briarroselvr

[briarroselvr]

"Disney's princess needs to have more diverse personalities!" Yes true, sure, but also

Disney's first three Princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora) are all graceful, sweet, like singing songs about dreams and wishes, and do not actively fight: "omg they're such anti-feminist caricatures!!!"

Disney's next princesses have more established emotions and personalities, alongside the establishment of the "I Want" song as applied to motives outside of love (exploration, adventure, making their family proud): "OMG Ariel traded her voice for a man, how stupid!" "Belle's so stuck-up!" "Jasmine's just a spoiled brat!"

Tiana's a dedicated hard worker, loves her family a lot, and wants her loved ones to be very happy even at her own expense and gets... totally ignored in this conversation, gee I wonder why

Rapunzel, Anna, and now Asha are a little bit awkward, silly, but exuberant and get written off as "stupid adorkable" despite the other tenets of their personalities setting them apart, like Rapunzel's creativity, Anna's dedication to her family, and how Asha strives to help those around her

Moana gets called a disobedient brat for seeing beyond her father's narrow-mindedness

Disney Princesses have many wonderfully different personalities. It's just that people are dedicated to misinterpreting them, and that's why I never take the "Disney Princesses need more diverse personalities!" comment at face value.

[briarroselvr]

Jake's Team Pirate - The Full Lost Pilot to Jake and the Never Land Pirates

A discussion between @pixiedust-poppers and @preciouslittletoonette and I about the Lost Boys' absence in Jake and the Never Land Pirates lead into this thread about forums that revealed some interesting tidbits about the lost pilot episode of the show, which according to forums, supposedly had Nibs and Movie!Cubby in the series.

Well, on Twitter, some madlad leaked more than 20 DTVA series bibles, pitches, and art-books for a multitude of shows under the past 12 hours before Disney finally put a stop to it (which as far as I'm concerned, didn't destroy or remove any of the content on the archive where it was leaked). Among those was the series bible for Jake and the Never Land Pirates, originally named Jake's Team Pirate.

I couldn't download it because my computer is ass but you can find it here [and archive that link in the wayback machine because it won't be long until DIsney comes at ya]

However, this also lead me to a rabbit hole to discover the full lost pilot of the JTP. This pilot episode was essentially an early version of what would later become Season 1, Episode 8b, Race to Never Peak. At the time that I'm posting this (on my birthday, yay!!) it has been 15 hours since the video was up on YouTube. Again, I'd suggest you download it if possible and/or save this to the Wayback Machine in the Internet Archive just in case (I'm fairly certain this thread will not survive the night, which again, is why we should be prepared)

But here it is!

I am typing this out whilst watching the pilot in real-time to give you my disjointed thoughts because this is crazy. Anyways, away we goo!

So There was a Fourth Pirate Member? AND HE WAS NIBS????

Yeah, that's his name! Nibs! But he's clearly not the Nibs from the movie, at least not design wise. Was this a deliberate change of the character, was this a different character with the same name or a coincidence? I'm leaning towards #3, but even in spite of my confusion, Nibs is actually okay.

So Jake's crew was supposed to have four members! Pretty nifty.

Damn, Skully had an Eyepatch?

They were going all out on this pirate thing, huh?

I prefer the finalized design of the Jolly Roger

For those who don't know, the design for the Jolly Roger in the series was recyced from a dropped design for Hook's ship in the film. The filmmakers thought it didn't fit in with the world they wanted to present, but the showrunners thought it to be appropriate for the younger demographic and their portrayal of Hook.

I mainly agree with this sentiment, but also because Hook's signature color is red. So a red and black ship with warmer colors fits well with his aesthetic and character. Far more than this odd mix of yellow and tannish brown from the pilot. And again, in a show aimed at preshoolers, color theory is a major priority. I'm 18 and even I find appeal in the visuals, so it was a good step in the right direction.

