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aprillikesthings · 6 months

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LAST EPISODE

s5 ep13 heart pt 2

LET'S GOOOOOOO

it's 1:21pm and I have laundry to do AND Easter Vigil service starts at 8pm, can I get this all watched before 7pm?

Or am I gonna sit there in church vibrating in place for two hours knowing I have three minutes left on the episode or some bullshit lol

(That's longer than usual, yes. Easter Vigil is actually one of my fave services of the year--we start outside lighting candles (the ones inside have been out since Thursday night, even the one we otherwise never put out), then walk into the dark church, then sorta speedrun bits of the old testament (with a hymn after every reading) and then we decide OKAY IT'S EASTER NOW :D and turn on the lights and make a lot of noise and sing a few more hymns--we don't sing or say alleluia during Lent so all the hymns have that in it. There's often MASSIVE amounts of church incense, too. Anyway by the end it's a bit of a party. Apparently some churches have an actual party after the service.)(side note if you're new-ish to these posts that I'm Episcopalian, like, the priests at my church are a gay man and a woman, we're cool people mostly I promise)

See this is why these posts take forever. Why do I keep infodumping shit. This is what it's like to watch things with me in person, though.

If I get through this episode before Easter Vigil my reward is gonna be coming home and taking an edible and rewatching the last two episodes without screenshots so I can just cry over them.

oKAY

eh? that's new. like putting that on screen like that in dead silence. No intro sequence.

oh right Adora is injured. :( And it's some kind of magical monster thing that did it--a security thing put into the Crystal Castle by the First Ones

when she touches her wound the Failsafe glows, and it's making static-y noises and looking glitchy, that can't be good

the nasty tentacle monster thing is still there buT SO IS CATRA YAYYYY she shatters at least one of its eyeballs? I think?

my brain: this is like Caitlyn helping Vi after she got stabbed by Sevika, the wound is even in the same place :D me: wrong person has the red jacket on also Catra isn't going to buy some illegal potion thing to dose Adora with

(you should watch Arcane)

DOES SHE EVER SAY IT LIKE THAT BEFORE THIS?? oh god she sounds so breathless and relieved

Adora: "You can't be here! It's too dangerous"

And she stands up and starts to fall over and fucking Shadow Weaver helps her stand up, uGH

LOOK AT MY BB KICKING ASS

oh god so Shadow Weaver basically drags off Adora, Catra's like "I'll catch up, okay?" and Adora's like "no no Catraaaaa" her voice is cracking and everything, she doesn't want to do this without her and also worries about Catra and that tentacle monster thing

I'm not gonna screenshot it but poor Glimmer is fighting her dad, who is still chipped and Evil.

Bow is fighting Scorpia, also chipped and Evil. Oh hey Melog shows up and makes Bow invisible.

Micah is MEAN when chipped. He calls Glimmer a failure.

Glimmer: "My mother raised me to be brave. My friends taught me to be kind. And I'm stubborn. I get that from you. I will never stop fighting! And I won't lose another parent! I love you, dad."

She blasts him with enough magic that he collapses.

Bow, invisible, types away on Entrapta's computer she set up in the Horde thing, but when he gets it to start to do its thing he gets excited and says "I've got it!!" and Scorpia hears it and blasts him and is standing over him about to get him.

Bow: "Prime may have made you do a lot of things, but he can't turn you into something you're not. So, right now, all I need you to do is trust me."

Her eyes get normal for a second and she yells, and Bow slams a button on Entrapta's computer. There's a bright light.

Where Sea Hawk is holding Mermista, her chip goes dead and falls off. We get a lovely montage of other characters from all over Etheria, like Huntara and the folks at Elberon, who'd been chipped having their eyes go back to normal!

Scorpia: "oh my gosh I am so sorry!!"

yeah she's definitely back to normal lol

up on Horde Prime's ship:

lol

"My device worked! I knew it would!"

Bow: "Hey, everyone. I'm Bow."

(lol there's so much story in just this frame alone)

But yeah they show people from all over Etheria stopping to watch him speak, including his dads.

"Right now, we're the only thing standing in the way of him controlling it forever. You might be feeling hopeless. You might be thinking "We don't stand a chance." And maybe we don't. Prime's too strong. His army is too powerful. But that's not gonna stop us. We need to show Prime we're not afraid of him, because we have each other. And we have love. We can't give up. And if we go down, we go down together. We need you. All of you."

"It's time to fight. For She-Ra, for our homes, for each other!"

Broadcast over, back to Horde Prime. "Put an end to this mockery."

Catra injures the tentacle monster thing, but now that green is spreading into the room, and as Catra runs down the hall towards the Heart, she stops as Horde Prime shows up in hologram form

"I had such high hopes for you." like what, dude. keeping her around and chipped like a fucking puppet as an example? eugh. (something something about how her speeches to Adora while chipped were an obvious reference to people proselytizing high-control faiths)

the moment of distraction is enough for the tentacle monster to grab one of Catra's legs and she screams in pain D:

also there's still a bunch of earthquakes happening as these two limp towards the Heart

Poor Adora is just weakly going "No...no...wait" Shadow Weaver: "Don't lose your focus. We're so close."

What's this WE shit.

But also damn one thing Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime (and Light Hope!) have in common is they both believe love and affection and "attachments" are weaknesses. Shadow Weaver just cannot seem to get it through her head that Adora's love for Catra (and vice versa) is helpful here. Not a detriment. Love isn't a distraction!!! It gives us a stable ground of security and safety from which to do hard things!!

Meanwhile poor Angella told Adora "take care of each other."

This is pulsating, and so is the Failsafe on Adora's chest

OH NO oh god Okay being near that much hardcore magic is making Shadow Weaver powerful--her hair does the floaty thing for the first time since, what, s2? And she starts reaching for it, but THEN--

Adora yells Catra's name and starts walking back towards her, and Shadow Weaver's hair falls down again and she says the most weirdly desperate-sounding "Adora, wait!"

Prime's hologram is still torturing Catra along with the actual tentacle monster

(someone has drawn rule 34 of that thing but I'm not looking for it. I am content to know it exists.)

AND THEN THE MONSTER GETS BLASTED BY SHADOW WEAVER AHAHA NICE

about time she was useful amiright

okay so is this Shadow Weaver actually realizing she's been wrong about The Power of Love, or is this just her begrudgingly accepting that these two are Sold as A Set, Do Not Separate, and unless Catra's there Adora won't be able to use the Failsafe because she'll be looking for Catra the whole time???

Like is this an emotional epiphany or just pragmatism?

oh god so she magically shoves Catra away (towards Adora), but Catra runs back to Shadow Weaver

And y'all I know I talked about this a LOT way back in earlier seasons but I cannot tell you how accurate this keeps being in regards to dealing with an abusive parent. Like if you'd asked me, even after I cut off contact, if I wanted my dad to die, I would've said No! Of course not! At that point I didn't know whether the no-contact thing was temporary or not. I just knew I needed time and space to not be constantly stressed and anxious, for a notification on my phone to not immediately fill me with so much adrenaline my hands shook.

Anyway Shadow Weaver puts up a magical shield to keep Catra back

Shadow Weaver's response is amazingly calm and quiet. "Please, Catra. You need to make sure Adora reaches the Heart. The magic must be set free."

Her fight with Tentacle Monster isn't going well.

Catra's voice is heartbreaking here. "Stop it! It's going to kill you!"

"But you, this is only the beginning for you."

;_;

STICK THAT KNIFE IN AND TWIST IT! YEAH!

Catra's crying "no...no..." and a hand reaches out and grabs hers

LOL FINALLY HIT THE IMAGE LIMIT okay going to reblog

what a moment for it pfft

#april rewatches spop #heart pt 2

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catrasredemption-moved · 3 years

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Taking Control Rewatch/Analysis

After a lot of discussion, I've decided it's time to rewatch Taking Control, because it really does highlight Adora's and Catra's separate issues with each other, and shows that Adora, frankly, has very shitty habits when it comes to dealing with Catra.

NOTE: I am not, at any point, saying that Adora is abusive. She's not, but her approach to Catra in this episode just sort of sucks for a good amount of time, and it's all a result of how they were raised.

Let's just jump right in - Catra is clearly traumatized. We come off the theme song right into her having a nightmare:

And not just any nightmare - she's dreaming about Prime, and everything that happened.

So... off to a good start for her.

And then Adora comes in, and god help her she just wants to do whatever she can for Catra, but at that moment, even Catra doesn't know what she needs, and she's spent years dealing with Adora's "we can fix it" savior complex, so of course she does the one thing she knows how to do - gets angry and lashes out.

(It's also really important to remember that Catra specifically told Adora not to go to Prime's ship. "Don't come here, no matter what." She was ready to die on that ship, ready to die for the only thing that still mattered to her - Adora.)

Then, just like Catra, Adora falls back on old, Horde-learned habits - she gets angry.

An Not at a great move considering everything Catra just went through, and blatantly ignoring Catra's admittedly ridiculous request to just be dropped off on some planet. ("I said I'm going to take you home and that's exactly what I'm going to do.") Is it something Adora should indulge? No, of course not. Is the correct response flipping the mattress and throwing Catra on the floor? No.

And then...

"Why are you acting like this? We saved your life!"

Catra told Adora not to come back. She sent Glimmer away specifically to keep Adora from going to Prime's ship. She had already accepted her fate and planned to die or spend the rest of her life as Prime's mini-me, and she was at peace with it. The implied "we saved you, you should be grateful", is very Shadow Weaver-esque, while also saying Catra should be grateful for something she did not want.

Again, is Catra being reasonable? Of course not. She should've known Adora would come back for her, whether it was to save her friend or to be a hero. So of course she gets mad and yells back because she never asked to be saved, or given another chance at a life she didn't want.

"I thought things could be different this time but clearly nothing has changed."

And Adora is very, very wrong. A lot has changed. Catra has changed. But Adora's way of arguing with her hasn't adapted to catch up with all that yet.

And the kitchen scene. Oh the kitchen scene.

"I thought we actually stood a chance at fixing things this time, but after everything we've been through, she's still a stubborn brat!"

Well, Adora... you haven't actually tried to fix anything. You went in, tried to force her to talk when she clearly didn't want to, then yelled at her and walked out. You want her to be grateful that you saved her even though she had absolutely zero desire to live, and you kind of threw her out of bed.

"We all risked our lives to save her, and she can't even say thank you?"

