Board Thread:Character Discussion/@comment-28162607-20170103120839/@comment-25926288-20170103124933

I'd question using an anti-Swanfire blog as a decent source as it's doesn't take into account several things.

1. As you say, Henry's birthday is sort of questionable. He was ten in 2011, so he was born in 2001. That's how I'm sure the writers took it. Nine months back from August is clearly Nov/December, but you say they mentioned a summer. I don't know if we really can use Henry since he must be rounding up his age or something to match Jared's age.

If we go with Henry being conceived in late 2000, then Emma was 17. Age of consent depends on the state and it's 16 to 18 generally. Given that Emma has no parents or guardians that we know of, I'm okay with the fact that she's 17 and in a relationship. Noone knows how old Neal was. Let's say early 20s and Emma's late teens. Legality is pretty much null and void, maturity is questionable (Neal is really 100+ years old, so I'd handwipe that away).

2. There's a twisted perception that Neal was a manipulative jerk that blackmailed and controlled Emma. That is clearly not true. Most of what you put is baseless. Because:

A. How do we know Neal knew her age?

B. What is FTL's age of consent and marriage? I'm pretty sure given that he's from there, things were different.

C. Where do you see that Emma was unhappy and unwilling to participate in the relationship?

D. Where do you see Neal purposefully manipulating Emma for sexual gratification?

Emma was clearly happy with the relationship and Neal was too. He clearly loved her and highly valued her, at least. Emma doesn't recount on any bad memories besides the set-up at the end. Neal never tricked her into a date. It was casual conversation that I'm sure if Emma wanted, she could have not entertained that notion (because she was stealing his "stolen" car).

Back to the blog for a moment, they clearly use a photo of MRJ who was 34/35 and Abby Ross who was pretty much 16.

'''TL;DR: Emma was probably 17. Blog uses photo manip of MRJ (age 35) and Abby Ross (age 16), which proves that age 35 and age 16 is a big gap, but irrelevant otherwise.'''