#also it will just occasionally drop off bits of lore with horrifying implications!

[scribesynnox]

Okay but like, this is horrifying, right?

That was just casually horrifying, right??

What happens to drawing!Laios, is he alive? What will he do now?

[bestworstcase]

6, 7, and 9 for the Tangled ask meme!!

post-series questions

6. What did you think of Zhan Tiri as the big bad?

stares at blog    Well, 

watching season three was a bit of an exercise in managing expectations and constantly reminding myself that at the end of the day this is a children’s show on disney channel and they were never going to go as hard with the horrifying protean eldritch horror angle as i would have liked, but i’ve been super into zhan tiri as a concept since queen for a day and when i watched painter’s block for the first time i was delighted because it seemed like a pretty strong signal that zhan tiri wouldn’t be a one time deal; i love the lore and her eclectic aesthetic and her quirky followers and the gremlin baby look (shdhsfbdsh), i love the manipulative chessmaster angle.

also season three validated a lot of the way i wrote zhan tiri pre-season three; i had her pegged as a skillful manipulator and in once a handmaiden in particular… man, the bitter snow vibes were strong in handmaiden. and it’s a sort of small silly thing the way she introduces herself to rapunzel and cassandra by making them say her name gave me so much life because that’s how i did it in bitter snow too (and so did pathygen in strings which everybody should read) and i love winning

and when season three wasn’t validating my headcanons it was very politely leaving them untouched. i think the only zhan tiri headcanon of mine that season three broke was the specific nature of her manipulation of demanitus, wherein i imagined her betraying him first. 

my one disappointment is with… sort of everything after she actually gets her hands on the drops. my favorite thing about zhan tiri throughout the rest of season three was that, despite her evidently having powers once she was released in cassandra’s revenge,* she still relied on manipulation to get what she wanted. she earned every single one of her wins by out-thinking, out-planning and out-maneuvering her opponents and i love that it’s so unclear whether being in the lost realm for two thousand years weakened her or if she just prefers to achieve her ends through cunning and artifice. also a boomerang is such a thematically perfect weapon for her to use because it requires precision, skill, and forethought and it attacks in ways and from angles that most people don’t think to defend. 

(*she floats in cassandra’s revenge; teleports in race to the spire at least once and i think arguably twice [the spire appears to have only one entrance, and ziti either sneaks back in through it while rapunzel and eugene are right there, or she teleports in behind the staircase]; possibly teleports and possibly is invisible in tale of two sisters given how quickly she pops in and out and the fact that cass doesn’t see her even though she’s in cass’s line of sight when she slips the broken mirror into rapunzel’s bag; gives cass some kind of telepathic glimpse into her own mind in handmaiden and again, more implied teleporting and invisibility plus the grapes and potion which personally i think she just conjured; and in plus est en vous we see her shapeshift on a small scale when she goes full gremlin and hisses at rapunzel. plus there’s the recurring theme of her shadow appearing as the monster form.)

my absolute favorite zhan tiri moments are when, in race to the spire, she steals the key from rapunzel by throwing the boomerang directly underneath rapunzel’s hand, causing rapunzel to reflexively lift her hand into the returning flight path, allowing the boomerang to snatch the key on its way back; and the implication in plus est en vous that zhan tiri (1) knew cass didn’t trust her, (2) would react to this distrust by putting her in a rock cage, and (3) would forget to extend the rock cage through the floor on which it sat, and to counter this she picked up a vial of acid in the demanitus chamber hours before cass actually turned against her. both are small moments that suggest so much cleverness, foresight, ability to improvise, to use people’s strengths and weaknesses to her advantage, to always have a contingency plan. also it’s funny as hell

so when she got her hands on the drops, turned into a giant monster, and just clobbered everyone through raw brute strength… i mean, don’t get me wrong, that was cool and i loved every second of it but it was also, kind of, zhan tiri where did your brain go? and i know the point is that she gets what she wants and arrogantly assumes nobody can stand against her now, but the thing is… zhan tiri just spent a whole season running around in the tiny body of a six year old and relying on mundane methods and the occasional magical party trick to get what she wants so it does feel a little out of character to me that she would take this left turn into Raw Power Is The Only Thing That Matters when cleverness has always been her greatest asset.

then again if she had kept her brain she probably would have won so like +1 for the demonic idiot ball for saving the day lmao

bonus round: look at all my ziti discord emojis i love her SO MUCH

7. Do you have any post-series headcanons?

almost all of my non-zhan tiri headcanons revolve around bitter snow / the saporian cass au/rewrite thing i’m writing so i haven’t even begun to consider post-series headcanon stuff but i will say that immediately after the group shot at the end of plus est stalyan dumps brock and hooks up with caine and they run off and become pirate queens together and also sing a lot it’s a crime they didn’t let laura benanti sing

9. Pick your top 3 favorite songs from the series.

1. crossing the line 

2. waiting in the wings

3. ready as i’ll ever be