Keep Forgetting How Much I Love Season 1 And 2 Cass. Like, She Had Her Toxic Moments, But That Was Okay

These are all really good points! My issue isn’t really with this scene in general, but more the fact that it’s a symptom of an underlying problem with the show when it comes to its treatment of Eugene.

We get Painter’s Block, an episode where Rapunzel tries to overcome her mental paralysis after Queen for a Day. We get endless scenes in season 3 of Eugene consoling her over her fears, Eugene encouraging her when she falters, Eugene surrendering his desire to fight Cass in exchange for Rapunzel’s desire to keep reaching out to her.

Not once do we get a Eugene-centric episode that isn’t about Rapunzel in some way. Not once do we see her helping him when it isn’t related to some lesson she has to learn/unlearn. Not once do we see her— or anybody, for that matter— call out the fact that he’s using humor or passive-aggression to mask his feelings.

And before anyone points out that Rapunzel’s the main character, we got an entire episode of her helping Attila and an entire episode of her trying to make friends with some guy who doesn’t like her. Yes, both of those episodes did turn out to be about Rapunzel in some way— like how it attempted to show that she would stick up for a criminal, and how it showed her people-pleasing tendencies after Gothel— but they still primarily featured those characters, and we still learned about them. We never really got that setup and payoff with Eugene.

So I look at this scene, and on its own, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But I know that, in regards to the entire show, the tough choices Eugene has had to make are never really addressed. His character isn’t explored to its fullest potential— in fact, if you hadn’t seen the movie, it would be easy to forget he isn’t just some freeloader who’s devoted to Rapunzel, the way Cass believes.

Rapunzel tells him “we can chat about difficult choices,” but my problem is the fact that, no matter how valid her feelings are, they only ever talk about hers.

rapunzel. rapunzel, i feel you. i understand that you’re lashing out because of demon magic and stress.

however.

you are talking to the man who chose to die for you.

i think he understands what a tough choice is.

hey how about we just… extricate zachary levi’s voice from his body. like ariel. and give it to eugene. mentally. not physically. like, they share a voice, but they are Very Different.

either that or we just headcanon varian as trans and autistic even harder and make so much fanfic and fanart of him & eugene being besties.

i’m poor. need money.

^^^^^ precisely. also whoa, I can’t believe you’re on good terms with Hugo.

Varian gets tanner and more freckly in the sun and Hugo just burns. There is no cure. Aloe vera & whatever concoctions Varian can whip up are helpful, but they just reduce him to his pale self again. He is doomed to either be pink/red or pasty. Varian desperately tries not to find it funny.

TELL ME EVERY TTS/VAT7K HEADCANON YOU HAVE

PLEASE NO I HAVE A FAMILY

why did i subject myself to this. i’m still gonna do it, though. (these aren’t fully dedicated to any one character, so y’all can still ask about them! just thinking of the overall shows)

-varian got down on one knee to propose to hugo. hugo laughed and said “ha, you’re even shorter now.” there was a moment of absolute silence before hugo realized what was going on. varian started to stand up. hugo frantically begged him to wait and start over.

-cassandra and eugene occasionally called off their rivalry for cass to teach eugene to play chess. cass had realized he didn’t know how (orphan, poor, thief) and said that a future king obviously had to learn. cue surprisingly cute, very gruff training.

-varian is terrified of maximus. maximus can smell the criminal on him. varian has had to hide in a tree from that horse several times.

-there was a point in hugo’s life, after vat7k, where it finally dawned on him that he was safe and happy. varian held him as he cried with too many emotions he couldn’t describe.

-hugo absolutely despises frederic and arianna. he performs elaborate, heist-like pranks on them for varian’s sake. they don’t know it’s him. they’re losing their minds.

-for a long time after his redemption, varian didn’t see anything wrong in his relationship with andrew. he just thought “well, he’s standing in for my dad.” and then he did consciously realize “he’s evil”, but he didn’t actually unpack everything that went on. i don’t think andrew did anything to him, but i think he was extremely creepy, and there’s still something so horrible about a man in a confined space with a boy who was 13 only a year ago.

-upon the separatists of saporia breaking out, andrew made sure to keep varian busy in the castle so he didn’t realize that the citizens of corona were enslaved.

-varian’s truth cookies made pete and stan confess their love.

-nuru is afraid of ruddiger at first (not a lot of wildlife in a meteor-ravaged kingdom). she finally gets over that fear just in time for varian to have to turn ruddiger into beast-ruddiger for some reason. nuru is even more emotionally scarred.

-“plus est en vous” goes differently in my mind. in my ideal reality. in my headcanon. i don’t know exactly what happened, but i do know varian, lance, and eugene play MUCH bigger roles.

-hugo is an emotional drunk. varian is a stupid drunk (while inebriated, he once invented a ship, which had already been invented at the time. ((by “ship”, i mean boat.))) rapunzel is also an emotional drunk. cass is the death-wish kind of drunk that would deliberately try to get run over by a carriage. eugene can keep an objective in mind when he drinks, like getting information out of somebody, but he will also get distracted by a really pretty swirl of wood on the table. lance is a philosophical drunk.

-the whole team, from both shows, hums their big songs to themselves when they’re bored. those things may spring out of their innermost psyches and display themselves in fits of passion, but damn if they aren’t catchy.

-angry once won an arm-wrestling match against lance. no one knows how it happened. lance swears she hypnotized him.

-eugene lets rapunzel paint on him, and she comes to him for fashion advice.

THAT’S ALL I CAN THINK OF RIGHT NOW AND THEY AREN’T EVEN CHARACTER-SPECIFIC SO OH BOY I GUESS I HAVE MORE

so weird when your brain just switches hyperfixations for a second. one moment you look at blorbo and are incandescent with joy. then you pick up other blorbo and the first doesn’t look so shiny. and then you are a monster.

Your honour, I admit that I do have a superiority complex over not watching Disney "live action" remakes, but in my defense, I am right

they all secretly believe they’re the leader, and they’re all wrong.

but most of them listen to varian because it’s like he owns the house they’re having the sleepover at. they do it to give him the illusion of control.

The fact that VARIAN is the leader of Team Radical is so fucking funny to me. You know that clip of The Rock’s character in Jumanji giving some super serious leader talk and then turning around to go “don’t cry don’t cry don’t cry don’t”? That’s Varian

people who initiate conversations youre everything and i’m in love with you

reverse gatekeeping. I am on my knees begging people to engage with the source material