Happily Ever After: Relationships Are Hard

[HoodlumSheep]

I just hijacked my first post on tumblr. I feel terrible, but at the same time I don't regret it. 

it was about Scarlet Beauty (which Always switches me into rage mode). Heck, some of you could have liked/agreed with the original post, but I don't care at this point. 

I'm just soooo tired of seeing the Wonderland series and Scarlet Queen get thrown under the bus.

So I guess this is just the usual once-in-a-while reminder that Scarlet Queen is CANON. C-A-N-O-N.

Viva la Scarlet Queen!!!!!

(I'm not saying no one is allowed to ship Scarlet Beauty (ship and let ship, etc.), it's just...it's just Wonderland's (and specifically Will Scarlet/Scarlet Queen's) mistreatment by A&E is a very, very sore spot for me.

have a nice day, everyone! An sorry for the small rant. :P

Edited May 1, 2016 by HoodlumSheep

[KingOfHearts]

Quote

So I guess this is just the usual once-in-a-while reminder that Scarlet Queen is CANON. C-A-N-O-N.

Well, Scarlet Beauty is technically canon too. :P But I totally agree that Scarlet Queen is sooo much better. I wish Regina's relationship worked similarly to it. There are different dynamics, obviously. (Like how Anastasia not really being evil.) If you're going to use someone like Will or Robin Hood, there needs to be some conviction involved. Will didn't approve of what Ana was doing. Ana betrayed him (though she regretted it later) and there was a fallout. But they got back together later, and that's one reason I love them. They were able to reunite after going separate ways and hash out their issues.

With Outlaw Queen, it's difficult to ship because have no problems. You can't want something you already have. All the other main couples have needed development to be happy together, and they've all endured relationship problems, separation, and hardships. OQ did have a little of that in S4, but we learned later that it was really all Zelena's game. I can't accept what they have as real because they never get mad at each other. They never share any human emotions. To make matters worse, Robin gets so little screen time that he becomes a token boyfriend.

Just for clarity - Pistachio is not a relationship problem. That's a Zelena problem. Exterior dilemmas can enhance a couple's portrayal if it's directly about one half feeling something for the other, like with Emma saving Hook from the Underworld or Snowing's rescue tag through S1. It shows their feelings are genuine. With the Zarian baby, Regina doesn't feel bad for Robin. Heck, Robin doesn't feel bad for Robin. There's sympathy from both sides for Regina herself, but that's more about Zelena's revenge than it is Pistachio. 

If Regina had to prove she redeemed herself or Robin had to do anything to impress her, then I'd be closer to shipping Outlaw Queen. But neither of them work at it. I see Emma working her butt off for Hook, Belle relentlessly sticking with Rumple against all logic, and Ana losing her moral credibility to get a time travel spell so she can make things right with Will. There's all that sacrifice, and OQ's scale doesn't come close to any of it.

[HoodlumSheep]

I meant canon True Love (which Scarlet Beauty isn't). :p

I wouldn't have any problems with Scarlet Beauty if they admitted that this was pre-Wonderland Will, because him hooking up with Belle would be very in character at that point. But when I see posts on tumblr suggesting that Will should pop in and TLK Belle, I can't help but enter into a state of frenzied fury. 

Scarlet Queen was a pretty great relationship (by Ouat standards, and I personally adore ScQ) and outclasses some of the main show's relationships by far. And they only had 13 episodes to work with :P, which just kinda makes me sad because it shows how little effort they've put into the likes of OQ and such.

Edited May 1, 2016 by HoodlumSheep

[daxx]

The TLK post for Scarlet Beauty was a joke. It's basically a jab at Rumbelle.

[Rumsy4]

I don't care what Adam may have said on Twitter. I headcanon that S4 Will is pre-Wonderland Will. :-p

I agree with daxx that Scarlet Beauty TLK is basically a dig at Rumbelle. It also speaks a lot to the characterization of Belle as perpetually in need of being in a relationship. I think having Belle hook up with Will after kicking Rumple out, and then taking Rumple back, was such a bad move. It's like Belle prefers to be treated like crap over being treated right. You can't fix stupid. 

[KAOS Agent]

I'm pretty sure that Belle flat out said that she doesn't love Will, so no worries there. Poor guy is probably drunk somewhere digging holes to find his map and get back to Ana.

[KingOfHearts]

58 minutes ago, KAOS Agent said:

I'm pretty sure that Belle flat out said that she doesn't love Will, so no worries there. Poor guy is probably drunk somewhere digging holes to find his map and get back to Ana.

