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notmoreflippingelves · 1 year ago

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I need to ramble more about Esteban Flores, because everything about this character and his arc seem as though it was tailor-made for me and specifically designed to make me absolutely feral.

This going below the cut, both because I do not want to spoil the entire show for my friend who is think of watching Elena of Avalor and because I go full-on apologist here and I feel like that will annoy some people.

Imagine making the absolute worst mistake than anyone could possibly make, because you are 18 and scared and stupid and tired of being ignored. And it results in you losing your family and your freedom and what little self-respect you had left because you know all of this is very much your own fault.

And so you proceed to spend the next 41(!) years eking out a miserable existence in an oppressive state. Upon fear for your life, you are forced to be the reluctant right-hand of the evil witch-queen who conquered your country, killed your aunt and uncle and trapped your cousin in magical prison. In spite of this, you nevertheless do everything within your limited power trying to hold the kingdom together and make sure the people don't starve, because the queen certainly doesn't care about anything except greedily bleeding your country dry.

And no exaggeration, this is just what canon explicitly gives us outright in the pilot. Like that's not even getting into head canons/interpretations/common sense of what exactly this sort of life entailed for you. Because this is a children's show so there's only so much they will let us imply about living under that kind of system. Especially as a young, attractive, terrified person who is the last living member of the previous royal family who is likely being kept alive partly as a combination trophy/punching bag for the evil queen (even if the show never actually states this outright).

And then by some miracle, what's left of your family comes back after all this time. The evil queen is overthrown, partly because you yourself finally stood up to her at a critical moment. You and your country are finally free again, and what's more, you and your family are finally together again after over 4 decades. But you still feel like an outsider--partly because you always were an outsider in your family even in the better times and partly because over the past 41(!) years, time stood still for all of them except you.

And as a result, no one ever cares to ask what those 41 years were like for you or even just if you’re doing okay. Not only because your family can’t even begin to comprehend what it must have been like, but also because they don’t care to even *try* to understand. Because the narrative has decided that everyone else’s respective traumas is worth way more than your own. (Though tbf the narrative really doesn’t dwell much on anyone’s trauma in general but yours gets especially neglected , except to briefly play it for laughs or to remind you that your trauma is *your own fault and only your own*).

For a little while, life is pretty okay. It’s weird not having to watch your step every instant to make sure you’re not putting a toe out of line. And so you never really fully break out of your “survival mode” conditioning, making sure that you are still considered important and valuable enough to keep around.

But all the while, you know that your past—and especially your terrible little secret—is eventually going to come back to haunt you. And it does. First via blackmail and then via the return of the evil witch-queen herself. Fortunately, she is defeated for good before she can take avenge your “betrayal of her” but you still have to deal with seeing the ghost from the past who terrorized you for 41(!) years.

And then, your secret finally comes out in the open and you are disowned by your family—the family you *just* got back a few years ago—for an admittedly super bad decision that you made over four decades ago and have regretted ever since. Rather than face the rest of your life in isolation (as though you didn’t already have enough of that during the previous regime), you escape before you can be sent into exile. This puts you directly in the path of *another* terrifying, evil magical milf who you are forced to ally yourself with. Because you have 40+ years of conditioning that when a woman like that says “jump,” you say “how high?” if you are to have any hope of survival. Especially given that the only people who could’ve protected you from her are the family and friends who have just definitively washed their hands of you.

Despite this, you are still trying to seek your cousin’s forgiveness and to protect her in the little ways that you can. But you are constantly getting rebuffed over and over again, and if anything, your attempts at reconciliation only seem to make your cousin angrier, and she now hates you just as much as—if not MORE than—the woman who actually murdered her parents.

Your cousin is so angry at you specifically that she actively ignores the greater threat of Witchy Milf 2.0, because she happens to see your face and is enraged. This ends up backfiring spectacularly for you both, though it does indirectly lead to the defeat of said Witchy Milf 2.0.

