#i've watched utena but nothing is really jumping out at me right now

[rotationalsymmetry]

So I'm like 9 or 10 episodes into She Ra and I am loving it. (Not hugely spoiler-y, but I mean it is about the show.)

Some thoughts:

The way the show bounces between Adora's POV with the Rebellion and Catra's POV with the Horde is pretty similar to the way Avatar: The Last Airbender goes between Aang and Zuko. And yet there's some obvious differences that keep the dynamic interesting: Adora started with the Horde and already knows Catra. (Also, Catra's character is nothing like Zuko's (if anything Adora is more Zuko-like) and Adora is nothing like Aang.)

The "princesses" thing is a little goofy, but it's a kids' show and I can live with it.

When I was an actual kid, I avoided shows with a predominantly female cast because I generally assumed they'd be too girly for my taste. Now I'm wondering if I was missing something I might have really enjoyed. While there are definitely girly elements to the show -- one of the episodes I watched yesterday centered on a prom, for crying out loud -- it doesn't feel overwhelming. I think Adora being blatantly uncomfortable with a lot of the girly stuff helps -- and she's not the only character either. (And Catra in a tux, oh my god.)

Shadow Weaver makes a great dragon. And the uh Mystic-whatever episode I thought was really well done. I can imagine different people having polar opposite takes on this, but I think it was good that Adora's "something is wrong" reaction turned out to be justified. Of course not all "something is wrong" reactions are. But when you're having a "something is wrong" reaction and people expect you to calm down from being just told that things are safe and put in situations where you're alone with the contents of your head? Not good. (And Adora did real harm as a result of Shadow Weaver's tricks. This is part of how mental illness is.)

I love the juxtaposition of Scorpia's, uh, prickly physical body and her big old softie personality.

Glimmer. Oh my goodness. She's cute. She's fat, or at least not as slender as her mother is, and while the show hasn't specifically called attention to that you can tell it's part of Glimmer not feeling like she's living up to her mother's impossible-to-reach perfection. The very, y'know, normal teenaged relationship between Glimmer and her mom where they disagree and Glimmer thinks her mother is being overprotective and overly cautious and Angela thinks, understandably, that Glimmer is being too reckless and defiant and is feeling sad that Glimmer doesn't come to her with her problems. Glimmer has sparkles in her hair and she can teleport and every problem she has is super relatable and I love her.

I'm not sure what to say about Bow but I like him. He's got good natured side-kick vibes. He's got a gender-swapped role analogous to the role a lot of Token Female Characters have in shows centered on male characters. But also his sidekick-y role coexists with a lot of individual characteristics and skills. Has a lot in common with Sokka -- not sure if he'll end up as developed as Sokka, we'll see.

Entrapta: I always appreciate a girl geek. I think my partner finds her over the top odd behavior a little much? I'm good with it. I mean, exaggerated characteristics kinda go with the genre, right? And her prehensile hair is really something else. (And I love that she's found a way to enjoy parties!)

I am having trouble sorting out much of the ethnic/racial coding in this show, and I am not sure I want to sort it out. Ah well.

I love Bright Moon's aesthetic with all the crystals and waterfalls and things hanging in the air and stuff. I like it even more that Adora didn't like it all and couldn't figure out how to sleep since it was so different from the Horde barracks.

The names are so ridiculous. Light Hope. The Fright Zone.

Who or what is Grayskull and are we ever going to find out from the show?

Whether we do or not, I'm going to shout "For the honor of Grayskull!" at random intervals for the entire rest of my life, probably.

I like the random old woman in the woods, whatever her name was.

I actually kinda like Sea Hawk. As a character. I'm sure I'd hate him as a person.

I like the wild genre hopping in episodes like 4 to the prom. Very fun.

I guess as far as hippies in shows go, Princess Perfuma and co aren't like worse than the usual stereotypes? I'm just used to hippies being presented as maximally cringe, so...yeah. (I'm not from the right generation to be a real hippy. But I'm a hippy at heart. Flowers and back to nature and deep calming breaths and all.)

So far every episode has been really interesting and nothing has felt like just filler or like it missed the mark. When did TV get this good? Like I love old Star Trek to pieces, but I got to admit it's horribly dated and half the episodes are total bombs.

Back to Catra and Adora. Catra's a great character. She's cynical and self-centered and why wouldn't she be? She's the not-favored "child"/ward and she sees the society she's living in the way it is and she knows nobody is going to look out for her if she doesn't. And she's just fun. Chaotic-chaotic to Adora's Lawful-lawful. (Yeah, I know those aren't real things, I don't care.) And I love the sort of character Adora is: the kind of person who's good to the bone, who's loyal and responsible and kind and brave and everything good, who knows where her values are and doesn't do dishonesty or subterfuge (but because of that who sometimes is massively obvious to when other people are less well intentioned), and who very rapidly swaps sides without a second thought when she finds out the story she's been told about what the Horde is doing in the world doesn't match reality. And of course Catra doesn't follow her. Again, why would she? For one thing, for all Catra knows the Rebellion is just as bad. Why wouldn't it be?

Swift Wind. Somehow the show introduced a rainbow-colored unicorn-pegasus and then just dropped it. That is wrong and Swift Wind needs to come back.

Oppression and colonialism and stuff: ok, I'm kinda burying this point, sorry for that. There's a lot of visual resemblance between She Ra and Steven Universe, and there are themes here that seem to sort of split the difference between SU and ATLA. Now, I don't think ATLA especially lends itself to criticism of Western colonialism and/or US modern imperialism, but you can read that into it and that's fine, I just don't think it's innate to it, you can get all sorts of "fighting tyranny" storylines that aren't intended to be specific critiques of modern power dynamics, or which aren't intended to critique them in the way that leftists/whatever would. Like, Proud Boys think they're fighting tyranny, come on. And the Fire Nation is attempting to conquer the world through military might, and what the US is doing at this point is a lot more complicated than direct conquest.) Anyhow. The way I see it, SU is a much more blatant criticism of colonialism. The story's largely about how a group of people who started out on the side of the oppressors switched sides and what the consequences of that were, which is a relevant story for/by white Americans, and especially Amethyst's whole "I didn't actively contribute to the original mess, but I am a product of that and have to contend with what that means" is kinda relevant when your country used to do the slavery thing and stuff and it's not like you did and yet here you are. And maybe you wouldn't even exist if apocalyptic horrors hadn't been perpetuated by your people on other people, and how do you deal with that, like, emotionally? And the resource extraction thing and the higher tech thing and all that point specifically to Western culture vs indigenous nations in a way that most "resist tyranny" stories do not. Anyhow. So, She Ra seems to me to be less blatantly connected to all that than SU, but it's still handles that reading fairly well, and specifically the association between technology and a unified hierarchical structure with the Horde vs a bunch of independent nations who all have dramatically different cultures and who also coexist peacefully with nature...there are certain parallels there. And I do think there is something to having a protagonist who is a good person and just believed what she'd been raised to believe and then learned some new things and was like "yeah, I'm on the wrong side, hang on I'm gonna defect even if that means leaving everyone I ever cared about or even knew before today and also adopting a lifestyle that's very different from what I'm used to" that's kinda huge, not necessarily easily replicated, but it's huge.

Best Friends Squad 4 Lyfe.

That thing where Shadow Weaver was going to wipe Adora's memories, talk about nightmare fuel.

Stay woke.