Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-25926288-20151211170125/@comment-27885419-20160614170518

Eskaver wrote: PrettyBlackRosePirate wrote: Revisiting this thread after a long time, wanted to have a fresh go at "defending my ship". My reactions in brackets and bold.

I'd like to add a basic fact that nothing is perfect, no person and no relationship. You can't say it's bad because it doesn't meet perfection in your perception, and yes perception is a big factor here. In my perception, many people are just looking for excuses to justify their dislike for this ship, many of which I do not find valid.

Don't like it, it's your opinion, but taking any and everything and making it Hook's fault is taking it to a new level. I find many of the "justifications" and "reasons" by people here ridiculous and more of a desperate attempt to prove themselves right than anything. At the same time, maybe some will describe my explanations as the same. That's where perception comes in. In one of your bolded comments, you mentioned that it's not Hook's fault, but the writers. I completely agree. Killian as a character has actually grown on me but I still never saw him as a terrible character or anything. I more or less was taking a combination of arguments I saw and combined them with my opinion. I can mostly see what both sides see. That's one of the more beautiful things about our perceptions.

I'll admit I said some purposefully controversial thing (XD What can I say?), but most was from the point of view for Emma since she was with us longer. Later on in this thread or somewhere I think I said that Emma was bad for Hook in some regards too. I'm not trying to say that there aren't good things, but the bad seems to get washed away which is just a problem the show has at times.

I'm not some anti-CS fan or anything. It just tries a little too hard sometimes, fails at some other times, tries to "morally paint things grey" and we get a weird conglomerate at the end.

Here are a few points that I think should probably be addressed:

1. Real sacrifice. I say real because I saw beautiful, meaningful sacrifices and then I saw then quickly undone. That goes for any character or relationship on the show. Hook giving up his ship and all its history is huge, but then the writers just end up giving it back to him randomly for random reasons. I'm sure anyone can see how that hurts what was suppose to be a nice moment of sacrifice for Hook. Likewise with Emma, she lost Hook, had a beautiful good-bye, then got him back in a roundabout way. She might have learned that selfishness is bad, but she ended up with what she wanted anyway. I mean the loss of Robin seemed to be downplayed and sort of disrespected, with the happy kissing scene just immediately after and next to his coffin. (I agree on both. But the thing is, the writers have mostly focused on intention rather than action, hence many crimes of the past are ignored in favour of a change of heart and what you sacrifice is returned to you. I honestly didn't see the point in bringing back the Jolly Roger for some once-in-a-season screen time. Bringing Hook back, however, they had to do it in order to retain the CS fans who likely would have stopped watching otherwise. How many times have they killed off main characters? A few, maybe, but none of them were likely to cause a major fall in viewership. Just like they can't get rid of Rumple, or Charmings, or Regina, they can't get rid of Hook. I honestly didn't see the point of killing Robin.)

2. Hook needs to be integrated into the family. David and Hook are slowly becoming friends. Henry gets bad advice from Hook in some slapdash way. Snow and Hook don't even talk. Emma's strongest relationship early on was with her mother, yet her love interest doesn't seem to interact with him whatsoever. Henry and Hook stuff should stop being 99% offscreen too. (Well, that isn't unique to CS. The writers seem to believe that romance and family should not be mixed, 'cause while  most characters don't have a family, the ones who do have hardly any love interest-family interaction. I have hardly seen any Robin-Henry interaction, and Regina-Roland interaction was limited to season 3 as a way for Regina-Robin to bond. Even in the Underworld Henry Sr. wasn't given enough screen time to meet Robin, who got damn less of it himself. Maurice doesn't approve of Rumple, George and David went into war over him choosing Snow, and Hook you already mentioned. They didn't even show Granny's reaction to Ruby and Dorothy. So it's more of a show characteristic than a ship characteristic.)

3. 5A proved to me that I was right about Hook's "redemption" being contingent on Emma's "love". Nothing in 5B showed me that he doesn't continually put Emma on a pedastal and looks down upon himself. 5B and Liam actually said that this was Hook's problem, but they never resolved it. For all I know, Emma upsets Hook again and he goes back to villainy. (I repeat, nobody's perfect. It doesn't take Emma a second to go into flight mode, even now. She's trying, and he's also trying. Just because they haven't reached that point doesn't mean they have to end it or something. And I don't think so, the worst Hook would do would be to shut Emma out and become suicidal. His villainous route was a Darkness reaction, though it was grossly overdone and unbelievable.)

4. 5B's only down point to me was that Emma realized that she pretty much risked too much to go on her selfish trip to defy nature. Emma realized it and was right. Then, everyone else )aka the writers) were waxing poetic about how they wanted to go and how the plan will work and how it'll be okay. Only when Robin died did that sad attempt of whitewashing go away. This isn't Hook's fault, but only in this relationship have I seen Emma risk all those she loved to save her romantic partner. Cherry on the top was the writers having the other characters insist that Emma was right and all would be great. (Emma didn't drag anyone to Hell. She was about to go alone. They volunteered, and that means they aren't Emma's responsibility. Again, this isn't a CS point but a 'other characters' point. Emma continually gave others the option of leaving, they didn't accept it. Emma felt guilty about landing them there, Snow insisted that 'love is worth it', and same about Hook and David. It's not because of CS, it's because apparently everyone ships CS and wants them reunited no matter what.)

Another slight issue is the character development and where things will go I guess. Haha, I sort of got a bit strong-worded towards the end.

TL;DR version: It's not that bad surface level but Hook's goodness seems contingent on Emma and I have never seen anyone, especially Emma, illogically risk the lives of her family and friends just to "save" the man she loves. By save, I mean selfishly attempt to defy nature. (Remember the no of times they've brought Rumple back? They killed of Neal for it, they made Emma Dark One for it... Remember them all opening a portal to wherever-the-dark-one went realm? They took kids, dwarves, a baby, a pregnant woman, and who not to an unknown realm which could be potentially dangerous, all to save Emma. Remember Charming getting back defying death, first by Neverland water and then heart-sharing? Come to think of it, Emma wanted to do precisely that. The difference is that this time around the heroes volunteered to accompany Emma to Underworld. Emma wanted to go alone. They decided to tag along. Not Emma's fault.) Responses in bold.