Quetanto

I WONDER WHY THEY CHANGED THAT. NOT LIKE A 26YO DATING AN 18YO IS VERY VERY GROSS. If they hadn't changed Eugene's age to be 23 (early season 1 age) I wouldn't be a fan of new dream! Because that's super gross! I'm still a little iffy about 18 x 23, but at least it's not an 8 year age gap. You shouldn't date someone THAT MUCH OLDER THAN YOU until you're at least 25 (because that's when your brain fully develops)

STOP USING NEW DREAM TO SUPPORT CASSARIAN

Edit: Eugene is actually 24 in season one (since we find out he's a year older than he thought) but I wanna make it clear that he didn't know he was that old, and I'm still iffy about the 5 year age gap that he thought he had. By the time Eugene finds out he's 26 Rapunzel is already 20 (turning 21 later season 3) I'd like to reiterate that it's still not 8 years, and Rapunzel is an ADULT when they met.

alsooo heres a lil age up scale for reference

age 18 design belongs to kritterart (Kaitlyn Ritter), and the 14/16 designs belong to Ben Balistreri

Things like “Flynn Rider was the closest thing to an identity I ever had. Sure, I was on the wrong side of the law, but I was my own man. In Corona, I’m just Rapunzel’s incredibly attractive boyfriend.”

I really really want to see more of that. Even if it’s in songs like Everything I Ever Thought I Knew, I wan’t to see more of him as his own person.

A chance to further the times when the show has actually genuinely been empowering, and, well, they kind of blew it.

His name is Eugene Fitzherbert. Not Flynn Rider. Not Horace. Eugene. 

He’s not ‘lazy and stupid’, he’s clever and motivated- Just not motivated by the same things as other characters.

He’s not just Rapunzel’s Boyfriend. He’s her confidant, her best friend, her back up and her Captain of the Guard.

He’s often the comic relief but that doesn’t make him a non-essential character nor does it mean his contributions aren’t worthwhile. Or that he can’t or shouldn’t be taken seriously. 

He’s vain but he’s not shallow.

He has earned everything he has accomplished by the end of RTA. He has grown, learned, taught, compromised and sacrificed for his friends, his family and for the people of Corona. He didn’t get anything handed to him because of proximity to Rapunzel or because she ‘settled’ for the first man she met. He gave his all and was rewarded in kind for being a good person.

You are so brave and an inspiration to us all!

I got lucky. I have accommodations for my disability. But I also know that, from the outside, what I go through every day is something most people can’t imagine for themselves, and shouldn’t ever have to. And everyone’s human. Nobody’s capable of changing the whole world by themselves. All they can offer is what they can spare.

So when I’m told by people who can’t give me accommodation that I’m braver than I think I am, or more resilient than I believe myself to be…maybe it’s true, maybe it isn’t. But it’s all they can physically do, unless I ask otherwise. It’s an offering saying, “If I could take this on for you I would, but I can’t and I feel useless about it.” And that means there’s an opening there, to seek other help in ways that I think they can give. Do I always ask? No. Can they always give? Depends. But knowing that someone’s made the offer means knowing someone else is trying to put themselves in my shoes, and doesn’t want me to be hurting, and is feeling defeated that they can’t help…that’s not exactly bad.

But if they’re all supposedly such good friends of Rapunzel and Eugene, then why would they miss their wedding? Yes, the “Tangled Ever After” short was created before the series, BUT THE CREATORS OF THE SHOW KNEW THIS IN ADVANCE. We even saw them add some fun elements foreshadowing the wedding in the series. “Return of the King” was all about continuity and preparation for the wedding. They gave us a half-hearted explanation for the Stabbington Brothers’ appearance, and revealed that King Edmund gave Eugene the sash he wears in the short. If the creators could think of all this, than why couldn’t they be bothered to give reasons for the absences of Rapunzel and Eugene’s friends?

Yes, Cassandra left Corona to find her destiny, which explains her absence, but what about Varian, the Royal Engineer of Corona? Or Lance, Eugene’s childhood best friend? As his daughters, Kiera and Catalina would have gone to the wedding with him.

As fitting as a job like Royal Engineer is for Varian, and as sweet as it is that Lance adopted the girls, none of these endings explain why these characters aren’t at the wedding.

Yes, everyone can just say something along the lines of “you just don’t see them,” but there have been other TV series’ in the past where OC’s were created in series’ that bridge a time gap, and their absences in sequels were accounted for.

In The Lion Guard fandom, over half of the fandom questioned as to whether The Lion Guard was canon to The Lion King 1 & 2 because the characters that appeared in The Lion Guard were OCs, who never appeared or were even mentioned in the second Lion King movie.

