when mary and ririka revealed to kirari their little side bet, you could see how this lowers kirari's morale. you would notice that she really /does/ want to win in this gamble, she's not playing purely for the sake of it. she literally aims to win this gamble because i can guess that partly, she wants to prove that she can best ririka, and that she wants to be president, more than anyone else. (and you know how kirari gets when she /wants/ something. she ALWAYS expects that she gets it and does everything in her power to get it.)

if it was yumeko in that chair, it would be an entirely different story. yumeko would actually /want/ for crazy stakes. you could see only a few gambles where yumeko plays to win. (e.g. yumeko v terano, she's playing to win BCS she wants to play against kirari) and yet, even if she plays to win, she still lets her own desires get ahead of her because it thrills her. if yumeko feels like she might lose, she would be thrilled (see image below); likewise, if she fully reads her opponent and gets the gist of their gamble, she would be ecstatic (i.e. the stuco gambles).

moreover, you don't see kirari looking excited from losing to mary and ririka. she /wants/ to get her way, even if she has to exhaust all her efforts to do it. which moves to my next point.

the tides are all up against kirari. now it absolutely BAFFLES me how amazingly she can turn the tables and psychologically attack her opponents with one single statement.

in this panel, she literally /enables/ ririka. she reminds her of her roots, and what she was fundamentally founded on. she wants to test how far ririka has gone on without any string attached to her. and look how it catches everyone off guard! it's amazing how kirari can manipulate a person and a situation as effortless as batting an eyelash. (actually reminds me of joker, but that's a thought dump for another time)

but then ultimately, she still loses at that.

now, another one of mary's cheats is on. she's perfectly confident on beating kirari once again. now look how kirari shatters this newfound confidence

kirari is psychologically testing her opponent again, this time with mary. she wants to test this world-famous iron willpower that supposedly entrances everyone mary comes across with. she wants to see how far this could reach: whether mary would confidently back out or confidently go all-in. but mary, as evidently it's shown in the entire series, is a human that naturally gets tossed by fear. and what do you do when you can't fully decide on a thing?

you go middle ground

which throws kirari off. it turns out, mary's iron willpower isn't all that invincible (which i think is just natural for humans like us)

okay now i'll fast forward. ririka (now awaken that she's a momobami by roots) takes advantage of their lil dispute and bites kirari instead, throwing the both of them off guard.

i'll end this long post with a lil appreciation for the mary-ririka duo. it's absolutely brilliant for these two to team up: someone with enormous willpower that can take up anyone she wants to go against (namely momobami kirari), and someone with fundamentally the same cut as the insanity kirari has. mary was right: she can never take on kirari alone simply because she doesn't have the guts to stomach bets with insane risks and insane returns while currently being manipulated by the opponent. ririka, on the other hand, absolutely can. what ririka lacks, however, is the confidence and decisiveness that mary possesses.

Can we talk about how Shadow Weaver turned away from obtaining more power because Catra was in trouble? She had every opportunity, there would’ve been nothing in her way. Both Catra and Adora were wounded and unable to fight. Catra was about to die And Shadow Weaver chose to save Catra And sacrificed herself in the process The “do one good thing” theme holding strong there And admittedly, Shadow Weaver may have done it because she knew her body would be destroyed by the power But if that’s the case, why did she give the speech to Catra? Why did she sacrifice herself still instead of getting Adora to the heart and finding ways to get more power afterwards? Why didn’t she let Catra die for them, instead of her dying for them? And wanting Catra to live out her life? Because Shadow Weaver’s is over and she knows it. She’s tired, whether she’s tired of her life or herself or both. Like no matter what she did, no one would ever trust her again. She’d live a very lonely life. And one that’s most likely consumed with seeking power because that would be all she has left It was very interesting to see. Also, the fact she told Adora she may have to sacrifice herself at the start of this journey and then being the one to do so for them? But I think it makes sense I don’t necessarily like sacrifice as being the way to redeem someone and I don’t think Shadow Weaver is necessarily redeemed But I think it was the best thing they could’ve done with her character because a redemption for her would’ve been extremely difficult She wasn’t meant to have one She did a good thing — showing a brief moment of care, but she’d been doing wrong for so long, and Adora and Catra would not have been able to heal with her still looming over them.  