How long has it actually been since they got away from Prime? I can't imagine more than twelve hours, since Darla is still in pretty rough shape and Entrapta is running around like crazy to fix things. That's less than a day to recover from being chipped, dying, being brought back to life, and adjusting to now having to live a life you'd given up. Catra's still trying to catch up with everything, and Adora is already harping on her about changing and being grateful.

And again, let me be clear - I do not think Adora is abusive or malicious. Frustrated, yes, because Catra is being stubborn, but not for the reasons Adora thinks. She's used to Catra acting this way, but the feelings are coming from a completely different place, something Adora hasn't taken time yet to understand. She's not just being stubborn, she's scared.

We also get Glimmer being the voice of reason in this scene, and that's so important:

"This is Catra we're talking about. Did you think she was instantly going to become a totally different person?"

Two things to note here: Glimmer, by this point, has spent a lot of time with Catra. Catra, who kept coming back to her cell to taunt her, but also stayed when Glimmer asked. Catra, who laughed when they talked about Adora and told her about being cadets in the Horde. Catra who saved her life. Glimmer knows Catra hides behind a hard exterior, and from the way Adora's acting, she can probably guess that she sent Catra right back into that after some very painful vulnerability.

Second thing - Glimmer says different person. Not better, not good, different. Catra's already proven she can be good, and Glimmer knows that'll come out when Catra is ready. But Catra's processing method doesn't run on Adora's schedule.

"I thought she'd at least try."

Again, Adora, you haven't given her a chance. Old coping mechanisms just aren't going to work here, no matter how hard Adora tries.

She also just really unintentionally has the worst timing.

This is the second time she's walked in right on the heels of a flash, and it's obviously not her fault, she doesn't know. It just terrible, terrible timing.

And this is where we get into some really dicey territory.

Catra had complete control of her body just ripped away from her. She's been violated in one of the worst possible ways. She's had almost no time to recover mentally. And now here Adora is, with someone Catra does not want to see, ordering Catra around and making demands.

Again, Adora isn't wrong per se. The chip needs to go. But Catra is in full defense mode, and Adora isn't helping. She's making it worse. She literally backs Catra into a corner and yells at her. It's really not a good look.

She's scared. Scared of the situation, of the fact that she has to face Entrapta, of the idea of living a life she had no intention of continuing. And she's scared of Adora. Because Adora is still acting the way she would have before Horde Prime, but Catra's not the same person anymore, and Adora hasn't seen that yet. She doesn't see it until Catra finally takes the hardest step and reaches out to her.

"Stay."

And finally, finally Adora sees. She sees Catra being vulnerable, asking for her. She realizes that maybe she's been doing this wrong. Maybe her old approach isn't right. Maybe Catra doesn't need the old Adora and her way of dealing with things. She needs comfort. She needs to know she's not making a mistake by letting Adora see her weakness.

Catra, meanwhile, has at least started to come to terms with things. She has this life, even if she didn't want it, and she's so tired of self-sabotaging. And when faced with the possibility of never seeing Adora again... she realizes she doesn't want it. She doesn't want to be alone anymore.

And they proceed with this new, tentative, weird dynamic. Catra forces herself to face the flashes the chip's been causing and use them for something good, and Adora supports her through it instead of arguing. It's new, and it's strange, but it works.

Rounding out to the end of the episode, it's really significant that Adora goes to Bow and Entrapta after the fight rather than back to Catra. She's finally recognizing that she needs to give Catra space, and that if Catra wants her, she'll come to her. It's a gamble that pays off.

The Point:

There's a lot going around about how Catra is abusive and cruel to Adora, but not a lot about how it goes both ways. Adora is the hero, she's supposed to be perfect, but she's not, and we see that as early as the first episode when she all but blames Catra for the way Shadow Weaver treats her. ("You are kinda disrespectful.")

It's a terrible consequence of the way they were raised, and it's really showcased in Taking Control, where Adora immediately reverts back to old habits and ways of dealing with Catra that don't fit anymore. It's only when she learns how much things have changed - when she truly sees how vulnerable Catra is - that she tries to adjust her own behavior accordingly.

Catra, in much the same way, learns that she can't just slip back into her old skin - her old habits, her old way of acting. It's not who she is anymore. So she takes a chance. She lets herself be vulnerable. And Adora responds positively. It's a huge step for both of them, and a turning point in their relationship. Now they really do have a chance to fix things, because they're finally on the same page.

#catra #adora #catradora #Sam's Meta #abuse tw #discourse tw #It's about Catra of course there's going to be shit #it's almost impossible to talk about her in a meta sense without addressing the discourse

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incorrect-quotes-from-she-ra · 2 years

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glitradora fic, anything really would be nice <3

hey anon! thanks for the request, this was really fun to write :)

---

"We're out of cereal," Catra grumbles out. It's midnight, she's sleep-deprived and exhausted, and she wants. Her fucking. Cereal.

"I think I might have finished it," Adora blurts out. She's sitting at the couch, where the three of them had crashed right after making it home from work. Glimmer is still half asleep.

"Adora," Catra groans. "My cereal."

"Sorry! It just tastes really good and you get the ones with the little white chocolate triangles in them and they're such a lovely surprise! You can never get used to it!"

"We can just go to the nearest," Glimmer yawns, "24/7 and buy more."

Catra considers that idea. "Okay," she decides, and snatches up her coat. She's striding to the door, stuffing her wallet in her pocket before Glimmer interrupts her.

"And where do you think you're going?"

"The store?"

"Not without us," Glimmer says, heaving herself out of the couch. "I can't believe you're making me do this, Catra."

"I'm not making you do anything," Catra points out, but Adora's already twisted up with trying to get her hands through her jock jacket and Glimmer is digging through the pile of stuff at the coffee table for the apartment keys. Catra heaves a sigh.

---

Catra has to fight, fight, her smile as she watches her girlfriends in the grocery store. She can't help it, okay? They're adorable.

"Catra," Adora asks, with literal puppy eyes. She's holding up the chocolatey cereal Catra hates with her whole heart. "Please? I know you hate it but I love it and so does Glimmer and we'll finish it really fast this time-"

Catra rolls her eyes. Glimmer pushes up next to Adora, slinging a casual arm around her waist and adding her puppy eyes to the mix.

Catra breaks. "Fine," she grumbles. "But only one packet!"

Adora grins sloppily, and presses a quick kiss to Catra's lips before running off down the aisle. Glimmer hesitates, pecking Catra shyly and running after Adora, leaving Catra to smile fondly and shake her head.

They move down the shelves of cereal to the snack aisle, and Glimmer already has a towering pile of junk food in her arms. Adora is snatching candy off their hangers. Glimmer dumps the entire pile of chips, chocolate, soda and god knows what else into the cart, and grins at Catra. Catra bites the inside of her cheek.

"Not a chance," she says, and starts putting the food back on the shelf. "Glimmer, why do we need barbeque chips?? No one likes barbeque chips!!"

"Bow does," Glimmer says immediately. "And he's visiting on the weekend."

"Bow won't eat a familysized pack of chips, Sparkles. No," Catra adds, as Glimmer's hand reaches out to another packet of the sweet and salted chips she loves so much. "I have already counted three of those packets- Adora!"

Adora grins sheepishly from behind the cart, into which she'd just dumped a handful of chocolates of all sort.

"Guys," Catra moans, running a hand down her face. "I'm not getting us all this shit only to have you sick in bed complaining about a bad stomach two weeks later."

"We won't," Glimmer swears.

Catra raises an eyebrow. "Really?" she asks.

"Glimmer, come on, we have to check out the paste aisle," Adora interrupts, her eyes glinting. "Catra, you can sort through the stuff, keep all the chocolates and the chips. Get some more soda. Bye! Love you!"

"That's not sorting out!" Catra yells after them, but they're long gone. She stifles another smile and continues on.

---

Catra catches Glimmer and Adora making out against a row of pasta sauces, and she leans one shoulder against the shelf, and smirks, waiting for her girlfriends to notice her. When they do, Glimmer shoots her a look that makes Catra want to taste Adora on her lips, and Adora looks embarrassed at being caught, running a hand through her messy hair.

"Hi," Catra says finally, moving down the aisle, pushing her cart in front of her. It's been emptied of all food except the cereals and a few packets of chips [Glimmer's favourites] and a few chocolates [Adora's favourites].

"Hey," Glimmer says, reaching out. Her hand fits around Catra's waist easy as anything, and Catra settles into the touch, smiles softly as Adora drops the ingredients required for Catra's favourite type of pasta into the cart.

When Catra doesn't move to take them out, and pushes the cart to the check-out counter, Adora gasps. "Oh, I see how it is! When it's your food you're okay with buying it but when it's ours..."

Catra snickers.

"Catra! I can't believe you'd do that to us!" Adora is pouting now, and Glimmer looks up at Catra with her eyes all widened and adorable and. Fuck.

"Do what?" Catra asks, laughing. They reach the counter and she starts to place their items up, exchanging a smile with the cashier.

"Gum," Glimmer jumps up, holding out a stick of bubble-gum pink gum. "And we'll forgive you."

"No."

"If you get us those perfume strips we'll forgive you," Adora offers.

"Nope." Catra grins at the cashier, who's hiding a laugh.

"Gum. Candy. Perfume. Lip balm. Chocolates. Soda."

"It's like you don't want us to forgive you, Catra."

"Come on, kitty!"

"Fuck off," Catra says, pulling out her card to pay for the groceries. "Excuse my language," she adds, addressing the cashier. "They bring out the worst in me. They're idiots, you see."

The cashier laughs. They hand the bag to Catra and take the card, scanning it. "You guys look happy, though. And y'all are cute, too."

Catra looks back at her girls, who are gaping at her in shock. Probably because she just called them idiots in front of the cashier. "Yeah. Thanks."

She gets her card back, and tips the cashier. "They're idiots," she says, finally, smiling softly at the cashier. "But, well," she looks at the way Adora is trying to keep the sliding doors open with Glimmer cheering her on- "they're my idiots. Have a good night."

---

requests are open!! feel free to send in some <33

#asks #prompts for leo #glitradora #glimmer #catra #adora #she ra #spop #spop fics #glitradora fanfic #glitradora fic #she ra fanfic #glitra #catradora #glimmadora

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etheriadearie · 2 years

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Read your big Entrapta post. It was very interesting, and over 6000 words long, LMAO. You should use plain text more though, the heavily reformatted bold/italicised/etc text made it difficult to read.

So, a few things:

1. I absolutely agree that the characters are continuing the historical trauma of the first ones. Entrapta is a truth seeker trying to get to the heart of the issue and basically discovers the Heart of Etheria with the minimal amount of investigation in season 1, with nobody else questioning what the First Ones did because it would mean they have to question their entire power structure.

