thebritcrit

[thebritcrit]

I just found out that apparently back in the day when Great Tree came out people tried to use the argument "Well you don't blame a hot stove when you get burned by it" to defend Rapunzel and like....I'm sorry, but that's as dumb as the keys and locks argument that incels use.

First of all, the "hot stove" is a human being. A human being that almost never has the power to burn people. A hot stove always has a surefire chance of burning someone or something, a human (even one with magic) does not. A hot stove is not sentient and does not make choices. Rapunzel is sentient and can make choices, and she made the choice to use the incantation despite her knowing full well that is was dangerous and she couldn't control it. She gets credit for saving the group, but she also gets full credit for burning Cassandra as well. Because she made the choice to use the incantation, any consequences that come from that choice, good or bad, are fully on her.

Secondly, Rapunzel was in mortal danger. The tree was very clearly coming down and Rapunzel couldn't snap out of it. She explicitly says as much. There was almost nothing about that situation that she had under control. Do some people honestly expect Cassandra to not try to snap her out of it and save her there??? THAT'S more out of character than anything she does in season three that's "out of character". If Cass didn't snap Rapunzel out of it, Rapunzel would've died. Rapunzel owes Cassandra her life, for pete's sake

Thirdly, not to mention, it's bad enough that the characters blame Cass for her disability that she literally got trying to save the princess. It's not remotely okay for the fandom to do the same thing. Cassandra hardly had a choice in the matter, she didn't sign up to get her hand burned. She had no idea that would even happen. Nobody ever chooses to become disabled like that, so acting like Cassandra had a choice is incredibly insensitive and insulting.

[thebritcrit]

Kirkus reviews Frozen: Polar Nights

Review after the break in case you want to avoid any mild spoilers.

Arendelle’s winter solstice celebration is threatened when a fearsome draugr is awakened in this return to the world of Disney’s Frozen. 

Determined to get everything right, Queen Anna is stressed about planning Arendelle’s Polar Nights festival, which will not only celebrate the winter solstice, but also her sister Elsa’s birthday. On a camping trip meant to get her mind off things for a bit, she, her fiance, Kristoff; his reindeer, Sven; Elsa; and snowman Olaf tell scary stories around the campfire. Kristoff tells the story of sisters Sissel and Inger and how Sissel, neighboring Vesterland’s future queen, was killed by Inger out of jealousy. It is told that Sissel became a draugr, a reanimated corpse that causes terrible storms when seeking revenge. Following the tale, a storm hits the campers, and when they return to Arendelle, Anna, Kristoff, and the townspeople’s memories are starting to fade, jeopardizing the festival plans. Drawing on Norse mythology, the draugr is fairly scary, making this novel veer at times into fantastical horror, but this element is generally tempered quickly with levity. Written with fans of the movies in mind, little worldbuilding is done, with the focus instead on the beloved, charismatic characters and their repartee as well as the sisterly ties.

Movie fans will love this next adventure. (Fantasy. 8-12)

Pub Date: July 19, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-368-07664-7

[thebritcrit]

Did you know that Cassandra actually wrote two books in one of the tts graphic novels?

I do! It was The Friendship Mix-up!

I love how even in the comics they keep the detail that Cassandra is a very hard worker.

[thebritcrit]

What's the nicest thing you can say about Varian stans?

oh no contest they’re THE most creatively prolific and enthusiastic corner of the fandom and the energy surrounding fanworks in varian-heavy circles is pretty overwhelmingly positive! tts fandom overall is def still around but clearly on the ebb except for varian and esp v7k people—the v7k server i’m in in particular is still just as happening as it was when the show was still airing (two and a half??? years??? ago???)

also at this point all but a tiny handful of dedicated cranks has Moved On so 99% of folks who are still like, actively varian people are just real positive and upbeat about not just varian but the story in general? hdkdhsk still PLENTY of griping about the shows missed potential because we are all disappointed by season three but nowadays that tends to be more of the constructive using these disappointments or questions or loose ends as a springboard for fanworks so the vibe is very chill

also v7k folks will let me like ramble for multiple discord messages abt geography or whatever in tts and be enthused about that so they’re the best SKJFGJDH

[thebritcrit]

You know, for somebody complaining that they had such an awful, horrible life, I feel that the rest of the main cast actually had much harder lives than Cassandra. She grew up in a palace for crying out loud! She was raised by a father that loved her. Yeah, it wasn’t rosy, but whose life is? So what if Cassandra didn’t get the exact job she wanted? A lot of people don’t, but they’re happy mostly. I’m a 24 year old who doesn’t know what she wants, and I’m not killing people in the name of destiny

You're also not a fictional character in a fairytale world.

