A room without books is like a body without a soul.

The Bible tells us in Deuteronomy 31:6 that God will NEVER leave us nor forsake us.

What if Grace made a lopsided crochet Rocky and cuddled it every night.

What if Rocky couldn’t stop making xenonite puppets of his alien friend.

Twenty-three years later, his own son fights him on a great big spaceship, cuts off his hand, and stands over him holding a lightsaber while Palapatine tells him to deliver the killing blow. Vader is now where Count Dooku was, sitting helpless while he waits for a Jedi to kill him at the word of a Sith. To Vader, it had to seem almost like justice. This is how the story goes--Sidious takes an apprentice, then orders a Jedi to kill them, and the Jedi becomes the new Sith apprentice. Sidious will win, because Sidious always wins, and the cycle will go on, because darkness always creates new darkness to destroy it. Luke will make the killing blow, because Vader's given him good reason to, and then Luke will become enslaved to Sidious and the dark, until the day he is inevitably betrayed and killed himself...

But then Luke tosses aside the lightsaber.

It must have been like light breaking through the darkness, to receive mercy in the situation where you yourself had no mercy. To see your son be stronger than you were, because back then you had not known that it was strength to refuse to use power. This boy who's so much like you found a way to break the cycle and refuse the chains that waited for him. The story doesn't have to end the way it always does. He found a way to defeat the darkness by refusing to give the darkness what it wants...

Rapunzel’s line here is in reference to giving Eugene the satchel with the crown back, in which she says “I should have given it to you before, but I was just scared. And the thing is… I’m not scared anymore. You know what I mean?”. And to understand her fear about returning the satchel back, it’s important to remember that she only has the satchel because Gothel threw it at her feet and effectively told her that giving him the satchel meant that he would abandon her. The satchel is, in some ways, a symbolic message of “reasons Flynn can run” [and I use ‘flynn’ here intentionally].

For Eugene, that satchel and the treasure within it is a signal of the life he had been living. The impression that Eugene has been on his own for quite some time and has dedicated his life to the accumulation of wealth as a means of safety and security is suggested to readers during the campfire scene (”[Flynnigan Rider] had enough money that he could do anything he wanted to do. He could go anywhere he wanted to go. And-and-and for a kid, with nothing… I… I don’t know, it just seemed like the better option”). I think much of Eugene’s life has been spent in fear perhaps to the point that he hasn’t known, for quite some time, what it’s like to not have that fear. Because he turned to a life of thievery and crime out of fear of not having enough to get by, and that turned his life into one constantly on the run out of fear of being caught. Eugene hasn’t known, for basically his entire life, what it means to find safety and security even though he’s devoted so much of his life trying to find it. 

And the crown is worth a lot. I don’t think it was hyperbole when the Stabbington Brothers told him “we do this job, you can buy your own castle” when talking about stealing the crown. But by the time Rapunzel gives him that option again… Eugene has learned what it could mean to not be living in a life of constant fear. He’s gotten a glimpse of what it might mean to find safety and security with another person (Rapunzel), and I think he realizes just how much he craves that. 

And I think that becomes clear in his response in the boat to Rapunzel’s comment about not being afraid. Because he pushes the satchel down in favor of looking at Rapunzel’s face:

And then says, “I’m starting to.” 

Because you don’t unlearn a lifetime of habits and deeply-ingrained motivation of fear overnight, but he is starting to. Later in the film, when Eugene says “you were my new dream”, that is only a confession of what was already admitted right here in this moment. Eugene quite literally pushes away his lifetime of learned habits because Rapunzel has helped show him, even in the little time they’ve had together, what it might be like to not be so afraid all the time. 

We’ve all seen that Gothel makes Rapunzel come to her for hugs, but today I realized it goes deeper than that. Gothel doesn’t want Rapunzel showing physical affection unless she has been given specific permission. Opening her arms is that unspoken permission.

For example, towards the beginning, when she’s reminding Gothel that it’s her birthday tomorrow, she grabs her arm in exuberance. Gothel is put out and then pries Rapunzel’s hands off her arm, all the while pretending she doesn’t remember (or care) that her birthday - something Rapunzel is extremely excited about - is fast approaching.