What the fu-

Ok the more I look at it the less uncanny it is (actually it's lowkey cute) but I 5 year old me probably would've died laughing looking at that. It's so goofy looking and it feels like it borders on uncanny but not too much. Again, aimed at kids so they probably wanted a more cartoonish look and I wouldn't blame them. The face also kinda blends in with Bucky's model, given that he's a CG character in a 2D animated world (like Rocket from Little Einsteins, Carpet from Aladdin, the Wildebeest Herd from Lion King, or Forte from Beauty and the Beast 2). What do I think about the CG itself though? It works. It really does and I have to give props to the animators for their neat crafting and blending of 2D and 3D (obviously this is a pilot so you can't walk in with high expectations of Fantasia-level quality animation, especially knowing how much hell animators can and will go through just to put something out onto the small-screen, that being said, the animation in the pilot is pretty easy on the eyes).

Let's talk about Character Design.

There are a lot of things to like about Nibs, especially if you choose to divorce the movies from the show, but one thing in particular I like is his design.

You see, there's this thing called the color wheel. In art class, we learn about where colors lie on the color wheel and what relation they have to each other. Purple and yellow are a good example of complenetary colors, which are colors that creates high contrast when blended together.

Being a kids' show, high contrast is something that will be frequent in the art-style. If the finalized version of Captain Hook's ship works because it blends in, Nibs' outfit design works but for the opposite reasons. It stands out, making him noticeable both in his own shots and with the other characters. And it's appropriately placed. He has a purple vest and hat, but yellow lines along it, along with a yellow sword to make the contrast not too subtle, but not too overt. All combined with a cyan patch on his right sleeve that will be eye-catching enough.

The color direction of this show is really damn impressive!

This is pretty cool!

It's hard to tell with screengrabs and the poor quality of the video, but this is clearly supposed to be an early version of the "Pirate Password" sequence from Seasons 1-3.

I like this! It's pretty unique and a fun way to introduce the show. I prefer the final version, but had this been what they gone with, I would've had a damn good time seeing this as a kid.

Also, I have no screenshot for this, but Izzy's original name was Reddy. Don't ask me why.

I miss Season 1

Like, this episode really makes me nostalgic for the show and most of its simple, yet neat qualities like Jake's team actually being a team [instead of S4 making it Jake + Other Guys: The Series], Hook and Smee's fun little dynamic and the classic adventures. I'd argue that this should've actually been an episode.

Also Burton and Bennet's performances are really good, you can tell that they loved playing their characters again after 9 years in spite of Return to Never Land's financial flop. They really are worthwhile successors to Conried and Thompson.

The Team Treasure Chest was Way Different

So in this version, the Dubloons were just silver coins. Not gold. And there was a specific amount of Dubloons that you could earn after solving Pirate Problems, which would unlock a treasure at the end. (Also obvious reference to the pieces of eight).

I think they probably should've kept that, it would've added more variety to the show with every differet treasure being earned.

Holy shit there's LORE?

Izzy explains to Nibs that she made a promise to Tinker Bell in accordance to the 'order of the fairies' to use Pixie Dust as a last resort, after Nibs asks her why they can't just fly to Hook themselves.

Like, not only does she outright mention Tinker Bell when in the actual show, it takes 2 seasons for the character to appear, but there's this legit backstory behind it, which I guess was the prototype for "Only for emergencies!"

Nothing in the show contradicts this, and we do get some dialogue similar to this in later episodes, but man this was quite the surprise for a test pilot.

Oh yeah, Bucky talks!

The VA for Sharky also voices him. It's actually kind of sweet, and it implies that it's Bucky, not Sharky, singing the theme song (especially since Sharky and Bones aren't in the intro of this pilot).

I think I'm getting the idea of why Nibs was a character in the first place,

A recurring gag in this pilot is that Nibs attempts to solve the pirate problems on his own only to struggle and require Team Pirate's help. The message being that teamwork, especially with your friends is more effective and better than trying to solve every problem on your own. Obviously this show isn't the first or only show aimed at children to have this message, let alone a Disney show, but I think the idea with Nibs (and this is speculation) was to have him be a stand-in for the audience so they could learn the message along with him. That's a very good sentiment.

And I guess maybe they thought they could accomplish this lesson without this forumula with Nibs which may have been the reason he was cut, and yeah, the show pulls this off pretty well without him. But this does put things into perspective; They had a lot of good ideas that wound up not being used, but the actual show doesn't really suffer with the loss of said good ideas because they are able to pull it off efficiently. So yeah, this show still rocks. Personally I would've included Nibs just because of the 'character being a stand-in for the audience to take in the moral with them' thing being pretty smart.