But guess what? There’s no time to breathe or celebrate, because her defeat occurred during the successful summoning of a third power-mad, feminine-presenting magical humanoid and her allies. At least, this one treats you with some initial respect and actually gives you outright what you-think-you’ve-thought-you-always wanted. But she also turns your family and friends to stone in front of you as a warning of what’s to come if you dare to defy her.

But this time, you are finally done with this, have finally lost enough that you have paradoxically found your courage. You sacrifice yourself to save your cousin, and she is finally able to accept that you’ve sacrificed and changed enough that she can forgive you. And her forgiveness is so powerful and pure that it not only restores you to life but also undoes all the other evil magic. Together, you defeat this final enemy, paradoxically by banishing her to the same Underworld where your mistakes accidentally sent your aunt and uncle and her parents long ago. Peace has been restored. You have returned for good and are finally secure in your family’s love.

And after all that, there are *still* people (both presumably in universe and in the fandom outside of it) who say it's too little, too late and that it would've been better for everyone if you'd simply stayed dead.

Like I'm just... are we really victim-blaming the character who has 45 years of unprocessed trauma and guilt (both survivor's guilt and guilt in general) because of a decision he made when his brain was still developing and he was being manipulated by an older, much more powerful person?

#elena of avalor #elena of avalor meta #esteban flores #chancellor esteban #like how do you do this to me--an english major--#and not expect me to be completely unhinged about it?#like the parallelism. the THEMES.#the fact that having to abide by established sofia the first canon #meant that the writers had to significantly prolong the length of both esteban's and elena's respective traumas #i get that they had to but like 41 years? they still did THAT #and they expect me to be normal about it #don't get me wrong; i am not blaming elena for her response #it was normal and understandable and given her position; i may have acted the same #but at the same time; 41(!) years of trauma that the narrative just assumes esteban did and should've gotten over by now #even though they are not expecting elena to have gotten over the same 41-years of trauma?#and not just little trauma with a little “t”; we're talking TRAUMA™#someone get this man to the Ever Realm equivalent of therapy #like i'm not totally wild about s3 in general (we should've had an final season to deal with the coronation day aftermath)#but like the finale still hit all the right narrative beats that i needed so I'm okay-ish #and it still handled esteban's final arc much better than the similar final cassandra arc from tangled the series #imo at least

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axel-ambassador · 2 years ago

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Cass's S3 arc was wasted potential, how about we fix that

This is gonna be a long one so buckle up.

yes yes we all know how much her villain and redemption arc was very iffy and can be fixed in so many ways. For example the ones I've seen:

Remove Gothel and focus on different motivations, you could have her doing it to protect Rapunzel rather than simply turning against her out of jealousy.

Have Zhan Tiri literally posses her through her ill feelings and control her like a puppet both physically and mentally.

Have the mirror demon Cass take the moonstone as a double plot twist, leaving Cass stuck in the house of yesterdays tomorrows, and nobody even knows.

All of these are fantastic ideas to rewrite her arc but one I've seen less explored in detail is the insanity route.

Insanity and delusion arcs, if done well, can make for some very compelling characters, whose motivations and actions can be unpredictable, but also understandable.

What if the moonstone slowly ate away at Cass's sanity, ON TOP OF what's she's already going through with her feelings of uselessness and abandonment, and with Zhan Tiri constantly talking in her ear and feeding her lies used to justify those feelings. Just take what we already have in canon, and spice it up a bit to make it more believable.

What if the moonstone also projected voices? Lost souls who have succumbed to the effects of possessing the stone, some nagging and screeching at Cass, telling her not to make the same mistake as they did, and some encouraging and praising her to follow Zhan Tiri and do these awful things.

The thing is, despite hearing voices, Cass refuses to remove the stone, because she's never felt so alive, so powerful, and she slowly gaslights herself into believing that the stone is, in fact, keeping her alive, because without this power she may as well be dead, with her injury essentially ruining her future, and that's her justification in Crossing the Line.

