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VARIAN: Varian as Loyalty is highkey canon, even though people might prolly place him with Magic because, man, idk, “the brains” of the Team or whatever the hell, “loyalty to his village and family” is ACTUALLY marked as his defining trait in the introductory book Rapunzel’s World. I’m not even joking, it’s actually written in there. On top of that, his Dream (the Tangled-verse definition of a character’s main driving force/goal) is to help his village through his science, his entire scientific career is driven by his loyalty to his village. And going even beyond that, his entire character arc in the show surrounds his father, making him proud, freeing him, loyalty to his family; and Rapunzel’s main betrayal is leaving him behind, breaking her promise to help him, but even afterwards, he still goes back to Rapunzel, and even after Cassandra kidnaps and semi-drugs him, he’s still trying to reach for her!!! Because they still believe that Cass is good, because she’s their friend!!!!!! And he’s ALSO the only one of the Team to WANT the Team, they literally set out on this journey seeking for “their tribe”, and terrible wording aside, Driven by a desire to help, raised to devote himself to the people who need them (literalll child of a village leader), endlessly fucking forgiving (fuck the Brazilian dub for having him STILL try to plead with Andrew even as he’s about to be killed), he’d be willing to live and die for them, primarily and especially live, a family that’s entirely theirs and of their finding and everything they longed for when set out in that journey.

YONG: listen. Listen. He was pissing me off and I couldn’t write anything and it was getting late and it was getting me streeeesseddddddd. However I choose that for him because of the Beauty pillar, it was between Generosity or Honestly, I threw it into heads and tails twice and got Generosity twice so I kept it. The fact that I’m currently rewriting him does not help, but yeah. Horrible time to ask anything Yong-related.

HUGO: Hugo and Kindness is one of those funny little cases of me wanting to be funny about something, because the thing with Hugo is that she lacks everything that supposedly makes a “good person”, she doesn’t have the empathy bone, doesn’t have the attachments bone, half of the time girlypop doesn’t even know which feelings of hers she’s actually feeling and which ones she’s faking for the sake of a job (which ranges from everything from a real assignment to small talk), it’s the idea of “Goodness” (or rather, kindness) as a choice and an action, specially with Hugo being one of weakest moral links within the Team, with the second being the poster child for Altruism. At the same time, Hugo was raised by “good” people, and even now she is raised by a woman who lives by a “good” purpose, Hugo is genuinely supposed to be a medic — which is, like, one of the ultimate good person jobs (also the Healing pillar) in the fantasy setting, and he is meant to become an entire teacher, that’s even a part of the actual real original concept!! Hugo’s main scientific differential is that the girl literally found out how to create life, how to make metal come alive, which is. I mean. Insane. (There’s also an aspect of transness in there, as just occurred to me but that’s not the point!!). And the very first thing she gives life to: a mouse. A tiny, frail little thing used mostly for lab experiments, so very vulnerable which would need to depend on her forever to be able to live safely. Hugo runs away from the responsibility Donella wants her to take because she knows how bad she is, knows how capable of harm he is and knows how easily he could hurt people; what he doesn’t seem to realize though it’s that not wanting to hurt people who would rely on you is… Well, it’s an almost noble sentiment. She thinks she’s just being logical, she’s not cut for the job, she’s not soft, or empathetic, or naturally driven to helping others like the other three are (God’s choir of angels), she doesn’t care as much as Donella does. Seeking to not do harm might not be a step towards suddenly developing empathy but it’s certainly not a step towards being bad, and sometimes this intellectualized kindness is more needed than the popular idea of kindness. And this is— this is!! Actually canon!! Within quotations, of course, but Hugo dos not steal from common people!!!! He’s specific to steal from his patrons, “he’s Robin Hood stealing from the rich for himself”, he doesn’t give back to the poor but he doesn’t take from them. The idea of a Hugo casually taking things from whenever is common but it’s unfactual. This is getting too long but EITHER WAYYYYYY, you get my point lmao.

NURU: Nuru and Laughter was guided by the element’s pillar. So, hope! Which is her main theme/thing, if it hasn’t been she wouldn’t even be out there, but she is. The idea of Hope being birthday from Desperation, when there’s nothing else to do but give in to Hope. It’s a refusal, primarily, and also related to my brand new twist that’s probably not that much of a twist but I made Nuru an atheist 💥💥💥 and here’s an additional twist: my goal with her is contradiction, but specifically the the contradiction of making her both negativistic or pessimistic (in the idea of expecting the worst from people and life’s happenings) and almost idealistic, in a way, it’s the idea of wanting to believe in a brand new tomorrow, helloooo I love portraying virtues as choices, Hope is also something to sign up to instead of being born with. Hope as a response and refusal to Despair and to the Will Of God, hello, hi. Are any of you listening. Additionally! I don’t really want to make Nuru strong. Hear me out. Because Strenght in her situation is not something very?? Worth celebrating, in my eyes, but it is a need of hers, it’s survival, it’s a mask, it’s not a virtue it’s a necessity and it’s sad!!!! That she needs to have that!!! It’s sad that she needs to be strong!!!!!! She’s sixteen years old and has the weight of the the world in her back. The trick is, and deep down she feels so very ashamed of it, but she doesn’t want to be strong. Because most people don’t, and specially people like Nuru. Here comes Laughter again: she’s a teenage girl!!! She wants to have fun!!! And most of all, what she longs for is edenic joy, because her people have been living in fear for so long, have been taught in fear, a lot of people probably evaded from the kingdom and they have records of what Koto once was. What she still believes it is. She wants her people not only to be alive but to be Happy above all things, she wants to hear people singing, wants to see them dancing, she wants to hear laughter and children playing in the streets and elders gossiping up and around and she wants her people to worry about silly things and not the collapse of their civilization. Nuru wants to give happiness back to her people, happiness which was stolen from them allegedly by their gods and truthfully (in Nuru’s eyes) by those STUPID, STUPID rocks falling from the sky. It’s not fair, and it’s it’s not fair, she will make it fair. Along the way she finds that she, too, is deserving of the same joy, for she too is a child of Koto. Smiley face