#tangled analysis

[queer-cosette]

Cassandra and Colour

In TTS/RTA, when Cassandra wears red, it's representative of her loyalty to Corona and Princess Rapunzel. The most vivid red she wears is the sleeves of her guard uniform.

It's important that it's vivid, because this is when her loyalty to the kingdom itself is her priority. And it's the same uniform the other guards wear. It's also brighter than the red she wears as part of her 'action' outfit:

This is a much more brownish red, almost pinkish, which is interesting because pink is one of Rapunzel's preferred colours. This is significant because Cassandra tends to set aside her loyalties to the kingdom in favour of her loyalty to Rapunzel specifically, which is demonstrated the first time we see her wear this outfit - when she sneaks Rapunzel out of the kingdom for one night of freedom before her coronation.

Also interesting is that the red is worn mainly on her undershirt. From there we can assume that the red undershirt is actually touching her skin (at least on her arms and neck), and it's also presumably the last layer of clothing over any undergarments, meaning it's almost directly over her heart. Loyalty is something that, at this point, she is making her own decisions about.

But then, at the Great Tree, Cassandra's loyalty to Rapunzel is her undoing. Someone else summed it up elsewhere, but basically, Cassandra and Eugene both see Rapunzel's safety as their number one priority - but Rapunzel's number one priority is Eugene's safety. No one has Cassandra's safety as their number one priority, not even herself, and that's why she's the one to get injured. Her arm is badly burnt, even withered, so she puts on this outfit:

Two things are important to note here. First, the arm that was withered was Cassandra's right arm - her dominant arm, established in the next few episodes where she is forced to relearn how to use a sword. This is significant because it means her right arm is the one she uses to protect Corona and Rapunzel, and now it has been destroyed. She's slipped further away from that position of loyal bodyguard by another tiny amount.

The other thing to note is that she is still wearing red, but now, rather than a garment worn over her heart, it's a cape. The red is on full display, but now it's the furthest garment from both her skin and heart. She's shrouding herself in it now, because at this point she's trying to pretend that everything is still as it was and that she's still highly capable of doing the job she was given (first by insisting she's not as badly injured as she is, and then later when she begins to contemplate double crossing Rapunzel). But she's slipping further and further away, and her loyalty to Rapunzel is nothing more than a mask by the time they reach the Moonstone Chamber of the Dark Kingdom.

A third thing that's interesting to note is that the cape is a much... purplier shade of red than anything else Cassandra is worn. Where else have we seen a purplish red before?

In fact, knowing that the Great Tree - where Cassandra got the armour - was once Zhan Tiri's stronghold, for whom Gothel once worked, there's even the possibility that the cape is made from the same actual fabric as her dress.

There's more analysis to be done here regarding Cassandra and colours, but I'll put it in a reblog.

[adventuretolkienlover]

Okay, please tell I'm not the only one who noticed this. Vex's ear are like, super pointy!

Okay, y'all gonna call me crazy. But think about it. We've never seen her parents. She has unusually pointy ears. And she's very talented with weapons. I suspect...

She may be part elvish.

Do you see it?! I do! Anyone else notice this? This may or may not be important to my fic later.

[itsvioletevergarden29]

I once saw someone comment on a video about Rapunzel and Gothel that Rapunzel should've stayed with Gothel because "she had everything she could've wanted in her tower" (yeah, except love and freedom) "and also what if her birth parents were abusive". Yeah but they literally weren't and even if they were then she could get out of that situation too. I was SEETHING after reading that comment.

It’s the way mother Gothel is repeatedly proven wrong. The way Repunzel gets to find out the world is full of beauty and wonder. The way everybody who meets her loves her. The way she mumbles when she tells Maximus it’s her birthday and literally nobody gives a shit. The way Gothel tells Repunzel “look at you. You think he’s impressed?” in reference to her hair but we see multiple times that Eugene thinks she’s beautiful, specifically the next day after it’s been braided. It’s just so good and multilayered

[artist-issues]

I remember during the making of Tangled, the filmmakers said they had to work hard to design Rapunzel’s tower to be beautiful and seem like a cozy, fun environment, while also making Mother Gothel seem sweet and loveable, if manipulative.

