#shera s4

[sherafaces]

all the digital pictures from the show!

[imminent-danger-came]

It's just me and the 2 different season 4s that destroyed me

[layna-art]

Wow a rare occurrence of me actually posting art (Shera brainrot got to me)

Also just me or S4 is my favorite season and I love Catra’s outfit in it (even though ouch she’s spiraling)

[breakthesword]

Mara Edit - Interstellar Theme

youtube link

[el-ffej]

"She-Ra? No, there hasn't been a She-Ra around these here parts for 30 YEARS!"

I was so excited to actually have confirmation of the timeskip we all knew happened before Season 4 only for ND to immediately derail the convo into jokes 😂

[source]

[raayllum]

thinking about how Ezran getting to be angry at his father's murderer is going to heal me after that was so glossed over between Catra and Glimmer in shera

To be clear, my issue isn't that Catra and Glimmer eventually became allies and even friends, but that Catra's hand in Angella's death (two things that s3 and s4 of shera focused on) was Completely Dropped in season 5 of SheRa (not even a single mention or guilty look!), versus The Dragon Prince steadily building up to Ezran's continued grief over his father's assassination through having - like Glimmer - to take the kingship and being pissed at the elf responsible for it on sight with him having to work through his emotions being, alternatively, a major focus.

[emileedoodles]

S5 Shera Vs S4 Catra are peak enemies aesthetic ✨

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Idk if this has been talked about before but do you think Hordak and Wrong Hordak are kind of parallels to catra and adora? Adora and WH both fully believed the hoard was truly good, and only defected when they realized it was a lie. Their values never changed, their realities did. Catra and Hordak both seemed to know the hoard was actually pretty evil, but didn't care. They both had there own reasons to rebel in the end, personal pride and whatnot, but mostly it was their love for adora and entrapta that pushed them to change sides.

Yes, I absolutely do.

Wrong Hordak even has a scene where he's petting a horse for the first time, just like Adora!!! And they both have this sort of existential crisis.

They both believed they were honorable missionaries of the Horde, that the Horde was perfect. Whether it was Adora believing the Horde were victims of rebel insurgents, or Wrong Hordak believing that Prime was the smartest and most merciful man in the universe. Sweary Shera amps this up to 11 with their Wrong Hordak having heard a bunch of lies about gay people, kind of like how Adora heard a bunch of lies about princesses (also gay people).

With Catra and Hordak, it's more like... okay, yeah, they were ALSO brought up in these cults. And I would actually say that Hordak was far more "brainwashed" than Catra, because to begin with Hordak fully believed in the hype of Prime, at least for a while. He was cast aside as a defect, and knew of the violence of the Horde, but still believed in his creator's perfection, unlike Catra, who knew from the start that Weaver was full of shit and realised over time that Hordak was too.

I'd say though that both of them were SCARED of their masters, and were trying to get their approval, to sort of... prove that they were wrong about them. Because the little voice Prime and Weaver put in their heads says "You are wrong, you are a failure", and they need to silence that in order to function. This is why Catra never defected, she needed to prove herself in the system and Weaver would "win" if she quit, and this is why Hordak scrambled to Prime's feet once he arrived.

But something changed over time. The versions of Hordak and Catra we get at the end of Season 4, their hearts aren't in it anymore. All of their actions across S4 are driven by different motivations to before.

For Hordak, his motivation actually flips over - He hardly gives a shit about reuniting with Prime anymore! What he wants to do is prove to Entrapta that she was wrong for leaving him behind, and prove to himself that he isn't a worthless piece of shit failure like everyone thinks he is. Hordak goes from a sheltered scientist to leading the army on the front lines, embracing the violence of a warlord and sort of making a name for himself rather than hiding behind the rest of the Horde. He's in the state of mind Catra was in the previous seasons!!!

For Catra, her motivation... well, it ends. We saw the fire and rage from her in the previous season where she was so determined to prove herself that she ended the world, and this is a Catra who has to deal with the consequences of that. She realises that she has very little left in her life and she tries to cling onto those ideas, even to bond with Hordak despite everything he's done to her, and she goes through the ten stages of grief, ending up on Prime's doorstep as having... started to think about what it is she really wants. Like, she sees Glimmer fuck up big time but try to fix it anyway, she goes "You can do that???", and I think Catra starts to accept she still cares about people, she cares about Adora and even Glimmer and Hordak. She's a character filled with so much empathy who tries to crush it dry.