Belle will end up killing him.

Edited May 1, 2016 by KingOfHearts

[InsertWordHere]

No ex is safe from Rumbelle. Find Ana, Will!

[HoodlumSheep]

8 hours ago, daxx said:

The TLK post for Scarlet Beauty was a joke. It's basically a jab at Rumbelle.

Ah, oops! Failed at catching that.:P

[Curio]

It's baffling how the show seems to be doubling down on how fast the relationships need to progress. In the first few seasons it wasn't as noticeable, but it's been especially egregious in 5B. It's like the writers have completely forgotten what it's like to naturally develop relationships and want to jump from Point A to Point Z, and screw Points L-M-N-O-P. Emma and Neal only dated a few months, but he's a huge presence in Emma's life and the show's mythology. Regina and Robin jumped into a relationship quickly in Storybrooke. Lily was apparently Emma's best friend, even though they only hung out a few times. Regina and Emma went from arguing non-stop in 4A to being BFFs in 4B with no in-between explanation scenes. Emma's guarded personality was influenced by Cleo, a woman she only spent 48 hours with. Zelena and Hades are True Love™ after one bike ride. Ruby and Dorothy are True Love™ after one night in a poppy field. Zelena and Regina did a complete 180 after regaining their memories and are now totally Team Sisters Forever.

The hastiness in which these relationships seemed to flip a switch makes their current relationship statuses ring false. Even though Rumple and Belle are hugely problematic, I can buy them being together because the writers have at least taken the time to draw out their issues over several arcs. But every single pairing I listed above, from the Regina/Emma and Regina/Zelena friendships to the Zelena/Hades and Ruby/Dorothy romances, did such a drastic about face that I can't buy their current stories.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Curio

[Souris]

I want CS to have that effing rainbow flash wave that almost knocks people off their feet. I don't care. That's what I signed up for. Give me the effing rainbow flash wave that almost knocks people off their feet.

[Curio]

They'll probably save Emma and Hook's rainbow-exploding True Love's Kiss™ for the series finale and have them mirror the opening shot of the show where Charming galloped on a horse to kiss Snow. Except it'll probably be reversed and Hook will be under the sleeping curse and Emma will be galloping on horseback to wake him up. (Or, because TS;TW, it'll be Emma speeding in her Yellow Bug.) It's gotten to the point where this has been my head canon for so long that I'll be extremely disappointed in anything else.

[Shanna Marie]

6 hours ago, Curio said:

They'll probably save Emma and Hook's rainbow-exploding True Love's Kiss™ for the series finale and have them mirror the opening shot of the show where Charming galloped on a horse to kiss Snow.

I would be okay with that and I even would love that kind of ending, but the problem is that in straining for that effect, they seem to be (unintentionally, probably) making some weird and rather disturbing statements about what True Love is. On the one hand, we have the couple that's actually been developed, where there's no magical pixie dust proclaiming them true loves, where they've spent more than five minutes together, where they were actually friends first, where they've both made huge sacrifices for each other and overcome their personal baggage to develop a relationship with each other, but they've been in a situation that's been shown to be something that could be resolved with a True Love's Kiss, and it didn't work, and they worry that they don't live up to the high standard of something so rare as True Love. And that would be fine, on its own, since True Love was supposed to be so rare that Rumple went to great lengths to bottle it. Except there's the other hand, where among the couples who've had that magical True Love's Kiss are one in which one of them was able to shut it down because there was something else he wanted more, one in which one person was unconscious and the other had never met him when he was awake, one in which the couple had one conversation that was mostly hostile, and one in which the couple had barely met and he was pulling a con to use her to achieve his goals.

Even Disney has started mocking the idea of the insta-love, with the fake-out of Hans in Frozen and with the whole romantic plot line of Enchanted. But this show not only has the insta-love with magical True Love's Kiss, but also holds off on magical True Love with the couple that has a developed relationship.

If they were going to hold off on them until the finale, then they needed to hold off on putting them into any situation where a TLK might have been possible. In my mental speculation fanfic between seasons, I imagined that Emma was going to refuse to let Hook kiss her because she was worried about where the Darkness would go, and it was safest not to take any chances and get rid of it some other way. I thought that would be where that forehead lean thing they do would come in, and they could have built all kinds of sexual/romantic tension with the desperately in love couple who couldn't dare kiss because they were afraid of what that kiss would do. But no, they're kissing all over the place, even managing to light that flame as Emma dropped her guard and was excited about her future, which really should have meant that a TLK would have worked, based on what happened with Rumple and Belle. It's like them not showing Emma's reaction to Hook's heart almost being crushed in 4A because they were saving her reaction to him dying for the 4B finale -- the problem is that it did happen, so she reacted, even if we didn't see it, and the total lack of reaction is glaring and made her look like she didn't care.

