Oh Well, With Her Even Death Would Be A Photoshoot.

SWAN QUEEN AT ENCHANTED 2018

Just to clear up the controversy. (PLEASE SHARE!)

I was the one who asked Lana the SwanQueen question at the Enchanted Con. I want to take this time to apologise for the confusion I’ve caused. This was my first Con and I was very over-excited and nervous all at once. I was the last scheduled question before the Q&A closed and I wanted to take the opportunity to ask Lana a, unique, question but I didn’t anticipate how crazy the fallout was going to be. Here is the transcript of my question:

“In season 7, as a result of the season 7 curse, it was revealed that the story travelled back in time and the events of Hyperions Heights ran parallel with an older time of Storybrooke. Wherein there exists another Regina and another Emma in addition to the original Storybrooke timeline. With the laws of time, including the ripple effect, do you care to give your opinion on whether you believe that in this alternate Storybrooke - SwanQueen exists?”

Watching Season 7, I perceived the time-jump as a creation of a second, alternate, Storybrooke that ran parallel with the original timeline as well as the Wish Realm and Hyperion Heights. So, I saw at least 4 active universes, in Once, running at the same time. I was curious to know if, like me, Lana believed that SQ existed, or could exist, in this older, alternate, version of Storybrooke.

Despite the confusion, my question received a positive reaction from the audience. Shout out to my fellow SQ shippers! Lana answered by saying that she believed that Regina was single, living with Henry in the mansion. She even joked about Granny possibly living there to which Bex bantered back about a ship with Granny! 😂 Lana continued saying that, from her perspective, she couldn’t answer honestly and that my question was more suited for Adam & Eddy. Bex, bless her, added that SwanQueen COULD exist in a parallel universe! THANK YOU BEX! 💚

Later, when receiving my autograph from Lana, I apologised to her personally for the confusion. She very graciously said that she wasn’t at all confused and elaborated by telling me that the events of the time-jump Storybrooke take place after Season 6 and that Hook and Emma were already married. I told her, “We can dream.” to which she agreed, “We can.” ❤️ I told her she was an angel and that I loved her very much. I blew her a kiss and she responded with her trademark MWAH! 💋 THANK YOU LANA! 💜👑

So, to everyone responding controversially to this whole situation, please remember that Lana has always openly supported all the ships and the LGBTQ community! As do I! Please be kind to everyone in the fandom and remember to love and love each other.

Once again, I apologise for any trouble I’ve caused in the fandom, to my fellow Swan Queen shippers, or to Lana!

THANK YOU ALL AND SEE YOU AT ENCHANTED 2!

/Naomi

Swan Queen Spring Break Week 2021 Master List:

The compiled works of Swan Queen Spring Break Week 2021:

DAY 1: Sunset/Sunrise

deathnotelu

Art – “Operation Cobra”

https://deathnotelu.tumblr.com/post/646328347472871424/morning-at-grannys-prompt-sunrise-for-swan-queen

Defying_Expectations

“Please Don’t Take My Sunshine Away”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30284415

Italymystery

Art – Inspired by the movie Ladyhawke

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30180240

KizuRai

“Sunset”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74346711

LZClotho (LZielinsky)

“We Meet Between Sunset and Sunrise”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30180042

misseliza23

“Dungeons and Dates”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30184044

MissSwen108

“The Sunset Date”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30177729

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13845207/1/SQ-The-Sunset-Date

Noname_Kat

“in love with the sunrise”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30184857

Theirseyes

“Once Upon A Spring”

English https://archiveofourown.org/works/30178944/chapters/74355135

Italian https://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3969015&i=1

Art https://twitter.com/theirseyes/status/1373730296361840641?s=21

Waknatious

“Sunrise: A Swan Queen Scene”

https://waknatiouswrites.tumblr.com/post/646283699488473088/sunrise

WickedHeadache

“You’ll Be the Evil Witch and I’ll be the Princess”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30183639/chapters/74368491

DAY 2: Bloom/Gloom

KizuRai

“Bloom”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74346861

LZClotho (LZielinsky)

“Gloom and Bloom”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30191931

misseliza23

“Or Forever Hold Your Peace”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30206202

MissSwen108

“A Blooming Romance”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30201009

