I Made This Tumblr For A Reason That Was Not This

As someone who 'betrayed' Marinette(no she didn't) Alya gets no protection from those same fans.

Chloé fans are just so used to the show's BS they'll call out the blatant misogyny because it's being leveraged against them like a sledgehammer. These fans are not the same ones attacking Alya. Chloé is only ever used as a cudgel in Alya salt, it's never about Chloé as a character just a tool. (Very meta)

Putting a "read more" cuz admittedly I have a bad tendency towards long winded posts:

Tldr: what frustrates me is that not enough people talk about Alya also facing misogyny compared to these other two nonblack characters, and that tells me that not enough people truly see Alya as a girl, and thus don't find this point to be worth making. This view reflects anti-blackness, even if implicit/accidental.

I do think Alya's treatment comes from a 'defend Marinette at all costs' mentality stirred into the broader structural/cultural racism/sexism. She's considered a 'valid target'(gross) for people to unleash on, because she's a 'traitor'(no she isn't) but yeah in reality it's just people outting themselves because it's *never okay* and thinking it can be just shows they have conscious or subconscious -isms they need to tackle.

Edit:just saw the tags and yeah I bet you are right that paleness gets Chloé sympathy from some fans. Though I wager she would never get the 'bratty rich girl' role in the show if she were a poc. Odds are ML would turn her into a physically violent bully, just from it's track record. 😓😡

“So… I really like Catra. It’s been a while since a character impacted me emotionally the way she does. So I wanted to do a bit of a deep dive into who she is, why she is, and, as always, what I’m most interested in: what she can tell us about ourselves. So, let’s cut to the core of it. Catra is an abused child and this is a story about trauma. When we talk about trauma, we often associate it with a single life-shattering event but trauma itself is more broad and somewhat Universal in basic terms: the damage to the mind caused by any distressing event that overwhelms our ability to process it in the moment. When this happens to children in developmental stages the damage becomes even greater. As a child everything’s already overwhelming. Every crisis is the end of the world. Every new discovery is the most exciting thing ever, and we’re incredibly vulnerable to the stimuli around us. Internalizing each new experience as the way the world is. 

Catra is traumatized by a childhood characterized by intimidation, manipulation, and verbal and physical abuse. In Catra’s case, her trauma isn’t some anecdote to her fraught relationship with Adora. It’s directly related to it. The traumatized mind is predicated on safety and when Adora leaves, Catra’s sense of safety is shattered. What we see for 4 seasons is her attempt to recapture that safety using the dysfunctional tools she picked up from her abuser. So really the first place to start is understanding the most formative relationship in her life: Shadow Weaver. 

Shadow Weaver tells us she sees herself in Catra but she specifically sees the parts she doesn’t like. Catra who isn’t born with some inherent power to exploit, Catra who struggles for recognition. Shadow Weaver tries to prove herself too and is rejected by Mysticore and Catra becomes the outlet for that shame. She doesn’t get to be a person. She’s a child made to be an adult woman’s receptacle for her own self-hate and the narrative frequently posits the 2 of them as mirrors. In ‘Promise’ we see Shadow Weaver reluctantly acknowledge her mistreatment of Catra but amends it immediately with…

SHADOW WEAVER: “And I won’t apologize!”

And in the same episode…

CATRA: “What do you want, an apology? You’re not getting one!”

I wonder where she learned that…

Catra does in fact learn a great deal from Shadow Weaver because, well, she was the one with the power. It’s this idea of: “if you can have the power, maybe she can’t hurt you anymore.” She picked up her patterns as an abused kid would as a way to both predict her and protect herself and in doing so, she absorbs Shadow Weaver’s distorted view of the world. One in which love makes you weak and weakness is not allowed. If Catra’s arc is driven by a need to protect this wounded child, we might understand her arc best by looking at that very childhood. Let’s look at the flashbacks in ‘Promise’ and in ‘Corridors’, the 2 that bookend Catra’s way in and out of her spiral. We’ll get to them both, but let’s start with ‘Promise’. 

‘Promise’ gives us a detailed microcosm of the kind of dynamics that inform why Catra is the way she is. Adora and Catra are playing. They both, as curious children, go into Shadow Weaver’s chamber. They both break in but it’s Catra Shadow Weaver tortures. Immobilizing her before threatening her life. She tells Catra the only thing keeping her alive is Adora’s fondness for her. So as we peel back the layers of Catra and Adora’s relationship, we see that their conflict is one that exists by design. As a tactic of divide and conquer of abuse victims. 

