change together never forget where and how their love began, and the emotion associated with that time and those memories doesn’t diminish. A couple that’s been married for 60 years and been through all sorts of ups and downs will still be able to tell you about the moment they met and knew it was true love back when they were 17 years old, even though they’re clearly different people now.
and that’s basically how I feel *currently* going back to Neal without much fuss would come across. It’s a sweet story if they can find their way back, I just need it to be realistic. The real world is not a fairy tale and Emma spent 99% of her life in the real world. Her life is not as cut & dried as some of the others are.
I hope there’s a whole mess of fuss. I don’t want SF to have a simple reunion and immediate happy ending. That would feel incredibly unrealistic. I want them to have to earn their relationship back.
The show has proven that Henry needs his entire dysfunctional family and contrary to some opinions, that Henry needs all of them including both Emma AND Regina. (I can’t stand the argument that they have to be together for Henry’s sake – be in love for being in love’s sake, not because Henry exists, that’s not healthy for anyone.
Adam tweeted just the other day that he doesn’t believe that SF should be together just for Henry’s sake, so I do hope that if they do end up together in the end, that people won’t hate it just because they put Henry’s parents back together. Clearly there is more to K&H’s thought process than that if Adam’s tweeting it.
As far as Regina goes, I think she’s currently a suspect choice to be a parental figure, but I believe that by show’s end, she’ll have proven herself worthy of being someone who can be a positive parental figure in Henry’s life.
So glad we can have these civil debates though.
It can be a bit nerve wracking to attempt civil debate on such topics, because people feel so passionately about their ships that it’s easy to get defensive.
The Snowing/Abigail triangle was obvious, the MAP triangle *should* be obvious as a TLK woke Aurora up etc. It seems odd to me that if we’re supposed to be rooting for SF to get back together and watch them overcome obstacles like the other “set in stone” couples that have also been in triangles, that they would put such a great option in there that has lots of potential and make people fall in love with the pairing only to ditch it because Neal’s “alive” – which frankly isn’t a reason – but since they like to throw curveballs I really just don’t know (and contrary to some opinions, nobody else knows either except for H&K).
Well you said yourself that standard FTL rules shouldn’t apply to Emma’s love life because she’s a product of living in our world. In our world, twu wuv isn’t always obviously destined, so I think it makes sense for them to have provided options.
Also, it keeps things interesting and provides for emotionally loaded and unpredictable storylines, and that makes for compelling TV that keeps people tuning in. 😉
[adrotate group="5"]I can forgive inconsistencies from the pilot, but Nealfire’s lines have become a serious pet peeve, which I hate, because I love me some Nealfire.
His face is so unfair! The eyes, and the smile and the everything! *sigh*
@MysteryKat25 wrote:
Apparently a group of girls gave him a little crocodile too, with a name tag on it saying Rumplestiltskin. People were trying to drag him away but he insisted on going through the crowd to thank them for the present and posed for a picture. He. Is. Wonderful!
He is a sweetheart! 😀
@RumplesGirl wrote:
I think that’s why A and E are calling them the Lost Ones instead of the Lost Boys, they are aging the entire myth so that they can cast older people.
Agreed. From a purely practical standpoint, if some of these characters, like Felix and PP in particular, are gonna be getting lots of action and screen time, the characters have to be old enough so that they can cast actors who are several years older, and able to work longer hours, and put in generally more dark and compelling performances. You couldn’t achieve that effectively with child actors.
Of the search for season three’s big bad, Kitsis says, “We have begun the process, but we have begun it secretly! We’re sneaky this way!”
Sneaky show creators are the sneakiest. 😉
@RumplesGirl wrote:
Crack theory!
We assume that RH taught Snow how to be huntress, what if RH also taught Charming, but at different times. Like Charming learned how to sword fight from RH then decided to go back home and then days later Snow found RH and learned from him. Talk about fate! Also it would make Charming one of RH’s Merry Men perhaps which would be fun to see!This would be so fun! If they’re gonna show his backstory during those years, and they also want to keep the focus on less characters next season, re-using a character they’ve already introduced would be ideal, instead of making up a bunch of new, previously unseen randoms to only appear in one ep.
It would also mean they’d be expanding on RH’s story a bit, so they might expand it a bit more while they’re at it, and use him to tell Tamara’s backstory too, and the theories about them being related could prove true. Surely they’ll have to give us some backstory on her, and as I just said above in relation to Charming, they can keep the show more tightly knit if they re-use a previously seen character, instead of introducing us to more randoms while telling a backstory.
