Not sure if this even needs saying, since we don’t know how much attention this video will get, but obviously our goal is not to encourage harassment or bullying of the creator we are responding to. We don’t want to misuse our platform to rally a mob to hurt someone. We are just angry at how disrespectfully she handled the topic of childhood abuse trauma, and we hope she will post a public apology and take down her video.
Ok calm down kid, the lady was just sharing her opinion on how she saw the show. Many people miss the set up for Cassandra's villain ark, mainly because it's done very quietly at the start and then is kinda rushed twards the end. She did not misuse her platform by sharing her opinion on the show nor does she need to apologize or delete her video, it says more about you that you want her to do that.
Just because you disagree with her opinion doesn’t mean she needs to apologize or remove her video! A bad review that you happen to disagree with is a normal and natural part of all art which is made available for public consumption and scrutiny. It is not harmful. You should redirect your ire at something that is actually harmful, like bigotry and fear-mongering against marginalized people. God know there is plenty of that on this platform.
@@mikaylaeager7942 I'm still working my way through this video, but so far they have been doing alot of attributing malice in what is very clearly inexperience when it comes to the person they are critiquing. They also haven't even included the person's video in the description. They are treating a bad analysis video as if it's worthy of a hbomerguy level take down video, if they wanted to give a through analysis of Cassandra's arc they could have done that, they didn't need to include Cali in this.
@@TiredMoonRabbit Yeah. I just finished the video and their analysis of Cas’s arc is honestly really good and their critics of Varian’s arc are valid although overblown. However juxtaposing their arguments against Cali makes it feel mean-spirted and contrarian rather than an honest good faith review. It tainted every argument they made as I was continually questioning their motivation. It honestly seemed like their primary objective was to take down this small-time creator who was clearly very young and inexperienced in media analysis and who’s only crime was expressing her personal opinion (although clumsily.)
I really tried liking Cassandra, but most of her character felt poorly executed to me. It really does look like she threw a temper tantrum over Gothel picking someone else to abuse.
Umm, did you watch the video? Cuz it sounds like you didn't. What you're describing is a surface level reading of the situation, which we debunked pretty thoroughly.
I held to this belief for so long, too, before this video opened my eyes to the truth about her character. I now think that Cass was actually really well-written
@@imyouralibi6208 Just because you present an argument to someone does not guarantee their mind will be changed in accordance with your beliefs. I did watch the video, but none of your points served to sway my opinion of this character. I'm very impressed with the organization and manner in which you presented your thoughts. I just feel differently when it comes to this specific individual.
@@dianagoenaga7263 Fair enough. I just wanted to know what I was dealing with since we had another commenter not that long ago who hadn't bothered to watch the video ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@imyouralibi6208 despite that experience, i wouldn't come in swinging JUST because someone disagrees. everyone thinks completely differently, it's why everyone has different favorite colors, so someone can understand the whole situation yet still have a different view
Finally, a video not hating on Cass and actually seeing the traumatic experience she went thought, I absolutely hate when people undermine Cass’ villain arc. This video does them both justice
For Varian’s triggering incident, I think you missed the part where the Fredric sent armed guards to his home to silence him and steal his scroll piece before he did anything wrong. And he did say he had asked “everyone in Corona” for help. And how he was unable to reach out to anyone because of the lies Fredric and or Nigel spread about him. (Treason is punishable by death remember? And Fred knew exactly what actually happened because he read Rap’s diary.) Plus the guards that broke into Varian’s home being disguised and willing to attack the princess, a lady, and prince consort, along with Varian’s pleading letter paint a pretty grim picture of his conditions in those 3 months. I certainly wouldn’t keep asking Raps for help after that either. Or hell, he very well might not have *been able to* get ahold of her in that time. I think you’re being pretty uncharitable with her tone about these things too. “Oldest trick in the book: kill the dad!” & “the tenth ‘you killed my father speech’” were just as much a joke as “crispy hand” bit. I think you’re misrepresenting her there. And honestly same with when you claimed she was more dismissive of “waiting in the wings” than “I will make you proud” she was pretty dismissive/critical of both. Same with attributing to deliberate deception which could have been a simple oversight. Like I get you think she’s not objective but y’all are swinging wildly in the other direction on this one, and worse it’s directed at an actual human being not a pair of cartoon characters lmao. Same with what seems like the repeated pearl-clutching about “minimizing the trama” of a cartoon character. Like I can hear how mad you are at her, doesn’t come off as very objective analysis really… like chill out. Cassandra is not your mommy, she’s a drawing. It’s just like the crazy Varian stans that treat him like their literal son. Y’all are being way more emotional than she was at this point. 1:05:15 Again untrue. Corona drew first blood when they sent armed guards to chase him out of his home and steal the scroll that is the only hope for saving his dad all while accusing him of a crime that carries a death sentence……. All before he even broke any laws. So it’s not a lie. He *is* on his own. They *are* out to get him, we saw it in “quest for Varian” and he said as much with the “everyone in Corona” line. Disagree about you absolving Fredric of responsibility of the black rocks: Quirin warned him. He did what he did knowingly. And hey, you find it sympathetic, she finds it dumb, I find it both. Your Zhan Tiri analysis is on point though. 💯 💪 💯 1:34:54 Nope the root of his betrayal *was* about his father not vague ~feelings of abandonment~. It was tangible. His actions make that abundantly clear. The actions he takes are in service of him saving his dad, not resolving some kind of vague abandonment issues. 1:40:43 this is a stretch. We don’t ever see this “darkest side of humanity” shtick from the captain. He lives in a castle, he’s a glorified mall cop. What are you thin blue liners? And those “logical warnings” includes things like guys on stilts ffs, she’s clearly not taking any of it seriously in that ep. Especially considering Raps is basically a demigod ffs. And I think you’re minimizing the kidnapping too, considering how much Coronan culture had been shaped by the trauma of that incident. Cass would have grown up with those lantern holidays too ya know. Worse she personally knew Fed and Arianna, she would have seen first hand what the abduction did to them. And the “surrounded by friends and family” bit is explicitly DESPITE Gothel’s efforts as Cass would/should well know lmao. Like does Cass really not know anything about the events of the movie? That seems like a huge stretch to me. Bruh the “play” dialogue was pure shit! What do you mean “raw” character dialogue 🤣 please expand! I’m genuinely curious! “Once a handmaid” is fascinating for how different people read wildly different things into it. I’d love to see your full break down!!! I agree with y’all about the season 3 being a shit resolution to Varian’s arc. Though honestly making Fredric just lose his memories does seem pretty merciful given the man’s plans for him and what Varian could have done. And…. my dudes, the mining infrastructure didn’t just materialize over the course of the few months the evil ethnic minority were in charge. It was there before, further evidenced by all the other references to Fredric/Corona using prison labor “tailor in the stockades” and “the prison barge of the lost sea” the Saporians didn’t invent coronan slavery they just flipped the script on who was doing it. The season 3 shift of Varian’s character going from “I’ll do anything to get my dad back” to “I’m scared no one will forgive me” sucked ass tbh. I’m 100% with you on that one. 1:48:45 “He could just show himself trustworthy over and over again…” 🤣 my brother in Christ, the 14 year old was locked in a cell with a violent offender. If he hadn’t joined up with the Saporians he probably never would have seen the light of day ever again or gotten his dad freed, given how Raps has behaved towards him in the past lmao. 2:10:30 … uh yeah it WAS kinda insane🤣 guys, a lot of people find the idea of juvenile incarceration insane as a premise. Full stop. And then you consider how “kids in cages” was a big thing on the news at the time, and plus the first angry and red ep… like yeah. What are you trump fans? It *is* insane. And idk about your fanfic in the end part. Ideas are cheap. Everything is about execution. Post it on ao3 and I’ll be able to judge it accordingly. 🤷♀️ And for your rewrite, guys the idea of the moonstone controlling/corrupting Cass WAS their original plan. It’s a little hypocritical of you guys to denigrate OP for doing zero research and you didn’t even know that… seems hypocritical to me. “Take down her video and post a public apology 😡” omfg, are you actually serious rn?? Twitter has poisoned some people i s2g 🤣 But I guess this is just “””prejudiced””” criticism. Good thing you added that dismissive disclaimer in there.
Splitting this in two due to length… “you missed the part where the Fredric sent armed guards to his home to silence him and steal his scroll piece” It’s easy to miss something that never happens. First: what you are referring to takes place well *after* Varian’s triggering incident; he had already made the decision to get revenge. Second: Fredrick sent guards to *watch* Old Corona and intervene if Rapunzel were to come for the scroll piece. That’s why they come in and try to take the graphtyc from her. (To be clear, they do not attack, because obviously Fredrick wouldn’t want her harmed. They try to intimidate her into surrendering it, and then fight back (with non-lethal methods) when the group attacks them to escape.) “he did say he had asked “everyone in Corona” for help” What, you think he literally asked *everyone* ?? No. He said he asked for help and everyone (as in, everyone he asked) turned him away. Which brings us back to the fact that Raps uncharacteristically neglected him until ‘The Quest for Varian’. He shouldn’t have needed to be able to reach her; she should have been coming to him. The writing there isn’t very good, as we already said in the video. “I certainly wouldn’t keep asking Raps for help after that either.” You mean after ‘The Quest for Varian’? That’s literally the episode when he *does* start asking for her help again (though not sincerely, he’s just using her). “just as much a joke” Except with Varian she makes sure to frequently, soberly reflect on how terrible his situation was and how hard it must have been for him and how his reaction is understandable and such. Whereas with Cass she consistently complains about how it’s so “minor” and “unsympathetic” and her reaction is “unwarranted”. So yes, with Varian, her levity comes off as a joke. With Cass, it comes off as further dismissal. “she was pretty dismissive/critical of both” No, she was not. She went on about how “Make You Proud” created so much emotional investment and was cleverly reprised and all that. And she just dismissed “Waiting in the Wings” as “the depressed version” of someone singing about how they wanted to be recognized. “attributing to deliberate deception which could have been a simple oversight” The amount of errors and misrepresentations in her video push it beyond “simple” oversight. The fact that she did not bother to double-check most (if not all) of her claims before making them is indicative of a complete lack of care. The fact that she did not bother to show a shred of understanding or empathy toward Cass’s trauma is likewise indicative of a callous attitude. We cannot, and will not, claim to *know* CallieStar’s intentions - hence why we often phrase it as “this seems/sounds like she…” in the video and I say “indicative” not “proof” here - but her intentions ultimately do not matter. Her attitude can be hurtful and harmful, and that is what upsets us. “directed at an actual human being not a pair of cartoon characters” CallieStar is critical of Cass’s arc specifically *because* of her dismissive attitude toward her trauma - trauma that is very real for a lot of actual human beings. Why is it okay for her to be hurtful toward real victims of child abuse who relate to Cass’s trauma, but not okay for us to call her out for it? “doesn’t come off as very objective analysis” As explicitly stated in the introduction of the video, this video has two goals: 1) the objective analysis of Cass and Varian’s character arcs, and 2) the critique of how CallieStar’s video ultimately can be hurtful due to just how thoughtless she was in her criticism. “Corona drew first blood…” As I already said, they were not chasing him out of his home and trying to steal the scroll from him. Their focus was keeping Rapunzel ‘safe’, not hunting Varian. But I will point out that if they were, then you would be agreeing with us that CallieStar got it wrong, since she calls it a “lie”. “Disagree about you absolving Fredric of responsibility of the black rocks” We don’t absolve him of anything though. We specifically say, “Yes, King Fredrick holds some responsibility for the rock situation, and is definitely to blame for his neglect of Old Corona.” (We say “some” responsibility because there were multiple factors and people involved in the rocks becoming the problem that they did.) “Your Zhan Tiri analysis is on point though.” Thank you.
Part Two: “the root of his betrayal was about his father not vague ~feelings of abandonment~” First of all, what is “vague” about what we described? Second, you seem to be ignoring him explicitly vowing vengeance against the people who “turned their backs” on him (and reiterating that point more than once). “We don’t ever see this ‘darkest side of humanity’ shtick from the captain” Corona is not a utopia. Yes, this is a show for kids, but it can reasonably be assumed that dark crimes DO occur in this setting - like kidnapping and abandonment of children, murder, etc. - and as the security force for the kingdom (because we’re not shown any other law enforcement) the Captain and his men are the ones dealing with it. Add to that the Captain is a side character, whose appearances are predominantly brief and more for plot than characterization, as well as (again) this being a show for kids, and yeah, we’re not getting some deep, world-hardened grimdark character. But based on Cass’s description of him, and how serious he tends to be about his job, not to mention his behaviour toward Eugene, he’s not some complacent/easy-going or friendly/optimistic guy. “those “logical warnings” includes things like guys on stilts” Because this is a show for kids, and so obviously they aren’t going to have Rapunzel listing off darker things. But it’s made very clear that Gothel warned her about anything and everything under the sun that was dangerous. And, like we explicitly said in the video, a LOT (not all) of it probably sounded like logical warnings. (And out of the 10 things Raps lists in that moment, over half of them are legitimate things to be cautious of.) And so while Cass could consider Gothel overly paranoid, she *might* also think “she was just trying to keep Rapunzel safe”. As she herself is someone who tends to be distrustful of a lot of things/people, and tries to get Rapunzel to be more careful of them too in an effort to keep her safe, that doesn’t seem like a stretch of logic. “I think you’re minimizing the kidnapping” Assuming you mean I minimized what it could/would be from Cass’s perspective (since I was very clearly speaking from her viewpoint), I won’t deny that’s possible. I don’t think she would really “personally know” Fredrick and Arianna; the daughter of the Captain of the Guard isn’t going to be friends with the King and Queen and see the depths of their mourning. Your point about the lantern holiday is better, but even then we see the citizens treating it just as any typical/light-hearted holiday than as a solemn remembrance. And when we take into account how we see Cass act toward Rapunzel in ‘Beginnings’ (how she’s not treating Raps like ‘the girl who lived’), I certainly don’t get the impression that Cass gives Rapunzel’s loss and return any particular significance - as you seem to be suggesting would be the culture. And as we explained, even though we can assume Cass would know about what happened in the movie, she would have only *heard* about it. Which makes a difference. And then, when she’s faced with that information again in a new context (“Gothel was my Mom”), especially considering all the setup of the previous seasons, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that her focus wouldn’t be on the kidnapping itself, but rather how it displaced her. “the ‘play’ dialogue was pure shit” Please explain why you think so. “What do you mean ‘raw’ character dialogue” It’s referring to how the Cass, hidden in someone else’s appearance, finally opens up. And the two girls finally get a chance to really talk. Maybe “raw” wasn’t the right word to use, but it’s emotionally straightforward (which we think was important for the characters, going into the finale where their conflict gets resolved) and a moment of release for all the tension that had been building up (which is nice for the audience…), right before things launch into the climax. “the mining infrastructure didn’t just materialize” Okay… and? Just because Corona had mines, doesn’t mean they were operated using slave labour driven by threats of violence. As for prison labour: I don’t recall the context of the examples you give. Please provide the episodes so I can look it up. But honestly, I *highly* doubt that the creators made Corona as a kingdom that uses slave labour. My guess is you are reading into those two lines far more than what is reasonable to infer. “he probably never would have seen the light of day ever again or gotten his dad freed” and “uh yeah it WAS kinda insane” Not a lot is known about the Corona prison system. We certainly aren’t given the impression that it’s an ideal system, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume it’s as problematic as it is in real life (which is a topic with way more depth and nuance than one can hope to achieve in a YT comment section, so I’m not getting into that). And especially when you take into account that the King expressed a desire to get Varian and Quirin help (which would likely include the opportunity to express remorse and show himself trustworthy again), I doubt that his time in prison would have been as long and cruel as you are suggesting. Ultimately there’s a year long gap for S2 and we don’t know how long it was before Varian broke out with the Saporian, and we have no idea what the King was doing (or not doing) during the time. But, again, I highly doubt that the creators had the worst scenario in mind, seeing as the King is written to be a flawed but good person. “the moonstone controlling/corrupting Cass WAS their original plan” Source please. “and you didn’t even know that… seems hypocritical to me” It seems hypocritical to actually do research but not learn *everything* there is to know about a topic? You certainly set the bar really high… ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 Actually Varian did ask Rapunzel for help mutliple times, The first was during the blizzard, which yes she couldn't help at the time, but she could atleast have kept him in the palace instead of having the guards throw him back into a deadly snowstorm. The second time was when he sent a letter to her to get his graphtic, now at this point Varian has been accused of attacking Rapunzel during the blizzard, a statement which was made by Nigel at the start "The Quest for Varian". When she goes to check up on him in that same episode she finds his village abandoned, the letter he sent her warned her about the guards which implies that he has encountered them and are the one who most likely chased him out of his village. This we find out at the end of the episode was all done on the King Fredric's orders so yes the king did vilify Varian. When Varian appears again in the Alchemist Returns, three months have passed since the blizzard(remember Rapunzel saying her Dad had lied to her for months in secret of the sundrop so it must have been atleast three months), so Rapunzel neglected a 14 year old for three months and allowed the kingdom to think he attacked her. When he meets up with her, he asks her to help him steal the sundrop flower which may be able to help free his father.(This isn't anything amoral and I will explain why in a minute), throughout the vault break in she keeps questioning his motives on why he doesn't care about Corona, while ignoring the simple facts that; 1)they neglected him and his village for months on end, 2)he has been vilified and harassed by the King and his guards and 3)as a 14 year old kid he has zero responsibility over their personal safety. Now when they reach the flower chamber Varian takes the whole flower, and Rapunzel protests because they agreed to one petal, but this is where Varian gets angry and rightly points out it doesn't matter and it doesn't make a difference. She says he is breaking the law by stealing, but no that is not what he is doing, the flower never belonged in corona, it was stolen by Fredric from mother Gothel so he can heal his dying wife, and Varian is only stealing it now to save his Dad from the amber. Ofcourse Rapunzel doesn't realise this and asks how could he, when she neglected him for three months, allowed a false rumor about him to circulate(that he attacked her during the blizzard) and is expecting him to care about the kingdom that could not care less about him or his Dad or his village. She does offer to help him fix everything but we know this is a false promise because helping him means confronting her Dad and we know she won't be able to do that because of the finale. Speaking of the finale this is where Varian is used as a scapegoat for everyone's awful behaviour, saying that I will be consistent and say that yes Varian send an automon to kidnap Rapunzel was wrong and I am not going to pretend he is innocent, but he is a victim of his circumstance. Raps on the other hand still refuses to admit that she neglected him and instead victim blames him and calls him "extremely unstable". In a last ditch effort to finally get some help, Varian attacks Corona and kidnaps the Queen and this is the point where I just hated, and mean hated Rapunzel's hypocrisy, Fredric admits to Raps that he was warned by Quirin that taking the flower would awaken the rocks but he had no choice because his wife was dying and Rapunzel just forgives him, even though Varian was doing just the very same thing in the last episode and she tore into him for it. In fact she puts all the blame on Varian and completely sides with her Dad, the King who caused the black rock situation in the first place.
@@thebanana3099 “Actually Varian did ask Rapunzel for help mutliple times” When did I say he didn’t? It was the OP who commented that they wouldn’t ask her for help again if they were in Varian’s shoes. “the letter… implies that he has encountered them and are the one who most likely chased him out of his village” At best it shows he is aware of them. It doesn’t mean they’ve done anything to him. Suggesting they chased him out of his village is pure speculation. Their orders were simply to prevent Rapunzel from retrieving the graphtyc. And I believe it’s reasonable to argue that Varian asked her to get the graphtyc not because he couldn’t himself, but because he wanted her to see the state of Old Corona and his father in order to ramp up her sympathy for him and spark distrust of her father, priming her for his manipulation in “The Alchemist Returns”. “Fredric admits to Raps that he was warned by Quirin that taking the flower would awaken the rocks but he had no choice because his wife was dying and Rapunzel just forgives him, even though Varian was doing just the very same thing in the last episode and she tore into him for it” Your comparison is only surface level. All Fredric did was collect the flower from a random spot (it wasn’t Gothel’s property). Whereas, to steal the flower from the vault, Varian slipped people mind-altering drugs and lied to/manipulated/endangered Rapunzel. So, I’m sorry, but Rapunzel had every right to tear into Varian and it’s perfectly reasonable for her to forgive her Dad. “the King caused the black rock situation in the first place” The rocks didn’t awaken and become a problem until Rapunzel touched them *years* later. And if she’d followed Fredrick’s instructions and stayed in Corona, that never would have happened. So technically she’s to blame. (Though I don’t hold her at fault for it because she didn’t know. And, honestly, given that she’d seemingly lost the sun-drop’s power at that point, I can understand why her father wouldn’t bother telling her. It’d be reasonable for him to think by that point nothing was going to happen.) Otherwise, a lot of what you have to say about Rapunzel’s behaviour is just proving our point that Rapunzel was written *terribly* out of character for the sake of plot. And as soon as THE main character is warped to make the plot work, the writing (for that bit, at least) is bad. Period. Arguing that Varian’s turn IS well-written because it makes sense due to Rapunzel’s out of character behaviour is upside-down and backwards logic. As is using events that happened *after* his turn to villainy to justify his turn to villainy. ~ M.E.
Another interesting thing about Cassandra is that she seems to somewhat inspired by Jeanna d'Arc/Joan of Arc (looks, personality and story). It was funny how often Cassandra appeared in my mind while I was watching a documentary about Jeanne. Here are some parallels as examples: Jeanne heard (mostly female) angel voices who told her to fight against England -> Zhan Tiri told Cassandra to fight Rapunzel and while ZT was still in ghost-form no one could see her except Cass (making it seem like Cass was hearing voices) Jeanne cut her (dark) hair short and wore men's clothing -> Cassandra has short hair and wears men's clothing Jeanne personality was direct and kind of rude -> Cassandra is direct and kind of rude Jeanne was denied by the baudricourt multiple times before she got a change -> Cassandra was denied multiple times to be part of the guards before she got a change Jeanne was leading an army and fought during war -> Cassandra was leading an army (Secret of the Sun Drop) and fought herself as well Jeanne's leg got hurt during war -> Cassandra hurt her leg (admittedly that could be a stretch) Jeanne got burned -> Cassandra's forearm got burned Jeanne got severely injured during war, but insisted of continuing to fight -> Cassandra got badly injured, but insisted she was "fine" and kept going People/grown men were afraid of Jeanne -> People/grown men are afraid of Cass Jeanne got "promoted" after freeing Orléans (raised to nobility) -> Cassandra got "promoted" after leading the guards in SOTSD (became bodyguard)
Oh, wow! That's really interesting! I wonder if it really is all just a coincidence or an actual conscious choice by the creators. Anyway, thanks for highlighting those parallels!
@@imyouralibi6208 I also noticed that when the united sun-and moondrop shoots into space the beam seems to come from where Orléans is located. If it is supposed to be a reference to Jeanne d'Arc's history, that could (finally) explain why the beam comes from the "middle" of the land instead of (close to) the sea. Jeanne d'Arc is also a french symbol of unity. But of course that is just one historical figure Cassandra is based on. Another is of course Cassandra of Troy or at the very least the "Cassandra syndrome". "The Cassandra metaphor (variously labeled the Cassandra "syndrome", "complex", "phenomenon", "predicament", "dilemma", "curse") relates to a person whose valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others. " - from Wikipedia
I think the moment of Gothel abandoning Cassandra might even be a bit more traumatizing than we give it credit for. Like... imagine you being a 4 year old child. You are waiting for your parent to return. Being completely alone for hours, until it is already the middle of the night. Then suddenly a group of unknown men burst into your home and start screaming. You run to the door, just to see your parent (aka. the one who is supposed to protect you) on the other side of a river in front of a bridge. You shout for them, but as a response they destroy the bridge - therefore you cannot reach them - and leave you alone with those unknown (and probably scary) men. Then those strangers carry you away from the safety of your home and also the only place you have ever known. Meanwhile you cannot stop crying because you do not know if you will ever see your parent again. If I would have been in her situation, I would have been scared for my life. Before someone mentions it: Yes, the Captain said he would not harm her (and thankfully he kept his word), but he was still a stranger to Cassandra at this point. There was not a reason for her to trust him, yet.
Another reason for her anger and trauma is Cassandra probably felt Rapunzel was taking away from her (by outshining her, etc) only to find out Rapunzel took her mother from her. That could be why she obsessed over the idea of Gothel loving her.
@@cassidyh5021 I wouldn't say "probably". In "Islands Apart" Cassandra says to the Captain "you knew all along how much was taken from me". So I would say it is definitely the case. Last night I also had the thought that one reason why Cassandra built her tower at the place where Rapunzel's was is that she wanted to be closer to Gothel. After all, the tower was also where her mother lived and (most importantly) died.
2:05:31 I think it makes sense to be torn. I feel like in writing once a character faces their fears they're normally not scared anymore. Varian being cautious about the amber even after facing his fear would diminish what he went through in Be Very Afraid, but trauma doesn't heal that fast, so it could make sense for him to be a little cautious. The more I thought about it the more I started to think it might make sense for him to be okay with using the amber if he's more afraid of what happened with his dad than the amber itself. You could say that by facing the fear of the amber he realized he is more afraid of something happening to his dad than using the amber. He was only afraid of the amber because it encased his dad and maybe because of the guilt he had about his actions. He associated the amber with his trauma. I think this because of how he acts in Plus Est En Vous when Eugene brings up the mind trap. Varian starts being cautious then.
I'm not great at wording my thoughts but I'll try my best. I went into tangled the series really wanting to enjoy Cassandra's arc because the concept sounded great but when I finished it I was just a bit disappointed. I feel like most people I've seen talk about it either think that there was absolutely zero buildup to her betrayal OR that the buildup to it was prominent and really good, but I think it was THERE, it was just just... okay? It starts getting set up with Challenge of the Brave, where she is frustrated that Rapunzel was overshadowing her in her one chance to shine, and something that seems to happen a lot in the first season is that Cassandra's father will prevent her from being a guard and doing... guard stuff, because apparently he was worried for her safety(and I don't think its a coincidence that there are no? female guards, correct me if I'm wrong. not to mention they instead put her in the position of LADY in waiting despite being a warrior... I wonder why.) So, for season one, there were incidents where Rapunzel did specifically mess things up for Cass, but most of the time it seems like the issue that cass faces is the fact that nobody takes her seriously to be a guard and they unfairly don't let her do what she wants to do despite being qualified for it. Then season two comes along, and I'm not a fan of the fact that they created a similar issue to Varian where you have an important character who gets their moment then kinda just gets neglected for a whole arc but oh well. Anyways, there is a lot of conflict between Rapunzel and Cass in this season, but for a good portion of the season it doesn't really feel like people are choosing Rapunzel over Cass, rather Rapunzel is choosing OTHERS over Cass. And this still technically works for her villain arc, but it only contributes to some issues in season 3 which I'll get to eventually. They do make fun of cass for being a lady in waiting to rapunzel a couple of times(which felt a little bit out of the blue in the context? but maybe I just need to rewatch) emphasizing how cass feels like she lives in her shadow, but I feel like this concept wasn't explored as well as it could've been. It was with gothel of course, but I feel like this one didn't come across as well to the audience because we KNOW what gothel is like and why she did what she did. We know that gothel is an evil manipulator gaslighter etc. and that the only reason she chose rapunzel is so she could use her. Cass KIND of knows this too, but like you said, from her perspective she didn't know what gothel was truly like. And while it's a sad scene for the little cass who just got abandoned, it just seems like it's harder to feel sympathetic for older cass practically victim blaming rapunzel for something that we KNOW only caused her harm and years of abuse, so ultimately this doesn't feel like one of those times that rapunzel was "blessed" as cass says in crossing the line. Season 3 comes along. Cass has betrayed rapunzel, knows about gothel, and she seems to put a lot of emphasis on "My whole life, I've been cast aside for you." And this is where the wonky motivation stuff comes in, because they keep bringing up the fact that cass feels outshined by rapunzel, but it seems like originally cass was more upset with the fact that people don't take her seriously and they don't let her "achieve amazing things". And it's not like these can't go hand in hand, but they really start to jumble it up where cass meets her father, the man who unfairly prevented her from achieving her dreams because of his own personal beliefs and "fatherly" instincts or whatever we wanna call them, and instead of calling him out for this, she calls him out for... not telling her about gothel...??? She says "You knew all along how much was taken from me, you knew who my mother was and you kept it from me, you only did what was best for yourself" and maybe you could argue it was implied, but she put emphasis on the fact that he hid who gothel was from her. What about everything else that happened in season 1? It's just so unfortunate because out of all of the things they could've had her confront him about, preventing her from being a guard for years, almost letting her be sent to a convent, instead she just... focused on gothel. who we barely found out about this season. There was so much potential for that scene and they kinda just blew it. She switches back and forth between what she's truly angry about, the show flip flops between what they wanna focus on, and maybe it's realistic, but for me and a lot of the audience, it comes across as confusing. For comparison, Catra from She-ra is similar to cass, including her motivations. It's just that it comes across a lot more clearly than cassandra's. We see from day one that Shadow Weaver prefers Adora over everybody else, ESPECIALLY Catra. And this isn't just the plot of an episode every now and then, Shadow Weaver makes it very clear to Catra for the entire first season that she is only using her to get Adora back because Catra is "useless scum" and Adora is her golden child. Catra spends the first season being sent on missions to get Adora back. Catra is only allowed to be around because Adora likes her. We see the physical and mental abuse that catra faced while watching adora be treated seemingly well in comparison(she was abused too, but in less obvious ways). She even calls her out on this, specifically accusing adora of being happy with the fact that she's Shadow Weaver's favorite, and calling her out for never standing up for her in a way that would put her on SW's bad side. So ultimately it makes sense why she resents adora. and I could go into catra and adora's relationship and abandonment and all that but i'll be here all day and I gotta wrap this up, so I'll just leave it at that lol. Basically, I liked the concept of Cassandra's arc, but I wish it was handled better and more consistently in the show, because sometimes it ends up being pretty confusing.
