“An afternoon in the garden”

Painted on procreate [2020.05]

paul hollywood: Me too, but its just slightly - check in the middle right there - underbaked.

First, when she saves Glimmer Catra says she’s doing it for Adora, not Glimmer. But there are few other moments which suggest otherwise. Catra visits Glimmer’s cell even when they’re not talking, showing that she’s not only going to see her because she’s lonely.

Horde Prime also calls her out on feeling sorry for Glimmer, much like he called her out on still caring about Adora before, and Catra doesn’t deny it. In fact her face gives her away much like it did before too.

And this is backed up further by the fact that Catra goes out of her way to get Glimmer the cake she mentioned wanting in their previous talk.

She was trying to downplay her selflessness to Glimmer so that Glimmer wouldn’t convince Adora to come back for her, but Catra clearly didn’t only save Glimmer for Adora, she did it because she’d genuinely come to care about her as well.

Second, throughout this entire season Catra’s single greatest fear is that Adora will end up sacrificing herself to stop Horde Prime, but when she realises exactly what he’s doing to the people on Etheria, she actively encourages Adora to stop him.

It’s obvious that she’s truly concerned about the damage Horde Prime is causing, which makes a lot of sense when you remember that Catra has experienced being chipped herself. She doesn’t want anyone else to have to go through what she did.

Third, the importance of this scene is obvious but I want to touch on something specific about it. Entrapta is about to leave here, ready to move past everything that Catra did before, but Catra still stops her so that she can thank her and apologise.

This is huge, because it would have been so easy for Catra to just let Entrapta brush it all off instead of bringing up her own mistakes and taking responsibility for them, but she makes the hard choice anyway, because she knows it’s the least Entrapta deserves from her.

Fourth, this moment is pretty funny but also incredibly important. Catra tells Adora she’s working on her anger management, and follows it up with concrete action seconds later. She doesn’t just promise to do better, she actually does the work to change her behaviour.

Words on their own mean nothing if you don’t back them up with your actions, and it’s crucial that Catra doesn’t just say she’s going to work through her problems, but actually puts the effort in to make real changes and better herself.

Fifth and last, Catra reassures Netossa about Spinnerella, even though they have no prior bond and she knows Netossa still has every reason to hate her, simply because she feels bad for her and wants to make her feel a little better.

What all these moments have in common is that they show Catra expressing sincere empathy for other people. Her feelings for Adora may have been a big factor in her initial desire to improve, but Adora is definitely not the only thing Catra cares about.

i think the biggest key to her character is thst everyone expects abusive parents to be completely void of affection for their children, but that’s rarely the case. even shadow weaver– twisted, manipulative, and selfish as she is, still cares about the kids she’d fostered. even twenty years later, she jumps in to save micah, despite him wanting to do nothing with her. and she saves catra, too, and tells her she’s proud of her, despite spending her whole life making catra feel like garbage.

here’s the thing, though. it doesn’t cancel that out. nobody expects you to go ‘OH, well, shadow weaver was actually such a sweet loving person the whole time’. being abusive to your kids, making them suffer, and caring about them – in some twisted way or another – is not mutually exclusive, and i find it extremely mature of she-ra’s writing to acknowledge that.

abusive parents very rarely know they’re abusive. they’re not thinking ‘i love making this kid suffer and fucking them up psychologically for the rest of their lives’. most of them choose to remain completely unaware of the effect their abuse has, and most of them, if you asked, would probably describe themselves as a perfectly good, hardworking parent. shadow weaver is just the same. even though everything she’s ever done has been in favor of obtaining power for herself, she’s ALWAYS had justification for it. she’s always talking about how it would benefit a bigger cause, and i really do think she’s convinced of it herself. as far as she’s concerned, she’s only ever done the ‘right thing’. her raising of catra and adora is no different.

when she was held captive before being sent to beast island, and buttering catra up? telling catra all this stuff about how she always saw herself in her, and was simply trying to make her strong through ‘tough love’? of course she was saying what catra wanted to hear in order to get her to do as she wished. but i don’t think she was just making that stuff up, either. she certainly held unreasonable anger and resentment towards catra, simply for failing to meet adora’s golden standard, and maybe for reminding her too much of herself, as well. but it doesn’t cancel out the fact she did, ultimately, consider her a daughter figure.

i don’t know, i think it’s such a refreshing take. shadow weaver is a horrible, abusive, egocentric person – but she isn’t a sociopath, she’s not wholly devoid of empathy. and she proved that when she gave up her life to save her girls– but in the same breath, she proved she never really changed right to the end.