Problems are not a contest. Cassandra was traumatized at an early age, and she repressed the memories, but couldn't shake the effects. Her turn had nothing to do with "not getting the exact job she wanted," and had everything to do with spending her entire life thinking she wasn't good enough to keep her own mother, and that she had to earn every ounce of love and respect she got. But like, earn earn. Work her ass off for a crumb of recognition.

Just because she grew up in a palace doesn't mean her trauma is invalid. Just because other people "had it worse" doesn't mean she's not allowed to complain.

Problems are not a contest.

[thebritcrit]

You know, even thought Tangled didn’t intentionally give Gothel any intentional stereotypical looks, I feel like the series Definitely did. She was given more witch like features and a hooked nose, none of which she had in the movie, and THAT makes me uncomfortable.

Everyone's features were exaggerated for the series. Gothel was no exception. She might not have a hook nose in the movie, but she does have a downturned nose, and this feature was exaggerated. The series also made her face shape more skull-like, which I'd never been fond of.

The fact of the matter is that it is extremely unfortunate that Gothel ended up looking like a Jewish stereotype, but she was not based on any actual Jewish people. However, I am in no way attempting to invalidate your discomfort. You are very valid in your concerns. It's also unfortunate that Rapunzel looks so Aryan, and that the "opposite" of straight blonde hair and an upturned nose is the stereotypical Jewish appearance, and that anti-Semitic Jewish Mother rhetoric is that they steal Aryan babies. Gothel's design is tone deaf, at best.

[thebritcrit]

So, how will your "No Cassandra" fic work? Will there be literally no mention or appearance of her at all? Or will she appear like a background character or cameo though not inherently involved? I personally don't care for her in the slightest, so her not appearing at all will be fine with me, but I understand it's yours and the-writer1988's fic, thus your choice :)

She is not going to appear in it at all. This all takes place in a universe where there is no Cassandra*, but everything else still exists. (We are, of course, picking and choosing which parts of the series will get actual focus, removing entirely things we didn't like and replacing them with unique plot points.)

@the-writer1988

*Again, I would like to remind everyone that neither of us are anti-Cassandra. This whole fic began as a thought exercise that was sent to me via ask, and we were so intrigued by the plot I banged out off the top of my head that we decided to flesh it out into a full-blown story.

[thebritcrit]

I cannot tell you just how disgusted I am that Chris Sonnenburg and the creators of TTS tried to promote “evil is inherited.” The idea that they used that as the main excuse for Cassandra’s villain arc, and even attempted to integrate it into “Varian and the Seven Kingdoms” by wanting Varian’s mother to be evil disgusts me. It doesn’t matter who your biological parents are. The actions of your biological parents don’t define who you will become. You aren’t them. That’s that.

I'mma slow you down there for just a sec, because Kait Ritter - one of the minds behind Vat7K - talked to me about it while she was in the process of developing it, and she, too, dislikes "evil is inherited." Varian's mom isn't the villain of the story because they wanted to show that he "got his villainy from somewhere" or anything like that. They were more intrigued by the 'evil mad scientist, but what if it's a woman' idea. All Varian got from his mother, in that regard, is a penchant for alchemy. But also, Vat7K isn't canon to the series. It's literally a fan project. And it was being developed during S1, and stopped being developed before S3 began being worked on. You can tell by the fact that they never turned the Seven Kingdoms in Vat7K into the named Seven Kingdoms from the series, which they were originally intended to be. Kait had no idea that they were ever going to explore the other kingdoms in any capacity.

But, yes. Chris does have that 'evil is inherited' thing, and I hate that. I hate it so much. It makes literally no sense. Especially when said evil doesn't even raise their own child. Evil is nurtured, not nature. It's a decision that's made. In some cases, it's a misconception that's taken too far, but it is not genetic.

[thebritcrit]

*sigh* the “Mother Gothel is an anti-semitic caricature” discourse is going around again and I am once again in the position of reminding people that Gothel’s character design is modeled on Cher and her VA, Donna Murphy (neither of whom are Jewish):

This has been explicitly stated by the animation designers and Donna herself on multiple occasions. People are projecting Jewishness onto a character that was explicitly visually based on two non-Jewish women simply because she has features that are stereotypically associated with Jewish people (her nose and hair).

The point of Gothel’s character design was to make her visually as opposite of Rapunzel as possible: dark-haired and curly where Rapunzel was blonde and straight, tall where Rapunzel was short, curvy where Rapunzel was flat, dark colors where Rapunzel wore pastels. The animators also specifically stated they wanted to make sure Gothel didn’t initially appear evil (in both looks and personality), because it wouldn’t make sense for Rapunzel to love her so much if she was so obviously scary and “evil.”

