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firelxdykatara · 4 years

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Hi! I follow you mostly for your zutara content and I noticed you also ship captain swan! I'm assuming you aren't as active in the ouat fandom as you are atla, but i'm curious why you ship captain swan and what your thoughts are on anti-cs arguments since from the ones I've seen, they seem to be somewhat similar to anti-kataang arguments. thanks for the great content! :)

oh god, this ask sent me on such an emotional journey. (and thank you, by the way! i’m glad you like my content <333)

ouat ended before i lost my old blog in the purge, and i’d stopped watching after season 6 ended to begin with, but my old blog was restored (like eight months later which is why i never really went back to it) so if you want to check out my ouat tags over on @thepinkrvnger i was. very active in the ouat fandom for a very long time. (relevant tags are my captain swan tag, though you’d have to dig past gifsets and things to get to any meta, and also my anti swan queen and anti swanfire tags [there was a lot of bad blood in the ouat fandom and lordy did i have Many Opinions])

it’s been so long i can’t really. say for sure anymore, but i was definitely among the first wave of captain swan shippers. like many of us, i started shipping it almost as soon as killian was introduced in season 2, and it was that infamous episode with the beanstalk that really cemented my love for the ship--and, aside from emma herself, captain swan was one of the few things that kept me watching when the show’s writing quality took a steep nosedive.

uh. anyway. to actually answer your question, honestly? i’d need some specific examples, because i can’t think of any anti cs arguments that remotely resemble anti kataang arguments, in large part because there are no similarities between them. in fact, captain swan is much more similar to zutara--enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, complete with a season 2 betrayal following an emotional connection when they were isolated from their respective groups (actually if i really thought about it i could probably make a connection between emma’s connection with killian at the top of the beanstalk and katara’s connection with zuko in the crystal caverns beneath ba sing se; it wouldn’t line up perfectly but there are thematic similarities there which are actually pretty damn juicy now that i'm mentally putting the two scenes side-by-side), and the entire show basically setting them up with parallels and narrative symbolism, killian’s redemption arc being second to none (seriously, much as i love zuko’s, his is not the only way to have a redemption, and kiliian is an excellent example of a true villain redemption done right--interestingly, the other attempted redemption arcs in ouat were piss poor, which makes me think they used up all the good writing for killian’s, but that’s another rant altogether), and emma being the driving force in her own romantic narrative the entire way through their relationship arc.

one of the biggest anti kataang arguments, for me, has always been katara’s lack of agency in her own romantic narrative--and this absolutely does not apply to captain swan. killian falls in love with her first, but emma is the one making every choice--to save him, to trust him, to include him in her family. a lot of killian’s redemption is wrapped up in his feelings for emma, but she doesn’t change him--while it is his growing love for her that, in the beginning, makes him want to be a better man, he still makes every choice to be better on his own. he feels remorse for his bad actions and he does what he can to make amends to his victims, where possible. the show keeps bringing up new, horrible things killian did in his past, but unlike when it does this with regina, he always feels remorse, and he is always the one trying to make up for the bad he did, rather than being painted as a victim (the most egregious example of this is during the camelot arc, where regina is attacked by a man whose entire family she brutally slaughtered--not only does she not give a shit, but she’s painted as the victim throughout the entire interaction).

it does help that emma is the central character of the series. we are privy to her thoughts and emotions, and she’s never presented to killian like some sort of trophy or prize for Doing Good--there is a moment where he kisses her without her consent, but a) the situations are entirely different, and b) they don’t get together Right Away (in fact, iirc, it takes the entire rest of the season for them to actually get together, and there is a lot that happens in between), and emma’s feelings are the most prominent at every stage of their developing relationship.

i’m actually really interested in knowing which arguments exactly you mean, because i can’t think of a single argument against kataang that would apply to captain swan in even the flimsiest respect. they are entirely different relationship dynamics that come from very different places and have entirely different journeys, and, as i pointed out, if captain swan parallels any atla ship i think it’d be zutara more than any other. so if you can think of examples, please send them to me, i’m curious!

#atla #ouat #captain swan #zutara #anti kataang #just or the mentions #asked #Anonymous

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