suffering sappho

The red world And corresponding red breezes

Went on Geryon did not

[Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red]

When Adora first left the Horde she told Catra she was leaving because the Horde was evil, did monstrous things to innocent people, and had been lying to them the whole time. And Catra responded, “what, you didn’t know?”.

And there’s so much to unpack there, but what really killed me was when I thought about why that was. Why was Catra so cynical when Adora bought the propaganda?

It’s because of how they were raised. Shadowweaver raised both of them abusively, but they got different flavors of abuse. Adora was the Golden Child and Catra was the Scapegoat. They were both abused, but Catra caught the brunt of the most violent abuse. She knew the Horde hurt innocent people because she was one of them.

And that puts a whole new twist on how angry Catra was when Adora wanted to leave. When Adora said “what the Horde is doing is wrong and we should leave because of it”, Catra’s response wasn’t really “you’re just learning the Horde hurts innocent people now?” it was, “it wasn’t enough to make you leave when they hurt me?”.

That’s why she’s so angry. From her perspective, Adora was willing to leave the Horde because of what they did to these random people they’d never met before. But she’d never offered to do the same for her.

Carol Danvers and her beautiful face.

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