Wow, thanks for the comment! We love hearing in-depth responses like this, and you bring up some very interesting points. I never paid too much attention to what gender the guards were, but if it's true that there were no female guards at all, that's pretty glaring. Regarding Cass putting the emphasis on Rapunzel outshining her despite the other issues she experienced, I think it comes down to what we said in the video where Cass is just focusing on her trigger (finding out Gothel abandoned her for Rapunzel) and muddying the actual problem 🤔 And yeah, the audience knowing Gothel's true nature is definitely one reason for why they might find it hard to sympathize with Cass. Regarding Cassandra's father, I think you raise a fair point. It would've made sense for Cass to be a bit harder on him. I can't say I remember Cass flip-flopping too much on her point of contention... I actually touched on a comparison of Cassandra and Catra in our Patreon bonus content for this video, lol. It's genuinely scary how similar those two are. But yeah, I agree that Catra's character was handled better and given more clear-cut triggers.
I’m personally sure that while Cassandra’s arc isn’t 100% perfect and Rapunzel was a bit TOO forgiving even though she’s Sunshine incarnate, I still enjoy it even if I think it could’ve been a bit better at how it was handled
Thank you so much for making this video! I thought I was going crazy for thinking Cassandra's arc was really well set up with very understandable motivation only to find the fandom as a whole completely disagreeing. Pretty much every point you made with Cass I agree with and it felt really good that other people also see the things that I saw in the show. I just wish they had more time to flesh out her villain arc in S3 more, but except for it being a little rushed and Zhan Tiri kinda not working quite well I actually liked it. But especially the setup and motivation are, in my opinion, really well done and it hurts that so many people don't see that or disagree. Especially when they say Cass is simply 'complaining about not being raised by an abuser' completely disregarding her emotions and trauma and that maybe they're not completely rational but still understandable? Especially when disregarding all the setup and she would focus on the trigger because it's more noticeable. I also thought that maybe she focuses on that because anger at Rapunzel gives her strength (and is encouraged by Zhan Tiri) while the feeling of being overlooked and undervalued makes her feel defeated and hopeless, thus not fueling her. Additionally her being raised by the captain maybe also gave her the feeling of having to prove herself/be good enough to be loved, even though we know the Captain loves her, we also see how strict he is and how high his expectations for her are and how he regrets the way he raised her at least somewhat. Just wanted to share these thoughts. Thank you again for this video ❤
Our pleasure! We're glad you enjoyed it 🙂 And yeah, it's really sad to see the way people twist Cassandra's motivations just because they don't understand them, especially since the topic deserves so much more sensitivity. Anyway, thanks for your comment! 💕
I plan on making a video where I talk about two issues with Varian's villain arc and then I talk a little about Varian's redemption arc. Plus I rewrite his villain arc. I pretty much say that his redemption arc only makes sense because of information that can be implied. If it weren't for the fact that in season 3 his goals were more about his father then I probably would've ended up agreeing when you said that his redemption was a 180. After watching this video I noticed something was bugging me about Varian's turn to villainy, so I rewatched What The Hair and Great Expotations and realized there wasn't really buildup for his villain arc. I don't think there's much in Queen For A Day either. I see what made you think it was out of character for him to become a villain. After I watched Great Expotations I didn't understand how Varian becoming a villain made sense. If anything before the scene where the amber starts forming and Varian leaves to get help contributes to his villain arc then I must've missed how.
Why are the comments so harsh? They took a lot of time and put a lot of research into making this video and even if you dont agree with all their points this is still a very well made analysis and a very persuasive and factual agrument.
@@TiredMoonRabbit If you were simply having a mutual conversation, all well and good. But you've clearly been going around looking for new comments just so you can shove your narrative down everyone's throats. You've more than said your piece. Now finish your conversation and move on.
So haven't watched the video but yeah Cass's 180 at the end of season 2 really was poorly executed. Rapunzel gets a little authoritative with her like once and suddenly Cass feels' like she's nothing. Varian on the other hand lost his dad and had a promise broken to him by Rapunzel and had proper time to let it stew.
@aisleelovegreenwood6448 Yeah, claiming Cass had zero buildup really just shows a shallow perspective. I think it would've been best if Cass left to find her own path a *lot* sooner. Maybe then, her villain arc could've been avoidable and she could've actually been happy. Yeah, it would've been hard leaving friends and family behind, but she really needed to take that step.
Ok...I initially went into this video expecting a long reaction video to CallieStar's video that completely missed most of her arguments.... ...what I instead got was a surprisingly well-thought-out defense video that opened up my eyes to the many flaws of Callie's arguments in her video. I disliked Cass's villain arc and preferred Varian's and while my opinion hasn't changed, this video actually changed my mind in a lot of areas. A few things: 1) I LOVE Varian as a character and he's my favorite (mainly cuz of season 3), but you actually made some good points about his villain arc, it definitely could've been handled better in certain areas. It would've felt more impactful it had more build-up over the course of the season and we got see Varian more before it happened. I also do agree that him acting all "I'ma gonna kill u MHAHAHA" seems very jarring. That being said though, I always saw Varian's arc as "you didn't help my dad so I'm gonna MAKE YOU help my dad". I never saw it fully as revenge (though I admit I think I forgot certain parts of his dialogue in the finale lmao). I don't know how what he was doing was supposed to make his dad proud though (Quirn would really just say "Son, I love you, but also what the fuck"), I think it could be explained that he didn't fully think this through since y'know... he's a teenager lashing out cuz of trauma. I also do agree it's weird that Varian didn't factor in outside circumstances to why Raps couldn't help him, but again, it could be because he was in a very desperate situation and he didn't fully think this through due to just experiencing his traumatic event and being a kid. 2) Ya, It did feel OOC for Raps to not check up on Varian which is a problem I always had with Varian's arc, like if Raps just checked up on Varian this whole thing could've been avoided fast. It felt a biiiit forced and contrived. You're rewrite was definitely a lot better. 3) I disliked Cass' villain arc like I already said but your video changed my mind about it on certain areas and I don't think it's a complete disaster like before. I thought Cass' reasoning for disliking Raps and turning on her after learning she's Gothel's daughter made no sense, but after watching this video, I think I get it a lot more now. I also thought there wasn't any real build-up for Cass' betrayal which changed when I saw this video and you outlined episodes where it was being built up...but...I still prefer Varian's arc over Cass' for one simple reason; Varian received real consequences for his actions, Cass didn't. Varian got punished for his actions while Cass got off-scot free for her's when her crimes were similar to Varian's, and Varian had to work to earn forgiveness from the rest of the kingdom by saving Corona from the red rocks, Cass meanwhile...didn't. I don't want Cass to go to jail or anything but like, any punishment for her actions would've been nice rather than a slap on the wrist. Like, at least have her repair the damages she caused, buuuut no. Sure, she helped defeat Zhan Tiri, but I don't think that's enough to instantly make up for her crimes. Overall, this video definitely gave me a better appreciation of Cass' villain arc and I think I learned a lot of stuff about how to do a media analysis better from this video. So ya, I liked it, 👍
Thanks so much for your comment! It’s always nice to hear when our work has an impact. 1) Varian is definitely a fun character, despite the problems. Totally understandable why he’s a fan-favourite. 2) Yeah, I think ending Varian’s arc too fast if Rapunzel was in-character was exactly why the creators made the choice to write her out-of-character. I wish they could have found a way to keep her in-character without losing the arc they wanted. 3) That’s valid. I agree that some consequences were deserved. I just don’t know how the writing would have been able to give her something that felt fair but still had that “kid’s show happy ending” all in a couple minutes of epilogue without feeling very rushed/forced. Maybe if they had more time (if Disney hadn’t taken away 15 episodes), they could have given the denouement the second half of an episode and shown Cass helping repair Corona, like you suggested, before riding off into the sunset. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 So I just realized that there was something that I missed: I always found it weird that Cass thinks that Gothel loved her...and never considered that, if that was true, then Gothel wouldn't have left Cass for Raps. I mean, abandonment isn't something a loving parent would do and it seems weird that Cass just never realized that? I don't know if anything I just said here was offensive or anything and if it please tell me.
@@flowerboi16 She does realize it eventually. After seeing the full mirror memory she understands that Gothel never loved anyone but herself. But I think up until that point she was affected by her childhood belief that Gothel must have loved her, or at least thought that Gothel could have *grown* to love her if Rapunzel hadn't gotten in the way. ~ M.E.
I just had a random thought about what could’ve happened for Varian’s villain arc. What if he was never actually evil? In the series he gets accused of being a threat before he actually is. But this time let’s say the accusations get to the point of he isn’t even allowed at the castle by the time his father is encased in the amber. When he’s denied help he decides to try and talk to Rapunzel after the storm instead of deciding he wants revenge. Unfortunately Rapunzel can’t get passed her father’s overprotectiveness and doesn’t get to help him. She sends Cassandra and Eugene to check on him but he’s been forced into hiding at this point and they can’t find him. Rapunzel doesn’t get to help him until Quest For Varian. In The Alchemist Returns he feels that the only way he can help his father is if he steals the Sun Drop flower. He doesn’t want to steal it and feels worse about making Rapunzel sneak him into the castle and helping him. In Secret Of The Sun Drop everything he does in the original episode (the serum on the raccoon, the automatons) he does to try and get Rapunzel’s attention but causes unintentional harm. He then goes against his own will and kidnaps the queen which finally makes Rapunzel come to him, but everyone believes they have to attack Varian who’s been accused of attacking Rapunzel. When everyone sings Ready As I’ll Ever Be when he says “I’m the bad guy that’s fine”, he’s accepting that that’s what the world sees him as. Instead of intentionally attacking the fight in the episode breaks out because something goes wrong and he can’t control his automatons. At the end when he goes to jail he lets himself get taken because he knows he did the break the law a few times and feels like he accidentally became the villain when he tried to avoid it. In season three he teams up with the Saporians because he wants people to forget his crimes (both the ones he never committed and the ones he did) so while he doesn’t think it’s a good idea he makes the deal like in the original episode. Rapunzel’s Return would pretty much stay the same and so would the rest of season three. One thing he’d say during his redemption arc is that he never meant to hurt anyone.
I 1,000,000% agree with the overall message of this video. I also thought that Cassandra arc and trauma is extremely overlooked in favor of praising Varians and her build up was in my opinion way better than Varians. I just personally feel that her execution as a villain was weaker then his, because even though it is extremely obvious that Cassandra feels outshined by Rapunzel no matter all of her efforts to exit her shadow, Rapunzel is still very much the closest person in her life and her best friend. As much as Varian had nobody before it’s not really like he and Rapunzel had many episodes of building up their friendship, if anything he should be closer to Cassandra because they have had more bonding episodes together. It makes sense that he villainizes Rapunzel in his mind because he *isn’t close to her when his world gets flipped around* Cassandra has had many episodes of her friendship with Rapunzel and even though they clearly don’t have an unbreakable bond considering all of the negative factors and feelings of self doubt that have come up in Cassandra’s mind because of Rapunzel’s existence. Her friendship with Rapunzel has always pushed through and prevailed for so long on top of these feelings of worthlessness. Cassandra loves Rapunzel and it is obvious. So I think It’s out of character for her to villainize Rapunzel over the rest of Corona. She should’ve wanted to prove her worth to them and make them realize that she is so much more than what she seems to be, but she shouldn’t have thought she should do this by attempting to ruin Rapunzel’s life. It could’ve been a great misunderstanding where both of them don’t want to hurt each other but they’re both being convinced that the other one does want to hurt. I really feel like it should’ve been something of how Cassandra clearly felt shadowed by Rapunzel and wanted to clearly step out of that. But when it is implied that there is a chance Rapunzel could die from touching the moonstone. And after having her feelings of being outshined be pushed to its limits from figuring out about Gothal. This is why Cassandra takes the moonstone and tries to control it. She tries to prove herself and save her best friend at the same time. If it was a complaint that Cassandra should’ve been way more levelheaded than Varian, then this would appeal to both sides because *she isn’t trying to hurt just like how he wasn’t trying to hurt* the part where they let their failures to achieve their goals even after turning to villainy is what causes them to lash out and eventually want to hurt others instead of trying harder to either get recognition or get their father free. Cassandra should’ve eventually become more villainous, but she should’ve always had this feeling of guilt behind her because she was hurting her best friend by doing it. But she’s not gonna be patient anymore and she’s going to put herself first. Because waiting and letting Rapunzels feelings come before hers is what led to her being so unrecognized. TLDR Cassandra had a reasonable crash out but I think it was weird of her to crash out on Rapunzel instead of just the rest of Corona.
Thanks for your comment! I understand your point about how you find it unconvincing that Cass would turn against Raps after all their history but, as we detailed in the video, it’s not unbelievable due to all the feelings she’s been struggling with and the targeted manipulation by Zhan Tiri. Certainly her character arc writing is flawed; I’ve heard a bunch of fan-made alternatives that I would have loved to see instead. But what you mention about how Cass’s motivation “should’ve been something of how Cassandra clearly felt shadowed by Rapunzel and wanted to clearly step out of that… she’s not gonna be patient anymore and she’s going to put herself first” is exactly what we see in the show. And yeah, she gradually became more villainous - she didn’t want to hurt Rapunzel at the start, but she was pushed further and further through Zhan Tiri’s manipulations. And she certainly felt conflicted throughout most of her villain arc, as we explained. 🤷♀ ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 OH NO I DIDNT PHRASE THIS WELL ENOUGH. I meant that through the ENTIRETY of her arc it should have been obvious they didn’t want to hurt each other. As much as she was manipulated, it would have just been more compelling if the conflict between them was truly just a misunderstanding. And I’m probably bias because I’d give everything would have made for a *FANTASTIC DUET*
@@forgettableanimegirl5253Oooooh, okay! I don't know if I'd like all the conflict to just be due to a big misunderstanding, but that's only my personal opinion. But yeah, I could totally see a duet version of "I'd Give Anything" being absolutely lovely. 👍 ~ M.E.
I want to thank you guys for making this video. For a while, I was in the same boat of not understanding Cassandra’s actions or motivations in season 3, and thinking that this conflict was too dragged out. But hearing your analysis has shed a lot of new insight into her character for me, and makes me appreciate the writing of this show a lot more. One thing I think would’ve helped it was for more time for Rapunzel to reflect more on how her own actions contributed to Cassandra’s anger. We do get a really nice scene in Once a Handmaiden, when they’re doing the play and she acknowledges that she’s partly to blame. But when she says that Cass should’ve been more honest about how she was feeling, I find it a little insincere since Cass did explain to Rapunzel twice that she felt like no one trusted her, in the Great Tree and the end of Rapunzel Day One, and Rapunzel didn’t seem to internalize it. Rapunzel Day One especially frustrated me since Rapunzel never apologized for burning Cassandra’s hand, or making her feel like she didn’t trust or value her. I know Cassandra said she would get over it eventually and Rapunzel decided to respect that and not push, but I would’ve liked it if at some point in season 3, Rapunzel could do more to acknowledge how she contributed to Cass’s insecurities. Especially after the end of Beginnings had her reflect how Cass had sacrificed her dream of being seen as a respected warrior for her. It also might be because in the end, Cass doesn’t get that moment where she gets to save the day and prove herself to everyone. In the end, she gives the moonstone fragment to Rapunzel so she can use its power. She even says, “this is your destiny”. Don’t get me wrong, this makes perfect sense from a narrative perspective as it shows Cassandra letting go of her own desires to do what’s right and fix her mistake, and acknowledging that the moonstone and its power was never her destiny. I guess for me, the series did such a good job of making me want Cass to finally get the respect she wanted from everyone. And by the end of the show she still has no idea what her destiny is. And while she does decide to go out into the world to find her destiny, we as the audience will never see that because the show is over. So it makes her story feel a little incomplete for me. But as you said, maybe this is in part due to Disney cutting the season short, so we didn’t have as much time for Rapunzel and Cass to have a more thoughtful discussion. What I would’ve done is maybe have Cassandra’s Revenge end with Zhan Tiri stealing the moonstone from Cassandra as soon as she escapes from her prison. This way, Cassandra’s Revenge could serve as the climax for Rapunzel and Cassandra’s fight, and the last few episodes could be more of a falling action. This way we could have more time for Cass to make amends with Corona, her father, and Rapunzel. And she and Rapunzel could have the discussions they have in A Tale of Two sisters, only here it could end with them reconciling and agreeing to work to stop Zhan Tiri. Gravity Falls did something similar with having Dipper and Mabel have their reconciliation in Weridmagedon part 2, so in the final part, they were fully united in stopping the bad guy. This would also make Zhan Tiri feel like a bigger threat if she gets the moonstone sooner. She’s still waiting for the eclipse to attack Corona, but the stakes will feel a lot higher by the time we actually get there. Maybe we could also have more time to flesh out her backstory with Demanitus and give her more compelling motivation.
I hate when cass become ungrateful and forgot that Rapunzel literally was ready to sacrifice her life to save cass when they both become birds and Rapunzel literally broke the final egg on cass so cass could be live as a human putting her life she earned after 18 years on the line
It's something I can understand - everything turned out okay moments later so it could be easy to forget, and someone doing something really nice for you doesn't mean that just cancels out everything else (like Rapunzel being somewhat responsible for Cass's hand getting crippled) - but sure, I could see an argument being made about that episode needing to have more impact on the girls. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 hi hope you reply this!! but there was numerous times when Cass tried to kill raps but not once has Rapunzel tried to kill Cass even for her own defence and raps wishing redemption of the person who tried to kill her proves that Rapunzel is literally a better friend... Why was Cassendra able to turn her back against raps who sacrificed her life when becoming a bird...but Rapunzel never gave up her hope on Cass even when she tried killing her
@@IshwarRajakumar The straightforward answer is that it boils down to their character roles: Rapunzel is the heroine and a role model for children, so she does what’s right because it’s the right thing to do. Cassandra goes through a corruption arc and becomes the villain due to internalizing a false perception of reality. (If you want the details on that, it's all in the video.) ~ M.E.
Thank you so much for making this! There were so many good analysis for Cass on tumblr, but on youtube the Cass-hate is strong and I was hoping someone would make a video explaining how good she and her story actually are. (I was even thinking doing it myself, but my english isn't that good and I don't have much spare time for doing so.) When I first watched the show my favorite character was Varian and I also thought Cass was a copy of him, but when I rewatched it and noticed all the little foreshadowings to Cassandra's later development she quickly became my new favorite. I already liked Cassandra, but I did not expect that any character would ever replace Megara from Hercules as my number 1 Disney character (Meg had been my number 1 for over 10 years at this point). I agree that Cassandra's arc is not 100% perfect, but it's still really good and realistic...and (in my case) also very relatable.
We're very glad that you enjoyed our defense of her character! (And I'm also glad we saved you a lot of time and effort to make your own, lol) Thank you for the comment! 😊
Maybe this was mentioned in the video and I missed it OR calliestar said some worse things in her own video, but is it not a bit strange to say that a huge flaw of callie's video is that she makes claims without evidence, but then claim "She acts like cass is stupid for not recognizing that her mother didn't have her best interest at heart"? Especially since this seems to be one of the main reasons you want her to take her video down. While yes, callie said ignorant things about trauma and undermined cassandra's motivations, it doesn't sound like she ever said that 4 year old cass was stupid for believing gothel loved her, and the clip that you provided proving she did just said "Cass barely even knew gothel as this information was a shock to her, and the life she did have with gothel was simply acting as a child slave for her." I don't think this quote implies that she believes FOUR YEAR OLD cass was stupid and should've realized that gothel didn't love her. I think it's more so questioning why ADULT cass didn't seem to think about this during season 3. Has Cass not been characterized as the smart one of the group, who knows how to read people and their bad intentions VERY well? Even when we see Cass watch her memories, she is literally watching in horror and acknowledging how neglectful of a mother gothel was. It seems like adult cass KNEW what was going on in that moment. She felt bad for her younger self. It's a very strange switch up in her character for her to suddenly ignore this(example: cass seems to have forgotten the abuse she watched herself face during a tale of two sisters, and she has to be reminded by rapunzel that gothel was abusive). Based on the clip you showed, I think what callie may have been getting at was "Is it not weird that the current cass seems to acknowledge that her childhood with gothel was awful, but is simultaneously angry that rapunzel took the abusive life she had with gothel away from her?" Not that 4 year old cass is stupid for not realizing that gothel was abusive.
“Especially since this seems to be one of the main reasons you want her to take her video down.” That line alone is certainly not why we want her to take her video down. It’s just one piece of an overarching problem of her overall dismissive and insulting attitude toward Cassandra’s trauma - which is hurtful to real people who have been victims of child abuse. She calls it “unsympathetic” “nonsense” “shallow/petty” “not tragic enough”, calls Cass “overdramatic”, and more. The reason we take CallieStar’s comment as “acting like 4yo Cass is stupid” is because how she points out that young Cass “was simply acting as a child slave for Gothel” comes off as “she should’ve known better back then already”. But young Cass saw it as “my place”, she saw it as her “humble duty”, and a way to show love to her Mother. And even if she was referring to older Cass (it would have been nice if her video contained some sort of clarity, as we said several times), young Cass’s feelings would naturally be resurrected in older Cass, rather than her immediately processing the situation for what it truly was from a detached perspective. “when we see Cass watch her memories, she is literally watching in horror and acknowledging how neglectful of a mother gothel was” Not really, imo. Keep in mind the larger context: Raps had disappeared in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrows (which had already been messing with them), and Cass was just looking for her when she gets her trauma shoved in her face while she’s already off-balance from everything else going on. She’s not standing in those memories processing how Gothel mistreated her, she’s remembering how much she loved her mother (young Cass: “Mother knows how much I love her…”) and how much she longed to be loved in return (Cass: “I craved so much… one glance one touch [without strings]”). And then she watches as she gets abandoned in favour of golden-girl Rapunzel (speaking from her perspective here). Cass is unstable, reeling from everything and emotionally vulnerable and (as we discussed in the video) she’s ripe for being triggered into the next step of her arc as her longing to get recognition (to be affirmed, validated) is boiling so close to the surface. So I think it’s reasonable to believe that her usual ability to read people and their intentions is overridden. (And once she’s made the decision to go forward, she’s not going back.) “cass seems to have forgotten the abuse she watched herself face during a tale of two sisters, and she has to be reminded by rapunzel that gothel was abusive” Mm, I don’t think it’s Cass forgetting and being reminded, I think it’s Cass being in denial. And then, of course, when they find the incomplete memory mirror, it seems to confirm what Cass *wants* to believe. “Is it not weird that the current cass seems to acknowledge that her childhood with gothel was awful, but is simultaneously angry that rapunzel took the abusive life she had with gothel away from her?" This would have been much better for her to say. Please understand that we are not accusing CallieStar of *intentionally* being hurtful. There’s a reason we phrase things a lot of the time as “it seems/sounds like she’s saying...”. But ultimately it doesn’t matter how she *intended* to be understood; we felt that what she actually said and how she actually said it (often her tone is half-laughing or annoyed when discussing Cass’s trauma) is very hurtful. And how much she said it leads one to wonder if she actually thinks (or at least thought) that way. Not to mention the fact that she doubles down on it in the comments (thus further encouraging such a hurtful mentality in others). And so we feel that her video is harmful and should be taken down. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 I guess it just boils down to different interpretations then, since rewatching the scene, it seems to me like she is pretty disturbed by how gothel was treating little cass. Obviously she's gonna be caught off guard, but it didn't seem like adult cass was looking at her mother with love in that scene, she looked pretty uncomfortable and upset with her. And it's not just her reactions, it almost feels like the scene does everything it can to demonize gothel, from eerie, evil sounding music to having her treat cass like a nuisance and tool right in front of her face "This cottage isn't gonna clean itself you know, hahaha!" "UGH, MUST I do EVERYTHING?". I feel like a lyric to mention is "And when it came, it came with strings," which seems to indicate that cass acknowledges that Gothel's "love" was conditional. "So I think it’s reasonable to believe that her usual ability to read people and their intentions is overridden." I think it's definitely possible, I'm just not a fan of the decision to change a key trait of a character to make the arc work. A big part of cass's character, one that also plays a part in the buildup to her betrayal(like not trusting adira in the great tree), is the fact that she is good at reading people's intentions and is cautious about who to trust. This basically gets abandoned in season 3, considering she seems to trust Zhan Tiri without much question until she finds out who she actually is, and of course the things involving gothel. "she points out that young Cass 'was simply acting as a child slave for Gothel' comes off as 'she should’ve known better back then already'" I just can't read it that way? I basically explained this in my original comment, but it doesn't seem like anything she said indicates that CHILD cass should've known better. The closest thing we have to her clarifying whether she's talking about child or adult cass is whatever clip she plays at the time, and she didn't show child cass, she showed adult cass. It seems like my argument doesn't work as well if we don't have the same interpretation of the flashback childhood scene, since you think that cass was focused on her love for her mother while I think she was also seeing gothels neglect. Calliestar probably interpreted the scene similar to me, so that's where the misunderstanding happens.
“I guess it just boils down to different interpretations then" Yeah, that’s fair. “And when it came, it came with strings" I did acknowledge that line. But the focus there, imo, is still on that longing for love, rather than it being evidence of Cass really processing how incorrigibly self-centered Gothel was. “I'm just not a fan of the decision to change a key trait of a character to make the arc work” I don’t see it as being a change to her characterization; Cass’s core isn’t “being good at reading people”, it’s her being cynical (which often manifests as distrustful). Now that cynical/distrustful behaviour is being targeted at Rapunzel, instead of being used to protect Rapunzel. As for Zhan Tiri, yeah, her presence is a bit of a sore spot in the writing for us as we said in the video, so I do agree that Cass’s trust of her can rightly be critiqued. “Calliestar probably interpreted the scene similar to me, so that's where the misunderstanding happens.” That’s a valid guess. Though, even allowing for that, I will say it doesn’t erase the other blatant moments of her dismissive attitude. ~ M.E.
Two and a half hours???? Girl, you need personal shadow work, not analyzing a tv show or trying to point the finger at how another creator is wrong. If I was Callie Star, I would genuinely feel terrified of your preoccupation with her video and attempts at mind reading and analyzing her. She posted her opinion. She does not need to issue an apology or take down her video, and you have issues that you need that this badly.
I agree that Callie was being insensitive and downplayed Cassandra’s story to the fullest. But, I can agree on one thing and it’s the dept of her story. I feel the emotional weight was not enough to support a full season. No, it should not be disregarded or changed completely, as what Callie felt needed to happen. I feel that yes, her villian arc should have ended midway of the 3rd season and the rest was seeing her improve slowly. She can rebuild her friendships until the final boss with zhan tiri instead of her being redeemed IN the fanale and brief and quite underdeveloped exit out of the show.
I agree that the finale of her story was rushed. But keep in mind that Disney cut the series short. If the creators had the other (iIrc) 15 episodes they’d initially planned, we could have gotten a better paced redemption arc and denouement. Within the limits they had, I could see an argument being made for cutting the villain arc in half, but another option would be to just invest more into making the emotional weight clear to the audience. It’s all there but (especially given the target audience) it’s not as clear as it could/should be and so a lot of people don't understand what Cassandra's struggling with. ~ M.E.
ive just fell back into my tts obsession and have been ravenously devouring a lot of content on youtube about it. however when i saw the title of the video this is responding to, i immediately had a bad taste in my mouth and have since avoided it like the plague. when i finally watched it (to get context for your video), i had a pretty visceral reaction from all the weird cass bashing included and the lack of explanation for claims that sometimes felt pretty out there. your video did a great job articulating just why that video was just... so... bad. it also gave its own great analysis of the parallel cass and varian arcs, and i thoroughly enjoyed it :) after my most recent rewatch of the series, i find myself astounded at the overall quality in the writing, the animation, the songs, etc. throughout the show, cass's relationship with rapunzel is one of the most important elements of the story, and i find myself getting defensive when people want to write it off. in my opinion, her arc in the final season makes all the sense in the world, but it could be made more clear to the audience what her actual goals are (or the fact that she doesn't know what her goals are) at different benchmarks in the season. meanwhile, in varian's arc, the audience gets pretty clear views of what his goals are, but it of course is not as realistic or as well flushed out.