All of this information can be found in easily-accessible BTS features, just like the infamous “Hot Man Meeting” re: Flynn’s character design. They wanted to make it as visually obvious as possible that she wasn’t Rapunzel’s bio mom. That intention+directly using Murphy (Gothel’s VA) & Cher as visual reference=Gothel.

Just…ask yourselves this: if Gothel was blonde with a “normal” nose (whatever that means, but I genuinely saw it said by someone earlier today) but literally nothing else about her changed, would you be saying that she’s an anti-semitic stereotype? If they hadn’t given Gothel her VA’s nose or Cher’s hair, would you be saying this? That’s a far better yardstick of whether Gothel is ACTUALLY a Jewish stereotype or if you’re projecting Jewish stereotypes onto a character who’s visually based on two non-Jewish women that happen to have what you view as stereotypically Jewish features.

I’m not saying the tropes don’t exist. I’m not saying they’re not harmful. All I’m saying is that Gothel (and thus Tangled) is unreasonably linked to those tropes out of an unfortunate coincidence. There is a very distinct difference between being actively anti-semitic and Tangled, which has anti-semitism being projected on it because its villain bears passing similarity to anti-semitic caricatures out of sheer coincidence.

[thebritcrit]

Do u wish they made more books of the tv series for season 2&3?

You mean like the junior novelizations of episodes? Yeah. In fact, they had another book in the series planned and announced that never got published. There were several series-related books that were announced and never published, such as a replica of Rapunzel's journal!

[thebritcrit]

Incase you feel sad, just remember that our Cass is out there wandering and living the best out of her life in the outside world but is still keeping in touch with her family in Corona by occasionally sending letters through Owl. And when it’s someone’s birthday, I would like to believe that she’d just send a plain and simple “Happy Birthday, [name]” letter and yes even to Eugene but it would always be the most different and special of all because the letter would go something like this:

“Congratulations, Fizherbert. You’re not dead yet.”

[thebritcrit]

do you ever think about how Waiting In The Wings won a daytime emmy and it established Alan Menken as an EGOT and it was the song they told Eden Espinosa to Go Off on at long last and how thematically beautiful it is that Cassandra’s solo gained this recognition and

[thebritcrit]

THANK YOU! Finally someone said it! Honestly it really infuriates me sometimes how people will say Varian did nothing wrong and then in the same breath say Cassandra deserves to be in prison or worse. It’s so dumb.

hdkdhsk i mean i am not the first or only to have made this observation but . yeah

its so evident even in that anon, like cassandra “went out of her way to try and hurt and KILL rapunzel and her loved ones” but varian “challenged rapunzel’s morals and forced her to ask the question: who do i prioritize, my friends or my kingdom?” and like—both of those statements are true! but they also continue to be true if you flip the names, because there’s nothing cass does in s3 that varian didn’t do in some form or another in his villain arc (except for the accidental demon jailbreak mghfjs) and i would argue that in s3 rapunzel overcorrects in a big way from the mistakes she made with varian in s1! she focuses so hard on getting through to cass that she imperils her kingdom through inaction! (and this is the entire point of NLTL, that cassandra and varian are very alike in this way and both of them know it)

and of course it’s very easy to frame one of them as ‘better’ than the other by highlighting the actions of one and the narrative role of the other mgnfjsms but you lose so much nuance for both of them by doing that /:

[thebritcrit]

I'm sorry, but claiming that the people who are upset with how Cassandra and Varian were handled are not only part of the fandom, but misogynistic is absolutely insane. I'm sorry that I don't think one measly apology to Rapunzel, and no one else, after going out of her way to try and hurt and KILL Rapunzel and her loved ones is enough to redeem her or make her any type of hero. She was handled SO poorly, and so was Varian. Varian played an important role as the antagonist and to Rapunzel, challenging Rapunzel's morals and having to force her to ask the question: who do I prioritize, my friends or my kingdom? and then he was left to rot in a prison for an entire season. And then he was brought back and used as essentially bait and nothing more. But then the next season with Cassandra goes against her entire arc with Varian, because then she just drops everything, ignores her duties as a princess, and fixates on Cassandra. She ignores the fact that Cassandra is hurting her subjects and her loved ones, kidnaps Varian, and tries to fucking KILL Rapunzel, but somehow, she's more important to Rapunzel because "she can fix her", which is a problematic concept in itself. So, yeah, I think it's entirely unfair to assume that people who don't like how your favorite and least favorite characters were handled are part of the hatedom, and even worse, misogynistic and racist. It's really bold and disgusting and downright delusional. Please, think about how your words affect others and realize how the world doesn't revolve around you.

