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I love the idea that the WWW’s name will be revealed on the dagger! What if she turned green because she is the new dark one? That would parallel how Rumple turned green in “Desperate Souls.”

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I love that this little yellow bug was their first home! They look so happy together. 😀

"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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I was just thinking about how writers often misdirect us. For example, the writers did this for August W. Booth by making a lot of us think he was Baelfire in “The Return” only to discover in “The Stranger” he was really Pinocchio. I’ve been thinking for a while now that the CS kiss in 3×5 and Hook showing up at Emma’s doorstep in 3×11 are really misdirections which are meant to distract us and keep many guessing about the actual story of Emma and Neal’s final reconciliation. Misdirection is a common literary device that’s used in TV and film scripts. This tactic is used by a magician who seeks to divert our attention to look up while he secretly slips a coin from his sleeve into his hand to make it look like the coin just magically appeared. Just a thought I had as I consider that 3×12 would seemingly be about Hook trying to get Emma to remember by TLK, and yet, we now know Christopher Gorham also  filmed that episode with Jennifer Morrison. We now have reason to believe Chis’ character might be integral in the story of Swanfire. I think Hook showing up on Emma’s doorstep at the end of 3×11 was a deliberate distraction from the actual point that it’s the dreamcatcher and the potion, not Hook’s kiss, which will jog Emma’s memories.

"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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can we get a close-up of that dagger? does it have any name on it? could it be Gold/Rumpel is still dead, but he is walking around only because he’s the DarkOne? why would Eddy say that Rumpel/Gold is definitely dead, but he’s the Dark One? what does that mean? does it mean HE was undone, but the curse was not? is this why Belle looks sad to see him? can’t the poor imp rest in peace even after death?

I remember Rumple’s name almost disappeared from the dagger in 2×16 when he nearly died. But I didn’t see his name disappear when he stabbed himself and Malcolm in 3×11.. It’s happened so fast. Did anyone else catch it? Here is the clip again from 3×11 of Rumple’s self-sacrifice:

That’s not exactly professional for him to stroll up to socialise between takes when they’re working, is it? If he’s in the scene and wants to hear what’s being said about it between takes, to know if he’s gotta do something different himself, then the mingling would make sense. It just seems strange. Also, maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t have been out there that night unless I HAD to be,

Good points, Phee. I guess we’ll find out sooner or later if he was in the scene or not.

"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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Now we get this news today on top of the other thing. Personally I think everyone should let ABC & Adam know how they feel about it and why.

I’m not sure what that would accomplish though, because the scripts are written well in advance of them actually being filmed. And the episodes which have been filmed (3×12-3×16) wouldn’t likely be amended anyhow. I think we all just need to chill out and relax, because at the end of the day, we don’t really have any control over the story Adam and Eddy decide to tell in the end. If the show really does become that much of an anxiety to viewers, they’ll quit watching, and then that will send a loud and clear message to the co-executives that the audience didn’t like what they had to show. Plus, we really might be pleasantly surprised by the direction that the show takes, and then any complaints will be pointless, too, because you’ll forget why anyone was anxious in the first place.

"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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I hope that during the next several months everyone keeps in mind that filming schedules don’t necessarily mean anything.  For example, if one episode wraps on Tuesday and the next episode begins filming on Wednesday, an actor may work out a filming schedule that front loads work on the first episode and back loads work on the next episode to get a week off.  In that time an actor may fly to LA, or anywhere, and it would mean nothing for the character.  Believe.

Wise words to live by, Molly! Thanks, and yes, *believe in second chances.* 🙂

"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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I like your crack theory, Ranisha.

Yes, that is an awesome crack theory I’d love to see come true! Chris Gorham’s character being linked to Dorothy would be very fitting, seeing as the theme of her story was getting back home again. Chris Gorham’s character helping Emma and Neal get home to one another would be a perfect tie-in to the Oz story!

"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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According to @Katman on Twitter, Gorham was on set but NOT FILMING. So now I’m confused.

Katmtan wrote on Tumblr that while Chris Gorham was on set, he was not actually in the scene being shot on Thursday night. She suggested Chris might have instead been filming with Jennifer Morrison and MRJ on Friday night. Chris reportedly left Vancouver on Saturday.

"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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Someone mention that Hansel and Gretel gave them Swanfire vibes without the romance of course because they were two lost thieving kids taking care of each other, who really just wanted a home and family.

Yes, the theme of “family always finds each other” was very prominent in True North. It was the first episode in which Henry asked about his father and Emma told him the story about the fireman. This theme was repeated in “Heart of the Truest Believer,” when Henry told PP, “My family is different. We always, find each other.” I really think that this theme is the heart of the Swanfire family dynamic going forward.

On an interesting side note, Kataman wrote that Chris Gorham might have been filming with Jennifer Morrison and MRJ on Jan. 24. Chris reportedly left Vancouver Jan. 25. This lends creedence to my theory that Chris Gorham’s character is going to play an integral part in the lives of both Emma and Neal.

"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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This is such an excellent essay. I love it!

Neal Cassidy is Indestructible: Emma’s Fallen Fairytale

Why?

