#as catra looks back

[manic-sapphic]

just chiseling away at my jagged stone heart

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

i don't really understand the point of showing catra to be scared of adora after the portal was closed, only for her to double down on her villany and torture adora the next time they meet, as if nothing ever happened.

[yardsards]

when characters have poofy messy but otherwise straight hair, i like to headcanon that their hair is actually naturally wavy/curly and they just don't know how to/don't care to take proper care of it. bc irl that is often the case (speaking from personal experience)

[tippenfunkaport]

Promotional images Mattel released in 2019 to promote the She-Ra and the Princesses of Power toyline. Mattel famously botched the release of these so badly these dolls are extremely rare and fetch huge prices in the collector's market.

There was also a ComicCon exclusive set with Shadow Weaver and She-Ra.

Source Tweets below

[fizzie-frog]

"Why would you need a 2 TB ssd?"

Me hoarding thousands of photos and videos of my every favorite character:

[blonde-and-cat-suc]

If Adora and Catra both did crap to hurt each other then why do I never see comics abt Adora feeling like crap and feeling bad for hurting Catra

[kikic777]

Posting some art works here that I did last year! This one is a screenshot redraw of that iconic scene in She Ra and the Princesses of Power.

[candyskiez]

sorry for changing my account look again am I still cute

[worldsbiggestnerd101]

catra honey ily and i know you’ve been through some shit but did you really have to send entrapta to beast island and then lie about her betraying the horde. did you.

[aerhartdraws]

Gave our girl a big gun.

I'm sure she'll use it responsibly.

Rescue Mission

“Greyskull-Zero-Two, report.”

Catra surveys the scene before her, brow furrowing as she counts the figures ambling in the valley below her, loading boxes onto the waiting hauler. Their quarry is in there, no doubt about it. Just a matter of– “Greyskull-Zero-Two, report.” An eye twitches at Command’s insistence. “There’s some kind of auditory disturbance coming through my earpiece,” she mutters, through gritted teeth. “It’s very distracting.” “… Very funny, Zero-Two. Report.” Catra sighs, flipping through scan modes on her visor. “Twenty bodies, twelve armed,” she replies. “Most of the cargo’s loaded. Can I shoot them now?” “Negative, Zero-Two. Stick to recon.” Her eye twitches again. “Command, I thought our objective was locating Zero-One. If she’s here, we have to move now. The rest of the 52nd won’t arrive in time to respond to our reinforcement request.” The tension in her voice is barely concealed, the temptation to blurt a string of expletives down the comm withheld but for the thinnest thread of restraint. “Negative,” comes the response. “That’s an order, you hear me? You do not fire unless fired upon.” Catra sits there for a moment, considering. Finally, she stands up, walking towards the edge of the outcrop, her armoured form silhouetted against the planet’s pale sky. “HEY, ASSHOLES!” “Zero-Two, what–” All twenty of the insurgents turn to look at once, twelve guns immediately blazing to life, spewing plasma in her direction. Catra pulls back, narrowly avoiding the hail of glowing bolts spattering across the cliff edge. “Permission to engage now?” A wry smile spreads across her face as she asks the question. It’s greeted with a groan and an exasperated sigh. “… Fine. Cleared to engage. And Catra?” “Yeah?” “You're working for us, now. No more war crimes.” Catra huffs as she steps forward once more, hefting the autocannon to her shoulder, taking aim as her finger finds the trigger. “You’re no fun.”

[aingeal98]

Being in the She Ra fandom when it was airing was so funny because you had this highly powerful character filled with righteous revolutionary rage and occasional bloodlust, generally carrying the squad through whatever dangerous mission they're on by teleporting them to safety, often only held back from destroying her enemies because her best friend did not approve of killing or stooping to their level, and the fandom took one look at her pink aesthetic and Catra's unreliable narration and was like "Yeah she's just too nice and boring she probably believes the power of hugs and friendship will save the world."

And then s4 hit and they were so confused why instead of hugs and friendship she believed in fists, murder, and dark magic. Like buddy she's been on this path for four seasons now, that's on YOU for letting the name Glimmer and the pink aesthetic fool you.

