#CATRA REDEMPTION

[livingdoll13]

understanding catra in taking control s5: ep 6

(lots of awesome people have already said some amazing things about this, but it’s been on my mind a lot especially since i’ve been seeing some anti catra bullshit lately)

first off, i want to say that i don’t think that catra is necessarily handling the situation well, but i often see people saying some crazy shit about how she’s so “ungrateful” to adora for rescuing her or whatever and just generally being incredibly insensitive to her.

you have to remember everything that catra has gone through up until the point. horde prime had just completely violated her body and mind, electrocuting her in the baptismal pool, cutting off her hair, and infiltrating her memories. catra, who is already deeply afraid of the losing control (namely to shadow weaver, who taught her that power and control were necessary to be safe from her abuse), just lost all of her autonomy in the most fucking disturbing, pseudo-religious way possible.

before this, catra fully expected to die. i’ve seen a lot of different takes and i’m relatively open-minded to about what it is that catra thinks specifically when she remembers that scene with her and adora’s younger selves in corridors, but i think that it’s something along these lines:

“all i’ve ever done is hurt adora, and all she ever tried to do was love me instead. i’ve loved her and wanted her more than anyone else, and still all i did was hurt her. adora finally gave up on me, like i deserved all along anyway. but maybe, just maybe, the last thing i do could be for her. maybe that last little piece of goodness in me could live on in her.”

hence the:

“all i do is hurt people. there’s no one left in the entire universe who cares about me.”

anyway, my point is that catra has been through fucking hell :(

adora rescues her, and in the moment, catra is (obviously) relieved, shocked, surprised, confused, even. (“why did you come back? we both know i don’t matter.”)

the confusion is the main thing i want to focus on. catra really truly believes that adora hates her (shadow weaver has conditioned her to believe that she has always been inherently worthless and unlovable), so catra can’t understand why adora would ever come back for her.

catra eventually comes to the conclusion that adora just wanted to feel like a hero. she just came back to rescue catra to prove her virtue or her moral superiority to catra.

so she lashes out. she feels so completely out of control, and bitter with adora for her actions, convinced that there is no way that adora came back for her out of love.

adora handles this like shit. the literal first thing she does is throw the mattress onto the floor, and later slams catra into the wall. adora lashes back at catra, hurt that catra doesn’t “appreciate” adora’s love for her. adora doesn’t even try for two fucking seconds to understand where catra is coming from.

(adora does have a consistent issue with only seeming to be able to empathize with catra’s emotions when catra is weak, vulnerable, and powerless throughout much of series honestly)

ugh and calling her a stubborn brat? like i love you adora, but that makes my blood fucking boil. it is SUCH condescending, shadow weaver-coded language to use toward catra. i understand, catra is being “difficult” or whatever, but god it’s so easy to see why catra is acting the way she is.

and ofc catra is scared of entrapta! obviously, catra wronged entrapta deeply, and catra has never lived in a world with grace and forgiveness. shadow weaver physically abused her all her life, and hordak suffocated her for losing shadow weaver and lying to him about it. catra knows that she hurt entrapta, so naturally she immediately assumes that entrapta is going to fucking kill her the minute she has a chance.

then adora’s reaction is to fucking shove her into the wall and tell her to “grow up”. catra just looks fucking terrified, backed into the corner in her little horde pjs :(

adora backs off for a moment and tells catra that she would respect her wish to drop her off somewhere, catra realizes that adora really could leave her, and immediately rushes to beg adora to stay, kneeling on the ground, reaching up for her hand. something about that whole scene just absolutely fucking breaks my heart.

it kills something in me when i hear people say that catra didn’t do enough for redemption. it’s never what her redemption was ever about. catra is genuinely so, so much more complicated than that. and so is adora! i’m still sad that adora never really made up to catra for some of her shitty behavior.

i don’t believe that their arcs are meant to be done at the end of the show. there’s still so much room for them to grow. and that is what the post canon fics are for lol

oops this ended up being wayyy more of a rant than i intended; i think about catradora all the time :)

[misssakurapetal28]

Note: This isn’t a Catra//dora post. I want to see and hear opinions on OTHER Catra pairs. So please be respectful to me and each other!

Any hate will be blocked.

[vyr2oso]

I love how I've literally been saying that crosshair and catra are like the same fucking character since 2021 and the show only continues to prove me right

[kathrahender]

Do you think Catra's redemption arc was rushed or incomplete?

Well- I think it wasn't as good as it could have been, and it could have been more well-developed, but her redemption is better than Shadow Weaver at least.

[arceneades]

Catra's Redemption?

TL/DR: Catra is the product of brainwashing and abuse who heroically shakes that off and bravely gives her greatest betrayer a second chance.

In my barely-on-life-support fic "Catran", I'm going through SPOP episode by episode, in a more gritty universe than canon, and from the point of view of a non-binary Catra.

Yes, Adora is still queer in this fic. I'm not a monster.

Anyway, this has me spending a LOT of time in the head of the Catra in my head. And from in here...