This began as my thoughts on why Neal will not be the character that is rumored to die before S3’s curtain falls. But before I could assemble them all, quite frankly, plenty of people in the fandom wrote perfectly compelling arguments for Neal’s living on, and made any points that I would have made myself.

But still, I think there’s a touch more to be said about Neal and Emma and their story.

For a long time I’ve thought that Emma, and all aspects of her story (from her abandonment to Henry to Neal) have been given to us, really, like a bent sort of fairytale (as opposed to a fractured one). Fairy tales grow in their natural, magical habitat: the Enchanted Forest. (So Once would have us believe.) But Emma was sent from that magical world into ours: the World Without Magic (on a sort of reverse-Narnia trip). And so her story, her fairytale (she is a princess, after all), is a bruised one: a fallen fairytale.

I put forward that this is the story we’re watching (that the writers are writing): the bruised and bent fairytale of Bailbondsperson Princess Emma Swan. Because that’s what you get in the World Without Magic (and don’t we residents know it). Perfect loves and ‘I will always find you’ are few and far between, and plenty of us never get them.

The World Without Magic makes finding your happy ending hard (far harder than in the Enchanted Forest). You get no helps, no shortcuts. What you get is a life in the foster system, a man whom you love and who leaves you, and a child you feel you have no other option but to give away. That’s your story in the World Without Magic.

But that’s the thing about Emma and her fairytale, that’s the hope she gives us all.

Fairytales, at their heart, are wish-fulfillment. When you wish upon a star, find your prince, conquer your oppressor, live happily ever after. We take hope from fairytales, from Sleeping Beauty being kissed awake after a hundred years, from someone learning to love a Beast, and so on. And Emma’s bent and bruised fallen fairytale is no different. Is her past that different from Cinderella being forced into servitude or Snow White being driven from her home? Her attitude toward life might be less sunny than theirs is shown to be in their Disney incarnations, but the circumstances of all their lives are similarly bleak. And just as we take hope/see the wish fulfillment from their stories, we take hope/share in that wish fulfillment from hers.

Who among us hasn’t wanted to believe that that person we were so desperately in love with and who left us for no reason we could ever reconcile ourselves to actually had a good reason? Actually was trying to have our best interests in mind?

What adopted child hasn’t dreamt at night of her parents, imagining they really had wanted her? Or (as Henry’s fairytale is also Emma’s) that his father loved him and would someday show up and want to be a part of his life? Or that their parents (divorced/separated/whatever) might reconcile?

Who hasn’t at one point wanted a former lover to show up and want us back?

And who among us, (sometimes years after, even) has not wished we could go back and change something about how we behaved/the choices we made in a relationship? Alter the way we left it (if not the outcome)?

Emma’s fairytale says these things have the potential to be healed, to be understood and explained and forgiven. It’s about being open to letting the future heal the hurts of the past; relationships renewed, parents and children reunited, and above all a story where abandonment cannot be reversed, but can be repaired, and where trust can exist again.

And that happy ending can’t exist without the main players in Emma’s story: Henry, Snow, Charming, and Neal.

–

Neal’s own bruised fairytale, of course, began in the Enchanted Forest, and experienced several stops at magical locales along the way. Interestingly, his father is the Dark One, and his grandfather Peter Pan, but he has never been shown as magical (yet Emma, the progeny of unmagical parents, IS magical).

But his destination was always meant to be the World Without Magic, and though Magic began him on his trip and has visited him along the way, once he got here to stay, as far as we know he was without it. And so his ‘fairytale’: village coward’s son gains wealth and influence when his father takes on the mantle of the Dark One, de-volves into a poverty and homelessness far worse than anything he experienced in his early life in the Enchanted Forest.

And the role reversal of the unwitting peasant falling for royalty occurs when he falls in love with Emma (Disney’s Sleeping Beauty shows quite the opposite paradigm—Prince falls for peasant girl, though Rose herself was ignorant of her own nobility, as is Rapunzel of Disney’s Tangled—as is Emma).

Neal seems to be part of several separate fairytales (which he alone connects together). The Dark One and Baelfire. The Darlings and Peter Pan/the Dark One and Peter Pan, and this fallen fairytale of Emma’s. (And who knows how many more to come…)

He’s only really essential to happy endings in two of them, and that’s Rumple’s and Emma/Henry’s. If Rumple really is dead (which we kinda pretty much know he’s not), then Neal dying is immaterial to that story, which already had its conclusion (a dead Rumple not being able to know whether his son got a happy ending or not). But Neal is crucial to Emma and Henry’s fairytale. To its happy ending.

If anything, the fallen fairytale of Princess Emma shows us that you can find love in the World Without Magic. But hanging on to it (or losing it and then later letting it back in) is hardest work without the help of magical shortcuts.

But in the end, I fully expect a happily ever after. And that can’t happen with Neal dead, because as Emma said in the Cave of Echoes, the whole reason she had wanted him dead was because she didn’t want to re-experience the pain (deal with the past). But any good reader knows, if you can’t work through the past you can never really move forward. And if Neal is killed, there is no way to work through things with him.

At this point in the series, Neal is essential to both his own happy ending, and to Emma/Henry’s. If you end his life, then you’re writing a very different story than the one I’ve seen scrolling out on my screen since the Pilot.

"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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