Why Varian Worked Where Cassandra Failed - TTS Analysis

i've wanted to talk about tangled this series for a while now but i was never really sure how to approach it should i do an episode ranking should i just talk about the music should i go all out and analyze every single episode of the show i've never really tackled a tv series before with hours upon hours of content to sift through so i started to wonder if i should even talk about tts at all but one thing i kept coming back to with this show was the characters with two characters in particular proving to be of significant interest to me that's right we're talking about the moody teenagers of the tangled family cassandra and varian in personality cassandra and varian may seem like polar opposites cass is cynical and matter of fact while varian is optimistic and bubbly but concerning character arcs they're very similar so if both of them turn into anime villains for certain periods of the show why did varian's twist spark sympathy in me while cass just makes me feel exhausted i mean honestly what is up with mooncast the whole arc just feels wrong but i'm not entirely sure why searching the ark itself has still left me a bit confused so i think comparing it to a good example of a negative arc through the use of varian may help us determine why cass has turned to villainy is so controversial let's start by figuring out how we're supposed to do this kind of arc and look at the great writing behind varian in a way varian feels like a tragic hero character all he wants to do is create a successful invention that will change the world for the better and make his father proud and he might even have the intellect to do it but he seems to be destined for failure as something always goes wrong with his creations at the last second varian has been stuck in this trap of being so close to success but tripping at the finish line for a while now and the cycle of disappointment has taken its toll on him as it would any person yet he doesn't really show it varian continues to pursue his scientific ventures and even when others warn him of the glaring risks he assures them that he's got it all figured out and everything will be fine you know when someone says everything will be fine it's pretty likely that everything will in fact not be fine after a string of disasters actually we only see varian screw up twice before queen for a day but we'll talk about that later the audience already has at least some pity for varian after all he is only a teenager and he has nothing but good intentions everyone can relate to that feeling of putting in hours of hard work and effort only to come up just short of success whether you're trying to get a better grade or working hard in the hopes of getting promoted and the disappointment from others especially those you care about can be even worse than the pressure you put on yourself now we have a likable character with a problem that he needs to fix and we're all rooting for him to overcome this struggle do bad things are only going to get worse for varian from here on out enter queen for a day you really can't experience the insane tonal whiplash of jumping to this special after a season of slice of life unless you watch the series in order literally the episode before this we were going on an adventure with rapunzel's mom and her essential oil crystal wearing ant where they defeated a giant horde of furbies by ringing a bell as they flew on a handmade paraglider queen forde is completely out of nowhere and unapologetically ruthless to its characters and i love it guys even pascal gets a fake out death it's bad especially for varian so the rocks are growing out of control and ode corona which is where varied and his dad karen live marianne thinks he's finally found a way to get rid of the rocks but karen thinks it's dangerous for him to just be experimenting with it especially when you consider kirin's past with the rocks in the dark kingdom kieran compromises with his son by saying he'll talk to the king about it although he ends up just covering the whole thing up and says that they just need more land which king frederick grants varian is mad about this but he's able to get a word in with rapunzel about the rocks and she makes that forsaken promise that she'll protect old corona and she'll never let anything bad happen to him varian stops arguing with his dad and decides to just continue his experiments on the rocks in secret and as usual everything works out completely fine with no mishaps at all so yeah karen and varian get into a fight over his experiments with kieran telling him it's too dangerous and varian asking him to just trust him one more time one thing leads to another and now kieran is being slowly encased in amber with seemingly not much time left varian leaves to get help and because he's traveling all alone through an icy wasteland it's time for a music video let me make you proud does kind of just explain to us what we already know about varian he wants his dad to be proud of him doesn't every character with black hair want that but the song still serves some importance in making an emotional connection with the viewer and adding more sympathy to baron's character as well as being repurposed as a scary version for the reprise varian is able to make it to the castle but he's kind of barging in on some important business and so despite his pleas and the promise she made to him at the beginning of the episode rapunzel has to turn varian away in order to ensure the safety of the kingdom as a whole this results in a really great scene that provides some important development not only for varian but for rapunzel as well after this point varian is pretty much gone for the rest of the episode and is only mentioned by other characters but that certainly doesn't mean he's out of the show and this is where varian shifts from the sweet little cinnamon roll that the fangirls love to the angsty alchemy-based anarchist the fangirls also love i mean it's a two-for-one deal how can you pass it up and this shift could have easily gone wrong since it is a very