The way they're doing this means they're basically saying that the real True Love is an instant attraction that has nothing to do with actually knowing the other person.

[Souris]

The writing on this show makes me want to pull my hair out. The pieces are there, they just don't use them well -- and that is incredibly frustrating.

[Camera One]

As others have said, especially in the episode thread, True Love implies that both parties are willing to sacrifice and do what the other wants despite their own wishes.  Yet Hades pretty much planned out trapping Regina et al. immediately after his True Love's Kiss.  So how could what he had with Zelena actually True Love?  

Emma was supposedly magical because she was a True Love baby, but we didn't see Cinderella or Aurora indicate their baby was doing anything magical at the baby yoga class.  

Edited May 4, 2016 by Camera One

[InsertWordHere]

13 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Emma was supposedly magical because she was a True Love baby, but we didn't see Cinderella or Aurora indicate their baby was doing anything magical at the baby yoga class.  

Don't forget Liam 2, the child of the most epic of true love couples, Papa Hook and Nurse.

[KingOfHearts]

6 minutes ago, InsertWordHere said:

Don't forget Liam 2, the child of the most epic of true love couples, Papa Hook and Nurse.

My headcanon is still that Papa Hook fell in love with Nurse Ratched. (No she didn't die! It was all a ruse!)

[PixiePaws1]

47 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Emma was supposedly magical because she was a True Love baby, but we didn't see Cinderella or Aurora indicate their baby was doing anything magical at the baby yoga class.  

My headcanon for this is that Snow regained her ability to have children via a magical source.

[Rumsy4]

5 hours ago, Camera One said:

As others have said, especially in the episode thread, True Love implies that both parties are willing to sacrifice and do what the other wants despite their own wishes.  Yet Hades pretty much planned out trapping Regina et al. immediately after his True Love's Kiss.  So how could what he had with Zelena actually True Love?  

That's why I'm hoping the TLK was faked somehow. In the same episode, they had Killian specifically bring up the rarity of True Love, and also had Rumple's attempt (?) at kissing Belle awake fail. Or maybe I'm just giving the writers too much credit.

[YaddaYadda]

5 hours ago, PixiePaws1 said:

My headcanon for this is that Snow regained her ability to have children via a magical source.

There's that, but the way I've been looking at it is that Rumple chose Snowing specifically because he foresaw that they were going to be the parents of the Savior. Merlin foresaw Emma and her magic when he allowed Ingrid to cross into the Land without Magic with the scroll.

He didn't choose Aurora and Philip who are Snowing's contemporaries, and were already in love, and set to marry. He chose a couple that was a lot more complicated (Snowing also made tons of sacrifice for each other).

I think Emma was always meant to be who she is, the Savior, and magical. I think Rumple played on what he saw in one of his visions without knowing that she would have magic, or anything like that.

21 minutes ago, Rumsy4 said:

That's why I'm hoping the TLK was faked somehow. In the same episode, they had Killian specifically bring up the rarity of True Love, and also had Rumple's attempt (?) at kissing Belle awake fail. Or maybe I'm just giving the writers too much credit.

Pan said that the reason the TLK didn't work between Belle and Rumple when he kissed was because Belle doesn't accept him the way he is. Now, he could have been shit peddling because he's Pan. 

About Zelena and Hades, I'm hoping he faked it. This whole thing in the Underworld was a huge production on his part. He double-crossed everyone he came in contact with, and I don't Zelena is any different. I think he loves her, I just don't think he loves her the way he claims he does. Plus I'm pretty convinced that now that he tore Rumple's contract, he's going to turn around and try and use Zelena's baby for whatever he needed the RB baby for.

All the claims about him wanting to be a family, and the whole I don't want vengeance anymore while this is still his main goal, all the while telling Zelena she has to choose between him and her sister...true love at its finest.

[Camera One]

Did they say in 3B that the Time Travel spell requires a true love baby?  If so, then Zelena's baby with Robin wouldn't work.  I don't remember why Zelena rejected Philip and Aurora's baby.

[YaddaYadda]

7 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Did they say in 3B that the Time Travel spell requires a true love baby?  If so, then Zelena's baby with Robin wouldn't work.  I don't remember why Zelena rejected Philip and Aurora's baby.

No, it doesn't require a true love baby. The baby is needed for its innocence.

