I Think It’s Really Funny That My Favorite Show Is She-ra. I Wear Heavy Black Eyeliner, Leather, Combat

understanding catra in taking control s5: ep 6

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

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

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

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

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

hence the:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

everyday i wake up, read the news with my cup of coffee, pull my hair out, cry, scream, and then try to recover by reading catradora fanfic

living in america is fucking shit rn, but at least i still have catradora

Looking at utenanthy official art, I love how genuinely happy Anthy is portrayed in art that is meant to be post-anime.

Look at how happy she is!! Another notable detail is that she tends to be more in control in comparison to her art with utena as the rose bride (I mean, that's a bit obvious considering she was the rose bride but I still feel the need to point it out)

She is held (damsel in distress style) by utena, who looks to be more in control and still has the prince mentality. (not all the art before the ending is like this, but a lot of it is). So it makes me really happy to see a genuinely happy and free anthy be more in control. They're in love!! They're free and they're happy!!

This post doesn't bring anything new to the table and I'm guessing this has been pointed out a million times before, but I want to gush about 90s anime lesbians. I love them dearly. Did you know they changed my life forever.

this is actually so so fucking true and i cannot believe that it’s literally like fucking six years later and STILL people are saying the same silly shit about catra being primarily a sub.

and catra doesn’t just want adora’s love: she wants to be equal to adora. she wants adora to value her. that’s a major fucking piece of her character.

this post just sums up all my thoughts perfectly <3

Catradora are both tops and Catra is a dom, change my mind

(Actually, don’t change my mind. I’m not writing this to cause drama, I’m writing this because Catradora sexual discourse is frustrating me and I want basically a masterpost to link back to whenever I need to explain my apparently controversial views on this shit. Hopefully some other people will also find that it speaks to/for them and be able to use it for the same purpose. Please don’t troll me, I’m but a simple girl who needs to be understood. I am, however, totally open to respectful debate. :)

Okay, I’d like to take some time here to follow up on my previous posts about how Catra and Adora are both vers-tops and Catra is so not a sub. I feel a little silly writing a long meta about the sexual dynamics of a femslash ship in a cartoon aimed at kids and teens, but there’s reason for it. For some reason, lots of fics write one or both of them in ways that feel extremely out of character, perhaps to make them fit the mold for a particular kink or sexual trope. And people will write what “works” for them ugh, and I’m not kinkshaming on principle, but some of it feels extremely disrespectful to the characters. Particularly Catra, given her backstory and struggles so far in the series, and I find this rather troubling.

And unfortunately, some of these things that are written to fit some sexual trope have ended up entering the more general discourse and morphing the fanon interpretation of the characters into something urecognizable, something that would make the canon characters mad if they read it. That’s another big reason why I’m bothering to write all this.

Let’s start with a clarification: when I said Catradora are both tops, I meant they would fight each other for control of an encounter and that’s totally fine and we don’t need to make hard statements about who is the top because it comes naturally to both of them. But I didn’t mean they would necessarily want control for the same reasons or that they are interchangeable in the sack. IMO, Catra is a dominant vers-top and Adora is the definition of a service top (but also versatile if that’s what works for her partner). These may be unpopular opinions (honestly why?), but I am fully prepared to back them up. *cracks knuckles*

I’m going to explain my biggest point first and then put a bunch of additional thoughts under the cut. That point being we need to consider Catra and Adora’s relationships with power.

Here’s the thing. For Catra, power is safety, power is an accomplishment she is proud of. She has fought/longed her whole life to be taken seriously. She has always felt disrespected and like she lacked agency (both of which are true, actually), so feeling respected and in control is very important to her.

This is especially true of her relationship with Adora, as she feels like Adora has been controlling her for most of their lives and doesn’t respect her. She resents that Adora has been in the “power position” for ages and is actively trying to change that.

Didn’t anybody else see how she got off on those guards standing at attention as she walked by in 2x01, and how tickled she was standing on top of Dryl in 2x02, overlooking her troops taking it over? Catra gets off on power, why would she not also literally get off on it?

To Catra, giving up power would feel like a failure.

For Adora, power is a burden. Yes she is an absolute control freak, but that’s because she feels like she needs to control everything because if anything goes wrong it’s all her fault. Shadow Weaver instilled this idea in her when she was very young, the way she was groomed to be a leader in the Horde reinforced it, and now being She-Ra has made that feeling inescapable for her.

I’ve seen people use the “person who has a lot of power irl wants to give it up in the sack” concept to explain why they see Catra as a sub, but imo it works way better for Adora because she has always been saddled with power, even when she didn’t want it. I will get into this more under the cut, but we have seen Adora resenting and struggling with all her responsibilities on multiple occasions.

To Adora, giving up power would feel like a relief (once she got past the mental block of needing to control everything).

(This isn’t all to say that Catra would be running shit 100% of this time, I do actually think both are somewhat versatile in terms of top/bottom and dom/sub classification. I’m just making a hard case in this direction because I think they lean this way and because so many people seem weirdly convinced that Adora would 100% dominate Catra all the time and it’s weird and a little offensive.)

Now, let’s move on to my additional thoughts! The tl;dr of it all is: brattiness =/= submissiveness (quite the opposite, in fact), why the hell would an abuse survivor want to relive her trauma, this master/pet nonsense is racist af, Adora is not a starfish wtf, and Adora is a good little soldier who likes following orders.