I also like the dynamic between the four pirates. It's clear he's the overcompensating 'little brother' figure of the group. I guess that role went to Cubby once Nibs was phased out but you can appreciate how these kids feel like a genuine friend group.

The Team Treasure Chest Song is Sung Too Early

After getting the 8th dubloon, the pirates sing the Team Treasure Chest Song. And then it cuts to Hook cornering the pirates in the cave.

It definitely makes sense to do what they did in the actual series, save the song for the end when the pirates have actually completed their adventure and earned their victory/huzzah.

Hi Skully

I guess there's another reason for why Nibs' was cut was to allow the story to balance the characters easier. Since Skully barely had any lines here, or a role, and seems to be written in the stereotypical parrot way. Again, one thing that was improved in the finalized version.

CONCLUSION:

It's so interesting to see how different things were, how they could've been and how it could've worked. There were a few things here and there that I think deserved to be tweaked, but overall, it's a really pleasant viewing experience and even though I'm sad a few things, Nibs included didn't make the cut, it's nice knowing that the show was able to hold its own even without those elements.

God I really hope other show pilots/series bibles like Lion Guard or Elena of Avalor come to light because this is legitimately intriguing. Like, finding fossilized remains of extinct animals type intriguing.

[briarroselvr]

I cannot be the only one who thought the tinker bell movies were awful

[briarroselvr]

i hate the "apple and raven were switched at birth" theory so bad it's insane. like, not only is it laughably unfounded but it literally goes against everything the story of eah is trying to tell?

[briarroselvr]

Ok so girl who has everything: "I was always taught"

Thaught what? By who? Did they forget she didn't have a normal childhood? There was nobody to teach her such things. What does she mean by "always taught"?

And if she means "always" taught by Ari and fred ,,,,, she's been with them for just a bit over two years. And she was already an adult when she found them.

Please help me out here if you may

Okay but yeah this line bothers me too

To be fair, the full thing is "I was always taught nobody's got it all" and it can be interpretated as Gothel just... telling her that life in the tower was the best thing she could ever get, that she couldn't be safe and go in the outside world or something of the like. But honestly this song is so... weirdly written in some ways that I understand why you got confused because when I first heard it my first thought was also like "by who??"

i know the usual criticism of Rapunzel's attitude in this song is that she's being selfish because she doesn't care about Cassandra, and I get it because it is pretty strange that there's not a single moment when she talks about her but... idk, my personal problem with it, and with s3 in general, is that to me it feels like they're trying to say that, you know, Rapunzel is fine now, no more trauma to speak of, she's all healed and everything in her life is good :) and it's not even denial, this is treated as a fact most of the time. Even for the Gothel thing, it's not that they gave Cass trauma with her that bothers me the most, it's more that they're contrasting her with Rapunzel who's... idk, supposed to be someone who's fine now and can help Cass get better. And, well, I don't think that's exactly the case, I think there was still a lot to explore about Rapunzel's trauma, and how it's affecting her - and I wouldn't have minded if she thought she was okay now when in fact she was not, but that's never really the angle the series took.

[briarroselvr]

speaking of hugs i really wish that like... rapunzel got more of them? and from different people?

it's just, on one part i really think the whole arc with cass and how rapunzel struggles with hard boundaries which leads her to hurt her friend even if she doesn’t want to is really interesting and could have been amazing had it had... an actual conclusion to it instead of being handwaved away

but also... rapunzel spent 18 years with an abusive "mother" who held hugs over her head as a reward for compliance, she spent 18 years during which comfort only came from the very same person who hurt her and then... Then she got out, and she had Eugene who loves hugging her as much as she does him, she hugs her parents sometimes and then... that's it? I don't know how to explain but just, I wish that all the lessons about boundaries hadn't been negative ones - i wish there had been a middle ground, and that rapunzel got to learn about different kinds of people during the course of the series

[briarroselvr]

A bit specific but your opinion on Gothel being a disciple of Zhan Tiri? Do you think it would have been better to develop this more in the story?

