This thread deserves its own post.
johannas-motivational-insults said:
I like the toxic friend angle in canon because thatâs a very real issue that can come from abuse, but at the same time since we havenât seen Catra interact with SW in a bit it seems the fandom is forgetting why she is this way. Though tbh I think itâs very hard for anyone who wasnât abused as a child to understand. The fandom reaction to [Catra] bothers me a lot. People are too judgy with morality and obsessed with purity (much like Christian culture) to the point that they have lost their compassion and ability to see nuance. Catra was never unredeemable. She was never evil, only put up that front to protect herself emotionally and physically.
malachi-walker mentioned you on a post âCatra and the Performative Nature of Villainy and Abuse Survivalâ
@johannas-motivational-insults Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Catra definitely did become a toxic friend and that needed to be addressed, but the way some members of the fandom have turned it into the end-all be-all of her character and sidestep the fact that she has literally been TORTURED since she was a small child is... Mega distressing. Especially since a lot of Catra anti discourse... Well, it sounds uncomfortably similar to the people who told my parents that I, a 14 year old child, wasnât worth helping because my grief process wasnât as nice and pretty as they wanted. And these were people who often didnât even know a damn thing about me, but they still told my loved ones to cut their losses and leave me to my fate. Itâs fucked up to see that dynamic playing out with Catra, given I was actually in that situation.
Look, Catraâs done some bad things. Really bad things. And if the people sheâs hurt arenât able to forgive her, thatâs understandable. But we the fandom have not been personally victimized by Force Captain Catra (though it may feel that way at times). And we the fandom have all the facts, unlike the characters. Even Adora doesnât know how bad things were between Catra and Shadow Weaver - as Mal said in the original post, Catra hid that from Adora to avoid showing weakness or causing Adora emotional grief. (And when they do get the facts, their perspectives will probably change somewhat, because they are all decent people.)
If we go around âcancellingâ and deriding this characterâs problematic behavior when we have all the information we need to understand why she behaves that way, we are no better than those bystanders who said to cut @malachi-walker loose. No better than those who write off the mentally ill, saying they canât be helped unless they meet very specific criteria. In fact we are worse, because we have all the facts. If yâall want to willfully ignore the pain Catra has been living with all these years and what that has done to her, then honestly youâre the problematic ones. Have a little compassion for your fellow human... or, well, fellow person.