[KingOfHearts]

7 minutes ago, Camera One said:

Did they say in 3B that the Time Travel spell requires a true love baby?  If so, then Zelena's baby with Robin wouldn't work.  I don't remember why Zelena rejected Philip and Aurora's baby.

The baby just needs to be a symbol of innocence. A baby born of True Love is just most likely to work, not necessarily required.

[Camera One]

Okay.  Thanks for saving me from rewatching 3B!

[Souris]

Ranting about the A&E interview about CS's sexual activities or lack thereof:

They are such trolls. They're deliberately withholding any confirmation just to be jerks about it. This show’s representation of sex is as messed up as the rest of its morality. Creepy/wrong/rapey sex? SURE!! HAVE SOME MORE!! 

Healthy sex between a loving, committed and nonvillain couple? Perish the thought! The last healthy sexual encounter with no unsavory implications shown on this show was the Snowing tacos scene in S2 -- and that was played more for laughs than anything else.

[profdanglais]

Well, CS has hardly had a spare moment to draw breath since they became a couple. They don't have a crypt to hide out in when they want to be alone. They only just got the Jolly Roger back, and have had no down time to get down in it. If the plot could just slow its roll a little there might be time to show what Emma and Hook get up to when they're alone. 

On a slightly different note, I've been thinking a lot about the insta-love we've been seeing recently, and have come to the realisation that pretty much every couple has been guilty of this to some degree. Snowing was in love after one meeting. Hook moved pretty quickly from attraction to love with Emma in 3A. I don't remember Rumbelle that well, but it didn't seem like it took them too long. The difference between those couples and Ruby/Dorothy or Zelena/Hades is that they didn't get a TLK straight away. Is it the insta-love we find implausible or the TLK after a 5 minute relationship? If I like a couple I'm usually willing to accept that they're meant for each other after a few meaningful looks, so I think in my case it's the TLKs that don't sit well, not the speed with which the couples fall in love. 

[Curio]

1 minute ago, profdanglais said:

Well, CS has hardly had a spare moment to draw breath since they became a couple. They don't have a crypt to hide out in when they want to be alone. They only just got the Jolly Roger back, and have had no down time to get down in it. If the plot could just slow its roll a little there might be time to show what Emma and Hook get up to when they're alone. 

The writers made a conscious decision to skip six weeks of bliss between 4A and 4B. They just choose to never include nice moments.

[tri4335]

And I feel they skipped those six weeks so they wouldn't upset parts of the fandom showing that bliss!

[Joanh23]

6 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

If I like a couple I'm usually willing to accept that they're meant for each other after a few meaningful looks, so I think in my case it's the TLKs that don't sit well, not the speed with which the couples fall in love. 

Yeah I'm the same I can buy that the characters fell in love so quickly, what I don't see is how they can have a TLK so quickly.  To me a TLK needs to be earned by the couples - we saw Snowing fight for each all during S1 and it was only after they'd saved each other multiple times that they had a TLK, same with Rumbelle, although their romance was shown in 1 episode, it was clear in the episode that it took place over a couple of months.  

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, profdanglais said:

Is it the insta-love we find implausible or the TLK after a 5 minute relationship?

For me, it's the TLK that's implausible. I don't know that I'd call most of these couples insta-love. There may have been that "this is the one!" sense fairly quickly, but they went through some stuff before it became love, and still more stuff before the TLK. And that "this is the one!" thing does happen in real life. My dad saw my mom walk into the campus diner and declared to his best friend that he was going to marry that girl (not knowing that she was his friend's little sister who'd just come to that university -- awkward!), and they've been married more than 50 years. With Snow and Charming, they'd gone through her stealing from him, him tracking her down, then both of them rescuing each other before he saw the ring on her and they started falling in love, and then they went through a lot more over the course of time before they had the TLK. With Hook and Emma, they had that climb up the beanstalk and dealing with the giant, during which I think the attraction started. He was impressed with her and thought she was brilliant, while she had to have felt something for her to panic and fear she couldn't trust him and compare him to Neal. Then they had all the back-and-forth after that, with him being impressed with the way she dealt with stuff and him doing surprising things like going out of his way to return Aurora's heart, then their encounters in Storybrooke, followed by him offering his ship to go after Henry. They had their private wake for Neal and had gone through a fair amount of stuff in Neverland before that first kiss that led to him saying that he'd realized it might be possible for him to fall in love again. Then there was more working together before they were parted for a year and then he gave up everything to reach her again before he told Zariel he loved her.