Because, they said, if the environment is too much like a prison, and Gothel is too much like a villainess, the audience wouldn’t believe in Rapunzel as a character. They’d think she was either stupid or cowardly, to stay in such a nasty situation without trying to escape sooner. But if her circumstances seem just livable enough, just sweet enough, that you can see some of the appeal, then you wouldn’t blame her for waiting so long to leave.

Why didn’t they do that with Wish?

Why didn’t they think that relatability through?

Nobody is really feeling compelled to root for the everyday Rosas citizens during the movie. You don’t feel like rooting for Asha’s cause, or even Queen Amaya’s. Because you think to yourself, “why did it take the townspeople so long to ask the question ‘why can’t we just have our wishes back?’”

Asha comes up with those culture-breaking questions, inexplicably, in the first twenty minutes of the movie. It takes the rest of the townspeople about 24 hours to suddenly start asking that, too.

So why don’t you root for them?

Because when something bad happens to them, part of your brain goes, “why didn’t they see that coming, though? Why didn’t they ask questions? That one’s a little bit on them.”

And you don’t really feel that feeling you got with Mother Gothel, where you were like, “Oh yeah, I can see why the main character trusted this villain; the villain really seems to care about the hero, if you didn’t know what she was after.” You don’t;t get that same feeling with Magnifico. Because the whole idea of what he does—by erasing people’s memories and yelling at them and having no moments with regular folk where he’s warm and personal and building trust—is so malicious that we don’t believe the other characters couldn’t see it.

We COULD HAVE believed it. If they’d added in good writing and character moments to make it believable.

When Magnifico interacts with the people who trust him and are duped by him, he’s up on a stage, flashing superpowers they don’t have and then disappearing back into his tower after only granting one wish. He’s not on the welcome tour with Asha. He doesn’t know his own palace staff by name. He’s done nothing to build the trust all the side-characters unquestioningly give him. So even at the end, when everyone’s like, “aw, we wanted to believe in Magnifico,” we don’t feel it. Because didja? Why? Everyone could see that coming.

Meanwhile Mother Gothel tells Rapunzel she loves her most every time she leaves. She laughs with her. She reinforces every conversation they have with the idea that she’s desperate to protect Rapunzel. She brings her her favorite soup as a surprise and remembers the ingredients. She goes to get white paint on a very long trip so Rapunzel can paint. She compliments her strength and beauty—even if it’s backhanded. She calls her “dear,” and “darling.” She knocks thugs out with sticks, returning even after she argued with and supposedly ‘gave up’ on Rapunzel, all to supposedly’ protect’ her. So when Rapunzel realizes it was all an act, and she’s wrathful and furious and grabs Gothel’s hand, we DO feel it. Because we believed that Rapunzel really didn’t see this coming, so the shock stings worse. We don’t blame Rapunzel, and we do blame Gothel.

Just another example of what #NotMyDisney forgot about themselves.

[essycogany]

Sonic’s been more acceptable to hugs in canon. Specifically with Tangled and Amy. He also has small examples with the Wisps as well. It makes me think after Sonic Forces where Sonic’s had no contact with ANYONE for 6 months, he’s grown to like hugs A LOT more.

Before Sonic Forces:

After Sonic Forces:

Before Forces Sonic politely pushes the Wisps away from him for some personal space. While after Forces he greets them with open arms. This gives off the impression after disasters like the metal virus or Frontiers where Sonic couldn’t even high-five his friends, the blue hedgehog grew to be more physically affectionate towards his friends. I guess Sonic decided it was something he wanted to appreciate while he’s able to.

Makes you really wonder how those obstacles might’ve permanently affected him. To be fair those situations including the one with Surge, did a total number on the guy in some fashion. We were told about it more then shown in Forces but it still counts.

Or maybe I’m looking WAY too much into things. It’s your call!

[tiredandoptimistic]

I know that Tangled: the Series has it's flaws, but it's also literally the ideal sequel series conceptually (and I love it forever). They didn't unravel the happy ending of the movie, they just looked at the established traits of the characters involved and elucidated how they would continue to play against each other.