[1very1fancy1doilies1]

Catra drawing I started way back in 2022! I used to draw anatomy very differently, so it was difficult to make it look "normal" while retaining the integrity of the original sketch. also! I tried to mimic @babypears gorgeous coloring style (I gave up)

[aprillikesthings]

The entire plot of She-Ra would be kind of hilarious from the POV of a random Horde soldier the same age/cohort of cadets as Catra and Adora (we know there's more we see on screen whose names we never learn)

Because just imagine

You grow up and sleep in the same bunk room and those two are constantly sharing the same bed, and Adora is at least friendly with everyone but if you're TOO friendly Catra hisses at you and threatens to cut you

Shadow Weaver is obviously obsessed with Adora and using Catra to control her (...and vent her own anger whenever she feels like it), so you just uhhh stay out of that as much as you can

And then one day right after Adora makes Force Captain she disappears and both Shadow Weaver and Catra lose their fucking minds about it, as if there's not dozens of other Horde soldiers, why is it always about Adora

Oh and there's some new tall blonde princess named She-Ra who keeps kicking the Horde's asses?

What do you mean that's also Adora??? THE FUCK???

Oh and look Catra is still weirdly obsessed with her and the two of them seem to start every battle only to run off and fight each other, for fucks sake they should just bang already, you're tired of getting beat to shit because of those two

Anyway at some point Shadow Weaver is gone and then Catra is too, for a while; but oh nope ha ha there she is again

Also at some point some kinda portal thing opens up and everything is HELLA WEIRD and then suddenly everything is back to normal

Except after that Catra's giving orders ALL THE TIME, and she gets meaner and meaner and if anyone tries to talk to her about it they also get shouted at

And then Catra and Hordak disappear, then Horde Prime shows up, and the world almost ends but it doesn't and the Fright Zone is covered in plants for some reason??? Wow the sky is bright without all that pollution. Weird.

And then you find out that the reason the world didn't end is ....Catra and Adora had a make-out somewhere underground and also, now Catra is glued to She-Ra's side and making goo-goo eyes at her

LIKE. The plot of She-Ra would be absolutely batshit from their POV and I can't stop laughing about it, like what do you MEAN I've been sent to fight in battle over and over because these two dipshits couldn't just tell each other they wanted to bang for MULTIPLE YEARS

[blitzwhore]

I just saw Blitzø get called Stolas stockholm victim I can't with this fandom anymore😭

😂 As outrageously incorrect and stupid as that take is, I'm going to go on a tangent here. I hope you don't mind.

I think every fandom has annoying people with awfully terrible takes in it. People with zero media literacy. People who hatewatch. People who think they're entitled to the exact show they would've wanted, which has nothing to do with the actual, existing show.

This is especially true for queer media, and especially true for queer cartoons. (Hi, yes. I was active in the Adventure Time, Steven Universe, Voltron, and She-Ra fandoms when those shows were airing, respectively. I've seen some stuff). Some people just can't handle queer cartoons, period. If the queer characters/ships are soft and wholesome, they're infantilising and boring, and if they're complex and nuanced and actually have conflict, they're abusive and problematic. You'll hear the same recycled arguments over and over again. Like, the shit some people are saying about Blitz and Stolas after The Full Moon? Is literally almost word-for-word what they said about Catra and Adora post-season 3 of She-Ra (and even at the end of the show).

Here's the thing, though! Those people and their bad takes are not what I want to think about what I think about a fandom. Those aren't the people I want to call the fans. They don't deserve that title. Not when so many other people are out there dedicating their time to making gifs and art and meta posts, and writing fic, and commenting/reblogging to show support, and sliding into people's DMs to scream and squee together about a thing they love.

At the end of the day, "fandom" is just a lot of people each doing their own thing. Which people you engage with and allow to stay within your line of sight will determine your fandom experience. Fandom can be a huge, convoluted, online space full of people who are constantly arguing with one another and whose takes make you unfathomably angry... Or it can be you and your 5 friends and mutuals who scream gleefully at one another in 2-note posts. You can't control what others post online, but you can control your engagement with it.

How? Well, here's what I personally do to avoid getting upset by people's stupid opinions online:

Filter 'critical' and 'anti' tags (eg. #anti stolitz #anti vivziepop #Helluva Boss critical #HB critical #vivziepop critical). Many people actually do tag their critical posts because they know it's the respectful thing to do!

