Holdouttrout

1. They had to know that the logical, meaningful end to Emma’s run as Savior was her death at the end of season 6.

2. In this show, getting married in That Dress, having a kid and basically abandoning another one is a more permanent death than death.

3. This theory does not explain any character assassination prior to the end of season 6.

1. I multiship but I’m no longer saying I’m not swen. Sorry, gatekeepers. I’m swen and I multiship. 
2. I actually would like to see Regina make out with a woman, any woman.
3. I would also love to see a developed relationship between her and a woman. This hopefully would include kissing but needn’t be with the same woman as point #2.
4. I think Regina ending up with a woman other than Emma is NOT the same as swan queen happening on the show. But that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun!
5. I ship dragon queen for different reasons than I ship swan queen, but I have many reasons. Teh Pretty is just one of them.
6. I keep my ketchup in my fridge.

This is an alternate take on 5A. It holds to established canon ships.

Regina begs Emma to save Robin. This is the big one, the first request, the one that breaks the heroes’ insistence that they are not going to have Emma use her magic because the darkness just too seductive. This is the episode that made me buy that they were going there with Emma, that they were really going to make her family partially responsible for her darkness.

The dwarves (they WANTED to be a part of the adventure, after all) find out that the brother they thought was dead might actually be in this realm, nearby, and that he might have something they need to release Merlin from the tree. But their brother might be in more trouble than they thought, and it seems like they might need to make a deal with the Dark One to help him…

David and Arthur go on their bro-quest for the magic toadstool, but those left behind get a tip from Lancelot that all may not be right in Camelot. They discover that Guinevere is enchanted with the Sands of Avalon and attempt to release her from the curse so she can help them. (Perhaps it turns out the Sands of Avalon, as the creation of a former DO, are powerful magic that can only be undone by another Dark One’s magic.)

Merida makes a deal with Emma for the spell to change her fate so she can rescue her brothers. Belle still convinces Merida she can accomplish her goal without the spell.

Henry’s date with Violet goes exactly the same way, and for the same reasons–Emma is already losing perspective on her darkness. After they free Merlin, she offers to fix it for him–but Henry, as a true hero, turns her down (leading Emma to tell him that everyone else let her down, but not him.)

Arthur and Zelena work together to trap Merlin by binding him to Excalibur. Killian gets hurt in the rescue.

We find out that Killian and Emma have been planning to move in together. Instead of Emma admitting she wants to move forward with her relationship with Hook, she admits that she’s having doubts and that she hasn’t been honest with him because she loves him and doesn’t want to hurt him. He says that he’ll wait until she’s ready. This honesty unlocks the Promethean Flame, but Killian collapses just like before and Emma tethers him to the sword to save his life, realizing that she does want that future after all–at any cost. And why is everyone so judgmental about this? Doesn’t she deserve to be happy? Haven’t they been the ones prioritizing themselves over her this whole time?

And that’s how you turn Emma dark.

Then, you have her working to undo making Hook a DO without killing him, which involves sacrificing someone to the darkness. You have her working to bring this plan to fruition. You have Hook succumbing to the darkness without knowing what’s going on–maybe he starts working with Emma because he is tricked by her arguments about doing what’s necessary, because he believes her. Maybe he turns cruel without meaning to. Basically, you show the influence of the darkness in him before he gets his memories back.

And then the end of 5A plays out largely the same, except Emma does have to sacrifice herself to get rid of the darkness. She dies and Hook is left de-Dark One-ed… and Hades comes and offers him/everyone else a chance to get her back. You see, he’s looking for something to use against his brother, who cursed him to the Underworld, and if they help him, he’ll help them. After all, he’s the ruler of the Underworld, and he’s never met a rule he can’t bend, even that pesky one about not bringing anyone back from the dead.

Rumple doesn’t become the DO again right then, but he offers to help them navigate the Underworld because he wants the power back, because Belle’s gone and he might as well. He cautions them not to trust Hades, because his games are always rigged.

They descend into the Underworld.

2. I absolutely think the writers thought they made it clear TO EMMA that Hook was in immediate danger. (He sent his shadow, his hook came too, and… he apparently needed her to get a random piece of wood?) If we take as a given that Emma knew Hook was in immediate, life-threatening danger, AND that Snow actually made the decision not to use the Pixie Dust and that Emma couldn’t have used it herself to wake them anyway (which I believe)) then I am prepared to give her a soft pass on this one. Mind you, she’s still in Trout’s Bad Character Doghouse for so many other reasons, including that horrible sweater, that she is still failing Trout’s Bad Character Rehabilitation Course.

3. Look, Charming and Snow already made the decision to send Emma away when she wasn’t even yet BORN. And, as far as they knew, she was safe and happy and normal. In retrospect, of course, they doomed her to an unhappy childhood where she felt unloved and unwanted. But they didn’t make that cold calculation at the time. And they always bargained her against the future happiness of everyone in Storybrooke. So while it was sort of a crap thing to do to their kid, it wasn’t new and it wasn’t 100% terrible, either. (Also, I just re-watched the scene where they see her through the door, and from their perspective, they can’t see two other bunk beds that you can see from Emma’s perspective.)