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13845991/1/A-Blooming-Romance

Noname_Kat

“gloom on the grave”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30200940

Theirseyes

“Once Upon A Spring” (Part 2)

English https://archiveofourown.org/works/30178944/chapters/74405184

Italian https://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3969181

-------

DAY 3: Party/Picnic

Italymystery

“Picnic Enchanted Forest Style”

Art https://archiveofourown.org/works/30221265

KizuRai

“Picnic”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74482308

LZClotho (LZielinsky)

“The boss’s girlfriend”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30199827

MissSwen108

“SQ Royal Matchmaking Party”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30219555

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13846610/1/SQ-Prompt-Royal-Matchmaking-Party

Theirseyes

“Once Upon A Spring” (Part 3)

English https://archiveofourown.org/works/30178944/chapters/74461059

Italian https://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3969403

------

DAY 4: Working/Relaxation

Italymystery

“Duty First and...Pleasure”

Art https://archiveofourown.org/works/30241959

KizuRai

“Relaxation”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74532072

LZClotho (LZielinsky)

“Leaping Leprechauns”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30244362

misssliza23

“Let me help you (out)”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30245514

MissSwen108

“First Comes Duties Then Comes Relaxation”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30247542

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13847492/1/SQ-One-shot-First-Comes-Duties-Then-Comes-Relaxation

Theirseyes

“Once Upon A Spring” (Part 4)

English https://archiveofourown.org/works/30178944/chapters/74525907

Italian https://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3969629

---

DAY 5: Rainbow/Rainy Day

Aponi_Aquene

“A Rainbow after the Storm”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30312183

Italymystery

“Open Day”

Art https://archiveofourown.org/works/30261840?view_adult=true

KizuRai

“Rainy Day”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74593629

MissSwen108

“A Rainbow Day”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30271167

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13848230/1/A-Rainbow-Day

----

DAY 6: Breakfast/Late-night snack

Aponi_Aquene

“Strawberries and Cream”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30324741

Italymystery

“Unexpected late night visit”

Art https://archiveofourown.org/works/30284085

KizuRai

“Late-night Snack”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74642040

Theregalunicorn

“Foraging”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30264744

-----

DAY 7: First Date/Anniversary

Italymystery

“Happy Anniversary My Love”

Art https://archiveofourown.org/works/30301788

KizuRai

“Anniversary”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30176154/chapters/74695683

LZClotho (LZielinsky)

“A Year to Know We Want More”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30319065

queststar

“A date of anniversaries”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30259233

SPECIAL EDITION: DAY 1-7

DelicatePoem

“a kiss caught in the rain (this is how it goes)”

https://archiveofourown.org/works/30312318

Wangxian + pretty scenery

"But I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women and children who lost their lives to men like you. Man and women and children forced to wear your chains. I must answer to them.

And this war, Flint’s war, my war, it will not be bargained away to avoid a fight. To save John Silver’s life, or his men’s, or mine.”

I’d like to start from this beautiful speech from Madi to explain why I think Madi is the war itself. Why she was exactly what Flint needed to start fighting it and why she couldn’t be further away from Silver as a person.

Just because I rewatched the final ep. today and I feel the need to honor the one who lost part of herself in this and to reason about the dynamics among the two persons who might have changed the world and the one who kicked that hope back into the dark corner of the untold.

As always, Flint and Silver’s conversation at the end of ep.XXXVIII made me think A LOT. First time I guess I was overwhelmed by emotions, but this time, between the bitterness of the betrayal and the desperation of Flint's loss, I think I started to see exactly what Silver couldn’t get about the war. Which basically is its meaning.

But let me begin with Flint, because is the character I think I know better by now and because I need to start from a warrior who is not the war itself.