So the attraction may have been fairly quick, but they'd gone through a lot before the word "love" was used to describe anyone's feelings. They'd already gone through a lot more together before that first "fake" kiss than most of the TLK couples we've seen lately managed to go through together before they had that "most powerful magic in existence" degree of true love, and it was still some time after that (actually, more than a year, though they were apart all that time, with her not remembering him) before they considered it love, and still more time after that before they passed a True Love test, and they still haven't had a TLK. Heck, they'd spent more time together in the car driving from New York to Maine than Ruby and Dorothy had spent together before they had a TLK.

[Dianthus]

Except that Hook and Emma didn't fall all that quickly. Emma had been actively resisting her attraction to Hook for some time. It wasn't until she found out about the fate of the Jolly that she really let herself go. I guess you could say "slow burn" is relative for this show, but they'd spent more time in each other's company than any of the others.

Edited May 6, 2016 by Dianthus
change to the wording

[InsertWordHere]

17 minutes ago, Shanna Marie said:

With Snow and Charming, they'd gone through her stealing from him, him tracking her down, then both of them rescuing each other before he saw the ring on her and they started falling in love, and then they went through a lot more over the course of time before they had the TLK.

They had a TLK two meetings later, after Snow told Charming she didn't love him and took a potion to forget him, but as you say, Snow Falls goes a long way to making it seem not so instantaneous. OTOH, technically we are going by Snow Drifts/There's No Place Like Home now and that doesn't stack up quite as well.

Edited May 6, 2016 by InsertWordHere

[KAOS Agent]

Snowing's rather quick fall into True Love worked better when they were seen as a very special couple. If we see that spark from the first and watch them fight for each other, then a True Love's Kiss after just a couple of meetings seems rather sudden, but is still plausible given the uniqueness of them as the True Love couple that gave birth to the Saviour. The way it's written now, I wonder what took them so long. You can have True Love just by bumping into someone on the street (not for you though, Neal). And really, Emma's magic and Saviour-ness seem to be all Emma and it has nothing to do with her parents and how they feel about each other. So on one hand, it still really sucks to be Emma and on the other, I kind of like the idea that she is who she is on her own merits and not because her parents are super special. It would make sense if Snowflake was normal, just like Aurora's baby should be.

[KingOfHearts]

I liked Ruby's infatuation with Dorothy. That was fine. I found Zades tolerable in their flashbacks too, but only because Zelena ended up turning him down. The TLKs (and instant trust in Zelena's case) were what bothered me. Instant attraction can happen. But increasingly lately, the show has been using TL as a cop-out for writing believable relationships. Using Snowing as a reference, despite them getting a TLK in the first scene of the show and being a traditional couple, the writers did put in some effort to build them up. Not so much from total time spent together, but air time. We saw their dynamic over the course of multiple episodes. It was shown longer than one flashback or a five-minute conversation.

[profdanglais]

Although more time than usual passed between CS meeting and using the word love, I still feel like on Hook's side it came on pretty rapidly. He was clearly attracted to her in S2, but by the middle of 3A he had gone full steam ahead into lurve. That arc was what, about a week? Long by the Show's standards but still pretty quick. With Emma it's harder to know when she fell, but she had clearly come to care for and trust him by the end of S3, despite her curse-memory-loss, Neal, Walsh, and her natural tendency to resist softer emotions. Given all that, her feelings were probably quite firmly developed about the same time his were, she just needed longer to accept them. So after a week of tramping through a jungle, a bit of flirting, and one (admittedly hot) kiss, Hook was prepared to give up his most prized possession and jump through a portal into a world he knew nothing about to get Emma back. That's moving pretty fast, right? Then a scant week after that, Emma gave up her magic to save Hook's life. Granted, as the Saviour, she probably would have done that for anyone, but the deeper emotion behind her actions was clear. 

Now, I love CS and don't really have any problem with the way their story has been told, but I do remember thinking that Hook seemed to go from brazen flirting to heart-on-his-sleeve kind of suddenly. Just trying to pinpoint why I don't mind in the case of CS but Ruby Slippers' TLK didn't sit right, and I think it's because of the TLK itself. Them falling for each other in an afternoon I could buy into, but a TLK is a bridge too far. 