If I come across a post that has one or more of those tags, obviously, I don't click through to see it under any circumstances.

If I stumble across a stranger's untagged post with hate/criticism that upsets me: I stop reading and BLOCK. Immediately. I don't look back. I don't finish reading. I don't engage. I just block block block. I <3 the block button, seriously.

If I feel my mind reeling from a bad take I just came across: I take a step back, close my phone, breathe, remember life is beautiful sometimes. Go back and watch an episode I really like. Clean my living space a little. Vent about it to a friend (but only if I really need to, because if not, I'd rather not dwell on it).

If I'm starting to feel the need to reply to someone's bad take (directly or via my own post), I instead make the decision to channel that energy into making fandom posts out of love. (I don't do this just with fandom. If I see something transphobic online, I usually react by reblogging a bunch of trans art or trans positivity posts on my main, for example). I like to think of it as putting some positivity out into the world to compensate for the negativity I just saw. So, for example, if I see someone shitting on my blorbo, I may make a silly post just saying how much I love blorbo. Or I'll make (or draft) a post about how interesting I find some of blorbo's actions. Or reblog another person's positive/interesting post about blorbo.

And finally, I stay the hell away from Twitter. Or at least, if I go on Twitter, I try my best to avoid any tweet that has text in it instead of just art. Even the people who have good opinions spend too much time arguing with the people who have bad opinions on there. I don't want to see people's bad takes! No, not even while reading founded and perfectly articulated criticism of those bad takes! So I just limit my time on Twitter. And again, if someone is putting bad takes on my TL (even if it is to counter them), I unfollow and block as needed.

All this to say, yes, it really fucking sucks to read the opinions of people who don't understand and who hate the characters and ships and worlds you love. Gosh it's the worst. But you can curate your fandom experience. You can focus on the things you can control. You have the power to decide if your fandom experience is draining or fun!

And because I don't know how to finish this, here, have a Stolitz kiss to heal you:

We will keep winning and there's nothing the haters can do about it. 😌

[midnightechoes]

Five years ago today, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power premiered on Netflix. I had seen a few preview articles about it, and liked what I saw. Those articles mostly focused on She-Ra’s, Adora’s, Glimmer’s, Bow’s, and Catra’s redesigns, and I thought they were fabulous. I loved Adora’s new red jacket and bouffant hair style. Glimmer’s entire redesign was inspired, and I loved that they made Bow black so we could have more diversity in the main cast.

It was She-Ra’s and Catra’s redesigns that caught my eyes the most, though. They made Catra an actual catgirl, and not just in the anime sense where she's just a cute girl with cat ears and maybe a cat tail. She was a full-on furry. It was a brilliant design choice. Honestly it’s no wonder that so many were instantly drawn to her.

And of course, She-Ra herself. I loved her new look, and her huge ass new Sword of Protection. In fact, I loved it so much that I drew this picture of her before the show even came out:

Then the show came out, and needless to say, I fell in love. And honestly, it changed my life.

I know, I know. That sounds very hyperbolic, and to an extent it is, but in a lot of ways, I’m absolutely serious.

Alright, I have to back up a little. Back when I was in college, and for a few years after, a couple of friends and I tried to make a webcomic called The Devil’s Gate. It was minorly successful but eventually floundered. Then I met some people and we tried to make a video game, which also failed. After those few years, I found myself on my own and trying to rework the concept of my webcomic. Making comics, creating stories, those have always been my dream, and I was desperately trying to figure out a story I could make work, something that I believed in. But it never truly got off the ground. By the end of 2015 I had given up on the comic, realizing that after working on it for years in different forms that I needed to step away from it.

I didn’t really know what to do after that. I was still doing my quick daily doodles, but I wasn’t writing, I wasn’t drawing anything of note. I felt emotionally and physically drained of my creativity. I was honestly getting to the point where I thought it might be time for me to give up on trying to be creative or making things all together.

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power came out on November 13, 2018, but despite looking forward to it, I didn’t actually watch it when it came out. It wasn’t until that weekend that I decided to check it out.

