#tangled discourse

Honestly, all of Frederic’s shortcomings are too easily explained away because the show uses Varian as a scapegoat. Frederic hiding the knowledge of the black rocks until they are literally starting to destroy the captial? Somehow he convinces the angry townspeople to turn against the one person actually working on stopping the rocks. Frederic sending disguised guards to harass Varian in his already destroyed home? Completely overlooked in favor of Rapunzel just being angry about being lied to. Even Rapunzel uses Varian as an excuse to lesson Frederic’s actions when Frederic even dared to try to take responsibility for his mistakes.

Varian didn’t cause the rift between Frederic and Rapunzel. It was Frederic’s lies that caused that rift. It’s Rapunzel’s inaction until she literally couldn’t not ignore the black rocks that’s part of the problem. The townspeoples’ rage about the black rocks destroying their homes and livelihoods shouldn’t have been “solved” by directing that anger on a single teen. Frederic was WAY more responsible for the conflict in S1 than Varian was. All Varian did was allow his sorrow turn into rage, borned from the desperation that was forged by Frederic and Rapunzel actions and inaction.

While I would by no means call myself an expert in the field, I have gained some experience at writing thanks to writing fan fiction as a hobby. Given that, I can tell you that when you’re putting together a story, it isn’t a good idea to bog your story down with useless information. Which means, unless you’re writing for a series that you intend to go on for a while, don’t take up your readers’ time by including information that isn’t relevant to the plot. 

Case in point: you’re writing for a movie/TV mini-series. You only have so much time allotted to you in which to get your story told. Therefore, you have to decide what your characters and story should spend time focusing on. Unless this show or movie is entirely a romance--where the overarching plot is to get two specific characters into a relationship together--spending time on which character is going to wind up romantically involved with which can become a pointless waste of time. Especially if you have a larger overarching plot, and other things you have to focus on in order to get to the climax of that plot. 

Given all of that, do y’all really think Disney is going to spend any time confirming all of their characters’ romantic or sexual orientations? Especially if whether or not that character is going to wind up romantically involved with anyone has no bearing on the plot whatsoever? 

The answer is they will not. Like them or not, you do have to admit that Disney recognizes that they won’t have very many fans if they make movies that do nothing but drag on because of information that is not relevant to the plot at all, so they aren’t going to spend time on confirming or denying a fictional character’s sexual orientation unless it becomes relevant to the plot. 

Y’all, that’s what fandom is for. That’s what headcanons and fan fiction and fan art is for. Let the creators of a story give us the canon version so we can play around with it in our fandom spaces. 

See, I completely disagree with you. I see her complete lack of interest or understanding in romance and love as proof of her being ace/aro, not gay. She's disgusted by love from EVERYONE, not just Rapunzel and Eugene

Well...the ending of “Under Raps” may beg to differ, when she’s contemplating the rose.

I don’t exactly know what truly constitutes a “hot take” but my most steadfast belief that I don’t think I’ve gotten a chance to express on tumblr is that Eugene had a lot more going for him then just being Rapunzel’s supportive boyfriend, and the show really dropped the ball when it came to his potential as well as New Dream’s development as a couple and as individuals.

Like most things in the series, TTS had all the potential story elements to do Eugene’s character justice, but stops short for one reason or another in my opinion the most frustrating way possible. Lance being his old partner in crime that he screwed over, but later reconciled with and joined him on his way to redemption. A bitter lover that Flynn Rider betrayed. A crime lord that he worked under for most of his life that has it out for. An identity crisis that involves his long lost birth family. All of these elements have the potential to make a story arc that would have gracefully continued Eugene’s arc from the movie about him making up for his past, and moving forward as the bat version of himself.

Unfortunately, almost all of these plot points weren’t even resolved by Eugene himself. They were most often “solved” by Rapunzel either telling him what was “best” for him, or taking over the plot point entirely, robbing Eugene a chance to have agency in his own story beats. Sometimes, the story just drops a plot point for Eugene almost entirely (ex: his identity crisis at the end of S2 completely overshadowed by the Cassandra betrayal twist that no other character ever touches on)

As for the lost potential of New Dream, even if we ignore the near universally hated ending of “No Time Like the Past” making Rapunzel on the same level as Stalyan (arguably worst than her), the couple is so one-sided that the show just forgets that Eugene is supposed to the future co-ruler of Corona or at least heavily support Rapunzel with her doing so by marriage, and instead makes him take a job directly under Rapunzel’s employment. Instead of using his previously establish position as a criminal consultant to the royal guard be a stepping stone of him applying his knowledge to help heal Corona from the reckless war on crime, he instead is put in a position that he in canon of the show was established to be awful at, and ended up “running the tightest ship the kingdom’s ever had, which again Corona did not need.

While personally I think having Cass’ birthday the day after Rapunzel’s is overkill considering how canonically important Rapunzel’s birthday is to the Tangled universe, I do agreed that conflict can be much more than jealousy.

As I mentioned before, Cass could have been on screen teaching Rapunzel self defense lessons by her request because Rapunzel feels like she has to prove herself to her father to get freedom (which is pretty dang sad). Then the Challenge of the Brave comes up and Rapunzel recklessly joins in order to make a statement, but is overwhelmed due to the difference between someone who recently started learning to defend herself vs people who has been training specifically for the event and Cass has to sacrifice time showing off her skills to protect Rapunzel from getting hurt. Like, Rapunzel be good for a beginner and may even be a natural, but even that doesn’t put her on par with actual fighters. It doesn’t have to be a glorified measuring contest on “who is better than who.” Just an old fashion conflict between friends who have their motives at odds with each other.

This is a bit iffy in a sense that I believe neglect is certainly a form of abuse, but at the end of the day I don’t think Quirin is purposely neglecting Varian. It’s the unfortunate result of him being very busy, being emotional distant, and him honestly being a bit ashamed of Varian’s recklessness. His role of being the leader of Old Corona and his duty as a father puts him in a pretty tough situation when Varian’s inventions cause problems to the community, but at the same time, it’s his own personal failings as a father that prompts Varian to think he has to do’s something drastic to earn his love. S1 portrays this dynamic between the two of them pretty well in my opinion, both being fueled on concern for their home and each other, but being completely on the wrong page due to their own personal reasons.

Of course, you probably are more referrring to the common fandom trope of making a parent purposely physically and/or emotionally absuvie, which I do disagree with when regarding Quirin. Being both a deeply concerned, but ultimately distant parent are the majority of Quirin’s character flaws, but he never seems malice in his intentions. I think Quirin unfortunately falls into the purposely abusive trope in fanon works because it’s common in general for fandom’s to write flawed parents as such. There is also some projection at play in how people read certain scenes in the show, and the moment when giant Quirin intimidatingly looms over small Varian and orders him into silence can have lots of interpretations to the audience.

As for Varian’s adoration for his father. I do believe it is warranted because again, Quirin does show that he cares for him, albeit in subtle ways. Plus based on my interpretations of Varian, he seems to be a kid who, while is out of control due to a lack of supervision and direct guidance, he was raised to at least show respect to his social betters which I’m sure his father being the leader of the village plays a role in enforcing. Varian’s main goal at the beginning of his arc is to do something amazing and useful for his community, which must be inspired by Quirin’s role as the reliable and solemn leader of Old Corona. That coupled with the shame of his inventions causing problems could easily lead to Varian idolizing his seemingly much better put together father.