Apparently a She-Ra Blog?

Still an all ships fan, still thinks Adora needs to Own Her Shit. Posts being relocated here for better organization and to free up my main blog a bit.

[ericas-spop-blog]

The Problematic Adora Master Post

My posts about Adora’s dysfunctions, flaws, and general Problematicness - all the reasons I love her.

A perpetual work in progress, but at least it’s all in one place?

(Content warnings for child abuse, abuse, trauma, as depicted and implied within the show apply for all the below links.)

(Note: Much of this is reblogged from my main)

The Horde and Toxic Strength

Adora and Sense of Self

Adora and Magical Thinking

Adora as Audience Surrogate

Confrontation-Escalation

Rules for Thee (and Thee), But Not For Me

S1E1 and Emotional Abuse

S1E1 - Isolation and Abuse

You Have To Help!

Trauma Holodeck - Octavia

Trauma Holodeck - Asking Questions

Trauma Holodeck - Trust Exercise

Trauma Holodeck - Fighting Dirty

Trauma Holodeck - Focus (A follow up on the above)

Trauma Holodeck - Control Her (Pt 1)

Trauma Holodeck - Control Her (Pt 2)

Trauma Holodeck - Control Her (Pt 3)

Trauma Holodeck - Control Her (Pt 4)

Trauma Holodeck - Promise (Pt 1)

Trauma Holodeck - Promise (Pt 2)

Trauma Holodeck - Promise (Pt 3)

Trauma Holodeck - Adora’s Apology

S3E1 - We’re Past That

S3E2 - A Sense of Control

S3E5 - A Perfect World

Death of the Author (Followup to A Perfect World)

Corrupted Catra (less Catra-centric than it sounds)

S4E11 - I Was Afraid

S5E6 Pick-Apart - Pt 1

S5E6 Pick-Apart - Pt 2

S5E6 Pick Apart - Pt 3 (Entrapta and Catra-centric)

Catra and Melog - (Catra-centric, Adora-related post-script)

Failsafe - I Need You!

S5E11 - You Ruin People (Pt 1)

S5E11 - You Ruin People (Pt 2)

S5E12 - You Are Worth More

You Coming?/Please, Stay

Catradora, My Feelings On

Wanting Catradora to Succeed

[ruabvbj]

[lizardsfromspace]

Hi, I noticed your story has conflict in it, and I was wondering why you didn't just write people who are right doing everything correctly with a note saying "I enthusiastically co-sign everything in this story"? Must be some kind of mistake haha

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Hordak often represents toxic masculinity... he inherited the ideas from Prime and can't live up to them. If he was a gamer he'd break a controller after every match.

Entrapta is the opposite of toxic masculinity. She's the one who says "have a nice day :D" after losing a game to someone. She might've been able to win but wanted to have fun.

[swearyshera]

Happy Catradora day, everyone!

[fairymascot]

what's really smart, and painful to me, about catra's villain arc is that when you think about it, it's actually... completely expected. totally by the book, per her own established character goals.

i mean, emotionally, yes, she's in a downward spiral hurtling straight to hell and taking everyone down with her. but practically speaking? shes doing just what she and adora always said they'd do. this was their plan. they were to climb the ranks of the horde, until they'd finally get enough control over their lives that nobody can hurt them anymore. this is exactly what catra's doing, it's just that she's doing it alone.

but that's the rub, huh? because the pillar propping up the whole fantasy wasn't the ascent to power. it was doing it with adora. it was breaking free from the horde's clutches with adora.

but adora went and got free on her own. and catra stubbornly set about climbing the ranks by herself, hoping to achieve freedom and fulfillment in this way -- only to discover that no amount of power in the horde can truly set you free, and that there's no joy to be found in it without adora by her side, anyway. she was completely blind to what made her chase after this fantasy in the first place. it was the need for love, companionship. not power.

can you blame her, though? she grew up under shadow weaver. we see from ep1 how she drilled this mindset into their brains, when she tries to convince adora to celebrate getting promoted all by herself; tries to make her forget the key part catra has always played in that plan for her, too. 'isn't this what you wanted since you were old enough to want anything?'

