#even if that thing or place is ultimately Horrible and the consequences primarily occur off camera or post-canon after the Happy Ending | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

johannas-motivational-insults · 5 years

Photo

You really didn’t think that one through, did you, Adora?

Like for starters, it’s not any safer for Adora to leave Catra behind than to bring her along - either way, Catra’s going to be punished for Adora’s actions if Shadow Weaver finds out. She’s the scapegoat/whipping girl, that’s how things work. And if Shadow Weaver finds out while Adora is still gone, then Catra’s stuck dealing with her alone, which is even more terrifying. That’s why Catra says, “Then I guess she let us both down,” regarding Adora leaving. Because Shadow Weaver is correct, Catra’s lying about Adora not telling her she was leaving and where she was going, but Adora not getting back on time and landing Catra in trouble is letting her down in another way.

Then Adora’s decision not to return to the Fright Zone even when Catra spells out that Shadow Weaver will hurt her if she comes back empty-handed... I will elaborate below, but suffice it to say, this is definitely letting Catra get in trouble for her actions. This is obviously a complex decision and Adora is going through a lot at the time, but if Catra’s safety was really her priority, she'd find another solution.

Quite honestly, Catra is suuuuper lucky that Hordak reacts the way he does when Shadow Weaver brings her to him, because if Shadow Weaver had her way she would be punished horribly. It’s actually a little sad to think about, because if Hordak had punished Catra instead of promoting her she probably would have left the Horde if she’d had another chance, and this would be a very different story. But I think Hordak recognized her thirst for validation and used that to his advantage. Anyway, that’s a little off topic, perhaps a discussion for another day.

More meta re. the Catradora confrontation in Thaymor under the cut!

Look, I love Adora. I really do. She is a very likeable character, in a lot of ways, and I appreciate and relate to her drive to do ‘the right thing’. But sometimes she can be a little boneheaded/shortsighted, and a lot of that seems to stem from her not recognizing her own privilege and how unfairly Catra is treated in comparison.

Obviously Adora was not wrong to leave the Horde, but I do take issue with how she left. When watching the confrontation in 1x02 initially I could see both sides - in fact, in certain places I was a little more on Adora’s side. But with the added context of the rest of the season (especially 1x11), Adora’s refusal to come back to the Fright Zone feels less heroic and more irresponsible.

At first she says she’ll only come if the Horde leaves Thaymor alone, which is a perfectly reasonable deal. She’s what they came looking for, so with the mission objective accomplished Catra could easily call off the attack. But then after a little more discussion she changes her tune and says she won’t come back at all. That shift seemed to occur because of this exchange:

“I’m saying this is wrong. They’ve been lying to us, manipulating us, Hordak, Shadow Weaver, all of them!”

“Duh! Did you just figure that out?”

Sadly, there’s a miscommunication here that results in Adora deciding to leave the Horde with or without Catra. Adora seems to interpret Catra’s flippant response to mean that she knows the Horde as a whole is evil and she doesn’t care. But what Catra’s really saying is she knows the people who raised them aren’t good people and it’s insulting that Adora never realized this before, considering the way they treated her. Then Adora asks Catra how she can be okay with that... and Adora means “How can you be okay with working for evil people?” while Catra thinks she means “How can you tolerate being treated that way?” So to Adora, Catra’s answer that it doesn’t matter because they look out for each other and they will be in charge soon sounds terrible, like she’s saying she just wants to rule the world. But what Catra means is that it’s okay because she won’t be treated that way forever, and besides, she has Adora and that makes everything more tolerable.

When you think about it, this miscommunication makes sense, because they are ultimately focusing on different things. Adora is driven by her moral compass and Catra is driven by her need for safety, something Adora doesn’t have to worry about. Though Adora’s upbringing was also not great, she had a certain amount of privilege that allowed her to care about stuff like doing the right thing. All Catra could really worry about was avoiding Shadow Weaver’s wrath, protecting herself and protecting Adora. And why would she worry about anything else? Adora was all she had, the only person who was ever kind to her and gave her a reason to care about her.

