#spop rant

"What did you expect? After all, us Etherians are so very emotional."

she mocks him for not being able to see it coming, cause he mocked her for her obvious attachment to adora and sympathy for glimmer.

much like light hope with she-ra, he saw attachments as weaknesses, and like shadow weaver toward adora, he could only understand them in terms of something to manipulate. when he should've seen her strong emotions for what they obviously made her:

a threat.

and even after that, the moron still doesn't learn. he puts the person most likely to motivate catra's mind to fight the chip right in front of her

and causes the resurgence of she-ra by making adora confront the impending end of a life that would break her heart beyond any other. or at least, that's probably how he thought it would go down.

but it doesn't break her heart, just lights a fire in it. dude set himself up for failure twice in a row with these two.

love doesn't need to add up to count. and that intergalactic megalomaniac moron couldn't even magicalculate pfffft~

don't get me wrong, adora was a very compelling protagonist. she was flawed, relatable and had good character growth (until s5, at least). but she-ra, as her superhero form? i feel like she was just lost potential. i mean, sure, she lifted tanks and stuff. but she never did anything truly mind-blowing as she-ra.

in her fights with catra, i guess you could say catra had the upper hand because she was adora's abuser. but in general, there were very few satisfying fight scenes involving she-ra. most of the “fight scenes” were just catra repeatedly and remorselessly torturing adora, all while berating her.

i mean, come on, i get that adora didn't want to hurt catra. but she couldn't even dodge or block catra's attacks? she couldn't figure out a way to restrain catra without hurting her? even a simple punch from catra seemed to really hurt she-ra, so what was the point of the she-ra form? if just seems to me that she-ra was a regular person who was taller and slightly stronger.

even in s4, where adora finally got tired of catra's shit, there were very few instances of her fighting catra as an equal or defeating catra. i guess some of it had to do with the fact that catra didn't want to face adora and sent double trouble in her place instead.

she-ra didnt really do much for the plot, she certainly didn't make adora's job any easier, since adora got her ass beat whether she was in the she-ra form or not. she was taller and stronger but the strength didn't really matter.

if she-ra was really created as a weapon, you'd think that the first ones would make it more durable and strong. but the outfit was flimsy and easily torn through, the sword didn't seem too different from a regular sword and there wasn't much improvement to her agility. it seems like all that's needed to defeat the legendary invincible warrior is a teenage catgirl who slacked off during her training and had only her claws for weapons. doesn't seem like a very powerful weapon to me.

and honestly, i feel like adora herself was mostly reduced to the dumb blonde jock stereotype after a while. i've mentioned this before how in s1, adora was shown to be very diligent, strategic and a capable fighter. but all of that is thrown away in the later seasons and her only strength seems to be her physical strength, which she doesn't use much of.

what's even more disappointing is that adora never faces off with hordak. hordak is literally the leader of the horde, adora is trying to bring down the horde. you would think that she would have some sort of animosity with hordak. you would expect to see fight scenes or at least a confrontation.

especially after the revelation that hordak was the one who adopted adora and took her into the horde, you would think that this would bring up a new dilemma. in any other story, i wouldn't be complaining. but this is literally a story about a war, where the chosen one is fighting the army led by an evil dictator. you would think that she would have a direct relationship with said dictator.

but no, the only person adora really seems to be opposing is catra. we're supposed to believe that there's a war going on, when the only rivalry that matters is adora vs catra (which is reduced to “oh they were just exes who couldn't get over each other haha silly lesbians” in s5).

Now someone has probably mentioned it, but I see a lot of similarities in the way Hordak focuses on Entrapta in Huntara vs the way he focuses on her in The Heart pt 2:

The angle is different, but she's still positioned in the front while he stands tall in the back, eyes on her. Entrapta is filled with passion and he cannot look away. She has his complete attention, despite having the portal finally showing signs of working, despite having his God standing in front of him.

This is what reminds him of who he was, the confident warlord he had once been. Her drive and her sheer presence make him remember. His eyes are on her because she means more than the portal, more than his creator. She is an individual and should never be part of the Hivemind. And neither should he.

You can even see the moment his individuality returns:

Clone standard slick-back hair.