Hordak and Catra both get the "death and rebirth" in the final season, after their "rebirth" they become more introspective with all the rage tempered or gone. Hordak, in close proximity to Prime, starts to see how truly weak the man is, and how hollow his version of "Love" is, especially compared to the sheer strength of heart he sees from Entrapta. And Catra, in "Save the Cat", are their bare selves, all notions of hero vs villain stripped away, just those two girls who grew up together trying to survive. Catra afterwards still has the final strips of her mask that she claws onto, but she lets them flutter away.

Wrong Hordak and Adora "had it easier" when it came to defecting because they were entrenched in the false values of their system, and just applied those values to their new situation. Whereas Catra and Hordak had to develop new values from the ground up, since the whole time all they were made to care about was whether they were on the good side of the person in charge, because if they werent, they were going to get the Stick.

[sowhisperssalad]

why do I remeber posting this cause I was thinking on what catras twitter page would look like

The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light

[chronicsyd]

I also want to go on a rant about Adora and Hunter cause I saw an old pic on my old phone that said, “if you Stan Catra you automatically Stan Amity I don’t make the rules” (even though I already made a post of stop comparing these two especially as redemption arcs but that’s not the point of this…)

Cause Adora and Hunter seem to have more in common than people think like the denial of the side they’re fighting for being “bad” (it just takes longer for Hunter to figure it out) (and they both need the literal proof of it happening (ie the decimation of that one village done by the Horde in ep 1 of Shera and Hunter seeing all the other Clones and Philip trying to get rid of him as well) and they both are in this mindset of “there’s nothing worse than disappointing the people who think you’re special” cause Hunter and Adora do what they do cause A) Hunter is being manipulated by Belos by being told that “the Titan has great plans for you”, if he doesn’t question things then Belos wouldn’t act violently towards him, etc. and B) Adora believes that if she does A,B and C right then things would stop going wrong around her like Catra would stop being hurt by Shadow Weaver, Glimmer wouldn’t be hurt in S1, the Horde wouldn’t be Decimating them in S4, etc. etc.

Like this is just another thing that I’d probably go on for days about (and would probably make a more in depth post about if that is something people would read…)

[sherafaces]

All the drawings from SheRa part 2

[imminent-danger-came]

I THINK I FINALLY PUT TOGETHER WHY LUZ'S ARC IN S3 OF THE OWL HOUSE BUGGED ME SO MUCH.

It's because they made her defining moment helping Belos meet the collector—which feels disconnected from the core of her character (and also it happened in an episode over halfway through season 2). That's not her defining moment, and it never has been: it was her choice to walk through the portal door, and become a witch.

That's what makes her similar to Philip, right? Like, Luz has this grand idea in her mind of becoming a witch. Philip has his own grand idea of being a heroic witch hunter and saving the human realm from this great evil. That's what the line "I am the great witch Azura, warrior of piece!" is meant to communicate. It's the idea in her head vs reality. That's what s1 of toh explores.

Luz choosing to walk through the portal door and become a witch is what leads to...well, everything. It leads to her not being able to go back. It leads to her mother's grief. It leads to Eda losing her magic. It turns Amity's life upside down. It leads to Belos meeting the collector. It leads to the near destruction of the Isles.

And that ties in with her foil to Philip WAY better, and it makes her decision to stay in the human realm at the end of 3x01 actually relevant. She wanted to be this great witch, to follow in Philip's footsteps creating a portal door and learning about the isles, she wanted to live her dream...and look what that lead too.

So, Luz feeling like her and Belos are both motivated by love and by their own childish notions...like that would have been SO interesting. She wasn't becoming the villain and didn't wake up one morning evil, but some of her decisions undeniably hurt others. But it also lead to some good things. And that's life, isn't it? Taking the good with the bad and accepting that.