[YaddaYadda]

2 hours ago, profdanglais said:

Although more time than usual passed between CS meeting and using the word love, I still feel like on Hook's side it came on pretty rapidly. He was clearly attracted to her in S2, but by the middle of 3A he had gone full steam ahead into lurve. That arc was what, about a week? Long by the Show's standards but still pretty quick. With Emma it's harder to know when she fell, but she had clearly come to care for and trust him by the end of S3, despite her curse-memory-loss, Neal, Walsh, and her natural tendency to resist softer emotions. Given all that, her feelings were probably quite firmly developed about the same time his were, she just needed longer to accept them. So after a week of tramping through a jungle, a bit of flirting, and one (admittedly hot) kiss, Hook was prepared to give up his most prized possession and jump through a portal into a world he knew nothing about to get Emma back. That's moving pretty fast, right? Then a scant week after that, Emma gave up her magic to save Hook's life. Granted, as the Saviour, she probably would have done that for anyone, but the deeper emotion behind her actions was clear. 

It's sort of funny because I thought that Hook falling in love with Emma happened gradually. There was clearly attraction there, but it didn't seem to me like he gave himself permission to fall for her until his confession in the Echo Cave, where he seemed to have given some thought to moving on from Milah. And even then, I always felt he wanted to pursue whatever with her, and I have no doubt they would have started something if it hadn't been for Pan's curse, and the missing year. When they were at the town line, and he told her he'd think of her, and she replied good, I thought it was both of them opening up to that possibility, even though there was no chance it was going to happen anymore.

I think it's the missing year that cemented whatever feelings he was starting to have for her, what with him being miserable, and faithful to her.

In light of what happened in 5x20, and the uncertainty of what true love is, and the very abstract idea of it, I just find it funny that he attempts a TLK in 3x11.

[RulerofallIsurvey]

A littlel OT (but the thread IS about Happily Ever After relationships, right?)

8 hours ago, Shanna Marie said:

My dad saw my mom walk into the campus diner and declared to his best friend that he was going to marry that girl (not knowing that she was his friend's little sister who'd just come to that university -- awkward!), and they've been married more than 50 years.

Aww.....

This made me smile and I badly needed it this morning, so thank you! (and...to quote Pepe Le Pew, "Le Sigh!")

Edited May 6, 2016 by RulerofallIsurvey
Those pesky parentheses..

[Curio]

6 hours ago, YaddaYadda said:

It's sort of funny because I thought that Hook falling in love with Emma happened gradually.

I agree. The way I perceived it, there was clearly a strong initial attraction between them during the beanstalk episode, starting with physical attraction and slowly noticing how they had similar personalities and life experiences. That episode started his interest in Emma, but from the time the beanstalk episode happened and the end of Season 2, Emma was more of a crush than someone he realistically thought he could be with. Yes, Emma was attractive to him in more ways than one, but the deeper connection didn't start until after Neal's fake death at the end of Season 2. He turned his ship around mostly out of memory of Bae, but he also had to have done it on some subconscious level to help Emma as well.

Realizing that Emma had a strong connection to the same person Hook once loved probably made him think of Emma on a deeper level. His crush on Emma jumped up a few notches in the premiere of Season 3 when they bonded over their loss of Bae/Neal and Hook genuinely seemed concerned when Emma had drowned. The fans who paid attention to their smaller moments in Season 2 weren't surprised by his reaction, but those who didn't really see their spark in Season 2 probably viewed that moment, and the subsequent moments in 3A, as taking a huge leap.

I also viewed Neverland's timeline as not quite the same as our world's, so what the audience perceives as a week in Neverland could have felt like several weeks or months for the Neverland people. So starting from their initial meeting in Season 2, the several months between the beanstalk episode and Neverland, the screwy Neverland timeline where time and space is wonky, and the Missing Year where all Hook did was think about Emma... I don't think Hook falling in love with Emma was rushed at all. Neverland was all about Hook realizing there was potential to fall in love with Emma, and the missing year and trading his ship solidified his own personal feelings about it.

I also wonder if his father's story about receiving a TLK from the nurse he never met influenced Hook's decision to kiss Emma in NYC. He was probably thinking to himself, "Well shit, if my bastard father could receive a TLK from a woman he never even met or spoke to, then perhaps there's hope for it working on Emma. She did say 'good' after all..." 

Edited May 6, 2016 by Curio

[profdanglais]

I guess I read it as once Hook made the decision to move on from Milah (Echo Caves) then he was all in. He told Neal just a few eps later that he was "in this for the long haul." He doesn't love in half measures, and I interpreted his turning the prostitute away in "The Jolly Roger" as a sign that he was fully in love, not just wishing he could have seen how things developed with Emma, but actually brokenhearted to be separated from her. He even confessed as much to Zariel. That's what seemed quick, the switch from pursuing single-minded revenge over Milah to being head over heels for Emma.

