sw traumatised adora by projecting her ambitions onto her, as she was the golden child with a lot of potential (which sw wanted to exploit). like azula, she was put on a pedestal from a very young age, praised for her skills, and ruined by a lot of conditional love. also, both of their counterparts -catra and zuko- were abused in a much more obviously harsh and cruel manner, right in front of them. this conveyed a pretty clear message: follow the rules, do as i say, dont displease me like this person or you will be punished like them. (note azulas "you cant do this to me! you cant treat me like zuko!"). so both of them really looked up to and adored their abusers, and were subtly traumatised very, very deeply. hence adoras inability to ever relax and azulas need to overachieve, always. (note how seriously she took that game of volleyball at the beach and how upset she was when she was having trouble being liked by the boys at the party bc it was something she wasnt good at and fuck even a lowly peasant like ty lee managed to do it)
whereas for catra, she learned from a young age that fear and power were everything, and love was finite and unreliable. sw and ozai both ruled with fear and power; azula was deeply bitter about her mom favouring zuko over her, just like catra with shadow weaver and adora. i mean catra told adora point blank that she couldnt possibly become best friends with lonnie and still give catra the same kind of love she used to before. azula was kind of ahead of her as she didnt really have an adora, so she just decided to not take any risk by depending on love, and used fear to control people ("what choice do i have? trust is for fools. fear is the only reliable way"). catra eventually did end up going down this path too, after she believed that the only only person who loved her betrayed her for other people. also, mommy issues. damn. both of them had a lot of those. obviously ursa wasnt the abusive parent sw was, but azula very firmly believed her to be so, (literally everything azula said about her in the search), and they both just didnt receive the love they needed from their moms. and grew up bursting with jealousy bc they saw someone else getting it. and they both craved power because they were taught that it was the only thing that could give them security in the system. that, and others fear of them. anyways wow this was fucking long i totally have the time to be writing tumblr essays on cartoon characters right now fuck me
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