THIS THIS THIS

“your trauma doesn’t define you” no actually it does. it dictates every aspect of my shitty life.

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.

casings by ethel cain is SO catradora-coded that it's driving me fucking insane and i can't think about anything else.

ethel asking "am i not good enough for you, is there something wrong with me?" and literally all i can imagine is catra not understanding why she wasn't good enough for adora to stay with her :(

and catra thinking that adora replaced her with glimmer and bow, how adora was so willing to give everything up she had with catra for them

ofc we, as the audience, understand why adora left (we understand adora's savior complex and her moral drive), but the only explanation that catra can imagine is that she never mattered to adora as much as as adora mattered to her.

and actually, if you ask me, i think that's partially true. shadow weaver made is extremely fucking clear to catra that she had no worth outside of adora. without adora's affection, catra meant nothing. growing up, catra's whole sense of herself is so intrinsically tied to who she is to adora. adora is her lifeline.

this isn't true for adora. her worth is tied to her usefulness, her strength, her obedience. shadow weaver also made that incredibly clear to her too. it's why becoming she-ra in the first season is the worst possible thing that could've happened to her.

it's why she leaves and catra stays and grieves.

it's not to say that adora doesn't love catra. adora loves her so, so much. she loves her with everything that she is, but she can't let herself love catra, because she has to be perfect. the perfect soldier, the perfect she-ra, the perfect hero, etc.

ugh the catradora angst is just unmatched. and now every single time i hear this stupidly beautiful and heartbreaking ethel song, all i can think about is them :((

she is beautiful ⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

i love being a weird girl ♡

“she was afraid in the end. and she suffered”

can you hear my heart breaking :((((((

i wake up every morning and think about catradora <3

some catra faces i feel like ranting about

^^here have some silliness before the wounds below <3

their only direct interaction all of season 4 whyyyy does it kill me so much to know that. damnit. it's not all that surprising catra would feel it confirmed: adora's done with her. the look she gives catra after she hops out of the way just in time says only one thing to me- "dodge it or don't. idfc."

that little smile on catra's face when she says "don't sound so happy to hear me" - because she's so fucking happy to get to hear adora one more time. just kill me already, i'll even dig the grave myself aight

this is a darker thought forsure, just a heads up, but i've always been fairly certain (and i don't think it's an uncommon theory) that at some point between catra's ragged breathing in adora's arms and her complete lack of breath when she attempts to heal her - catra has actually died. and i've kinda come to theorize this is the moment she exhales her last as her head tips back and to the side, looking up at adora and almost sorta smiling. it would make sense too as to why adora doesn't bother much with tryna be careful w her after that point - it becomes more crucial to get her out of there and somewhere safe for her to try n heal her asap.

and the moment catra sees adora just gave up. the first time she yells her name cause she knows that's what adora had just done. are you fcking kidding me 💔🪦

and closing w this one cause well the way adora smiles when she looks at her is just dumb amounts of sweet <3

this is actually so so fucking true and i cannot believe that it’s literally like fucking six years later and STILL people are saying the same silly shit about catra being primarily a sub.

and catra doesn’t just want adora’s love: she wants to be equal to adora. she wants adora to value her. that’s a major fucking piece of her character.

this post just sums up all my thoughts perfectly <3

Catradora are both tops and Catra is a dom, change my mind

(Actually, don’t change my mind. I’m not writing this to cause drama, I’m writing this because Catradora sexual discourse is frustrating me and I want basically a masterpost to link back to whenever I need to explain my apparently controversial views on this shit. Hopefully some other people will also find that it speaks to/for them and be able to use it for the same purpose. Please don’t troll me, I’m but a simple girl who needs to be understood. I am, however, totally open to respectful debate. :)

Okay, I’d like to take some time here to follow up on my previous posts about how Catra and Adora are both vers-tops and Catra is so not a sub. I feel a little silly writing a long meta about the sexual dynamics of a femslash ship in a cartoon aimed at kids and teens, but there’s reason for it. For some reason, lots of fics write one or both of them in ways that feel extremely out of character, perhaps to make them fit the mold for a particular kink or sexual trope. And people will write what “works” for them ugh, and I’m not kinkshaming on principle, but some of it feels extremely disrespectful to the characters. Particularly Catra, given her backstory and struggles so far in the series, and I find this rather troubling.

And unfortunately, some of these things that are written to fit some sexual trope have ended up entering the more general discourse and morphing the fanon interpretation of the characters into something urecognizable, something that would make the canon characters mad if they read it. That’s another big reason why I’m bothering to write all this.

Let’s start with a clarification: when I said Catradora are both tops, I meant they would fight each other for control of an encounter and that’s totally fine and we don’t need to make hard statements about who is the top because it comes naturally to both of them. But I didn’t mean they would necessarily want control for the same reasons or that they are interchangeable in the sack. IMO, Catra is a dominant vers-top and Adora is the definition of a service top (but also versatile if that’s what works for her partner). These may be unpopular opinions (honestly why?), but I am fully prepared to back them up. *cracks knuckles*

I’m going to explain my biggest point first and then put a bunch of additional thoughts under the cut. That point being we need to consider Catra and Adora’s relationships with power.

Here’s the thing. For Catra, power is safety, power is an accomplishment she is proud of. She has fought/longed her whole life to be taken seriously. She has always felt disrespected and like she lacked agency (both of which are true, actually), so feeling respected and in control is very important to her.

This is especially true of her relationship with Adora, as she feels like Adora has been controlling her for most of their lives and doesn’t respect her. She resents that Adora has been in the “power position” for ages and is actively trying to change that.

Didn’t anybody else see how she got off on those guards standing at attention as she walked by in 2x01, and how tickled she was standing on top of Dryl in 2x02, overlooking her troops taking it over? Catra gets off on power, why would she not also literally get off on it?

To Catra, giving up power would feel like a failure.

For Adora, power is a burden. Yes she is an absolute control freak, but that’s because she feels like she needs to control everything because if anything goes wrong it’s all her fault. Shadow Weaver instilled this idea in her when she was very young, the way she was groomed to be a leader in the Horde reinforced it, and now being She-Ra has made that feeling inescapable for her.

I’ve seen people use the “person who has a lot of power irl wants to give it up in the sack” concept to explain why they see Catra as a sub, but imo it works way better for Adora because she has always been saddled with power, even when she didn’t want it. I will get into this more under the cut, but we have seen Adora resenting and struggling with all her responsibilities on multiple occasions.

To Adora, giving up power would feel like a relief (once she got past the mental block of needing to control everything).

(This isn’t all to say that Catra would be running shit 100% of this time, I do actually think both are somewhat versatile in terms of top/bottom and dom/sub classification. I’m just making a hard case in this direction because I think they lean this way and because so many people seem weirdly convinced that Adora would 100% dominate Catra all the time and it’s weird and a little offensive.)

Now, let’s move on to my additional thoughts! The tl;dr of it all is: brattiness =/= submissiveness (quite the opposite, in fact), why the hell would an abuse survivor want to relive her trauma, this master/pet nonsense is racist af, Adora is not a starfish wtf, and Adora is a good little soldier who likes following orders.

(Plus new bonus content: Catra’s love and protection of Adora signals she’s a top, not just a dom.)

Keep reading

If I had a nickel for every time the universe was saved from annihilation by gay love, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's delightful that it happened twice.

Bonus homoerotic tension glitching frenemies.