Think of the Ice King from Adventure Time. His crown gives him incredible ice powers and keeps him alive, but it takes his sanity from him, creating an impossible labyrinth in his mind that he becomes trapped in, leaving him a shell of his former self.

So Cass spends 6 months without other human contact, with only the comfort of the little ghost girl and the voices. She's angry, she's scared, so the red rocks still appear. She doesn't know what's happening anymore, why she feels so proud and yet so so guilty all the same. She's confused, she can't sleep, she can't think straight, the voices are pulling at her psyche, tearing her mind in two, one that is still loyal to Raps and is sorry betraying her, only wanting to be noticed for once, hoping they can fix their friendship, and one with a darker train of thought that is angry, in pain, and thinks that this is the only way, that Rapunzel needs to know how it feels to be seen as nothing but a shadow, an afterthought, a mistake, like she has been seen as for so many years.

They conflict, each thought slowly becoming more and more incoherent as it all blends into a cacophony of static noise, a whirlwind of emotion that she doesn't know how to process, and so she does what she's always done when he feels lost.

She fights.

Rapunzel sees her after 6 months and notices something off. Cass's confidence and pride all those months ago seem to be gone, she sees a caged animal, growling and clawing at scraps of salvation. She's talking to herself.

Varian is kidnapped, with the intention of obtaining more power, because without this incantation, she's nothing but a nuisance to her former friends unless she proves that she's powerful enough to pose a threat, so she can finally be taken seriously.

Nothing Left to Lose is relatively the same, but Cass appears more unhinged in her movements, nearly impaling Varian and even herself as the song continues. She cant lose, not when she's lost her parents, capability, future, friends, home, and without knowing just yet, sanity.

Bring back the deleted storyboards of her panting and lashing out as she destroys the painting of Raps, and you can see the slight remorse in her eyes before a faint whisper ushers her away from the wreckage, telling her to claim their her rightful throne.

When the gang tries to enter, she revels in their struggle, they finally have an inkling of what it's like to be so determined to reach a goal, only to be shut down at each corner. She laughs, but it doesn't sound like her. She eventually lets them up on her own, they need to see just how powerful she's become.

"I'm glad you could make it Raps, I've been waiting for you."

Attack. Attack. This is your chance, coward.

"Shut up..."

"...I didn't say anything Cass..."

Cass pauses, none of the voices ever responded to her pleas before. She looks at Rapunzel with an unreadable expression.

You're crazy, you're insane insaneinsaneinsane doitdoitdoit makehersufferkillher kill her

"I said SHUT UP!"

She lashes out. She fights. She's quick, strong, but also sloppy, and that's what makes her fall to Rapunzel's power.

The moonstone is chipped like her psyche. What now whatnow whatnowwhatnow?

More power they whisper, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

But it's not enough, it's never enough, she's never been enough. She's stuck, she's always been stuck. An endless cycle of a dream, a goal, a passion, followed by an obstacle, an intrusion, a blonde princess. She needs to break this cycle before it breaks her further.

So she lets the ghost girl guide her, too tired and too sick to navigate her ocean of emotions anymore. Letting wave after wave pass over her until she drowns, and suddenly she's in a cave, clutching a broken box, pieces scattered about like her heart.

She doesn't know what she's saying anymore, what's an intruding voice and what's her own thoughts. She keeps flashing back, stuck in a house, stuck in a castle, stuck in a tree, stuck in a mirror, stuck in a tower, stuck in a cave, stuck, stuck, stuck.

She and Rapunzel break out, with a broken mirror, and a broken spirit.

The voices are screaming, ringing, screeching, she can't form a single coherent thought. She's stuck between ideas.

Forgive her, love her, fix this, fix yourself.

Kill her, hurt her, show her exactly how much she's hurt you. Kill.

Fix. Kill. Fix. Kill. Fix. Kill. FIX. KILL. F I X. K I L L.