But idk, instead it was like a "blah blah your one single mistake makes YOU the true villain!", which just isn't compelling or at the core of Luz character.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

hopping on as someone who doesn't usually love enemies to lovers but shipped catradora throughout the show's run, and then kinda meh'd on it after, my problem isn't necessarily that there was abuse or messiness in the relationship - in a lot of ways, the more mess the better

for me, there was a lot of set up and not enough time to do the pay off, in one scenario i've never seen anyone been able to adequately dismantle my argument for (although if you can please do so! i'd be interested in reading it)

simply put: I think it's weird that there's a one-off episode in which Catra brainwashes Adora into being a weapon (S2 "White Out") and is pretty gleeful about it, and then when that plot point is repeated in the final season - Catra is brainwashed and turned into a weapon by the final big bad - the way those similar plot points are treated is very different.

I don't think it's a bad thing to have an antagonist or protagonist mirror each other - and Catra is She Ra's deuteragonist easily - and that parallels between her and Horde Prime, or even her and Shadow Weaver, are interesting and the latter are particularly well acknowledged. So my issue isn't that Catra mirrors the irredeemable big bad at one point, that's chill

My issue is that when Adora sees Catra be brainwashed, she's horrified and does everything she can to help her. The story, through Adora and Catra's lingering trauma over being chipped in the subsequent episodes, acknowledges that it was an awful and accordingly traumatic experience, that she deserves support as she navigates it, and that kind of dehumanization is just well, awful

So why doesn't Adora get that understanding and focus when she undergoes it? Especially when being forced to be a weapon, as we see in S4, is triggering and her intended Destiny as SheRa / a first one.

This was the perfect opportunity for the two to bond, and for Catra to acknowledge that she put Adora though that - maybe feel regretful and ashamed that she'd treated it so callously, refused to relinquish control, and made Adora attack her friends.

But the show doesn't do that, because the show is a lot more interested in exploring Catra's trauma concerning the shared plot point than it is with Adora's, and that was my personal breaking point with the ship.

(I actually think S5 would've been structured better if Catra and Adora had switched places for a lot of the plot points, leading to their romantic reconciliation - Adora and Glimmer get to patch things up, Adora sacrifices herself for Glimmer because that's who she is, Catra works with Best Friend Squad to save Adora, she has to fight an Adora who's not holding back at all for the first time, Adora can still unlock She Ra, Catra can acknowledge what happened in S2, they can move past it in a more developed manner, etc).

Jackie/Shauna from Yellowjackets, in which one indirectly kills and then literally cannibalizes the other, or Aaravos/Viren from The Dragon Prince (also a kids show) in which they engage in a magical blood ritual so Aaravos can manipulate Viren into dying for him, and also encouraging him to murde the child they have together, are not Sanitized in the slightest, but the fuckery is leaned into and the setup/payoff/pacing is, imo, something that She Ra was lacking in. Even Pearl/Rose from Steven Universe, and a lot of Steven Universe, goes into why good intentions or apologies is not always enough, which is an honestly messier take than "this character apologized so it's all good now".

I'm really glad kids and queer kids have She Ra growing up; I would've liked a lot more queer media when I was growing up. And queer media is absolutely held to a stricter standard then non queer media, for sure. But that also doesn't mean we can't take issue with how a queer story, 'sanitized' or not (which is loaded for the aspec community as a concept as well), doesn't always work for us as individuals, and that means learning to accept that some people are gonna have different breaking points with the Mess than you do - case in point

I also think She Ra has a deeper message than just "big lady with sword" - it does have meaningful things to say about breaking cycles, and growing past old behaviours, and second chances (things that were, I believe, not as much of a thing in the 80s cartoon, but I never watched it so I wouldn't know). How well it executes those themes is subjective, but that's always gonna be the trade off when a work takes on messier ideas/concepts to begin with, I guess

"we need less sanitized queer stories" yall keep saying fucking she-ra romanticizes abuse. you couldnt possibly handle less sanitized queer stories

[thecatranimal]

secret look into season 4 catras fantasies

[catrasarm]

i really wanna know what scorpia wrote in this note. please.

ND reveal the note challenge

[anamorph-marco]