CALANTHE MY BELOVED

kdhdjdks so in general i am always of the opinion that More Demons would have been better for the story, esp since zhan tiri was the ultimate big bad of the series, and in s3 when gothel is made such an overwhelming part of cassandra’s motivations it feels odd that they just… never mentioned it?

and ofc i’m disappointed about the lack of disciples in s3 in general. sugracha :(

but! on the other hand, i don’t think it would have been good necessarily to put more gothel lore into s3 if nothing else changed? the s3 story was already so focused on Cass Mad About Gothel and drawing increasingly nonsensical parallels between them that i feel like without serious restructuring, more gothel development would have been… kind of just more of the same, and i’m not about that.

and then on a third hand i’m sort of glad that the show gave us just enough to confirm that yep, gothel was a contemporary of zhan tiri’s and possibly a disciple just like tromus and sugracha and then NOTHING ELSE, because that sort of wide open blank space in canon is exactly the kind of playground i love and there’s absolutely nothing in canon that can contradict my extensive headcanons about who calanthe gothel was or what her relationships with the other disciples were like or what drew her into demanitus’s tutelage or why she betrayed him for zhan tiri or why she betrayed zhan tiri to use the sundrop for herself or what she was *like* before she spent two thousand years whittling her humanity away because all she cared about was being young and pretty. and, like, if she’d been given more development or backstory in canon i would either be incorporating it or disregarding it depending on how well it suited my headcanons but it is kind of freeing to just not have any canonical material at all

and on the fourth hand i just really fucking love the concept that she was a disciple of zhan tiri it’s so FUNNY. this woman was two thousand years old and lived through LEGENDARY HISTORICAL EVENTS and personally learned from DEMANITUS AND ZHAN TIRI THEMSELVES and then was like “u know what i want to use this knowledge to live alone in a cabin and my life’s ambition is to be Beautiful, Forever, and keep detailed logs of every time someone compliments me.” she’s such a LOSER LMAO

[briarroselvr]

mulling over RATGT tonight, as one does, & specifically how it reflects on eugene’s friendship with cassandra and how, like.

ok so tts tries pretty hard to sell that cass and eugene have this sibling-esque bond. the ribbing. the banter. the “no one gets to be a jerk to you except me” thing eugene does sometimes and like, him literally saying he thinks of cassandra as a sister. it’s all very like. the stereotypical sibling relationship. but - & idk if this is down to a lack of interest in developing relationships outside rapunzel or what but - after the front half of s1 there’s no? like bonding moments between cass and eugene without rapunzel. it feels very . shallow. anyway

RATGT

it’s implied in RATGT that eugene is aware , or at least suspects that cassandra is struggling?? like this conversation:

RAPUNZEL: I don't get it, Eugene. I have never seen Cass act like this before.

EUGENE: Yeah. Angry, brooding, impatient, I'm stunned.

RAPUNZEL: You know what I mean. Ever since we left Corona, she's been... different.

EUGENE: Because she is. We all are, Blondie. We've all had to make some adjustments since leaving Corona. We're not the same people we were six months ago. And, well, why would Cass be any different

RAPUNZEL: It's just that ever since I've known Cass, it's like she seems so...together.

EUGENE: You, of all people, should know things aren't always what they seem.

eugene first dismissed the notion that cassandra’s extreme distress and irrationality could be out of character because he literally cannot seem to pass up an opportunity to take potshots at her but moving past that. when he sees that rapunzel is truly confounded he drops the humor at cassandra’s expense and takes a more genuine tact, which involves him . directly suggesting that cass being “put together” is just a façade which. would imply that eugene understands that cass is, to put it lightly, having a hard time.

and despite this he doesn’t lift a finger to help her, unless you count like. vaguely hinting to rapunzel that cass might be hurting under her put together mask and then nudging her to talk to cass without so much as a “hey shouting her down and pulling rank on her in front of the entire group probably hurt her feelings” which is an observation that would have saved quite likely everyone a lot of pain but , whatever

i just really think the “oh eugene is an ass to her because #siblingbanter but when anyone else is mean or tries to hurt her he springs to her defense” thing falls flat in light of how utterly apathetic eugene is towards her in RATGT. he cringes when rapunzel publicly humiliates her but doesn’t talk to rapunzel about how that was, maybe, not a nice thing to do, he doesn’t speak up in cassandra’s defense, he doesn’t try to talk to cass himself despite evidently perceiving that she is, in fact, spiraling. he doesn’t like. at any point, express concern for cassandras hand after rapunzel mutilates it. in destinies collide he even, like rapunzel, blames cass for the injury - which in the kindest possible reading suggests that he heard rapunzel’s side of the story and accepted it with face value and either never spoke to cass about it or cass just decided to let it lie to avoid a repeat of the RDO situation.

