#literally half of the plot points are things directly lifed from the Disney canon and had no basis in the books at all

[frog-whisperer]

Can’t sleep thinking about how irrationally angry Andy Serkis’s Jungle Book made me

[bestworstcase]

Hi, I really love your thoughts and analysis on tts so I wanted to ask if you have read The Vanishing Village Book? It made me really think about Eugene's character. I sorta disliked him in the book and felt his relationship with Rapunzel was different and strained. I guess my question is if you think Eugene is a good character? I feel that I am biased for liking the story and relationship between Cassandra and Rapunzel so perhaps I am not seeing him in a fair light but there's just factors that make me feel he might not be the best for Rapunzel. I love their relationship and value & dedication towards each other but their relationship can feel a bit stale sometimes and Eugene can come off as not understanding and dismissive towards Rapunzel sometimes so ig I'd like to be proven wrong and be reminded that Eugene is good for Rapunzel

i have read vanishing village (and i remember liking it better than lost lagoon) but i have to admit i don’t remember anything but the very broad strokes of the plot, so i don’t feel equipped to do any analysis of eugene based on it; that being said -

i do really like eugene as a character in the sense that he is. interesting / engaging / compelling, which yeah to my mind that’s what makes a “good character” but also has nothing to do with the, kind of, moral or personal question of but is he a good guy or is he likable or sympathetic or that kind of thing. and on that my feelings are more ambivalent kfjfjdhs

on the one hand i do find his relationship with rapunzel in tts to be fairly refreshing. it’s nice to see a fictional m/f couple that is just… comfortable with each other, friends with each other, able to talk about their problems collaboratively with each other. that is so rare in fiction, where the tendency is so often to rely on miscommunication to manufacture relationship drama or do the will they won’t they, on again off again nonsense which is just so tiresome - and it feels good to have a m/f couple that eschews that altogether. and it’s also imo really nice that the m/f relationship fades so much into the background vis a vis the wider plot, which i know is not necessarily a popular opinion [vague gestures at all the ‘eugene was sidelined’ discourse] but, like, i feel like i can count on one hand the number of stories i know where the female protagonist *has a male love interest* without the story being ABOUT him, and with the male love interest filling this supportive narrative role while quietly and subtly dealing with his own problems on the side? it’s so difficult to find stories where men aren’t centered and so i appreciate eugene and new dream a lot for that reason too.

but at the same time like - eugene def falls victim to the plot-driven writing just like every other character does and that frustrates me because i think ultimately having all these loose threads hanging with him means his character feels a bit stagnant, and that in turn makes his flaws more glaring because they’re never… worked on or addressed, they just sort of persist or silently fade away for the most part. (which again, is true of literally every character because the storytelling of tts is highly plot driven and episodic)

& that phenomenon can make character interpretation a little convoluted, because… well the intentions of the narrative are signaled pretty baldly (eugene grows out of his selfishness and becomes a compassionate hard working leader for corona, which he has embraced as his home) without having much if any on-screen development to back it up (indeed the premise of flynnposter involves eugene shirking his new responsibilities, and then it concludes with a commitment from him to take the captain gig seriously - but thereafter the only time we get to see this demonstrated through him encouraging project obsidian [which makes him look the opposite of compassionate or responsible given he is excitedly planning to extrajudicially murder cassandra] and then joining the fight against zhan tiri [which literally everyone in corona does]). so do we take what the textual development shows us and conclude that eugene is, at the end of the day, just another cop, or do we take the narrative signaling as a given and fill in the textual gaps with our own imaginations? i tend to fall heavier on the textual side but i do try to take intentions into consideration when they are signaled so clearly, because i understand the structural and corporate limitations on what the tts team were able to do with the story.

anyways - i also have some fraught feelings about new dream because, in the film, it’s not a relationship that i can buy into at all. rapunzel is 17, a few days shy of 18, when an adult man in his mid-twenties tumbles into her bedroom, hits on her, tries to take advantage of her naïveté so he can recover his stolen goods and screw her over because he’s spent his life cultivating an attitude of selfish disregard for anyone but himself, but she’s so sweet he decides to give emotional vulnerability a try and within three days they’re in love and then they get MARRIED?? and he’s literally the first person rapunzel has ever met who wasn’t her “mother”? excuse me???