2. However, Entrapta is still a villain that the Princesses need to stop. Especially as the Black Garnet Experiment was hurting so many people, and she didn't even know what sort of dangerous weapon was lurking under the surface yet! Unfortunately I think the lack of communication with her in s1 is attributed to time - she only got a single episode to deal with them and just when they were warming up to each other they were separated. I like to think if this separation never happened, the other characters would've started to understand Entrapta better and let her do her thing. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't have let her mess with a runestone. A full Rebellion! Entrapta would face prejudice against tampering with tech, as you said. Only the Horde would be willing to fully embrace it, which is why Bow's tech is nowhere close to Entrapta's - hell, people tease him for it rather than ask him about it!

(This presumably changes after s5 where suddenly tech is a vital part of society and Entrapta carried the Rebellion through the transition.)

3. I do think you're right when you say, all the other characters are caught up in their anger and hurt, but Entrapta lets it pass through, and she can see most clearly the value in other people, and treats them better than she gets treated. She does carry and push down some hurt especially around getting rejected so many times no matter how hard she tries, and sometimes she questions her own philosophies of "imperfections are beautiful" because how can she believe that when her own imperfections keep leading to her pushing people away? But she has a strong heart, and pushes through that doubt and becomes a powerful force for individuality across the show. She is unabashedly herself, and transfers that positive energy onto other characters when de-chipping them, breaking up tension for other characters on the space ship, and helping Hordak figure out who he is.

Hi! Sounds like we agree on a lot, let me see if I can respond to a few things...

Thanks! My Promise discussion is over 17,000 hah 💜😜💜✌️. And I think you're right about the text, thx for saying. I've been thinking about switching to all bold, an example of that here.

Okay to this, I think we need to deal with the outdated and blasé boring 80s villain concept..

::metadiscuss She-ra and ND Stevenson's take on villains 🦹‍♀️

To be clear, my writing is never done to condone anyone's actions. What's happening is that they're all bad (until s5). SPOP is a waking disaster for pretty much every character, good guys and bad, they are all being hurtful and those decisions are bouncing off each other in a disastrous chaotic echo chamber. And Entrapta’s story, while messy, shows the truest line of good intentions towards others and to finding the truth.

Which is why I think judging Entrapta (or Catra and Hordak) as 'villains who need to be stopped’ isn't what ND wants us to do.

Catra and Hordak are absolutely being total assholes, but, there's only a couple really evil people in SPOP, who cause so much hurt and destruction in the story, and to which we can trace back all the other characters' actions to. What makes Catra and Hordak different from these evil people is that they aren't sociopaths. For example, one such sociopath villain- Shadow Weaver- gets away with the most terrible bullshit for the longest time. She abused Catra and Adora from an early age- and Adora and Catra only manage to stop her at the very end. This is a much more realistic storyline, as irl abusers fly under the radar, some never even face consequences for their actions.

But, this complexity is how ND Stevenson set out to give us a better story than the old 80s boring blasé “villains are evil and only exist to be stopped by the heroes”. Those stories lack any creativity, making 1 dimensional badguys to be knocked over by the heroes shooting gallery style.

The biggest clue that SPOP rejects such a blasé villain take is the plot itself- do the Princesses EVER even really stop them? Anything they try to do backfires- they didn't stop the portal from opening, they never regained control of the Black Garnet- and yet did the Horde ever use it again?

They could have, right? So, the Princesses struggle to even do the most basic thing of stopping the Horde. Stopping the villains isn't something we see them do until the end. The Princesses don't work together, before Adora showed up they all hid in their kingdoms and abandoned Etheria’s populace (and often their own people) to war. (see Bow’s dad George in s2ep7). But, by making unbalanced emotional decisions that are out of control they do make things worse for themselves, and for everyone on Etheria. This is because while the Horde is wrong, their own decisions add to the trauma of the other side, particularly Catra, perpetuating and increasing the violence.

For example, about one of the most villainous moments- Catra pulling the switch- we can see how Glimmer’s own actions of empowering Shadow Weaver in s3ep4 sends things out of control.

That's the moment Catra's actions are solidified, before then she's not angry enough to do what she does. And from then on Glimmer continues to give Shadow Weaver even more power in s4, she falls for her deceptions, which contributes to Glimmer’s mistake of linking Scorpia to the Heart, looking to win by any option. The world almost ends; it's chaos.

To elaborate about the portal incident: I say confidently that what we're suppose to understand within the plot that the portal wouldn't have happened without Glimmer bringing Shadow Weaver to the Fight Zone.

Entrapta actually had that under control, she had convinced Hordak to wait to try the portal, so they could perfect it (more really, for romance). And Adora did a good job warning Entrapta about the dangers, changing her mind. So, even though Catra wanted to do it, it wouldn't have happened. She wasn't the uncontrollably enraged person we see when she shocks Entrapta and then lies to Hordak.

That all comes down to Catra being brought within an inch of her life by her abuser yet again. Catra has been powerless to stop her abuser all of her life. Seeing the Princesses enable her abuser is a bridge too far. She has to win, even if there's a chance the world will end.

Imho what Catra did to Entrapta is what she hates herself for the most. It wasn't supposed to happen, we see that on her face afterwards. Catra is (predictably) driven by fear, that no matter what she does her abuser will be enabled by others.

Even at that point in the story, Adora is an enabler of their abuser in Catra's eyes. She's wrong, Adora has no control- and feels as unsafe as she does.

This is the kind of evidence that's there if you look for it, and Glimmer's decision to enable their abuser leaves both Adora and Catra unnerved and they begin to spiral during s4. What's also true is that Glimmer is partially responsible for her own pain in s4 and the loss of her mother. (I can talk in more detail about this cascade of events, lmk.)

In fact, Shadow Weaver switching sides is nothing- she's not trying to help the Princesses win, there's nothing left for her at the Horde and she uses it as a new opportunity to manipulate for power. In s4 she drives Glimmer towards releasing the power, for her own gain. It doesn't end like she intends when the Heart is set off instead.

But, as usual Shadow Weaver is getting away with it. She only faces consequences in s5 when Catra (‘a villain who needs to be stopped') helps Adora past all the manipulations with her love confession. Why is it Catra that has to bring the knowledge of love, why is she the wise one? It's literally the story of the series, her saving Adora with The Kiss.

So the story of the series isn't that Catra is a redeeming villain- it's why she has this special knowledge. Nor is Adora some miraculous hero- she can't be a real hero until she learns to accept that love.

So Catra can't really be called a villain, she does act the part but it's more complicated than that. Hordak isn't one either- he is a trauma machine, but he helps them win in the end, too. And Entrapta is one of the least villainous people in her intentions- lead than the Princesses who try to use a horrific super weapon to win (obvious similarities to choosing the nuclear option). Instead, we should focus on the real villains- sociopathic manipulators who like to hurt others- Shadow Weaver, Horde Prime, and somewhat Light Hope.

They lack the ability to feel love or empathy, they want to hurt others, like many of the worst abusers in our societies (looking at you, capitalism). That emotional difference is where the root of evil actually lies, because it lets them hurt people indefinitely. And just like Shadow Weaver, Horde Prime got away with it for the longest time, he hurt Hordak and murdered many innocent worlds before being stopped. And what did it take to stop him? An act of love. Gay love. 🏳️‍🌈 That's a pretty great rejection of the blasé troupes if you ask me.

So, I don't agree with the 80s villain view of Entrapta and most other characters. Is Scorpia a villain? How about Kyle, Rogelio, and Lonnie? They're treated as such. It's so much better that we're shown both sides, to understand how their choices are affected by the Princesses own actions. So that way we can think about why they make the decisions that they do. It's chaos until they all agree to stop and understand each other. Meanwhile the sociopaths were getting away with manipulating them all.

Oh an Entrapta? She doesn't stop to placate anyone's fragile feelings, such as with the Princesses, because ignorance is worse than not knowing what's really going on and the deeper plot that threatens the entire universe.

Anyways... I am not worthy to speak for ND but I suspect that he'd say calling Entrapta a villain wasn't what he wanted us to see. Or with many of the other characters. Entrapta is always doing her best, she's also kind to others. Calling her villain is so surface, it's meh.

Hope that makes sense.

p.s I know my posts are long, but its because I'm trying to answer all of the questions and misconstrued comebacks I've seen all at once, every question all at once. I do wish my writings could be shorter, but then I'd leave too many things open to confusion. Also, many questions are answered in my hyperlinks- more good meta to read with a hot cuppa somethin'☕️☺️ (all hyperlinks are on tumblr)

In a show where Catra and Adora struggle so much with becoming their true selves, Entrapta is always in touch with her most authentic self. She gives me all of the happy feelings 🥰

I know, it hurts to see her suffer. 😥 She shouldn't be made to doubt. Then again, what's being alive more than doubting? Each major character in SPOP does it. Her story has so much humanity 😌

Well said!! This is what I'm really saying when I talk about how the Princesses are privileged. Like, many privileged people accept the current economic order and that's wrong- it's destroying our environment and makes 3rd world counties impoverished. I see a real similarity in how the Princesses just accept their world order. Like irl, just because they don't know it's wrong doesn't make it any less wrong.

Thanks to anybody who hung out through this long post. If you like it, let me know. But reblogg if you can, because reblogs make the tumblr world go round ☺️💫🌍✨. Thanks for writing in op, I'm glad we agree on many things (some which I didn't have time to cover).

Happy Pride everybody!! ✨✨🏳️‍🌈✨✨!!!!

p.s if you have an ama pending I have received it and will respond just as soon as it's ready. Feel free to keep sending me asks my peoples!!

-Etheriadearie

#entrapta #she ra meta #spop meta #she ra #she ra and the princesses of power #spop #villain #80s villain #nd stevenson #she ra spoilers #catradora

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swearyshera · 3 years

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I shall share my thoughts on these (no major spoilers!)

Beast Island: This one I've not got hugely detailed notes on, but those evil 'mind vines' are going to be fun to do in a painful way. Also Micah being a DAD.

Bow's One Time Swear: I always joke about just dropping it in randomly in a normal conversation, but I wouldn't do that. Or would I..?

Horde Prime: I have gone back and forth over how I'm going to do Horde Prime's character, to not only be humorous but also not end up making fun of things that aren't funny. To that end, I very much doubt I'll be making jokes about the clones having sex with him, because that power imbalance is just a little bit nope for me. That's not to say from the right perspective you can't joke about darker topic, but it's got to be done right and that is very difficult.