I definitely noticed the sparks between them in S2, which is actually why it seemed sudden to me. There were sparks like crazy in "Tallahassee," then again in that brief scene with him in the hospital bed, then they hardly had any screen time together again until S3, when Hook seemed to swerve from that initial attraction to love. I realise now that this was because Colin O'Donoghue broke his leg, but at the time I didn't follow any behind-the-scenes news so I assumed that I'd just read too much into their earlier interactions, then suddenly whooosh! Echo Cave confession, long-term aims, attempted TLK. 

It's possible that Hook's love for Milah had been fading for some time, and he had just been clinging on to it out of stubbornness and because his life would be pointless without it, and the feelings for Emma sort of crept in through the cracks and caught him unawares. 

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that CS developed too quickly at all, quite the contrary actually. My point is just that even though it is the slowest burning relationship on the show by a country mile, it still came about more quickly than a lot of relationships. 

Edited May 7, 2016 by profdanglais

[Curio]

6 minutes ago, profdanglais said:

It's possible that Hook's love for Milah had been fading for some time, and he had just been clinging on to it out of stubbornness and because his life would be pointless without it, and the feelings for Emma sort of crept in through the cracks and caught him unawares. 

That's exactly how I read it. After hundreds of years passing in Neverland, his suicidal recklessness in Season 2, and his conversation with Regina at the end of Season 2 discussing if revenge is what makes them unloveable, it seems to me he'd been battling the thoughts of letting go of Milah and ending revenge for a while at that point. It just took meeting Emma and finally the kiss to really solidify if he could let go of Milah once and for all.

[kitticup]

I think that Hook came to realize that revenge was not worth it.  He thought he had killed Rumple and realized it changed nothing.  Milah was still dead, he felt empty and realized he wasted centuries.  The timing was right for him to have that moment of self awareness/realization that let him move on.  Emma was willing to give him a chance for something more and he took it.  Hook was tired of being alone, probably tired of having to turn off all his feelings to get revenge.

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, kitticup said:

I think that Hook came to realize that revenge was not worth it.  He thought he had killed Rumple and realized it changed nothing.  Milah was still dead, he felt empty and realized he wasted centuries.

It sounded like that had a lot to do with it. He thought he got his revenge, and he realized that it didn't make anything better. It didn't bring Milah back. All he'd done was make himself miserable by singlemindedly pursuing revenge, and that left him open to realizing that there were other options. It did seem like he was attracted to Emma fairly quickly on the beanstalk climb, but he was still too focused on Milah (or the idea of Milah) to consider dropping his revenge scheme for her. Then once he had his anti-revenge epiphany, he focused on Emma. It was fairly quick in the show time, unless you consider Neverland time being possibly wonky, but then again, that was about a week of 24/7 togetherness in very intense circumstances. It wasn't a week with maybe one or two dates. When they arrived in Neverland, he said he fancied her (when she wasn't yelling at him), and after the kiss he said he'd realized he could love again. He didn't actually say he loved her until his confession to Zariel, a year later.

It's harder to tell from her perspective how things tracked because of those infamous walls. She was certainly flustered on the beanstalk climb, but that may just prove that she's alive. There aren't a lot of people who wouldn't be flustered by someone who looks like that making that kind of intense eye contact while tying a bandage with his teeth. I think there was a sense of kindred spirit bonding, but I don't think she even considered him as a possibility until the kiss, when it affected her more than she'd anticipated (if she'd already been interested in him, I don't think she'd have kissed him like that). I think with her it was very gradual, going from being attracted and intrigued to the friendship they developed after the return, to going through the time travel together, to learning about the Jolly Roger, and then it was still more than a couple of months after that before she used the word "love."

I think I'd have rolled my eyes hard if his attempted TLK had worked when he came to New York for her because I wouldn't have believed they were there yet to live up to that standard -- and yet at that time they knew each other much better and had been through more together than either Ruby and Dorothy or Zelena and Hades.

[OnceUponAJen]

I can buy "love" at first sight,  but it seems to me too, that a TLK is something deeper that would require the couples to have demonstrated a deep devotion to each other.  And that is something that doesn't happen in an afternoon. I can see the potential of Zades, but I honestly thought that bike ride was pretty corny. I also think a TLK is a poor substitute for actual character development.

[Shanna Marie]

7 hours ago, OnceUponAJen said:

I also think a TLK is a poor substitute for actual character development.

