I was a big fan of Darkwing Duck when I was a kid. Absolutely loved the show and would watch it with much anticipation after school and all that jazz. I loved many of the episodes, but ‘Beauty and the Beet’ was my first taste - as far as I can remember - of the good girl/bad guy pairing, something that years later I still love. Although back then I didn’t know I had a thing for that, but this episode always stuck with me, and I couldn’t help but feel bad for Bushroot and wish he and Rhoda had ended up together, especially a few episodes later when he tried to make a bride of his own out of a flower and ended up with a potato monster.
Recently, my partner decided on a lark to add Disney Plus to our cable package, and I’ve been binging on old shows I enjoyed back then. Tale Spin, Mighty Ducks, Bonkers, etc etc, and naturally Darkwing Duck was something I could not help but watch. And boy howdy, streaming is one hell of an experience, being able to watch all these lovely episodes back to back.
It was a real trip watching ‘Beauty and the Beet’ from an adult perspective. I still wished Bushroot and Rhoda could have become a real couple, but I definitely see the issues (i.e. Bushroot wanting to mutate Rhoda against her will) and if I knew that fanfiction existed back then i probably would have crayon-written a story about them being together (and it would have royally sucked, me being a little kid and all)
But damn if watching that episode again doesn’t make me want to write a fanfic now. I still love me a villain/good girl pairing and it’s nice to actually be able to put a name to why I often wished the bad guy would end up with the girl instead of the hero, lol.
(I do not claim ownership to any of the images above - the first 4 are scrrencaps and the fifth picture is a fanart I found on Google a while ago from what seemed to be a Russian site)
(Edit - I have now published the story and there’s 2 chapters available so far!)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/47306602/chapters/119200648