I like your idea for how to rewrite Varian’s villain arc, especially with getting the separatists get involved early on. The one thing I don’t fully agree with, though, is having Nigel be the reason Rapunzel never finds out about Barian and Quirin. For one thing, it takes away from Rapunzel’s development by not having her have to make the tough decision to prioritize the needs of the kingdom over her promise to Varian. And also, it feels really weird to have all the blame for this situation placed on a random side character. It means Rapunzel and the king don’t have to face any of the personal responsibility they have for the situation because they can just say, “it’s all that guys fault!” Plus I feel like if Rapunzel or the king realize that Nigel left Varian and Quirin to suffer because he didn’t trust Rapunzel to make the right choice and then never told her afterward, leading to Varian attacking the queen and the kingdom, he’d be thrown out of the palace immediately. But I understand why you chose to write it that way. When I first saw the show, I was really confused as to why Rapunzel and her friends never made any attempt to visit or contact Varian after the storm ended, especially since she felt so guilty about it. It feels really out of character for her, and makes it feel like the whole conflict could’ve been easily avoided, which makes the arc have a lot less impact. Another way you could fix it is to have Rapunzel not reaching out be called out. Maybe if Cassandra or Eugene suggest talking to Varian, but she’s afraid to face him because of how guilty she feels, and decides to wait until she can find a solution to the rock problem. She’s afraid that going to him now without a solution will feel like “too little too late”, and will only make things worse. And maybe she’s also afraid for her own safety as she knows these rocks want her for some reason. And instead of having Varian declare vengeance immediately at the end of Queen for a Day, what if throughout the second half of the season, we cut back to him a few times showing him repeatedly trying and failing to break the rocks. He becomes so obsessed with freeing his dad, he starts neglecting his own health, skipping sleep and meals so he can keep working. Each failure only makes him more and more frustrated, and causes his mental health to further decline. And as more time goes on, he becomes more bitter at how Rapunzel has refused to come back and help. So when Varian claims Rapunzel and the kingdom abandoned him, his anger is justified because she left him to stew in anger for weeks . Having This also ties in better with the writer’s original goal of having Varian push Rapunzel to stop running and face her destiny. Because throughout season, she isn’t running at all. She wants to be more involved and learn more about what these rocks are so she can help people. It’s King Fredrick who is trying to keep her away from them. So having Rapunzel refuse to be more active in helping her friend because she was afraid, directly leading to him turning on her makes more sense, as her inaction made Varian believe that Rapunzel didn’t care enough. And even though that wasn’t at all what she meant, she sees how that’s how it looked to Varian. This then leads to her taking a more active role in season two, especially in Rapunzel Day One where she is trying really hard to get Cass to open up about their fight because she doesn’t want a repeat of Varian. Although I would rewrite Varian to be less malicious, just maybe so laser focused on helping his father he isn’t aware of the harm his actions are causing rather than threatening the entire kingdom, and he isn’t willing to listen to Rapunzel or anyone else due to his anger towards her.
Great point about the weaknesses in the idea of using Nigel as the obstacle! It's so nice to get feedback like this. :) Our focus was on eliminating the out-of-character behaviour, but I love your idea of keeping it in and working it into the narrative to strengthen the character work and themes. And showing Varian so physically and mentally unwell due to stress would absolutely explain his otherwise out-of-character behaviour. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208Thanks for responding! Personally, I hate it when story conflicts are driven by the “failure to effectively communicate” trope. On top of making characters look stupid, it makes it feel like most of the conflict could’ve been avoided if characters exercised more emotional intelligence, which makes a story as a whole feel more frustrating than engaging. It was especially annoying in tangled because no reason was given as to why Rapunzel and the gang didn’t try to talk to Varian, despite feeling so guilty about it. So having a story where it’s actually called out makes it feel less like the writers failed to properly explain out of character behavior and more that they are purposefully using out of character behavior as a cautionary tale. In this case, it shows Rapunzel the potential dangers in being inactive when conflicts arise between friends. Not trying making an effort to reach out and apologize to Varian sooner only made her look uncaring and callus from his perspective. Here’s my writing rule I use for my stories: When there’s an obvious potential solution that could resolve the conflict super early on, you need to give a compelling reason as to why the characters don’t do the obvious solution. It takes the reader/viewer out of the experience of reading/watching a story when then can recognize contrived writing.
@@LauraM96829 Yes! The “failure to effectively communicate” trope can be so frustrating. There are ways to pull it off, like using it to add themes and character work, but just having it happen for the sake of plot is annoyingly contrived and happens so much. (Especially in Rom-Coms, in my experience.) And yeah, it's better to address the obvious solution rather than ignore it and hope your audience doesn't think of it. Or else just add complexity to the situation to make the obvious solution unviable. Like, "they could just row across the moat at night", well then, add a dangerous nocturnal creature to the moat. It can add a layer of cool worldbuilding, get rid of the obvious solution, and make the character work harder to use that avenue so you get to add more interesting plot and characterization as well. Win-win. :) ~ M.E.
This is how I feel about TASM2, there is a whole conflict that is literally caused because there was no effective communication between the hero and the villain, causing miscommunication. I never wanted to finish the movie, because it was too much of a frustrating trope to care for what happens later. Now I did finish the film eventually, it was great! But like you said, tropes of miscommunication are not engaging, just tempting to turn the whole movie off because the writers couldn't come up with a better conflict build-up. However, sometimes it can be done right. Helluva Boss, Full Moon comes to mind. Stolas and Blitz don't have effective communication, yet it's written in such a way that isn't frustrating to watch. Stolas treating the sitation as a rom-com, Blitz being confused about it, Stolas' lack of self awareness in the way he presents things, pushing Blitz away. And then Blitz's self hatred causing him to lash out at Stolas for pushing him away. It's actually ENGAGING, and makes you want to see more. @LauraM96829
@@ECSOrder66 Exactly. That Helluva Boss episode is a great example of how to do a “failure to communicate” story, because the whole point is that Blitz and Stolas are emotionally stunted people due to their own trauma, and the both need to confront that trauma in order to understand how to be better and to avoid hurting more people. Like I said in my rewrite for Varian’s arc, a lack of communication in a story is okay if the point is to drive home a certain message, or if it’s believable for the characters to be bad at communicating at this stage of their development. For instance, if maybe your character doesn’t warn someone else of an impending conflict due to them overestimating their own abilities and believing they can handle it without help. Or maybe someone else they loved died trying to help them, and they don’t want to put anyone else in harms way. Basically, give a compelling reason why they don’t just talk to each other. Another example I really like was in season 2 of the Dragon Prince, where they were able to subvert the tired “liar revealed” storyline. When Callum learns that his stepfather is not only dead, but Rayla knew the whole time and never told him, he is rightfully upset with her. But rather than do anything rash like kick her out of the group, he tells her to just give him some space so he can focus on how to break the news to his little brother. And the next morning he is about to tell him but can’t bring himself to do it yet, he understands Rayla’s position better. That he did want to tell him, but found it too difficult because she cares about them. And then he goes to tell her this, and she even still apologizes for not telling him sooner, and is there to comfort him as he grieves for his father. Another potential solution could be having communicated impeded in some way, causing characters to act with a lack of information or because of a misunderstanding. For instance, in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo doesn’t receive Friar Laurence’s message about Juliet being alive because an outbreak of the plague stopped the messenger from reaching him in time. Either one of these would’ve helped Varian’s arc feel more believable. Maybe if Varian had been sending messages to Rapunzel asking for help because he didn’t want to leave his father unprotected. But the king intercepted the letters in order to keep Rapunzel from going back, and started keeping Rapunzel busy with princess duties while assuring her that the situation was being dealt with. Or, what I think makes more sense, have Rapunzel be afraid to reach out without a solid solution out of fear and guilt, making her appear heartless and apathetic to Varian, and have her learn she should’ve been more proactive as a friend.
Would you say Rapunzel's behavior in "Rapunzel: Day One" was a bit out of character? By that I mean her little angry speech to Pascal (or her journal), how she understands why Cassandra is mad, but then blaming her for her hand getting hurt, while drawing her looking like a monster. And then later saying she is mad at Cassandra because she said she had it (going dark-mod) under control but Cass did not listen. Even though the reason why Cass ran to Rapunzel and grabbed her arm at the great tree was that Rapunzel was saying she could NOT control it.
It was certainly a case of "we need her to act this way in order to have the scary picture for plot reasons later". But it's not the only time we see Raps being upset and drawing it out (if I recall correctly, she draws everyone fighting in the beginning of 'House of Yesterday's Tomorrow'), so I don't think I'd fully label that out-of-character behaviour. Just convenient-for-plot behaviour. As for the claiming she had it under control, yeah, I've noticed that before too. I don't recall the exact wording she uses, but I recall thinking there were other possible interpretations. Like, she could have meant "I had the situation under control" rather than "I had dark-mode under control" - it's all speculation for why she would think she had the overall situation was under control, but I think reasonable arguments could be made. 🤔 ~ M.E.
I think your missing the point of callys video. It maybe shouldn’t have been called an analysis but the point of that video was made to more explain for long time viewers or fans of the show why they felt let down or confused by cassandras villain arc. The video obviously wasn’t an in depth comparison on how to properly make a villain arc, and cally wasn’t using varrian arc as a complete guide for all villain arcs, she was explaining what worked in the show, what didn’t work in the show based a large amount based on fan resception. It’s a video for the fans made by a fan. Varrians arc worked well for the fans! because we had proper build up. We already knew alot about the characters motivation, and we could sympathise with him. Where as casandra was alot more catroonish and her character arc felt extremely rushed although she had a whole season. She went from good to bad almost immediately then back to good again. The video was more of a comparison, cally also has a video where she rewrites cassandras arc and again its a video made by a fan for the fans. It wasn’t or it doesn’t seem to have been intended as a deeply serious deep sive into THE VILLAIN ARC and how to write one.
I don’t think we’re the ones who missed the point of her video… “the video obviously wasn’t an in depth comparison on how to properly make a villain arc” But she said that’s what she was doing. Just because she failed to do it well doesn’t mean that she was intentionally doing something else. “based on fan resception” Except, again, she’s clearly speaking with the intention of analyzing and critiquing the writing of the character arcs based on what she knows about writing. It’s clear that you didn’t watch our video, because what you are describing of Cass and Varian’s arcs is inaccurate to what is actually in the series (as we showed in the video), and we addressed CallieStar’s rewrite. And based on your inaccurate description of CalleStar’s video, I’m wondering if you even watched that either… ~ M.E.
I love when creators snap and create a long video essay about a specific topic they love! Light hearted of course, I’m interested in this because I think Cassandra on some level has the downside of the villain moment being long(with some actions that have he go ‘okay how are we going to properly deal with the of that’ them it’s not too discussed) and the villainy and redemption one season. I’m always open to having my opinion changed though!
I know the video you're talking about, and I actually agree with her points on why Cassandra was an inferior villain to Varian. Honestly, I don't think you did a very good job defending your case.
Yeah, for people who claim to be offering “objective” criticism they seem really emotional and biased. And they are really uncharitable bordering on dishonest about the jokes and tone of the original. Plus the rampant rewriting they do to try to prop up Cass’s arc and dumbing down they do to Varian’s kinda boarders parody.
Honestly I find it disgustingly sick people actually thing that childhood trauma is not actually a real reason why people feel like their not good enough, I for one know what it is like to have someone leave you or to feel like your parents abandoned you because they got Board of your existence, not to mention I’m pretty sure that this type of trauma is the most common.Im sorry but if this type of trauma is the most common then how does it become invalid.Honestly I’m glad some people actually appreciate how messed up this thinking actually is.
This is long, I’m listening to it like a podcast while doing homework, IDC what’s you say thought U will still forever have Cassandra a my favourite character, idk why i just love her, and I ship cassunzel so…fight me
Have only got to around the 50 minutes point and I don’t plan on fully watching (Sadly don’t have the time sorry) so if I say anything you addressed later just know that’s why!! Cas leading up to her betrayal was great, however my problems begin when she’s in her villain arc actually. It felt way to drawn out and didn’t work for a season villian! Varian was great because he was like a villian for one episode, and the later another. We didn’t have to constantly watch the same thing happening again and again and screaming at Cass to get it (ie Zanteri manipulating her) while watching Varian. Because it was a single episode or two not the whole season. However leading up to it was great! You could get the motivation and the song after the betrayal was fun to watch. The drama was captivating and you could understand where Cass was coming from. Also in Varian’s defense he was kid. And all the adults he looked up (Like Rapunzel and his dad) weren’t helping him. His dad lied about the rocks to the king, and Rapunzel didn’t come when she needed him to (and didn’t even come to check in later which just led to a lot of festering). So of course he’s going to seem different, he just went through something traumatic and there’s no one here to help him. He’s not going to seek out help/guidance he’s an enraged and alone kid. And in a way he blames Rapunzel and in turn the rest of Corona for not helping him, so enacting a sort of vengeance on them may feel like a way to make his dad proud. He’s ‘avenging’ him in a sort of way. Of course later on though, when he realizes his actions were foolish and he just wants to go back home. Though he messes up by immediately going the memory potion route. I mean who wouldn’t feel like they’d be forgiven if they did that, and had gotten sent to jail. Varian’s arcs make sense, considering his age, his personality, and recent experiences he just had in his life. Varian is an unstable kid with no guide when his father gets put into amber, and it makes sense he goes sort of ‘insane’ in a sense. While I do love both Cass and Varian, I’d have to say Varian’s actual villian arc is better and Cass’s buildup to her villian arc is better. I just wish they hadn’t drawn out Cass as a villian, or at least escalated things so much more.
I understand it’s a long video, but I hope you will come back and watch more of it, because we do address the points you raised here in detail. Either way, thank you for taking the time to comment! And if you do finish watching but still disagree with our conclusions, just let us know then and we’d be happy to discuss. :) ~ M.E.
I don’t wanna go here to the comment section to just rant but that’s what you basically did anyways so here I go… Look I get that u personally don’t like it but I personally thought she didn’t do that bad of a job. I watched the video myself. Also you point out how her title is clickbait but your video is titled how to fail at an analysis but most of the video is just you ranting. Also in my opinion it’s very childish to make a ranting video of another creator. Anyways those are my thoughts. Fellow commenters feel free to disagree but these are just my opinions.
Rant: "an unwarranted rambling on about a certain topic due to spite or pettiness" Do you mind explaining how calling out CallieStar misrepresenting the narrative, being insensitive and ignorant of trauma/abuse is a unwarranted rambling?
Well she did go in detail into both Varian and Cassandras arcs while explaining what the other creator did not do right when analysing their character arcs respectively so I think she very much did explain „How to fail at analysis”.
Ok have completed this video I want to be very very clear, I agree with you (mostly) when it comes to both cass's and varien's arc, alot of people miss the subtlety in her arc because they can't understand how she could still harbor her feelings about her mother when she doesn't even remember her well, but lack of understanding is not condoning or belittling/dismissing abuse as you claim (more heavily implied) cali and her viewers were doing, and thats where my issues with this video come in. In this video you both are very rude, disrespectful, and put words in calis mouth, you say that you can't know what she was thinking while giving her opinion and then proceeded to speak for her as if that is definitively version of what she has said. You have also told her to take the video down which is bad for two reasons, 1. Just because she did a flawed analysis and didn't think about cass's abuse doesn't mean shewas harming anyone, we are talking about cartoon characters here not real people she doesn't need to apologize for anything, And 2. Deleting the video isn't learning, you don't learn from getting rid of your past work you learn from improving it, you could have asked her to rewatch the show and see if her opinions stay the same and if they do explain why in a better way than she did in that video, but no she needs to delete it because she committed the horrible crime of not seeing the very well done but very very subtle story of a fictional character and you think thats the same as dismissing child abuse. Again I agree with you but you didn't have to be so hostile about. This is a bit disconnected but I want to say it so I will, how people view cassandra's arc kinda reminds me of how people view the final season/ending of How I Met Your Mother. Alot of people look at that shows ending as if it was written terribly and that it makes no sense, but when you actually look at the show as a full thing and don't skip parts you see as filler it make perfect sense, from character motives to robin and barney's break up even how they frame the ending from a filming/storytelling standpoint. I think people tend to only look at the highlight episode when it comes to shows instead of looking at a show as a whole, if they view an episode as filler then they don't give it a second look, even if thoses episodes give bigger insight to the characters, the world they live in, and there motivations, I think that is what cali and others did with TTS but I could be very much wrong.
Okay, to begin, I want to address the fact that you responded first *without* having watched the video. Which is grossly dismissive. *This* should've been your first comment. But because it wasn't, it's rather hard for me to take you seriously. Secondly, how exactly are we being "rude" or "disrespectful"? And since when did we put words in CallieStar's mouth?? We outright played the clips from her video that we were addressing. They were explicitly *her* words, not something we made up. Your claim that she shouldn't have to take down her video is utterly backwards and based on groundless assumptions. Mishandling the topic of abuse absolutely *does* hurt people. Yes, Cass is just a fictional character, but what about the countless *real* people who identify with her experience? You don't think they're going to find it hurtful when their pain is dismissed as "not tragic enough"?? Because honestly, that is an incredibly callous assumption on your part. And how does CallieStar *not* learn from acknowledging her mistake and removing the hurtful material she created so it doesn't hurt more people?? By leaving it up, it will continue to attract people who will feel they've essentially been given the ok card to dismiss and belittle the trauma of child abuse victims. And again, you are ignoring the *actual* issue here. So let me make it abundantly clear. *WE DO NOT WANT CALLIESTAR TO TAKE DOWN HER VIDEO BECAUSE SHE DISAGREED THAT CASS' ARC WAS WELL WRITTEN. WE WANT HER TO TAKE IT DOWN BECAUSE IT IS ACTIVELY HARMING VICTIMS OF CHILD ABUSE.*
Genuine question: If Cassandra’s trauma was instead that she’d been harmed due to her gender identity, race, or sexual orientation, and Calliestar’s dismissive and insulting attitude about it remained the same: that her anger about it didn’t make sense, it’s not tragic enough, it’s unsympathetic nonsense, a shallow/petty motivation, her wrestling with the pain is overdramatic and thus exhausting to witness, that she should just be grateful it wasn't worse, etc. - would you still say that her video isn’t hurtful or harmful to real people and that leaving it up is how she and others will learn to do better?
@@imyouralibi6208 1. I made my comments when I was around half way through the video and they were twards the things that you had said at that point and what you had wrote down in your own comment section, so I don't know how you can't "take me seriously" sounds like you're the one being dismissive of what I'm saying. 2. It's your tone, throughout the whole video you are overly aggressive twards things that did not warrant aggression, that is how you're being disrespectful and on how are we putting "word in her mouth we show clips from her video" like stated in my comment while yes you show her point you then assume the reasons she made her point is either with malicious intent or out of stupidity (although not saying that word exactly you imply it), you also let her say something and then repeat it it in a completely different way to make what she said sounds worse, like when ever you bring up cass's abuse cali is just saying some vague and not fully formed thought (because she did think it through enough) and you then spin a yarn as if she's actively, purposefully being misleading, so yes you do put words in her mouth. 3. Her video is not harmful of victims of child abuse, mainly because in her video she doesn't address nor talks about cass's childhood trauma in any way, how and why you ask? Because she didn't understand that part of her arc if she did she wouldn't have been so of base. The only way someone could walk away from her video feeling any sort of way you're suggesting they would they would have to A. Complete misinterpret her words like you have done or B. Have watched your video first and not even give a chance, which would be alot harder to do if you included her video in the description which you did not, I wonder why certainly wasn't for malicious reasons, but unlike you I'll just chalk that up to simply forgetting to do so. She never said her arc wasn't tragic enough, that what you said, she didn't even imply it, all she ever said was that her "arc wasn't done well enough for her" and that she "liked varians better" is that biased? Sure but it's in no way harmful to anyone, also another example of you putting words in her mouth by the by. 4. No just no, you want her to take down the video because YOU think it harmful to victims of child abuse, which I don't want to pry but judging by how hard you sticking to this point I can only assume you are one, geuss we have something ever so slightly in common. Listen to me when I say this, Cassandra is a cartoon character who is very well written but for an audience of children and young adults they most likey won't think that, especially if they didn't see the warning signs or haven't experienced them either second or first hand, but just because they don't see it (which the show it's self doesn't really help with because they don't really discuss in the best way they could have when she did turn evil, not the people who wrote the shows fault sense they got short changed but still) doesn't mean there not aloud to talk about what they did see or that that is harmful to anyone. You could have made a video educating cali on what she missed and how she could have done a better analysis but instead you went into it with hostility. 5. Kinda disappointed you didn't engage with the rest of my comment.
@@m.e.3251 well 1. That's not how she said any of thoses things in her video and 2. That has nothing to with anything I'm talking about, why the bait dude? How did you even read my comment and come to the conclusion that any of that has anything to do with the topic at hand.
As someone who has been emotionally abused for... a very long time by my caretakers, I am here to say that disliking Cassandra’s arc or calling it stupid is not a crime against me, and you don’t have to apologize for your opinion. Granted, 0CallieStar0 joking about Cass’ “crispy hand” was not okay, because she had just been disabled, and she certainly wasn’t analyzing Cassandra’s character in a respectful way at all. Can I have the time stamp where you talk about Cass’ actions like you did with Varian kidnapping the queen and all? I think you may have missed a few things with Varian’s arc, as several commenters have tried to point out to you. 1) You pointed out how out of character it was for Rapunzel not to check on him for three months, but I don’t remember you mentioning that that contributed to his villain arc. 2) In “The Quest for Varian”, we see that his lab is covered in dust. Eugene even makes a comment about it. This, and the fact that Varian sent them to his house to retrieve the graphtyc, show that Varian had felt the need to leave due to the masked men. This also contributes to his arc, because he feels like the kingdom has turned its back on him. It’s the equivalent of someone saying you attacked the president (the rumor that Nigel started about Varian attacking Rapunzel), and the police trying to hunt you down. (Attacking royalty is a death sentence in those times, and since Rapunzel didn’t check on him, Varian very well could have been killed without her knowing.) 3) The whole point of his arc is that it’s a major switch from his sweet, pure self from earlier in the show. It’s meant to show what he’s been driven to, and, in his own words, how he’s “sunk pretty low”. Back to the emotional abuse thing. I actually loved your analysis of Cass. That part of the video was fair and really enjoyable to watch. But when I first saw season 3, I was insulted at how little they spoke about Gothel and how that didn’t SEEM to influence Cass’ arc as much. It didn’t seem like a realistic portrayal of the effects of emotional abuse. Many people agree with that, or they are simply ignorant about emotional abuse. That doesn’t mean that they’re saying it’s okay. 0CallieStar0 proved that she’s on the ignorant side, because she said “If anything, Rapunzel got the shorter end of the stick” etc. etc. She’s saying that Rapunzel was emotionally abused “worse”, which, while being ignorant, shows that she is in no way saying emotional abuse is okay. We have to assume positive intent here. Another thing- Keeping in mind what I brought up about Varian, this shows that his arc is about a kid that the government has not done its job in protecting. If we’re saying that people that don’t like Cass’ arc are declaring that emotional abuse is okay and supporting it, then we’re saying that people that don’t like Varian’s arc are saying that the government not bringing child rapists to justice, abandoning foster children when they turn eighteen, turning a blind eye to child abusers because they’re bribed to, not properly caring for homeless children, and anything else along those lines is okay. Or we could let people have their opinions and their reasons for those opinions. Again, I enjoyed your respectful and thought-provoking analysis on Cass, and the effort you put into making this video.
Also, Varian didn’t “clumsily try to help” in Rapunzel’s Return part 2, unless you’re referring to the “oh, my bad”s when he kept dropping things. The pinnacle of his redemption was when he was willing to stay on the ship while Rapunzel got to safety and deactivate the explosives, possibly dying in the process. I do agree that his redemption was rushed, though, and I would’ve loved to have seen more.
@@LeeLupin-nk4mm I agree with basically everything you have said here. I feel like the writers of the show were being hesitant when it came to using mother gothle as a character, like they didn't want to fall into the trap of making her a sympathetic villain so they tried to rarely mention her, I also think (because I'm rewatching the show right now) that they probably original intended for cass to remember her childhood with gothle, cause if you look at the episode where raps is trying to get cass and Eugene to get along they have a talk while trapped in a cell, and cass looks away when the topic of what she thinks her parents where like came up, but it seems that at some point they changed there plan.
I’m sorry about the emotional abuse you’ve experienced. “disliking Cassandra’s arc or calling it stupid is not a crime… joking about Cass’ “crispy hand” was not okay…” I want to clarify that CallieStar disliking Cass’s arc isn’t the problem for us. What made us upset was that she calls Cass’s *trauma* shallow/petty, “unsympathetic”, “nonsense”, (etc.) and it’s from THAT standpoint that she criticizes the arc as bad. So, for us, it poses the same problem as what you acknowledge about her “crispy hand” joke: it’s disrespectful. “time stamp where you talk about Cass’ actions like you did with Varian kidnapping the queen” I assume you’re referring to the part around the 1hr5min mark? We emphasized Varian’s actions in summary there as a direct response to CallieStar (repeatedly) downplaying their severity or ignoring them entirely, from which she’d then try to paint him as purely sympathetic. When it came to Cass we made sure to note her villainous moments (such as when she threatened the lives of Eugene, Caliope, and Rapunzel), present her villainy as morally unjustified, and acknowledge that the other characters’ distrust of her was earned. But as those moments are spread out, due to the structure/organization of the analysis, there’s not really a summary timestamp to provide. “you may have missed a few things with Varian’s arc” 1) Our focus was on discussing the overall quality of the writing/execution. Forcing a key character completely out-of-character to make the plot work is a poor writing choice. Period. Yes, it could be argued that it contributed to his turn, but it’s ultimately a moot point because the turn itself is still an unearned alignment change - as we said, there was nothing to suggest such a malicious/merciless side to Varian’s character that just needed to be triggered to the forefront. 2) This is not contributing to his turn to villainy, that’s a done deal at this point. And while I think it’s valid to suggest that Varian wasn’t at home because he felt unsafe there (though it’s not necessarily due solely to the guards), I don’t think it’s accounting for the full picture. Varian has already synthesized the mood-changing potion into a veritas serum, and I believe it’s clear that he commissions Rapunzel to retrieve the graphtyc as the start of his manipulation of her. He wanted to expose the king’s lies and have Rapunzel see his father’s predicament - he wanted to boost her sympathy for him and drive a wedge of distrust between her and her father so that she would help him steal the Sundrop Flower. 3) Major switches in characterization need to be foreshadowed/pre-established. If they aren’t, it’s not good writing. “I actually loved your analysis of Cass.” Thank you! “that didn’t SEEM to influence Cass’ arc as much” Yeah, as we acknowledged in the conclusion, it’s fair to say that the number of people who didn’t understand her arc shows a lack in the writing/execution. I know I found a lot more depth than I had realized was there (for both characters) when I started analyzing their arcs for this script. A series targeted at 7yrs-olds should have more clarity, imo. “while being ignorant, shows that she is in no way saying emotional abuse is okay. We have to assume positive intent here.” To be clear, we were not accusing her of excusing emotional abuse as okay, but rather dismissing/downplaying it as insignificant. Further to what I noted above, we also showed in the video where she suggests in a comment that childhood emotional is “not properly tragic or recent enough” to warrant a character turning “full-villain”, and in another comment she says that Cass is being “overdramatic”. Whether or not her intention was positive, her words can still be hurtful. “If we’re saying that people that don’t like Cass’ arc are declaring that emotional abuse is okay and supporting it” Again, the issue isn’t that she didn’t like Cass’s arc, but that she was disrespectful toward Cass’s trauma. And we’re not claiming that she’s supporting or excusing child abuse, but rather that she’s being hurtful in how she is dismissing/downplaying it. “unless you’re referring to the “oh, my bad”s when he kept dropping things” We’re referring to his potion mix-up when he tried to help in the dungeon and, yes, on the ship when he dropped his potions while trying to show off. And keep in mind that his offer to stay on the ship was promptly refused and he was yeeted off and left behind. His willingness to help and even sacrifice himself shows genuine character redemption, but it doesn’t change what actually took place. Ultimately, his attempts were mostly clumsy and/or ineffective. Thank you for your feedback! ~ M.E.