And there it is: the stray hair. It is famous for its appearance as Entrapdak develops in S3, a sign of his acceptance of himself as more than a clone of Prime; as someone worthy of love.

The most annoying thing that I've continued to hear in this fandom is about two ships scorpia and Catra, and Catra and adora. It safe to say that the people who ship catradora wear that badge very proudly and that's okay also it's probably gonna become cannon. I'm however not here to complain about the ship. Scorptra fans are cool they're just not a loud as other ships in the fandom. Overall the she Ra community is pretty chill and that's great after the disaster that was Voltron.

So to get to the point my complain is about the reactions to these ships, sort of. Like how they're seen I guess. People are perfectly fine with adora and Catra being together no complaints no questions. However when it comes to scorpia and Catra people are like no they can't be together if Catra doenst do better or be better. They shouldn't be together if Catra is the way she is. And it's really annoying because it's like double standards like it's okay for Catra to be mean and vindictive with adora because power or love or whatever, but before Catra can be with scorpia she needs therapy.

if she did sacrifice herself in anyway, it wasn't for those girls. it wasn't to save catra from that big ass tentacle-tongue monster, it wasn't to save adora from prime's virus.

if she was sacrificing herself for anything, it was for the magic to be set free. what she was really sacrificing then, was getting to be there for it. giving up her chance at all that power in exchange for a real chance at the magic being set free.

cause when adora knocks her arm off of her and turns back for catra when she cries out, shadow weaver stares at all that glowing, pulsing magic and i think that's what she's contemplating.

the realization that even if she dragged adora along with her, adora was close to succumbing to the virus, and with her unwavering concern for catra, there was no way she'd have the strength to activate the failsafe even if she could focus enough to try.

if there was a chance at everything working and the magic being set free, it had to be catra. and finally, she begrudgingly accepts it and in my opinion, that's why she turns back.

saves catra, tells her what she does before adora gets there, gives herself a pat on the back,

and has her mutually assured destruction moment right before their eyes.

it's her final act of manipulation to further her agenda. she didn't gaf about these girls (or anyone) beyond her perception of their utility. never had, not even at the end.

the only tragic thing about her death to me is knowing that how everything went down woulda twisted & intensified all the trauma she'd put them through in ways they'd be dealing w for the rest of their lives. like even in this small blip of catra's physical reaction to sw's "proud of you" statement, she makes these confused, quick, conflicted little movements & expressions.

so i've said it many times and am always down to say it again ~

and even more WHY did this feel like it slapped my heart in the face so damn hard?

seeing that adora's reaction to catra's desperation seems to have so very nearly been returned by a pivot to defiant anger from catra ~

but that fleeting reaction only shows on her face for half of a split sec, her actual reaction more the expression of her briefly defaulting to putting up that shield ~

(possibly even considering just letting it happen, tempted to wrap her shock & fear in the familiar armor of anger)

before crumbling instantly, the consuming nature of her fear & grief far more than catra has the strength to even try hiding at this point. figstiyvkg ~ spontaneous combustion: me decease/K.O.

also why - this poor bb is so fcking tired why is no one dragging her to the forest? barricade this gurl in a sleep tent rn, please

i beg of you, get her hydrated & spoil her with snacks cause aww she loves snacks & tell this gurl to please SLEEP ON IT she is just so brutally exhausted but still so compelled not to let herself stop and it

adora's own she-ra's ability to essentially purge the whole glob of gross conscious mass from prime's vessel and blast it to pieces of glittery magic light matrix just like the ones that kept him barely able to open his host body's eyes? ahhhhh

horde prime thought he understood light. the implications of a phrase like "brought her into the light" is something i could go off on way more but i just love that he touts such familiar phraseology, this idea of bringing someone to light

but what about bringing it to them?

it's exactly what she-ra does. both when she resurrects catra

and when she extracts & subsequently disassembles the molecular structure of prime's consciousness before blasting it apart in a moment of instantaneous decomposition on like, a metaphysical level.

without really needing to know or understand how, she-ra took a light to prime so bright, he couldn't stand to perceive it. raw, real light that adora's she-ra wielded like it was second nature. light that dissolved & tore apart prime's own consciousness - the way of thinking & existing he spent centuries attempting to force on the entire universe - and then blasted it entirely out of existence.