also just the fact that after RATGT after knowing cass is struggling after watching rapunzel literally YELL at her to shut up in the great tree, eugene uses “we never listen to you!” as a jab at cass when he’s frustrated with her in the shell house?! like. jesus eugene isn’t an idiot he demonstrates over and over that while he can be a doofus sometimes he’s very socially astute and emotionally observant and i just. i just don’t believe, after RATGT, that eugene didn’t have an inkling that saying “we never listen to you” would be deeply hurtful to cass, as it would be deeply hurtful to anyone whose best friend pulled rank and shouted to silence them in front of the entirety of their shared friend group followed by exactly zero of their friends sticking up for them, followed by everyone just ignoring the disabling injury they sustained in the course of rescuing their best friend from a literal death incantation, while said best friend harangued them for having the audacity to be upset after all of this. like. either he has so thoroughly dehumanized her in his mind that her feelings and pain do not even exist to him or he said that to hurt her

and then he says she’s like a sister to him in the same breath as he suggests she’s the obvious candidate for betraying the group . i really - like. what was the intention, here. the softest reading i can think of is that eugene enjoys poking fun at cass and has mistaken that for a close friendship but delegates any and all feelings talk to rapunzel because he isn’t comfortable with the idea of being emotionally vulnerable with cass; but the one that makes the most sense to me is that eugene, at best, tolerates cassandra for rapunzel’s sake and channels his resentment and seething dislike into an endless volley of “jokes” at her expense whilst mouthing a platitude now and then to give himself plausible deniability. but i am positive that eugene is not intended to be a gigantic passive aggressive dickhead. what… were the writers thinking? were they thinking?

[briarroselvr]

Hi! I’ve read some of your posts about Rapunzel. They’re very good! One thing I’ve noticed about Rapunzel is that she likes to have uneeded amounts of control over other people. Including her friends. While this is most obvious with Cassandra, you can see it in her interactions with her other friends and people as well. While I like to think that letting Cassandra go at the end was a step in the right direction, I don’t know if I would say Rapunzel’s outgrown this tendency. It’ll be a process.

mhm this is one of the things that most interests me about rapunzel, bc here’s this character who grew up with zero autonomy and was then thrust more or less immediately into a position of enormous power with no preparation whatsoever, and my read on her controlling behavior is that she, as a result of these circumstances, simply isn’t able to differentiate between having autonomy and having power; i.e. she needs to be in absolute control of a situation in order to feel free to live her life as she chooses.

(consider rapunzeltopia: rapunzel, having festered away in hidden doubt and guilt over her decisions in the great tree for months, is so tempted by the promise of a world where she has no power and no one demands that she make decisions for them that she comes within inches of knowingly trapping herself in a fantasy where she will have no ability to make choices whatsoever; and critical to her overcoming this temptation is for her to symbolically defeat her doubts about the choices she made in ratgt. the first thing that happens when rapunzel rejects the dream is she is attacked by a furious cassandra, injured arm exposed, blaming rapunzel for everything - and then rapunzel picks up her crown, the symbol of her authority as a princess, to deflect nightmare!cassandra’s blow and literally cracks her out of existence. power and autonomy are so closely intertwined in her subconscious that she cannot have the latter without embracing the former.)