dramatic character change sympathetic villains or good guys turn bad are always an incredibly stressful balancing act in writing because you need both sides of the moral conflict to be arguable but want to be ultimately the most agreeable in the end and to be honest with varian they knocked it out of the park every box is checked off with no problems there's a proper setup to varian's rebellion against society he was always an outcast and the only people he had some real connections with were rapunzel and his dad the little support network he had kind of fell apart though as he only continued to have conflict with his dad and rapunzel had to turn her back on him in the end but even though this all adds up to a pretty crappy life it's not enough to declare war on an entire kingdom so you do the oldest writing trick in the book and kill the dad i'm pretty sure this would be the breaking point for most people already but considering varian is canonically 14 when this happens it's not a surprise that he goes a little crazy and even when varian is a villain he's not overly evil for no reason he really does just want his dad back and if that means pulling some strings and committing some treason that's just what he's gonna have to do it's only when rapunzel and the rest of corona push back that varian is forced further down this dark path in order to achieve his goals and he falls further for the lie that the kingdom is out to get him and his father varian really is just a kid living in a bad situation and he just lost his only chance at escape from it and okay i'm not saying he should have threatened the entire kingdom and bringing out the evas was a little much but varian's got some valid points this king is really really stupid he can't just ignore the fact that an entire town is being destroyed and do nothing about it because he doesn't want his daughter to feel bad in fact frederick is kind of the one to blame for all of this terrible black rock stuff happening in the first place he himself admits that the evil power of the moon stone would not have been awakened if he didn't take the sun-dropped flower and use it to save his wife so he does all of this and yet he has the gall to blame the disaster on rapunzel how dare she actually leave the house for once and touch the rocks you know completely unaware of the world changing consequences okay okay calm down what's something good you can say about the king he uh has a nice egg collection man everybody hates on calliope but let's not forget the nightmare that was season 1 king frederick varian are good because sympathetic setup plus traumatic event times good intentions with bad actions equals engaging corruption arc everything is handled with a lot of care and it creates a well-done arc that acts as an amazing season finale the only criticism i have is that i wish we got to spend some more time with varian before the twist happened i always thought varian was in the show before queen for a day a lot more than he actually was guys he's in two episodes and you pretty much forget he exists by the time episode 16 rolls around i think it would have made varian's betrayal much more emotionally impactful if we had spent some more time with him before it happened like at least a few subplots or something what we get is still great i just think it could be even better by amping up the stakes so that it's not some random side character who is suddenly getting a ton of attention and so season one ends with varian being seriously messed up on the inside and the kings like you get this peasant out of my face great now that that problem solved i'm sure it'll be nothing but fun times from here on out certainly no more betrayals or backstabbings right don't worry we'll get to our little star child over here later anyway varian gets redeemed in the third season and reunited with his dad as expected and while it's not as impactful as his arc in season 1 it's still expertly written even though varian is now working with keanu reeves and the freedom fighters he's not really evil anymore and he has no true aggression towards rapunzel and her friends which makes a lot of sense i mean honestly what else is he supposed to do it's kind of hard to join back into society after you try to destroy it at this point varian is just lost and needs someone to lead him back on the right path and the writers know this so they give him a nice very well-needed talk with rapunzel like we should have done this two seasons ago needed then allow him to redeem himself through actions by saving the kingdom instead of just being like i double triple quadruple promise to be a good guy for reals this time it's good yay and then varian just kind of vibes gets really mad at xavier for some reason he gets stuck in a seashell and there's episode 10 which is a good varian arc episode then varian gets kidnapped by cass for a hot second but we'll cross that bridge when we get there he's also pretty helpful in preparing for a possible attack from cassandra he builds a warning system hot air balloons an amber gun and amber what am i the only one who finds it weird that baron built a gun that shoots amber you know the thing that almost killed his dad and caused him severe irreversible mental trauma we're just gonna fire that stuff around like it's nothing you know what this is actually pretty in character then he does some cool fighter stuff in the finale and makes this face the overall conclusion here is that varian is one of tangled the series best written characters his journey in season one from an optimistic underdog to a tragic villain forced down a bad path is amazing on paper and in execution there's proper build up for his transformation and the transformation itself never feels unreasonable or over the top varian's redemption and tackling of his trauma in season 3 is also very well done again setup and execution are what's important here and for varian the show writers do a great job overall while he may not break the iconic characters of cinema list varian is still a very well written likable and engaging character who stands out as one