#lemonykleonella

Drew my mutuals’ sonas in an animal crossing-ish style! :)

sonas (in order of top left to bottom right):

Kleo ( @lemonykleonella)

Vito ( @mak-to-the-future)

Harper ( @ahatintimepieces)

Swampy Sam ( @kaileedraws swamp friends!)

Lavender (me!)

Snowl ( @banyanas not really a sona but shhhhh)

too lazy to make it look accurate to the actual meme but

Listen, I don't personally mind Catradora as a ship. Good ol' friends to enemies to lovers, who doesn't love that? Also hehehe heterochromic catgirl go brr.

(WAIT SHIT THE ONLY HETERO THING ABOUT CATRA IS HER HETEROCHROMIA HOW HAS THIS JOKE EVADED ME FOR SO LONG?)

Anyways. My personal beef with Catradora is:

A) it was handled a bit poorly and clearly rushed in season 5 at the expense of other characters' arcs, Adora's character development at the end of season 3, and he friendship with Bow and Glimmer, which was pushed aside to make room for Catra. Hells, I feel like she got accepted waaaayyyy too easily after what she has done to them all. Even more easily than Scorpia and DEFINITELY more easily than Entrapta (who was done dirty as FUCK but I won't discuss it in this post.) I dunno, I feel like her redemption wasn't earned and there was definitely not enough development between her and Adora - too much enemies, not enough to, and the kinda lovers which make me vaguely uncomfortable.

But hey, no show is perfect! Good for the wlws and all. I'm glad they got their lesbian reylo.

Whiiich brings me to:

B) THIS SHIP IS FUCKING EVERYWHERE. Yeah yeah, it's been the most popular thing since day one and Noelle ships it, but by FUCK I have Catradora blacklisted and it still pops up on my dash because people don't tag their shit, or tag shit completely unrelated to Catradora as Catradora so I can't see it. I saw an Entrapta cosplay post tagged as Catradora. What???? Can you guys learn how to tag things, please?

C) some of the shippers are toxic as FUCK. Fanatical Catra stans, Glimmadora antis, low-key fetishists, idiots who will call you homophobic if you don't like their ship, abuse apologists*, you name it, I've seen it. Sometimes on tumblr, mostly on twitter. And yeah, I know that most of the fandom is lovely save for a few bad apples which make a fuck ton of noise, and I know a couple of Catradora shippers who are awesome and kind people, but [sigh].

(*see, I know that Catra treated Adora badly because they were enemies - all the gaslighting, murder attempts, scratches and verbal abuse - but the line "don't you get it? I love you! I always have!" just really rubs me the wrong way given the way Catra has treated her in the past. Like I'd personally send Catra to therapy first and maybe then think about getting her together with Adora.. Shit, I'd send them all to therapy. Gods bless the ending of "Carry On" by Rainbow Rowell - that woman gets it. Can't wait for part 3. ALSO THIS BOOK HAS ENEMIES TO LOVERS TOO, IT'S GAY, AND IMO DONE BETTER THAN CATRADORA.)

Sorry, fhís turned out really rambly. Catradora isn't everyone's thing; some watch the show for other things, and I'd really love it if people respected that. And if the show itself respected that too instead of shoving it all aside for Noelle's favourite problem child. I mean all content creators are allowed to have favourite characters but neglecting the rest of the cast for their sake? Not cool.