the two of them were raised to view obtainment of power as the ultimate goal-- the only thing that's even worth aspiring to. and so aspire they did, but wrapped that aspiration up in their true desire, as muddy and unfocused as it had been at the time: each other.

adora always wanted catra and catra always wanted adora, and they were abused and molded into misdirecting those wants elsewhere: like obtaining power or becoming a tool of war, proving their worth through destruction or sacrifice. but you know what, they made it through the fucked up maze the horde built into their heads and they found their way back to each other, and at long last they obtained the love, joy and fulfillment they've yearned for all their lives, together. GOD what a truly iconic love story

[102939482719304-deactivated2026]

Adora is the perfect image of good girls in misogynistic systems. Being good and right and correct, being obedient, doing as she’s told and doing it well, thinking that since she’s doing good she will get good, that the income would match the outcome, that her hard work in the present would translate for the bright future, cause and effect, a perfect just-world fallacy, guaranteed success and glory and happiness. In the horde, that’s what she was was taught so that’s what she learned and believed, she was working and training and studying hard, being the perfect soldier, yes there were cracks in the steps but what’s at the end of the path is what matters. And then as she-ra, her world changes from the outside but remains the same from the inside, she carries that mentality with her, and she-ra herself with all her power and love is enough proof that Adora is on the right path. That she’s doing good, a lie that’s been told over and over and over again. And the final sudden and absolutely haunting tragedy is in the heart, when she realises that it was all in vain, that she was doing everything not only bad but the facade of goodness was actually making it worse for her, that her obedience erased her true self, her body never belonged to her, her strength and intelligence was meant to serve another’s vision and not a proof of her own merits, that her niceness and politeness and oh-so-goodness was just to make her a better and easier tool to use. That she was nothing but a sacrifice, a lamb to the slaughter, that her death the way her life was is not about her own. That she had been forcibly married to the war and the battlefield, and there’s no question for a divorce. That she had been everything, a tool, a doll, a weapon, a goddess, a statue, a mural, but never a person. And this realisation that feels like an execution, that her entire personhood or at least what she think of it as was built on something bad and wrong and incorrect. How can one even begin to stop and step back and erase it all and start over? How can anyone fix it?

[nadiadlc]

my (ex) wife and husband have returned from war!?!!?

aurgh i miss them bad

[ruabvbj]

[foolforshera]

You ever wonder if the reason Horde Prime couldn't take Krytis is because Melog's species is really, really good at mirroring back actual feelings and they kept doing that to the clones and the clones kept realizing things that Horde Prime didn't like, such as they are their own people with their own inner lives and they didn't need Horde Prime? Maybe that was a place that Prime had a little rebellion of clones on his hand and that's why it's hidden away now.

[thrandilf]

Show: -has nuance-

Fandom: i love how black and white this is and how purely good this act that drives the rest of the plot was

[manic-sapphic]

the difference in grips gets to me

[the-entire-cast-needs-therapy]

I feel like there's smth to be said about Adora's S5 She-Ra form being noticeably more... feminine? Than the first one? But I'm not completely sure what conclusions to draw based on that

You guys see what I mean here, right? This form isn't UNfeminine, she's got a tiara and lots of flowing hair, but the little pseudo-skirt + bike shorts combo is kind of giving Envy FullmetalAlchemist- or, the more likely inspiration given the show's other allusions to it, Utena RevolutionaryGirlUtena. Her chest is also deemphasized more in this form (though, this might be a sign of it being more militaristic than anything else, since it seems to have a chestplate with more coverage compared to the 2nd form- not just the gold ornamentation, to me it looks like there's some armor under the white fabric), the other one doesn't really highlight it but her silhouette is less boxy. Also, the s5 form has the train/longer skirt thingy instead of the cape, which... I don't post about it a lot here bc this is my She-ra blog, but I am deeply Utena Brain Diseased and this triggers my Utena Brain Disease. Like. Fucking.

These comparisons are a bit less solid than the ones to Utena herself, since the cape is really the only common feature with Dios and Anthy's movie design also has a whole sleeker dress under the train-skirt-thing and the shape of it is a more dramatic bell in keeping with her OG Rose Bride Dress, but I'm chewing glass regardless.

