Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-15260863-20130812124942

This is my take on the whole SwanFire argument. This is just how I saw what the show was portraying and then got really frustrated with Emma's personality glitch when it came to Neal.

First of all, Emma was absolutely scarred by what happened. It's why she lied to Henry about his father, she couldn't bear the thought of him finding out what his father had done to her. She made up a story about how his father was a hero who died saving lives. All her life Emma was completely unloved. As far as she knew at the time she was abandoned as a baby on the side of the road - "[her] parents didn't even care enough to bring [her] to a hospital". She had a family until she was three, but then her adopted parents had a child of their own and "sent [her] back". After that was shunted from foster home to foster home until she aged out of the system at 16. Sixteen years old and alone in a big city with no qualifications to speak of, no home, no friends or family. She was forced into thievery.

Enter Neal, they were together for a year or two and he looked after her. For the first time in her life she had someone to love and to love her. They were going to go to Tallahassee and start a new life together. Then as far as she knows he sets the police on her so that he can keep the twenty grand from the watches. She's seventeen/ eighteen years old, pregnant and in prison. I highly doubt she had an easy time of it there. For the next ten years she is completely alone, as far as we know she had no relationships or connections in that time. If she even had friends they weren't good enough to keep in contact with after she moved to Storybrooke. The only reason I can see for this is that she simply hasn't been able to trust anyone enough after what Neal did to her. The one time in her life she trusted anyone enough to let him in and he betrayed her, set her up to go to jail for his crime. Even when she gets to Storybrooke she was far more comfortable sleeping in her car than accepting Snow's offer of a room in her apartment.

Now, I realise Neal did all this for Emma's own good but she suffered terribly because of it, emotionally and psychologically. I also can't get over the fact that Neal did all this because Pinocchio told him to. The fairy-tale character known for dishonesty, trickery, selfishness etc. He betrayed the woman who trusted him more than she had trusted anyone else in her life simply because someone told him to. Neal may have done what he thought was best but that doesn't negate the fact that Emma was deeply hurt.

It doesn't make sense to me that she would forgive him. That she would just let him back into her life after he broke her. With how untrusting and hardened she became after he betrayed her. Compare the Emma we saw in the very first episode before she meets Henry to the Emma we saw in the flashbacks in Tallahassee. There's a massive difference and all that stems from Neal and how after him she was unable to trust anyone else. I definitely don't see them working or lasting in another romantic relationship because all the while there'd be a nagging question in the back of Emma's mind: I wonder if he'll leave again. She wouldn't be able to trust him after what he did, she'll always wonder if some random guy says to him that he's getting in the way of her destiny if he'll just up and abandon her again and she won't know why.

This is partially why I like the Hook and Emma interactions so much. Hook would never have left Milah. He loved her too much to hurt her like that - especially on the word of someone like Pinocchio. It's obvious in everything he does that the people he loves are absolutely treasured by him. With how perceptive Emma is she would have seen this, she could have trusted this. When she handcuffed Hook at the top of the beanstalk she said "I can't take the chance that I'm wrong about you". This all comes back to Neal and her inability to trust people. Hook was also genuinely hurt that she abandoned him, he wouldn't have taken it so badly otherwise. He didn't take it badly that she didn't believe him about the blacksmith ruse or when she was obviously going to leave him to the ogres tied to a tree. This was because she was right, on top of the beanstalk she wasn't. Emma trusts Hook - more than she's trusted anyone else on the show as quickly. She opens up to him about her personal life and the event in her life that hurt her more deeply than anything else. She hasn't even talked to Mary Margaret about that, but her and Hook are sort of kindred spirits in that they were both irreparably damaged by the loss of someone they loved. Lost in different ways but they were still hurt. She left him on the beanstalk because she felt that she could trust him and she was afraid of that.  