Rapunzel is an eighteen-year-old who just got free from her abusive mother for the first time in her life. She's been dreaming of adventure for years, and just had two days of wild exploration. She finally got to experience the world she spent so long imagining; of course she would want to keep that going, of course she wouldn't be happy living as a princess in a castle. But also, it makes perfect sense for her to be conflicted because she's always lived through stories, so she takes the concept of "happily ever after" very seriously. All the most important people in her life (Eugene, Gothel, and King Frederic) have always reinforced the idea that you should strive for a life of peace and rest, meaning that until Cass, she thought she was weird and wrong for wanting something other than a life of luxury. And she does enjoy the luxury. There's enough new and exciting things within the city walls to keep her busy and excited for a few months, but eventually she was always going to feel that pull to explore new frontiers and meet new people.

Speaking of the people who influence her, they all have valid reasons for acting the way that they do. Eugene has already experienced years of adventure, so he's familiar with the bad parts and disenchanted with the good. For him, life in the castle is the novelty, so that's where he wants to stay. It's his relationship to Rapunzel that changes him, allows him to experience the world through her eyes, to see the beauty and wonder that she finds everywhere. He doesn't quite get where she's coming from at first, but he loves her and is able to come around and understand her point of view and do what it takes to make her happy.

Then there's Frederic, who's a somewhat complicated character. The movie didn't give him much of a character (not even a line of dialogue), and he exits as a purely benevolent symbol of "happily ever after." That worked for the movie, but the show needed conflict; so Rapunzel's parents needed personalities. Even though the writers didn't have much from the original text to go off, it's not difficult to infer that the man who spent eighteen years aware that his negligence allowed his daughter to be kidnapped (or killed, he didn't know what happened to her) would become rather protective of said daughter once reunited with her. The way he treats Rapunzel, doing everything he can to keep her locked up and ignorant, isn't good but it's understandable. He's been king for decades and he's exhausted, he wants to give his daughter the sort of happy and peaceful existence that he didn't have. He doesn't understand that she could go through all the shit that happened in her two days of adventure and want to go back out there. He's so confident in what he wants for her that he doesn't stop to listen to what she wants for herself. Now, again, these feelings are no excuse for his actions, but they do explain them. Frederic is fundamentally a good guy who's trying his best for his family, he just needs to learn to listen to what they say they need. (Which he does! Eventually. This is what character arcs are for).

It's just really neat to me how they looked at the movie and took these characters and thought about how they would come into conflict, how putting "THE END" on the screen wouldn't actually solve their problems. I love me a good villain, but sometimes it's nice to watch something where everyone involved has a good point and they just need to communicate and compromise a bit to find the best solution.

[adventuretolkienlover]

Amen! We love you Lance!

When we met Lance Strongbow, he was selfish. He wanted riches and petty revenge. He wanted it so much, he was willing to get his best friend in trouble over it, and wouldn’t listen to said best friend when he said he wasn’t interested. Instead, he lied about his intentions.

At the end of the series, he’s become a selfless man. He faces his fears to keep an entire city calm. He takes on responsibility to serve and protect the kingdom (even if it’s only a temporary promotion). And most of all, he willingly becomes father to two girls on the verge of teenagehood. Becoming a foster or adoptive parent is an extremely selfless act, especially when you’re doing it without a partner.

I love Lance, and I wish they’d focused more on him and his development.

[wishfuldr3aming]

I love how in Tangled when Mother Gothel went back to the tower after seeing Maximus alone, the inner of the tower was portrayed as dark and cold, rather than the lighter warmer colours we had in the beginning scene when Rapunzel was still there. It's kinda like Rapunzel is the light, joy and especially LIFE in the tower.

[queer-cosette]

Given your clothing analysis, would you say that green is more Cassandra’s color than Rapunzel’s?

Yes, absolutely! I don't know if you saw the final update I added to my post, but imo green for Cassandra represents innocence and new beginnings - it's the colour she's seen wearing in flashbacks to when she was a child, suggesting that when she wears it in the final scenes of Plus Est En Vous, it's a happy return to square one. She's reconciled with Rapunzel, forgiven herself, and reunited with her father - and it's the same colour she was wearing when Gothel abandoned her without a second thought, but the Captain chose to protect her and love her, and I can't imagine it would be lost on Cassandra that even after all she's done to push him away, he still loves her without question and wants her in his life.