Anyway, I'm not saying any of this is good or bad, Adora can be as feminine or masculine as she likes, I just feel like there's something to be said here about this + Adora wearing a full length gown in her imagined ideal future

[the-entire-cast-needs-therapy]

She also looks noticeably older- which, I mean, Adora IS older by this point, but that's not reflected in her base non-She-ra design

[artofkace]

Catra says trans rights!

(drawn for an awesome ko-fi request ♡♡)

[your-royal-momoness]

[4444555666777888999]

Tfw when men do that thing where they pretend they have no control over their temper. LOL It’s so funny like am I supposed to pretend that I don’t know you’re completely self-aware and present during this rage performance. Or should I pretend you’re the tortured hero in a movie, possessed by a series of fabricated flashbacks of the war and your father

[feministakari]

Someone put in the “Why Does He Do That” quote

[feministakari]

Another one:

[worldwithoutmiracles]

"Abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology... An abuser tries to keep everybody - his partner, his therapist, his friends and relatives - focused on how he feels, so that they won't focus on how he thinks, perhaps because on some level he is aware that if you grasp the true nature of his problem, you will begin to escape his domination."

[prokopetz]

"Is [character] intended to be [identity]?" can be a difficult question to give a simple yes/no answer to not because writers are hedging their bets, but because very often the actual answer is "[character] is modelled after several people I know in real life, some of whom might well be [identity], but frankly if they are it's none of my damn business".

[lyricwritesprose]

This is especially the case with autism, I find. Yeah, I happen to know someone who is hyper-obsessed with three different shows and is loud in restaurants and bounces up and down as she talks, but is she autistic? She hasn't told me she is. What am I, a cop?

I think this is also why inadvertent autism representation is so often a hell of a lot better than the sort people set out to make with checklists. Making a character from some traits on a piece of paper: static, artificial, shallow, probably going to turn into a stereotype. Making a character based on your weird aunt Joy who collected over six hundred dolls, all creepier than the last: organic, interesting, well-rounded, also probably a haunted doll involved.

[flameraven]

The number of writers I know who were asked "this character seems very autistic-coded, was that on purpose?" who answered "nah, they're just based on me" only to come back years later and be like "Uh, SO, I learned some things..." is... at least four or five at this point. Autism manifests in so many different ways, and especially in adults who've learned to mask, is easy to miss if it doesn't look like the stereotypical traits. They may not know. And even if they do... what are you, a cop? Maybe it's not your business.

[captainclickycat]

I feel like this is a good time to remind people that their interpretation of a character can exist independently of what the author intended.

Like I always wonder a bit what the motivation is behind asking creators "is this character intended to be X". I can understand wanting to feel like there's something substantial behind the vibe you're getting off the character, that maybe it's not just wishful thinking, and in general it's nice to feel acknowledged and seen by the people who create the stuff we like. I get that.

But there seems to be this tendency sometimes to call upon authors to personally validate fan readings of a character and expecting people to change their interpretation of them based on the response and it's like. Folks. Read characters how you want.

I mean if you're trying to put something forward as a legitimate, grounded interpretation and not just fun whatever headcanon stuff then it's good to have textual evidence to back up your claim, but even then the evidence you should be looking for is in the text, not something the author said on twitter or whatever. This is effectively what Death of the Author means. The character might initially have been based on their mate Paul and who knows what's going on with Paul, but when they're being viewed through a reader's eyes they exist independently of Paul.

(By extension, it's important to understand the distinction between reading characters as autistic or what-have-you and armchair-diagnosing real people, because I see people equate the two all the time and it's really annoying.)

I've talked before about how much I dislike the way "word of god" gets so over-valued in fandom, both in the way it's used to replace actual textual representation and the way people use it to try to shut down fandom discussions and ambiguity - "well actually the author said it's like this, so everyone has to agree with that now." I just don't think that kind of external author input is as important or valuable as people make it out to be. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with it, but when it's treated like the be-all and end-all stuff gets frustrating.