But, my intention is to make him a genuinely awful and unsettling character to see, and tease out humour from that in a way that doesn't punch down. Ideally, the reader will be on edge every time he's in a post, but we'll see how that pans out.

Queen Glimmer: Season 4 is when Glimmer thinks she has matured (season 5 is when she actually does), so it will be the time that her "I can fight whatever I like" persona starts to drop away. I think that in her first few episodes as Queen, she's afraid to make mistakes and that stops her from being her usual self (oh the irony), but as she grows more comfortable in her role towards the end of season 4, she gets that aspect of her personality back. But that, sadly, is what leads her to turning her back on her friends.

Double Trouble: I love DT, I really do, they are so much fun and they absolutely will be here! One thing I do know I'm going to change a little is their speech to Catra at the end of Destiny. I've seen a lot of people say it was inadvertently victim-blaming, so I shall remove the ambiguity and replace it with something that destroys Catra that little bit more. If in doubt, add more pain.

Save the Cat: I've not got a huge amount of notes, but the one I have around chipped Catra is either going to go down as terrifying (if I get it right) or offensive (if I get it wrong). No pressure there...

The Portal: I am actually about a third of the way through Remember as I write this, so I've gone through the happy Catradora moments and I'm onto the Adora breakdown. Changing the other characters in little but noticeable ways is quite fun, so I hope you enjoy that too.

For the final episode of season 3, I have a lot planned to make you laugh and cry. Mostly cry, I imagine. Adora and Catra's fight will see Adora say some stuff that really hits Catra; Adora and Angella's conversation before she goes for the sword will break you with three words. And the aftermath once they get back to Bright Moon? Good luck surviving that.

Bow and Glimmer's fight: I hate that they had to fight, but it will have to happen. Bow is learning over the course of the show that being a friend to someone doesn't always mean going along with what they want, and that you have to sometimes say 'no'. And the first time he actually does this with any meaning behind it, in Fractures, it shakes Glimmer because she's not expecting it - but Glimmer being Glimmer, she takes it entirely personally and lashes out verbally.

I feel like the way Bow matures in the show is often overlooked because it's a lot more subtle than Glimmer's 'impulsive kid to responsible adult' journey. Where she learns to think about other people more, Bow learns to think about himself more*, and this episode is when those two journeys clash.

(* not saying Bow becomes selfish, it's more that he learns to balance his needs with others' a lot better)

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testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

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“I’m loyal, that’s my whole thing.” - Scorpia, Season 4 Episode 6, Princess Scorpia

“Everything they taught us in the Horde about loyalty is meaningless” - Lonnie, Season 4 Episode 5, Protocol

Rewatching Season 4, I just finished Princess Scorpia. This is an episode that has always stuck with me, especially the A plot of Scorpia realizing how badly Catra has treated her and everyone else and deciding to leave. One thing I’ve been thinking about since I finished the series, though, is what this episode is telling us on a larger level. Looking beyond the character arcs and more at this show’s larger themes and message. Because this show is very much a show that says things, made by people who believe them. That earnestness and depth is one reason I keep coming back to it.

In the pull-quote above, and throughout the episode and before it, Scorpia defines herself in terms of loyalty. It is her identity - as she says, that’s what Scorpions do, they’re loyal. Her actions for three and a half seasons bear this out. When she first shows up, she tries to position herself as Catra’s new best friend, the one who won’t leave her and will stick by her no matter what. And that’s what she does, until this episode. She sticks by Catra through Catra’s increasingly villainous plots and erratic behavior. But she doesn’t just stick around. Until the portal, she barely contradicts Catra, and even afterwards, does so only furtively and immediately backs away as soon as Catra pushes back. For more than a year of show time, Scorpia has not just stood by Catra, or supported her, she’s actively assisted her in her most villainous and destructive acts. Scorpia is fighting by Catra’s side, eagerly carrying out her orders, and doing her utmost to see that Catra succeeds. But her loyalty goes beyond this practical help. Because for all that Catra loudly declares that she doesn’t need a new best friend, she consistently seeks out connection throughout the show, even when she’s at her most isolated in season 4. She needs moral support, and connection, and to know that she isn’t alone. Scorpia provides that, and keeps Catra going. Though Scropia isn’t initiating Catra’s various misdeeds, she’s assisting and supporting Catra throughout. On a personal, psychological level, the only word that seems adequate for this is ‘ennabling’ - Scorpia, sweet as she is, is Catra’s enabler. We see in the next few episodes what happens when Catra doesn’t have Scorpia’s support - she breaks down, and realizes that her actions really do have consequences, and that the affection she took for granted for so many years is something she can’t live without. But as long as Scorpia’s still around, Catra can’t make that realization.

Now I’m not going to say that Scorpia is morally culpable for Catra’s own actions. She’s not. Catra is solely responsible for her various betrayals, manipulations, violent outbursts and assorted murder attempts against...most of the rest of the cast (though being raised by Shadow Weaver sure as shit is a mitigating factor). But while Catra is obviously being a bad friend to Scorpia throughout, Scorpia isn’t actually being as supportive or helpful to Catra as she thinks, because Catra doesn’t actually need unconditional support, she needs people to be honest with her and express to her how she’s hurting them. She needs people who will stand up for themselves just as she needs to take responsibility for her own actions. This is part of why she and Adora have such a healthy dynamic in season 5 - Adora doesn’t take her crap, and Catra takes responsibility for her crap.

However, Scorpia -is- responsible for her own actions. And as I said above, she’s been with Catra every step of the way as Catra has attacked just about everyone and made war on Etheria. On a larger, political level, Scorpia is a willing participant in upholding the Horde’s oppressive system, and executing a war of aggression and colonization against innocent people. Speaking of colonization, perversely, she’s loyal to the very organization that dispossessed her and literally stole her birthright, then discarded it like a useless trinket when it was no longer useful to them. No one ever suggests ‘why don’t we let Scorpia connect with ~her runestone~’ until Glimmer does (and Glimmer’s motivations and arguments aren’t exactly forthright). Scorpia’s loyalty makes her an accomplice in her own oppression (like a bunch of the themes in this show there’s some interesting post-colonial stuff that the show doesn’t fully explore, probably because Noelle and the crew felt self-conscious about telling a post colonial story, or just didn’t know where to go with it). Interestingly, Scorpia’s loyalty to the Horde here parallels her loyalty to Catra, which has made her completely disregard her own wellbeing, which is the most obvious take away from the episode.

But I would argue that everything above shows that for Scorpia loyalty has been a way of avoiding developing her own moral compass. Scorpia repeatedly shoves aside questions of right or wrong in favor of being loyal to her friends and to the Horde. Loyalty has made Scorpia not only willing to accept her own mistreatment, but to willingly mistreat others, and to keep herself from asking any hard questions about what she’s doing or why. This is despite the fact that Scorpia is, by inclination, an incredibly gentle, kind and compassionate person. She’s willing to silence the best parts of her nature out of loyalty to Catra and the Horde. In the end, she also commits acts of violence and perpetuates the oppression of Etheria. And this is so insightful, because we see this sort of thing in our world all the time. So many oppressive institutions depend upon the loyalty of their members to keep them ‘just following orders’; so many abusive systems depend upon loyalty to stifle dissent and silence potential whistleblowers before they even speak. We see this in some of the most oppressive institutions and the worst scandals in our own society, and looking back through human history we see it in some of our nation’s and our species' most infamous crimes.

And when we look at the Horde as a system that Hordak has built in imitation of his elder brother’s empire, we see just how central loyalty is an ethos. Hordak himself is motivated entirely by loyalty to Prime - being a former clone, he spends the entire series not fully capable of accepting himself as an autonomous being (even when he acts like one and enjoys it, there’s some fucked up religious shit there that I won’t get into). He seems to have instilled this in his followers. The Horde Trio, Catra and Scorpia all hold loyalty as one of their highest values. Catra clings to it as her biggest accusation against Adora - that she was disloyal, as expressed in Catra’s perception that Adora broke her promise and abandoned her. Loyalty keeps the Horde Trio together and fighting for the Horde, and Scorpia with Catra. I think we can read between the lines and say the Horde runs on loyalty (as well as fear) and this is a very insightful portrayal of oppressive military and paramilitary institutions like armies of conquest and occupation and other instruments of state violence.

There’s another, related way of looking at how a sole reliance on loyalty as a moral framework has stunted Scorpia’s moral growth, and I think that brings together both the ways that it makes Scorpia willing to accept her mistreatment and participate in the mistreatment of others. Namely, loyalty in the Horde style isn’t just sticking with someone or something, but subsuming your own will into theirs. Following orders. Supporting your friend in what they do no matter what. Whatever you call it, it’s about turning off your own self - your self preservation, your self respect, your conscience, whatever other things you value - and just going along with what the person or institution you are loyal to wants you to do. And this is where Horde loyalty goes full circle, back to its origin - Horde Prime, the narcissistic self-made god who wishes to control or destroy everything that is not himself. Loyalty as Hordak conceived of it and as the Horde believes in it is a reflection of Prime's absolute control over all his domain.

In a way, self-determination is one of this show’s highest values (together with love). It’s at the heart of Adora’s 5-season, 3 year struggle to become her own woman and her own hero as she shrugs off one imposed destiny and then another and finally embraces what she wants. In a more negative form, it’s at the heart of Catra’s arc, as she finally accepts responsibility for her own actions and their consequences and starts working to make a world that she actually wants to live in, as well as admit to herself that what she really wants is love. And I could go on. This self-determination is existentially, obviously threatened by Prime chipping people, but it is also stunted by horde-style loyalty that demands unquestioning support and obedience.

Both the Horde Trio and Scorpia reject the Horde’s ideal of loyalty and walk away, but I think it’s interesting how they do it. Neither rejects loyalty entirely (not on the way Adora does) - the Trio, realistically, remain loyal to each other and simply walk away and walk out of the war (this might save their lives), joining the other disillusioned cynics in the Crimson Wastes. They reject loyalty to the horde and embrace a more supportive and respectful form of loyalty to each other. Scorpia leaves, but she actually comes to her crisis and makes her decision out of loyalty, and because it’s clear that her loyalty isn’t returned. The immediate situation - loyalty to Emily and Entrapta’s memory on one hand and Catra’s orders on the others - creates the conflict between loyalties that forces Scorpia to actually make her own choice rather than deferring to Catra. But she also reflects how Catra betrayed her loyalty to Entrapta, and thus how all of her friends’ loyalty to Catra is not returned.This is another point about horde-style loyalty - it’s one way - Hordak or Catra will demand your loyalty, but they feel no obligation to return it, which reflects Prime’s view of every other being in the universe as disposable. It’s only when she’s with the Princesses that Scorpia starts to find a new moral center, though sticking up for and protecting her friends remains important to her. In neither case, though, are these kinds of loyalty coming at the cost of either the Trio or Scorpia’s autonomy or ability to make moral choices of their own. In the very next episode, she says she wants to 'be A good friend' which is how the Princesses typically describe sticking together, which is a much more active and holistic concept than 'loyalty'. Scorpia confesses that she doesn't even know how, but she wants to learn and thinks the princesses can teach her.

