truly do not understand people who think cap was anything but a mediocre at best parent to cassandra. like yes he loves her and i’m sure he did his best but under his care cassandra grows up insecure, repressed, and convinced that she’s only valued for what she can do for people. in s1 she explicitly credits her father with teaching her “how to earn her keep” she’s terrified of being banished to a convent if she screws up and we see over the course of the first season that her terror is one hundred percent rational. she is not catastrophizing or exaggerating when she says her father will send her to a convent if it gets out that she helped rapunzel sneak out of corona, that really happens.
cassandra grows up knowing that her father will send her away if she breaks the rules. she grows up knowing that her relationship with her dad is conditional. she grows up with the threat of the fantasy equivalent of a wilderness camp hanging over her head.
like you get that this is harmful in and of itself right?? that this is textbook emotional neglect? that after being removed from gothel’s “care” cassandra was raised in an environment where she was expected to earn her keep, earn the things that parents are obliged to provide for their children, and she understood that she would be sent away as punishment if she failed to do so. that however well intentioned the captain was he didn’t save cassandra from her trauma so much as bring her into a new situation where the traumatization continued to happen but in a far more insidious form?
the captain himself acknowledges that he screwed up majorly in how he raised cassandra. islands apart is his do-over. wish!cass is the do-over where he can be everything cass desperately needed him to be; thus the emotionally attentive, affectionate, and involved dad cap we see in islands apart is not the father the real cassandra grew up with.
and on top of all this there’s the way the captain treats cassandra throughout s1 vis a vis her desire to join the guard, which is like—i think people see it play out and mentally file it under ye olde trope of the slightly overprotective parent but the thing is, cassandra is twenty-two years old and qualified for the guard. she is the fantasy equivalent of a college graduate with a degree in the field of her chosen career, but the only job openings available to her are controlled by her parent and instead of giving her a fair evaluation he occasionally hands her work under the table while telling her he’ll take it away again if she quits her shitty retail job. in great expotations he literally treats giving her a guard assignment like he’s a parent offering his kid a special treat if she finishes her homework “very well, but your lady in waiting duties come first, only after you finish those, including setting up for the expo, may you help” …
like please. please imagine being a twenty-two year old college grad with all the qualifications required for your dream job and a glowing recommendation from a manager in the company (stan is a ranking officer and enthusiastically supports cass’s attempt to get a guard assignment in ge), and when you interview your dad the boss is like “okay, you can perform some of the duties of the job you want, but we’re not actually hiring you, and you have to keep your full time shitty retail job too, and you can only do the work i’m assigning to after finishing a full shift at your shitty retail job” because that is what happens to cass in great expotations. and most of the rest of season one as well, until cap finally figures out that she’s not a child anymore and he can’t treat her like one. it’s WILDLY unfair.
“he’s overprotective and doesn’t want her to get hurt” is a reason but it in no way justifies how completely shitty and exploitative and wrong it is to treat cass like this. no, she isn’t owed a job, but if cap doesn’t want to give her one, he owes her the decency of a clear rejection. he owes it to her to say, “no, we’re not hiring you,” instead of muddying the waters with vague talk about her “not being ready” (which implies he will be willing to hire her at some point, an indefinite amount of time later) or by giving her assignments when she is not actually a guard (which is a Fantasy Unpaid Internship).
any emotionally healthy person with good interpersonal and professional boundaries who was put into cassandra’s situation would say “nope, i’m out,” and leave to seek employment elsewhere. because that is the correct, reasonable course of action when a prospective employer treats you like this. but cassandra has been emotionally neglected her whole life and conditioned to believe that she has to earn basic necessities like a secure place to live or her father’s love, and in her mind being allowed to join the guard is inextricably linked with earning her father’s love and trust, so she clings to these crumbs because in her mind the alternative is nothing.
and the captain did that to her. i think people see that cap was not openly scornful of her or malicious in the way that gothel was and conclude that he must have been a much better parent and sure, that’s true, but when the bar is in the earth’s mantle, clearing it still means that you’re underground.
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
yousharknotpass
titsay
tankhall
pixelskylines
dailybridgerton