and i get the impression the tts team was fully cognizant of that problem and made a real effort to address it, as much as they could within the context of the designated disney princess couple - that’s how we get things like the BEA proposal and rapunzel and eugene talking their feelings out afterwards and agreeing to take things slower, and that’s how we get things like rapunzel having cass and eugene having lance so they have lives and identities and relationships outside of each other, and it’s why eugene has a little arc of becoming less self-absorbed in the front half of s1 and why cassandra overtly criticizes his treatment of rapunzel in BEA and so on and so forth. like no one says it OUT LOUD in the series but rapunzel’s and eugene’s relationship is fraught with peril because of the way they met and came together, and it takes significant emotional work from both of them to navigate that to arrive at a healthy place, and i enjoy watching that play out.

so yeah eugene is sometimes too in his own head to notice when something is wrong with rapunzel, like how he misses how unhappy she is in BEA because *he’s* so jazzed about palace living, and sometimes they struggle to get on the same page with each other in general; but that’s just, kind of the gig where relationships are concerned. what matters to me is that whenever these hiccups happen we see, typically some confusion or distress from him or rapunzel or both, and then they reach out for each other and talk about it until they reach an understanding, which is the correct healthy way to manage this sort of conflict in a relationship. and of course through it all eugene is pretty unflagging in his absolute support of rapunzel - even if he doesn’t always *express it* in a good way, he is always very invested in rapunzel’s happiness and well-being. like even the BEA proposal, eugene’s fuck up lies in assuming that rapunzel felt the same way he did about everything and that proposing now would make her happy - there’s self-absorption there but not to the point where he isn’t concerned about her feelings, so when he upsets her he immediately realizes that he screwed up and shelves his own feelings to focus on hers, which is very Good Partner of him.

and then again on a metatextual level i do kind of hate that rapunzel’s arc is essentially, trapped in corona -> adventure! -> adventure is traumatic time to go home -> exact same circumstances she started in but she’s happy about it now. not to say i object to rapunzel embracing her role as a princess/queen per se, but in an ideal world i would like that to come from a place of rapunzel remaking her role to suit herself rather than just kind of… this ‘well got the wanderlust out of my system forever!’ vibe i get from plus est. this isn’t directly related to eugene at all but i think it does splash over onto him on account of him being so closely intertwined with her life in corona. if rapunzel were given an arc about tearing down institutions that stifled her in s1 and really rebuilding corona to be better (something that is lightly implied in canon but never quite makes its way to outright text) then of course eugene would have been her number one supporter - but she doesn’t get that arc and so eugene ends up just kind of being there while rapunzel settles into the role laid out for her. (the destiny narrative being played painfully straight in this regard doesn’t help either.)

this is all a bit of a ramble but i guess what i’m getting at is i think at the end of the day the thing that makes new dream feel a bit stale or stagnant is the series sticking to this aggressively pro-monarchy, status quo is good, mass market appeal narrative enforced by the reality of Disney Princess Show, and that’s not eugene’s fault or any character’s fault, it’s a corporate issue and writing issue.

oh and also personally i think eugene’s biggest flaw in the new dream relationship is he has a tendency to enable rapunzel’s worst impulses via unquestioning support - a little healthy skepticism can be very good for a relationship vs just being your partner’s yes man. so when i imagine a character trajectory for him post-series it involves eugene getting more comfortable pushing back when rapunzel is pursuing ideas that are bad in some way.

[reblogthiscrapkay]

Persephone in Disney’s “Hercules”

After doing my write-up on “Jasper in Deadland”, which doesn’t actually have the myth of Persephone in it but does have her and Hades as characters, I found myself thinking, ‘why don’t I do more write-ups about media that has Persephone in it even if her myth isn’t directly addressed?’ And once I had that thought, I decided I should talk about Disney’s “Hercules,” which is probably just as famous for its portrayal of Hades as it is for literally anything else about it.

I think anyone’s automatic thought when I say Persephone in Disney’s “Hercules” is that she’s not actually in the movie at all and that’s not actually correct.