(Green for Rapunzel, on the other hand, I think more likely represents doubt and uncertainty, since we only see her wear it on Terapi Island, where she argues with first Pascal (about his lie to the Lorbs), then Eugene (about how Hookfoot should conduct himself on his date with Serafina), then everyone (about the Idol). It's somewhat of a low point for her in Season 2 - and we see green on Rapunzel again when she uses the Hurt Incantation on the Great Tree, which, while not a moment of direct uncertainty, does mark the beginning of her friendship with Cassandra slowly truly unravelling.)

[paintbrushnebula]

I really wish we got to see what that first month of Rapunzel and Eugene's relationship was like

Because it would've been really interesting to see the reality set in for the fact that their relationship technically began 3 days after they met--that the first month or so of them essentially being boyfriend and girlfriend will be spent actually getting to know each other. They're both gonna be discovering all these things they didn't get to see in each other in those stressful, unrelenting first three days. They'll find out about their flaws and that there are things they might not like, which is perfectly normal in any relationship of course.

But they'll also discover all these crazy new things that they'll LOVE about each other, things that didn't have time to shine in those first three days. Things three days could never do justice, and boy are they grateful that their love survived those three days. Three days wouldn't have been enough, and oh there was so SO much more to discover. So all these beautiful things could never not outweigh all the uncovered flaws, and there's never that moment when either of them think they were wrong about the other, or that they jumped into things too soon, because its still them ^u^

wish me luck eepsters, I have an oceanography exam tomorrow. this bites 😖

[whosbex]

I know ppl are gonna take offense to this,but THIS is why I don’t ship Casszunel. Now I’m not saying that Cass isn’t queer,cuz she definitely is,but she just deserves someone better then Rapunzel. Because this right here shows that Rapunzel treats her like shit. And I know ppl are gonna come at me for that,and to those ppl,FACE THE FACTS! She treats Cass like shit,and doesn’t say sorry for it,so from my point of view shipping them together is not the best idea. But also on a separate note none of this story would have happened if it wasn’t for Eugene,and I know Cass gets on him for basically acting like the main character but truth be told he kinda is. Cuz if he didn’t find Rapunzel’s tower than,she wouldn’t have escaped,wouldn’t have gotten to see the real world,and wouldn’t have met Cass.

And yes I know ppl make AUs where Cass finds the tower but the story just wouldn’t be the same. So shipping Casszunel wouldn’t only be bad for Cassandra’s mental health but it also cancels out Eugene. Yes some ppl make AUs where they’re a three way but Rapunzel is always gonna love one more than the other,the one getting more love being Eugene because he was the first,which is understandable,but what does that mean for Cass?

In conclusion,form me Casszunel is kinda toxic. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t respect ppl who do ship them it’s just that most of the ppl I see who ship them make others feel wrong for not siding with them.

This scene here is always both so heartbreaking and so infuriating to me. We all know what this is meant to symbolize, but I’m gonna rehash it for those who are new both here and in the fandom. In this scene, both Cassandra and Varian fall. Varian is caught by Lance and Cassandra catches herself, reflecting how they got through their trauma and villain arcs.

Here’s the thing that pisses me off though.

Cassandra. Catches. Herself.

She is COMPLETELY alone after this fight for God knows how long. Rapunzel claims throughout the episode that she still loves and cares about Cass, but when she (somewhat accidentally) yeets her off a VERY high tower to a fall that could very well have killed her. And yet what is the first thing she does after waking up from passing out?

Call out for Eugene and Pascal. Now normally I’d be okay with this. They are her loved ones too, she’s allowed to be worried for their safety.

But she shows literally ZERO REGARD for the safety and wellbeing of the woman she professes to care about and consider a sister and best friend. Cassandra could have been DEAD for all Rapunzel knew. She had no reason to believe that fall did not kill her. And there is no second of footage between the end of that fight scene and Rapunzel getting the bottle message in Race to the Spire where she EVER shows any remorse or concern for Cass potentially being dead because of her.

And it’s not even Rapunzel here. Not Eugene, not Lance, not even Varian express any concern about Cass. They all claim to be her friends, ans yet when she falls to what could’ve been her death they don’t bat an eye. Hell, they don’t even go back and check if she’s okay!

And it’s not even this moment. This happens consistently throughout the show. Almost every near death experience Cassandra is in, nobody seems to care until after the fact.