CATRA: “What is your problem with me?” 

ADORA: “I mean, you are kind of disrespectful.” 

CATRA: “You never protected me! Not in any way that would put you on Shadow Weaver’s bad side.”

If Catra and Adora blame each other or themselves, it takes some of the focus off of Shadow Weaver. So from here we learn first that Catra is taught that she has no value if Adora doesn’t want her. Second, that something innate in her deserves more punishment for the same transgression. But for all the grief Shadow Weaver seems to give her, her best friend still wants her around. And so... for the time being… it’s okay. The world is a mess but they have each other.

And so… the weight of ‘The Promise’. 

So when Catra believes Adora breaks it, that’s why her entire world crashes down. She’s no longer safe and the Horde kids seem to know it too. 

LONNIE: “Easy Catra, Adora’s not here to protect you anymore.”

While Adora was right to leave, it’s also the perfectly placed stab to the wounds inflicted on her as a child and before making her choice to turn on Adora, Catra’s gaze lingers on that child. Everything she does from this point on is to protect it. So why didn’t she just leave with Adora in the first place? Surely, it would have saved a lot of time and trouble. Well, it would mean accepting that Adora left on the word of two strangers. In the defensive state she was in, Adora’s offer to go with her would have felt like even more of a betrayal. An afterthought to the best friend she didn’t care enough to actually go back for. So Catra works overtime to prove her independence. If she never needed Adora in the first place, her betrayal can’t hurt anymore. So now, any other offer of closeness is one she can’t afford. This informs her other relationships going forward. Notably, that with Scorpia. 

Coming out of the biggest abandonment in her life, Scorpia approaches Catra with an incredibly eager and unsolicited offer at closeness. Certainly, Catra is cold at best and cruel at worst to Scorpia, excluding their time in the Crimson Waste, but her discomfort makes sense. We’re told and shown Catra asking for boundaries and personal space, which Scorpia repeatedly encroaches on. 

CATRA: “Scorpia, remember that little talk we had about personal space?”

Physical touch which seems to make Catra particularly jumpy is also something that Scorpia does a lot. Catra’s behaviour towards Scorpia is still hurtful and wrong but this is a relationship between 2 people misreading each other and needing very opposite things. It’s just a bad place in time for them both. In her relationship with Scorpia and beyond, Catra continues to behave more and more erratically. Her abuse makes her a walking paradox, craving connection as any lonely kid would but also learning to see connection as the precursor to pain. Pushing it away harshly the closer it gets. What Catra’s doing is recreating the cycles of unstable attachment not because they’re good, but because they’re familiar. And in her fearful mind, familiar is synonymous with safe. 

I talked in another She-Ra video about the authentic self and the traumatized mind survival mode may well be the inverse of that. It’s not making choices that honour wants, personalities, aspirations. It’s being stuck in a state of nervous system hyper-vigilance. 

CATRA: “How dare they take best friends and turn them into giant sword ladies-”

Not only does Adora leave but in doing so she gains magical power and popular adoration. This gives us an idea of how Catra views She-Ra. As the thing who took her one safe person and turned her into something unrecognizable. She-Ra as the very proof of everything she was threatened with as a child. Adora’s greatness and her meaninglessness. This all ties to the fact that Catra believes that love is finite. This idea isn’t just explored through Catra. In what seemed like almost throw-away lines in ‘Princess Prom’, Catra’s thoughts are parroted by Glimmer. They had very different upbringings - certainly Glimmer had status and privilege Catra never did - but they’re similar in their isolation and that respective isolation leads them to see their value and relationships as zero sum, and inherently unstable. Bow makes new friends and Glimmer’s response recalls Catra. 

BOW: “Glimmer, I’m allowed to hang out with other people.” 

GLIMMER: “But don’t you see? That’s how it starts. Then suddenly everyone has new friends and nobody needs me anymore and then… I’m all alone.” 

But Catra’s also been abused so finite love doesn’t just make her anxious. It sends her into a tailspin. So she tries to re-establish control the way she’s been shown how. Power and influence so she might be safe. From mimicking her, she literally becomes Shadow Weaver. Ascending to her position in a move that she thinks will grant her the safety she needs but it doesn’t help. 