I was instantly hooked. I binged through the entire season in two days, and did plenty of crying and cheering. And then rewatched it immediately. I was in love. I was obsessed. It had been a long time since anything grabbed me like SPOP did. I loved the characters. I loved the colorful, sci-fi-fairy tale world of Etheria. I loved how unapologetically feminine it was. And most of all, I loved how queer it was.

I hadn’t done a ton of shipping before SPOP. I’ve been down bad for harlivy for what feels like my whole life, and I was angry when Mika and HG didn’t get together in Warehouse 13, but more often than not I had just been conditioned not to look for queer things in mainstream culture, and even barely in subculture.

That is to say, when I was smashed in the face with Catradora I was surprised how much I glommed onto it immediately. I was absolutely taken with Adora and Catra and their relationship. Both characters were so relatable, and despite not quite being text (although the subtext was so loud and obvious it might as well have been text), it was impossible to not read their feelings for each other as romantic.

It wasn’t just Catradora, even if that was a lot of it. Spinnerella and Netossa being canon from the start was wonderful. How much Glimmer and Bow screamed “BISEXUAL DISASTERS” from the start was adorable. Scorpia’s crush on Catra was as cute as it was sad in its one-sidedness.

I had never really been in a fandom. That is, yeah I’ve liked things, loved things even, but I never found other people to talk about it at length, never found discords just for that thing, never read or wrote fanfic, barely ever drew fanart. 

But, I watched SPOP, and then I watched it again. And then I drew Catra. And then I drew Adora. And then I drew them again. And suddenly I was on AO3, a site I never frequented, reading Catradora fics. And then I had an AO3 account. That December I participated in Catradora Week 2018 (I’d never heard of this kind of thing) and drew two pictures for it and wrote my first fanfic.

By the end of February I had drawn more in the three months since the show had premiered than I had in the previous year. I was working furiously on a long, multi-chapter fanfic, and writing more words than I had in the previous couple of years combined.

I was inspired again.

In the 18 months that SPOP ran for, I drew more than I had in years, I wrote hundreds of thousands of words. I felt so rejuvenated and happy about my creativity and free for the first time in years.

It’s hard to put into words exactly how it felt. I was so close to giving up my art and writing, which honestly, would have been giving up a part of myself. An important part of myself. It’s not overstating that SPOP saved me, or at least my creative spirit.

I also learned about the wonders of being in a fandom and fandom things like fan weeks, big bangs, zines. And I made some wonderful friends that I cherish to this day.

Even as I inevitably moved onto other hyperfixations, my love for She-Ra hasn’t diminished. Plushie Catra and Adora sit next to me on my desk every day. Catradora art still hangs on my wall.

The inspiration that SPOP ignited in me hasn’t died either. It’s carried me through a tremendous level of creativity that I’ve been riding since the premiere. It let me create a ton of fan art for SPOP, and then RWBY and then the Witch From Mercury, and I’ve written a ton of fanfics for RWBY and Supergirl. And perhaps the best, that inspiration has helped me create more OC stuff in the last couple years than I had in a long time.

I owe She-Ra and The Princesses of Power so much. I am so happy that it exists and that it happened when it did. I’ll always cherish it.

And for real, Netflix, SPOP spin-off movies WHEN?!

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

"of course catra isn't going to change immediately, healing is not linear!"

look, i get it. i get this pov. it's not easy to change destructive habits and coping mechanisms. but you have to at least try. and someone needs to hold you accountable when you inevitably slip back into toxic habits.

and we need to remember that catra isn't just a "bad friend" or someone who "made a few mistakes" like s5 tries to tell us. she's a war criminal. she's killed people. she almost committed mass omnicide out of spite.

so excuse me if i'm expecting her to act a little better after getting her ass saved by her victim.

catra needed someone to hold her accountable. someone to call her out when she started to slip into old patterns. if glimmer wasn't so horribly mischaracterized in s5, i would say she's the person for that. or adora.

but no, the spop writers really wanted to hammer in the fact that catra is good now, without putting in effort to actually make her good, so they just completely changed all of the other characters.

wouldn't it have been easier to make catra just act like a decent person instead? did you really have to make her continue saying and doing toxic shit while everyone around her acts like completely different characters? idk it just seems like more work to me.