#paragraphsss

[cassandra-watch]

Re: deep trauma becoming entrenched from a young age: so it’s not a guaranteed thing, this isn’t something that everyone who loses a mother at such a young age is 100% going to experience, and to such an extent. Some adoptees never manifest this, but some do, even if they were adopted as infants and their adoptive parents were great. Everyone’s different. I’ve read several accounts where the person doesn’t really start grappling these feelings until they’re a young adult, and they find it helpful through therapy to identify these feelings as having first origins in this disruption (and then go on to learning productive ways of responding to those emotions when they arise). This seems to be a more recent shift in modern understandings of adoption and fostering but presently it’s something I’ve noticed a lot.

But also I was reflecting last night and making myself sad, because child Cassandra has a terrible time of it, because Gothel is an awful human being. She sees Gothel actively choose to abandon her at age four, an age when I think people are actually starting to form conscious long term memories (though granted yes, she then deeply repressed this memory). But it’s also not that one moment, she had four years of neglect and, in a way, small scale temporary abandonments as Gothel continuously ditched her for unknown lengths of time. Just remember her face at the words “I won’t be gone long.”

[cassandra-watch]

Post episode chatter — warning for She-Ra spoilers:

[cassandra-watch]

On the suspected time jump and change in attitude:

Seriously. At this point she’s walking in to the Great Tree at ease with blue child walking with her, complaining at it in an exasperated way yes but almost in the way she bickered at Eugene. (And why not, it has been her only company for MONTHS, it first came to her wanting to be her ‘friend’, at this point in time she has almost started treating it like one.) This is way different than last we saw on the day with the red spikes. At this point she is perfectly willing to go for the scroll in Corona whereas on that day, she was still terrified, though the episode did end with her resolving to do SOMETHING.

Her confrontation with her father definitely happened between that day and this one. She’s slowly making her way back but becomes aware that he is looking for her and trails him for a while in the labyrinth. This is one of the major fears we suspect is attached to going back to Corona — how can she face her father — and now here he is. He’s in a hostile location and knows something’s around, it might be Cassandra but even if it is he doesn’t know what to expect, so he draws his sword. Cassandra perceives that as a threat, she draws hers and goes on the attack, disarms him.

This is what she feared, her own father is coming after her, does not trust her. Did he ever even care for her in the first place? Obviously no one else did, why should she expect better of him? He’s demanding answers for her betrayal of her duty, it really is all about Rapunzel, isn’t it. He doesn’t care about her, he cares about the princess like everybody else.

Angry Cassandra is now yelling, she may have been blind to all this as a child but he KNEW these things, knew what he was doing, chose to do all these things which have hurt her so tremendously. Again, “you only did what was best for yourself”, he never cared about her. Why should she care about him, then? Why should she even fear him, fear what he thinks of her?

The line “THIS is MINE, THIS is MY destiny” comes after that, she’s yelling it at him but she’s also solidifying it for herself, she’s repeating it to really believe it. No one cares about her so she doesn’t have to fear disappointing them, she looks out only for herself now. She is in charge of her own happiness and she will seize that destiny which she believes will give it to her.

It’s ingrained in her, she’s so used to obeying her father, to showing she can follow orders as she pursued that dream of being a guard, that his command shakes her despite the wall of anger she has built around herself. But isn’t this just further proof? He’s not even acting like a father now, he’s trying to use orders to get what he wants, like always, she is done with that, she is done listening to other people.

She leaves that encounter even more resolved. What more does she have to fear from Corona now? She’s faced her father, she won that encounter, didn’t she? He proved that she shouldn’t even waste her time worrying about what people think about her because it’s not like they actually care, they’re just trying to get what they want. And if that’s all everyone else is doing, why shouldn’t she finally step up and take what she wants?

[cassandra-watch]

Angry: “You have to!”

Red, pulling her hand from Angry’s hand: “I don’t want to!”

I don’t think I’ve commented on it before but I have been noticing Rapunzel’s tendencies to use this kind of language — ‘I had to’, ‘You have to’, ‘I had no choice’ — and it’s been catching my attention because it was a big issue in She-Ra too. Adora was always charging forward with that kind of language, her conviction that she had no choice and HAD TO do this or that, which was bad enough when applied to herself but she unconsciously applied it to other people too. The very way she spoke to Catra barreled over any element of choice Catra had in their interactions, and so to reclaim that, Catra would do the opposite of what Adora wanted.

The inherent power dynamic between Rapunzel and Cassandra just exacerbates this, of course. The Great Tree has her raise the queen thing and her making decisions Cassandra will disagree with, and “I need you to be okay with that.” Then we come to S3, “You’ve got to give me the moonstone.” By virtue of her position Rapunzel has automatically (and usually obliviously) had power in their interactions — and I’ve mentioned already how I see Cassandra grabbing the moonstone as her thinking it’s a way to gain control for herself.

[cassandra-watch]

Compilation of post episode gay chatter (hit image limit, my reply in plain text):

Re: all the gay texts: yes this whole thing is super gay and I’m super gay so I was dying

The whole exact parallel to Eugene in the chair to start off with, the rainbow hair in the background to reinforce that yes, yes there is a gay reading to be had here. The storyboarders had a Mission. Also you have giant Rapunzel with giant rainbow hair which Cassandra never sees and is totally oblivious to which of course I’m not taking as a metaphor for something, why would I ever do that,

I definitely recall how the Best Day Ever scene ended in the movie because I had the parallel clips up for comparison, at that point E is still ‘gotta convince her to go back and give me the bag’ and is decidedly not making THAT face. That face is just so gay, like if the artists wanted this to come across as ~friendship~ sure you could have Cass smiling at her but those gosh darn eyes, eyebrows,

Also they did not have to have Rapunzel talking about how much Cassandra means to her with those flowers in hand my goodness, they are almost out of the shot for parts of the scene but they specifically have her raise them at key points,

And THEN her sitting against Cassandra at first at the campfire, Rapunzel has not been immediately touchy with Cassandra, she doesn’t take her hand at first when setting foot onto the grass, she was too busy having fun to directly interact with her later, but after she gives her the flowers she initiates contact for the first time herself and then starts talking about how maybe she doesn’t want to go back to the tower ughhhhh

In my reactions I was mostly focused on Cassandra’s guilt but I was also wondering what else she might be thinking about during the campfire scene, was there any wistful ‘why couldn’t *I* have been the one to find Rapunzel in the tower’, especially when she feels the need to ask “why are you telling me this” with that face. Cassandra knows this isn’t real, has to tell herself this isn’t real, this is oblivious Rapunzel and she’ll be back to normal by morning and won’t want to run away with Cassandra anymore. Exactly as you say, repressed gay Cassandra is just, please stop making this more difficult for me

Yes to that wish, somehow I blanked on what shooting stars meant and it was annoying me but of course it signals a wish being made 🌠

And yes Rapunzel WANTS to trust people, WANTS to trust Cassandra, that or ‘friends’ is just the magic word for her always

Ahhhh I missed the Korra parallel ahhh!

[cassandra-watch]

Then M raised a thought which it turns out I had very many thoughts about upon reflection (surprise it’s about Cassandra):