There's no way they could've redeemed her, whatsoever, without doing this. I think the sacrifice as redemption can work when it's done well and this is a case where it's done well. There's way too much she cannot fix, and she cannot change who she inherently is after all this time. And we already can see that Adora and Catra cannot trust her, even when they have to work with her.

“ I want to know why she was suddenly so connected to the planet and the magic ”

For one, she'd been hiding a lot of her abilities from the others. She was stronger than she appeared, and Catra said that. I do have to wonder if she did somehow manage to take a small chunk of the heart's power at the end. knowing it would kill her? Or if that was just her own magic she'd been hiding, but still knowing it would kill her?

We've seen again and again that if she uses her magic without the connection to the Black Garnet, that it affects her body. I assume because of how the spell of obtainment fucked her up she cannot easily use magic anymore without leeching from something else or it starts to kill her.

And I believe that's, after the spell of obtainment, why she can began latching onto anything with power. One because she is power hungry, but two, Without a connection to something else, using magic kills her. Because we see it at the start, that if she went too long or used too much without recharging from the Black Garnet that she got very weak

but what about yumeko? yumeko always want her gambles to include the most amount of risk for thrill of the game itself. however, she has been playing with mary and betting the minimum like her. it isn't until the fourth round when her motives are finally revealed.

yumeko has, after all this time, wagering against terano. she knows that the bookmaker has the ability to acquire the most votes using the student body. the election would be as good as determined at that point.

with this, mary gets completely cast aside!! the people are led to believe that yumeko doesn't care for mary as her rival, that all of mary's feelings and motivations in this game are just a stepping stone just so she can wager against terano.

how can someone who's been exploiting another person like that, can you call a friend, ririka argues. this was an important match for mary, as she has established. it's an awfully selfish and rude move for her part. it's like she doesn't care for mary at all.

BUT THENN

remember that if one of them wins, terano would still have the most votes. the results of the election would be as good as determined and terano would have "basically" be the winner. (the student body votes total up to a thousand and add that up to terano's 649, that's more than half of the overall 3000 votes, compared to a mere five hundred votes). the results of their gamble would have been meaningless.

but what about mary? she would have lost and/or reduced her chances to become president. their gamble would have meant nothing and she would have to strive all over again to go over the top.

what does yumeko say then?

"instead we're going to work together, right? after all, mary-san, you want to become head of the student council president, don't you?"

yumeko, in all of her inscrutable and incomprehending motives, has been helping mary all this time!! she has been respecting mary, being her friend, and rooting for her!! she cares for mary, had cared enough to hear about what mary has to say to her all those chapters back, about what she wanted to do in this election.

if they tied, mary would have better chances of becoming president. yumeko wanted to help her as well as get the gambling thrill she had so long seeked for. a better outcome couldn't have turned up for her.

with that, we get to have this cute, neat panel of them enjoying all of the thrill and excitement everything has been building up to that point AAAAAAAA

it all comes down to their choices in their cards. if mary wanted to win, a rock's clearly her play here. it's surefire and by the book, and it involves the least risk possible. there would be no other reason for her to play a card other than rock.

however, mary had an epiphany. mary KNOWS yumeko. she knows that the girl has the ability to turn the tables upside down in an insane and incomprehending way. mary is familiar enough with her, in all their time together, that she knows how yumeko works, in and out, even if she has no way of understanding it.

and that was why mary had chosen to play paper. she wanted to match yumeko's insanity with her own. she wanted to be equals with her, after all. because she chose that, she finally sees yumeko eye-to-eye, and had a taste of the insanity yumeko has always been accustomed of.