Thank you for clarifying what you did. I think that helps me understand this video a lot more, and the other commenters trying to explain Varian’s arc don’t have clarity about where you were coming from. Most of your response was clarification, like I said, and how you interpreted scenes, like in your analysis of Cass and your interpretation of Varian’s reasons for not being at his home, so I won’t try to combat those with many of my own interpretations. However, one thing that always stuck out to me was when Varian said “One petal from that flower would solve all of our problems”. I believe he was expressing how powerful it was, not saying that he was only going to take one petal, because he followed up with “Oh, I know we can’t [ask Frederic to hand over the flower]. Which is why we have to steal IT.” As in, the whole thing. Rapunzel misunderstands him, and the dialogue doesn’t do its job after that. If the writers had wanted Varian to resolve everything with Rapunzel, all he would have had to say is “I told you we were stealing the whole thing!” or something along those lines. Then Eugene would burst in with his out-of-character “Get him!” and Rapunzel could tell the guards to stand down. I believe that yes, Chris and the writing crew did use Varian as a plot device for most of the duration of his time on-screen, but I also think that with the way his character was set up, he could have been redeemed if Rapunzel, Cass, Eugene, or anybody had talked to him on his level instead of one “don’t break the law” speech from Rapunzel.
@LeeLupin-nk4mm You were so respectful in these comments, that really put a smile on my face. A lot of people here were super ignorant on what Alibi had said, despite the constant clarification, I was there, I saw it, haha. I'm really happy that you understood what was said, and even better, that even if you didn't understand, you were still so kind in your responses either way! This was a great conversation to read.
Okay, I do agree with pretty much everything you say in this video, but I think there's one thing about Varian's arc you're kinda missing, and it's that. He's a literal child. In season 1 he is 14 and in season 3 he's like, 15-16. The way he flips around and starts acting super irrationally actually makes a lot of sense because he is a CHILD. His brain hasn't fully developed. It's also why people find it ridiculous that he was put in prison. I do agree with you saying there's a double standard regarding Cass going to prison, because she literally fucking died trying to save the day and that MORE then makes up for the other shit she pulled while being actively manipulated, but I still think putting the 14 year old kid in an adult prison is too much. I can't comment on much else because I haven't rewatched the show in awhile, I just think it's important to take Varian's emotional maturity into account sjfkfmdmfmemfmf
I think arguing about the prison sentence is moot because it’s all based on speculation: We don’t know much of anything about Corona’s prison system (whether it does/does not have a juvenile division), whether/what other correctional options exist, how long he was in there, what the king did/didn’t do to help him during that time, etc. So I don’t see a point in getting hung up over that topic. As for his emotional maturity: It’s incredible what a low opinion people have of teenagers, “They're irrational, they can’t think for themselves, they can’t control their emotions, they’re walking contradictions, they have no self-discipline” etc. etc. etc. I’ve heard so many insulting excuses given for teenage characters. It’s downright sad. Especially when the reality is that characters are not people, so the argument doesn’t work anyway. Characters are fictional constructs that need consistency and progression to make sense. Like we said when discussing Cassandra: we’ve seen her act self-centered and hurtful before, she just takes it to another degree when she turns. But there’s nothing like that shown for Varian. If he’d angrily tried to blame-shift when the boiler experiment exploded, or when he’d lost the Expo, then his turn would have made more sense. As it is, it’s just inconsistent. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 y'know what, fair. Inconsistencies do be there. I see ur point. Age is still kind of important tho? Especially someone as young as 14, which is young enough to still be in middle school. I'm in highschool rn so I'm speaking from experience- teenagers do not make great judgement calls, myself included! And granted most people aren't always 100% on their judgement, but either way if you're still young enough to be in school you still probably need more guidance than an adult. This isn't even abt Varian anymore tbh cuz the way u phrased it I do see ur point abt the flip flopping better, it's just like. In general I think kids shouldn't be judged the same way adults are and 14 is still BARELY a teenager- Also, back to Varian, if I'm remembering correctly he wouldnt have met the Seporians(is that how you spell that-) if they put him in juvie man I'm sorry. Those guys were not gonna be in fuckin juvie they were literal terrorists- Varian's actions were ALSO literal terrorism so he def shouldve been heavily guarded but putting him in a prison that also contains adults is INCREDIBLY unsafe and irresponsible, considering the types of people that get. Sent to prison in a just society. He just straight up shouldnt have been in a situation where he couldve met those guys. It doesn't matter if the kid is a criminal, it's still important to keep them out of proximity of people they can't defend themself against. I'm not gonna get like. Worked up over the Corona prison system. Because it is not real. And I think the writers just failed to consider the implications. But still, don't put kids in prison, is my hot take.
@@galaxydacreature Yeah, of course youth should be factored in when writing young characters but, whether used as a flaw or a strength, it can't be applied randomly. I think the main cast of A:TLA are a good example of using it right since their immaturity manifests in character based ways: Toph refuses to help with the group chores because she’s trying to prove her independence, Aang hides the letter from Sokka/Katara’s Dad because he doesn’t want to lose the only family he’s got left, both Sokka and Katara (who have been isolated in a tiny community) crush hard when they meet other attractive teens, etc. As for the jail thing, I think you put it well when you say that the writers just failed to consider the implications. ~ M.E.
"His brain hasn't fully developed." If you wanna go with that argument, please keep in mind that the brain grows/develops until the mid-20s to early 30s (25-30)...and Cassandra is at max. 24 years old at the end of the show.
Oml I'm just getting back into tts!! This makes me so happy to see 😋!! I actually watched CaliStar's video like a week before this, and I agreed with some points, but for the most part I felt a lot like y'all, and I just didn't know how to articulate it too well lol. I really hate that she couldn't see that the whole obsession with Mother Gothel was more out of the principal of the matter ( literally waiting in the wings since childhood ) rather than Rapunzel actually being raised because yeah it wasn't Rapunzel's fault at all, that's the point😭 Also to add on to your whole point of Rapunzel being out of character for Varian's corruption, it didn't make any sense that she never tried correcting anybody when they said that Varian "attacked her" during Queen for a Day, or that she didn't tell the guards to stop when they literally were throwing him back into the giant snowstorm. I really also like how the thing that pushed Cass over the edge in crossing the line was Rapunzel saying wait. I think it was a really good small detail that really reflects all her feelings she's had that Raps stayed oblivious to. I think my main problem with Cass is that they seemed just too scared to make her evil. You said it somewhere in the video, but at the end of season one Varian literally kidnaps the queen, tells her after his father's freed he's going to destroy Corona, threatens to trap her in amber, then tries to kill the royal family😭 And when Cass turns evil she takes the moonstone (Which could have killed Rapunzel), and then then doesn't do anything until halfway into season three when she kidnaps Varian ( She doesn't even try to hurt him), and overall she just seemed like a lot less of a threat. It's to the point where when she transforms into that other lady it just seems kind of pointless cause she hasn't even really done anything bad until she lashes out at the kingdom. I think this also kind of ties into Rapunzel's attitude towards her. Obviously Rapunzel is going to have a lot more sympathy towards Cass than she did Varian because Cass has literally been her best friend, but there's a point where I was just getting tired of Rapunzel try to defend her. When they started having the fight in Cass's tower I think it would have been better if Rapunzel had a lot less hesitation while saying the fourth incantation 1. because her friend got kidnapped 2. her fiance got threatened 3. I feel like Rapunzel should realize that Cass has enough power to be a large threat to her kingdom, and she doesn't know that she didn't really hurt Varian while he was kidnapped, she found him literally hanging in a cage. Even though she could still be there for Cass, she should have also been there for all her citizens who are now in danger. Plus it doesn't even have to be about defeating Cass, her whole motive throughout the fight could just be trying to get the moonstone. Like she needs to put her foot down and say that she needs to stop Cassandra before she can fully reach her. I feel like that would make it more believable for Cass to think that Raps will be mad at her when she actually took some initiative in stopping her yk? I agree with what you said about Zhan Tiri, she's just to vague in what she's trying to do for me to think of her as a really strong villain, they have two really big villains in this season, but neither feel like a threat while watching it lol. I feel like if I could change it I would make Zhan Tiri actually use her magic to control Cassandra more. Like I think all the buildup to Cassandra taking the moonstone is great, but afterwards she just falls off 'cause she's always warring with herself about if she's doing the right thing or not, and it kind of takes away from everything that happens before 'cause it's like, " why'd you even take the moonstone if you're not at all sure of what you're doing😭😭😭???" So what I would do (au time ig lol) is make it so that you can't see Zhan Tiri at all until she gets unleashed. We already know that it's not impossible for this kind of magic to mess with someone's mind, i.e. Rapunzel not being able to stop herself when she starts saying the dark incantation, so we could keep going on that route and make it so that Zhan Tiri is able to somewhat speak and use her magic against Cassandra when she grabs the moonstone, so when she takes it, she starts actually doing awful things because Zhan Tiri is altering her to have really heightened emotions, like when she sings crossing the line. So the things she does aren't really out of character, but they are made while she's constantly in a heightened state, and when Zhan Tiri escapes after Cass and Raps's fight, she stops using her magic on Cass. So 1. her reveal is a little more dramatic 'cause Cass doesn't hear that little voice in her head anymore, and 2. we don't really know who this big bad is except the fact that she's skilled enough to manipulate Cass without ever showing her face. I think this also makes a little more sense because I don't really get how Cass is able to see Zhan Tiri, so I think it would make more sense if she was just using the moonstone as a mouth piece, since it is pretty much the embodiment of destruction, rather than a way to make Cass see her. Then when Cass is no longer being controlled, she's able to take a breath and start letting the guilt in, and Zhan Tiri wouldn't really feel the need to control her anymore since she already did all she needed to, which was free her from her prison. My final thing about this is that I really wish they designed Zhan Tiri differently. I hate her eyes, they're so ugly😭😭😭😭 Sorry for the crazy long comment 😞 Your video was great 🥰🥰🥰
Okay, also hi! New sub, let me say this..I absolutely love Cassandra, and the voice actor. Cassandra is so much more than that, and Varian and her are them same to me while he's not at the same time. And I completely agree with this vid and I disagree with Calie. I love both the characters Love how ya said the judge is a hack lol, so real. Now, I know why all the Fandom love him but..we don't see any liking Cassandra, your explanation is so...perfect!
@@imyouralibi6208You're very welcome! Honestly kinda feel bad for Cass not gonna lie. All her life she wanted to do all those things you mentioned. She is overlooked, and it makes her upset, and she snaps at people
@imyouralibi6208 This is my sister, the one I told you would love this video. (I was right) 😂 And she's right to love this video, that was an amazing analysis!
@@tabbypawzz It's honestly so sad that so many people in the fandom misunderstand Cassandra's character and hold so much vitriol toward her 😞 Her songs hit so hard for me, especially Waiting in the Wings and its reprise.
Okay, so I also disagree with calliestar as well because of her erasing cassandras trauma, and her bias for varian, but I also disagree with some of your points. My goal is not at all to change your mind, but to respectfully disagree. As much as I agree that he could have asked for help, i know you said that rapunzel went out of character to not help him, and that might have made it easier to convince us that that is something varian would do. Cassandra is in fact traumatized, and calliestar DOES in fact erase it, but I think her problem was that she did not consider zhan tiri. In my opinion(I could be wrong) what she went through alone would not push her to the edge, but with the influence of a demon, which could potentially represent peoples inner demons due to her being manipulative in nature, her arc does make sense, I personally know they didnt have enough episodes to make it work properly, and i understand it, it is sinply the pacing that I believe is slightly rough. I do believe though that they are extremely different, both motive wise and the in different actions they take, and you should not compare their traumas, because you can still drown in shallow water, no matter who you think is deeper, both are drowning. Lastly, there is one final difference that I would like to include. In Nothing Left to Lose, (which i could make hundreds of essays on and not get bored) and Ready as I'll Ever Be, it shows that varian knew he was a bad guy, yet cassandra thought that even though the path she was on was dark, she thought she was in the right. Not all that important, but interesting to think about. And lastly lastly, varian was very goal oriented meanwhile cassandra seemingly had no clue what she wanted to do, but, it truly kind of worked because it shows the differences
Thank you for your comment! “rapunzel went out of character to not help him, and that might have made it easier to convince us that that is something varian would do” For sure, the writers making Rapunzel not follow-up with Varian is why he feels betrayed/abandoned and lashes out. So it makes sense in that regard, which I’ve seen several people argue, but Rapunzel being so out-of-character is a big problem with the writing that can’t just be ignored. Writers can’t just change key characterization of THE main character to make the plot work and pretend nothing is out of the ordinary. “what she went through alone would not push her to the edge, but with the influence of a demon… her arc does make sense” Agreed. As we stated in the video, Zhan Tiri was the catalyst for Cassandra’s turn. “they didnt have enough episodes to make it work properly… it is sinply the pacing that I believe is slightly rough” Yep, as we mentioned, Disney ended up cutting down the number of episodes so Cassandra’s arc in S3 isn’t paced as well as it could have been. “you should not compare their traumas” Just to clarify (in case you are not using “you” in the broad sense), we were simply comparing the quality of their character/arc writing. We outright say that trauma is not a competition; we did not compare their trauma. “varian knew he was a bad guy, yet cassandra thought that even though the path she was on was dark, she thought she was in the right” Yes, the differences are very subtle. Varian knows that what he’s doing is bad, but he believes he’s justified. Cassandra is in denial that she’s doing anything bad, because she also feels her actions are justified. “varian was very goal oriented meanwhile cassandra seemingly had no clue what she wanted to do” Yep, that’s a fair assessment. Varian wanted to free his Dad and make Corona suffer. Cassandra wanted to follow “destiny”, but yeah… that’s pretty vague. Which is part of why Zhan Tiri was able to mislead her so easily. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 sorry, I did not intend to imply that with rapunzel acting out of character was not a plot issue, I could have stated that better and I apologize for that
Honestly, I would have preferred if you had just made your argument for why you believe Cass’s arc was better than Varian’s rather than framing it as you being objectively right and Callistar being objectively wrong. Her video simply reflects her opinion and preferences, precisely the same way your video does. Your framing of your opinion as “right” and hers as “wrong” diminishes your credibility and hurts your argument overall. An argument that was otherwise very well thought out.
I guess you missed the part where CallieStar titled her video as an "analysis" and claimed multiple times throughout the video that that's what she was doing... You do realize storytelling is not a subjective artform, right? There *are* objective principles for determining what's good writing and what isn't. Acknowledging as much far from hurts our credibility.
ImYourAlibi: Claims Callie is dismissing childhood trauma Also ImYourAlibi: Proceeds to dismiss the trauma Varian experienced when he was still a minor Great argument
@@imyouralibi6208 I know you guys are too biased to accept criticism of your arguments but since you asked Downplays the fact that Varian is literally terrified his dad could be DEAD. Its blatantly shown in the show and confirmed by Chris that Varian DOES fear his dad could be dead but chooses to believe there's hope to save him cause of course he does because the alternative is just accepting that his dad is gone forever and internally a part of him knows part of it is his fault. He's literally a kid scared that he might've caused his dads death. He simply holds on to the hope he can save him. Conveniently forgets the king sent his men to break into Varian's home and steal the scroll that isn't the kings to begin with. Varian had to go into hiding cause of them and Varian states they will do anything to get it so stating he had to deal with them and hide it. Ignores the fact that Varian was clearly manipulated by the seporians who he was literally put in a cell with. Yeah no "random ghost he doesn't know and could walk away from at any time" He was put in a cell with these people and was offered "friendship" and a way to start over if he goes along with the Seporians plans. He clearly ia shown going along with ANDREWS plans even when Varian is shown to take issue with his plans cause no shit he's still a minor going along with what these grown adults that manipulated him told him to do and they use his fears of if Corona will ever accept him again to either push him to help their plan by promising he can start over or use his fears of being accepted against him when he starts to go against their plans. Why can't he just prove himself over and over? Why exactly does Varian have to prove himself "over and over" and in the show TWICE to be accepted but Cass just gets to ride off intro the sunset after helping at the very last possible moment. And what the hell are you expecting? Corona's been badmouthing Varian since before he even turned Rapunzel was the only one willing to give him a chance and hell even she wasn't willing to until Rapunzel's Return. For all of Cass's whining, she had every opportunity to choose better and kept digging herself deeper while with Varian we are actively shown plenty of figures in Corona are actively against him.
“Its blatantly shown in the show and confirmed by Chris” Citations needed for both of these. “the king sent his men to break into Varian's home and steal the scroll” This did not happen. The king sent his men to watch Old Corona and intervene if Rapunzel were to come for the scroll piece. And that's all they did. “Ignores the fact that Varian was clearly manipulated by the seporians who he was literally put in a cell with… was offered "friendship" and a way to start over if he goes along with the Seporians plans” We ignored speculation? Yeah. Because we were analyzing the content, not your head-canon. We don’t know what happened in that cell. We don’t know why Varian is working with them aside from what is actually in the content - which shows him crowing about how he’s finally getting back at Corona until he admits to Rapunzel that he feels he can’t redeem himself and everything changes in short order. And that’s really what that part of the series is about: his redemption. So we’re examining and talking about it from that standpoint, not speculating on what happened off screen to explain it like another trigger/turn, because it isn’t; he’s already a villain at that point. “Why exactly does Varian have to prove himself ‘over and over’” We were responding to CallieStar’s question about “what else is he supposed to do?”. You’ll note that we didn’t include that option in our rewrite because there were other options that we thought worked better, especially given the path the creators had already followed. “but Cass just gets to ride off intro the sunset after helping at the very last possible moment” Varian chose to stay after he (barely) helped “at the very last possible moment”. If he had chosen to ride off into the sunset, I’m sure he would have been allowed. “she had every opportunity to choose better and kept digging herself deeper” So did Varian. “with Varian we are actively shown plenty of figures in Corona are actively against him” Same with Cass. Also, I'm not seeing how any of what you bring up here is evidence of us dismissing Varian's trauma. We were very clear in the video that we agree what Varian went through was traumatic, we simply we feel his turn to villainy is out-of-character with what was established and we thoroughly explain why. In contrast, CallieStar repeatedly says Cass's trauma isn't sympathetic enough, calls it "nonsense" and presents it as shallow/petty motivation, says Cass is being "overdramatic", etc. ~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 You guys really suck at "analyzing the text" if you somehow miss obvious facts sitting right there in front of you. Some "analysis" this is if you have to change the context to fit your bias. If anyone should delete their video its you guys since you can't even analyze the text in your favor without lying in an already deeply biased video. Wow did you even actually watch the show?? You flat out play the clip of Varian shouting in relief that his dad is alive "Dad! Dad! You're alive!!" indicating that yes Varian is afraid his dad might be dead but holds on to the hope he can be saved. "This did not happen. The king sent his men to watch Old Corona and intervene if Rapunzel were to come for the scroll piece. And that's all they did". Nice headcanon cause thats not what happened. They state themselves they were ordered to retrieve the piece regardless if Rapunzel went after it no conditions just go retrieve the scroll piece an item that doesn't belong to the king and was ordered to be retrieved regardless if Rapunzel showed up. "We ignored speculation? Yeah. Because we were analyzing the content, not your head-canon." Wow you guys are hopeless if you can't understand the basic facts right in front of you or you're just lying to win an argument (spoiler alert you're not winning). Look at me and tell me you seriously believe Varian orchestrated the Seporians takeover of Corona when he's never shown to believe in the cause in any capacity. Funny you conveniently forget the moments where varian is clearly unsure of what he and the seporians are doing but ends up going along with ANDREWS orders while you go on about Cass's "brief moments". Nevermind the fact Andrew is shown to use words like friend and buddy in a clearly manipulative way to keep Varian in line. Tell me how on earth you can even pretend he wasn't manipulated when Varian flat out states "we agreed no one would be harmed" with shock and surprise. Again why would he orchestrate a takeover for a cause he doesn't believe in? And he's clearly shown to not be the one in charge its Andrew, And he's shocked when they go back on their word because they got him to trust them as the only people he could rely on. You can just admit your crying and whining over Cass's trauma is fake AF when you blatantly ignore when a minor is being manipulated by grown adults using his fears against him.
@@reagangrayson2879 Most of this is just you slinging insults instead of actually presenting reasons for why we’re wrong or any evidence of us dismissing Varian’s trauma. If that continues to be the case, I doubt I will continue this conversation much longer. “You flat out play the clip…” So you claim that we dismissed his trauma and when I ask for evidence you point to something that we acknowledged in the video and said essentially the same as what you have to say about it… “They state themselves they were ordered to retrieve the piece regardless if Rapunzel went after it” The exact line is “We had orders to recover the scroll to keep it from you.” Nothing in there about “regardless”. It seems your disagreement with me is boiling down to a difference of interpretation. I am taking into account the fact that Varian only said they were watching, and the fact that they didn’t enter his empty home to take the scroll before Rapunzel got there, as indication that their orders were only to intervene if she came and took it. “you're just lying to win an argument (spoiler alert you're not winning)” No. I’m not childishly trying to “win” an internet argument. (But it seems you are.) I am trying to ascertain whether there are any legitimate critiques to be found within this slop of a comment you’ve posted. (Spoiler alert: there aren't any.) “tell me you seriously believe Varian orchestrated the Seporians takeover of Corona” Why would I say that when I don’t believe it? I don’t see how a strawman fallacy proves your point that we were dismissive of Varian’s trauma. At best, you have pointed out that we didn’t note how Varian was being manipulated by the Saporians. But, as I kind of already said, the trauma we were focused on for both characters was specifically the trauma directly connected to their turn to villainy. Certainly their villainous journeys brought both of them more trauma, but I fail to see how us not bringing up each trauma either of them suffered after their turn to villainy is a case of us being dismissive of only Varian. ~ M.E.
I've never watched the Tangled series so I can't exactly give my opinion on this topic but I thought this video was incredibly well made and I enjoyed all 2 hrs and 30 mins of it haha :) !!
There was a lot to say. Lol. Analyzing the arcs of two characters appearing in a 60-episode series takes a lot of time on its own. Add to that responding to the problems presented in another video, and it's easy to go over 2hrs. 🤷♀
@@LynnTyson-fp6nn Did you watch the video at all? Or even read M.E.’s comment above? The video runtime includes detailed breakdowns of both Cassandra *and* Varian’s character arcs (and more). So your assertion that a longform video analysis of a character is evidence of bad writing would apply to Varian as well. 💀
@@LynnTyson-fp6nn Okay. It seems clear that all you did was read the title, and you think that makes you qualified to comment on the video. It doesn’t. If you want to make yourself look like an even bigger ignoramus, be my guest and continue talking. But I’m not going to waste my time responding any more.
I feel like Varian gets a lot of favoritism from the fandom. Back in 2020 I was extremely anti Varian fan girl and I have no idea why. Whenever people said that Varian was an extremely relatable character I found myself disagreeing. At the same time I kept rewatching the episode Be Very Afraid because I could relate to what Varian went through. I finally accept the fact that I can relate to Varian but not for the same reasons that the fandom does. Come to think of it while people talk about Varian having PTSD in Be Very Afraid I don’t hear many people saying that they can relate what he went through in that episode. Back to the whole anti Varian fan girl thing, I think that while I’m not as anti Varian fan girl because I never gave him any favoritism I don’t agree with the moon Varian theory because I can see where him being the Moonstone doesn’t make sense. I think the favoritism he receives from the fandom is one of the reasons why people prefer his villain arc over Cassandra’s. A common issue with King Fredrick is how people hate on him for what he did. He definitely shouldn’t have avoided the black rock situation because it was a danger to the kingdom. While he didn’t handle the situation properly I can understand why he did what he did. Avoidance is his response to his anxiety. What happened to Rapunzel was traumatic for him and he seems to be having anxiety throughout the show. You can have your own opinions on whether or not he did the right thing but it’s also important to understand why he did it. I can understand the reasons behind some of his actions because I know what it feels like to have anxiety and avoid things. In Frozen I feel like Elsa sometimes gets misunderstood sometimes and called a villain, but because I can relate to her I can understand how she feels and why she makes the choices she makes. This brings me to Cassandra. I don’t think she’s having anxiety but she is going through trauma. Her trauma is why she does what she does. Obviously she didn’t do the right thing but I understand why she did it. A lot of people use Varian’s age as a reason why his actions are valid. Like you said she’s been affected by childhood trauma. It’s true that trauma can have permanent effects. Those permanent effects are part of why she’s doing what she’s doing. In fact she was younger than Varian when she had her trauma. The reason people say Varian’s actions are understandable is because your brain is not fully developed when you’re 14. If I’m remembering correctly your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until you’re 25. So a lot of what Cassandra goes through is before her brain was fully developed. She is around 25 by season 3 but even if you could argue my point about her brain not being fully developed is invalid she’s still doing this because of trauma. Take someone like Fredrick whose brain is fully developed by the time his trauma happens for example. It’s still a struggle. Therefore Cassandra has valid reasons for what she did. It’s okay to like Varian better than Cassandra but I think people need to understand that yes, Varian has valid reasons to feel the way he feels, so does Cassandra. You can compare anyone’s trauma to Varian’s and say Varian’s is worse or more traumatic, but everyone responds differently to situations. Something may be more traumatic for me than it would be for someone else. Whatever a person’s trauma was it was hard for that person to go through. Their struggles are valid. This is why the favoritism towards Varian can be an issue.
Writing aside, I'll be honest, as much as I like Varian as a character, I never bought him as a villain, definitely not an intimidating one. Whereas I completely bought Cassandra as being a truly dangerous threat.
Sorry, but someone disagreeing with you or interpreting media differently isn't actually a crime they need to apologize for. You're 1. Just as biased. and 2. The one who's attacking another real person here. Seriously, please go touch grass. You could've just made this whole analysis video as a standalone thing without going after another creator and it would've come across as much more sincere.
If you were paying attention you would know that we were asking her to apologize and remove her video due to her dismissive and insulting attitude toward child abuse, which can be very hurtful to *real people* who are victims of such trauma.
@@m.e.3251 And I disagree with you that there was anything wrong with her video. Her criticizing a fictional character isn't on the same level as you guys attacking a real person. Stop spending so much time online doing fake activism that's really just a mask to shut down people who disagree with you about a TV show.
@@arielxlazarusSir... she was mishandling the concept of TRAUMA and CHILD ABUSE. Which is, you know, shown in the video. That you either clearly did not watch, or clearly did not understand. That is definitely something wrong with her video.
@@ECSOrder66 Once again, criticizing a fictional character, one whose history of child abuse is handled badly in the show anyway, is seriously not a big deal. If you want people to be more sympathetic towards Cass, that's your prerogative, but no one else has to care about your opinion. I'll say one more time, it's a youtube video about a fictional character. You people are making a mountain out of a molehill because you can't handle someone not liking your fav. Please go touch grass, all of you. There are multiple genocides happening in the world right now and you're complaining about a non-issue.
@@arielxlazarus I appreciate the strawman, bud. "It's a RUclips video about a fictional character" Ah, the "it's fiction" argument. You seeing this, guys? It's a fictional character being abused, not a real person, that means there is no harm in Callie's video. Logic, right? Congratulating on insinuating that if a victim is a fictional character, if someone downplays the severity of it, there is "no harm". Seek help.
![Digital Circus Episode 4 [TRAILER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/abZtsmMUbJo/mqdefault.jpg)
Not sure if this even needs saying, since we don’t know how much attention this video will get, but obviously our goal is not to encourage harassment or bullying of the creator we are responding to. We don’t want to misuse our platform to rally a mob to hurt someone.
We are just angry at how disrespectfully she handled the topic of childhood abuse trauma, and we hope she will post a public apology and take down her video.
I agree with you, though I haven't watched the kid, I do disagree with her
Ok calm down kid, the lady was just sharing her opinion on how she saw the show. Many people miss the set up for Cassandra's villain ark, mainly because it's done very quietly at the start and then is kinda rushed twards the end. She did not misuse her platform by sharing her opinion on the show nor does she need to apologize or delete her video, it says more about you that you want her to do that.
Just because you disagree with her opinion doesn’t mean she needs to apologize or remove her video! A bad review that you happen to disagree with is a normal and natural part of all art which is made available for public consumption and scrutiny. It is not harmful. You should redirect your ire at something that is actually harmful, like bigotry and fear-mongering against marginalized people. God know there is plenty of that on this platform.
@@mikaylaeager7942 I'm still working my way through this video, but so far they have been doing alot of attributing malice in what is very clearly inexperience when it comes to the person they are critiquing. They also haven't even included the person's video in the description. They are treating a bad analysis video as if it's worthy of a hbomerguy level take down video, if they wanted to give a through analysis of Cassandra's arc they could have done that, they didn't need to include Cali in this.
@@TiredMoonRabbit Yeah. I just finished the video and their analysis of Cas’s arc is honestly really good and their critics of Varian’s arc are valid although overblown. However juxtaposing their arguments against Cali makes it feel mean-spirted and contrarian rather than an honest good faith review. It tainted every argument they made as I was continually questioning their motivation.
It honestly seemed like their primary objective was to take down this small-time creator who was clearly very young and inexperienced in media analysis and who’s only crime was expressing her personal opinion (although clumsily.)
I really tried liking Cassandra, but most of her character felt poorly executed to me. It really does look like she threw a temper tantrum over Gothel picking someone else to abuse.
Umm, did you watch the video? Cuz it sounds like you didn't. What you're describing is a surface level reading of the situation, which we debunked pretty thoroughly.
