Eldest Daughter Support Line

*references under the cut

Gonna just try to throw together a bullet-point list here, so I have something to go off of when/if I expound on this more fully:

I realise that the quirkiness and goofiness of things is kinda just a given when Disney makes a show based on a movie. I know that. But there are some things that kinda . . . lose their weight/mystery/wonder/realness when you TV-7 them and decide to main-character them. To name a few- a) The Corona guards (it takes away from how skilled of a thief Flynn was to manage to steal the lost princess's crown, something that was under HIGH surveillance (and doesn't that say something about the hope Rapunzel's parents had for her coming back someday-- but that's another post), if the entire guard save for the Captain actually turns out to be a mess of bumbling fools). b) The ruffians and thugs (the whole point of I've Got A Dream wasn't that they're all just harmless sweethearts; it was that even the deepest, grimiest dregs of the kingdom have the same common thread of humanity running through them, and that Rapunzel was able to bring that out. There's more to the song, but my point is that it WASN'T the former. The point was that there was more beneath the roughness-- and you kinda lose that when you sand them down (which, sure, is in part due to some of them reforming-- Atilla specifically, I suppose-- but can you seriously look at any of the others in the show and think that anyone could say one of them had blood in their moustache?). Don't even get me started on the Stabbingtons). c) Corona itself. I know, I know-- it's a show, so it's gonna be kooky. It's not going to feel like a real kingdom, or even a believable, thematically-fitting kingdom, the way it did in the movie. But oh, man-- the cheesiness of it all.

They could've done a MUCH better job with the fact that Eugene proposed multiple times before Rapunzel said yes. They could've made it a lighthearted thing-- something along the lines of him casually proposing once a day, or once a week on a schedule, knowing she'd say yes when the time was right, with it being not-a-joke but not-a-heavy-thing. They could've made it so that every time he proposed, something inopportune came up-- a'la Charlie Brown and the football-- until it didn't. They could've done literally anything other than making it an issue of, "oh, Rapunzel's just gotten her freedom! And if she gets married, she's going to be imprisoning herself again!! Oh, what to do, what to do?!" Look me in the eyes and tell me with a straight face that post-movie Eugene Fitzherbert would not have been willing to go to the ends of the earth with Rapunzel so long as she wanted to go there. Look me in the eyes and tell me with a straight face that post-movie Rapunzel would have second-guessed a heartfelt, genuine proposal from Eugene for even a second. Yeah, you can't do it. (This is really another area where you can hear the corporation bleeding through. You just know someone in the writer's room put those words into Rapunzel's mouth for the Message of it-- they didn't flow out of her character.)

(And also the issue isn't so much WHERE she is, but WHO she's with!! I'd think that anyone who's watched the movie would have at least come away with that! In the end, the point to her isn't the place, but the people! It's the place that changes BECAUSE of who the people are! I do not, in all honesty, believe that 2010 Tangled Rapunzel would have equated her father to Gothel just because he put her on lockdown to keep her safe. She is with the people who love her most in all the world, she is not being abandoned, and she is being protected because she herself is important beyond measure to someone, not because one aspect of her holds value since it is of benefit to someone. Unsurety makes sense-- just as it did when Eugene left her at the boat to give the crown back to the Stabbingtons. She had reason to fear being abandoned then, and she'd have reasons to be uncomfortable with the lockdown situation-- but that doesn't justify the level to which things were ramped up in the show.)

(I have a lot of issues with the king's characterisation, too, actually.)

(I have a lot of issues with most people's characterisation, at some point or another.)

I really did not see the point in making Eugene a prince. Again, this is something that felt like it came from the corpo side of things. That's not to say I didn't like the whole line-of-guardians-of-the-Moonstone thing-- I rather did, actually (and I appreciated the introduction of his dad if only for the line "you finally got adopted?! :D" from Lance). It just really felt contrived to build a whole kingdom (as if to act as a foil to Corona, though that didn't really get used to its potential, if that's part of what they were going for) around that idea.

That said, there IS a lot of stuff I do appreciate! The Moonstone/Sundrop dichotomy, and how it resolved, was neat-- and I liked the gradual buildup to it, minus the hair thing. I liked how Varian foreshadowed Cassandra's arc but was also a bit of a foil for it. I liked the additional backstory we got for Cassandra in how she's tied to Gothel, and therefore to Rapunzel-- even if it does seem a bit contrived, it DOES set up for Zhan Tiri's manipulation of Cassandra really well. Lance is fantastic and I loved that he ended up adopting the girls. The art style is great and the music usually slaps.

I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream. I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam.

Flower, gleam and glow, let your powers shine. Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine. Heal what has been hurt, change the fates’ design. Save what has been lost, bring back what once was mine. What once was mine.