In Adora’s defense, when she says she’s not going back she immediately offers to bring Catra with her. And Catra should have gone with her, that much is certainly on her shoulders. I think she rejected that olive branch for two reasons: 1) As many posts have gone into, it probably felt awful to her that Adora suddenly cared about protecting people being abused by the Horde after doing very little to protect her from the Horde’s abuse for all these years. 2) She was finally getting to be the hero and rescue Adora for once after usually being relegated to sidekick, and Adora not only refused her help, she told her what she was doing was wrong. I understand Catra’s indignation over this, as much as I hate to admit it. She is a very prideful person but also extremely insecure after all these years of being told she is worthless and will never amount to anything. Having Adora of all people shoot her down when she feels she’s proving Shadow Weaver wrong is a huge slap in the face.

I think Catra probably would have been happy to leave the Horde under different circumstances, like if Adora had suggested they run away because of the way Catra was being treated. But Adora’s not running away with her, she’s running away for other reasons and saying she can come if she wants, almost as an afterthought. It’s not like she says, “I want to leave, but I won’t leave without you.” This leaves Catra grappling with the realization that she doesn’t mean as much to Adora as Adora means to her (or at least it feels that way to her), and that Adora does not take their promise to protect each other as seriously as she does. When she expresses her hurt and frustration that Adora would throw away “everything” (their friendship, their history, their promise) for some people she just met, Adora doesn’t understand and turns her back on her, literally and figuratively.

And that brings us to the super uncomfortable part. Catra shocking Adora is not great. Really, really not great. But, she doesn’t do that until Adora says she’s not coming back no matter what and turns to leave her behind. At that point it’s either hurt Adora or come back empty-handed and face Shadow Weaver’s wrath. On first watch I thought it was horrible that Catra did that, because it seemed like she was primarily doing it out of anger. But after watching the rest of the season, I get it. There is an anger component and that’s obviously a problem, but she’s also trying to save herself, as she expresses when Adora asks her why she’s doing this.

This is the part where I really start to get annoyed with Adora, knowing everything we learn as the season progresses. Her best friend is all but begging her to come back not only because she misses her, but because her very life could depend on it. Has Adora really forgotten that Shadow Weaver basically threatened Catra’s life when they were children and said Catra was only being kept around because of Adora? With Adora gone, Shadow Weaver loses any motivation to tolerate Catra at all, and Catra loses any protection she has (as Lonnie so kindly points out in 1x03). These aren’t difficult pieces to put together, if Adora has been paying any attention.

To be fair, Glimmer and Bow come and snap Adora up before she has a chance to respond in the moment, but she still has a choice after that, when Glimmer gives her the sword: turn into She-Ra and destroy the Horde squadron, or go back to Catra and agree to return with her, once again insisting that they leave Thaymor alone. She managed to escape the Fright Zone twice already, so clearly she could find a way out with Catra later after convincing her to come with her. Either way, everyone has been evacuated from the town already and Adora just has to decide how to get the Horde to leave. Obviously the She-Ra option is more “heroic” and dramatic and it makes a moral statement that she stands against the Horde, but destroying the squadron only takes things from bad to worse for Catra, and Adora really should recognize that. At that point Catra should leave the Horde just to protect herself from the consequences of this failure, and it’s not very clear why she doesn’t. Maybe it’s simply because she feels she can’t trust Adora anymore, and she certainly can’t trust the people Adora has aligned herself with.

Ultimately, the reason Adora’s actions in Thaymor bother me is because she chooses to prioritize a rather intangible thing - her morals - over her best friend’s safety, which is very, very tangible. Adora knows how Shadow Weaver treats Catra. She is quick to jump to the defense of complete strangers after years of largely turning a blind eye to Catra’s unfair treatment, and in the end she refuses Catra’s rescue attempt and abandons her to the mercy of Shadow Weaver. Obviously Catra does some problematic things in Thaymor too, but the stakes are much different for her, and Adora doesn’t realize that and therefore misinterprets her words and actions because, well, privilege is blind.

#she-ra #spop #meta #gifs #catradora #gifset #adora #catra #thaymor #shadow weaver #catra and shadow weaver #mine

935 notes · View notes