#why introduce Gothel/Ziti as outside factors at all

[birb-tangleblog]

I'm curious on your thoughts about Moon Cassandra. Many people seem to find the character unsympathetic in season 3, and maybe a way this could've been avoided is if the moon stone went into cass's mind, found her insecurities, and amplified them so she would take the moon stone (essentially twisting her into a person of only anger and hurt)? The king hinted that it could play mind tricks. Just have her (or rather the moonstone) be the main villian, no gothel or zhan tiri. What do you think?

Ty for such a thoughtful ask, this was fun to consider! I'm kinda having a hard time organizing my thoughts and making everything flow together tonight, so bear w/ me:

I really like Moon Cassandra as a concept! It's unique, character-driven, was genuinely surprising, and I like the themes it plays into. But I also agree w/ the sentiment that the plot with her wasn't executed well, mostly re. her motivations and redemption. (And there's also this... general confusion/dissonance in the writing between what the showrunners seem to have intended vs. what they actually ended up implying.)  

Imo Cass had a great setup for her villain arc, a solid reason to take the moonstone, and she was already a sympathetic character in S2- but the Gothel twist really hamstringed that.

Her arm being withered by someone so close to her, feeling overshadowed, bitterness and resentment, with some justified unhappiness over how her friends had been treating her is a really solid internal motivation, and it’s easy for me to feel for and even relate to her struggle. How many princess shows focus on the main char's best friend struggling w/ insecurity and self-worth, and make overtures at examining and deconstructing privilege and chosen one destiny narratives?? That's good stuff!

But then S3 revealed her surprise parentage, and we get massively downgraded from a strong internal motivation to a weak external one. It isn’t a natural conclusion to the previous build-up and it’s far less compelling. The wonkiness of this choice has been talked about and criticized extensively, but tl;dr I think it's hard to feel sympathy for Cass when her feelings are hard to understand, and her reasons for lashing out don’t make sense.  

Compare/contrast Varian’s more straightforward char progression and motives in S1; it’s easy to see why he feels and acts the way he does, and it's easy to feel bad for his circumstances.

(As an aside, she also has little agency in her redemption, and how it plays out makes any remorse/guilt seem kiiiinda insincere. That def doesn't help put her in the audience's good graces... but I feel like that's a diff issue.)

(And yeah, the twist works a little better wrt Cass’ villain arc if you view it with a ton of personal interpretation/analysis/subtext- e.g. seeing Gothel choose Raps over her was a tipping point, symbolic of all her other struggles, etc. etc.- but that's still not what's emphasized in the show itself. The cracks that started to show in S2 never come back up, but Gothel being her mother does, repeatedly- and it's a bad look.)

I've seen a lot of reenvisionings of S3 and Cass' villain arc w/o the Gothel twist, but idk if I've seen the idea of a ZT-less S3 w/ more emphasis on the moonstone as a semi-sentient entity. It's an interesting variation and I like it!

I think what you describe is actually kind of what happened- just with ZT actively manipulating and pushing Cass in that direction instead of the moonstone. Which, iirc, jives w/ how the creators thought of ZT in her ghostly form as a manifestation of intrusive thoughts and bad impulses- but that ended up putting ZT in an awk place herself, and made for some other issues with her characterization/motivation seeming underdeveloped. I could totes see the moonstone playing the same role without those complications. It might also allow for ZT to enter the story in a diff way.

I think having Cass be overtly influenced by the moonstone would run the risk of decreasing her agency as a char a bit, so I’d say that it could work well w/ the caveat that the underlying choices would still have to be all Cass. The moonstone making her evil wouldn't work for me- for the same reason that Cass being a doppelganger or being possessed after coming out of the door weren’t my fav theories pre-S3.

Possessing the stone could negatively affect her mental state, make her more destructive b/c that's the stone's nature, or increase her willingness to go to extremes by lowering her inhibitions- but the anger, hurt, and insecurity getting amplified are all old emotional wounds that had been there for a long time before then, y’know? (And that might’ve actually been a cool parallel with Catalina’s werewolf curse, actually.)

(On the flipside, very deliberately giving Cass less agency would prob have made it easier for many fans to forgive her actions. And maybe that'd have better suited how the writers wanted Cass to come off by the end of the season?) 

That line about the moonstone whispering really seemed like it'd be more significant, and I wish they'd done something w/ it too. I'm not sure if it was a red herring or if they just dropped the ball there (like with so many other threads that got forgotten lmao). I guess we're left to conclude that Edmund is hearing voices from being isolated for so long? Though if he was to have a throwaway line about mental instability, you think they wouldn't have namedropped the extremely important magical artifact...

a;lksfa;dfj; I hope this is coherent and I'm not just rambling, I think the tl;dr of this post is just, any take on S3 and Cass' villain arc that is more character-driven and builds on what S1-2 established is going to appeal to me. The Gothel twist goes in the opposite direction, so I have an extremely hard time with it and it’s frustrating. Giving more personality and lore to the drops is also always gonna be interesting! I enjoy headcanons that give the sundrop/moonstone added quirks. 

Honestly, something I enjoy about Moon Cass as a char is just how many directions I can see her going in as an antagonist that feel believable.

#ask #text post #heck I hope this makes sense #I almost did bullet points I just cannot put the thoughts together cohesively lmao #but like... if the focus on S3 was supposed to be all abt Cass and Raps relationship #why introduce Gothel/Ziti as outside factors at all #there's enough there btwn the two of them w/o it #discussion and theories #cassandra #my post