That's the real problem. It (along with the pixie dust soulmate test) has become a cheap shortcut to telling us how deep a relationship is rather than showing the relationship, and as a result, lately it's the more superficial relationships that have been verified as magical true love while the relationship they're bothering to develop doesn't need that shortcut but then hasn't been verified as true love (though I think now that the Ambrosia test counts as proof).

The other problem is that they're now using it as a plot shortcut. It didn't really matter to the story that Papa Hook had a True Love relationship. They just needed some kind of way to have him be still alive just before the curse so he could appear in a flashback. The easiest handwave was sleeping curse + TLK. With Dorothy and Ruby, it didn't really matter to the overall plot, so it came across as just something to silence critics -- hey, we not only had a LGBT relationship, but they're True Love! Like every other couple on the show! With Hades, they needed a reason he hadn't acted in the living world before now and a reason he could do it now -- easy answer, he's under a curse that can be broken with True Love's Kiss!

When in doubt, curse+TLK is the way out of anything and a great way to prove how great a relationship is without actually writing it.

[Camera One]

With Papa Hook, TLK was basically used as proof that he had really seen the light and changed.  

[YaddaYadda]

9 hours ago, Camera One said:

With Papa Hook, TLK was basically used as proof that he had really seen the light and changed.  

I still find that moment extremely revolting that his ass didn't see the error of his ways for years after he sold his kids, until a woman he fell in love with during his sleep told him he should feel bad. GTFO. 

I've never been so angry at a character. He is just plain horrible. 

[Shanna Marie]

2 hours ago, YaddaYadda said:

I've never been so angry at a character. He is just plain horrible.

That whole thing was such bad writing because the incident really wasn't necessary to motivate Hook's turnaround. We saw no reason for Regina to have known the details of the incident, and the only thing that seemed to matter to Hook was the question of who he wanted to be (and even there, the real turnaround seemed to involve him seeing Emma in danger). Now we know that's been something he's always struggled with. The father killing was way over the top, especially since they jumped through such huge story hoops to arrange it. So they wasted a bit of backstory, a character relationship that could have been interesting, and the concept of a True Love Kiss for no good reason.

While I can kind of buy someone falling in love with the voice of someone talking to him while he's in a magic coma, I still don't see how you can get True Love for someone you haven't actually met. He was basically a corpse. She didn't know anything about him other than what he looked like. If she did know how he got to that state, she had no way of knowing that he was changing from listening to her. All she could possibly have known was his appearance and maybe why he was under a sleeping curse. She fell in love with the attractive not-corpse of a criminal, someone she'd never interacted with, never even seen with his eyes open. How can that be True Love? (Not to mention, why would he even have had a nurse looking after him? They've said that a person under a sleeping curse is basically in stasis, so it's not like they'd need an ICU nurse to change the IV and other tubing, and it was his enemies who had him under a sleeping curse, so it's not like they would have hired someone to look after him and then set up a foundation to keep that care going for a century. Did this woman stumble upon a body, notice it didn't rot, and just start talking to it?)

[Serena]

On 28/4/2016 at 1:32 AM, Rumsy4 said:

The other aspect of poor relationship building in this show is that the characters seem to form lifelong bonds in a few short hours.

It's a problem with the structure of the show, the flashbacks. If those people met and fell in love in a flashback, the writers only have one episode (because they've so self contained) to tell the story. Which is one of the several reason they should either drop the flashbacks, or start telling a more cohesive story with them (like in season one where we followed Snow and Charming's story in flashbacks, so they had more episodes to develop)

[Camera One]

That is definitely true, though with most characters, they are only interested in doing a one-off and they don't want to explore them in depth.  An example is how they brought on THREE Queens of Darkness instead of just one.  

Within the flashback structure in a single episode, they always have the option to space out the scenes they show.  That was partly why Merlin/Nimue worked slightly better, since it showed their first meeting, and then later on when Merlin proposed.  With this show, a lot of it has to do with the charisma with the actors.  It also depends on the viewer... I know lots of people felt the chemistry between Hades and Zelena, and Red and Dorothy, and I'd have loved to, but they didn't make a dent in my Heart of the Truest Doubter.

[YaddaYadda]

The way they wrote Merlin and Nimue, with the clear time jump between when they met and when he told her about the grail, I absolutely bought that they fell in love, and were building a relationship. They were living together, he was about to propose.

Hades and Zelena, there's chemistry there, but I just don't buy it, especially not from someone as closed off, and untrusting as Zelena is. Zelena is a one person band, and it boggles the mind that she bought what he was selling, and that she even fell in love with him so quickly. And seeing her panic when she landed in the Underworld, the story that followed makes even less sense when it ends with a TLK.