I Think They Could Be Friends….

sometimes you gotta write a full-on ghost story reducing the 14-year-old antagonist of the first season of that dumb tangled spin-off show to a vengeful cryptid, because that’s what everyone saw him as

and make said story told by a princess whose state of nonexistence is even more severe than the other fictional Disney princesses

while sitting around a campfire with a well-intentioned 12-year-old pyromaniac, a thief who’s going to betray them, and the exact murderous cryptid she’s unknowingly weaving her tale about.

it’s gonna be called “fear is the heart of love”, and if i ever finish it, i’m inflicting the ao3 link upon you.

i feel strongly about this

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

Gimmie your Donella headcanons pretty pls

well… only because you said pretty pls

evil lesbian time

-she has used her braid to strangle a man before. this was in front of hugo, but he was ten years old, so he was practically an adult. it’s fine.

-she used to be very protective about her lab journals, but ulla started doodling around her notes and donella gradually warmed up to it. (then they started to drift apart, and ulla began her own journal that she never let donella see, and donella was left to trace the loops of ulla’s handwriting even before ulla was gone.)

-she usually made it a policy not to hire child soldiers, but hugo was the best thief she’d ever seen. she tested him & his instincts for a while before deciding to raise him herself.

-on that note, she does love hugo in a way, but donella’s mind is very priority-organized, and hugo ranks low on that list.

-she prefers mechanical weapons to chemical ones. her dagger is her go-to in a 1v1 fight, though.

-slightly civil to quirin. slightly. a long time ago.

-very defensive, even with those she half-trusts. they have to be out to get her, otherwise, why would they be saying this?

-constant, well-hidden paranoia. she’s climbed so far but her position is so precarious.

-she was raised in a very unstable home that she left as soon as she could. either she was an orphan or she was brought up by someone who parented her like she parents hugo.

-she only got truly, unconditionally attached to someone once, and that woman disappeared for almost two decades. ulla was always going to disappear, and donella was always going to be left.

fanfic writers are so fucking awesome man. they write novel length fics that are sometimes even better than some published bestselling books written by professional writers. like fanfic writers are professional writers to me and they gift us their masterpieces for free. they give us something we can look forward to after a long day. something from which we can seek comfort when life is hard. something that can be our own little getaway. in a world of capitalism, despite everything, they give us all of these for free. like holy fuck. shout out to every fanfic writer. I wish all fanfic writers a very ‘I love you with all my heart and soul. I thank you from the bottom of my heart’

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.

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

i’m poor. need money.

Your brother is SIXER??

me a while ago, seeing fanart of POC varian: that’s a neat concept!

me, getting back into this fandom: …HOLY SHIT WAIT that would add so much to s1. the persecution he faces from the king and his village. the way he’s vilified. even the s3 stuff, like how he has a fawn response around the mains and how hard he has to work for them in order to be treated like he belongs, though he’s apparently only paid for his efforts when he becomes the royal engineer-instead-of-alchemist… people who depict POC varian, you geniuses.

fanartists, i’m curious. did you factor in everything that canonically happens when you reimagined varian in that way, or did you make the drawings first?

(warning for a small essay in the tags)