Flint started by fighting a war, another one, an easier one, alongside Thomas. He found himself in that period of time, but he lost that war and the one he loved the most with it. Then he started to fight another kind of war, twisted himself in order to fit into its lines. That war was never about liberation, even if that was what he had been telling himself all along and maybe what he hoped he could eventually accomplish by fighting it: it was just about revenge and something to grab in order to stay afloat. It took him to lost every hope of happiness he had left (Miranda), the last possible meaning of his life and of the person he felt he really was deep inside to see the chance for yet another kind of war. A wider one, a harder one, a most fundamental one. It took him to meet Madi. Knowing her, someone completely different from anyone he had known and fought along in the past, someone who was somehow closer to him as a person than anyone he had ever known (except maybe Eleonor, I’m talking mainly about the pirates. Thomas and Miranda were close to him but not very similar in character I’d say and maybe this is why they got along together so well), he finally had the chance to understand that he was not alone in his misery. She had the courage to be what Flint didn’t even know he could become, the fight not for the fight’s sake but for the outcome, as much as he reputed himself already excluded from it, because however he couldn’t ever be part of anything again, not in the way he had been with Thomas and Miranda. But there’s a difference between fighting just to kill and fighting to save who the one you are killing would have been willing to kill, and Madi represented that change for him.

And the war represented the only meaning he was still able to give to his life.

He is defined by his past, absolutely and mainly, and this makes him both someone with valid reasons to fight and someone with reasons to stop fighting.

In the previous episode we see how Silver instead refuses to be defined by his past, which could be a good or a bad thing, depending on how one let that past influence themselves, but that in this specific situation is basically what makes him unable (just my point of view of course) to get the general meaning of that war.

He chooses to erase his experience in favor of the moment, of the future maybe, and this makes him unable (as much as he likes to affirm the contrary, which I had never agreed upon) to understand the minds of the ones who let that experience shape them. And even more, it makes him unable to understand the minds of the ones who don’t need to have cruel experiences behind them in order to feel the fight. That is, Madi.

To link with my previous post ( https://www.tumblr.com/dragonsinthedarkness/758840316125216768/from-the-moment-he-started-speaking-i-couldnt?source=share ), in that infamous conversation in the last ep. Silver confesses he felt the war only (or especially, but I’d say only) when he lost Madi, because he felt the need to honor her sacrifice, avenge her lost and everything Flint had been doing for years, and the point is that that war was EXACTLY that. It was answering to the multitudes of voices who had undergone all that suffering and that demanded justice for it. It was trying to accomplish that as few others as possible could undergo that same fate.

And the point I want to make is that Madi was not only a warrior but the war itself because she felt those voices and the need to answer to them EVEN IF she had never personally experienced such tragedies. She was raised with the Guthries, then in the camp, she had probably even had the chance to be happy in her childhood, but this didn’t prevent her from developing the knowledge of that evil or the responsibility to fight it as leader of her community and as sisters of all the ones who had suffered before and may suffer again.

She wasn’t defined by her own past, but she brought on her shoulders the most painful and important legacy and decided to honor it.

And one may ask for justice for what happened in their own lifetime with a single chance of succeeding, that can make a great warrior of them, but those voices REACHED BACK CENTURIES, as she said. Her justice, their justice, would have been hopeless as long as something bigger as that war started to change things, and this is exactly what Silver couldn’t understand.

Now of course I know changes don’t happen overnight because “the world is too strong for that”, but I’m talking about their reality in that age right now and I think that as much as a war couldn’t have probably changed things, it would have been a beginning at least. A scream echoing in the night of their existences who would have maybe be heard, and as long as even a single person was able to gain goodness from it, it wouldn’t have been in vain.

As I believe all their efforts had not been in vain, despite the outcome.

For one hour, a month or a year (to improperly quote Silver) of freedom.

For one single moment of victory, of light in the dark.

Rio and Agatha - Star Crossed Lovers

This scene always makes me laugh. Like...Rogers had it all prepared to discuss the bargain with Flint as "civilized" men and then he just begin saying the last thing he should have if he wanted to have any hope of succeding. Of course he couldn't know, but still that's so funny lol

Poor Flint.

THIS BITCH WOODES ROGERS REALLY KNOWS HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. Wow. You can't just SAY the words Lord. Thomas. Hamilton. like that they're nothing to James McGraw/Flint! And just look at the phrasing of this - "I understand that you knew him."

I'm trying to get back into the groove of things. I am currently diving headfirst into one of my oldest hyper fixations. I finished this a few days ago after taking too long to work on it, but well....

Let the water wash away Everything that you’ve become On your knees, today is gone And tomorrow’s sure to come Tomorrow’s sure to come

~ Who's afraid of little old me?

They should be.