of the best of tangled the series cast now for the second part of the video the yin to the yang the darkness to the light or you could say the moon to the sun that's right it's time to talk about the dreaded cassandra moonstone arc and why it could have worked if it had been handled much differently i honestly really liked cassandra in season one i know some people found her annoying and thought she was too much of a jerk to eugene but i personally felt that her dryness was a good balance to the enthusiasm of rapunzel and eugene and i found her relationship with rapunzel very sweet and endearing they really were like sisters huh and while they did have their conflicts which mainly boiled down to just opposing personality traits most of them didn't last very long and were usually contained to one episode that's a good thing because the drama they had never carried enough weight to last more than one episode otherwise it would risk becoming repetitive and tedious to watch but there is an underlying conflict that the writers of the show are trying to set up for future episodes and it starts all the way back at the beginning of rapunzel and cassandra's relationship in the episode beginnings which i'm going to talk about now because it is set before season 1 even though it aired in season 3 cass struggles in her new position as the lady in waiting for rapunzel cass is strictly in this job for business and it seems like she's trying to use it as a springboard for better opportunities aka pretty much any job that requires you to beat the crap out of someone rapunzel is politely annoying throughout this episode as her social skills are pretty much non-existent after living in a tower for 18 years and doesn't understand how informal her actions are despite cassandra's many attempts to get her to understand the conflict for cass in this episode is pretty much hinging on one choice betray rapunzel to become a cool warrior chick with the buff ladies or pass up on that dream to maintain a friendship with rapunzel cass chooses rapunzel finding more joy in their relationship than her personal aspirations and the two learn to love each other for their differences rather than hate each other because of them unfortunately the underlying sentiment of this moment that cass has to sacrifice her personal desires for rapunzel's sake never fully goes away and is only waiting beneath the surface to be uncovered in later episodes season 1 addresses it only in small amounts with episodes like challenge of the brave and great exploitations and we even get a nice moment in secret of the sun drop where cass does get to prove herself and leads the royal guard in her father's place for the most part season 2 follows the same format emphasis on for the most part once that first two-part special rules are round though it's time to shift from kid-friendly slice of life to angsty brooding fantasy edition the rapunzel and cassandra conflict has been on and off up until now but once we reach rapunzel in the great tree much like queen for a day everything goes off the rails the main argument between the two in this episode is that rapunzel wants to follow adira's guidance while cass thinks she's dangerous eventually rapunzel loses her temper on cass and tells her that whether they trust adira is not up for discussion and since pretty much everyone else agrees they all take rapunzel's side leaving cass to feel betrayed by her friends rapunzel tries to talk about it but botches it up and just kind of nicely restates what she told cass in the first place cass then leaves the group to go brood in the form of the song waiting in the wings which is pretty much the depressed version of let me make you proud honestly i'm being serious here both of the songs are about how the character singing wants to prove all the naysayers wrong and show that they are capable of doing great things but varian is chasing after his goal with a determined optimism while cass has already claimed defeat still cass decides to keep on keeping on as she always has and rejoins the group unfortunately rapunzel is starting to show a bit of wear and tear with this whole trip and is on edge for the rest of the episode when hector tries to collapse the tree on them rapunzel starts using the wither incantation to stop him cass warns her not to do it and says that she can kill hector if she could just reach the magical trident nearby but rapunzel refuses to listen and tells cass that the incantation is the only way cass reaches out to stop rapunzel and oops rapunzel tries to help cass and her crispy hand but cass brushes her aside just wanting to forget the whole thing and move on that's not happening anytime soon after a strange outing with hook foot and his brother we addressed the tension between rapunzel and cass in the episode rapunzel day one and man this is some classic painfully familiar girl drama i just wish she would understand how i feel then why don't you go talk to her and explain your feelings why would i do that when i can just sit here my sadness for the next three days rapunzel and cassandra both feel misunderstood by the other party yet they refuse to talk to each other well rapunzel at least tries to start a conversation but she's very clumsy about it and cass is very clumsy about it so it takes them an entire episode to even attempt a discussion but it never really matters in the end because immediately after in the next episode everyone's back to hating on cass again then nothing incredibly important happens besides this little scene at the end of rapunzeltopia where cass finds out about her past which we'll address later but then we get to lost and found or more importantly the end of lost and found demanded reveals to eugene his fortune that someone in his party will betray him could you guess who it is oh that face i may not like the writing of the ark itself but the personality that evil cast brings is just amazing and now it's time for the big finale destinies collide although i actually think it's more important to examine rapunzel's character in this episode rather than cass at this