This Is Actually So So Fucking True And I Cannot Believe That It’s Literally Like Fucking Six Years

understanding catra in taking control s5: ep 6

(lots of awesome people have already said some amazing things about this, but it’s been on my mind a lot especially since i’ve been seeing some anti catra bullshit lately)

first off, i want to say that i don’t think that catra is necessarily handling the situation well, but i often see people saying some crazy shit about how she’s so “ungrateful” to adora for rescuing her or whatever and just generally being incredibly insensitive to her.

you have to remember everything that catra has gone through up until the point. horde prime had just completely violated her body and mind, electrocuting her in the baptismal pool, cutting off her hair, and infiltrating her memories. catra, who is already deeply afraid of the losing control (namely to shadow weaver, who taught her that power and control were necessary to be safe from her abuse), just lost all of her autonomy in the most fucking disturbing, pseudo-religious way possible.

before this, catra fully expected to die. i’ve seen a lot of different takes and i’m relatively open-minded to about what it is that catra thinks specifically when she remembers that scene with her and adora’s younger selves in corridors, but i think that it’s something along these lines:

“all i’ve ever done is hurt adora, and all she ever tried to do was love me instead. i’ve loved her and wanted her more than anyone else, and still all i did was hurt her. adora finally gave up on me, like i deserved all along anyway. but maybe, just maybe, the last thing i do could be for her. maybe that last little piece of goodness in me could live on in her.”

hence the:

“all i do is hurt people. there’s no one left in the entire universe who cares about me.”

anyway, my point is that catra has been through fucking hell :(

adora rescues her, and in the moment, catra is (obviously) relieved, shocked, surprised, confused, even. (“why did you come back? we both know i don’t matter.”)

the confusion is the main thing i want to focus on. catra really truly believes that adora hates her (shadow weaver has conditioned her to believe that she has always been inherently worthless and unlovable), so catra can’t understand why adora would ever come back for her.

catra eventually comes to the conclusion that adora just wanted to feel like a hero. she just came back to rescue catra to prove her virtue or her moral superiority to catra.

so she lashes out. she feels so completely out of control, and bitter with adora for her actions, convinced that there is no way that adora came back for her out of love.

adora handles this like shit. the literal first thing she does is throw the mattress onto the floor, and later slams catra into the wall. adora lashes back at catra, hurt that catra doesn’t “appreciate” adora’s love for her. adora doesn’t even try for two fucking seconds to understand where catra is coming from.

(adora does have a consistent issue with only seeming to be able to empathize with catra’s emotions when catra is weak, vulnerable, and powerless throughout much of series honestly)

ugh and calling her a stubborn brat? like i love you adora, but that makes my blood fucking boil. it is SUCH condescending, shadow weaver-coded language to use toward catra. i understand, catra is being “difficult” or whatever, but god it’s so easy to see why catra is acting the way she is.

and ofc catra is scared of entrapta! obviously, catra wronged entrapta deeply, and catra has never lived in a world with grace and forgiveness. shadow weaver physically abused her all her life, and hordak suffocated her for losing shadow weaver and lying to him about it. catra knows that she hurt entrapta, so naturally she immediately assumes that entrapta is going to fucking kill her the minute she has a chance.

then adora’s reaction is to fucking shove her into the wall and tell her to “grow up”. catra just looks fucking terrified, backed into the corner in her little horde pjs :(

adora backs off for a moment and tells catra that she would respect her wish to drop her off somewhere, catra realizes that adora really could leave her, and immediately rushes to beg adora to stay, kneeling on the ground, reaching up for her hand. something about that whole scene just absolutely fucking breaks my heart.

it kills something in me when i hear people say that catra didn’t do enough for redemption. it’s never what her redemption was ever about. catra is genuinely so, so much more complicated than that. and so is adora! i’m still sad that adora never really made up to catra for some of her shitty behavior.

i don’t believe that their arcs are meant to be done at the end of the show. there’s still so much room for them to grow. and that is what the post canon fics are for lol

oops this ended up being wayyy more of a rant than i intended; i think about catradora all the time :)

The core of Catra and Adria’s relationship is that they value each other more than any mistake the other could or did make. Something about seeing that kind of forgiveness and grace in a context that very clearly parallels ex Christian experiences rewires my brain.

first off i wanna preface this by saying that i’m not actually a trans man/masc, but i had an experience with my mother in high school that i think definitely relates.

so i come from a super conservative fundamentalist christian household. like my mother has a fake ass degree in christian apologetics (if you don’t know what that is, you don’t wanna know) and helped found some crazy christian mom podcast dedicated to teaching parents how to “protect” their kids from secular culture. you know the type.