(as a series tts is broadly pro-monarchy and celebrates rapunzel’s growth into feeling comfortable and secure in her power, so i doubt that this is the intended reading of rapunzeltopia, but it’s the one that is the most compelling to me personally. anyways,)

it’s very easy to see how she came to conflate these two things - what’s less clear, and quite a bit more interesting for me both as a fan doing analysis and as a writer writing fic, is her path out of this mindset. she needs to be really challenged on her controlling behaviors, and she needs to have chances to step back and allow other people their own choices in a way that allows her to work through the underlying fear that not being in control will keep her entrapped in some way; i think she would need to dig pretty deep to get to a point where she could even articulate this fear, which is a necessary step to disentangling it from her thoughts, and all of this becomes harder when she’s a princess whose authority is seldom if ever questioned by her loved ones.

i think, in a canonish setting, a lot of it would have to come from conflicts with her peers; foreign dignitaries who are simply not beholden to her authority as corona’s princess and who have the social and political standing to set and enforce boundaries with her. much of her ability to be as controlling as she is comed not from rapunzel being particularly manipulative (she has some habitual behaviors that are manipulative, but no more than any victim of emotional abuse might have) or uniquely skilled in maneuvering people (she’s socially inept) but rather from the fact that all of her friends are commoners, and the one who gets the brunt of the controlling tendencies is her literal servant, so in a sense they really can’t say no to her. people from other countries of equal standing to her, however…

post-s3 i don’t think it would take a lot, honestly, for her to become aware of the basic problem, even though it would take a long time to unpack. a handful of messy diplomatic incidents to get her thinking about it, in top of her already having grown enough to give cass her blessing when cass decided to leave. i think s3 ends on a note of rapunzel being close to a breakthrough in this regard but not quite there yet.

(in fic of course i just threw her to the wolves, and by wolves i mean pirates who don’t give a damn that she’s the princess, a mere eight months out of the tower, because catastrophic culture shock builds character)

[briarroselvr]

I read a post by you where you describe Corona “as a society that chews you and spits you out” if you’re not a Royal. While I’ve heard you talk about the dark aspects of Coronan society In regards to how it shaped Cassandra, would you mi d talking about Coronan society itself? Like you, I’ve also noticed how Corona shuns people like Varian, an intellectual, and Cassandra, a woman who would rather be a warrior than accept the feminine role of a Handmaiden.

i don't remember the specific post so i will say as a blanket statement that not everything i write re: corona is textual analysis; a significant amount is specifically about bitter snow corona, which is a whole other ball game so -

& the reason i start with that disclaimer is it can be, i think, difficult to discuss this subject in the context of canon, just because insofar as there is worldbuilding in tts it exists in service of the plot (why isn't cassandra allowed to join the guard? because her character arc demands that she be barred from pursuing her dreams, that's why—etc) and while it's very easy to read "corona is systemically misogynistic and xenophobic" out of the text and then extrapolate accordingly vis a vis how this has shaped the characters, there are... a lot of gaps that need to be filled and you end up getting into headcanon territory pretty fast.

[and then you also start running into the question of: tts thoughtlessly reproduced the superficial appearance of a lot of real-world bigotries in the culture of corona, but it seems doubtful that the intent was for corona to come across as having this very discriminatory and closed-minded culture, so to what extent do we even need to accept as fact the existence of that bigotry? which is a question that matters in particular for fanworks where the goal is to portray corona as a more equitable place.]

anyway,

the point being that taking tts corona at face value, it is an absolute, imperialist monarchy whose citizenry is downright slavish in its loyalty to the king; women have little if any social or economic power, there are no women in the guard despite there being a rule on the books allowing them to join, and feminine gender roles appear to be harshly socially enforced [besides cassandra, the only gnc women we encounter are criminals and outlaws]; every trace of saporian cultural identity has been eradicated or forced underground in the centuries since conquest, and self-identified saporians are considered to be 'foreigners' despite being, as is explicitly stated in s1, coronan citizens; and the staggeringly harsh and blatantly unfair criminal justice system all but guarantees anyone who gets caught up in it once will be unable to escape even if they survive prison. i think the question of whether coronan culture has a strain of anti-intellectualism running through it or not is not something that can really be argued from the text (one of corona's major festivals involves celebrating the innovation and scientific exploration of the nation's citizens, and varian's villagers are probably wary of him because he blows old corona up on the regular, which,)

and that's like

a lot to unpack

[there's also the headache-inducing question of horses in the tts universe, and whether they count as people for this sort of thing, but i try not to think about that because it is just Too Much.]

what i always end up coming back to when i think abt this though is 1. the saporians and 2. coronan criminal justice, because those feel like the most egregious examples of like—oh, my god, corona is a fucked up place—in that the saporians are a persecuted ethnic group that corona treats like a historical footnote and everything we see and hear about the justice system in corona makes it breathtakingly clear that ordinary citizens just flat out do not have rights in corona and if accused of a crime would be lucky to get even a sham trial before getting tossed into jail. like, if that's the baseline then everybody here is fucked.

