#Marlin's whole flaw is that he's too over protective of nemo which causes nemo to act out in ways to try and prove himself

[redysetdare]

Every time someone calls a character being normal protective "overprotective" i lose a brain cell. i need to you guys to learn what the "Over" means in "overprotective" because you think it's a cute little fun character quirk instead of a flaw that usually acts as hindrance to one characters freedom and privacy in favor of another characters control and fear.

[tangledbea]

When i say parent characters, i mean The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo, Brave, and Strange World.

Original ask, for those following along: What is it about over-protective/over-bearing parents in other Disney show and Disney movies that were done better than in Tangled the series?

The difference between the parents in the movies that you listed and Tangled the series are that those parents all had character arcs within their stories. They began their journey as overbearing and/or overprotective, but the audience gets to see how their attitude towards their child and their own behavior changes.

Triton realizes that it's his actions that caused Ariel to run away. He even voices out loud, "What have I done?" Once he's told the truth of the situation by Sebastian, he exchanges his freedom for hers. And, at the end of the movie, he gives her back her human form without her even asking him to, because he sees that it's what she wants more than anything.

Marlin is actually the main character of Finding Nemo. He travels miles upon miles, meeting other fish and getting into and out of situations, and he realizes that, while his fears are not unfounded, they are also not insurmountable. He is given the final push of realization by Dory when she points out that he's not letting Nemo actually live because of his overprotectiveness. And then, at the climax of the movie, he makes the decision to trust Nemo and believe he knows what he's doing, thus proving that the lesson has been learned, and that he won't let fear hold him or Nemo back anymore.

Queen Elinor is the co-star of the movie. The story is literally about her and Merida's relationship. Through the course of the movie, she comes to understand Merida's point of view, and through Merida's own steps to meet her halfway, she becomes more open and compromising.

The same can be said for Strange World. That whole movie was about generational trauma and mending ties. Searcher realized he was pushing Ethan in the same way that Jaeger was pushing him, just in the opposite direction, and even Jaeger comes around to understand that his point of view isn't the only one that matters.

However, in Tangled: the Series, Frederic isn't a main character. He's actually a side character, an obstacle for Rapunzel to get past, and doesn't get a character arc. We don't see enough of the world and the situations through his eyes to really view an arc. What he gets is more like falling off a plateau. He's overprotective and overbearing, getting worse and worse until the S1 finale, at which point he abruptly apologizes when Rapunzel comes to confront him and he's sad, and lays out the reasons for why he was acting that way. And Rapunzel forgives him. And because she forgives him, everyone else in the series does, too. (Which happens later on in the series, as well.) Her forgiveness and actions during the season finale abruptly make him realize (off-camera) that she is more than capable of taking care of herself, a point which he tells her at the very end of the episode, despite people having been telling him that all along.

After that, his appearances are few, and they literally had to wipe his memories to reverse his personality to before he was overbearing and overprotective just to make him more likeable to the audience. There was very little satisfaction in that. It was as if they were scrambling to try to get us to like him, since the audience had such an overwhelmingly negative and unsympathetic reaction to him. (Not universal, of course. There are plenty of people who get it and like him, but the vast majority of fans do not.)

So I guess the big difference is that we get to see the journey of those other parents, even if it's brief, and so we know they've actually learned. There's a lot of heel turning in Tangled: the Series, and it's one of its biggest writing flaws.