point there have been so many warning signs about cass's vengeance that it seems like the whole thing should be blatantly obvious but for some reason when eugene confronts rapunzel about the prediction she's like no way why would cass ever do something like that okay i get it that rapunzel isn't perfect and i'm sure she's got a lot on her plate right now but this is just getting ridiculous why is rapunzel being so negligent towards cass i understood the conflict over adira and the collapsing of the tree in the moment because those were times when a decision needed to be made quickly and so there wasn't time to have a thoughtful discussion about it but why is rapunzel still unable to at least recognize that cass is upset with her even if she can't solve their conflict i'm not calling out rapunzel here i'm calling out the bad writing because to me the writers are starting to exaggerate the naive obliviousness of rapunzel so much that it feels out of character rapunzel may not have the greatest social skills but one of her strong suits has always been understanding the feelings of others throughout the show she's always working with the undesirables of society and there are countless instances of her sticking through a conflict with someone to help them become a better person in the end she's helped attila angry red quaid stallion you name it rapunzel has shown a much higher amount of patience to these people who are much more frustrating than cass so why can't she handle a small bump in their friendship again this isn't a call out on rapunzel it's on the handling of her character because i really don't understand how someone who has shown high consideration for others feelings in the past could suddenly lose that skill when trying to fix a minor conflict in her relationship with her best friend either way the episode goes on and it's time for cass to pull a ua and turn into the moon and again terrible writing but awesome villain moments we then learn the truth about cassandra's past she is gothel's biological daughter but her mother abandoned her at a young age to go live with rapunzel in the tower leading the captain of the guards to adopt her apparently this was enough to convince cass that rapunzel has been ruining her life since day one even though cass barely even knew gothel as this information was a shock to her and the life she did have with gothel was simply acting as a child slave for her and this is where the cracks and the foundation of cassandra's betrayal start to show the only motivation that we can really latch onto here are the incidents at the great tree because those major incidents warranted a larger reaction and invoked more feelings of sympathy in the audience otherwise what other sympathetic motivations can we find here rapunzel wasn't good at apologizing and is kind of annoying some people said some mean things to cass a few times cass can't be this special these motivations weren't giving the offender the silent treatment for a few days not stabbing them in the back and threatening to destroy their entire kingdom let's go back to varian for comparison this poor 14 year old kid already had a pretty crappy life but then his entire world was flipped upside down at the hands of his best friend in a single day of course he's going to be mentally wrecked and make some bad decisions the setup for cassandra's turned to evil just isn't as strong as varians and yet they try to drag it out for more than double the length of his villain run there's your problem every time i analyze this arc i always come back to this problem it only works in short episodes like we saw in season 1 and in the first half of season two maybe it could even sustain the end of a season like variance did but it should have never been forced to carry an entire season and the show's finale the writing behind it is just not that strong and for a second let's imagine varian's villain are carrying an entire season an arc that has even better writing than cass's what if varian escaped before the guards could catch him and the second season was spent hunting him down as he hid in the wilderness raising another robot army wouldn't the whole thing start to get old after the 20th you've killed my father's speech we would reach a point where rapunzel would just be pleading with varian to understand that she had to make a tough choice and if she hadn't focused on the safety of the island everyone could have died not just kieran but varian would refuse to understand all of this for no reason because the arc would have to keep going to finish up the season this is basically what they did with cass when it's not focusing on fantastical misadventures season three becomes very repetitive we fall into this pattern of cass questioning what she's done because the writers remember that our personality is actually rather realistic and isn't prone to impulsive emotion-fueled actions like the ones she's taking right now but every time cass has even a trace of a doubt this stupid little gremlin comes floating in and is like but rapunzel can we mention how terrible of a villain's anterior is by the way they try to portray her as a cunning mastermind she's not they try to make her cute yet creepy she's not basically they try to make her impactful or memorable in any way and she's just not it seems like the only reason she exists is to just give the story some sense of scale and at least in the first half of season 3 justify cass's actions at least in a way the rules of writing would say that cass carrying on this betrayal for so long would be out of character but now the writers can just pass the whole thing off as xanteri's manipulation and while yes now the writing technically makes sense and technically isn't bad writing that doesn't make it good either you can follow all the rules and justify pretty much any occurrence in your story with some kind of logical reason but that doesn't mean it's going to be engaging or challenging to the viewer for example let's say i told you to draw rapunzel and you show me this yes that looks like rapunzel and it accomplishes everything it needs