There's another interesting counterexample to Horde Loyalty. Adora repeatedly breaks with the people around her to do what is right. First she leaves the Horde, then walks away from Catra by stages when it is clear that Catra is going to continue to harm other people and Etheria. Then she walks away from Glimmer, defies Light Hope and breaks loyalty with her supposed destiny and purposes as well as loyalty to the homelans she has never known. By season 5, Adora is loyal only to herself and the people she cares about, but she isn't constraining her will to anyone else's. For all that she seems like a rule follower Adora has a rebellious streak a mile wide, and she will do what is right, no matter what. This is what allows her to save the universe 3 times.

So the show’s argument is that loyalty is not a good moral framework to base all of our actions around. I don’t think it goes so far as saying that loyalty has no place in our ethics (being a good friend, which is such a huge part of the show, certainly includes loyalty, especially sticking with people when the going gets tough), but the show stresses time and again that being loyal to something or someone shouldn’t make you disregard yourself and what you think is right. Because it’s only by living out our own values and taking responsibility for our own actions that we can come into our own as moral beings. Moreover, if we insist on maintaining loyalty to institutions that oppress us and others, we can’t dismantle the systems of oppression that are holding us and other people down. (Yes, this is a pretty radical message, but I suspect that Noelle is some kind of anarchist? Anyway, it’s a thing.)

Okay, so that’s what I, a 35 year old, get from this kids show. I think it’s also worth pointing out that this lesson applies to younger viewers too, in their most immediate lives. Younger viewers will have had friends who didn’t treat them well, or might not have treated other people well, and who might have pressured them into participating in the mistreatment of others (this is kind of how bullying works a lot of the time). I think it’s important that younger viewers see how being a good friend never means disrespecting yourself or other people and it means a lot to me that She-Ra shows this in such a nuanced and realistic way.

#she ra #she ra spoilers #spop #she ra netflix #she ra and the princesses of power #meta #analysis #scorpia

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lordofthefarts · 4 years

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Season 5 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power hit me in such a deep way that had me crying (and still has me crying). It tied everything together; everything came full circle. But there was something particular I really loved about the last three episodes.

You already see Shadow Weaver’s transition from caring only for power for herself to caring only to “save the world.” In both versions, however, you still see that she neglects to see Adora as anything other than a vessel of power, of simply another cog that needs to fit into the machine. In the Fright Zone, Adora was the Star Cadet, the Force Captain, the girl who would be the key in allowing Shadow Weaver to gain the power she wanted and conquering Etheria. Afterwards, Adora was only a vessel for She-Ra. Anything that got in the way of Adora turning into She-Ra to unleash that magic was unacceptable.

It goes to show that Shadow Weaver operates alone. She seeks to be self-sufficient, to need only herself and her powers. She keeps others in the dark because she wants to be in control of everything she does, and the less others know, the less they’ll know about interfering with her control. She applies this mentality to Adora - to She-Ra - she believes that Adora/She-Ra only need themselves in order to defeat Horde Prime and restore harmony. She believes that Adora simply needs to clear her mind and ignore her emotions in order to transform. She’s not wrong; this worked in the earlier stages of Adora’s growth as She-Ra, when she needed to learn how to heal. But this new She-Ra is not another being; it is an extension of Adora, and Shadow Weaver doesn’t recognize this.

Shadow Weaver keeps telling Adora that she doesn’t matter, that only She-Ra matters. She fails to realize that they are one, and that what fuels Adora is what fuels She-Ra.

When she claims that Catra distracts Adora and confuses her, she’s correct but for the wrong reason. Adora is conflicted because she loves Catra, but she doesn’t feel like she’s allowed to be selfish and have that happiness for herself, and instead she feels as though she needs to push away her wants in order to be the hero that everyone needs her to be. This is the conflict that prevents Adora from transforming, it’s not Catra being a “distraction.”

In fact, Catra is her fuel. Her love for her friends, and especially for Catra are what fuel her to become She-Ra.

The show deliberately shows this scene before Adora is able to transform into She-Ra. Watching her friends struggle in Micah’s dark magic, especially seeing Catra struggle, gives her the determination she needs to transform. You also see this before, when Catra was chipped and the only reason Adora transformed was to save her from Horde Prime’s clutches. Not to protect herself - she let herself take all the damage from Catra, and only when Catra was in trouble and was on the brink of death, Adora was able to transform. When She-Ra heals Catra, she turns back into Adora. Catra never only saw Adora as She-Ra. Adora was always Adora, regardless of her powers.

Adora’s face and demeanor completely change when she sees her friends struggling. What fuels Adora fuels She-Ra.

No one is able to see this connection quite yet. Catra doesn’t, for sure, even though she’s the first one Adora goes to to help. Catra believes that Shadow Weaver told Adora, that she is simply a distraction getting in the way of She-Ra. It is not Adora offering her hand to Catra, but She-Ra. It hurts because She-Ra and Adora are binaries, and if Adora chooses She-Ra, she cannot possibly be acting for her own desire. Catra desperately hopes that Adora will choose her, but instead, it always seems to her that Adora chooses She-Ra over her, Shadow Weaver over her, her so-called “destiny” over her own happiness.

Of course, Catra is partially self-motivated in that she wants Adora to choose her, but when she runs away and Adora confronts her, it’s clear that she’s mourning not for herself but for Adora.

Here, of course Catra feels rejected yet again, of course she feels like Adora is choosing She-Ra over her, again, but at this point in the story, she’s asking Adora to listen to her heart. The failsafe heart literally glows as Catra says this. Catra doesn’t want to stay and watch Adora keep ignoring her heart over and over again because it hurts to know that the girl she loves doesn’t know how to love herself.

This scene with Mara emphasizes this point yet again.

Adora thinks that she can’t both have what she want and be She-Ra. She still associates She-Ra as another side of her, instead of an extension of her.

This. This is what Adora needed to hear. Needed to learn. Shadow Weaver only ever taught her that Adora was important as a vessel, but both Catra and Mara are trying to tell her that Adora is important as Adora. This point is, of course, repeated nearly episode with Bow and Glimmer, but being face to face with Mara, the previous She-Ra, the one who also had the weight of the world upon her shoulders, this really pushes Adora to try and learn that she’s more than just a vessel. That she matters as Adora, not just as She-Ra.

This is a pivotal moment for Shadow Weaver. She doesn’t get the redemption, really, but she at least realizes how wrong she was. Here, they are so close to the Heart, but all Adora cares about, all that matters to Adora now is Catra.

Shadow Weaver realizes that She-Ra and Adora are not separate beings. She-Ra is Adora, Adora is She-Ra, not simply an alter ego. They are one being, and what makes Adora strong is what makes She-Ra strong. She finally sees that Catra is not a distraction, but that Catra is the key to allowing Adora to be She-Ra.

And more importantly, she realizes Adora’s destiny is not just to save the world, but to live out a proper life. She realizes that Catra is part of this life, that Catra and Adora are meant to be with each other in each others’ lives.

It’s only because of Catra that Adora is able to hang on. It isn’t the strength of She-Ra, but it’s the strength that Catra gives Adora. It’s the love they grew up with together in the Horde. Catra loved Adora from the beginning. They protected each other, even as rivals on opposite ends of the battlefield. They fueled each other. They come back for each other.

She-Ra is strong enough only when Adora fully gives in and realizes what she wants is Catra, above all. Yes, she wants to save the world. But with the world crumbling around her, she finally decides to let her heart free and let herself be selfish for once. This love fuels Adora. It fuels She-Ra, and this is what saves the world.

It’s not the usual “true love’s kiss” bullshit you always see. This is about Adora letting herself want, letting herself finally have what she deserves. Realizing that she deserves love, too, as Mara says. And only when she allows herself to be herself, only when Adora gets to be Adora only for herself, is she able to transform. It’s not about self sacrifice. This show is about love: platonic love and romantic love for others, but most importantly, about self-love.

#s5 spoilers #spop spoilers #she-ra #she-ra spoilers #catradora #catra and adora #catra #adora #sorry i know it's an essay #but it meant a lot to me

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sometipsygnostalgic · 3 years

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I'm not ender but ugh so glad that someone else is seeing it bc I've never seen anyone talk about the sw-adora-catra/hordak-entrapta-catra parallels before and how Catra was finally getting that sweet, sweet praise and favor only for it to be snatched away by a princess, in her eyes.

Your point about how Catra screaming at Hordak she's actually screaming at herself reminds me how in retrospect Hordak calling Catra a failure and weak while choking her for the first time and then while exiling her to die, he was projecting his own feelings of being a failure in Prime's eyes (who had also exiled him to die for not being good enough). Catra was craving for SW's and Hordak's favor and worked hard to get it, in vain, Hordak for Primes' favor and worked hard to get it, in vain.

(also very interesting point about the scorpia-adora parallel. after all child adora had latched onto catra, like scorpia latched onto her, but that's for another analysis)

yes! you get it! i could write huge chunks about all the parallels in she-ra, but i think that's one which ive not seen brought up much elsewhere, probably because people didn't have a full understanding - at the time season 3 was airing - of why catra had betrayed adora and then entrapta in this way. the viewers were having a hard time understanding her, they weren't sure if catra even cared about her friends or was just kind of evil and turning against them, but with the context of the full show, we get a good understanding of what was running through her head.

Catra: There's no time. We need to fire up the portal machine.

Entrapta: We can't. Opening a portal now will be disastrous. It's going to collapse and take us all with it. Adora was right.

Catra: Adora is right. (laughs) Adora gets everything she wants. But not this time. This time, I am going to win. I don't care what it takes. We are opening that portal now.

catra zaps entrapta the exact same way she did to adora, but where the first time she apologised, she is horrified by her actions this time, and decides to double down out of guilt and threaten scorpia too - catra actively deciding to be a monster

i found a really good post explaining catra's emotional responses to the betrayal the other day, but i cant seem to track it down :(

and then there's catra's words to hordak when she lies to him:

Catra: Oh, you can't trust anyone, especially a Princess.