So she goes to Shadow Weaver for help and here we see the complexity of trauma bonds. Shadow Weaver may well be the cause of Catra’s pain and pathologies, but in that twisted way, she’s also the person who knows her best, and thus someone who can give to Catra the recognition she craves. In a scene that makes me want to reach out and hug her, Catra asks: 

CATRA: “I was a child when you took me in. What could I have possibly done to deserve the way you treated me?”

And I was reminded of…

ZUKO (From ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’): “My father, who challenged me, a 13 year old boy to an agnikai. How can you possibly justify a duel with a child?”

She knows Shadow Weaver is a terrible person but in the moment she gives her the appearance of kindness, we see how much Catra needs it. But then Shadow Weaver leaves too. Playing at being Shadow Weaver stops working and the only other authority figure in her life tortures her, then sends her to die. But in the Crimson Waste where Hordak expects Catra’s pathetic life to come to an end, something happens. Mere days out of the Horde and Catra’s patterns start to change. She’s more open, playful. She’s still an ex-Horde soldier picking fights but it’s different. She’s kinder, warmer towards Scorpia as she toasts her to a crowd. But that old wound is still raw and it’s pushed HARD. 

ADORA: “Catra,… Shadow Weaver is in Brightmoon.”

CATRA: “Shadow Weaver left me.”

With five words a heel turn. In seconds from cocky and confident to complete tunnel vision. This is a person having a panic attack. At Catra’s most broken yet, we see her despair at what’s been done to her. 

CATRA: “You made me this way and you get to be the good guy?!”

There’s nothing but the need to win now. And barely a year after Adora leaves Catra’s despair spirals into something even more tragic. 

CATRA: “Threats only work on someone who has something to lose… but me? I’ve already lost it all.”

There have been hints in Season 2’s Crimson Waste episode of Catra being indifferent to or actively seeking the end of her life. Let’s look at what happens contextually around the time that Catra pulls the lever. She’s been suffocated and potentially killed by Hordak then sent to die in the Waste. However she might have been healing, hearing that Shadow Weaver chose Adora rips that progress open. She’s back in panic mode and Hordak and Entrapta have built just the thing extreme enough to match that feeling. What she does know is that Hordak has a way to win and it involves pulling the lever. She also knows that the lever will significantly change the world somehow. Catra isn’t attached to this world because as she’s told us: 

CATRA: “I’ve already lost it all.”

So she pulls the lever and the world changes. And it looks like it always should. She’s not in charge. She’s not Force Captain. She and Adora are together like they said they would be, and Shadow Weaver is kind to her. Until the ruse falls apart. Adora has taken that brief peace from her, leaving their life behind all over again. So she antagonizes She-Ra’s heroism because, to her, it’d feel like hypocrisy. Adora praised as a hero when she couldn’t even be bothered to stick by the one person she promised to help. And again, we see how distinct Adora and She-Ra are in Catra’s mind. She’s friendly to Adora in the alternate Universe because that’s her friend in the life they once had. But when Adora wakes up, she’s She-Ra again. She-Ra who has to save the world and who, once again, leaves her behind to do it. So there’s nothing left but to let all of it and herself… burn. In Season 4 she reverts to her old self-defence state full force. Easier to retreat behind it than to confront the grief of what she’s lost. She falls back on old patterns, seeking approval from the next authority figure she sees. She fully embraces the Big Bad villain mantle as the only script left for her to follow. She’s become what Shadow Weaver wanted. Strong. She should feel safe now. But the wounds inside her have not healed. 

CATRA: “Just leave… like everybody else.”

Now this could seem ridiculously hypocritical. “Of course they left, Catra. You pushed them away.” If Catra’s so lonely and wants connection, why not just ask? Well, that’s the ironic bit, right? Because if love comes too easily, it can’t be worth something. This isn’t logical but trauma brain doesn’t operate with logical, it operates on habit. And this is what Catra was conditioned to believe. Recognition only has value if it is earned. And that’s why we see Catra so preoccupied with proving. And the most insidious thing about these cycles is that they’re almost entirely unconscious. Now this isn’t to say that Catra isn’t aware of what’s happening but Catra the person is very much in the backseat to what are an addictive set of behaviours that are as harmful to her as anyone else, and living like this is exhausting. We see it take its toll on her mind and her health. By the end of season four she just wants it to stop. Trauma brain, addictive cycles. These things all work together to tell us that the world is predictable, and thus, so are we. We are pain. We cause pain. We will never change. So the most significant piece of Catra’s arc is just that: change. 