when i was 14 i was forced to come out as a lesbian. my parents completely freaked out and put me through fucking hell because of it. (i won’t go into details bc it doesn’t relate to this specific story but it was like. conversion therapy type shit. i was super isolated too, i wasn’t allowed outside the house except to go to my private christian school and they took my phone away)

anyway my mom is obviously super into conservative bullshit in general, but that summer she got ESPECIALLY into anti trans rhetoric, in particular anti trans masculinity rhetoric. i don’t think people realize how big this is, specifically in fundamentalist christian circles. they run with this idea of “the left is confusing young girls!! they’re targeting and preying on young girls into thinking that they can be men! they’re demonizing godly christian femininity!” and this idea gains fucking traction in these communities. for exactly the reason that you think that it does.

my mom made me go with her to some stupid conference, and there was this lady there who gave this awful speech on all trans men are really just confused, young, impressionable girls who need to embrace their god-ordained christian womanhood. i’ve been to many events like this one and heard a lot of bullshit but to this day i think that was the worst one. my blood fucking boils just remembering it.

at some point i couldn’t fucking take hearing that lady talk anymore bc i was fighting tears and shaking with rage and ran off into the bathroom. i’m not a trans man/masc, but i’m queer and oh i don’t know a fucking HUMAN, and my 14 year old self couldn’t take hearing that anymore. my mom found me in the bathroom and made a scene about it later.

i don’t know if it was that incident or if perhaps my mom thought so before and that’s why she dragged me to the conference, but she was incredibly strict with how i could dress and present myself from that point onward. all my life she’s been strict about what i could wear, but before then it was very much in a modesty-focused way. like, no short skirts, no tops that showed off my figure, no bikinis, no crop tops, etc. that all changed suddenly. suddenly i was forced to wear dresses, flattering tops, anything that looked stereotypically “feminine”. this drove me fucking crazy bc i don’t feel comfortable presenting myself super femininely. i don’t really usually present myself overtly masculinely either, but i definitely don’t like to be perceived as feminine.

even at the age of 14 i knew that my mother wanted control. she wanted power of my body, my sexuality, the clothes i wore, and even the fucking thoughts in my head. which really is just the same as the rest of the fundamentalist christian right.

The way mothers allow themselves to treat their daughters is already fucked up enough but when their kid is a trans man/masc it just gets so much worse. I’m literally not allowed baggy clothes, the simple and normal act of wearing baggy clothes, which is banned for me in particular because they don’t “frame my figure.” I should only be wearing clothes that cling to my body and show off my hips, and this is because my mum has some weird idea that if my “feminine form” isn’t on show at all times, I will turn into a masculine weirdo because I’ve already expressed my transness to her before and she’s doing everything in her power to stop it, and therefore I’m not even allowed the option of wearing baggy, loose fitted clothing. This is such a small example of the long list of things I’m not allowed to do in order to keep me from transitioning, but even something that small is incredibly fucked up to me because the level of control in forcing me to wear clothes that show off my “female” body to snuff out any masculinity is 100 times worse when you throw in the fucking immeasurable, painful dysphoria that I have to deal with by walking outside in clothes that basically have a neon sign over them telling people to look at the least favourite parts of my body.

And this is apparently normal, because mothers just want their daughters to be proud of who they are. And if those “daughters” happen to be trans men, it’s only in their best interest to detransition them back into daughters. Or whatever the fuck excuse we’ve given to them to treat their kids this way.

i think it’s really funny that my favorite show is she-ra. i wear heavy black eyeliner, leather, combat boots, and generally dress alternatively. then you ask what my favorite show is and i’m like “the sparkly lesbian princess cartoon!” and i won’t have it any other way.

Happy five year anniversary of Catradora! This is a holiday for me.

i’m sorry to say that this part of catra’s story hits a little too close to home :(

i love her sm

dude…… the nuance with which she-ra netflix reboot approaches a relationship an abuse victim has w their abuser…. the fact that catra hates shadow weavers guts for everything she put her through but also fundamentally cannot help but care about her…the fact that despite everything she still wants shadow weavers love and approval even if its unhealthy and she knows externally that shadow weavers not worth it…….. bro the understanding of the complexity of these things that the show exhibits……

THEY ARE LIKE THE SAME I SWEAR

Idk how often this connection has been made but raven and apple from ever after high are literally glinda and elphaba variants

do you see the vision or am i running out of things to say about this show?