I’m not crazy about her design but it’s not the worst thing. Why is she so blonde when most of the other gods seem to be more monochromatic (and as I’ve said before I’m not into blonde Persephone)? In fact, her lack of monochrome makes me wonder if they might have intended other things for her since the gods who aren’t mostly one color in general have more importance in the narrative. Also her earrings are probably supposed to be leaves but they look more like feathers to me. 

Persephone is only in the background of the pantheon scenes with her standing next to her mother in the opening scene and being one of the gods to crowd around Hercules at the end. So what is there to talk about? That. The fact that she is there and the fact that she is only in the background. This is important. In some stories this would be a minor detail that just shows that someone did their homework, but in this story where Hades is the main villain and easily the most memorable character, there’s a discussion to be had.

Before I get into depth about the villain aspect, I want to point out the fact that villains of the Disney Renaissance era are some of the most often cited when someone wants to have a discussion about queer coding in media and Hades’ name comes up basically every time. To me, he reads more like a sleazy used car salesman than a queer-coded villain (I think Radcliffe from “Pocahontas” or Ursula from “Little Mermaid” are more straight forward examples to point out for a straight audience) but there are definitely moments in the film where you can see this; his gay best friend-esque dialogues with Meg are pretty notable. That being said, this Hades being into ladies would not feel incorrect to me, a queer. Isn’t every Hades at least a touch bisexual (and everyone in Greek mythology for that matter)? Happy Pride!

So moving past the queer-coding discussion, we get to the villain issue. Giving a villain someone to love is going to change the dynamic of the villain and the story and is a really complicated choice for most writers. There’s a reason why every live action movie with the Joker in it has either had no Harley Quinn or Harley was the main character and the Joker was secondary. And they happen to be a couple with a bad relationship where you could easily have one of them throw the other under a bus if needed! Including Persephone in this story as Hades’ wife would mean that it would be really hard to make Hades the villain. In almost every medium where Hades has a Persephone, he isn’t presented as a villain but instead strictly lawful neutral, and you could still have a funny Hades who’s lawful neutral (look at “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” or “Jasper In Deadland” for example).

Sure, there’s the option of making Persephone a villain too, but while there’s no real precedence to make Hades a villain outside of a lot of conflating him with the devil through incorrect translations and confusion, there is absolutely no precedence to make Persephone a villain. Hades’ villainy already only works in this story because they have set it up that Zeus single-handedly won the Titanomachy and assigned the Underworld to Hades, leaving him bitter about it. In some versions of the myth of Persephone, Hades’ bitterness at his lot in the Underworld is actually the driving force behind him wanting a wife in the first place. Persephone would likely be a placating force for Hades, causing the more straightforward hero-villain narrative to not work and Disney’s shtick at this time was very much about straightforward hero-villain narratives.

There’s also the general problem that Persephone’s presence would make Hades WAY too powerful as this amazing Tumblr post discusses.

So Persephone as a villain is bizarre and she would likely be a positive thing for Hades. What if they had a relationship that was bad i.e. Joker/Harley? It would be a complete Greek God couple inversion since this movie shows Zeus and Hera as a happy couple (again, the goal was to simplify; this is also why Hercules is their child isn’t of Zeus and Alcmene). Well, then you basically have the horrible “Lightning Thief” movie (which I should maybe write about some time) and honestly, I think it would read really badly. If you don’t get why, go watch that film (but don’t, it’s terrible). Hades is unique is the Disney villain pantheon because he’s so likable and while he does bad things, his motives make a bit more sense than a lot of Disney villains. I think giving him a wife who he’s mean to would not only decrease his likability substantially but I think it would also be kind of controversial. Hades certainly wouldn’t be the iconic character that he is. It would also likely distract from the amount of time he spends interacting with Meg, who is not just a love interest to Hercules but a hugely important factor in the plot. Even if Persephone is equally mean to him, I think you’d still end up in this problem of having to address how two people who hate each other ended up married and then you’re into having to pose Hades as a kidnapper who regrets his choices. Also, I think in 1997 the married-couple-who-hate-each-other trope was mercifully on its way out.

