#like EVERYTHING about eugene's dilemma richard makes simultaneously more and less sense

[asteralien]

richard's relationship with money is so interesting to me despite/because of how vague and nonspecific it is in canon. which only makes sense because the show isn't interested in richard's backstory at ALL and, it being an audio medium, it can't exactly give many context clues like wardrobe/style or what his apartment/house looks like. but it's like......... he doesn't have interests, he dabbles in money-making activities. i am practically forced to assume that his mention of being good at pool also = a side hustle. his estranged dad up and left him a house and a paid ride to college. at this point he's way better off than he's ever been -- after 18 years of living with two separate conmen and a mother who doesn't care about him in mediocre apartments, he's suddenly on his own with his future out in front of him, and....... he STILL takes very risky grade-changing jobs for money? like he bypasses getting a regular college job and goes straight to petty crime? and apparently "far worse" crimes??? it's such an interesting balance between craving the security of Having Money and being pathologically unable to get it in a "normal" "safe" way. he doesn't even do anything with it in canon, he just GETS it. he isn't even buying lucy's drinks himself!!!! obviously even richard has bills to pay (which is. very funny to me. sorry that i think 19-year-old college era richard is the funniest person to ever exist, gremlin who's only ever lived in an apartment with his mother, sister, and mother's rotating cast of boyfriends, suddenly has a whole ass house dumped in his lap on his 18th birthday in exchange for his whole ass father's wholesale abandonment of him, has to figure out how to pay utility bills on his own, maybe thinks about getting a barista job or whatever kids did in the 80s, record shop clerk job?? and then nopes past it and picks "exploiting a child genius" as a career path instead. what a fucking legend. i also think he murdered people for money a couple times but that's just me) sorry i've lost the plot of this post thinking about campbell county community college computers richard. imagine being the people at the 5 Cs in charge of hiring STUDENT COUNSELORS and seeing richard maxwell strut into his interview and thinking "yes this 18-year-old suspiciously home-owning kid who talks like a john hughes movie antagonist and is currently his kid sister's very much illegal guardian is the perfect fit for our emotionally and socially fragile 11-year-old resident genius. what could go wrong" and then they have to pay for nicholas adamsworth's therapy sessions for the next 5 years because richard maxwell was what could go wrong. fuck. "waylaid in the windy city" maybe be my personal favorite richard but pre- and mid-"eugene's dilemma" richard is definitely the weirdest and funniest

#richard maxwell #aio #richard goes home deliriously exhausted from his college classes and 14 illegal side hustles and has to help rachael with her math homework #'why does he talk Like That' because it was the 80s and he's a single father next question #no wonder he genuinely likes lucy she's a Good Kid who doesn't need him she just likes him #despite everything that's probably the most straightforward relationship he has #unfortunately on lucy's end she also requires several years of therapy after her category 5 richard maxwell moment #like EVERYTHING about eugene's dilemma richard makes simultaneously more and less sense #when you realize that he's got the background radiation of 'my estranged mom showed up out of the blue to make me take care of her/my siste #'and then she left me alone with my sister and no way to contact her if i needed help' #'and then my sister got taken away from me because she got busted for shoplifting several times in a row so now i'm alone again' #'i canonically hate myself for failing her this way' #'also someone almost kidnapped me in a creeper van the other day' #the fact that fotf created the Most Character of All Time without meaning to or realizing is so fucking infuriating to me #at the very least richard maxwell should have been a supernatural character. he could have shone there. #instead. here we are.