*Catra turns around to glare at Adora.*

Catra: They'll just use you to get what they want.

I think it's unfair to say Catra didn't care about these characters, because she really did, but.... that was overpowered by her enormous insecurities. She was never going to be open with them the same way she was with Adora. She got close with Scorpia but, tragically, slammed that door in her face after a hard reminder of who Shadow Weaver thinks is worth her time.

The reason that Entrapta faced Catra's full wrath, whereas Scorpia faced Catra's emotional abuse instead, is because Scorpia was not a threat in any capacity, and was always willing to prop up Catra, but Entrapta had immediately usurped her and was impossible to control. Manipulation failed, having her make promises failed (Entrapta's not the best friend), intimidation failed, threats did not work, so Catra used the Panic Button.

What I found really interesting is that, in season 5's "Taking Control", Entrapta is the character that Catra's most scared of out of everyone in the rebellion. I think that she would probably be more scared to face Scorpia, but she'd never be scared OF her. Catra's learnt at this stage that everyone she hurts will want revenge on her, and a part of her thinks they SHOULD want it. Why would Entrapta NOT want to kill her? It makes no sense. And when she saves her from the violation of Prime's chip, Catra finally musters up the courage to apologise, very vulnerably. So, in that ep, she has a massive power over Catra. And she decides to use that power for good, forgiving her, which helps her move on. I could go more into Stevenson's AO3 story, "Don't Go", which has a fucking amazing Catra and Entrapta scene where Entrapta helps Catra find the road to redemption in the fog.

Anyway, more on Hordak:

In the episode "Signals", the really important one in season 2 where Catra loses Hordak's favouritism, he starts the ep trying to open a portal. It fails. He calls it "pathetic".

When Hordak berates Catra later in the ep, he's saying there is no room for failure in exactly the same way Prime says to him all the time. And as she leaves the room, Imp plays the "Failure" clip over and over and over again.

Hordak also hides every single one of his physical health issues, just like Shadow Weaver did. He flips out if anyone sees him vulnerable.

Judging from how Horde Prime punished all weakness and vulnerability, I think it's utterly apparent how characteristics of strength came to be so valued to him in the Horde.

So if you look at Hordak's two primary relationships in the Horde:

You have Catra, who is so much like him, struggling to make her way in the world. He respected her potential, but as soon as she stopped churning out good results and showed even a slight amount of dissent, he discarded her. He used threats, and tried to stamp out her spirit, until eventually reaching for the nuclear bomb of death by exile. This is exactly what Prime did to him.

So Catra had to come back bigger, stronger, badder than Hordak; Catra became "strong", and ended up bullying him into becoming the person he thought his big brother would finally respect.

This mentality is very different to Entrapta's, which was to walk into situations with an open heart, accept that you need help, and embrace your own brilliance. That you are "luvd".

And yet, Hordak was able to trust both characters.

A large part of it is Catra had used her lie - a so-called betrayal - to completely discount Entrapta's philosophy, and Hordak had embraced it, because he thought having someone actually care about him was too good to be true.

And then when he learnt that Catra had been the one fucking with him the whole time? Well, he had a breakdown. He had spent all of season 4 blowing shit up in the hopes of being able to find Entrapta and confront her, low key hoping that she was building the equipment he destroyed (it was Bow), but it turned out she had been exiled to Death Island and he had just believed some lie and let it happen.

So when he tries to kill Catra, I'm pretty sure the person he's most angry at is himself.

It's literally 1am so I actually don't want to write much more right now, but a scene that got me hardcore... it was when they met on Prime's ship.

Catra and Hordak had fought each other to death the last time they saw each other, but suddenly, they were feeling a weird empathy for each other.

Catra was GLAD to see him, because his hatred of her was familiar, it was something from her life before Prime came up and tried to erase everything. And it even was nice for her to see Hordak hate her - because it meant that there was still some of the guy she knew in there, making Prime seem less terrifying.

And yet, Prime IMMEDIATELY takes that way. Whether by Hordak's own confession, or by his attachment to the hivemind, Prime already knows the converasation they had.

Hordak probably does want his memories gone at this point. They're full of pain and loss, but also of individuality and love, something not allowed for him. His conflict with Catra was a bad time for him. But still, when he descends into the pool, he gives her a sad look. And when she sees what happens to him, her fear of Prime becomes true.

It's awesome writing.

#shera #she ra #hordak #catra #entrapta

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aprillikesthings · 6 months

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Now that I've spent a good day thinking about how hot it is when Catra is a terrible person corrupted by setting off a portal, I'm ready to go back to (re)watching her try to be Good lolol

well okay more than one day.

I mean I literally spent the last four? five? days listening to songs off The Downward Spiral over and over while thinking about Catra and practicing my makeup for my Catra cosplay and ordering more of the things I need for it; like literally just staring off into space at work between phone calls thinking about Catra

I'm totally a well-adjusted middle-aged adult, thanks for asking!

Shit where did I even leave off

Oh right

SO HEY if you're new here, I've been rewatching all of the 2018 She-Ra, and I started doing it for fic-writing reasons but predictably I have become deeply obsessed. Anyway these posts sometimes have a lot of asides and commentary and references to other stuff and dumb jokes among a ton of screenshots, also (and it feels odd saying it this close to the end of the show) it's a RE-watch, so there's often spoilers for later bits of the story, also I keep trying NOT to just describe the entire plots of the episodes but I keep failing lol

s5 ep7 Perils of Peekablue

Adora's trying to become She-Ra (without an immanent threat) and then Bow and Glimmer distract her, and then the door opens on Catra and

I literally did a YES YES YESSSS AHAHAH out loud bc this is the point at which Catra just starts OPENLY FLIRTING, as opposed to just uhhhh flirtatiously taunting I suppose lol

like you're SITTING IN HER LAP

Also while rewinding it to watch again I paused it at the most hilarious moment

look at Catra's FACE

help I can't stop laughing but also look at Bow's expression

Glimmer: omg I'm gonna get to see my dad Catra: *gets up and leaves*

But also I make this face when a cat leaves my lap before I wanted them to:

Anyway they're a day out from arriving at Etheria

Adora's trying so hard

BACK ON ETHERIA

YAY IT'S THIS ONE

the intro finally changed!! I can't get a good screenshot but now when Catra (with short hair) and Adora (in She-Ra's new get-up) are fighting they stop much faster and they're both smiling omgggg

and there she is!! with everyone else!!

okay I'm going to take way less screenshots etc of the underwater speakeasy thing because let's be honest: that part of the plot isn't what I'm here for lol

But yeah they're going to the speakeasy thing to get Prince Peekablue who can see to the edges of the galaxy and can maybe tell them where Adora and the others are because they don't know what happened

Oh also Spinarella is chipped and Netossa is realizing something is off/weird about her but doesn't know what

Oh hey! You used to work for Huntara in the Crimson Wastes

Sea Hawk has pissed off approximately half the people in the room it seems (by lighting their ships on fire at some point)

Scorpia and Perfuma are the cutest and I can absolutely see how they end up together

In my fic I originally had Adora talking to some kind of therapist but I wasn't sure they existed on Etheria, and last week I edited that bit so Adora is talking to these two (which makes the conversation more fun AND easier to write anyway)

Perfuma: "Scorpia. You should do things not because you're good at them, but because they make you happy." THAT IS ONE OF MY LIFE PHILOSOPHIES thank you Perfuma you're 100% correct and I tell people this ALL THE TIME

Mermista: "I might've set their boat on fire. Just to see what it felt like."

Sea Hawk:

lolol

YESSSS I love this scene

Perfuma makes a flower, throws it to Scorpia as she sings, and she blushes and tucks it into her hair, these two are so sweet and cute

oh god I forgot that when "Prince Peekablue" get stung by Scorpia they go through the last half-dozen shapeshifts before turning into a (passed-out) Double Trouble.

lolol instead of "cash cow" it's an insult to poor Catra

Anyway they have the info the Rebellion wanted!

Horde Prime is pissed and has blockaded the planet, also half the people at the speakeasy were chipped....and now so is Mermista, though nobody realizes that yet

But also the phrasing of "She-ra stole his little kitten away" is just amazing

But also the last they heard, Adora and Bow and Entrapta had left to rescue Glimmer, do they think Double Trouble is talking about Glimmer here or what

(which. they did. they just also went back for Catra.)

Netossa realizes her wife (and most of the people around them) are chipped D:

And a chipped Mermista is gonna drown them all

oh shit Micah is also chipped

Entrapta gets the comms working!

"The Rebellion's been compromised! Horde Prime has them! We lost, I'm so sorry! We lost them!" --and then the comms go to static

AND CREDITS!

#april rewatches spop #perils of peekablue

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heartslobbf · 4 years

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let’s talk about perfuma. imo, she’s one of the best characters in the show despite being underdeveloped, and i wanna explain why. she could’ve been extremely average, just some lanky flower girl that doesn’t believe in violence and loves everyone, but she is so much more than that (and it pisses me off that y’all reduce her to that).

in her introductory episode, perfuma is clearly in denial about the horde almost destroying plumeria. she doesn’t want to acknowledge the problem, wants someone else to take care of it for her. she’s scared of change, and that is because change makes you vulnerable. if things always stay the same, there’s a whole lot less danger and uncertainty, and therefore you’re safe. secure. perfuma’s kingdom is dying and she can’t bear to accept it because it is unknown to her. it’s putting her in a position where she is no longer secure. this fear of vulnerability can also be seen at the beginning of 1x10 when the princess alliance falls apart and she literally says ‘being together makes us vulnerable.’

the thing is, perfuma isn’t wrong. look at her choice of words. she says that being together makes them vulnerable, not weak. here, she kind of has the words mixed up, but we see that by s5 she has come to understand the difference. that’s what’s so great about perfuma, her motivation to do better, her hunger for self-improvement. it’s why she’s such an important part of catra’s redemption, actually, because she embodies the kind person catra is or wants to be.

let me explain: perfuma is an angry, impatient, short-tempered character. we are shown this again and again with her passive aggression to others and how easily mermista can annoy her with trivial things (sitting in her seat in the war room, for example). catra is also an angry, impatient character, but perfuma works every day to manage those emotions. she knows she needs them, she uses them as a tool (calling catra out, for example, is a time they were practically pivotal for getting her point across) but she also acknowledges they can hurt the people she loves. we know she does a meditation ritual each morning and we see in 4x02 how quickly she can unravel without it. she wants to be better. she puts the work in. that is such a valuable lesson for a character like catra who has always felt she’s just not good enough, she’s always going to be this angry and unlovable and no one can do anything about it.

