Finally putting my response to she-ra in words (and not even scratching the surface of my emotions)
What She-ra has done a really good job at is allowing so many people of various backgrounds and identities to be seen, which is hard to find. Media is often targeted at a very specific demographic which can be isolating to those with intersecting identities, or underrepresented ones. What I love about She-ra is that in making its show so diverse it caters to a very diverse audience, which is probably why it has for the most part cultivated a healthy fandom. As a cosplayer of color, it means so much to me to have characters in the main cast who look like me. People with skin tones or body types that are seen as "other" can often be invalidated by the cosplay community, especially when so many popular cosplays are of thin and light-skinned characters. While not perfect, the show managed to include in-depth and engaging character and story arcs in a very short amount of time. Something I have noticed about depictions of queer relationships and characters is they are often lazily written in comparison to their straight counterparts, either because they were thrown in as an afterthought, or because parts of their arcs were cut in order to appease a more conservative audience. When watching She-ra it was incredibly clear that the show was made by a queer creator and one who understood fandom. As a queer teen and a fangirl it's refreshing to see a show which is willing to embrace the fanbase and our ideas and emotions and identities instead of treating them as a joke (Supernatural), something to be exploited (Teen Wolf) or less valid than the authorial intent (Harry Potter). Even when fan theories aren't "canon", the show's creators don't treat those theories as lesser, and there's no expectation that a head-canon be dropped just because the show ended up going in a different direction. The show as a whole was so powerful, season 5 in particular. I'm not exaggerating when I say it took me months to recover from watching it, and I still get teary when I think too hard about the Catradora kiss. Shows like she-ra open so many doors for the future of animation and children's entertainment. It makes me so happy that my sister (who's as close to the target demographic as you can get) will grow up with shows like She-ra, or Kipo, or the Owl House. That so many kids like her have been introduced to important (yet often censored) topics such as gender and sexuality, escaping abusive relationships, and self-love. The show also introduced me to Noelle Stevenson. While I was aware of both Lumberjanes and Nimona, I haven't read either yet so I wasn't familiar with their author beforehand. Noelle is probably one of my greatest inspirations. Besides being a total icon, she's shown queer artists and writers like me that we can get our stories told through something as mainstream as a Netflix show.