Secret of the Sundrop. Cassandra was being crushed right there with Arianna. And unlike Arianna, she seems to have passed out and actually COLLAPSES from the pain. But no one, not even one of the extras, rushes over and checks to see if she’s okay. No one even asks her about it later.

Rapunzeltopia. Literally everyone else escapes the House of Yesterday’s Tomorrows before Rapunzel thinks of where Cass is. It wasn’t intentional, but they basically left her for dead. And when they realize she IS okay and alive, Eugene expresses his…”joy” by implying that seeing Cass is worse than seeing a subhuman monster.

Great Tree, Cassandra’s hand is burned and literally no one else checks on her except for Rapunzel. Rapunzel doesn’t even offer medical attention or offer to stop at an apothecary. And before that, she’s so focused on making sure Adira is alive that she actually seems to forget for a second that she literally just mutilated her best friend. They even go to an apothecary cart TWO EPISODES LATER and Rapunzel doesn’t say ANYTHING along the lines of “Hey maybe there’s something here that can help your hand.”!

And then in Cassandra’s Revenge, the ONE time there was a VERY likely possibly that Cassandra was dead as a doornail, they don’t do jack.

Cause I guess celebrating Eugene’s birthday is more important than making sure Cassandra is actually alive.

[lemurballing]

This is stupid:

buuuut it still works cause tangle is awesome :] i direct you to issue 37, where tangle does this:

at face value, heck yeah!! using her tail as a pulley system to tie up the boat?? so clever :) (and being able to wrap her tail around all that after the boat starts falling, before it loses much height - that’s very fast, accurate tail extension! what if she’d accidentally bonked her tail into any of those metal beams down there instead of going between them? she wouldn’t have made it in time if she did bonk!)

but you look closer… and it might not be that clever. in fact, it looks like a mistake.

(at the dark purple question mark, her tail’s path isn’t very clear. i went with ‘repeating the pattern’ around a part of the boat we couldn’t see in blue, which would then wrap around at the angle you see her tail stretch left, out from the question mark.)

it’s wrapped around the whole boat, so where���s the problem…?

the problem is: leverage (or whatever the word is for pulleys & ropes).

in the leftmost diagram, we see the dots - the anchor points of the rope - are at equal height. at a resting point, they will both hold the weight up with their own material integrity; that is, it will stay at the resting height unless the material breaks.

in the middle diagram, the ‘anchor point’ for the right rope has moved lower; the bar it holds the weight up towards is far lower, and the excess is wrapped over to tie to the ground. again, at resting position, it will remain there while the material holds.

in the right diagram, the rope arrangament is the same as the middle one, but now we’re applying pull force to bring the weight upwards. at this level, due to where the right rope is ‘anchored’ on the bar, no matter what force is applied, it cannot raise the weight any higher than that bar - only the rope on the left could pull it higher, or support its weight in a higher position.

applied to this situation:

the blue sections are parts where tangle’s tail can support the boat just by wrapping around and staying in place, pretty much; it’s a net woven around that just needs to not slip. the orange sections are where the only provable anchor point above the boat is tangle herself! (and i will note that the way she’s holding her tail here, her tail is almost certainly not the limb doing most of the pulling - for it to angle so much before and after her grip on it, it can’t be tensed. to better clarify - if you have long hair, and something pulls on your hair, it pulls your scalp. unless you grab your hair with a hand and pull it closer to your scalp, and then all the active tension is redirected through your arms.)

which means that for the boat to stay where it is - above the ‘blue level’ - tangle is actively pulling it higher! pulling the entire weight of the boat up.

so how hard is this - how heavy is the boat? in this panel, it looks like a relatively small boat; maybe a dinghy? dinghies can have those ribbed sides, and are generally round, and it could weigh somewhere between 100-200lbs, and be a little tough to carry…

nope! it is some type of motor boat (perhaps a skiff). you can see a propeller under the ‘cinch’, so it has a motor… and if you look at the rest of the page, it has at least 7 seats (presumably 8), so it has to be large enough to hold at least 7 people!

i’m not acquainted with boats so i had to do some digging - and most of the ones i found at first had consoles/raised walls/less seats than this one, which weren’t exactly a fair weight comparison. i also didn’t want to try to calculate precisely how long this boat is, since the angles are off and hard to calculate from this perspective.