so, 4x02. it’s a brilliant episode for perfuma’s character, really, and the first proper development we’ve had since 1x04. we see her anger, her impatience, but we also see her self-doubt. her belief that she’s inadequate, ‘just a flower girl.’ this is also when we get introduced to her little mantra that becomes a bit of a motif later on, ‘i can do this.’ we know perfuma doesn’t wholeheartedly believe this, but she says it anyway because she wants to. perfuma wants to be better. she will do whatever she can to be her best self, whether that be actually conquering her gripes with cacti or realising there’s a loophole with the roots (love that conflict resolution by the way, another good deconstruction of hero bs by spop).

this episode is also significant because it comes back to perfuma’s fear of change, of vulnerability. she’s thrown into a situation she doesn’t want to be in, one she feels miserably unprepared for, and she hasn’t done the one thing that puts her at her best beforehand, but she pulls through in the end because she is surrounded by people that support her, that listened to her and consoled her when she was vulnerable. 4x02 teaches perfuma the power of self-worth and the power of true, mutual, unconditional love, which can only come with vulnerability.

and this is where her character gets really interesting, in my humble opinion. ngl, one of the reasons i love perfuma so much is because she’s a pisces and i am too. i’m not gonna go astrology hoe on you rn, i’m just using this to demonstrate the part of her character that teaches others. pisces, if you don’t know, love to play therapist. we like to help the people around us with whatever strifes they may have because we think we’re fucking great at it. perfuma actually is.

you know how i said perfuma learns the importance of self-belief and vulnerability? yeah, she teaches both of those lessons to other characters in s5. like i said, perfuma is a character who values self-betterment and also happens to be a pisces, so when she sees scorpia, riddled with so much self-doubt and such low self-esteem, her immediate response is just i’m gonna teach that bitch how to love herself. and she does!

i’ve seen some people say they don’t like scorfuma because it seemed as though the writers just decided to ‘fix’ all of scorpia’s problems by giving her a girlfriend. that’s very dumb, first of all because they aren’t even together by the end of the show, they’re just interested in one another. second, the whole point of she-ra is that we’re stronger together. scorpia doesn’t go through growth in s5 because a girl likes her, she goes through growth because someone is showing her support and love for the first time in her life and that empowers her. you know, the worth that scorpia finds in herself doesn’t hinge on perfuma, like it did with catra. it’s about her as an individual, and perfuma so clearly makes it about that when her big lesson revolves around singing. scorpia loves singing. perfuma tells her she should do it because she enjoys it, a sentiment you’d never hear in the horde, and when scorpia does sing, she is actively rejecting the people who did make all her self-worth hinge on them catra. she’s doing something for herself, because she enjoys it, because it makes her happy, because she can.

it’s that same mantra: i can do this, i can do this. i really love how this was brought back from 4x02, how perfuma repurposed something that taught her such a valuable lesson for someone else. perfuma and scorpia are great foil characters actually, both constantly underestimated and thought of as weak by their groups, but some of the strongest characters in the show due to their deep value of love and self. i can do this, and i know i can because you believe in me, because i believe in myself. it’s brought back again in 5x10, when the last thing perfuma says before scorpia breaks the beam is ‘i know you can [pull through]’. she tells catra she believes in scorpia. it’s that belief, that support from other people that empowers the self to believe it too. we are stronger together, you know??

anyways, onto vulnerability. return to the fright zone is in my top ten episodes of the whole fucking show and you might think that’s a bit weird but i don’t. 5x10 encompasses so many important themes of spop so well and tells them with scorfuma and spinnetossa, our two side lesbian couples. this is significant since perfuma literally draws a parallel between her and catra at the end of the episode, and catradora and spinnetossa have always been significant to one another. i’m gonna say it, perfuma is the reason catra is finally able to confess to adora in 5x13. i’ve already talked about how important perfuma is to catra’s motivation to improve, but she literally makes catra rethink everything about strength and vulnerability, two words catra has a lot of feelings about.

catra fears vulnerability. we know this. she has such a deep love for those important to her but is never able to articulate it because she worries she’ll be taken advantage of, shot down, laughed at, whatever. all of this stems from the abuse she suffered at shadow weaver’s hands and her attachment issues, and it’s also why catra pretends to hate scorpia’s very open displays of affection and love: she sees it as weak because she has been taught to, but it’s all she ever really wanted to be.

we also know perfuma used to fear vulnerability. she doesn’t any more. the entirety of the episode leading up to her and catra’s heart-to-heart is her being vulnerable, putting herself in a position where she’s in danger but believing it’s worth it. and it is. despite what everyone said to her, perfuma is right: it was worth it. she got through to scorpia, even if it was only for a moment. she literally spells it out to us and catra with one of the best lines in the whole show: it’s hard, keeping your heart open. it makes you vulnerable, but it doesn’t make you weak, and i have to believe it’s worth it.

back in 1x10, perfuma was right: being together makes you vulnerable. horde prime tries to use people’s relationships against them, that’s literally the plot of save the cat, the point of pitting catra and adora against one another. he sees them as weak, just like shadow weaver deems adora’s feelings for catra ‘confusing’, just like light hope insisted adora was a danger to her friends as long as she was around them. they were all wrong. yes, they’re vulnerable. perfuma acknowledges that vulnerability puts you in danger, that it’s difficult to do that, but she knows it doesn’t make you weak. weakness vs strength is a big conflict in 5x10 literally introduced to us with netossa’s theories on everyone’s weaknesses in the first few minutes.

like perfuma says, friendship isn’t a weakness. it’s her greatest strength. her belief in love is literally what saves her and adora’s lives, it’s what saves everyone who got chipped, glimmer, bow. belief in love, both of others and yourself, is what saves adora in her dying moments. perfuma summarises she-ra’s entire fucking message to us repeatedly in 5x10 and she tells it to catra because catra is the one who will do the most with it. that glance at adora, it’s obvious what it means. perfuma is telling catra she should be open with adora about her feelings because you have to believe it’s worth it.

you won’t get anywhere waiting for other people to make the move. she-ra couldn’t heal plumeria’s lands, so plumeria had to fight their own battle alongside her no matter how much they felt unable to. the rebellion couldn’t move mara’s ship, so perfuma had to despite thinking she wasn’t strong enough. the reason they always win in the end is because they have each other, they have love and support and people motivating them to do better. just like perfuma motivates herself to do better.

it’s the mantra. i can do this. i can be vulnerable and still win, because i have love. and it’s hard, it’s so fucking hard to be vulnerable when you’ve feared it all your life and you’re so angry, so hurt, but you have to believe it’s worth it. and it is. it is, it is, it is, love is stronger than anything and being vulnerable for the people you love is the only way you can ever get what you want from them. perfuma as a character embodies that, having learnt it herself, and teaches the lesson to one of the characters who needs it the most.

adora is dying, and catra loves her, and she knows she does, and she just has to believe. adora is dying, and she loves catra, and she knows she does, but she doesn’t believe. not until catra teaches her too, in that moment, to realise they were all wrong, light hope, shadow weaver, horde prime. adora doesn’t need to let go, she needs to hold on and believe she will be pulled back up by the girl she loves. she needs to believe she deserves it. that it’s worth it.

and it is.

#ANYWAYS I FUCKING LOVE PERFUMA THANK U QUEEN FOR BEING THE BEST SIDE CHARACTER #sjdjeksmnf sorry this is long i tried to keep it short #I HAVE SO MUCB TO SAY ABT HER #shut up daisy #spop #perfuma #scorfuma #catra #scorpia #catradora #adora #spop meta

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cruelfeline · 4 years

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One thing that I feel was entirely unexplored, and that I feel really should have been explored, was the Alliance’s reaction to the clones.

This is an entire race of enslaved, purpose-bred soldiers who are completely at the physical, mental, and emotional mercy of their master. They are, arguably, the ultimate victims of Prime’s regime. And yet... our heroes barely say a word about them. They’re not violently antagonistic towards them, for which I am thankful, but they never seem to acknowledge their plight.

We have this moment when, upon seeing/hearing Prime choke my little Yudi a clone prior to painfully taking over his body, Catra and Glimmer don’t really appear concerned by the horrific implications at all. They continue worrying about themselves and spare Yudi the clone nary a glance despite something terrible having just happened to him. They never discuss it. They never acknowledge the horror of it.

We have this other moment where Adora hears, from Prime’s own lips, that he drains his brothers of life force and eventually uses their bodies to house his consciousness, and there’s just... nothing? No reaction? I mean, I appreciate that she is there for Catra, but for a woman who abandoned said Catra, and her whole “Horde family,” back in season one because she saw a village being destroyed and a bunch of complete strangers in danger, she seems entirely unconcerned by the horrific lives the clones lead.

It just comes off as odd because, while Prime definitely traumatizes Catra and chips numerous Etherians, the people that he really, consistently hurts, honestly from the moment they are born, are his own brothers.

And among those brothers: Hordak, especially.

So much of the Etherian war is directly related to how Prime traumatized Hordak, and yet, even after seeing what life under Prime is like, our heroes just don’t recognize it as a concern.

They never really seem to address the fact that Hordak was abused.

Horrifically so.

Catra, in particular, is witness to some of this abuse, and yet even she just... doesn’t seem to admit that horrific things have been done to him. Even after having experienced the hivemind for herself, after experiencing the purification ritual, she doesn’t acknowledge the reality of what he has endured, of what the other clones have endured. She only applies that understanding to herself and to other chipped Etherians, never extending that empathy to the clones, or to Hordak.

Even back in season four, after Glimmer and Catra saw Hordak get reformatted, I was kind of hoping for a better handling of this, hoping that the girls would realize Hordak’s true nature, and Prime’s true nature, and understand why things happened the way they did... but come season five, we never really hear them talk about it. Well. Glimmer mentions it to Catra once, but it’s less about Hordak, and more about the girls themselves being in danger. Again: no extension of empathy, despite the truly horrific nature of the situation.

And while I assume that Glimmer and Catra do eventually tell the others about what happened on Prime’s ship, it’s all off-screen. So we don’t get any sort of emotional reactions from the rest of the Alliance (not even Entrapta!) that might help indicate, to an on-the-fence viewer, that Hordak and his kind are vulnerable, that they are suffering, and that they need to be helped out of this abominable situation. We don’t get any character-confirmed indication that we-the-viewers are meant to be sympathetic/empathetic towards the clones (and Hordak).

