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every now and again i just have to reflect on how fucking traumatic catra’s chipping process must’ve been. like this girl didn’t need ANY more trauma in general, but especially not any more trauma relating to losing control of herself. she’s already had so much taken from her, and she already felt so alone and unloved. she was so sure that adora wouldn’t come back for her, that she would die there all alone, just hoping that her sacrifice meant something to adora :(((
not to mention that horde prime electrocuted her in that baptismal pool, the same punishment that shadow weaver tortured catra with all of her life.
the pseudo-religious implications of catra’s chipping process too…
UGH THIS SHOW ITS GONNA FUCKING KILL ME
“she was afraid in the end. and she suffered”
can you hear my heart breaking :((((((
(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 literally fucking think about this all the time so this just gonna be a rant lol)
i really, truly think that people in general don’t put the effort into understanding characters who are imperfect victims. for them, it destroys the appeal of victimhood. victimhood (especially when the victims in question are girls, women, femme presenting people, etc.) needs to be beautiful and tragic. think characters like ophelia, snow white, odette, juliet, the lisbon sisters. otherwise, their victimhood is no longer attractive.
catra is an imperfect victim. shadow weaver’s abuse did not make her soft, weak, timid, or fragile. it made her bitter, angry, and resentful.
i once saw a catra anti saying some bullshit about how they might’ve liked catra more if the writers had spent more screen time showing shadow weaver abusing her, specifically her when she was a kid.
this person wanted to see catra’s pain as beautiful. they wanted to see her ONLY as a child to be pitied, the little kid who cowered in fear instead of fighting back, and not have to acknowledge catra’s more complicated character traits.
i also think this is why these same people often talk like they love adora, like “adora deserves better than catra” and all that shit. adora (to them) is easier to see as a perfect victim. shadow weaver’s abuse made her obedient and self-sacrificing. it made her put others before herself, even to the point of fucking death. adora is selfless and brave. she’s so determined to be a perfect hero, to protect people, to care for people, to love people. these traits are easier to romanticize. it makes her seem beautiful.
if you ask me, this is a really fucked up way of viewing adora. i don’t love adora bc she’s a “perfect victim”, i love adora bc she, like catra, is also flawed. adora’s determination to be perfect leads her to abandoning catra. her inability to empathize with catra leads her to behaving the way she did in taking control. adora isn’t fucking perfect.
(for context i do also think that catra was in the wrong in that episode too, but i feel like we don’t talk enough about how badly adora was handling the situation. like seriously girl catra is here basically telling her “i don’t trust you bc i don’t believe that you could ever love me bc i’m inherently fucked up and unlovable” and adora’s immediate reaction is to blow up at her. it makes sense given what adora has just done for her, but it’s another example of adora being incapable of empathizing with catra. also calling her a stubborn brat? yeah uh that wasn’t funny adora, especially not with the ways that shadow weaver talked about catra.)
but i love that adora is flawed, and i love that catra is flawed. they’re not archetypes. no real person experiences abuse like they did and comes out perfect. catra’s intense fear of abandonment and resentment issues are a very fucking real response to the way she was traumatized. regardless of how ugly it is.
at the end of the day, i think that people can’t wrap their brains around this concept and refuse to empathize with imperfect victims bc they don’t want to admit that they, too, are imperfect victims. the perfect victim isn’t real. it’s a fucking myth.
in real life, people are messy and complicated, like catra and adora. it’s why i love them :)
ugh i could literally go on about this FOREVER i swear.
casings by ethel cain is SO catradora-coded that it's driving me fucking insane and i can't think about anything else.
ethel asking "am i not good enough for you, is there something wrong with me?" and literally all i can imagine is catra not understanding why she wasn't good enough for adora to stay with her :(
and catra thinking that adora replaced her with glimmer and bow, how adora was so willing to give everything up she had with catra for them
ofc we, as the audience, understand why adora left (we understand adora's savior complex and her moral drive), but the only explanation that catra can imagine is that she never mattered to adora as much as as adora mattered to her.
and actually, if you ask me, i think that's partially true. shadow weaver made is extremely fucking clear to catra that she had no worth outside of adora. without adora's affection, catra meant nothing. growing up, catra's whole sense of herself is so intrinsically tied to who she is to adora. adora is her lifeline.
this isn't true for adora. her worth is tied to her usefulness, her strength, her obedience. shadow weaver also made that incredibly clear to her too. it's why becoming she-ra in the first season is the worst possible thing that could've happened to her.
it's why she leaves and catra stays and grieves.
it's not to say that adora doesn't love catra. adora loves her so, so much. she loves her with everything that she is, but she can't let herself love catra, because she has to be perfect. the perfect soldier, the perfect she-ra, the perfect hero, etc.
ugh the catradora angst is just unmatched. and now every single time i hear this stupidly beautiful and heartbreaking ethel song, all i can think about is them :((
Both Catra and Adora defying death at the height of their character journeys in such a powerful and subversive way. Whenever I think about it deeper, both deaths were very traditional and demeaning ’feminine’ deaths. Catra had a man literally controlling her body and mouth to fight against her friend (and lover) for seemingly his own amusement, and when she resisted, he disposed of her by throwing her off a cliff (the gwen stacy method), she was barely present in the entirety of the episode, her agency stripped (not for the first time), the emotional stakes were felt, but by Adora not catra and how bad she felt to see catra this hurt, even though catra was the one in pain, we don’t focus on catra’s perspective at all during it, so if she did die at the end of it, she would have just been another name to add to the list of female love interest violated and killed by the hand of men for the development of the main character’s story. Except she didn’t die! that wasn’t her end, but her beginning, that part was just a step on the rest of her life that she grew and recovered enough to have power to control. To change.
As for Adora, there’s no shortage of self sacrificial women and female martyrs both in history or fiction, it’s been romanticised and encouraged since the dawn of the patriarchy for girls to grew up being conditioned into giving up their own needs, desires and even lives and health for the convenience and goals of others, and when they obey that to the extreme (like with the failsafe) they’re celebrated as the ultimate heroes. The perfect women are dead women after all. but instead Adora doesn’t die not just because of her power or sense of duty but because she learns to be selfish and choose something for herself for once and that’s what ultimately saves her. She rejects her conditioning and the message of what a hero must be and choose to live for her own self. Self love is radical.