So what if Hades and Persephone are married and it’s a decent marriage but Persephone just doesn’t know about any of his evil plans? That’s workable. Hades’ original plan to kill Hercules is pretty quietly done, and his all out war plan could have involved her being cooped up in Elysium and oblivious. Heck, you could even have the movie play out entirely as is until the scene where he’s enslaving the gods and then suddenly they see each other and he’s like, “Good news, honey! Soon everywhere will be my domain and you won’t have to be cooped up underground half the year!” and she’s like, “Is this what you were planning in your office every night?! You complete idiot!” That would kind of even give Hades more motive without having to mess with Persephone’s character.

I haven’t really touched on what might actually be the most obvious answer of why Persephone is in this movie but not as Hades’ wife: that just hasn’t happened yet. I’m sure this is the argument anyone who worked on the film would make. Okay, sure, there are no winter scenes in the film, but that whole thing is implied to happen long before any of the famous demigods are born. Perhaps this is just the answer. Although I think he’d have a much harder time winning her over now after he, you know, tried to take over the world.

The life of Disney’s “Hercules” Hades didn’t actually end with the film by the way. In the television show, which would have been the perfect place to tell the myth of Persephone, Hades actually has a crush on Aphrodite instead. While it’s kind of cute to give him a crush in general, why did they give up on this prime myth real estate to make this up out of nowhere? And it did in fact make him more sympathetic, but he’s also just far less villainous in the show. Disney just can’t stop with this Hades redemption and romance arc thing either. In the third “Descendants” movie, Hades is there as Mal’s father meaning that he canonically had sex with Maleficent from “Sleeping Beauty.” I had to lie down after that one. But it’s worth noting that while he’s a totally absent father until the point that this film happens, he has his reasons, his characterization in that movie is 100% sympathetic, and he’s not a villain at all.

Gosh, Disney. Just give the man his wife already!

(And in case you were wondering, there is some really cute fan art out there of these two if you have a burning need.)

[brawltogethernow]

I finally saw live action Beauty and the Beast, and for the record here are some of the impressions I took away from it:

- The Enchantress responsible for the premise is present as an actual character outside of flashbacks in this version, and her role makes no sense. She apparently moved into the town next to the castle after she cursed everybody to keep an eye on things, in the form of a Hollywood-homely woman of no status. Like I get that at the beginning she takes the form of somebody jerks might deride as a test of morals, but this was for ten years she spent just letting Gaston insult her to her face, so I can only assume it’s a kink of some kind. She’s also actively lifts the curse after personally observing that the conditions have been met, which raises so many questions.

- She waits until the last goddamn second too, after all the staff have been tragically rendered inanimate, even though the conditions to break the curse were met before that while she was already there. Wow.

- She still transformed and endangered the lives of the castle’s entire staff WHO DID NOTHING WRONG, which they rationalize to themselves by saying they should have done more to make their prince be less of a dick. But hey everybody knows that when somebody else is a jerk that’s your responsibility, so it’s fine. The Enchantress just walks away looking ethereal and smug at the end and I get the impression we’re not supposed to hate her? Too late. She’s definitely a chaotic neutral fairy with blue/orange morality AT BEST.

- Not only is the queer stuff in the film not acknowledging that the clock and the candle are an old gay couple, a wife is invented for the candle specifically to dispel this impression. She’s literally a bird though, so now you’ve just made one of your talking furniture characters a furry. As if this story didn’t have that overtone enough.

- Casting actually didn’t populate the fantasy-France setting exclusively with white people! It’s cool!

- Gaston has some kind of amazing inverted PTSD where thinking about his time in “the war” makes him feel better.

- Speaking of The War, this movie, instead of being set generically in no time period like the cartoon, deliberately anchors itself to a time period, but that time period is actually like ten time periods at once? Everyone wears tricorne hats, there was a plague a decade ago, and The War. There’s the famous waltz scene but in other scenes people dance the minuet. It’s confusing.

- I’ve seen people criticize this movie describing LeFou as pining for Gaston, introducing pointless unrequited gay angst, but I don’t get that impression at all? He’s definitely camp, but there’s nothing overt to suggest he’s got a doomed thing for his...friend? Boss? Bossfriend.