so, instead i looked at a few different types of boat to get rough estimated of weights, and then i’d roughly downsize that based off estimates of how much smaller a boat for ~3ft people needs to be!

i went through a handful of similar motorboats (mostly 1-4 people, but with added physical features to add weight) and found weights between 1,000lb to 2,000lb depending on length (18-22+ feet). a yamaha 195S is 19’5” long, and 2,509lb - but a nitro z18 is 18’8” and 1,700lb. the only good visualizers i found were charts for what motor horsepower to use for what length and weight:

so it was super hard to get a good estimate of the weight here!! like super hard!! so i’m just doing a vague whatever conservative estimate and someone else can do proper math!!!

if you half the length to a presumed 10ft long - which i’m not sure is properly long enough for this boat, i’d guess somewhere between 12-15ft - and then quarter the 20ft weight to try to account for the square-cube law, you get a guesstimate of a boat weighing about 500lb. if you’re conservative with it, maybe 400lb?

which, to keep from tipping out away from the metal cradle, lowering to the level of tangle’s tail wrapped around underneath, & be held upright as tangle is doing, has to be fully supported - and as noted earlier, without real assistance from tangle’s tail’s strength, this is just her arms.

now, you could assume tangle simply wrapped that mystery segment of tail around the cradle bar she’s standing on, and this would allow much more of the boat’s weight to be supported by her tail’s structure… but it’d have to be an awkward angle for her tail to do that and it to not be visible next to her feet or in the empty space to the right, which would also put some more of the strain on her arms/body instead of her tail, so she’d stil be doing a lot!

and especially if you estimate the boat closer to 12-15ft, which is closer to 600-750lb, that gets crazier…

PLUS the fact that she had to hold that weight up for at LEAST as long to ask them to hurry & tie the boat up, AND as long as it took for the others to actually work something up/fix the cradle to hold the boat and relieve tangle of it.

conclusion: this is canon

[spideyhexx]

modern coryo where you both get anxious over your separate things so you spend the night rotting in bed together and trying to distract yourselves

(sorry I wrote more of this in the tags and I’m too lazy to move it here)

[vortexonsaturn]

The Mirror Metaphor Used In Tangled

Mirrors are an important narrative device all throughout the film, one of the first times we see a mirror on screen is when Rapunzel is a child.

We see a young Rapunzel sneaking out of her room to look at the floating lanterns, this specific mirror merely helps us understand how vain Gothel is. The mirror is reflecting back Rapunzel, and as the movie continues, a mirror reflecting Rapunzel represents a time where she is under Gothel's control.

During this scene we get our first introduction the The Mirror, the one that is primarily used for this metaphor. The Mirror shows the viewer the relationship between Gothel and Rapunzel. Here, Gothel says,

"Rapunzel, look in that mirror. You know what I see? I see a strong, confident, beautiful young lady. Oh, look, you’re here too!”

This scene is not only Gothel tearing down Rapunzel, but it gives us a direct connection between Gothel, The Mirror, and Gothel's desire to remain young forever. It shows us how Gothel views Rapunzel, how she views her only as a device to remain young, not as a daughter.

It shows us the control Gothel has over Rapunzel, as Rapunzel does not stand up for herself or even question this behavior.

In the Mother Knows Best scene The Mirror makes another appearance.

Gothel forces The Mirror in front of Rapunzel after describing all the reasons why Rapunzel can never leave the tower, after making Rapunzel feel naïve and dumb for believing she ever could survive in the real world.

The Mirror is used often to distort or only show fragments of the truth.

When Rapunzel begins to trap Flynn in the closet, The Mirror is facing away from her/the act.

The after she...secures him in...she accidentally knocks The Mirror towards her.

Following this, she finds the crown due to it's reflection in The Mirror, which she then goes to try on. She has a moment where she feels confident again, forgetting Gothel's doubts, even if it's just for a moment.

After Rapunzel has this moment, Gothel returns to the tower. This causes Rapunzel to fumble around knocking The Mirror as she hides the crown, causing The Mirror to spin around, now facing fully away from Rapunzel/the tower.

The moment is key, because this shows us Rapunzel now has a new goal. One that doesn't include Gothel's agreement. One that threatens Gothel's control.