However, when season 3 came along, the writers were able to explain the absence of all the original characters and tied in the series with The Lion King 2 in the series finale. Even in “Aladdin and the King of Theives”, they included cameos of the characters from Aladdin the Series at Aladdin and Jasmine’s wedding.

Now, it’s been confirmed that Tangled the Series is canon to both Tangled and Tangled Ever After, so I’m not questioning as to whether TTS is canon or not, but the fact that the creator couldn’t be bothered to explain the absences of the characters is poor writing. Continuity is important when writing series’ that bridge time gaps.

I know that there are times when creators screw up, and I know that they’re only humans who make mistakes, like all of us. Although, taking into account the poor writing of Tangled the series as a whole, this only confirms to me that the only character they truly cared to develop was Cassandra. That is why she was the only one who was given an explanation. Varian, Lance, and the girls, however? They just weren’t cared about enough. Varian was just a mechanical character, Lance was just a comic relief, and Kiera and Catalina were just there to parallel Rapunzel and Cassandra.

And the answer to that is, pull out Varian and the Seven Kingdoms but with a twist.

Because maybe Varian does have a Destiny somewhere else. Maybe he’s got to come to terms with the fact that he’s got two sides of his heritage, the Brotherhood and the Covens of the Alchemists. Maybe Cass comes back to help, maybe not, but regardless, Kiera and Catalina aren’t about to let their new big brother go out into the world without them. (“V, you got nervous at Deadman’s Curve. You think you’re gonna survive without us for five minutes?”) Lance has one or two things to do himself, but mostly he’s pulled into it by the girls. Not that he minds. Ruddiger is naturally along for the ride regardless.

The wedding is trickier. If the rest of the family was out on a journey of self-discovery, wouldn’t it be a bit selfish to leave the lovebirds out of things? Yes. Yes it would. Just as it would be selfish not to invite them to the wedding. But perhaps the answer is…they don’t. Maybe the wedding we saw is just the public one. They certainly didn’t seem to do too much in the way of vows, although perhaps that was just bad editing. Maybe it’s just the public wedding–and the first one, the proper one, was family-only. The whole family. So that’s done, the Thieves and the Alchemist set off on their way, Rapunzel and Eugene have their wedding in the castle church…but they don’t stay for much more than cake. They’ve got a high-speed balloon to get ready for in the morning.

Unfortunately no, the Coven of the Alchemists is more a personal idea than anything else. Not entirely sure how alchemy was going to work in the Seven Kingdoms, aside from the fact that it seems to be linked a) to the seven Elements in medieval alchemy instead of the modern periodic table (which seemed to be more Varian’s style), and b) to be more intensely and intricately linked into magic. Which…I mean, kudos to them for exploring that a bit more, but that does make Varian a bit of a hypocrite for preferring science to magic. Or possibly a bit elitist? I dunno. Either way, I prefer to keep them at least a little separate. Not sure how closely anything I might write would tie into the earlier ideas (although again, even though they contradict some of the stuff from TTS the planning behind them is remarkable).

But if they’re all supposedly such good friends of Rapunzel and Eugene, then why would they miss their wedding? Yes, the “Tangled Ever After” short was created before the series, BUT THE CREATORS OF THE SHOW KNEW THIS IN ADVANCE. We even saw them add some fun elements foreshadowing the wedding in the series. “Return of the King” was all about continuity and preparation for the wedding. They gave us a half-hearted explanation for the Stabbington Brothers’ appearance, and revealed that King Edmund gave Eugene the sash he wears in the short. If the creators could think of all this, than why couldn’t they be bothered to give reasons for the absences of Rapunzel and Eugene’s friends?

Yes, Cassandra left Corona to find her destiny, which explains her absence, but what about Varian, the Royal Engineer of Corona? Or Lance, Eugene’s childhood best friend? As his daughters, Kiera and Catalina would have gone to the wedding with him.

As fitting as a job like Royal Engineer is for Varian, and as sweet as it is that Lance adopted the girls, none of these endings explain why these characters aren’t at the wedding.

Yes, everyone can just say something along the lines of “you just don’t see them,” but there have been other TV series’ in the past where OC’s were created in series’ that bridge a time gap, and their absences in sequels were accounted for.

In The Lion Guard fandom, over half of the fandom questioned as to whether The Lion Guard was canon to The Lion King 1 & 2 because the characters that appeared in The Lion Guard were OCs, who never appeared or were even mentioned in the second Lion King movie.

However, when season 3 came along, the writers were able to explain the absence of all the original characters and tied in the series with The Lion King 2 in the series finale. Even in “Aladdin and the King of Theives”, they included cameos of the characters from Aladdin the Series at Aladdin and Jasmine’s wedding.

Now, it’s been confirmed that Tangled the Series is canon to both Tangled and Tangled Ever After, so I’m not questioning as to whether TTS is canon or not, but the fact that the creator couldn’t be bothered to explain the absences of the characters is poor writing. Continuity is important when writing series’ that bridge time gaps.