Fuck everyone who says I needed redemption. Fuck them forever. Do you have any idea what it's been like for me? The torture? The abuse? Have you ever wondered why I scratched Octavia's fucking eye out? I mean, have you? Cause it ain't pretty, I'll fucking tell you that. Adora left me in that fucking hellhole. Yeah, she was all enlightened and shit but I was raised to believe that Princesses were all evil, and you know what? I didn't know any better, because I never had a chance to learn any better. I was raised from the age of fucking three to fight for the Horde, and you're going to hang a bunch of shit on me for that? Say that somehow, I was supposed to see past all of that and make good choices while I was being brainwashed and abused and abandoned? Fuck. You. I saved Adora. I saved your whole god damn rebellion when I put my ass on the line to give her that fucking sword back and saved her ass from being fucking mind-wiped and what did she say to me? That she was surprised. The one person I ever let myself care about and get close to and fucking love, and she left me and had the balls to be surprised that I would keep my promise to protect her? Yeah. That hurt. How was I supposed to know she really loved me? She sure as fuck didn't say it. She sure as fuck didn't show it. "One good thing"? Fuck. You. I didn't need redeeming. Adora needed redeeming.

[but-a-humble-goon]

Online media literacy be like "this teenaged girl who maybe hurt some people is irredeemable and unforgivable and deserves only to suffer forever" Meanwhile popular male redemption arc characters:

[pan-catra]

one thing that this spop rewatch is really opening my eyes on is how hypocritical the Catra redemption discourse was back when the show was still airing. i could make a compilation of all the times Scorpia tries to murder someone in the Rebellion or Entrapta disregards basic morals to uphold her partnership with the Horde and yet they get passes in regards to their redemption while people complain about Catra not “deserving it”. and like, it’s literally only because Scorpia and Entrapta are nicer than Catra. if Catra wasn’t a huge bitch no one would be saying her redemption was rushed or undeserved. people care far more about personality than they do about actions.

[idolomantises]

I always feel like the worst kind of character redemptions (other than redemptions where a character immediately redeems themselves after one conversation) are ones where the villain is betrayed and so they switch sides, and it's treated like they've become a better person.

[rewritingcanon]

my sister and i just yapped for almost three hours and we were just talking about how genuinely weird people in fandom are surrounding characters who have explicit mental illness. like they can never ever be normal. there are characters who are romanticised and glamourised for their mental illness (eren. wanda. joker. kaneki. nico. almost any danganronpa/ddlc character). characters who are consistently ridiculed for their mental illness either because it simply isn’t getting taken seriously (reiner) or because no one takes the character seriously (armin). and there are the characters that get blatantly outright DESPISED for it (basil, harry potter, korra, gale, also eren etc etc). like yes im seeing a correlation but its still so astounding how selective people are about where they draw the line with mental illness and what traits they can accept.

[queenoftheferns]

conversations about caitlyn rn are giving me flashbacks to the she-ra fandom iykyk

[bi-dykes]

Hi after my beautiful blue baby girl perfect Jinx sacrificed herself, I want to thank She-Ra spop once again for deciding Catra would live rather than die to save everyone and then apologize and join the rebellion to amend her mistakes, and not the age old message of “if you have hurt someone the best way to go forwards and be a better person is to KILL YOURSELF” like I’m so tired of that being the lazy and nihilistic approach to redemption in so many franchises

[vyr2oso]

Its been 3 years and now they BOTH have emotional support animals that reflect their true emotions to help them adjust being on the same team as the people/person they care about most after years of being their enemy am I right or am I fucking right

It's been 2 years and I'm only more convinced that Catra and Crosshair are the same person

[yourhighness6]

Unpopular opinion but I think in SPOP S2E3 Catra was genuinely trying to protect Entrapta from Hordak after almost being suffocated in the same episode by him

I think the main obstacle to Catra's perspective redemption arc at this point isn't her tendency towards violence or her constant anger, as those are classic character flaws before redemption arcs, but her manipulation tactics and her capacity to treat other people like shit. This is kind of an uncommon way of presenting these sorts of characters, who are often shown as being kind of "dumb" while having a repressed natural kindness. Catra certainly isn't "dumb", she's incredibly intelligent, an excellent strategist, and extremely careful with her words. In this scene I saw not the first glimpse but one of the first of a girl who genuinely cares about those close to her (besides Adora) and may be worthy of redemption. Catra clearly does have a heart, but I'm interested to see exactly how this plays out, as Noelle Stevenson took a huge risk by giving her these traits.

[nightowl1556]

The dragon has three heads

One to be a murderer, who will unleash death

One to be a monarch, who's crown will weigh heavy

And one to be mad, who's ideas will change history

[the-mpreg-guy]

also the people who are like "if you can't handle cait/vi, you would have never been strong enough for catradora" ARE INSANE bc the entire narrative of shepop was constantly saying that catra was WRONG for the shit she pulled and made her go through multiple episodes where she had to win adora's trust again AND she actually apologized. CAITLYN COULD NEVER

[girl4music]

Xena has a Power of Queer Love ending too in ways.

The only difference is Xena chooses self-sacrifice instead of survival because of the love she feels or has for others. She chooses what Shadow Weaver or Catra does. Personal sacrifice out of an understanding that the power of love matters more than the love of power and it’s only because she feels like all her evil deeds - whether purposeful or accidental - are too unforgivable, can’t be atoned for in life, and it’s too late for her. It’s certainly not a good ending in the sense that it glorifies her heroism as self-sacrifice/suicide and that can be an extremely dangerous and debilitating message to give viewers, but the sentiment of the whys and hows is realistic from a narrative and thematic point of view.

Xena is no kids TV show. Xena is a Greek tragedy.

So the Power of Love is in Redemptive Love in Xena which - thankfully - is a striking difference in She-Ra.

Adora chooses love and forgiveness for herself just as much as she does for others. So that’s one way where Xena and She-Ra aren’t similar. Which I’m happy about because that would have been far too much for a young audience and it would have overstepped its boundaries.