The multiple WLW relationships, the female friendships, the diversity of the cast, the message of sometimes doing what is good for YOU and not just everyone else?

Mild spoilers for She-Ra

“Outside of the typical epic storyline of a massive army and the resistance fighters hellbent on stopping them, “She-Ra” has taken the time to examine relationships, both romantic and platonic. Its final season, airing earlier this year, took the giant risk of admitting that — for all the social media “shipping” — Adora and her best friend/moral enemy Catra (voiced by AJ Michalka) were actually in love with each other. “It’s a responsibility in my eyes [to] create media for children, for all ages, that shows these issues as normal,” she said. As a member of the LGBTQ community herself, Stevenson never wanted to present the relationship as something to be afraid of or “saved” from.

Cartoons like this didn’t exist when she was growing up, she explains, leaving her to latch onto characters that were coded as gay or lesbian. “They weren’t characters who were outwardly gay or lesbian,” Stevenson said. “It was characters where I projected onto them or latched onto them in a way I didn’t understand yet.” She says Velma from “Scooby Doo” was her first crush on a character but, as a child, she didn’t understand what that meant or how to approach it: “I just felt a kinship with her. I felt seen in some way.”

That sense of visibility affected how Catra and Adora’s relationship developed as Stevenson understands children test out the way they want to be seen through characters. “That’s a space that is very important for young people who are finding out who they are,” Stevenson said. “It would have been huge for me for [I] had had something that was very normal, very accepted, something that was shown as being aspirational and beautiful. I think I would have started to figure things out a lot earlier.”

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schitt’s creek celebration