Instead, the Alliance just kind of glosses over the whole affair. It doesn’t specifically target the clones, sure, but neither does it point out that Prime is essentially utilizing a collection of purpose-bred slaves, even after Etherians start getting chipped. Even when Etherians themselves start experiencing Prime’s control, their concern never seems to quite reach out to the clones who are clearly trapped in a life no one would wish upon anyone.

I guess... all I really would have liked was someone, at some point, mentioning that hey, maybe Hordak needs to be rescued. Maybe the clones need to be freed. Maybe these supposed enemies are actually perpetual victims and need serious help. I mean, the Etherians don’t have to love their enemies, but at least acknowledging their plight? I would have liked that.

I feel like outright stating something like this would have helped people understand why Hordak ends up spared in the finale. I feel like it would have made it more palatable, rather than leaving a not-insignificant number of viewers questioning why he’s been given a second chance. Because while some of us naturally connect with Hordak and his brothers, others could have probably used a little character-driven guidance.

Ah, well. A missed opportunity. I suppose I shall have to soothe myself with clone/Etherian relations as portrayed in fanfiction!

#hordak #horde prime #she ra

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swampyswan · 4 years

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Horde Prime and Individuality in Horde Clones

One thing that a lot of people have noticed about the Horde Clones’ is that the ones who get a few moments of screen time all display little hints of individuality. Hordak and Wrong Hordak are obvious examples, but there is also a few others; that one clone that yelled at Catra and then got all possessed like the goddamn Exorcist, and then there was that other one that Adora and the gang tied up who absolutely would not shut up on how great Horde Prime was. We see two unique traits with these two; a bad temper and talkativeness. And these two have virtually no impact on the plot, which leads to the precedent that ALL clones have a degree of individuality that’s been suppressed.

However, I disagree with people who say that Horde Prime doesn’t want this individuality, because I would argue that it’s exactly what he wants.

Now, he doesn’t want the clones to be individuals from him, and he does enforce the idea of them being nearly identical, but I think that Prime’s entire set-up definitely allows for clones to show hints of personality, if only to set them up for further failure.

Prime shows a lot of traits of a stereotypical narcissist (not that he has NPD, because having NPD doesn’t inherently make you evil or anything, but he demonstrates a lot of traits of a malignant narcissist personality type in the most stereotypical sense). One of the biggest indications of this type of person is that they simultaneously believe themselves to be superior to others but still crave validation from others. It’s a contradictory idea; the narcissist believes they are amazing, but they also need others to reinforce it constantly, or else they feel inferior.

If all Prime wanted was efficiency and servitude, he could have all of the clones replaced with robots (kind of like Entrapta’s kingdom) with only as many clones as needed to repair them. If all he wanted was complete obedience, why not have the mind control chips active at all times with the clones, like it is with the Etherians? In some areas it makes sense to have clones, but in terms of more complex tasks (like running the ship) why bother with using a person when a machine can functionally do the same (or better of a) job?

If you think I’m looking into it too deeply, just keep in mind that Hordak’s betrayal would not have occurred had Prime either A. Shot Entrapta himself B. Had Hordak’s mind control chip already activated so he couldn’t stop himself, or C. Had a robot do it. So why doesn’t he make stuff easier for himself?

Speaking of that, why accept Hordak back at all? Why not just kill him after he showed so many moments of deviancy from the Horde after reading his mind? If Hordak’s actions are so blasphemous, why not kill him outright for the sake of the Horde’s efficiency? Or to prevent Hordak from rebelling a second time?

Well, it’s because it’s not about efficiency. It’s about showboating. Having a bunch of living breathing people who devote their whole existence to you is Prime’s dream. Taking such a rebellious member as Hordak and transforming him into another “perfect” servant is WAY more satisfying for Prime than killing him.

The clones, despite being aliens, are still people. And people make mistakes and can screw up in areas where robots wouldn’t, and when that happens, Prime comes in to “save the day”, like he did when that clone yelled at Catra.

Prime wants his clones to be subservient and reflections of him; after all, they don’t tolerate any identity outside of their attachment to their leader. And yet, Prime seems perfectly content with having flawed individuals running every corner of his ship simply because they give him validation and supply for his narcissistic habits. Having clones with little hints of individuality gives him more of an excuse to “reprimand” them and show off just how “amazing” he is.

Basically, I think Prime wants his clones to be so similar to knock down any ideas that they can function separately from him, but allows slight deviations because it gives him excuses to flex his “superiority”.

I can imagine that stuff like this happened pretty often; a clone shows a moment of deviancy (AKA having a personality), Prime inevitably finds out, makes a great show of reprimanding him (likely in front of other clones), shows “mercy” by “cleansing” him in that weird Jell-o bath thing, and makes it clear that he would do the same to any other blasphemers he finds. And the clones will try their hardest to follow his rules, but “failure” is inevitable, because “failure” literally means anything from “showing a preference” to “having a certain emotion at a time Prime decides is wrong for some reason.” I don’t doubt that Prime himself doesn’t even know what he doesn’t want the clones to do, especially since Wrong Hordak even says that FACIAL EXPRESSIONS are off limits (even though the Horde clones are all very expressive). It wouldn’t surprise me if he changed the rules on a whim.

Clone: *smiles because he’s happy about something*

Prime: Why are you smiling? How dare you treat this as some kind of joke!

Same Clone: *acts serious because he remembers last time*

Prime: Do you not feel any happiness for our accomplishments? How ungrateful!

TL;DR Horde Prime sucks lol

#horde clones #entrapdak #she ra spop #she ra princess of power #wrong hordak #hordak #horde prime #the horde #catra #adora shera #she ra #entrapta

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crypticpaw · 4 years

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Why Hordak Should Have Raised Adora As His Own In Cannon

She would have been his heir. He knew he wouldn't last forever, and he wanted the Horde to go on should a rebel actually get to him.

More reasons for Shadow Weaver to put Adora on a pedestal.

Private lesons from Hordak himself. Maybe some flashbacks while she trained with Light Hope.

"That's not how dad taught me..."

A REASON TO WHY HORDAK CALLED ON CATRA AND TRUSTED HER MORE THAN SHADOW WEAVER SO QUICKLY!

"You were very close to Adora. I want you to bring her back to me."

Catra not knowing how to break it to him that Adora is actually She-Ra.

Hordak is furious when he finds out.

Adora having an essistential crissis when she found out what the Horde was doing.

Adora hesitanting in attacking Horde troops.

"My dad is gonna KILL ME!"

Adora not telling anybody she was Hordak's heir until Catra breaks it to everybody in the final battle in season 1.

"You didn't tell them your little secret? How weird is it that Hordak's heir disapears at the exact same time that She-Ra comes back? Where is she, Adora? Oh, yeah, SHE'S STANDING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME WITH A GLOWING SWORD SHE FOUND ON A BUSH!"

Angella has a little private talk with Adora after this. She's not mad, but Adora is shaking.

"He said he was proud of me... That he couldn't wait to see what a great leader I would be... That we w-would conquer Etheria... T-together..."

Fast forward to season 3 and Hordak is discussing with Entrapta about Adora, and she tells him her friends also left her behind.

"I cannot believe my daughter became this idiotic to the point of thinking YOU weren't necessary to their cause! I've taught her better than this!"

He goes to the Northern Reach with Catra, Scorpia and Entrapta to supervise. Adora FREEZES the moment she sees him.

She has a full-on panic attack and Glimmer and Bow need to calm her down.

When Catra brings her in and she's basically drunk, he gets very worried.

"Adora, speak to me! Was this the princesses' doing? Are they drugging you? Are you ill? Anwser me!"

"I lov u dad!"

The squad rescues her and Hordak is shaken. Entrapta manages to cheer him up with the tech they got, but only a little.

When Catra brings Adora back from the Crimson Waste and Hordak notices she's sobber, he is LIVID!

Adora never felt this much fear in her life.

"Dad..."

"Save it! ... After all this time... After everything I've done for you... THIS is how you repay me?!"

"Y-you're destroying the planet-"

"I MADE YOU MY HEIR! MY OWN DAUGHTER! AND YOU CHOSE TO FOLLOW THE PRINCESSES?!"

"T-the Sword chose me! I-I never... Why am I justifing myself?! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO'S KILLED HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE!"

"DON'T YOU DARE TALK BACK TO ME! YOU THINK I CARE ABOUT THESE WORTHLESS WORMS?! ABOUT THIS MUDBALL EXCUSE OF A PLANET?! I CARED ABOUT YOU AND YOU ALONE! I'VE RAISED YOU! AND YOU BETRAYED ME AND THE INTIRE HORDE!"

"HOW DO YOU THINK I FELT WHEN I FOUND OUT WHAT MY OWN FATHER DID?! YOU THINK I WANTED THIS?!"

"ENOUGH! YOU ARE MY DAUGHTER AND YOU WILL DO AS I SAY! AND UNTIL YOU HAVE FIXED YOUR REBELLIOUS ATTITUDE, YOU'LL BE IN YOUR ROOM, THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

And he drags her out of there.

Entrapta and Adora have their little talk before the portal explodes.

Hordak believes Catra when she says Entrapta betrayed them, because Adora already did, why wouldn't Entrapta?

Events happen the same until season 5. The Rebellion finds out Catra, Glimmer and Hordak are gone and they got to space.

NOBODY👏GETS👏CHIPPED👏BECAUSE👏CATRA👏HAS👏TO👏FACE👏THE👏CONSEQUENCES👏OF👏HER👏ACTIONS!

They also rescue Hordak and Wrong Hordak gets dragged in somehow.

NOBODY wants Hordak there, but Entrapta and Adora defend him.

Hordak apologises to Adora and they hug.

Adora notices how close he became with Entrapta and teases him all the time.

"Dad's got a girlfriend!🎶"

"I hear you say that word one more time, and I'll glue your mouth shut!"

Season 5 stuff happens, Entrapta and Hordak get caught, Hordak shoves Horde Prime off a cliff, gets possesed, Adora exorcises Horde Prime off his body.

Entrapta hugs him and Adora smiles, going over to Catra.

Happily Ever After!

#she ra and the princesses of power #she ra fandom #hordad au #hordak #adora #entrapta #catra #this is just to have an idea #sorry for the long yelling scene #I needed to get this out of my sistem #she ra au #au #she ra fanfic #spop

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testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

Text

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

#she ra horde prime #she ra #she ra catra #she ra spoilers #redemption arcs #toxic religion

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