to as a drawing of rapunzel but which of these drawings do you think i'm going to like more that's how i feel about the mooncast arc it only does the bare minimum and the whole thing is starting to wear pretty thin by the time we reach the season 3 2 part special cassandra's revenge besides the pretty amazing party crashing scene cass continues to be an incredibly meh villain they try to do these deep conflicts with rapunzel and cass but there's nothing really going on here they just keep repeating the same issue about gothel over and over again and it seems like the writers think they can find something deeper there but they really can't rapunzel had no direct effect on this whole situation besides just existing and if anything she got the short end of the stick as cass at least got an escape from having an abusive sociopath as a mom again with varian's villain arc they knew they couldn't use it for more than a few episodes before it would get repetitive and their failure to do this with mooncast is one of the main factors behind its downfall but do not lose hope yet because something interesting does happen cass kidnaps varian to get the scroll translation out of him and their time in the rock fortress leads to a confrontation in the form of the song nothing left to lose i'm glad that the writers noticed the similarities between varian and cass as they face pretty much the same conflict of being underestimated by others throughout the show despite some of the bad writing leading up to this the song is an interesting exploration of their characters and makes good use of the fact that varian has been in the same position as cass not only that but the song itself is beautifully composed and performed and the animation for this whole sequence is just as amazing as xena1421 puts it this song slaps so hard what do you mean by that it's super catchy then we get back to the same old same old and it's just getting really hard to care at this point hold on a second super saiyan disney princesses okay now i don't care anymore again at this point any emotional weight this conflict between rapunzel and cass held has been exhausted it's just them repeating the same conversations over and over again and it just keeps going yet nothing special is added to keep the viewers attention we have this tale of two sisters as tangled the series puts it one born of light and one of darkness one chosen and one lost it sounds like this really epic fantasy storyline of an eternal conflict between good and evil but in execution it's just cast spouting the same nonsense about mother gothel while rapunzel just smiles and nods the mooncast's arc has stayed its welcome at this point and this finale should just resolve the conflict to preserve the good content we have there's seven more episodes look nothing significant happens in these episodes that change my mind about the arc if anything they reinforce to my negative feelings and unlike tts i'd like to avoid being repetitive so i'm just going to blanket them all as not very good but only mooncast wise all of the other aspects of the show like art music and voice acting are still just as on point as usual and the final battle of pluton vu is pretty amazing even if the writing behind it is meh don't worry more like just fatigue this is stupid conflict and then we reach the end of the season finale where poor cass has been so mangled by the writers that they don't even know what to do with her and just send her off into the woods what a waste of an arc tangled the series is home to some great frankly underrated writing with one of the best examples being varian and his corruption arc the writers gradually invested the viewers and his character by showing his unfortunate circumstances building up a sympathetic relationship between fan and character then they ramped the sympathy up to a thousand by tragically killing off varian's father at the hands of rapunzel leading to an emotional conflict between the two as varian repaid rapunzel's betrayal varian started out with a sympathetic goal but the further he went in trying to achieve it the darker his actions became leading to his eventual collapse a few episodes later the show only continued to deliver when they addressed his fallout one season later giving varian a satisfying redemption arc and allowing him to smoothly transition back in with the main cast i'm assuming partly as a result of varian success the writers tried a very similar arc with cassandra like varying cast gets pushed aside and underestimated by the people around her and she finally becomes fed up with these wasted opportunities and decides to take it out on who she believes is the cause of it all rapunzel it's a good setup for an ally turned villain and it's worked before as seen in episodes like challenge of the brave and great exploitations which explore this conflict on a smaller scale unfortunately this arc does not carry enough emotional weight to support an entire season yet the writers of tts try to stretch it out over a season and a half by the series finale every aspect they discuss of this arc has been explored ad nauseam and nothing that is compelling enough to prompt investigation remains unlike varian's villain arc which had a fairly strong emotional setup but wasn't forced to stay past its welcome the whole thing is just a clumsy mess and it makes me frustrated to see cass be reduced to an empty hull by the end of the shell but what do we do when we feel upset that's right sit in a circle and sing the buddy song you're my best buddy when who cares if people think it's strange you're my best buddy but don't ever change

Channel: 0CallieStar0

Views: 484,215

Keywords: tangled the series, tts, rapunzels tangled adventure, tangled, disney, disney tangled, disney princess, princess, cartoon, animation, fantasy, tv show, tv show review, review, commentary, character analysis, rapunzel, eugene, cassandra, varian, ready as ill ever be, waiting in the wings, nothing left to lose, funny, stargames

Id: 0EKmEIJuLzg

Length: 28min 6sec (1686 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021