(Plus new bonus content: Catra’s love and protection of Adora signals she’s a top, not just a dom.)

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THIS THIS THIS

watching arcane s2 completely fumble jinx’s arc genuinely made me so so upset, i’m still fucking mad about it honestly

I think I took for granted how good She-Ra is. Like it is a MIRACLE that a show like this exists, you know?

Idk, watching the Arcane finale and seeing it fumble the things it set up for itself in season 1, ditching complex and complete set-ups and pay-offs for cheap parallels that don’t always make sense; it made me realize how fucking lucky we got with spop.

There are a lot of incredible things about the show, about how pretty much every character in the show is queer, how trauma is represented, complex themes interweaved beautifully in a TV-7 rating show.

BUT

I feel like we as a ~ society don’t talk enough about the set-ups and pay-offs in the show. The fact that nothing in the show comes out of left field and how every piece of dialogue serves a function and sets the characters up. The characters in spop will never act out of character for a line, or to further the plot. Their consistency is incredible.

Let’s take Jinx and Catra for example. Jinx has complex mental health issues that were at the center of everything in szn 1, so she had a lot of symptoms and she was able to be messy and frustrating and realistic in her disorder. Then szn 2 came around and somehow her symptoms are mostly cured - which ok, we can chalk that up to Isha’s presence in her life, which yeah, her hallucinatory symptoms partly come back when Isha goes missing. Although, this would mean that they’re setting up that if Isha is not in Jinx’s life, then her symptoms would come back full force no?

Isha dies and there is absolutely nothing that pays off in terms of this little set up they did. Jinx becomes suicidal, but her other, more complex, more “able to ruin plot plans” symptoms disappear in its entirety. This is a character whose complexity is determined by what the plot needs to do.

Catra also has complex mental issues, and those NEVER go away for the sake of plot expediency, in fact, the plot baked Adora and Catra’s conflict in the center of it all from the very beginning. This means that Catra gets to act realistically all throughout the show and that furthers the plot. Catra doesn’t get rescued and all of a sudden her trauma goes away for the sake of redeeming her faster. Catra has not been healed at the end of the show, she is beginning to heal. She is allowed to explore the depths of her trauma and symptoms and instead of speeding through it, the show says - here, go down to rock bottom, get rescued and be unable to say thank you, get re-triggered by your abuser and run away at the very end of the show. And also, here are some characters that will call you out on your behavior, here is an emotional support animal, here, the person you love and have pushed away from, never hated you!! Her healing always feels like it’s a deliberate choice from Catra bc of what tools the show is giving her, not bc the plot needs to move forward now.

And in terms of set-ups and pay-offs. I mean…. It’s actually nuts. Characters’ dialogues literally bake themselves into other characters. Shadow Weaver tells Adora “Catra distracts you, confuses you” and Adora later tells Bow and Glimmer (after calling SW out btw) “I am distracted and confused and I cant be any of those things if this is going to work” which creates the final moments of the show.

Angella tells Adora “take care of each other” and Adora internalizes it as “I have to take care of Glimmer” bc of her trauma, and that leads her to be very controlling with Glimmer, which creates conflict in their relationship, which creates the heart of Etheria situation, which creates the Horde Prime situation.

SW tells Catra that she abused her bc Catra reminded her of herself. In that same episode, where SW’s past is explored, they both say “it doesn’t matter what I do, my authority figure doesn’t trust me”, we can see how Catra begins to emulate SW’s authority style throughout the show.

The show starts with SW telling Adora “isn’t this what you’ve wanted since you were old enough to want anything?” and it ends with Catra asking her “what do you want, Adora?” which sets up the conclusion of Adora’s entire arc.

Even little things, like Entrapta telling Wrong Hordak it’s ok to make facial expressions and Wrong Hordak being animated copying character’s facial expressions for practice after that.

ITS JUST SO GOOD THE WRITING IN THIS SHOW IS RIDICULOUS.

oh my god this is so fucking beautiful <3

I owe u a black eye and two kisses!!! (teeth eater)

- 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘦, 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧.

@mothercain ୭ ˚.⁺⊹

oh yes catra is absolutely having a massive bpd episode this whole time :( trying to explain bpd episodes to people who don’t experience them is very hard i fear

another big part of this is that catra wants to be loved and cherished as much as she wants to be respected. she wants adora’s love, but she also wants to be an equal to her. adora, meanwhile, has been made to feel that in order to protect catra, she must control her (thank you shadow weaver). you can really see that mentality on display in this episode.

telling adora that she must be dumb to have never hated her :(

then adora saying “i’m such an idiot. i thought that things would be different this time, but clearly nothing has changed”

my heart breaking :((((((((

damn this episode is genuinely insane how it just peels back so many layers of their relationship

understanding catra in taking control s5: ep 6

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

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

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

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

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

hence the:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

i’m sorry to say that this part of catra’s story hits a little too close to home :(

i love her sm

dude…… the nuance with which she-ra netflix reboot approaches a relationship an abuse victim has w their abuser…. the fact that catra hates shadow weavers guts for everything she put her through but also fundamentally cannot help but care about her…the fact that despite everything she still wants shadow weavers love and approval even if its unhealthy and she knows externally that shadow weavers not worth it…….. bro the understanding of the complexity of these things that the show exhibits……