gay shit

I guess you’re stuck with me. I wanna be stuck with you.

Electrocuting Catra via her whip [3x04/4x04]

Catra and Glimmer’s fight in 4x04 may be comedic (and really gay), but this parallel is tragic. The fight in 4x04 feels fairer than in 3x04, and the electrocution is staged to look like comedy rather than torture (just look at the differences in animation in the two middle gifs). But when you think about it, this is Glimmer using Shadow Weaver’s strategy of neutralizing Catra with magical current by using her only distance weapon against her (when she and Shadow Weaver are all about distance weapons in the form of magic). Not only that, Shadow Weaver has been doing this to control Catra for years and it’s no doubt caused Catra a lot of trauma. So Glimmer sees Shadow Weaver use magic in a smart but somewhat dirty manner to not only defeat but torture Catra, then she goes and does the same thing. And like, I know Glimmer doesn’t know that Shadow Weaver did this to Catra on the regs and doesn’t understand how abusive that relationship is, but still, it’s a little disturbing.

If you frame-by-frame it (skipping duplicates) this is how it goes:

FUCK

Look at her helplessly staring down the current

Look at her eyes following it

Look at her bracing for impact

Because she has done this before, she knows she’s in for a world of pain

And Glimmer delivers

FUCK

I hate this.

We’ve established pretty thoroughly here that getting tortured or immobilized by electricity is a very huge trigger for Catra. It’s something that every negative figure in her life has done to her at some point or another. Shadow Weaver-

Glimmer-

And when you consider the use of stun batons being so widespread in the Horde, potential triggers pretty much lurk everywhere for Catra.

In fact, in this pretty stunning meta @alsamil comes in and makes a compelling case that getting tortured by Shadow Weaver and Glimmer in tandem in 4x04 directly feeds into Catra’s decision to throw the portal switch and escape into the perfect reality. Because if even the “good guys” would resort to that kind of torture, nowhere is safe for her.

And what happens in literally the next episode?

… I think we just found out why Catra is so casual about electrocuting Adora in s4.