And if they tie RH into Snow flashbacks as well, then even better, because then they’ve been able to expand on three character’s backstories, without having to bring in three separate bunches of random newbies.
@Betsypaige24 wrote:
It all sounds interesting, but does that mean only the JR characters are core…….including Hook? Not Belle or Bae?
Adam has tweeted since this event that there were only certain characters they were asked about, so those are the questions they had to answer, and they had to give a lot of rushed answers. He specifically said that just because those other characters weren’t mentioned in reports from this event, that does not indicate that they won’t have a major role to play.
@KFChimera wrote:
So here is my question–where HAVE they confirmed they intend to do a triangle? Or is that another thing that someone interpreted that was not actually said or confirmed either? They never seem to confirm anything other than simple facts, and I thought they walk the fine line of avoiding promising a romantic relationship between Emma and whoever, but didn’t rule anything out. So would they confirm a triangle ? That itself seems inconsistent with “don’t want to spoil”.
To the best of my knowledge, no triangle has been officially confirmed. It’s really just the fact that fans by and large ship Emma passionately with one of two people, and naturally K&H don’t wanna spoil and officially rule either option out, so instead they give hints as to what could potentially happen to keep the fans fired up about it all, and it’s snowballed so that a triangle is what everyone assumes we’ll see, because both camps wanna be in with a shot.
@lostwithme wrote:
@RumplesGirl wrote:
Meghan shoots her show in Vancouver, same as OUAT. They plan to bring her back maybe once or twice a year.
No, it’s filming in LA now. They changed it. Meghan confirmed this at the Leo Awards.
Oh, bugger, that will complicate the bringing back of Red somewhat.
That was a great interview and gives me lots of faith for an awesome S3. 😀
@Betsypaige24 wrote:
@slurpeez108 wrote:
I haven’t seen anyone mention this, but that fact that both Adam and Eddy said they intended to “tame the beast” could be a foreshadowing of Rumple (the beast) becoming a mere man again. Perhaps by going up against Peter Pan, Rumpple’s dark one curse will be undone.
I’m not sure that’s what they meant, but I really do think Pan is the boy the Seer was talking about, not Henry.
Yeah, I’ve been pondering this for a while too…
Seer: A boy… A young boy will lead you to him. But beware, Rumpelstiltskin, for that boy is more than he appears. He will lead you…to what you seek. But there will be a price. The boy… Will be your undoing.
“Young boy” could still refer to PP even if he’s late teens, (like many of us have speculated he will be). “That boy is more than he appears”, well it’s safe to say that even if PP appears to be just a kid, he’s actually a super powerful bad guy with an agenda. And the bit about “will lead you to him” and “will lead you to what you seek” could very well relate to PP bringing about the undoing of the Dark One, leaving Rumple as a mortal man, which he has to be in order to have a real shot at being able to repair his relationship with Bae…which is what Rumple has been seeking all this time.
I would actually love that to be the case, though I really hate the idea of Belle not being the one to break the curse.
While the EPIC TLK is the most romantic way he could be cured, I’d be OK with it happening in a different way, because we’ve already seen that she could have cured him that way. Perhaps the fact that he put a stop to it that time means that TLK can’t work for this any more? Maybe it was a one shot deal, and the fact that he threw up a barrier against it relegated that particular cure void for eternity?
From a practical, TV making perspective, it would have more impact for it to happen some other way. The reason their previous TLK was so effective from a TV visual standpoint was that he was all Rumple-y and began to undergo a physical transformation. He doesn’t look all Rumple-y any more. I know there’s been some discussion wondering if he’d revert to looking like that once he’s back in a magical land, but I’m thinking probably not in NL, and especially not if he comes back to SB. So if he already looks human, how do they do the EPIC “OMG look, he’s transforming back into being a mortal” thing again for another TLK?
On the other hand, set up a scene with Rumple vs PP, two dark forces doing battle over Henry’s fate, converging on each other, trying to consume each other, lots of cool, EPIC, magic-y special effects building up until BOOM, the dark magic is destroyed…THAT would make for some fun TV which would be a fittingly dramatic end to Rumple’s centuries old curse.
In any case, if he were to be undone in terms of the curse, there’s no doubt Gold would struggle to be “just a man” – it would be an amazing storyline and it would be a Rumbelle-oriented one because she would see him through this
Robert would OWN every single scene of Rumple having to come to terms with being mortal again. It would be beautiful to watch.
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.
@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.