I know that there are times when creators screw up, and I know that they’re only humans who make mistakes, like all of us. Although, taking into account the poor writing of Tangled the series as a whole, this only confirms to me that the only character they truly cared to develop was Cassandra. That is why she was the only one who was given an explanation. Varian, Lance, and the girls, however? They just weren’t cared about enough. Varian was just a mechanical character, Lance was just a comic relief, and Kiera and Catalina were just there to parallel Rapunzel and Cassandra.

And the answer to that is, pull out Varian and the Seven Kingdoms but with a twist.

Because maybe Varian does have a Destiny somewhere else. Maybe he’s got to come to terms with the fact that he’s got two sides of his heritage, the Brotherhood and the Covens of the Alchemists. Maybe Cass comes back to help, maybe not, but regardless, Kiera and Catalina aren’t about to let their new big brother go out into the world without them. (“V, you got nervous at Deadman’s Curve. You think you’re gonna survive without us for five minutes?”) Lance has one or two things to do himself, but mostly he’s pulled into it by the girls. Not that he minds. Ruddiger is naturally along for the ride regardless.

The wedding is trickier. If the rest of the family was out on a journey of self-discovery, wouldn’t it be a bit selfish to leave the lovebirds out of things? Yes. Yes it would. Just as it would be selfish not to invite them to the wedding. But perhaps the answer is…they don’t. Maybe the wedding we saw is just the public one. They certainly didn’t seem to do too much in the way of vows, although perhaps that was just bad editing. Maybe it’s just the public wedding–and the first one, the proper one, was family-only. The whole family. So that’s done, the Thieves and the Alchemist set off on their way, Rapunzel and Eugene have their wedding in the castle church…but they don’t stay for much more than cake. They’ve got a high-speed balloon to get ready for in the morning.

(Literally just popped into my head)

Okay so, when Heinz was a kid, he never got any gifts or visits from ‘Santa’. Not because he was good or bad, but because he was just ‘Heinz’, at least that’s what his parents said. But, because he was allowed to have treats and (at least for that part of the year) was treated like part of the family, Christmas became okay. After a few years, Heinz just accepted that he just wasn’t supposed to get presents.

When Heinz dated Charlene, he always gave her great gifts. The usual flowers, expensive things like jewelry or small non-evil inventions, and occasionally the less-extravagant gifts like coupons to her favorite restaurants, salons or activities. No matter what it was, Doof always presented her with a present on her birthday, or one of the gift-required holidays. As for Charlene, she always just gave Heinz a check or cash. Not because she didn’t care, but because it was easier. If Heinz needed anything, he would find it in some obscure place or website or just build it himself. Same with material for his ‘projects’, she had no idea what he needed or where to get it. So, checks or cash it was, which was just fine with Heinz.

This continued for years, even after they got married and had Vanessa. When Christmas time came, all the gifts came unwrapped and were just baby clothes and small toys, stuff a baby couldn’t really remember or care about within a day. When Vanessa was around three or four years old, since it would be the first Christmas she remembered and one she would actually get to unwrap the presents for, Heinz got to work on a Automatic-Wrapping-Inator while Charlene took care of the Christmas shopping.

After getting all the other gifts, Charlene decides to get Heinz a few things. He never asked for anything, but she thought it would be a nice little surprise. She got him a new tool set, a purple sweater and a gift card for his favorite sweets shop (because homemade almond brittle). She got them wrapped at the store, and hid them in the car until she could put them under the tree without Heinz noticing.

Christmas morning came, and Heinz was the second one up after Vanessa. “Come on, Charlene. You two have presents to open.” She corrected him, saying he had gifts too, and of course he was shocked. “I get gifts?” Once she confirmed it, Heinz raced down stairs like an excited five year old. Rather than join his wife on the couch sipping coffee and trying to stay awake or take pictures, he was sitting right along side his daughter, tearing the wrapping paper off his presents. Charlene of course was amused by all of this, and she couldn’t help but smile at her family. When Heinz finished, he thanked her, looking so happy and about to cry.

That night, Heinz told her about how that day was the first time he got a real wrapped-and-tied-with-a-bow present. Charlene almost didn’t believe it, she couldn’t believe his parents could be so cruel. But whether or not she believed, Charlene did decide that from that day on she would get Heinz a Christmas present. No matter how many or how few, big or small, he would get something. And for the next three years, all three Doofenshmirtzs had something to open. Even a couple years after the divorce, Charlene would still mail him a small gift, and eventually just a Christmas card with his alimony check. 

But it didn’t mean that Heinz stopped getting presents, because he still had Vanessa, and eventually Perry and Norm and even some of the guys from LOVE MUFFIN (though it was usually a joke gift).