I held to this belief for so long, too, before this video opened my eyes to the truth about her character. I now think that Cass was actually really well-written
@@imyouralibi6208 Just because you present an argument to someone does not guarantee their mind will be changed in accordance with your beliefs. I did watch the video, but none of your points served to sway my opinion of this character.
I'm very impressed with the organization and manner in which you presented your thoughts. I just feel differently when it comes to this specific individual.
@@dianagoenaga7263 Fair enough. I just wanted to know what I was dealing with since we had another commenter not that long ago who hadn't bothered to watch the video ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@imyouralibi6208 despite that experience, i wouldn't come in swinging JUST because someone disagrees. everyone thinks completely differently, it's why everyone has different favorite colors, so someone can understand the whole situation yet still have a different view
Finally, a video not hating on Cass and actually seeing the traumatic experience she went thought, I absolutely hate when people undermine Cass’ villain arc. This video does them both justice
Indeed.💯
For Varian’s triggering incident, I think you missed the part where the Fredric sent armed guards to his home to silence him and steal his scroll piece before he did anything wrong. And he did say he had asked “everyone in Corona” for help. And how he was unable to reach out to anyone because of the lies Fredric and or Nigel spread about him. (Treason is punishable by death remember? And Fred knew exactly what actually happened because he read Rap’s diary.) Plus the guards that broke into Varian’s home being disguised and willing to attack the princess, a lady, and prince consort, along with Varian’s pleading letter paint a pretty grim picture of his conditions in those 3 months.
I certainly wouldn’t keep asking Raps for help after that either. Or hell, he very well might not have *been able to* get ahold of her in that time.
I think you’re being pretty uncharitable with her tone about these things too. “Oldest trick in the book: kill the dad!” & “the tenth ‘you killed my father speech’” were just as much a joke as “crispy hand” bit. I think you’re misrepresenting her there. And honestly same with when you claimed she was more dismissive of “waiting in the wings” than “I will make you proud” she was pretty dismissive/critical of both. Same with attributing to deliberate deception which could have been a simple oversight. Like I get you think she’s not objective but y’all are swinging wildly in the other direction on this one, and worse it’s directed at an actual human being not a pair of cartoon characters lmao.
Same with what seems like the repeated pearl-clutching about “minimizing the trama” of a cartoon character. Like I can hear how mad you are at her, doesn’t come off as very objective analysis really… like chill out. Cassandra is not your mommy, she’s a drawing. It’s just like the crazy Varian stans that treat him like their literal son. Y’all are being way more emotional than she was at this point.
1:05:15 Again untrue. Corona drew first blood when they sent armed guards to chase him out of his home and steal the scroll that is the only hope for saving his dad all while accusing him of a crime that carries a death sentence……. All before he even broke any laws. So it’s not a lie. He *is* on his own. They *are* out to get him, we saw it in “quest for Varian” and he said as much with the “everyone in Corona” line.
Disagree about you absolving Fredric of responsibility of the black rocks: Quirin warned him. He did what he did knowingly. And hey, you find it sympathetic, she finds it dumb, I find it both.
Your Zhan Tiri analysis is on point though. 💯 💪 💯
1:34:54 Nope the root of his betrayal *was* about his father not vague ~feelings of abandonment~. It was tangible. His actions make that abundantly clear. The actions he takes are in service of him saving his dad, not resolving some kind of vague abandonment issues.
1:40:43 this is a stretch. We don’t ever see this “darkest side of humanity” shtick from the captain. He lives in a castle, he’s a glorified mall cop. What are you thin blue liners? And those “logical warnings” includes things like guys on stilts ffs, she’s clearly not taking any of it seriously in that ep. Especially considering Raps is basically a demigod ffs. And I think you’re minimizing the kidnapping too, considering how much Coronan culture had been shaped by the trauma of that incident. Cass would have grown up with those lantern holidays too ya know. Worse she personally knew Fed and Arianna, she would have seen first hand what the abduction did to them. And the “surrounded by friends and family” bit is explicitly DESPITE Gothel’s efforts as Cass would/should well know lmao. Like does Cass really not know anything about the events of the movie? That seems like a huge stretch to me.
Bruh the “play” dialogue was pure shit! What do you mean “raw” character dialogue 🤣 please expand! I’m genuinely curious! “Once a handmaid” is fascinating for how different people read wildly different things into it. I’d love to see your full break down!!!
I agree with y’all about the season 3 being a shit resolution to Varian’s arc. Though honestly making Fredric just lose his memories does seem pretty merciful given the man’s plans for him and what Varian could have done. And…. my dudes, the mining infrastructure didn’t just materialize over the course of the few months the evil ethnic minority were in charge. It was there before, further evidenced by all the other references to Fredric/Corona using prison labor “tailor in the stockades” and “the prison barge of the lost sea” the Saporians didn’t invent coronan slavery they just flipped the script on who was doing it.
The season 3 shift of Varian’s character going from “I’ll do anything to get my dad back” to “I’m scared no one will forgive me” sucked ass tbh. I’m 100% with you on that one.
1:48:45 “He could just show himself trustworthy over and over again…” 🤣 my brother in Christ, the 14 year old was locked in a cell with a violent offender. If he hadn’t joined up with the Saporians he probably never would have seen the light of day ever again or gotten his dad freed, given how Raps has behaved towards him in the past lmao.
2:10:30 … uh yeah it WAS kinda insane🤣 guys, a lot of people find the idea of juvenile incarceration insane as a premise. Full stop. And then you consider how “kids in cages” was a big thing on the news at the time, and plus the first angry and red ep… like yeah. What are you trump fans? It *is* insane.
And idk about your fanfic in the end part. Ideas are cheap. Everything is about execution. Post it on ao3 and I’ll be able to judge it accordingly. 🤷♀️
And for your rewrite, guys the idea of the moonstone controlling/corrupting Cass WAS their original plan. It’s a little hypocritical of you guys to denigrate OP for doing zero research and you didn’t even know that… seems hypocritical to me.
“Take down her video and post a public apology 😡” omfg, are you actually serious rn?? Twitter has poisoned some people i s2g 🤣
But I guess this is just “””prejudiced””” criticism. Good thing you added that dismissive disclaimer in there.
Splitting this in two due to length…
“you missed the part where the Fredric sent armed guards to his home to silence him and steal his scroll piece”
It’s easy to miss something that never happens. First: what you are referring to takes place well *after* Varian’s triggering incident; he had already made the decision to get revenge. Second: Fredrick sent guards to *watch* Old Corona and intervene if Rapunzel were to come for the scroll piece. That’s why they come in and try to take the graphtyc from her. (To be clear, they do not attack, because obviously Fredrick wouldn’t want her harmed. They try to intimidate her into surrendering it, and then fight back (with non-lethal methods) when the group attacks them to escape.)
“he did say he had asked “everyone in Corona” for help”
What, you think he literally asked *everyone* ??
No. He said he asked for help and everyone (as in, everyone he asked) turned him away. Which brings us back to the fact that Raps uncharacteristically neglected him until ‘The Quest for Varian’. He shouldn’t have needed to be able to reach her; she should have been coming to him. The writing there isn’t very good, as we already said in the video.
“I certainly wouldn’t keep asking Raps for help after that either.”
You mean after ‘The Quest for Varian’? That’s literally the episode when he *does* start asking for her help again (though not sincerely, he’s just using her).
“just as much a joke”
Except with Varian she makes sure to frequently, soberly reflect on how terrible his situation was and how hard it must have been for him and how his reaction is understandable and such. Whereas with Cass she consistently complains about how it’s so “minor” and “unsympathetic” and her reaction is “unwarranted”.
So yes, with Varian, her levity comes off as a joke. With Cass, it comes off as further dismissal.
“she was pretty dismissive/critical of both”
No, she was not. She went on about how “Make You Proud” created so much emotional investment and was cleverly reprised and all that. And she just dismissed “Waiting in the Wings” as “the depressed version” of someone singing about how they wanted to be recognized.
“attributing to deliberate deception which could have been a simple oversight”
The amount of errors and misrepresentations in her video push it beyond “simple” oversight. The fact that she did not bother to double-check most (if not all) of her claims before making them is indicative of a complete lack of care. The fact that she did not bother to show a shred of understanding or empathy toward Cass’s trauma is likewise indicative of a callous attitude.
We cannot, and will not, claim to *know* CallieStar’s intentions - hence why we often phrase it as “this seems/sounds like she…” in the video and I say “indicative” not “proof” here - but her intentions ultimately do not matter. Her attitude can be hurtful and harmful, and that is what upsets us.
“directed at an actual human being not a pair of cartoon characters”
CallieStar is critical of Cass’s arc specifically *because* of her dismissive attitude toward her trauma - trauma that is very real for a lot of actual human beings. Why is it okay for her to be hurtful toward real victims of child abuse who relate to Cass’s trauma, but not okay for us to call her out for it?
“doesn’t come off as very objective analysis”
As explicitly stated in the introduction of the video, this video has two goals: 1) the objective analysis of Cass and Varian’s character arcs, and 2) the critique of how CallieStar’s video ultimately can be hurtful due to just how thoughtless she was in her criticism.
“Corona drew first blood…”
As I already said, they were not chasing him out of his home and trying to steal the scroll from him. Their focus was keeping Rapunzel ‘safe’, not hunting Varian. But I will point out that if they were, then you would be agreeing with us that CallieStar got it wrong, since she calls it a “lie”.
“Disagree about you absolving Fredric of responsibility of the black rocks”
We don’t absolve him of anything though. We specifically say, “Yes, King Fredrick holds some responsibility for the rock situation, and is definitely to blame for his neglect of Old Corona.” (We say “some” responsibility because there were multiple factors and people involved in the rocks becoming the problem that they did.)
“Your Zhan Tiri analysis is on point though.”
Thank you.
Part Two:
“the root of his betrayal was about his father not vague ~feelings of abandonment~”
First of all, what is “vague” about what we described?
Second, you seem to be ignoring him explicitly vowing vengeance against the people who “turned their backs” on him (and reiterating that point more than once).
“We don’t ever see this ‘darkest side of humanity’ shtick from the captain”
Corona is not a utopia. Yes, this is a show for kids, but it can reasonably be assumed that dark crimes DO occur in this setting - like kidnapping and abandonment of children, murder, etc. - and as the security force for the kingdom (because we’re not shown any other law enforcement) the Captain and his men are the ones dealing with it. Add to that the Captain is a side character, whose appearances are predominantly brief and more for plot than characterization, as well as (again) this being a show for kids, and yeah, we’re not getting some deep, world-hardened grimdark character. But based on Cass’s description of him, and how serious he tends to be about his job, not to mention his behaviour toward Eugene, he’s not some complacent/easy-going or friendly/optimistic guy.
“those “logical warnings” includes things like guys on stilts”
Because this is a show for kids, and so obviously they aren’t going to have Rapunzel listing off darker things. But it’s made very clear that Gothel warned her about anything and everything under the sun that was dangerous. And, like we explicitly said in the video, a LOT (not all) of it probably sounded like logical warnings. (And out of the 10 things Raps lists in that moment, over half of them are legitimate things to be cautious of.) And so while Cass could consider Gothel overly paranoid, she *might* also think “she was just trying to keep Rapunzel safe”. As she herself is someone who tends to be distrustful of a lot of things/people, and tries to get Rapunzel to be more careful of them too in an effort to keep her safe, that doesn’t seem like a stretch of logic.
“I think you’re minimizing the kidnapping”
Assuming you mean I minimized what it could/would be from Cass’s perspective (since I was very clearly speaking from her viewpoint), I won’t deny that’s possible. I don’t think she would really “personally know” Fredrick and Arianna; the daughter of the Captain of the Guard isn’t going to be friends with the King and Queen and see the depths of their mourning. Your point about the lantern holiday is better, but even then we see the citizens treating it just as any typical/light-hearted holiday than as a solemn remembrance. And when we take into account how we see Cass act toward Rapunzel in ‘Beginnings’ (how she’s not treating Raps like ‘the girl who lived’), I certainly don’t get the impression that Cass gives Rapunzel’s loss and return any particular significance - as you seem to be suggesting would be the culture.
And as we explained, even though we can assume Cass would know about what happened in the movie, she would have only *heard* about it. Which makes a difference.
And then, when she’s faced with that information again in a new context (“Gothel was my Mom”), especially considering all the setup of the previous seasons, I think it’s reasonable to suggest that her focus wouldn’t be on the kidnapping itself, but rather how it displaced her.
“the ‘play’ dialogue was pure shit”
Please explain why you think so.
“What do you mean ‘raw’ character dialogue”
It’s referring to how the Cass, hidden in someone else’s appearance, finally opens up. And the two girls finally get a chance to really talk. Maybe “raw” wasn’t the right word to use, but it’s emotionally straightforward (which we think was important for the characters, going into the finale where their conflict gets resolved) and a moment of release for all the tension that had been building up (which is nice for the audience…), right before things launch into the climax.
“the mining infrastructure didn’t just materialize”
Okay… and? Just because Corona had mines, doesn’t mean they were operated using slave labour driven by threats of violence.
As for prison labour: I don’t recall the context of the examples you give. Please provide the episodes so I can look it up.
But honestly, I *highly* doubt that the creators made Corona as a kingdom that uses slave labour. My guess is you are reading into those two lines far more than what is reasonable to infer.
“he probably never would have seen the light of day ever again or gotten his dad freed” and “uh yeah it WAS kinda insane”
Not a lot is known about the Corona prison system. We certainly aren’t given the impression that it’s an ideal system, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to assume it’s as problematic as it is in real life (which is a topic with way more depth and nuance than one can hope to achieve in a YT comment section, so I’m not getting into that). And especially when you take into account that the King expressed a desire to get Varian and Quirin help (which would likely include the opportunity to express remorse and show himself trustworthy again), I doubt that his time in prison would have been as long and cruel as you are suggesting. Ultimately there’s a year long gap for S2 and we don’t know how long it was before Varian broke out with the Saporian, and we have no idea what the King was doing (or not doing) during the time. But, again, I highly doubt that the creators had the worst scenario in mind, seeing as the King is written to be a flawed but good person.
“the moonstone controlling/corrupting Cass WAS their original plan”
Source please.
“and you didn’t even know that… seems hypocritical to me”
It seems hypocritical to actually do research but not learn *everything* there is to know about a topic? You certainly set the bar really high…
~ M.E.
Thank you for seeing how ridiculous that final request from them was.
@@imyouralibi6208 Actually Varian did ask Rapunzel for help mutliple times,
The first was during the blizzard, which yes she couldn't help at the time, but she could atleast have kept him in the palace instead of having the guards throw him back into a deadly snowstorm.
The second time was when he sent a letter to her to get his graphtic, now at this point Varian has been accused of attacking Rapunzel during the blizzard, a statement which was made by Nigel at the start "The Quest for Varian".
When she goes to check up on him in that same episode she finds his village abandoned, the letter he sent her warned her about the guards which implies that he has encountered them and are the one who most likely chased him out of his village. This we find out at the end of the episode was all done on the King Fredric's orders so yes the king did vilify Varian.
When Varian appears again in the Alchemist Returns, three months have passed since the blizzard(remember Rapunzel saying her Dad had lied to her for months in secret of the sundrop so it must have been atleast three months), so Rapunzel neglected a 14 year old for three months and allowed the kingdom to think he attacked her. When he meets up with her, he asks her to help him steal the sundrop flower which may be able to help free his father.(This isn't anything amoral and I will explain why in a minute), throughout the vault break in she keeps questioning his motives on why he doesn't care about Corona, while ignoring the simple facts that; 1)they neglected him and his village for months on end, 2)he has been vilified and harassed by the King and his guards and 3)as a 14 year old kid he has zero responsibility over their personal safety.
Now when they reach the flower chamber Varian takes the whole flower, and Rapunzel protests because they agreed to one petal, but this is where Varian gets angry and rightly points out it doesn't matter and it doesn't make a difference. She says he is breaking the law by stealing, but no that is not what he is doing, the flower never belonged in corona, it was stolen by Fredric from mother Gothel so he can heal his dying wife, and Varian is only stealing it now to save his Dad from the amber. Ofcourse Rapunzel doesn't realise this and asks how could he, when she neglected him for three months, allowed a false rumor about him to circulate(that he attacked her during the blizzard) and is expecting him to care about the kingdom that could not care less about him or his Dad or his village. She does offer to help him fix everything but we know this is a false promise because helping him means confronting her Dad and we know she won't be able to do that because of the finale.
Speaking of the finale this is where Varian is used as a scapegoat for everyone's awful behaviour, saying that I will be consistent and say that yes Varian send an automon to kidnap Rapunzel was wrong and I am not going to pretend he is innocent, but he is a victim of his circumstance. Raps on the other hand still refuses to admit that she neglected him and instead victim blames him and calls him "extremely unstable". In a last ditch effort to finally get some help, Varian attacks Corona and kidnaps the Queen and this is the point where I just hated, and mean hated Rapunzel's hypocrisy, Fredric admits to Raps that he was warned by Quirin that taking the flower would awaken the rocks but he had no choice because his wife was dying and Rapunzel just forgives him, even though Varian was doing just the very same thing in the last episode and she tore into him for it. In fact she puts all the blame on Varian and completely sides with her Dad, the King who caused the black rock situation in the first place.
@@thebanana3099 “Actually Varian did ask Rapunzel for help mutliple times”
When did I say he didn’t? It was the OP who commented that they wouldn’t ask her for help again if they were in Varian’s shoes.
“the letter… implies that he has encountered them and are the one who most likely chased him out of his village”
At best it shows he is aware of them. It doesn’t mean they’ve done anything to him. Suggesting they chased him out of his village is pure speculation. Their orders were simply to prevent Rapunzel from retrieving the graphtyc. And I believe it’s reasonable to argue that Varian asked her to get the graphtyc not because he couldn’t himself, but because he wanted her to see the state of Old Corona and his father in order to ramp up her sympathy for him and spark distrust of her father, priming her for his manipulation in “The Alchemist Returns”.
“Fredric admits to Raps that he was warned by Quirin that taking the flower would awaken the rocks but he had no choice because his wife was dying and Rapunzel just forgives him, even though Varian was doing just the very same thing in the last episode and she tore into him for it”
Your comparison is only surface level. All Fredric did was collect the flower from a random spot (it wasn’t Gothel’s property). Whereas, to steal the flower from the vault, Varian slipped people mind-altering drugs and lied to/manipulated/endangered Rapunzel. So, I’m sorry, but Rapunzel had every right to tear into Varian and it’s perfectly reasonable for her to forgive her Dad.
“the King caused the black rock situation in the first place”
The rocks didn’t awaken and become a problem until Rapunzel touched them *years* later. And if she’d followed Fredrick’s instructions and stayed in Corona, that never would have happened. So technically she’s to blame. (Though I don’t hold her at fault for it because she didn’t know. And, honestly, given that she’d seemingly lost the sun-drop’s power at that point, I can understand why her father wouldn’t bother telling her. It’d be reasonable for him to think by that point nothing was going to happen.)
Otherwise, a lot of what you have to say about Rapunzel’s behaviour is just proving our point that Rapunzel was written *terribly* out of character for the sake of plot. And as soon as THE main character is warped to make the plot work, the writing (for that bit, at least) is bad. Period. Arguing that Varian’s turn IS well-written because it makes sense due to Rapunzel’s out of character behaviour is upside-down and backwards logic. As is using events that happened *after* his turn to villainy to justify his turn to villainy.
~ M.E.
Another interesting thing about Cassandra is that she seems to somewhat inspired by Jeanna d'Arc/Joan of Arc (looks, personality and story).
It was funny how often Cassandra appeared in my mind while I was watching a documentary about Jeanne.
Here are some parallels as examples:
Jeanne heard (mostly female) angel voices who told her to fight against England -> Zhan Tiri told Cassandra to fight Rapunzel and while ZT was still in ghost-form no one could see her except Cass (making it seem like Cass was hearing voices)
Jeanne cut her (dark) hair short and wore men's clothing -> Cassandra has short hair and wears men's clothing
Jeanne personality was direct and kind of rude -> Cassandra is direct and kind of rude
Jeanne was denied by the baudricourt multiple times before she got a change -> Cassandra was denied multiple times to be part of the guards before she got a change
Jeanne was leading an army and fought during war -> Cassandra was leading an army (Secret of the Sun Drop) and fought herself as well
Jeanne's leg got hurt during war -> Cassandra hurt her leg (admittedly that could be a stretch)
Jeanne got burned -> Cassandra's forearm got burned
Jeanne got severely injured during war, but insisted of continuing to fight -> Cassandra got badly injured, but insisted she was "fine" and kept going
People/grown men were afraid of Jeanne -> People/grown men are afraid of Cass
Jeanne got "promoted" after freeing Orléans (raised to nobility) -> Cassandra got "promoted" after leading the guards in SOTSD (became bodyguard)
Oh, wow! That's really interesting! I wonder if it really is all just a coincidence or an actual conscious choice by the creators. Anyway, thanks for highlighting those parallels!
@@imyouralibi6208 I also noticed that when the united sun-and moondrop shoots into space the beam seems to come from where Orléans is located.
If it is supposed to be a reference to Jeanne d'Arc's history, that could (finally) explain why the beam comes from the "middle" of the land instead of (close to) the sea.
Jeanne d'Arc is also a french symbol of unity.
But of course that is just one historical figure Cassandra is based on.
Another is of course Cassandra of Troy or at the very least the "Cassandra syndrome".
"The Cassandra metaphor (variously labeled the Cassandra "syndrome", "complex", "phenomenon", "predicament", "dilemma", "curse") relates to a person whose valid warnings or concerns are disbelieved by others. " - from Wikipedia
I think the moment of Gothel abandoning Cassandra might even be a bit more traumatizing than we give it credit for.
Like... imagine you being a 4 year old child.
You are waiting for your parent to return. Being completely alone for hours, until it is already the middle of the night.
Then suddenly a group of unknown men burst into your home and start screaming.
You run to the door, just to see your parent (aka. the one who is supposed to protect you) on the other side of a river in front of a bridge.
You shout for them, but as a response they destroy the bridge - therefore you cannot reach them - and leave you alone with those unknown (and probably scary) men.
Then those strangers carry you away from the safety of your home and also the only place you have ever known.
Meanwhile you cannot stop crying because you do not know if you will ever see your parent again.
If I would have been in her situation, I would have been scared for my life.
Before someone mentions it:
Yes, the Captain said he would not harm her (and thankfully he kept his word), but he was still a stranger to Cassandra at this point. There was not a reason for her to trust him, yet.
Absolutely. It would've felt unbelievably frightening and horrible.
Poor Cass 😞😢
Another reason for her anger and trauma is Cassandra probably felt Rapunzel was taking away from her (by outshining her, etc) only to find out Rapunzel took her mother from her. That could be why she obsessed over the idea of Gothel loving her.
@@cassidyh5021 I wouldn't say "probably".
In "Islands Apart" Cassandra says to the Captain "you knew all along how much was taken from me". So I would say it is definitely the case.
Last night I also had the thought that one reason why Cassandra built her tower at the place where Rapunzel's was is that she wanted to be closer to Gothel.
After all, the tower was also where her mother lived and (most importantly) died.
@@beingafk3494 That does make sense.
Cassandra's villain song is basically what we would have gotten if they kept the original idea in Frozen to make Elsa evil.
In my opinion a lot of Cassandra’s villain arc is what could’ve been Elsa’s had she been kept a villain.
I like how tangled the series showed how childhood trauma can impact someone like Cassandra.💜💯👍
Thanks for the heart it means a lot to me.💜
2:05:31 I think it makes sense to be torn. I feel like in writing once a character faces their fears they're normally not scared anymore. Varian being cautious about the amber even after facing his fear would diminish what he went through in Be Very Afraid, but trauma doesn't heal that fast, so it could make sense for him to be a little cautious. The more I thought about it the more I started to think it might make sense for him to be okay with using the amber if he's more afraid of what happened with his dad than the amber itself. You could say that by facing the fear of the amber he realized he is more afraid of something happening to his dad than using the amber. He was only afraid of the amber because it encased his dad and maybe because of the guilt he had about his actions. He associated the amber with his trauma. I think this because of how he acts in Plus Est En Vous when Eugene brings up the mind trap. Varian starts being cautious then.
Fair point 🤔
I'm not great at wording my thoughts but I'll try my best.
I went into tangled the series really wanting to enjoy Cassandra's arc because the concept sounded great but when I finished it I was just a bit disappointed. I feel like most people I've seen talk about it either think that there was absolutely zero buildup to her betrayal OR that the buildup to it was prominent and really good, but I think it was THERE, it was just just... okay? It starts getting set up with Challenge of the Brave, where she is frustrated that Rapunzel was overshadowing her in her one chance to shine, and something that seems to happen a lot in the first season is that Cassandra's father will prevent her from being a guard and doing... guard stuff, because apparently he was worried for her safety(and I don't think its a coincidence that there are no? female guards, correct me if I'm wrong. not to mention they instead put her in the position of LADY in waiting despite being a warrior... I wonder why.) So, for season one, there were incidents where Rapunzel did specifically mess things up for Cass, but most of the time it seems like the issue that cass faces is the fact that nobody takes her seriously to be a guard and they unfairly don't let her do what she wants to do despite being qualified for it.
Then season two comes along, and I'm not a fan of the fact that they created a similar issue to Varian where you have an important character who gets their moment then kinda just gets neglected for a whole arc but oh well. Anyways, there is a lot of conflict between Rapunzel and Cass in this season, but for a good portion of the season it doesn't really feel like people are choosing Rapunzel over Cass, rather Rapunzel is choosing OTHERS over Cass. And this still technically works for her villain arc, but it only contributes to some issues in season 3 which I'll get to eventually. They do make fun of cass for being a lady in waiting to rapunzel a couple of times(which felt a little bit out of the blue in the context? but maybe I just need to rewatch) emphasizing how cass feels like she lives in her shadow, but I feel like this concept wasn't explored as well as it could've been. It was with gothel of course, but I feel like this one didn't come across as well to the audience because we KNOW what gothel is like and why she did what she did. We know that gothel is an evil manipulator gaslighter etc. and that the only reason she chose rapunzel is so she could use her. Cass KIND of knows this too, but like you said, from her perspective she didn't know what gothel was truly like. And while it's a sad scene for the little cass who just got abandoned, it just seems like it's harder to feel sympathetic for older cass practically victim blaming rapunzel for something that we KNOW only caused her harm and years of abuse, so ultimately this doesn't feel like one of those times that rapunzel was "blessed" as cass says in crossing the line.
Season 3 comes along. Cass has betrayed rapunzel, knows about gothel, and she seems to put a lot of emphasis on "My whole life, I've been cast aside for you." And this is where the wonky motivation stuff comes in, because they keep bringing up the fact that cass feels outshined by rapunzel, but it seems like originally cass was more upset with the fact that people don't take her seriously and they don't let her "achieve amazing things". And it's not like these can't go hand in hand, but they really start to jumble it up where cass meets her father, the man who unfairly prevented her from achieving her dreams because of his own personal beliefs and "fatherly" instincts or whatever we wanna call them, and instead of calling him out for this, she calls him out for... not telling her about gothel...??? She says "You knew all along how much was taken from me, you knew who my mother was and you kept it from me, you only did what was best for yourself" and maybe you could argue it was implied, but she put emphasis on the fact that he hid who gothel was from her. What about everything else that happened in season 1? It's just so unfortunate because out of all of the things they could've had her confront him about, preventing her from being a guard for years, almost letting her be sent to a convent, instead she just... focused on gothel. who we barely found out about this season. There was so much potential for that scene and they kinda just blew it. She switches back and forth between what she's truly angry about, the show flip flops between what they wanna focus on, and maybe it's realistic, but for me and a lot of the audience, it comes across as confusing.
For comparison, Catra from She-ra is similar to cass, including her motivations. It's just that it comes across a lot more clearly than cassandra's. We see from day one that Shadow Weaver prefers Adora over everybody else, ESPECIALLY Catra. And this isn't just the plot of an episode every now and then, Shadow Weaver makes it very clear to Catra for the entire first season that she is only using her to get Adora back because Catra is "useless scum" and Adora is her golden child. Catra spends the first season being sent on missions to get Adora back. Catra is only allowed to be around because Adora likes her. We see the physical and mental abuse that catra faced while watching adora be treated seemingly well in comparison(she was abused too, but in less obvious ways). She even calls her out on this, specifically accusing adora of being happy with the fact that she's Shadow Weaver's favorite, and calling her out for never standing up for her in a way that would put her on SW's bad side. So ultimately it makes sense why she resents adora. and I could go into catra and adora's relationship and abandonment and all that but i'll be here all day and I gotta wrap this up, so I'll just leave it at that lol. Basically, I liked the concept of Cassandra's arc, but I wish it was handled better and more consistently in the show, because sometimes it ends up being pretty confusing.
Wow, thanks for the comment! We love hearing in-depth responses like this, and you bring up some very interesting points.
I never paid too much attention to what gender the guards were, but if it's true that there were no female guards at all, that's pretty glaring.