And here we have the second significant insight into her childhood. Not memories projected by Light Hope to manipulate them into separating, but Catra’s own choice to reflect. The impetus of the show is Catra’s perceived betrayal. We got some insight into why that is in ‘Promise’ and ‘Corridors’ shows her processing the how. Catra believes that Adora becoming friends with Lonnie is going to threaten her value. See the way she frames it: 

“You’re supposed to be my friend.” 

As if Adora can only have one friend at a time. 

“Love is finite.”

This is the world of absolutes that she inherits from Shadow Weaver. At the same time that she’s processing these memories, she starts to connect with Glimmer. Glimmer who shares her burden of an impulsive choice that almost ended the world. Glimmer who has shared her same insecurities. Catra listens to her talk about her friendship with Adora and relates back with stories of her own. Maybe Adora didn’t leave for power and glory. Maybe Adora loves Glimmer. And maybe,… she really did love Catra too. Maybe it’s too late but she’s here now with this new clarity. So Catra does one good thing. And she expects to die and she’s okay with that because, after all, there’s nothing left for her. No forgiveness she deserves. No chance at a different life. But she survives. Adora comes back for her and it doesn’t make sense. And in this act of kindness, one she doesn’t think she deserves, she’s offered a choice: 

Accept Adora’s forgiveness, not as an eraser of the past, but a nod towards the future

OR 

Define herself by her lowest points, set out for some planet alone, and let her story end

I think Adora’s forgiveness cuts through because Adora has a vantage point no one else does. Having seen up close both her pain and the person beneath it. We see how impactful a change of environment is to Catra as she starts to heal. It’s certainly not linear. She retreats to old patterns when she’s scared, pushing Adora away because it’s easier to expect hate than to accept love that could be taken away. But she’s also vulnerable around people who have every reason to hate and punish her, like she thinks she deserves. And she’s still met with kindness. And she tries to help. She apologizes to Entrapta when Entrapta is content to let it be. She uses her connection to the chip Hive Mind to help the Rebellion when it causes her incredible pain. She recognizes her outbursts of anger and takes immediate steps to control it. She confronts her abuser and sticks up for both Adora and herself. After years spent in fear, she starts to find herself again. And eventually she returns the kindness Adora showed her on the ship back to her, asking her what she wants and trying to protect her from her own self-destruction: questioning Shadow Weaver’s motives when Adora is ready to sacrifice herself without hesitation. And finally, with no guarantee of reciprocation, she stays with Adora and tells her that she is loved. It’s love that Catra doesn’t believe is reciprocated and she doesn’t need it to be. When she lets go of expectations, she’s able to give love freely. And when it’s given freely, Adora is able to accept it. And so they traverse the biggest gulf in their separate arcs.

So why does Catra matter?

What Catra’s story shows us is a realistic depiction of a traumatized child. Trauma isn’t always romanticized and pretty. A shy meek victim. It can be ugly, violent and messy. And still deserving of compassion. So as with any destructive cycle, the solution is deceptively simple: doing anything different. In my ‘Corridors’ video I talked about the symbolism flip of “light” and “dark” in that episode. Catra hypothetically choosing the “dark” corridor. As some people in the comments pointed out, this could also symbolize the “dark” as the unknown, and that makes perfect sense to me. Survival mode thrives on unconscious pattern and predictability. The “dark” corridor might be the unknown of a new decision. Scary maybe, but the only way out. With fiction we show each other what’s possible. People aren’t obligated to forgive us, but they do, sometimes. However we might feel we do or don’t deserve it, it’s theirs to give. 

Or as one of my favourite shows puts it…

GILES (From ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’): “To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It’s not done because people deserve it, it’s done because they need it.”