Compromise. She's never considered a compromise, never had the peace of mind to. Kill or be killed, was all it ever was for her.

Now it's Rapunzel who is stuck, trapped in a cave by a woman trapped in her mind.

Eventually she finds the missing shard, but her minds only fractures further. She sees visions when she touches those small shoulders, a demon conqueror, a blue haired puppet, an eclipse.

Everything shatters.

She's sick. She's ill. She doesn't know who she is or what she's meant to do.

For once, the good voices ring louder.

Find her. Talk to her. Tell her what's wrong. Maybe she'll listen.

For once.

For once, she lets the good voice be her guide.

But of course they wouldn't want her. She's crazy. She's ill. She's insane as Eugene has put it.

"Cass, please, you don't have to be the bad guy."

So that's all she was.

"I don't want to be the bad guy. I'm sick...I can't think straight. I don't want to fight anymore ok? I just...I can't-"

She's cut off by a shot of amber, and everything is a blur.

Anger, pain, sadness, guilt, betrayal, whispers, screaming, crying, she's screaming, she's crying, she's insane. She's stuck.

She's in a throne room, your making a mistake rightful place, they say. She doesn't want this, she wants...she doesn't know what she wants. She can't feel, she can't think, and suddenly, she doesn't care.

She doesn't care when the eclipse comes. She doesn't care when Rapunzel arrives to take back her kingdom. She doesn't care when the puppet strings are pulled and she's suddenly fighting again. It's automatic. It's feels right. It feels wrong.

Rapunzel is trapped, encased by her (how did that happen?) She can only make out one word in the train wreck that is her mental state.

"Why?"

Why? Why had she done this? Was it even her anymore? Was it Cassandra? Who even is Cassandra? What does she want? What is she doing? She doesn't know the answer to any of these.

Voices and thoughts overlapping, creating a buzzing sensation, she answers as honestly as she knows how to.

"I wish I knew..."

Zhan Tiri take the moonstone, and she just lays there, thinking she's about to die, after all, the stone kept her alive, right? She's never felt so alive and so dead.

She hears Rapunzel's voice, she must have died too. Or maybe it's another one of the good voices giving a final goodbye. She looks around, Hell isn't yellow and rocky...Hell doesn't have a brunette princess...

They're stuck.

"Snap out of it Cass-"

You're crazy.

"I should be dead..."

"...what...?"

Useless. Unwanted. Mistake.

"That stone kept me alive... I might as well be dead... after all, I was as good as dead to you wasn't I?"

"Cass..."

Pitiful. Weak.

"Shut up...i can't think...i don't know who I am anymore...the voices...the voices won't stop...what am I supposed to do...what am I meant to do...who am I...?"

"Oh Cass..."

She tries to listen to Raps's speech, how she was sorry for ignoring her and her feelings, sorry with what was happening to her, how she was her best friend, how they can both work to fix their friendship, to fix her.

For once, Cass allowed herself to relax, as Raps pulled her into her arms.

She dies, for real this time. She can feel the floatiness, the numbness, the void that she could only feel in her mind had finally spread to the rest of her body.

Dead weight.

She's awake, and it's as if nothing has changed. She's surrounded, Raps and Eugene are there welcoming her in their embrace, and she almost feels whole again.

She cries, and cries, and cries and screams and cries and cries and cries.

She doesn't know who she's meant to be, she doesn't know anything anymore. Drunk and ill with power for so long, she's lost everything, her purpose, her future, herself.

She's stuck.

She's given a trial, found guilty of treason, but sentenced to exile as a way to better herself and her mind. Prison would only kill her further.

She's on the road, nothing but herself, Fidella, and the voices, searching for a destiny long lost to a cycle of misery of pain, finally moving, no longer stuck.

geez that took forever oh well I hoped you enjoyed I guess and if you made it this far, thanks for reading, and let me know what you think :)

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