[briarroselvr]

In what way is Rapunzel’s mindset when it comes to criminals more black and white and morally stunted?

than cassandra’s?

cass splits the difference between understanding that past behavior is a good predictor of present behavior whilst also 1. not caring about The Law for its own sake and 2. not treating people with criminal backgrounds like they’re somehow a different or lesser category of human from everyone else. e.g., she’s initially suspicious of lance for the same reasons eugene is—because he acts exactly like an unrepentant thief casing the palace would act (including trying to pocket valuables right in front of her!)—but the instant lance decides hey i’m not gonna steal anymore cass just. accepts that and never has a single problem with lance ever again. likewise she gets along fine with the pub thugs and fits right in with the vardarans. the criminals she has problems with are exclusively the ones Actively Causing Problems for her or people she cares about.

(cassandra is also. you know. a criminal herself gkgjfjdhkg she commits treason in before ever after!)

rapunzel on the other hand has. a very egocentric model of morality—which is natural and understandable given the isolation in which she was raised and the egotistical abuser who raised her. it’s “things that i don’t like: Bad; things i do like: Good,” with a side helping of the only type of interpersonal conflict rapunzel has ANY exposure to before she turns 18 is gothel’s adversarial and narcissistic zero sum approach where someone is always 100% right and the other person has to be 100% wrong and the person who is right is always the one who cries the loudest about their feelings being hurt.

i think this is most obvious with how rapunzel reacts to varian in TAR—she’s shocked and horrified when he says he only cares about saving his dad, she treats the victimless crime of stealing a dead flower of solely sentimental value as a Morally Heinous Act and is more concerned about the fact that varian “tricked her” into stealing it (when what actually happened is more or less he went “hey i need the flower to save my dad” and she went “NO STEALING IS WRONG?!” so he tried to mollify her by hedging about how much of it he needed—the fact that his dad was encased in a block of magical amber at the time didn’t even register to her as a justifiable reason to steal something no one was using anyway).

but at the same time when a year later he demonstrates an inkling of regret and desire to be friends again she welcomes him back into the fold with zero hesitation, bc she has an underlying mindset of “nice to me = good” that makes it very easy for her to forgive people who treat her, well, nicely. which is a double-edged sword because it can make her very compassionate and willing to give second chances—valuable traits for a leader!—but it also makes her easy to take advantage of—think sugracha, tromus, or even the much less dire situation of lance taking advantage of her hospitality and willingness to turn a blind eye to obvious red flags on the grounds of lance being Charming and Eugene’s Friend.

(in a similar vein: rapunzel won’t hear a word against the pub thugs, who are *bandits,* because they have nice hobbies that she appreciates and they have a soft spot for her, in contrast to cassandra who can both acknowledge that the pub thugs are…bandits whilst still treating them the same as she treats any other person.)

all this gets muddied further by tts’ inability/refusal to deal with things like…the separatists or caine, whose crimes mostly amount to Rebelling Against The Monarchy That Fucked Us Over, which because raps ends up *in charge* of corona at the end of the series but makes zero effort to even open a conversation with caine or andrew regarding how she can alleviate their problems or make reparations for the shit her kingdom did to them, ends up creating the implication that rapunzel is only invested in reforming criminals who are willing to be buddy-buddy with her. i don’t think that implication is *intended* but it’s a valid reading of the text nonetheless.