beloved are u trying to insinuate that i think the writing in season three was good? SKDHKLGSKDF

you must be new here

so to break it down:

s3 was objectively bad on technical merits

s3 is where the myriad structural weaknesses in the tts narrative collapsed, after two seasons of the story mostly making the 'grand overarching quest narrative but rigidly episodic storytelling' thing work. this is largely because cassandra is, structurally speaking, the protagonist during s3

the character writing from ep to ep was exceptionally poor for everyone in the cast, with cass, rapunzel, & varian getting the lion's share of the fucking-over

i am categorically anti-redemption arc for reasons i have discussed at length, literally just search 'redemption' on my blog lmao

the primary reason cassandra's villain arc got fumbled so badly is that tts was unwilling or unable, as a narrative, to tackle the actual legitimate grievances she had against rapunzel, and therefore resorted to using the gothel fig leaf and not allowing rapunzel to reflect or grow or change meaningfully throughout the season; varian's s3 arc suffered in a similar way but to a lesser extent from the inability of the disney princess cartoon to actually like. focus on the systemic problems that harmed him. the blame for this lies squarely on disney and corporate fiction in general

being cognizant of / acknowledging / talking about narrative weaknesses or failings and/or expressing disappointment or irritation at the way a story turned out =/= participating in hatedom, hatedom is the toxic phenomenon that emerges when subfandom spaces begin to revolve primarily around vitriolic vivisection of a piece of media

i want u to look me in the eyes and tell me that the tts fandom by and large taking the arab-coded man whose central motivation is attacking the kingdom that conquered his people a few hundred years ago and going 'this is a sadistic insane child rapist here are a hundred fics about him viciously abusing varian often so the white protagonists can brutally retaliate' isn't racist jesus christ anon

tts put the 'don't be blatantly racist about the racially diverse separatists of saporia' bar under the ground and the tts fandom collectively pulled out a shovel

anyway,

let me put it like this:

in s1, varian slips through the cracks of corona's non-existent support network and is let down by his friends while the king sends secret police to hunt him down after the traumatic (apparent) death of his father, and as a consequence he slides into a downward spiral which ends in him terroristically attacking the capital, grievously injuring many guards, kidnapping and threatening to murder the queen, and then trying to personally murder three people before he's stopped.

the typical hatedom stance here is that varian did nothing wrong because he was just a child and how dare that bitch rapunzel not help him like she promised (even though she...did, without hesitation, as soon as he got in touch with her and she discovered that her father was lying to her about having handled his problem!)

in s2, after two years of being taken for granted and having her boundaries stomped into the ground by rapunzel--who for all that she does truly care has zero experience with what it takes to be a good friend and fucks up a lot--& a LIFETIME of being expected to do two or three times the amount of work for a tiny fraction of the reward as anyone else, cass gets her hand burnt to a blackened husk by her best friend, who then 1. does not apologize for this, 2. gets mad at her for being upset, and 3. blames her for the injury. as a consequence, cassandra decides to trust the weird ghost who is kind and sympathetic to her and grabs the moonstone, then spirals hard on account of the ghost being a malicious demon bent on manipulating her, and eventually returns to corona to... terroristically attack and eventually raze the capital and try to murder rapunzel.

the typical hatedom stance here is that cassandra is a narcissistic abusive power-hungry bitch who had zero reasons for doing what she did and deserves to be executed or at least imprisoned or otherwise harshly punished for it. (even though the entire point of varian's imprisonment and subsequent radicalization by the separatists, and his hasty redemption arc after rapunzel offered him a second chance, was to illustrate the vague stance tts takes that punitive measures are not the answer to criminal behavior and are in fact actively counterproductive and harmful. which. is a stance that the folks in the tts hatedom will largely agree with as long as you are talking about varian instead of cassandra)

like u see the contradiction here, right. i invite u to explain to me why "boy does bad things because trauma = boy did nothing wrong, girl does bad things because trauma = girl is evil bitch who should die" isn't a misogynistic double standard gmksdfh

[thebritcrit]

An incomplete list of things in TTS that I find interesting but don’t talk about much: 

Saporia/the Separatists

Coronian history in general

the Firefly

the Vodniks because they’re basically mer-guards and I’m intrigued

King Trevor

the Brotherhood

Zhan Tiri and her desciples

the fact that werewolves and werewolf hunters are actually a thing

Neserdnia

Corona’s geography

[thebritcrit]

i think we all agree that cass deserves much more love.

[thebritcrit]

you don’t have to wait until you’re 100% ready. it’s okay to be scared and maybe a bit unsure. if you wait until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting your whole life and you’ll miss a lot of opportunities in the process