She also uses Rapunzel’s need for physical affection, deliberately taunting and “teaching” her with it by pretending to offer it, then taking it away immediately.

The first bazzilionty times I saw this movie, I always assumed Rapunzel was relieved to see Gothel towards the end of Mother Knows Best just because she was scared.

But now I realize it’s not only because she’s scared, but because Gothel is now giving Rapunzel permission to seek the creature comfort of physical contact that she so desperately needs after the gamut of fear she’s run.

Eugene, on the other hand, starts showing physical affection as soon as he starts feeling any affection for Rapunzel at all. He uses it as a comfort. Yet Rapunzel keeps her hands to herself.

It continues when he gives her the little flag, touching the small of her back in an affectionate way. But her hands (and attention) are full at this moment.

In fact, the first time she realizes she’s touching him, and he’s touching her, and there’s affection and enjoyment buzzing between them, she’s the first to pull away.

She’s alarmed at first, then apologetic and sheepish. Sorry I was touching you, Eugene. And he politely takes a step back, tuned in to her discomfort and giving her a little more space.

But that is why the moment on the boat is so important, and why Rapunzel has the reaction she does.

They are both resourceful and determined, used to doing the best they can with what they have, and as a result they encounter each other and decide to team up. Practicality, not romance, is what drives them together and what keeps them together for much of the movie.

Their methods of filling voids with whatever scheme they can concoct, the skills they’ve both gained from their past experiences, become the means they use to achieve their shared goal: get Rapunzel to the city to watch the floating lights and return her safely home. The scrapes and (mis)adventures they get into on their way are not just filler or fluff; they are opportunities to highlight the natural teamwork they have, the ways in which they complement and complete each other and so help each other: Rapunzel solves the run-in with the group of thugs/misfits with vulnerability and openness; together, they escape from the guards and avoid drowning. 

Already this is an improvement on their previous work, their previous “business”. It has more warmth, it has more success, it has more color. But that’s not all. Alongside their adventures, they start to talk to each other. Confide in each other. Nothing huge or dramatic. When he tells her his name he follows it with the dryly delivered “someone might as well know”. And when he asks about the situation at home, his voice is gentle and kind but not full of depth of feeling just yet. But it’s real, honest connection about their pasts and so contains within it the articulation of their emptiness. It’s the realest relationship either of them have ever had. It’s far realer than anything their past endeavors have ever brought them.

When they reach the lights, Rapunzel realizes this and it comes out in her words expressing her fears and worries about the lights. Understandably, she’s scared finally seeing the lights won’t be enough. But then, and here’s the beautiful thing, she’s scared that it will be. “And what if it is,” she says, tears in her eyes and voice. “What then?” This is the moment in which Rapunzel recognizes that she really has never filled the void in her life, the place where real love and human connection should be, and that the lights won’t do it either. Chasing the lights was her noblest effort yet, a beautiful and real and a valid dream, but still not enough. because the lights are not a person and the lights can’t love her back. 

Eugene’s answer to this is hopeful- there’s always another dream to chase. But he still doesn’t really have an answer for her. He doesn’t really understand.

Until they see the lights. 

Until they see the lights together. 

Their golden glow and beauty is enchanting, it’s everything she dreamed it would be. And then, it’s more. 

And it’s more because when she turns around, right at the end of the first verse, she sees him. Holding her dream in her hands, watching her watch it, experiencing it with her. 

That’s when she knows. 

She hands him the satchel and he knows he knows too. 

He knows that there is no new dream, no better dream, than her, than a real life of love with the person in front of him. 

After the lights happens everything I said in the original post. They’re torn apart and beautifully, magically, unexpectedly Mother Gothel’s ploy to sow discord between them doesn’t work. Rapunzel sees through Mother Gothel’s lie to see the truth of everything, including his reasons for leaving, and when he shows up there is no reproach or misunderstanding to clear away. Like I said in my original post, they understand each other now. 

And like I said in the post above, Rapunzel’s bargaining for his life and Eugene’s cutting off of her hair are the means they use to set the other free. And ultimately Eugene wins. He dies and his death, the first time she truly experiences loss, opens her up to a fuller understanding of and use of her magic and her healing. He is restored to her and they live (truly) happily ever after.

What is it to cheat in a relationship where you’ve promised your death to another?