- Conversely, it’s film canon that Gaston bit LeFou on the stomach “wrestling”.

- HWHAT THE FUCK.

- Josh Gad says “bites” in “in a wrestling match nobody bite like Gaston” as fruitily as humanly possible, was this implication on purpose??

- I don’t.

- Anyway.

- LeFou and Mrs. Potts team up to spew boiling water on angry villagers at one point. It’s the best thing ever. BROTP.

- Gaston Disney-dies by falling off a high parapet but then he’s fine, boo. Embrace your brand, Disney.

- Shortly before this Gaston just fucking rips a piece of stonework off the roof of the castle with his bare hands? What the hell? Was the castle also made of candy the whole time and it was just never brought up because it wasn’t plot relevant?

- Gaston has the magical ability to reload his old-fashioned pistol immediately instead of taking two minutes per bullet.

- Belle doesn’t get any sheep to explain the plot of her favorite book to. She just does that whole line including “you’ll see” to thin air while walking through the village.

- The line about her always having her nose in a book and a far-off look is sung directly when she’s talking to someone on the street, I think she’s giving the Enchantress-in-disguise alms or something. This could have been contradictory on purpose to show the prejudice of the villagers but if so it’s pretty weak, like the implication is that this Belle isn’t daydreaming and bookish.

- Positive Belle things: She invents the washing machine? This is the good shit. Maurice is a ditzy toymaker instead of a mad inventor in this version, but Belle is apparently an inventor instead, and that’s the best. Smart little girls everywhere are going to take the scene where she rigs up a way to deal with her chores to heart.

- Other wholesome Belle things: The scene where she sees the castle library for the first time is so real, she does a little happy dance and is plainly completely enamored with this room.

- Instead of being toxic masculinity brought to life and given free will, Gaston just seems kind of crazy and falls apart slowly like a half-off Shakespeare character.

- Belle’s taste in books is specifically narrowed down to being Shakespeare, which is a shame because in the cartoon she’s clearly reading romance novels.

- The songs from the original don’t mesh up perfectly with changed events, especially like, in terms of emotional coherence.

- There’s also a clear quality difference between songs from the animated film and the other songs.

- The movie overall seems incredibly slow, yet the romance feels rushed. It never at any point convinced me it was happening for any reason beside that it had to for the plot. I finished the film and still barely feel like Belle and the Beast are more than book-bonded friends.

- At one point the beast is like ‘If you want an escape without leaving the castle, let me show you something in the library,’ and I was like ‘HURR DURR DURR, THEY’RE GOING TO ESCAPE INTO THE WORLD OF READING #LibraryPSA’, but then they ACTUALLY DID. There’s a magic book that can teleport you literally anywhere for basically no reason that is used pretty well to help Belle let go of being too hung up on her idealized impression of her childhood to move on with her life, and is then never brought up again.

- I thought at first it was some sort of illusion but no, it literally just has teleportation abilities. This also means that Belle’s old house has been untouched for ten years for some reason. I know there was “plague”, but...ten years.

- TIL that if you slow down “Be Our Guest” because I guess you really want to milk it because it’s everybody’s favorite song it’s basically “Cabaret”.

- Seriously! Every scene! In this movie! Was so slow! Find some energy!!

- After the curse is broken do they get to keep the teleportation book Y/N?

- Did the rest of the people in the castle ever use it? Did Adam even tell them about it? If I was cursed into animate silverware it would pick me up EXTREMELY if I could get a change of scenery by popping over to Cairo or the rainforest or just the theater for an afternoon. There are multiple people in this version with canonical spouses who have forgotten them outside the castle who they could have been checking on.

- I’d rate the cinematography a solid meh but the castle set was good.

- There’s a joke where LeFou says 'je ne sais quoi’ and his friendboss doesn’t know what that means, and I honestly have no idea whether it was intentional or not.

- I found all of the furniture people terrifying-looking, but that could just be me.

- Having Sir Ian McKellan in your movie and not having him be instantly charming is a FEAT, but this film did it somehow.