i wake up every morning and think about catradora <3

oh yes catra is absolutely having a massive bpd episode this whole time :( trying to explain bpd episodes to people who don’t experience them is very hard i fear

another big part of this is that catra wants to be loved and cherished as much as she wants to be respected. she wants adora’s love, but she also wants to be an equal to her. adora, meanwhile, has been made to feel that in order to protect catra, she must control her (thank you shadow weaver). you can really see that mentality on display in this episode.

telling adora that she must be dumb to have never hated her :(

then adora saying “i’m such an idiot. i thought that things would be different this time, but clearly nothing has changed”

my heart breaking :((((((((

damn this episode is genuinely insane how it just peels back so many layers of their relationship

understanding catra in taking control s5: ep 6

(lots of awesome people have already said some amazing things about this, but it’s been on my mind a lot especially since i’ve been seeing some anti catra bullshit lately)

first off, i want to say that i don’t think that catra is necessarily handling the situation well, but i often see people saying some crazy shit about how she’s so “ungrateful” to adora for rescuing her or whatever and just generally being incredibly insensitive to her.

you have to remember everything that catra has gone through up until the point. horde prime had just completely violated her body and mind, electrocuting her in the baptismal pool, cutting off her hair, and infiltrating her memories. catra, who is already deeply afraid of the losing control (namely to shadow weaver, who taught her that power and control were necessary to be safe from her abuse), just lost all of her autonomy in the most fucking disturbing, pseudo-religious way possible.

before this, catra fully expected to die. i’ve seen a lot of different takes and i’m relatively open-minded to about what it is that catra thinks specifically when she remembers that scene with her and adora’s younger selves in corridors, but i think that it’s something along these lines:

“all i’ve ever done is hurt adora, and all she ever tried to do was love me instead. i’ve loved her and wanted her more than anyone else, and still all i did was hurt her. adora finally gave up on me, like i deserved all along anyway. but maybe, just maybe, the last thing i do could be for her. maybe that last little piece of goodness in me could live on in her.”

hence the:

“all i do is hurt people. there’s no one left in the entire universe who cares about me.”

anyway, my point is that catra has been through fucking hell :(

adora rescues her, and in the moment, catra is (obviously) relieved, shocked, surprised, confused, even. (“why did you come back? we both know i don’t matter.”)

the confusion is the main thing i want to focus on. catra really truly believes that adora hates her (shadow weaver has conditioned her to believe that she has always been inherently worthless and unlovable), so catra can’t understand why adora would ever come back for her.

catra eventually comes to the conclusion that adora just wanted to feel like a hero. she just came back to rescue catra to prove her virtue or her moral superiority to catra.

so she lashes out. she feels so completely out of control, and bitter with adora for her actions, convinced that there is no way that adora came back for her out of love.

adora handles this like shit. the literal first thing she does is throw the mattress onto the floor, and later slams catra into the wall. adora lashes back at catra, hurt that catra doesn’t “appreciate” adora’s love for her. adora doesn’t even try for two fucking seconds to understand where catra is coming from.

(adora does have a consistent issue with only seeming to be able to empathize with catra’s emotions when catra is weak, vulnerable, and powerless throughout much of series honestly)

ugh and calling her a stubborn brat? like i love you adora, but that makes my blood fucking boil. it is SUCH condescending, shadow weaver-coded language to use toward catra. i understand, catra is being “difficult” or whatever, but god it’s so easy to see why catra is acting the way she is.

and ofc catra is scared of entrapta! obviously, catra wronged entrapta deeply, and catra has never lived in a world with grace and forgiveness. shadow weaver physically abused her all her life, and hordak suffocated her for losing shadow weaver and lying to him about it. catra knows that she hurt entrapta, so naturally she immediately assumes that entrapta is going to fucking kill her the minute she has a chance.

then adora’s reaction is to fucking shove her into the wall and tell her to “grow up”. catra just looks fucking terrified, backed into the corner in her little horde pjs :(

adora backs off for a moment and tells catra that she would respect her wish to drop her off somewhere, catra realizes that adora really could leave her, and immediately rushes to beg adora to stay, kneeling on the ground, reaching up for her hand. something about that whole scene just absolutely fucking breaks my heart.

it kills something in me when i hear people say that catra didn’t do enough for redemption. it’s never what her redemption was ever about. catra is genuinely so, so much more complicated than that. and so is adora! i’m still sad that adora never really made up to catra for some of her shitty behavior.

i don’t believe that their arcs are meant to be done at the end of the show. there’s still so much room for them to grow. and that is what the post canon fics are for lol

oops this ended up being wayyy more of a rant than i intended; i think about catradora all the time :)