4. Still adamantly against Emma taking blame for Hook not telling her the truth.

5. Okay, the episode was never going to actually make sense. Pixie flowers? Really? That’s a thing now? Also, you can share a sleeping curse by drinking nonexistent liquid from a silver cup. (Whatever. Like I watch this show for its logic.)

But because it’s their only hug, the fact that it’s about Emma’s relationship with a man feels like the show is being deliberately mean to Swan Queen shippers. I know that it wasn’t intended that way. I know they don’t think that hard about this stuff. But I really wish they would think a little more–especially because they had plenty of moments where it would have made sense for the two of them to hug when it wasn’t about Hook or Robin and for whatever reason chose to skip those moments. And you know, if they’d hugged literally ONE other time, this would feel very different to me.

I’m not saying Hook hasn’t changed. The show has made it quite clear that he’s given up his murderous ways, that he feels remorse for killing people in the past, that he is trying to be a better man.

I’m not even saying she shouldn’t be with Hook.

I actually like(d) Hook and shipped Captain Swan before I re-watched the series and fell hard for Swan Queen (We do not choose our ships; they hit us over the head with the concussion of True Love.). I don’t mind that Hook isn’t perfect, that he doesn’t have this whole redemption thing figured out! I don’t mind that he falls into bad habits trying to defend himself from the consequences of his past (okay, I do mind, but I would understand it)! I don’t mind that he’s not immediately running to Emma to say “Hey, I killed your grandfather, just found out two seconds ago, forgive me?”

What I mind, more than anything, is that there’s a pattern of behavior when Hook does fall back into his old ways, Emma excuses him IMMEDIATELY, without reacting to or seeming to have her OWN FEELINGS about what he’s done.

That is what doesn’t feel like Emma to me, because Emma reacts to EVERYTHING. What does she do when Regina frames her for stealing confidential client files? She takes a chainsaw to Regina’s apple tree.

When she finds out that Neal is Rumple’s son, that he kept that from her and left her on Pinocchio’s say-so, she’s angry. She reacts to the revelation before she acknowledges that if he had told her, she would have thought he was nuts. She brings it up again when he asks her about her doing magic, saying that Rumplestiltskin’s son maybe doesn’t get to be judgy about her using magic.

Before Emma and Hook are together, when he comes to New York and kisses her, she shoves him away from her and slams the door on him. Then, when he again approaches her, she calls the cops on him and has him arrested (before she finds the photos in Neal’s apartment).

When Zelena curses Hook’s lips and he tells Emma about it, she doesn’t really want him tagging along to the farmhouse with her–and even though she does save him with mouth-to-mouth, she’s still not falling over herself to kiss him again. She’s still annoyed.

When Snow gets worried about Emma and pulls back on giving baby Neal to her because her magic is acting up, Emma reacts. She’s hurt. She’s afraid. She’s a little angry (and a lot angry later, when Ingrid riles her up).

When she finds out her parents, who held themselves up as heroes, as the good guys, stole Maleficent’s baby to remove Emma’s darkness, she’s pissed at them. She doesn’t immediately forgive them.

But with Hook after they’re together?

He colludes with Rumple to avoid Rumple telling Emma that he still has darkness in him–instead of owning up to hurting Will. Later, when Hook sucks the fairies into the Sorcerer’s Hat, Rumple had his heart, which you can’t blame him for. But when he threatens to tell Belle the truth about the dagger, when he punches Will, when he acts aggressively toward Emma, when he omits telling anyone the truth about all of those things, he was acting in his own best interest. But the only mention of it is when Emma says, “You didn’t have a choice.”

He kills Merlin; Emma covers it up. (I get why maybe she didn’t bring that up in the Underworld, considering she was at least partly to blame for the whole thing. I just wish the two of them had had a conversation that acknowledged that they both did horrible things as DOs and that they should try to do better from now on (like Snow and Charming after the baby-stealing episode).)

He keeps the shears against Emma’s express wishes and then lies to her about them. Emma’s like, “Oh, that’s fine. I would have done the same thing.” (This in particular made me SO MAD, because if anyone did that to me I’d be absolutely emotional about it and rage and talk to all my friends to see if I was blowing it out of proportion, and let’s just say that I consider myself slightly more emotionally stable than Emma ‘Chainsaw’ Swan.)

So yeah, IF Hook keeps this from her for a significant length of time (which he might not! I could be totally wrong!) and IF Emma just accepts it (which she might not! I could be totally wrong!) I’ll be ticked off. Because it’s a pattern. Because it doesn’t fit with how Emma reacts at other times or to other people or even to Hook prior to them being together.