Regarding Cass putting the emphasis on Rapunzel outshining her despite the other issues she experienced, I think it comes down to what we said in the video where Cass is just focusing on her trigger (finding out Gothel abandoned her for Rapunzel) and muddying the actual problem 🤔
And yeah, the audience knowing Gothel's true nature is definitely one reason for why they might find it hard to sympathize with Cass.
Regarding Cassandra's father, I think you raise a fair point. It would've made sense for Cass to be a bit harder on him.
I can't say I remember Cass flip-flopping too much on her point of contention...
I actually touched on a comparison of Cassandra and Catra in our Patreon bonus content for this video, lol. It's genuinely scary how similar those two are. But yeah, I agree that Catra's character was handled better and given more clear-cut triggers.
I’m personally sure that while Cassandra’s arc isn’t 100% perfect and Rapunzel was a bit TOO forgiving even though she’s Sunshine incarnate, I still enjoy it even if I think it could’ve been a bit better at how it was handled
Thank you so much for making this video! I thought I was going crazy for thinking Cassandra's arc was really well set up with very understandable motivation only to find the fandom as a whole completely disagreeing. Pretty much every point you made with Cass I agree with and it felt really good that other people also see the things that I saw in the show. I just wish they had more time to flesh out her villain arc in S3 more, but except for it being a little rushed and Zhan Tiri kinda not working quite well I actually liked it. But especially the setup and motivation are, in my opinion, really well done and it hurts that so many people don't see that or disagree. Especially when they say Cass is simply 'complaining about not being raised by an abuser' completely disregarding her emotions and trauma and that maybe they're not completely rational but still understandable? Especially when disregarding all the setup and she would focus on the trigger because it's more noticeable. I also thought that maybe she focuses on that because anger at Rapunzel gives her strength (and is encouraged by Zhan Tiri) while the feeling of being overlooked and undervalued makes her feel defeated and hopeless, thus not fueling her. Additionally her being raised by the captain maybe also gave her the feeling of having to prove herself/be good enough to be loved, even though we know the Captain loves her, we also see how strict he is and how high his expectations for her are and how he regrets the way he raised her at least somewhat. Just wanted to share these thoughts. Thank you again for this video ❤
Our pleasure! We're glad you enjoyed it 🙂
And yeah, it's really sad to see the way people twist Cassandra's motivations just because they don't understand them, especially since the topic deserves so much more sensitivity.
Anyway, thanks for your comment! 💕
I plan on making a video where I talk about two issues with Varian's villain arc and then I talk a little about Varian's redemption arc. Plus I rewrite his villain arc. I pretty much say that his redemption arc only makes sense because of information that can be implied. If it weren't for the fact that in season 3 his goals were more about his father then I probably would've ended up agreeing when you said that his redemption was a 180. After watching this video I noticed something was bugging me about Varian's turn to villainy, so I rewatched What The Hair and Great Expotations and realized there wasn't really buildup for his villain arc. I don't think there's much in Queen For A Day either. I see what made you think it was out of character for him to become a villain. After I watched Great Expotations I didn't understand how Varian becoming a villain made sense. If anything before the scene where the amber starts forming and Varian leaves to get help contributes to his villain arc then I must've missed how.
Why are the comments so harsh? They took a lot of time and put a lot of research into making this video and even if you dont agree with all their points this is still a very well made analysis and a very persuasive and factual agrument.
Thanks for the support! It's appreciated 🙂💕
The harshness comes down to their tone and asking cali to take down their video as if it's hurting people when it isn't, otherwise the video is fine.
@@TiredMoonRabbit Do you seriously have nothing better to do than stalk our comment section?
@@imyouralibi6208 I'm not stalking, I was having a conversation with a different commenter that brought me back, Chill out dude.
@@TiredMoonRabbit If you were simply having a mutual conversation, all well and good. But you've clearly been going around looking for new comments just so you can shove your narrative down everyone's throats. You've more than said your piece. Now finish your conversation and move on.
So haven't watched the video but yeah Cass's 180 at the end of season 2 really was poorly executed. Rapunzel gets a little authoritative with her like once and suddenly Cass feels' like she's nothing. Varian on the other hand lost his dad and had a promise broken to him by Rapunzel and had proper time to let it stew.
Maybe you should watch the video. Because what you're describing is not accurate.
~ M.E.
I think you may have forgotten the moment where Cass was forced to RELIVE her abusive childhood
@aisleelovegreenwood6448 Yeah, claiming Cass had zero buildup really just shows a shallow perspective.
I think it would've been best if Cass left to find her own path a *lot* sooner. Maybe then, her villain arc could've been avoidable and she could've actually been happy. Yeah, it would've been hard leaving friends and family behind, but she really needed to take that step.
ALMOST 3 HOURS!? I'm gonna need more than a bag of popcorn 🤣
Your video has literally put how I feel about both arcs so perfectly. Thank you 😊
Glad you enjoyed! 🥰
Ok...I initially went into this video expecting a long reaction video to CallieStar's video that completely missed most of her arguments....
...what I instead got was a surprisingly well-thought-out defense video that opened up my eyes to the many flaws of Callie's arguments in her video. I disliked Cass's villain arc and preferred Varian's and while my opinion hasn't changed, this video actually changed my mind in a lot of areas.
A few things:
1) I LOVE Varian as a character and he's my favorite (mainly cuz of season 3), but you actually made some good points about his villain arc, it definitely could've been handled better in certain areas. It would've felt more impactful it had more build-up over the course of the season and we got see Varian more before it happened. I also do agree that him acting all "I'ma gonna kill u MHAHAHA" seems very jarring. That being said though, I always saw Varian's arc as "you didn't help my dad so I'm gonna MAKE YOU help my dad". I never saw it fully as revenge (though I admit I think I forgot certain parts of his dialogue in the finale lmao). I don't know how what he was doing was supposed to make his dad proud though (Quirn would really just say "Son, I love you, but also what the fuck"), I think it could be explained that he didn't fully think this through since y'know... he's a teenager lashing out cuz of trauma. I also do agree it's weird that Varian didn't factor in outside circumstances to why Raps couldn't help him, but again, it could be because he was in a very desperate situation and he didn't fully think this through due to just experiencing his traumatic event and being a kid.
2) Ya, It did feel OOC for Raps to not check up on Varian which is a problem I always had with Varian's arc, like if Raps just checked up on Varian this whole thing could've been avoided fast. It felt a biiiit forced and contrived. You're rewrite was definitely a lot better.
3) I disliked Cass' villain arc like I already said but your video changed my mind about it on certain areas and I don't think it's a complete disaster like before. I thought Cass' reasoning for disliking Raps and turning on her after learning she's Gothel's daughter made no sense, but after watching this video, I think I get it a lot more now. I also thought there wasn't any real build-up for Cass' betrayal which changed when I saw this video and you outlined episodes where it was being built up...but...I still prefer Varian's arc over Cass' for one simple reason; Varian received real consequences for his actions, Cass didn't. Varian got punished for his actions while Cass got off-scot free for her's when her crimes were similar to Varian's, and Varian had to work to earn forgiveness from the rest of the kingdom by saving Corona from the red rocks, Cass meanwhile...didn't.
I don't want Cass to go to jail or anything but like, any punishment for her actions would've been nice rather than a slap on the wrist. Like, at least have her repair the damages she caused, buuuut no. Sure, she helped defeat Zhan Tiri, but I don't think that's enough to instantly make up for her crimes.
Overall, this video definitely gave me a better appreciation of Cass' villain arc and I think I learned a lot of stuff about how to do a media analysis better from this video. So ya, I liked it, 👍
Thanks so much for your comment! It’s always nice to hear when our work has an impact.
1) Varian is definitely a fun character, despite the problems. Totally understandable why he’s a fan-favourite.
2) Yeah, I think ending Varian’s arc too fast if Rapunzel was in-character was exactly why the creators made the choice to write her out-of-character. I wish they could have found a way to keep her in-character without losing the arc they wanted.
3) That’s valid. I agree that some consequences were deserved. I just don’t know how the writing would have been able to give her something that felt fair but still had that “kid’s show happy ending” all in a couple minutes of epilogue without feeling very rushed/forced. Maybe if they had more time (if Disney hadn’t taken away 15 episodes), they could have given the denouement the second half of an episode and shown Cass helping repair Corona, like you suggested, before riding off into the sunset.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 So I just realized that there was something that I missed: I always found it weird that Cass thinks that Gothel loved her...and never considered that, if that was true, then Gothel wouldn't have left Cass for Raps. I mean, abandonment isn't something a loving parent would do and it seems weird that Cass just never realized that?
I don't know if anything I just said here was offensive or anything and if it please tell me.
@@flowerboi16 She does realize it eventually. After seeing the full mirror memory she understands that Gothel never loved anyone but herself. But I think up until that point she was affected by her childhood belief that Gothel must have loved her, or at least thought that Gothel could have *grown* to love her if Rapunzel hadn't gotten in the way.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 that explains it better, thanks!
@@imyouralibi6208 indeed.💯
I really like this video! Cassandra is my favorite Disney character (right next to Syndrome), and I’m glad she’s getting more appreciation.
Thanks! We're glad you enjoyed! And Cassandra absolutely deserves more appreciation 🙂
I just had a random thought about what could’ve happened for Varian’s villain arc. What if he was never actually evil? In the series he gets accused of being a threat before he actually is. But this time let’s say the accusations get to the point of he isn’t even allowed at the castle by the time his father is encased in the amber. When he’s denied help he decides to try and talk to Rapunzel after the storm instead of deciding he wants revenge. Unfortunately Rapunzel can’t get passed her father’s overprotectiveness and doesn’t get to help him. She sends Cassandra and Eugene to check on him but he’s been forced into hiding at this point and they can’t find him. Rapunzel doesn’t get to help him until Quest For Varian. In The Alchemist Returns he feels that the only way he can help his father is if he steals the Sun Drop flower. He doesn’t want to steal it and feels worse about making Rapunzel sneak him into the castle and helping him. In Secret Of The Sun Drop everything he does in the original episode (the serum on the raccoon, the automatons) he does to try and get Rapunzel’s attention but causes unintentional harm. He then goes against his own will and kidnaps the queen which finally makes Rapunzel come to him, but everyone believes they have to attack Varian who’s been accused of attacking Rapunzel. When everyone sings Ready As I’ll Ever Be when he says “I’m the bad guy that’s fine”, he’s accepting that that’s what the world sees him as. Instead of intentionally attacking the fight in the episode breaks out because something goes wrong and he can’t control his automatons. At the end when he goes to jail he lets himself get taken because he knows he did the break the law a few times and feels like he accidentally became the villain when he tried to avoid it. In season three he teams up with the Saporians because he wants people to forget his crimes (both the ones he never committed and the ones he did) so while he doesn’t think it’s a good idea he makes the deal like in the original episode. Rapunzel’s Return would pretty much stay the same and so would the rest of season three. One thing he’d say during his redemption arc is that he never meant to hurt anyone.
Great idea! 👏
@@imyouralibi6208 thanks
I 1,000,000% agree with the overall message of this video. I also thought that Cassandra arc and trauma is extremely overlooked in favor of praising Varians and her build up was in my opinion way better than Varians.
I just personally feel that her execution as a villain was weaker then his, because even though it is extremely obvious that Cassandra feels outshined by Rapunzel no matter all of her efforts to exit her shadow, Rapunzel is still very much the closest person in her life and her best friend.
As much as Varian had nobody before it’s not really like he and Rapunzel had many episodes of building up their friendship, if anything he should be closer to Cassandra because they have had more bonding episodes together. It makes sense that he villainizes Rapunzel in his mind because he *isn’t close to her when his world gets flipped around*
Cassandra has had many episodes of her friendship with Rapunzel and even though they clearly don’t have an unbreakable bond considering all of the negative factors and feelings of self doubt that have come up in Cassandra’s mind because of Rapunzel’s existence. Her friendship with Rapunzel has always pushed through and prevailed for so long on top of these feelings of worthlessness. Cassandra loves Rapunzel and it is obvious.
So I think It’s out of character for her to villainize Rapunzel over the rest of Corona. She should’ve wanted to prove her worth to them and make them realize that she is so much more than what she seems to be, but she shouldn’t have thought she should do this by attempting to ruin Rapunzel’s life. It could’ve been a great misunderstanding where both of them don’t want to hurt each other but they’re both being convinced that the other one does want to hurt.
I really feel like it should’ve been something of how Cassandra clearly felt shadowed by Rapunzel and wanted to clearly step out of that. But when it is implied that there is a chance Rapunzel could die from touching the moonstone. And after having her feelings of being outshined be pushed to its limits from figuring out about Gothal. This is why Cassandra takes the moonstone and tries to control it. She tries to prove herself and save her best friend at the same time.
If it was a complaint that Cassandra should’ve been way more levelheaded than Varian, then this would appeal to both sides because *she isn’t trying to hurt just like how he wasn’t trying to hurt* the part where they let their failures to achieve their goals even after turning to villainy is what causes them to lash out and eventually want to hurt others instead of trying harder to either get recognition or get their father free.
Cassandra should’ve eventually become more villainous, but she should’ve always had this feeling of guilt behind her because she was hurting her best friend by doing it. But she’s not gonna be patient anymore and she’s going to put herself first. Because waiting and letting Rapunzels feelings come before hers is what led to her being so unrecognized.
TLDR Cassandra had a reasonable crash out but I think it was weird of her to crash out on Rapunzel instead of just the rest of Corona.
Thanks for your comment!
I understand your point about how you find it unconvincing that Cass would turn against Raps after all their history but, as we detailed in the video, it’s not unbelievable due to all the feelings she’s been struggling with and the targeted manipulation by Zhan Tiri.
Certainly her character arc writing is flawed; I’ve heard a bunch of fan-made alternatives that I would have loved to see instead. But what you mention about how Cass’s motivation “should’ve been something of how Cassandra clearly felt shadowed by Rapunzel and wanted to clearly step out of that… she’s not gonna be patient anymore and she’s going to put herself first” is exactly what we see in the show. And yeah, she gradually became more villainous - she didn’t want to hurt Rapunzel at the start, but she was pushed further and further through Zhan Tiri’s manipulations. And she certainly felt conflicted throughout most of her villain arc, as we explained. 🤷♀
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 OH NO I DIDNT PHRASE THIS WELL ENOUGH.
I meant that through the ENTIRETY of her arc it should have been obvious they didn’t want to hurt each other. As much as she was manipulated, it would have just been more compelling if the conflict between them was truly just a misunderstanding. And I’m probably bias because I’d give everything would have made for a *FANTASTIC DUET*
@@forgettableanimegirl5253Oooooh, okay! I don't know if I'd like all the conflict to just be due to a big misunderstanding, but that's only my personal opinion.
But yeah, I could totally see a duet version of "I'd Give Anything" being absolutely lovely. 👍
~ M.E.
heard the word sisterly and almost had a heart attack
I want to thank you guys for making this video. For a while, I was in the same boat of not understanding Cassandra’s actions or motivations in season 3, and thinking that this conflict was too dragged out. But hearing your analysis has shed a lot of new insight into her character for me, and makes me appreciate the writing of this show a lot more.
One thing I think would’ve helped it was for more time for Rapunzel to reflect more on how her own actions contributed to Cassandra’s anger. We do get a really nice scene in Once a Handmaiden, when they’re doing the play and she acknowledges that she’s partly to blame. But when she says that Cass should’ve been more honest about how she was feeling, I find it a little insincere since Cass did explain to Rapunzel twice that she felt like no one trusted her, in the Great Tree and the end of Rapunzel Day One, and Rapunzel didn’t seem to internalize it. Rapunzel Day One especially frustrated me since Rapunzel never apologized for burning Cassandra’s hand, or making her feel like she didn’t trust or value her. I know Cassandra said she would get over it eventually and Rapunzel decided to respect that and not push, but I would’ve liked it if at some point in season 3, Rapunzel could do more to acknowledge how she contributed to Cass’s insecurities. Especially after the end of Beginnings had her reflect how Cass had sacrificed her dream of being seen as a respected warrior for her.
It also might be because in the end, Cass doesn’t get that moment where she gets to save the day and prove herself to everyone. In the end, she gives the moonstone fragment to Rapunzel so she can use its power. She even says, “this is your destiny”. Don’t get me wrong, this makes perfect sense from a narrative perspective as it shows Cassandra letting go of her own desires to do what’s right and fix her mistake, and acknowledging that the moonstone and its power was never her destiny. I guess for me, the series did such a good job of making me want Cass to finally get the respect she wanted from everyone. And by the end of the show she still has no idea what her destiny is. And while she does decide to go out into the world to find her destiny, we as the audience will never see that because the show is over. So it makes her story feel a little incomplete for me.
But as you said, maybe this is in part due to Disney cutting the season short, so we didn’t have as much time for Rapunzel and Cass to have a more thoughtful discussion.
What I would’ve done is maybe have Cassandra’s Revenge end with Zhan Tiri stealing the moonstone from Cassandra as soon as she escapes from her prison.
This way, Cassandra’s Revenge could serve as the climax for Rapunzel and Cassandra’s fight, and the last few episodes could be more of a falling action. This way we could have more time for Cass to make amends with Corona, her father, and Rapunzel. And she and Rapunzel could have the discussions they have in A Tale of Two sisters, only here it could end with them reconciling and agreeing to work to stop Zhan Tiri. Gravity Falls did something similar with having Dipper and Mabel have their reconciliation in Weridmagedon part 2, so in the final part, they were fully united in stopping the bad guy. This would also make Zhan Tiri feel like a bigger threat if she gets the moonstone sooner. She’s still waiting for the eclipse to attack Corona, but the stakes will feel a lot higher by the time we actually get there. Maybe we could also have more time to flesh out her backstory with Demanitus and give her more compelling motivation.
I hate when cass become ungrateful and forgot that Rapunzel literally was ready to sacrifice her life to save cass when they both become birds and Rapunzel literally broke the final egg on cass so cass could be live as a human putting her life she earned after 18 years on the line
It's something I can understand - everything turned out okay moments later so it could be easy to forget, and someone doing something really nice for you doesn't mean that just cancels out everything else (like Rapunzel being somewhat responsible for Cass's hand getting crippled) - but sure, I could see an argument being made about that episode needing to have more impact on the girls.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 hi hope you reply this!!
but there was numerous times when Cass tried to kill raps but not once has Rapunzel tried to kill Cass even for her own defence and raps wishing redemption of the person who tried to kill her proves that Rapunzel is literally a better friend...
Why was Cassendra able to turn her back against raps who sacrificed her life when becoming a bird...but Rapunzel never gave up her hope on Cass even when she tried killing her
@@IshwarRajakumar The straightforward answer is that it boils down to their character roles:
Rapunzel is the heroine and a role model for children, so she does what’s right because it’s the right thing to do.
Cassandra goes through a corruption arc and becomes the villain due to internalizing a false perception of reality. (If you want the details on that, it's all in the video.)
~ M.E.
Thank you so much for making this!
There were so many good analysis for Cass on tumblr, but on youtube the Cass-hate is strong and I was hoping someone would make a video explaining how good she and her story actually are.
(I was even thinking doing it myself, but my english isn't that good and I don't have much spare time for doing so.)
When I first watched the show my favorite character was Varian and I also thought Cass was a copy of him, but when I rewatched it and noticed all the little foreshadowings to Cassandra's later development she quickly became my new favorite.
I already liked Cassandra, but I did not expect that any character would ever replace Megara from Hercules as my number 1 Disney character (Meg had been my number 1 for over 10 years at this point).
I agree that Cassandra's arc is not 100% perfect, but it's still really good and realistic...and (in my case) also very relatable.
We're very glad that you enjoyed our defense of her character! (And I'm also glad we saved you a lot of time and effort to make your own, lol) Thank you for the comment! 😊
Maybe this was mentioned in the video and I missed it OR calliestar said some worse things in her own video, but is it not a bit strange to say that a huge flaw of callie's video is that she makes claims without evidence, but then claim "She acts like cass is stupid for not recognizing that her mother didn't have her best interest at heart"? Especially since this seems to be one of the main reasons you want her to take her video down. While yes, callie said ignorant things about trauma and undermined cassandra's motivations, it doesn't sound like she ever said that 4 year old cass was stupid for believing gothel loved her, and the clip that you provided proving she did just said "Cass barely even knew gothel as this information was a shock to her, and the life she did have with gothel was simply acting as a child slave for her." I don't think this quote implies that she believes FOUR YEAR OLD cass was stupid and should've realized that gothel didn't love her. I think it's more so questioning why ADULT cass didn't seem to think about this during season 3. Has Cass not been characterized as the smart one of the group, who knows how to read people and their bad intentions VERY well? Even when we see Cass watch her memories, she is literally watching in horror and acknowledging how neglectful of a mother gothel was. It seems like adult cass KNEW what was going on in that moment. She felt bad for her younger self. It's a very strange switch up in her character for her to suddenly ignore this(example: cass seems to have forgotten the abuse she watched herself face during a tale of two sisters, and she has to be reminded by rapunzel that gothel was abusive). Based on the clip you showed, I think what callie may have been getting at was "Is it not weird that the current cass seems to acknowledge that her childhood with gothel was awful, but is simultaneously angry that rapunzel took the abusive life she had with gothel away from her?" Not that 4 year old cass is stupid for not realizing that gothel was abusive.
“Especially since this seems to be one of the main reasons you want her to take her video down.”
That line alone is certainly not why we want her to take her video down. It’s just one piece of an overarching problem of her overall dismissive and insulting attitude toward Cassandra’s trauma - which is hurtful to real people who have been victims of child abuse. She calls it “unsympathetic” “nonsense” “shallow/petty” “not tragic enough”, calls Cass “overdramatic”, and more.
The reason we take CallieStar’s comment as “acting like 4yo Cass is stupid” is because how she points out that young Cass “was simply acting as a child slave for Gothel” comes off as “she should’ve known better back then already”. But young Cass saw it as “my place”, she saw it as her “humble duty”, and a way to show love to her Mother. And even if she was referring to older Cass (it would have been nice if her video contained some sort of clarity, as we said several times), young Cass’s feelings would naturally be resurrected in older Cass, rather than her immediately processing the situation for what it truly was from a detached perspective.
“when we see Cass watch her memories, she is literally watching in horror and acknowledging how neglectful of a mother gothel was”
Not really, imo. Keep in mind the larger context: Raps had disappeared in the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrows (which had already been messing with them), and Cass was just looking for her when she gets her trauma shoved in her face while she’s already off-balance from everything else going on. She’s not standing in those memories processing how Gothel mistreated her, she’s remembering how much she loved her mother (young Cass: “Mother knows how much I love her…”) and how much she longed to be loved in return (Cass: “I craved so much… one glance one touch [without strings]”). And then she watches as she gets abandoned in favour of golden-girl Rapunzel (speaking from her perspective here).
Cass is unstable, reeling from everything and emotionally vulnerable and (as we discussed in the video) she’s ripe for being triggered into the next step of her arc as her longing to get recognition (to be affirmed, validated) is boiling so close to the surface. So I think it’s reasonable to believe that her usual ability to read people and their intentions is overridden. (And once she’s made the decision to go forward, she’s not going back.)
“cass seems to have forgotten the abuse she watched herself face during a tale of two sisters, and she has to be reminded by rapunzel that gothel was abusive”
Mm, I don’t think it’s Cass forgetting and being reminded, I think it’s Cass being in denial. And then, of course, when they find the incomplete memory mirror, it seems to confirm what Cass *wants* to believe.
“Is it not weird that the current cass seems to acknowledge that her childhood with gothel was awful, but is simultaneously angry that rapunzel took the abusive life she had with gothel away from her?"
This would have been much better for her to say.
Please understand that we are not accusing CallieStar of *intentionally* being hurtful. There’s a reason we phrase things a lot of the time as “it seems/sounds like she’s saying...”. But ultimately it doesn’t matter how she *intended* to be understood; we felt that what she actually said and how she actually said it (often her tone is half-laughing or annoyed when discussing Cass’s trauma) is very hurtful. And how much she said it leads one to wonder if she actually thinks (or at least thought) that way. Not to mention the fact that she doubles down on it in the comments (thus further encouraging such a hurtful mentality in others). And so we feel that her video is harmful and should be taken down.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 I guess it just boils down to different interpretations then, since rewatching the scene, it seems to me like she is pretty disturbed by how gothel was treating little cass. Obviously she's gonna be caught off guard, but it didn't seem like adult cass was looking at her mother with love in that scene, she looked pretty uncomfortable and upset with her. And it's not just her reactions, it almost feels like the scene does everything it can to demonize gothel, from eerie, evil sounding music to having her treat cass like a nuisance and tool right in front of her face "This cottage isn't gonna clean itself you know, hahaha!" "UGH, MUST I do EVERYTHING?". I feel like a lyric to mention is "And when it came, it came with strings," which seems to indicate that cass acknowledges that Gothel's "love" was conditional.
"So I think it’s reasonable to believe that her usual ability to read people and their intentions is overridden." I think it's definitely possible, I'm just not a fan of the decision to change a key trait of a character to make the arc work. A big part of cass's character, one that also plays a part in the buildup to her betrayal(like not trusting adira in the great tree), is the fact that she is good at reading people's intentions and is cautious about who to trust. This basically gets abandoned in season 3, considering she seems to trust Zhan Tiri without much question until she finds out who she actually is, and of course the things involving gothel.
"she points out that young Cass 'was simply acting as a child slave for Gothel' comes off as 'she should’ve known better back then already'" I just can't read it that way? I basically explained this in my original comment, but it doesn't seem like anything she said indicates that CHILD cass should've known better. The closest thing we have to her clarifying whether she's talking about child or adult cass is whatever clip she plays at the time, and she didn't show child cass, she showed adult cass. It seems like my argument doesn't work as well if we don't have the same interpretation of the flashback childhood scene, since you think that cass was focused on her love for her mother while I think she was also seeing gothels neglect. Calliestar probably interpreted the scene similar to me, so that's where the misunderstanding happens.
Agreed. It seemed wildly uncharitable that they took that line that way.
“I guess it just boils down to different interpretations then"
Yeah, that’s fair.
“And when it came, it came with strings"
I did acknowledge that line. But the focus there, imo, is still on that longing for love, rather than it being evidence of Cass really processing how incorrigibly self-centered Gothel was.
“I'm just not a fan of the decision to change a key trait of a character to make the arc work”
I don’t see it as being a change to her characterization; Cass’s core isn’t “being good at reading people”, it’s her being cynical (which often manifests as distrustful). Now that cynical/distrustful behaviour is being targeted at Rapunzel, instead of being used to protect Rapunzel.
As for Zhan Tiri, yeah, her presence is a bit of a sore spot in the writing for us as we said in the video, so I do agree that Cass’s trust of her can rightly be critiqued.
“Calliestar probably interpreted the scene similar to me, so that's where the misunderstanding happens.”
That’s a valid guess. Though, even allowing for that, I will say it doesn’t erase the other blatant moments of her dismissive attitude.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 indeed.💯
Two and a half hours???? Girl, you need personal shadow work, not analyzing a tv show or trying to point the finger at how another creator is wrong. If I was Callie Star, I would genuinely feel terrified of your preoccupation with her video and attempts at mind reading and analyzing her. She posted her opinion. She does not need to issue an apology or take down her video, and you have issues that you need that this badly.
I agree that Callie was being insensitive and downplayed Cassandra’s story to the fullest. But, I can agree on one thing and it’s the dept of her story. I feel the emotional weight was not enough to support a full season. No, it should not be disregarded or changed completely, as what Callie felt needed to happen. I feel that yes, her villian arc should have ended midway of the 3rd season and the rest was seeing her improve slowly. She can rebuild her friendships until the final boss with zhan tiri instead of her being redeemed IN the fanale and brief and quite underdeveloped exit out of the show.
I agree that the finale of her story was rushed. But keep in mind that Disney cut the series short. If the creators had the other (iIrc) 15 episodes they’d initially planned, we could have gotten a better paced redemption arc and denouement.
Within the limits they had, I could see an argument being made for cutting the villain arc in half, but another option would be to just invest more into making the emotional weight clear to the audience. It’s all there but (especially given the target audience) it’s not as clear as it could/should be and so a lot of people don't understand what Cassandra's struggling with.
~ M.E.
ive just fell back into my tts obsession and have been ravenously devouring a lot of content on youtube about it. however when i saw the title of the video this is responding to, i immediately had a bad taste in my mouth and have since avoided it like the plague. when i finally watched it (to get context for your video), i had a pretty visceral reaction from all the weird cass bashing included and the lack of explanation for claims that sometimes felt pretty out there. your video did a great job articulating just why that video was just... so... bad. it also gave its own great analysis of the parallel cass and varian arcs, and i thoroughly enjoyed it :) after my most recent rewatch of the series, i find myself astounded at the overall quality in the writing, the animation, the songs, etc. throughout the show, cass's relationship with rapunzel is one of the most important elements of the story, and i find myself getting defensive when people want to write it off. in my opinion, her arc in the final season makes all the sense in the world, but it could be made more clear to the audience what her actual goals are (or the fact that she doesn't know what her goals are) at different benchmarks in the season. meanwhile, in varian's arc, the audience gets pretty clear views of what his goals are, but it of course is not as realistic or as well flushed out.