(the very plot driven writing is also a factor here—rapunzel jumps to the conclusion that varian is evil in part because the narrative *needs* her to think he’s evil, and that’s also why neither eugene nor cass challenges her on that conclusion despite the whole… they know his dad is trapped and he’s being hunted by frederic’s secret police thing. to an extent we’ve got to rely on some of the lower stakes examples like one angry princess or the vardaros arc or how cass despite wanting to be a guard isn’t particularly interested in catching the strikers in BBOC whereas rapunzel is thinking up traps and lance and eugene have a whole elaborate investigation, etc, to get a sense of like, the baseline of their characters when not being smushed around like play-doh to fit the needs of the overarching plot.)

and for fanworks at least it’s an implication i like to take seriously as, like, a starting point for rapunzel’s basic mindset, bc it’s something she can *grow out of* through time and experience and being challenged on it by characters who are allowed to challenge her because i don’t have disney executives breathing down my neck about Not Criticizing The Monarchy In A Disney Princess Show.

ETA: this isn’t to say that cass is More Moral than rapunzel—rapunzel has a very strong (and black and white) moral code whereas i think cass is pretty amoral in general—just that *because* cass is amoral and indifferent about lawbreaking unless it’s personally relevant to herself she ends up being both more realistic and more reasonable towards people with criminal pasts (or presents) than rapunzel is

[briarroselvr]

Oml this analysis is extremely interesting. I’m currently doing a rewatch and I’m glad there’s so much online about rta in comparison to other Disney series’s.

my most controversial tangled opinion is that the sundrop/moonstone lore isn’t confusing, it’s just a soft magical system in a story that wanted a harder one.

what i mean by this is: there are zero theoretical limits on the powers of the sundrop and moonstone, but their actual established powers are nebulous and controlled by vague concepts (“faith” and “feelings”) without any hard explanation. this works as long as the magic is a mysterious quest object and its actual use is largely incidental, but once cass takes the moonstone, the magic becomes a central component of the plot and the system fails.

Keep reading

[briarroselvr]

Theory about some Dogs

This theory includes 101 Dalmatians, Lady and the Tramp and Oliver & Co. In 101 Dalmatians you see this to dogs.

You are in a pet shop. But when the became to old, they became stray dogs in Lady and the Tramp

But the lady dog Peg gets adopted, while the other dog still is a stray dog. But with more sray dogs and a wanderer in Oliver & Co.

[briarroselvr]

Theory about Dumbo

You can see in different movies some Dumbo toys.like in Lilo & Stitch and Pinocchio.

I think Dumbo is real and was really famous. The mouse Timothy said; ‘Dumbo, you making history’. Dumbo was in papers.

So there can excist Dumbo toys. Lilo her sister ooks like a history fan. She has a Mulan poster in her room.

But I don’t think thats our Mulan, but a actress. I also saw a poster in Lady and the Tramp. You can see a circus poster. Dumbo works in a circus and is famous.

[briarroselvr]

Theory about Tangled, Frozen and Tarzan

This theory includes more parts. So we start with Frozen and Tangled are famliy. In Frozen you can see Rapunzel and Flynn.

Why are they there? Because they are related! Because Rapunzel’s mother and Elsa and Anna’s father are sibblings.

The second part is about Frozen and Little mermaid. Elsa and Anna there parents went to a wedding. The wedding of Rapunzel and Flynn. On there way the ship sinks and become the ship in the Little mermaid.

The little mermaid supposed to be in Denmark.

But then I found this map:

Here Ariel doesn’t live in Denmark. I believe in this map. So we came to part three. Elsa and Anna’s parents went in a storm and got lost on sea. The ship gots in fire somewhere between America and Africa. And became the ship in Ariel. The parents landed in Africa. This trip takes about nine months. They get a baby boy Tarzan.

If you look at the picture of king and queen from Herendelle and Tarzans parents, they look alike.

[briarroselvr]

Theory about Jane and Belle

If you look at the movie Tarzan, you can find the tea set from Beauty and the Beast.

They could have bought it, but I don’t think so. Belle and Jane have the same taste of men…..

And the look alike. Not only the hair, but also the dresses.

[briarroselvr]

Theory about Tarzan and Atlantis

I don’t only believe Jane and Belle are related, but I also think Tarzan&Jane and Milo from Atlantis are related. I mean, look at his grandfather!

He really looks like Jane’s father.

And look at Milo. He looks like the old guy! And both are adventurers.

Milo explains his parents died when he was young and his grandfather raised him.

So why are Tarzan and Jane not there? Because they died in the jungle!