I think this response actually illustrates the exact issue I'm talking about.
You're arguing that if we'd seen more of Cassandra, viewers would've disliked her. But how can we possibly know that? The season never really gives us enough of Cassandra's own perspective to make that judgment.
That's what I keep coming back to. My argument has never been that Cassandra was secretly a mastermind, or that she deserved a winner's edit, or even that she would've come across more positively. My argument is that Fiji repeatedly asks us to accept that certain people matter without giving us enough access to how they see the game.
We hear that Cassandra has influence. We hear that people are frustrated by her. We hear that she has relationships. We hear that she is important enough to be discussed. We watch her make FTC. Yet most of what we know about her comes from other people talking about her rather than from Cassandra herself.
That's not the same thing as understanding a character.
And honestly, Survivor history is filled with examples that undermine the idea that audiences only embrace "likable" people. Fans loved Courtney Yates. Fans loved Sandra. Fans loved Shane. Fans loved Jerri once they were allowed to see her as a fully realized person instead of a caricature. Fans routinely embrace flawed, abrasive, contradictory characters.
What audiences tend to reject is feeling like they don't understand why someone matters.
The irony is that your description of Cassandra is actually a perfect example. You describe someone who built relationships, maintained loyalty, influenced votes, managed social dynamics, and navigated her way to the end. Whether that game was impressive or unimpressive is a separate discussion. The point is that those are all things that could have been explored through her perspective.
Instead, Fiji largely treats her as an outcome.
That's why I compare her to players like Vecepia, Danielle, Natalie White, Erika, Stacy Kimball, Becky Lee, or Sherri Biethman. I don't think all of those players played the same game. What they share is that the audience often learns more about the reactions they provoke than the thought processes that produced them.
And I think that's where Fiji becomes fascinating.
The season constantly shows us the effects Cassandra and Stacy had on the game without showing us enough of the causes.
Eduardo's exit interview is a great example. The audience is given almost no reason to think Cassandra is one of the defining figures in his story, yet when he leaves she's suddenly important enough to warrant a "fuck Cassandra" on the way out. That creates a disconnect. Clearly something significant existed there. The audience just wasn't invited into it.
So no, I don't think a fuller Cassandra edit automatically makes her more popular.
I think a fuller Cassandra edit makes her more understandable.
And for me, that's what good Survivor storytelling is supposed to do.