I think our ability to extend forgiveness to characters that don’t exist directly relates to our ability to forgive ourselves. If we forgive ourselves and let ourselves become better people because of it, we might see how that’s possible for others. Now does this mean we’re excusing harm as long as someone’s backstory is sad enough? Certainly not. But there’s a difference between the calculated repeated offences of an adult and the dysregulated self-defence behaviours of a traumatized teenager. If Catra were raised in a loving and stable home and just lashed out for no reason, this would be a different conversation. Understanding the impact of severe trauma means understanding that there’s a way out and seeing the person beneath the defence mechanisms of the child they’re still trying to protect. It’s a footnote to most episodes but Catra’s bond with Melog narratively connects the 2 as abuse survivors learning to trust and manage their emotions. And Melog’s behaviour mirrors Catra’s own: defensive and reactive from being attacked, calming down when reassured that they are safe. There’s a neat little microcosm of this in the episode ‘Hero’: A wild boar is charging at Mara and Mara - a product of the First Ones - instantly reaches to her sword to attack. The beast only grows angrier until Madam Razz steps in and offers it only gentleness. It was just scared. In this situation, some of us might forgive. Some of us might not. But Adora chooses to. Adora, who’s seen the routine abuse that made Catra the way she is. And Adora who still saw her best friend beneath it and decided to reach out. On what this all means to me, there’s a ‘Good Place’ quote that comes back to me often…

MICHAEL (From ’The Good Place’): “The point is people improve when the get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don’t?”

So I find Catra’s story to be a kindness to those whose experiences might resemble hers. When we lose ourselves in old survival mechanisms and harm the people we love. We might believe we could change but fear we won’t be given the chance. That chance isn’t owed and it’s not expected… but it’s still possible. Simply, sometimes if you need forgiveness and want to change, someone might give it to you. And sometimes, if you believe in someone, they might not let you down. And when trying to keep that hope that the world can be kinder, that we and those around us can change for the better, maybe sometimes is enough.”

I think the only thing I have to say in response to this absolutely exceptional character study video on Catra and her significant abuse and trauma arc by Five By Five Takes is REPRESENTATION MATTERS and if you don’t provide authentic storytelling and representation in fiction of characters that go through these situations and have to face these circumstances, why are you in the visual art/entertainment field at all? Storytelling and representation go hand-in-hand and the most compelling visual art/entertainment media or content always makes sure that they do go hand-in hand. 

This is just a children’s TV show and it provides a perfect thematic narrative on the dark and serious impacts of abusive trauma, psychological conditioning and genocide that most adult TV shows will never ever even attempt to touch because they’re so afraid of pulling their audience base in a direction that they may not want to go in but may very much NEED to go in.

‘She-Ra and the Princesses of Power’ pulls no punches on providing substantial storytelling and representation to its majorly young audience base and they have succeeded extremely well in that endeavour. I’ve said this before in past Tumblr posts of mine, but it really does go to show you what is possible and what can be achieved when you’re brave and adamant enough to go against the grain of censorship. Nate Stevenson and his entire phenomenal creative team behind the production of this children’s TV show achieved an incredible feat enough that this JUST AS phenomenal YouTube creator (Five By Five Takes) could provide an incredible character study and commentary on which makes you love the initial content it’s based on all the more. The insight in this one character study video has done wonders for my understanding of and reception to the character Catra as well as my appreciation for the production of ‘She-Ra and the Princesses of Power’ as a whole as I have only seen it all the way through once. 

This is what it’s all about for me. This is what I am here for as an enthusiast of art/entertainment of any medium and in any format. Visual or otherwise. And if more recent TV show/film creators were able to provide this level of substantial storytelling and representation in one total creative product, I would watch more recent TV art/entertainment and discover more wonderful characters and themes and narratives instead of fall back on re-runs of my most beloved TV shows and films of all-time. I could join in the hype of talking about it with everyone else if that was the case. 

But, unfortunately, it’s not. The fact I found this level of substantial storytelling and representation in a children’s TV show made in 2018-2020 speaks volumes to me about how afraid TV show/film creators are these days to go this hard, this deep and this intense with their storytelling and representation and I am deeply saddened that this is the way that it is right now. I sincerely hope next year that there is an improvement in TV art/entertainment because we really NEED it because it isn’t just about being entertained. It’s about being educated and the learning process is the point!

@introvertsnation

This homeless person is making me uncomfortable. Should I call [a man with a gun]?

My neighbor is having a loud party. Should I get [a man with a gun] involved?

There are some teenagers skateboarding. Do you think [a man with a gun] would get rid of them for me?