The Real Gel

Alt versions under the cut

Personally, I find that so odd. It’s clearly for plot reasons in LL so they can have an excuse to find the lagoon in the first place, but by VV it seems really tacked on compared to the actual series. Like Cass—the one who has never been outside her kingdom walls—is their sole navigator?

Basically what I wanted to say is that in the show she's so comfortable in Corona and she knows everything all the time. She knows all the people, she grew up in the castle as the captain's daughter, so she's used to their procedures, tournaments. She knows castle employees and knows rumors - knows how to find Varian, she knows the castle horses, she knows how and where to go to sneak out through tunnels, she knows history (the king with 11 fingers, the saporians, and basically everything she can know about the history of Corona), in the book she also knows the legend of the lost lagoon; she knows culture, festivals, norms. She is the perfect guide for Rapunzel exactly because she's so local, so coronian, that she knows exactly what to do anytime and anywhere. The writers basically use her as this well-informed person that knows everything about the kingdom so that she can inform Rapunzel, Eugene and the audience stuff that they don't know.

And she's a free spirit, she seems pretty confident in exploring through the forest with Rapunzel or going to old Corona with her, so in my opinion the cartography trait from the lost lagoon book matches a lot, cause she can map everything she explores. I like to headcanon that she has this fixation on exploring and mapping. We don't know what her daily routine was like before she became Rapunzel's lady in waiting, but it would be fun to imagine that exploration was a big part of it. Cass is the one who suggests sneaking out, and she reassures Rapunzel that it's safe so confidently.

The reason she makes maps in the book is to impress her dad to enter the guard. Love that her trait of knowing everything in Corona is really present in the book, she knows even the amount of lakes and rivers, like damn. I like to imagine that she knows the festival dances and castle procedures and how to show respect to royalty in public and and and

In the book she just went outdoors more because of the lost lagoon, I wish we could see more of this side of her in the show. Also, all the Corona maps have some irregularities, it would be fun to imagine that Cass drew those or something. Overall these exploration and knows-it-all traits are some of the first things that come up in my mind when I think of her, and it's weird that they weren't that shown in the series. Causes me some mandela effect, cause wdym she is not always sneaking out?

Something I love about Cass is how much she adores her kingdom. She knows it well inside and out and she’s Rapunzel’s go to source for information on kingdom things. I think this side of Cass makes a really fun duality with Eugene, where they both serve as guides for Rapunzel learning about the world in different ways. Cass is a noble who’s spent her whole life in Corona while Eugene is a former thief who’s been all over the world. They’re both world weary in completely different ways.

So yes, I really do like Cass’s love of maps in Lost Lagoon. Her interest in the history of her kingdom as it relates to war efforts and everything else described seems super in character…

…my issue is really with Vanishing Village.😂 I think many of the writing decisions in that book are off and that the first is better. Cassandra’s abilities and ways to contribute to the story appear less thought through in VV, especially the map making thing. Retconning the show lore for the sake of the plot element of Cass taking Eugene’s skills for granted seems really weird on both characters parts considering how different it is from actual canon season 2 caravan stuff. It doesn’t have much of a resolution in the story anyway and Cass mainly spends the whole book being pretty one note in terms of personality. Her bringing up the maps thing so much within the second book feels tacked on to me because of the writing around the ability, more than the ability itself.

persona 4heads our time is nowwww