Thanks for the comment! And we're very glad you enjoyed the video! 🥰
I like your idea for how to rewrite Varian’s villain arc, especially with getting the separatists get involved early on. The one thing I don’t fully agree with, though, is having Nigel be the reason Rapunzel never finds out about Barian and Quirin. For one thing, it takes away from Rapunzel’s development by not having her have to make the tough decision to prioritize the needs of the kingdom over her promise to Varian. And also, it feels really weird to have all the blame for this situation placed on a random side character. It means Rapunzel and the king don’t have to face any of the personal responsibility they have for the situation because they can just say, “it’s all that guys fault!” Plus I feel like if Rapunzel or the king realize that Nigel left Varian and Quirin to suffer because he didn’t trust Rapunzel to make the right choice and then never told her afterward, leading to Varian attacking the queen and the kingdom, he’d be thrown out of the palace immediately.
But I understand why you chose to write it that way. When I first saw the show, I was really confused as to why Rapunzel and her friends never made any attempt to visit or contact Varian after the storm ended, especially since she felt so guilty about it. It feels really out of character for her, and makes it feel like the whole conflict could’ve been easily avoided, which makes the arc have a lot less impact.
Another way you could fix it is to have Rapunzel not reaching out be called out. Maybe if Cassandra or Eugene suggest talking to Varian, but she’s afraid to face him because of how guilty she feels, and decides to wait until she can find a solution to the rock problem. She’s afraid that going to him now without a solution will feel like “too little too late”, and will only make things worse. And maybe she’s also afraid for her own safety as she knows these rocks want her for some reason.
And instead of having Varian declare vengeance immediately at the end of Queen for a Day, what if throughout the second half of the season, we cut back to him a few times showing him repeatedly trying and failing to break the rocks. He becomes so obsessed with freeing his dad, he starts neglecting his own health, skipping sleep and meals so he can keep working. Each failure only makes him more and more frustrated, and causes his mental health to further decline. And as more time goes on, he becomes more bitter at how Rapunzel has refused to come back and help. So when Varian claims Rapunzel and the kingdom abandoned him, his anger is justified because she left him to stew in anger for weeks .
Having This also ties in better with the writer’s original goal of having Varian push Rapunzel to stop running and face her destiny. Because throughout season, she isn’t running at all. She wants to be more involved and learn more about what these rocks are so she can help people. It’s King Fredrick who is trying to keep her away from them. So having Rapunzel refuse to be more active in helping her friend because she was afraid, directly leading to him turning on her makes more sense, as her inaction made Varian believe that Rapunzel didn’t care enough. And even though that wasn’t at all what she meant, she sees how that’s how it looked to Varian. This then leads to her taking a more active role in season two, especially in Rapunzel Day One where she is trying really hard to get Cass to open up about their fight because she doesn’t want a repeat of Varian. Although I would rewrite Varian to be less malicious, just maybe so laser focused on helping his father he isn’t aware of the harm his actions are causing rather than threatening the entire kingdom, and he isn’t willing to listen to Rapunzel or anyone else due to his anger towards her.
Great point about the weaknesses in the idea of using Nigel as the obstacle! It's so nice to get feedback like this. :)
Our focus was on eliminating the out-of-character behaviour, but I love your idea of keeping it in and working it into the narrative to strengthen the character work and themes. And showing Varian so physically and mentally unwell due to stress would absolutely explain his otherwise out-of-character behaviour.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208Thanks for responding! Personally, I hate it when story conflicts are driven by the “failure to effectively communicate” trope. On top of making characters look stupid, it makes it feel like most of the conflict could’ve been avoided if characters exercised more emotional intelligence, which makes a story as a whole feel more frustrating than engaging. It was especially annoying in tangled because no reason was given as to why Rapunzel and the gang didn’t try to talk to Varian, despite feeling so guilty about it. So having a story where it’s actually called out makes it feel less like the writers failed to properly explain out of character behavior and more that they are purposefully using out of character behavior as a cautionary tale. In this case, it shows Rapunzel the potential dangers in being inactive when conflicts arise between friends. Not trying making an effort to reach out and apologize to Varian sooner only made her look uncaring and callus from his perspective.
Here’s my writing rule I use for my stories: When there’s an obvious potential solution that could resolve the conflict super early on, you need to give a compelling reason as to why the characters don’t do the obvious solution. It takes the reader/viewer out of the experience of reading/watching a story when then can recognize contrived writing.
@@LauraM96829 Yes! The “failure to effectively communicate” trope can be so frustrating. There are ways to pull it off, like using it to add themes and character work, but just having it happen for the sake of plot is annoyingly contrived and happens so much. (Especially in Rom-Coms, in my experience.)
And yeah, it's better to address the obvious solution rather than ignore it and hope your audience doesn't think of it. Or else just add complexity to the situation to make the obvious solution unviable. Like, "they could just row across the moat at night", well then, add a dangerous nocturnal creature to the moat. It can add a layer of cool worldbuilding, get rid of the obvious solution, and make the character work harder to use that avenue so you get to add more interesting plot and characterization as well. Win-win. :)
~ M.E.
This is how I feel about TASM2, there is a whole conflict that is literally caused because there was no effective communication between the hero and the villain, causing miscommunication. I never wanted to finish the movie, because it was too much of a frustrating trope to care for what happens later.
Now I did finish the film eventually, it was great! But like you said, tropes of miscommunication are not engaging, just tempting to turn the whole movie off because the writers couldn't come up with a better conflict build-up.
However, sometimes it can be done right. Helluva Boss, Full Moon comes to mind. Stolas and Blitz don't have effective communication, yet it's written in such a way that isn't frustrating to watch. Stolas treating the sitation as a rom-com, Blitz being confused about it, Stolas' lack of self awareness in the way he presents things, pushing Blitz away. And then Blitz's self hatred causing him to lash out at Stolas for pushing him away. It's actually ENGAGING, and makes you want to see more. @LauraM96829
@@ECSOrder66 Exactly. That Helluva Boss episode is a great example of how to do a “failure to communicate” story, because the whole point is that Blitz and Stolas are emotionally stunted people due to their own trauma, and the both need to confront that trauma in order to understand how to be better and to avoid hurting more people.
Like I said in my rewrite for Varian’s arc, a lack of communication in a story is okay if the point is to drive home a certain message, or if it’s believable for the characters to be bad at communicating at this stage of their development. For instance, if maybe your character doesn’t warn someone else of an impending conflict due to them overestimating their own abilities and believing they can handle it without help. Or maybe someone else they loved died trying to help them, and they don’t want to put anyone else in harms way. Basically, give a compelling reason why they don’t just talk to each other.
Another example I really like was in season 2 of the Dragon Prince, where they were able to subvert the tired “liar revealed” storyline. When Callum learns that his stepfather is not only dead, but Rayla knew the whole time and never told him, he is rightfully upset with her. But rather than do anything rash like kick her out of the group, he tells her to just give him some space so he can focus on how to break the news to his little brother. And the next morning he is about to tell him but can’t bring himself to do it yet, he understands Rayla’s position better. That he did want to tell him, but found it too difficult because she cares about them. And then he goes to tell her this, and she even still apologizes for not telling him sooner, and is there to comfort him as he grieves for his father.
Another potential solution could be having communicated impeded in some way, causing characters to act with a lack of information or because of a misunderstanding. For instance, in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo doesn’t receive Friar Laurence’s message about Juliet being alive because an outbreak of the plague stopped the messenger from reaching him in time.
Either one of these would’ve helped Varian’s arc feel more believable. Maybe if Varian had been sending messages to Rapunzel asking for help because he didn’t want to leave his father unprotected. But the king intercepted the letters in order to keep Rapunzel from going back, and started keeping Rapunzel busy with princess duties while assuring her that the situation was being dealt with. Or, what I think makes more sense, have Rapunzel be afraid to reach out without a solid solution out of fear and guilt, making her appear heartless and apathetic to Varian, and have her learn she should’ve been more proactive as a friend.
Would you say Rapunzel's behavior in "Rapunzel: Day One" was a bit out of character?
By that I mean her little angry speech to Pascal (or her journal), how she understands why Cassandra is mad, but then blaming her for her hand getting hurt, while drawing her looking like a monster.
And then later saying she is mad at Cassandra because she said she had it (going dark-mod) under control but Cass did not listen.
Even though the reason why Cass ran to Rapunzel and grabbed her arm at the great tree was that Rapunzel was saying she could NOT control it.
It was certainly a case of "we need her to act this way in order to have the scary picture for plot reasons later". But it's not the only time we see Raps being upset and drawing it out (if I recall correctly, she draws everyone fighting in the beginning of 'House of Yesterday's Tomorrow'), so I don't think I'd fully label that out-of-character behaviour. Just convenient-for-plot behaviour.
As for the claiming she had it under control, yeah, I've noticed that before too. I don't recall the exact wording she uses, but I recall thinking there were other possible interpretations. Like, she could have meant "I had the situation under control" rather than "I had dark-mode under control" - it's all speculation for why she would think she had the overall situation was under control, but I think reasonable arguments could be made. 🤔
~ M.E.
I think your missing the point of callys video.
It maybe shouldn’t have been called an analysis but the point of that video was made to more explain for long time viewers or fans of the show why they felt let down or confused by cassandras villain arc. The video obviously wasn’t an in depth comparison on how to properly make a villain arc, and cally wasn’t using varrian arc as a complete guide for all villain arcs, she was explaining what worked in the show, what didn’t work in the show based a large amount based on fan resception.
It’s a video for the fans made by a fan. Varrians arc worked well for the fans! because we had proper build up. We already knew alot about the characters motivation, and we could sympathise with him. Where as casandra was alot more catroonish and her character arc felt extremely rushed although she had a whole season. She went from good to bad almost immediately then back to good again.
The video was more of a comparison, cally also has a video where she rewrites cassandras arc and again its a video made by a fan for the fans. It wasn’t or it doesn’t seem to have been intended as a deeply serious deep sive into THE VILLAIN ARC and how to write one.
I don’t think we’re the ones who missed the point of her video…
“the video obviously wasn’t an in depth comparison on how to properly make a villain arc”
But she said that’s what she was doing. Just because she failed to do it well doesn’t mean that she was intentionally doing something else.
“based on fan resception”
Except, again, she’s clearly speaking with the intention of analyzing and critiquing the writing of the character arcs based on what she knows about writing.
It’s clear that you didn’t watch our video, because what you are describing of Cass and Varian’s arcs is inaccurate to what is actually in the series (as we showed in the video), and we addressed CallieStar’s rewrite.
And based on your inaccurate description of CalleStar’s video, I’m wondering if you even watched that either…
~ M.E.
I love when creators snap and create a long video essay about a specific topic they love! Light hearted of course, I’m interested in this because I think Cassandra on some level has the downside of the villain moment being long(with some actions that have he go ‘okay how are we going to properly deal with the of that’ them it’s not too discussed) and the villainy and redemption one season. I’m always open to having my opinion changed though!
I know the video you're talking about, and I actually agree with her points on why Cassandra was an inferior villain to Varian. Honestly, I don't think you did a very good job defending your case.
Yeah, for people who claim to be offering “objective” criticism they seem really emotional and biased. And they are really uncharitable bordering on dishonest about the jokes and tone of the original. Plus the rampant rewriting they do to try to prop up Cass’s arc and dumbing down they do to Varian’s kinda boarders parody.
@@jennycomelatelyYou just said it yourself
"jokes"
About abuse.
About trauma.
Are you kidding me?
Honestly I find it disgustingly sick people actually thing that childhood trauma is not actually a real reason why people feel like their not good enough, I for one know what it is like to have someone leave you or to feel like your parents abandoned you because they got Board of your existence, not to mention I’m pretty sure that this type of trauma is the most common.Im sorry but if this type of trauma is the most common then how does it become invalid.Honestly I’m glad some people actually appreciate how messed up this thinking actually is.
I'm so sorry that you experienced that and hope you're doing better nowadays ❤
@@imyouralibi6208 me too.💜
This is long, I’m listening to it like a podcast while doing homework, IDC what’s you say thought U will still forever have Cassandra a my favourite character, idk why i just love her, and I ship cassunzel so…fight me
Lol, as sweet as Eugene and Rapunzel are together, I also ship Cassunzel 😅
Have only got to around the 50 minutes point and I don’t plan on fully watching (Sadly don’t have the time sorry) so if I say anything you addressed later just know that’s why!!
Cas leading up to her betrayal was great, however my problems begin when she’s in her villain arc actually. It felt way to drawn out and didn’t work for a season villian! Varian was great because he was like a villian for one episode, and the later another. We didn’t have to constantly watch the same thing happening again and again and screaming at Cass to get it (ie Zanteri manipulating her) while watching Varian. Because it was a single episode or two not the whole season.
However leading up to it was great! You could get the motivation and the song after the betrayal was fun to watch. The drama was captivating and you could understand where Cass was coming from.
Also in Varian’s defense he was kid. And all the adults he looked up (Like Rapunzel and his dad) weren’t helping him. His dad lied about the rocks to the king, and Rapunzel didn’t come when she needed him to (and didn’t even come to check in later which just led to a lot of festering). So of course he’s going to seem different, he just went through something traumatic and there’s no one here to help him. He’s not going to seek out help/guidance he’s an enraged and alone kid.
And in a way he blames Rapunzel and in turn the rest of Corona for not helping him, so enacting a sort of vengeance on them may feel like a way to make his dad proud. He’s ‘avenging’ him in a sort of way. Of course later on though, when he realizes his actions were foolish and he just wants to go back home. Though he messes up by immediately going the memory potion route. I mean who wouldn’t feel like they’d be forgiven if they did that, and had gotten sent to jail. Varian’s arcs make sense, considering his age, his personality, and recent experiences he just had in his life. Varian is an unstable kid with no guide when his father gets put into amber, and it makes sense he goes sort of ‘insane’ in a sense.
While I do love both Cass and Varian, I’d have to say Varian’s actual villian arc is better and Cass’s buildup to her villian arc is better. I just wish they hadn’t drawn out Cass as a villian, or at least escalated things so much more.
I understand it’s a long video, but I hope you will come back and watch more of it, because we do address the points you raised here in detail. Either way, thank you for taking the time to comment! And if you do finish watching but still disagree with our conclusions, just let us know then and we’d be happy to discuss. :)
~ M.E.
I don’t wanna go here to the comment section to just rant but that’s what you basically did anyways so here I go…
Look I get that u personally don’t like it but I personally thought she didn’t do that bad of a job. I watched the video myself. Also you point out how her title is clickbait but your video is titled how to fail at an analysis but most of the video is just you ranting. Also in my opinion it’s very childish to make a ranting video of another creator.
Anyways those are my thoughts. Fellow commenters feel free to disagree but these are just my opinions.
Rant: "an unwarranted rambling on about a certain topic due to spite or pettiness"
Do you mind explaining how calling out CallieStar misrepresenting the narrative, being insensitive and ignorant of trauma/abuse is a unwarranted rambling?
Well she did go in detail into both Varian and Cassandras arcs while explaining what the other creator did not do right when analysing their character arcs respectively so I think she very much did explain „How to fail at analysis”.
@@ECSOrder66 I never said that the video was amazing or anything. I do agree with some of this videos points. Thanks for the feedback though.
@@karina1047Good point.
Ok have completed this video I want to be very very clear, I agree with you (mostly) when it comes to both cass's and varien's arc, alot of people miss the subtlety in her arc because they can't understand how she could still harbor her feelings about her mother when she doesn't even remember her well, but lack of understanding is not condoning or belittling/dismissing abuse as you claim (more heavily implied) cali and her viewers were doing, and thats where my issues with this video come in. In this video you both are very rude, disrespectful, and put words in calis mouth, you say that you can't know what she was thinking while giving her opinion and then proceeded to speak for her as if that is definitively version of what she has said. You have also told her to take the video down which is bad for two reasons, 1. Just because she did a flawed analysis and didn't think about cass's abuse doesn't mean shewas harming anyone, we are talking about cartoon characters here not real people she doesn't need to apologize for anything, And 2. Deleting the video isn't learning, you don't learn from getting rid of your past work you learn from improving it, you could have asked her to rewatch the show and see if her opinions stay the same and if they do explain why in a better way than she did in that video, but no she needs to delete it because she committed the horrible crime of not seeing the very well done but very very subtle story of a fictional character and you think thats the same as dismissing child abuse. Again I agree with you but you didn't have to be so hostile about.
This is a bit disconnected but I want to say it so I will, how people view cassandra's arc kinda reminds me of how people view the final season/ending of How I Met Your Mother. Alot of people look at that shows ending as if it was written terribly and that it makes no sense, but when you actually look at the show as a full thing and don't skip parts you see as filler it make perfect sense, from character motives to robin and barney's break up even how they frame the ending from a filming/storytelling standpoint. I think people tend to only look at the highlight episode when it comes to shows instead of looking at a show as a whole, if they view an episode as filler then they don't give it a second look, even if thoses episodes give bigger insight to the characters, the world they live in, and there motivations, I think that is what cali and others did with TTS but I could be very much wrong.
I hope any of what I wrote makes sense, I'm very tired.
Okay, to begin, I want to address the fact that you responded first *without* having watched the video. Which is grossly dismissive. *This* should've been your first comment. But because it wasn't, it's rather hard for me to take you seriously.
Secondly, how exactly are we being "rude" or "disrespectful"? And since when did we put words in CallieStar's mouth?? We outright played the clips from her video that we were addressing. They were explicitly *her* words, not something we made up.
Your claim that she shouldn't have to take down her video is utterly backwards and based on groundless assumptions. Mishandling the topic of abuse absolutely *does* hurt people. Yes, Cass is just a fictional character, but what about the countless *real* people who identify with her experience? You don't think they're going to find it hurtful when their pain is dismissed as "not tragic enough"?? Because honestly, that is an incredibly callous assumption on your part.
And how does CallieStar *not* learn from acknowledging her mistake and removing the hurtful material she created so it doesn't hurt more people?? By leaving it up, it will continue to attract people who will feel they've essentially been given the ok card to dismiss and belittle the trauma of child abuse victims. And again, you are ignoring the *actual* issue here. So let me make it abundantly clear.
*WE DO NOT WANT CALLIESTAR TO TAKE DOWN HER VIDEO BECAUSE SHE DISAGREED THAT CASS' ARC WAS WELL WRITTEN. WE WANT HER TO TAKE IT DOWN BECAUSE IT IS ACTIVELY HARMING VICTIMS OF CHILD ABUSE.*
Genuine question:
If Cassandra’s trauma was instead that she’d been harmed due to her gender identity, race, or sexual orientation, and Calliestar’s dismissive and insulting attitude about it remained the same: that her anger about it didn’t make sense, it’s not tragic enough, it’s unsympathetic nonsense, a shallow/petty motivation, her wrestling with the pain is overdramatic and thus exhausting to witness, that she should just be grateful it wasn't worse, etc. - would you still say that her video isn’t hurtful or harmful to real people and that leaving it up is how she and others will learn to do better?
@@imyouralibi6208 1. I made my comments when I was around half way through the video and they were twards the things that you had said at that point and what you had wrote down in your own comment section, so I don't know how you can't "take me seriously" sounds like you're the one being dismissive of what I'm saying.
2. It's your tone, throughout the whole video you are overly aggressive twards things that did not warrant aggression, that is how you're being disrespectful and on how are we putting "word in her mouth we show clips from her video" like stated in my comment while yes you show her point you then assume the reasons she made her point is either with malicious intent or out of stupidity (although not saying that word exactly you imply it), you also let her say something and then repeat it it in a completely different way to make what she said sounds worse, like when ever you bring up cass's abuse cali is just saying some vague and not fully formed thought (because she did think it through enough) and you then spin a yarn as if she's actively, purposefully being misleading, so yes you do put words in her mouth.
3. Her video is not harmful of victims of child abuse, mainly because in her video she doesn't address nor talks about cass's childhood trauma in any way, how and why you ask? Because she didn't understand that part of her arc if she did she wouldn't have been so of base. The only way someone could walk away from her video feeling any sort of way you're suggesting they would they would have to A. Complete misinterpret her words like you have done or B. Have watched your video first and not even give a chance, which would be alot harder to do if you included her video in the description which you did not, I wonder why certainly wasn't for malicious reasons, but unlike you I'll just chalk that up to simply forgetting to do so. She never said her arc wasn't tragic enough, that what you said, she didn't even imply it, all she ever said was that her "arc wasn't done well enough for her" and that she "liked varians better" is that biased? Sure but it's in no way harmful to anyone, also another example of you putting words in her mouth by the by.
4. No just no, you want her to take down the video because YOU think it harmful to victims of child abuse, which I don't want to pry but judging by how hard you sticking to this point I can only assume you are one, geuss we have something ever so slightly in common. Listen to me when I say this, Cassandra is a cartoon character who is very well written but for an audience of children and young adults they most likey won't think that, especially if they didn't see the warning signs or haven't experienced them either second or first hand, but just because they don't see it (which the show it's self doesn't really help with because they don't really discuss in the best way they could have when she did turn evil, not the people who wrote the shows fault sense they got short changed but still) doesn't mean there not aloud to talk about what they did see or that that is harmful to anyone. You could have made a video educating cali on what she missed and how she could have done a better analysis but instead you went into it with hostility.
5. Kinda disappointed you didn't engage with the rest of my comment.
@@m.e.3251 well 1. That's not how she said any of thoses things in her video and 2. That has nothing to with anything I'm talking about, why the bait dude? How did you even read my comment and come to the conclusion that any of that has anything to do with the topic at hand.
As someone who has been emotionally abused for... a very long time by my caretakers, I am here to say that disliking Cassandra’s arc or calling it stupid is not a crime against me, and you don’t have to apologize for your opinion. Granted, 0CallieStar0 joking about Cass’ “crispy hand” was not okay, because she had just been disabled, and she certainly wasn’t analyzing Cassandra’s character in a respectful way at all.
Can I have the time stamp where you talk about Cass’ actions like you did with Varian kidnapping the queen and all?
I think you may have missed a few things with Varian’s arc, as several commenters have tried to point out to you.
1) You pointed out how out of character it was for Rapunzel not to check on him for three months, but I don’t remember you mentioning that that contributed to his villain arc.
2) In “The Quest for Varian”, we see that his lab is covered in dust. Eugene even makes a comment about it. This, and the fact that Varian sent them to his house to retrieve the graphtyc, show that Varian had felt the need to leave due to the masked men. This also contributes to his arc, because he feels like the kingdom has turned its back on him. It’s the equivalent of someone saying you attacked the president (the rumor that Nigel started about Varian attacking Rapunzel), and the police trying to hunt you down. (Attacking royalty is a death sentence in those times, and since Rapunzel didn’t check on him, Varian very well could have been killed without her knowing.)
3) The whole point of his arc is that it’s a major switch from his sweet, pure self from earlier in the show. It’s meant to show what he’s been driven to, and, in his own words, how he’s “sunk pretty low”.
Back to the emotional abuse thing.
I actually loved your analysis of Cass. That part of the video was fair and really enjoyable to watch. But when I first saw season 3, I was insulted at how little they spoke about Gothel and how that didn’t SEEM to influence Cass’ arc as much. It didn’t seem like a realistic portrayal of the effects of emotional abuse. Many people agree with that, or they are simply ignorant about emotional abuse. That doesn’t mean that they’re saying it’s okay. 0CallieStar0 proved that she’s on the ignorant side, because she said “If anything, Rapunzel got the shorter end of the stick” etc. etc. She’s saying that Rapunzel was emotionally abused “worse”, which, while being ignorant, shows that she is in no way saying emotional abuse is okay. We have to assume positive intent here.
Another thing- Keeping in mind what I brought up about Varian, this shows that his arc is about a kid that the government has not done its job in protecting. If we’re saying that people that don’t like Cass’ arc are declaring that emotional abuse is okay and supporting it, then we’re saying that people that don’t like Varian’s arc are saying that the government not bringing child rapists to justice, abandoning foster children when they turn eighteen, turning a blind eye to child abusers because they’re bribed to, not properly caring for homeless children, and anything else along those lines is okay.
Or we could let people have their opinions and their reasons for those opinions.
Again, I enjoyed your respectful and thought-provoking analysis on Cass, and the effort you put into making this video.
Also, Varian didn’t “clumsily try to help” in Rapunzel’s Return part 2, unless you’re referring to the “oh, my bad”s when he kept dropping things. The pinnacle of his redemption was when he was willing to stay on the ship while Rapunzel got to safety and deactivate the explosives, possibly dying in the process.
I do agree that his redemption was rushed, though, and I would’ve loved to have seen more.
@@LeeLupin-nk4mm I agree with basically everything you have said here. I feel like the writers of the show were being hesitant when it came to using mother gothle as a character, like they didn't want to fall into the trap of making her a sympathetic villain so they tried to rarely mention her, I also think (because I'm rewatching the show right now) that they probably original intended for cass to remember her childhood with gothle, cause if you look at the episode where raps is trying to get cass and Eugene to get along they have a talk while trapped in a cell, and cass looks away when the topic of what she thinks her parents where like came up, but it seems that at some point they changed there plan.
I’m sorry about the emotional abuse you’ve experienced.
“disliking Cassandra’s arc or calling it stupid is not a crime… joking about Cass’ “crispy hand” was not okay…”
I want to clarify that CallieStar disliking Cass’s arc isn’t the problem for us. What made us upset was that she calls Cass’s *trauma* shallow/petty, “unsympathetic”, “nonsense”, (etc.) and it’s from THAT standpoint that she criticizes the arc as bad. So, for us, it poses the same problem as what you acknowledge about her “crispy hand” joke: it’s disrespectful.
“time stamp where you talk about Cass’ actions like you did with Varian kidnapping the queen”
I assume you’re referring to the part around the 1hr5min mark? We emphasized Varian’s actions in summary there as a direct response to CallieStar (repeatedly) downplaying their severity or ignoring them entirely, from which she’d then try to paint him as purely sympathetic. When it came to Cass we made sure to note her villainous moments (such as when she threatened the lives of Eugene, Caliope, and Rapunzel), present her villainy as morally unjustified, and acknowledge that the other characters’ distrust of her was earned. But as those moments are spread out, due to the structure/organization of the analysis, there’s not really a summary timestamp to provide.
“you may have missed a few things with Varian’s arc”
1) Our focus was on discussing the overall quality of the writing/execution. Forcing a key character completely out-of-character to make the plot work is a poor writing choice. Period. Yes, it could be argued that it contributed to his turn, but it’s ultimately a moot point because the turn itself is still an unearned alignment change - as we said, there was nothing to suggest such a malicious/merciless side to Varian’s character that just needed to be triggered to the forefront.
2) This is not contributing to his turn to villainy, that’s a done deal at this point. And while I think it’s valid to suggest that Varian wasn’t at home because he felt unsafe there (though it’s not necessarily due solely to the guards), I don’t think it’s accounting for the full picture. Varian has already synthesized the mood-changing potion into a veritas serum, and I believe it’s clear that he commissions Rapunzel to retrieve the graphtyc as the start of his manipulation of her. He wanted to expose the king’s lies and have Rapunzel see his father’s predicament - he wanted to boost her sympathy for him and drive a wedge of distrust between her and her father so that she would help him steal the Sundrop Flower.
3) Major switches in characterization need to be foreshadowed/pre-established. If they aren’t, it’s not good writing.
“I actually loved your analysis of Cass.”
Thank you!
“that didn’t SEEM to influence Cass’ arc as much”
Yeah, as we acknowledged in the conclusion, it’s fair to say that the number of people who didn’t understand her arc shows a lack in the writing/execution. I know I found a lot more depth than I had realized was there (for both characters) when I started analyzing their arcs for this script. A series targeted at 7yrs-olds should have more clarity, imo.
“while being ignorant, shows that she is in no way saying emotional abuse is okay. We have to assume positive intent here.”
To be clear, we were not accusing her of excusing emotional abuse as okay, but rather dismissing/downplaying it as insignificant. Further to what I noted above, we also showed in the video where she suggests in a comment that childhood emotional is “not properly tragic or recent enough” to warrant a character turning “full-villain”, and in another comment she says that Cass is being “overdramatic”.
Whether or not her intention was positive, her words can still be hurtful.
“If we’re saying that people that don’t like Cass’ arc are declaring that emotional abuse is okay and supporting it”
Again, the issue isn’t that she didn’t like Cass’s arc, but that she was disrespectful toward Cass’s trauma. And we’re not claiming that she’s supporting or excusing child abuse, but rather that she’s being hurtful in how she is dismissing/downplaying it.
“unless you’re referring to the “oh, my bad”s when he kept dropping things”
We’re referring to his potion mix-up when he tried to help in the dungeon and, yes, on the ship when he dropped his potions while trying to show off. And keep in mind that his offer to stay on the ship was promptly refused and he was yeeted off and left behind. His willingness to help and even sacrifice himself shows genuine character redemption, but it doesn’t change what actually took place. Ultimately, his attempts were mostly clumsy and/or ineffective.
