#captainswan4evah

Well, first of all, I think everyone is allowed to love their ships, canon or otherwise.

But that's not your question. So, I'm definitely not a fan of Swanfire for a lot of reasons, but I'll try and keep this short. For one, I am wholely against "staying together for the kids". This mentality creates a toxic relationship, which your kids are seeing, and will later try to emulate in their own relationships, subconsciously. Two, while Emma did love Neal when she was younger, and is quoted as saying such as late as Neverland (correct me if there is a later date), there are many different kinds of love. Past Emma loved Past Neal, but a decade has gone by between their meetings. The love she has for Neal is more of a memory, nostalgia.. but there are a lot of other feelings toward him, too, like anger and resentment. Three, IMO, Emma never showed a desire to date anyone post-Neverland, pre-Neal's death. Why would I root for her to date someone when her character seems uninterested?

Had Neal survived, I would have liked to see him, Regina, and Emma successfully co-parenting Henry. That would have been nice.

I'm also not opposed to splitting Bae and Neal's characters. Say, Neal is a normal human from the LwoM, not at all connected to Rumple, or the EF, and Bae is someone who arrived to the LwoM and grew up as notNeal. The first time I watched Bae's story, I remember thinking how an older Bae might be a perfect pairing for Emma. I wanna say the same season had snippets of Neal and I was so grossed out by him, which.. in hindsight is really funny because now we know they're the same. So, I guess you could say I like the idea of Swanfire, but I absolutely hate SwanCassidy. (If that makes sense..)