After this, Rapunzel and Flynn escape the tower and we don't see The Mirror again until Gothel returns to find Rapunzel missing.

We see The Mirror for a brief moment, as Gothel hasn't yet realized she's lost control over Rapunzel.

When Gothel finishes inspecting the tower, The Mirror is gone.

This shows Gothel's loss of control, and the break in Gothel and Rapunzel's relationship.

In the end, after Gothel has manipulated Rapunzel back into her control, Rapunzel begins to have her realization/deja vu moment. When she realizes she is the lost princess, The Mirror reappears. Now showing a blurred reality outside of the frame.

In the final confrontation, Rapunzel rejects Gothel's attempts to touch her hair. Causing Gothel to stumble backwards, knocking over and shattering The Mirror.

Gothel and Rapunzel's relationship is broken. Gothel's control over Rapunzel is broken.

As we all know, Flynn then proceeds to use a piece of this shattered glass to cut off Rapunzel's hair. Gothel immediately begins to grow old, her death imminent.

Gothel desperately stares into the shattered remains of The Mirror, showing the shattered pieces of Gothel and Rapunzel's relationship as well as the control Gothel once had over Rapunzel.

I have more metaphors I'd love to talk about, another favorite of mine is the use of light throughout Tangled. So expect another unnecessarily long post soon!

[adventuretolkienlover]

I'm fine guys. Really! W-who's chopping onions? *Sobs*🥲😭

Took the liberty of capturing that moment - that one FRAME - before Hector chose to launch Adira into a tree. (And then I proceeded to turn it upside down so we could revel in his expression.)

You can see the uncertainty in his eyes. His angry mask has fallen to expose the fear that's been holding him captive for so long. And he's probably a little surprised by Adira offering him a place on her team - that she'd be willing join forces with him as brother and sister after he nearly killed her and her new 'friends.'

This is the moment Hector realized that there was something he cared about more than his oath, more than the Moonstone itself. After all the years he dedicated to doing what he believed was good and right, he finally accepted that killing his sister is the thing that would irreversibly damage his moral compass, and kill who he is on the inside.

He couldn't kill her - but he couldn't let her pass through the Great Tree either.

"I've seen the Sundrop's power first-hand Hector! And so will you when we return to the Dark Kingdom."

"...That'll never happen!"

This is such a loaded dialogue exchange.

Adira is convinced that once Hector sees proof of the Sundrop's power for himself, he'll believe in it just like she does. She remembers who he was before they split, and believes that he's still the same brother she once knew. She's determined to be close with him again, so they can defeat the Moonstone together, once and for all.

But Hector will never return home with his beloved sister. He will never see the Sundrop's power for himself. He will never fight by his sister's side again for as long as he lives. Because he will never let himself break his word to King Edmund.

"I'm sorry it came to this, sister."

[themattress]

Why are these Disney heroines "adorkable"?

Rapunzel (Tangled): Because she was raised in isolation her entire life. She doesn't have a clue about the outside world or social graces or other people besides her "mother" in general. But she's extremely eager to learn and eager to please, not to mention is a pent-up ball of energy waiting to run wild, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Anna (Frozen): While not as badly as Rapunzel, she was also raised in isolation for much of her life, largely having to rely on the books in her castle library to teach her about the world and things such as proper etiquette, life skills and romance. But real life is not a book, so when she actually has to do these things, she often flounders due to her nervousness, excitement or inexperience, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Moana (Moana): From early in her life, she was raised under a very strict set of rules and instilled with a strong sense of responsibility, which is at odds with her instinctive desire to break these rules and her fears that she isn't up to the challenge her responsibilities pose. All of this pent-up stress she carries within her will often cause her to explode with emotion at the slightest provocation, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Mirabel (Encanto): As a young child, she failed to receive a special gift and room the same way the rest of her family did. Now feeling like the failure of the family, Mirabel's coping mechanism became trying to make herself as extravagant and quirky as possible. She's an incredibly "Try Hard" person, which leads to her adorkability. It makes perfect narrative sense.

Asha (Wish): Um.....well, she.....yeah, I got nothing. There is no narrative justification here.

Disney doesn't have an Adorkable Problem. Just an Asha Problem.