Thank you for your feedback!
~ M.E.
Thank you for clarifying what you did. I think that helps me understand this video a lot more, and the other commenters trying to explain Varian’s arc don’t have clarity about where you were coming from.
Most of your response was clarification, like I said, and how you interpreted scenes, like in your analysis of Cass and your interpretation of Varian’s reasons for not being at his home, so I won’t try to combat those with many of my own interpretations.
However, one thing that always stuck out to me was when Varian said “One petal from that flower would solve all of our problems”. I believe he was expressing how powerful it was, not saying that he was only going to take one petal, because he followed up with “Oh, I know we can’t [ask Frederic to hand over the flower]. Which is why we have to steal IT.” As in, the whole thing. Rapunzel misunderstands him, and the dialogue doesn’t do its job after that. If the writers had wanted Varian to resolve everything with Rapunzel, all he would have had to say is “I told you we were stealing the whole thing!” or something along those lines. Then Eugene would burst in with his out-of-character “Get him!” and Rapunzel could tell the guards to stand down.
I believe that yes, Chris and the writing crew did use Varian as a plot device for most of the duration of his time on-screen, but I also think that with the way his character was set up, he could have been redeemed if Rapunzel, Cass, Eugene, or anybody had talked to him on his level instead of one “don’t break the law” speech from Rapunzel.
@LeeLupin-nk4mm You were so respectful in these comments, that really put a smile on my face. A lot of people here were super ignorant on what Alibi had said, despite the constant clarification, I was there, I saw it, haha. I'm really happy that you understood what was said, and even better, that even if you didn't understand, you were still so kind in your responses either way! This was a great conversation to read.
Okay, I do agree with pretty much everything you say in this video, but I think there's one thing about Varian's arc you're kinda missing, and it's that. He's a literal child. In season 1 he is 14 and in season 3 he's like, 15-16. The way he flips around and starts acting super irrationally actually makes a lot of sense because he is a CHILD. His brain hasn't fully developed. It's also why people find it ridiculous that he was put in prison. I do agree with you saying there's a double standard regarding Cass going to prison, because she literally fucking died trying to save the day and that MORE then makes up for the other shit she pulled while being actively manipulated, but I still think putting the 14 year old kid in an adult prison is too much. I can't comment on much else because I haven't rewatched the show in awhile, I just think it's important to take Varian's emotional maturity into account sjfkfmdmfmemfmf
I think arguing about the prison sentence is moot because it’s all based on speculation: We don’t know much of anything about Corona’s prison system (whether it does/does not have a juvenile division), whether/what other correctional options exist, how long he was in there, what the king did/didn’t do to help him during that time, etc. So I don’t see a point in getting hung up over that topic.
As for his emotional maturity: It’s incredible what a low opinion people have of teenagers, “They're irrational, they can’t think for themselves, they can’t control their emotions, they’re walking contradictions, they have no self-discipline” etc. etc. etc. I’ve heard so many insulting excuses given for teenage characters. It’s downright sad.
Especially when the reality is that characters are not people, so the argument doesn’t work anyway. Characters are fictional constructs that need consistency and progression to make sense. Like we said when discussing Cassandra: we’ve seen her act self-centered and hurtful before, she just takes it to another degree when she turns. But there’s nothing like that shown for Varian. If he’d angrily tried to blame-shift when the boiler experiment exploded, or when he’d lost the Expo, then his turn would have made more sense. As it is, it’s just inconsistent.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 y'know what, fair. Inconsistencies do be there. I see ur point. Age is still kind of important tho? Especially someone as young as 14, which is young enough to still be in middle school. I'm in highschool rn so I'm speaking from experience- teenagers do not make great judgement calls, myself included! And granted most people aren't always 100% on their judgement, but either way if you're still young enough to be in school you still probably need more guidance than an adult. This isn't even abt Varian anymore tbh cuz the way u phrased it I do see ur point abt the flip flopping better, it's just like. In general I think kids shouldn't be judged the same way adults are and 14 is still BARELY a teenager-
Also, back to Varian, if I'm remembering correctly he wouldnt have met the Seporians(is that how you spell that-) if they put him in juvie man I'm sorry. Those guys were not gonna be in fuckin juvie they were literal terrorists- Varian's actions were ALSO literal terrorism so he def shouldve been heavily guarded but putting him in a prison that also contains adults is INCREDIBLY unsafe and irresponsible, considering the types of people that get. Sent to prison in a just society. He just straight up shouldnt have been in a situation where he couldve met those guys. It doesn't matter if the kid is a criminal, it's still important to keep them out of proximity of people they can't defend themself against. I'm not gonna get like. Worked up over the Corona prison system. Because it is not real. And I think the writers just failed to consider the implications. But still, don't put kids in prison, is my hot take.
@@galaxydacreature Yeah, of course youth should be factored in when writing young characters but, whether used as a flaw or a strength, it can't be applied randomly. I think the main cast of A:TLA are a good example of using it right since their immaturity manifests in character based ways: Toph refuses to help with the group chores because she’s trying to prove her independence, Aang hides the letter from Sokka/Katara’s Dad because he doesn’t want to lose the only family he’s got left, both Sokka and Katara (who have been isolated in a tiny community) crush hard when they meet other attractive teens, etc.
As for the jail thing, I think you put it well when you say that the writers just failed to consider the implications.
~ M.E.
"His brain hasn't fully developed."
If you wanna go with that argument, please keep in mind that the brain grows/develops until the mid-20s to early 30s (25-30)...and Cassandra is at max. 24 years old at the end of the show.
Oml I'm just getting back into tts!! This makes me so happy to see 😋!! I actually watched CaliStar's video like a week before this, and I agreed with some points, but for the most part I felt a lot like y'all, and I just didn't know how to articulate it too well lol. I really hate that she couldn't see that the whole obsession with Mother Gothel was more out of the principal of the matter ( literally waiting in the wings since childhood ) rather than Rapunzel actually being raised because yeah it wasn't Rapunzel's fault at all, that's the point😭
Also to add on to your whole point of Rapunzel being out of character for Varian's corruption, it didn't make any sense that she never tried correcting anybody when they said that Varian "attacked her" during Queen for a Day, or that she didn't tell the guards to stop when they literally were throwing him back into the giant snowstorm.
I really also like how the thing that pushed Cass over the edge in crossing the line was Rapunzel saying wait. I think it was a really good small detail that really reflects all her feelings she's had that Raps stayed oblivious to.
I think my main problem with Cass is that they seemed just too scared to make her evil. You said it somewhere in the video, but at the end of season one Varian literally kidnaps the queen, tells her after his father's freed he's going to destroy Corona, threatens to trap her in amber, then tries to kill the royal family😭 And when Cass turns evil she takes the moonstone (Which could have killed Rapunzel), and then then doesn't do anything until halfway into season three when she kidnaps Varian ( She doesn't even try to hurt him), and overall she just seemed like a lot less of a threat. It's to the point where when she transforms into that other lady it just seems kind of pointless cause she hasn't even really done anything bad until she lashes out at the kingdom.
I think this also kind of ties into Rapunzel's attitude towards her. Obviously Rapunzel is going to have a lot more sympathy towards Cass than she did Varian because Cass has literally been her best friend, but there's a point where I was just getting tired of Rapunzel try to defend her. When they started having the fight in Cass's tower I think it would have been better if Rapunzel had a lot less hesitation while saying the fourth incantation 1. because her friend got kidnapped 2. her fiance got threatened 3. I feel like Rapunzel should realize that Cass has enough power to be a large threat to her kingdom, and she doesn't know that she didn't really hurt Varian while he was kidnapped, she found him literally hanging in a cage. Even though she could still be there for Cass, she should have also been there for all her citizens who are now in danger. Plus it doesn't even have to be about defeating Cass, her whole motive throughout the fight could just be trying to get the moonstone. Like she needs to put her foot down and say that she needs to stop Cassandra before she can fully reach her. I feel like that would make it more believable for Cass to think that Raps will be mad at her when she actually took some initiative in stopping her yk?
I agree with what you said about Zhan Tiri, she's just to vague in what she's trying to do for me to think of her as a really strong villain, they have two really big villains in this season, but neither feel like a threat while watching it lol. I feel like if I could change it I would make Zhan Tiri actually use her magic to control Cassandra more. Like I think all the buildup to Cassandra taking the moonstone is great, but afterwards she just falls off 'cause she's always warring with herself about if she's doing the right thing or not, and it kind of takes away from everything that happens before 'cause it's like, " why'd you even take the moonstone if you're not at all sure of what you're doing😭😭😭???" So what I would do (au time ig lol) is make it so that you can't see Zhan Tiri at all until she gets unleashed. We already know that it's not impossible for this kind of magic to mess with someone's mind, i.e. Rapunzel not being able to stop herself when she starts saying the dark incantation, so we could keep going on that route and make it so that Zhan Tiri is able to somewhat speak and use her magic against Cassandra when she grabs the moonstone, so when she takes it, she starts actually doing awful things because Zhan Tiri is altering her to have really heightened emotions, like when she sings crossing the line. So the things she does aren't really out of character, but they are made while she's constantly in a heightened state, and when Zhan Tiri escapes after Cass and Raps's fight, she stops using her magic on Cass. So 1. her reveal is a little more dramatic 'cause Cass doesn't hear that little voice in her head anymore, and 2. we don't really know who this big bad is except the fact that she's skilled enough to manipulate Cass without ever showing her face. I think this also makes a little more sense because I don't really get how Cass is able to see Zhan Tiri, so I think it would make more sense if she was just using the moonstone as a mouth piece, since it is pretty much the embodiment of destruction, rather than a way to make Cass see her. Then when Cass is no longer being controlled, she's able to take a breath and start letting the guilt in, and Zhan Tiri wouldn't really feel the need to control her anymore since she already did all she needed to, which was free her from her prison.
My final thing about this is that I really wish they designed Zhan Tiri differently. I hate her eyes, they're so ugly😭😭😭😭
Sorry for the crazy long comment 😞 Your video was great 🥰🥰🥰
Okay, also hi! New sub, let me say this..I absolutely love Cassandra, and the voice actor. Cassandra is so much more than that, and Varian and her are them same to me while he's not at the same time. And I completely agree with this vid and I disagree with Calie. I love both the characters
Love how ya said the judge is a hack lol, so real. Now, I know why all the Fandom love him but..we don't see any liking Cassandra, your explanation is so...perfect!
We're very glad you enjoyed. And thanks so much for the sub! ☺💕
@@imyouralibi6208You're very welcome! Honestly kinda feel bad for Cass not gonna lie. All her life she wanted to do all those things you mentioned. She is overlooked, and it makes her upset, and she snaps at people
@imyouralibi6208 This is my sister, the one I told you would love this video. (I was right) 😂 And she's right to love this video, that was an amazing analysis!
@@ECSOrder66 Haha, fr it is and Meriabell's song...fits her perfectly!
@@tabbypawzz It's honestly so sad that so many people in the fandom misunderstand Cassandra's character and hold so much vitriol toward her 😞
Her songs hit so hard for me, especially Waiting in the Wings and its reprise.
Okay, so I also disagree with calliestar as well because of her erasing cassandras trauma, and her bias for varian, but I also disagree with some of your points.
My goal is not at all to change your mind, but to respectfully disagree. As much as I agree that he could have asked for help, i know you said that rapunzel went out of character to not help him, and that might have made it easier to convince us that that is something varian would do. Cassandra is in fact traumatized, and calliestar DOES in fact erase it, but I think her problem was that she did not consider zhan tiri. In my opinion(I could be wrong) what she went through alone would not push her to the edge, but with the influence of a demon, which could potentially represent peoples inner demons due to her being manipulative in nature, her arc does make sense, I personally know they didnt have enough episodes to make it work properly, and i understand it, it is sinply the pacing that I believe is slightly rough.
I do believe though that they are extremely different, both motive wise and the in different actions they take, and you should not compare their traumas, because you can still drown in shallow water, no matter who you think is deeper, both are drowning.
Lastly, there is one final difference that I would like to include.
In Nothing Left to Lose, (which i could make hundreds of essays on and not get bored) and Ready as I'll Ever Be, it shows that varian knew he was a bad guy, yet cassandra thought that even though the path she was on was dark, she thought she was in the right. Not all that important, but interesting to think about.
And lastly lastly, varian was very goal oriented meanwhile cassandra seemingly had no clue what she wanted to do, but, it truly kind of worked because it shows the differences
Thank you for your comment!
“rapunzel went out of character to not help him, and that might have made it easier to convince us that that is something varian would do”
For sure, the writers making Rapunzel not follow-up with Varian is why he feels betrayed/abandoned and lashes out. So it makes sense in that regard, which I’ve seen several people argue, but Rapunzel being so out-of-character is a big problem with the writing that can’t just be ignored. Writers can’t just change key characterization of THE main character to make the plot work and pretend nothing is out of the ordinary.
“what she went through alone would not push her to the edge, but with the influence of a demon… her arc does make sense”
Agreed. As we stated in the video, Zhan Tiri was the catalyst for Cassandra’s turn.
“they didnt have enough episodes to make it work properly… it is sinply the pacing that I believe is slightly rough”
Yep, as we mentioned, Disney ended up cutting down the number of episodes so Cassandra’s arc in S3 isn’t paced as well as it could have been.
“you should not compare their traumas”
Just to clarify (in case you are not using “you” in the broad sense), we were simply comparing the quality of their character/arc writing. We outright say that trauma is not a competition; we did not compare their trauma.
“varian knew he was a bad guy, yet cassandra thought that even though the path she was on was dark, she thought she was in the right”
Yes, the differences are very subtle. Varian knows that what he’s doing is bad, but he believes he’s justified. Cassandra is in denial that she’s doing anything bad, because she also feels her actions are justified.
“varian was very goal oriented meanwhile cassandra seemingly had no clue what she wanted to do”
Yep, that’s a fair assessment. Varian wanted to free his Dad and make Corona suffer. Cassandra wanted to follow “destiny”, but yeah… that’s pretty vague. Which is part of why Zhan Tiri was able to mislead her so easily.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 sorry, I did not intend to imply that with rapunzel acting out of character was not a plot issue, I could have stated that better and I apologize for that
@@HestiaRed No worries! :)
~ M.E.
I love Cassandra story evil arc.💜👸
Thanks for the heart it means a lot to me.💜
@@PaigeRobins-ky4qc I'm just glad to see more people with an appreciation for Cass. And it's nice having more positive comments here too 🙂
@@imyouralibi6208 you are welcome and I love your video and I think you are right about the Cassandra evil story arc.👍💜💯
@@imyouralibi6208 👍
Eh, it was alright. Just didn’t really like how dragged out it was
Honestly, I would have preferred if you had just made your argument for why you believe Cass’s arc was better than Varian’s rather than framing it as you being objectively right and Callistar being objectively wrong.
Her video simply reflects her opinion and preferences, precisely the same way your video does. Your framing of your opinion as “right” and hers as “wrong” diminishes your credibility and hurts your argument overall. An argument that was otherwise very well thought out.
They also want her to delete her video because she was being "hurtful" and "misusing her platform".
I guess you missed the part where CallieStar titled her video as an "analysis" and claimed multiple times throughout the video that that's what she was doing...
You do realize storytelling is not a subjective artform, right? There *are* objective principles for determining what's good writing and what isn't. Acknowledging as much far from hurts our credibility.
@@TiredMoonRabbit Soooo you're cool with people belittling the trauma of child abuse and victim-blaming? Good to know...
@@imyouralibi6208 Storytelling is absolutely a subjective art form.. what are you smoking?
@@imyouralibi6208 Nice straw man argument… you really are the superior literary analysis!
ImYourAlibi: Claims Callie is dismissing childhood trauma
Also ImYourAlibi: Proceeds to dismiss the trauma Varian experienced when he was still a minor
Great argument
Citation needed.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 I know you guys are too biased to accept criticism of your arguments but since you asked
Downplays the fact that Varian is literally terrified his dad could be DEAD. Its blatantly shown in the show and confirmed by Chris that Varian DOES fear his dad could be dead but chooses to believe there's hope to save him cause of course he does because the alternative is just accepting that his dad is gone forever and internally a part of him knows part of it is his fault. He's literally a kid scared that he might've caused his dads death. He simply holds on to the hope he can save him.
Conveniently forgets the king sent his men to break into Varian's home and steal the scroll that isn't the kings to begin with. Varian had to go into hiding cause of them and Varian states they will do anything to get it so stating he had to deal with them and hide it.
Ignores the fact that Varian was clearly manipulated by the seporians who he was literally put in a cell with. Yeah no "random ghost he doesn't know and could walk away from at any time" He was put in a cell with these people and was offered "friendship" and a way to start over if he goes along with the Seporians plans. He clearly ia shown going along with ANDREWS plans even when Varian is shown to take issue with his plans cause no shit he's still a minor going along with what these grown adults that manipulated him told him to do and they use his fears of if Corona will ever accept him again to either push him to help their plan by promising he can start over or use his fears of being accepted against him when he starts to go against their plans.
Why can't he just prove himself over and over? Why exactly does Varian have to prove himself "over and over" and in the show TWICE to be accepted but Cass just gets to ride off intro the sunset after helping at the very last possible moment. And what the hell are you expecting? Corona's been badmouthing Varian since before he even turned Rapunzel was the only one willing to give him a chance and hell even she wasn't willing to until Rapunzel's Return. For all of Cass's whining, she had every opportunity to choose better and kept digging herself deeper while with Varian we are actively shown plenty of figures in Corona are actively against him.
“Its blatantly shown in the show and confirmed by Chris”
Citations needed for both of these.
“the king sent his men to break into Varian's home and steal the scroll”
This did not happen. The king sent his men to watch Old Corona and intervene if Rapunzel were to come for the scroll piece. And that's all they did.
“Ignores the fact that Varian was clearly manipulated by the seporians who he was literally put in a cell with… was offered "friendship" and a way to start over if he goes along with the Seporians plans”
We ignored speculation? Yeah. Because we were analyzing the content, not your head-canon. We don’t know what happened in that cell. We don’t know why Varian is working with them aside from what is actually in the content - which shows him crowing about how he’s finally getting back at Corona until he admits to Rapunzel that he feels he can’t redeem himself and everything changes in short order.
And that’s really what that part of the series is about: his redemption. So we’re examining and talking about it from that standpoint, not speculating on what happened off screen to explain it like another trigger/turn, because it isn’t; he’s already a villain at that point.
“Why exactly does Varian have to prove himself ‘over and over’”
We were responding to CallieStar’s question about “what else is he supposed to do?”. You’ll note that we didn’t include that option in our rewrite because there were other options that we thought worked better, especially given the path the creators had already followed.
“but Cass just gets to ride off intro the sunset after helping at the very last possible moment”
Varian chose to stay after he (barely) helped “at the very last possible moment”. If he had chosen to ride off into the sunset, I’m sure he would have been allowed.
“she had every opportunity to choose better and kept digging herself deeper”
So did Varian.
“with Varian we are actively shown plenty of figures in Corona are actively against him”
Same with Cass.
Also, I'm not seeing how any of what you bring up here is evidence of us dismissing Varian's trauma. We were very clear in the video that we agree what Varian went through was traumatic, we simply we feel his turn to villainy is out-of-character with what was established and we thoroughly explain why.
In contrast, CallieStar repeatedly says Cass's trauma isn't sympathetic enough, calls it "nonsense" and presents it as shallow/petty motivation, says Cass is being "overdramatic", etc.
~ M.E.
@@imyouralibi6208 You guys really suck at "analyzing the text" if you somehow miss obvious facts sitting right there in front of you. Some "analysis" this is if you have to change the context to fit your bias. If anyone should delete their video its you guys since you can't even analyze the text in your favor without lying in an already deeply biased video.
Wow did you even actually watch the show?? You flat out play the clip of Varian shouting in relief that his dad is alive "Dad! Dad! You're alive!!" indicating that yes Varian is afraid his dad might be dead but holds on to the hope he can be saved.
"This did not happen. The king sent his men to watch Old Corona and intervene if Rapunzel were to come for the scroll piece. And that's all they did". Nice headcanon cause thats not what happened. They state themselves they were ordered to retrieve the piece regardless if Rapunzel went after it no conditions just go retrieve the scroll piece an item that doesn't belong to the king and was ordered to be retrieved regardless if Rapunzel showed up.
"We ignored speculation? Yeah. Because we were analyzing the content, not your head-canon." Wow you guys are hopeless if you can't understand the basic facts right in front of you or you're just lying to win an argument (spoiler alert you're not winning). Look at me and tell me you seriously believe Varian orchestrated the Seporians takeover of Corona when he's never shown to believe in the cause in any capacity. Funny you conveniently forget the moments where varian is clearly unsure of what he and the seporians are doing but ends up going along with ANDREWS orders while you go on about Cass's "brief moments". Nevermind the fact Andrew is shown to use words like friend and buddy in a clearly manipulative way to keep Varian in line. Tell me how on earth you can even pretend he wasn't manipulated when Varian flat out states "we agreed no one would be harmed" with shock and surprise. Again why would he orchestrate a takeover for a cause he doesn't believe in? And he's clearly shown to not be the one in charge its Andrew, And he's shocked when they go back on their word because they got him to trust them as the only people he could rely on. You can just admit your crying and whining over Cass's trauma is fake AF when you blatantly ignore when a minor is being manipulated by grown adults using his fears against him.
@@reagangrayson2879 Most of this is just you slinging insults instead of actually presenting reasons for why we’re wrong or any evidence of us dismissing Varian’s trauma. If that continues to be the case, I doubt I will continue this conversation much longer.
“You flat out play the clip…”
So you claim that we dismissed his trauma and when I ask for evidence you point to something that we acknowledged in the video and said essentially the same as what you have to say about it…
“They state themselves they were ordered to retrieve the piece regardless if Rapunzel went after it”
The exact line is “We had orders to recover the scroll to keep it from you.” Nothing in there about “regardless”.
It seems your disagreement with me is boiling down to a difference of interpretation. I am taking into account the fact that Varian only said they were watching, and the fact that they didn’t enter his empty home to take the scroll before Rapunzel got there, as indication that their orders were only to intervene if she came and took it.
“you're just lying to win an argument (spoiler alert you're not winning)”
No. I’m not childishly trying to “win” an internet argument. (But it seems you are.) I am trying to ascertain whether there are any legitimate critiques to be found within this slop of a comment you’ve posted. (Spoiler alert: there aren't any.)
“tell me you seriously believe Varian orchestrated the Seporians takeover of Corona”
Why would I say that when I don’t believe it? I don’t see how a strawman fallacy proves your point that we were dismissive of Varian’s trauma.
At best, you have pointed out that we didn’t note how Varian was being manipulated by the Saporians. But, as I kind of already said, the trauma we were focused on for both characters was specifically the trauma directly connected to their turn to villainy. Certainly their villainous journeys brought both of them more trauma, but I fail to see how us not bringing up each trauma either of them suffered after their turn to villainy is a case of us being dismissive of only Varian.
~ M.E.
I've never watched the Tangled series so I can't exactly give my opinion on this topic but I thought this video was incredibly well made and I enjoyed all 2 hrs and 30 mins of it haha :) !!
Lol, thank you! 🙂
Why is this 2 hours long 😭
I think that should be self-explanatory 👀
There was a lot to say. Lol. Analyzing the arcs of two characters appearing in a 60-episode series takes a lot of time on its own. Add to that responding to the problems presented in another video, and it's easy to go over 2hrs. 🤷♀
@@LynnTyson-fp6nn Did you watch the video at all? Or even read M.E.’s comment above?
The video runtime includes detailed breakdowns of both Cassandra *and* Varian’s character arcs (and more). So your assertion that a longform video analysis of a character is evidence of bad writing would apply to Varian as well. 💀
@@LynnTyson-fp6nn Okay. It seems clear that all you did was read the title, and you think that makes you qualified to comment on the video. It doesn’t.
If you want to make yourself look like an even bigger ignoramus, be my guest and continue talking. But I’m not going to waste my time responding any more.
I feel like Varian gets a lot of favoritism from the fandom. Back in 2020 I was extremely anti Varian fan girl and I have no idea why. Whenever people said that Varian was an extremely relatable character I found myself disagreeing. At the same time I kept rewatching the episode Be Very Afraid because I could relate to what Varian went through. I finally accept the fact that I can relate to Varian but not for the same reasons that the fandom does. Come to think of it while people talk about Varian having PTSD in Be Very Afraid I don’t hear many people saying that they can relate what he went through in that episode. Back to the whole anti Varian fan girl thing, I think that while I’m not as anti Varian fan girl because I never gave him any favoritism I don’t agree with the moon Varian theory because I can see where him being the Moonstone doesn’t make sense. I think the favoritism he receives from the fandom is one of the reasons why people prefer his villain arc over Cassandra’s.
A common issue with King Fredrick is how people hate on him for what he did. He definitely shouldn’t have avoided the black rock situation because it was a danger to the kingdom. While he didn’t handle the situation properly I can understand why he did what he did. Avoidance is his response to his anxiety. What happened to Rapunzel was traumatic for him and he seems to be having anxiety throughout the show. You can have your own opinions on whether or not he did the right thing but it’s also important to understand why he did it. I can understand the reasons behind some of his actions because I know what it feels like to have anxiety and avoid things. In Frozen I feel like Elsa sometimes gets misunderstood sometimes and called a villain, but because I can relate to her I can understand how she feels and why she makes the choices she makes.
This brings me to Cassandra. I don’t think she’s having anxiety but she is going through trauma. Her trauma is why she does what she does. Obviously she didn’t do the right thing but I understand why she did it. A lot of people use Varian’s age as a reason why his actions are valid. Like you said she’s been affected by childhood trauma. It’s true that trauma can have permanent effects. Those permanent effects are part of why she’s doing what she’s doing. In fact she was younger than Varian when she had her trauma. The reason people say Varian’s actions are understandable is because your brain is not fully developed when you’re 14. If I’m remembering correctly your prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until you’re 25. So a lot of what Cassandra goes through is before her brain was fully developed. She is around 25 by season 3 but even if you could argue my point about her brain not being fully developed is invalid she’s still doing this because of trauma. Take someone like Fredrick whose brain is fully developed by the time his trauma happens for example. It’s still a struggle. Therefore Cassandra has valid reasons for what she did.
It’s okay to like Varian better than Cassandra but I think people need to understand that yes, Varian has valid reasons to feel the way he feels, so does Cassandra. You can compare anyone’s trauma to Varian’s and say Varian’s is worse or more traumatic, but everyone responds differently to situations. Something may be more traumatic for me than it would be for someone else. Whatever a person’s trauma was it was hard for that person to go through. Their struggles are valid. This is why the favoritism towards Varian can be an issue.
Writing aside, I'll be honest, as much as I like Varian as a character, I never bought him as a villain, definitely not an intimidating one.
Whereas I completely bought Cassandra as being a truly dangerous threat.
If you don't think cassandra is the best character in this series (its ok if not but this arc is it) what r u doing
CallieStar also made a video on how she would've wrote Cassandra's arc I want to know your thoughts on it
We actually discuss that in the video here 🙂
@@imyouralibi6208 Oh! Woops!😳
Sorry, but someone disagreeing with you or interpreting media differently isn't actually a crime they need to apologize for. You're 1. Just as biased. and 2. The one who's attacking another real person here. Seriously, please go touch grass. You could've just made this whole analysis video as a standalone thing without going after another creator and it would've come across as much more sincere.
If you were paying attention you would know that we were asking her to apologize and remove her video due to her dismissive and insulting attitude toward child abuse, which can be very hurtful to *real people* who are victims of such trauma.
@@m.e.3251 And I disagree with you that there was anything wrong with her video. Her criticizing a fictional character isn't on the same level as you guys attacking a real person. Stop spending so much time online doing fake activism that's really just a mask to shut down people who disagree with you about a TV show.
@@arielxlazarusSir... she was mishandling the concept of TRAUMA and CHILD ABUSE. Which is, you know, shown in the video. That you either clearly did not watch, or clearly did not understand. That is definitely something wrong with her video.
@@ECSOrder66 Once again, criticizing a fictional character, one whose history of child abuse is handled badly in the show anyway, is seriously not a big deal. If you want people to be more sympathetic towards Cass, that's your prerogative, but no one else has to care about your opinion. I'll say one more time, it's a youtube video about a fictional character. You people are making a mountain out of a molehill because you can't handle someone not liking your fav. Please go touch grass, all of you. There are multiple genocides happening in the world right now and you're complaining about a non-issue.
@@arielxlazarus I appreciate the strawman, bud.
"It's a RUclips video about a fictional character"
Ah, the "it's fiction" argument. You seeing this, guys? It's a fictional character being abused, not a real person, that means there is no harm in Callie's video. Logic, right?
Congratulating on insinuating that if a victim is a fictional character, if someone downplays the severity of it, there is "no harm".
Seek help.