𓆩♱𓆪

cool weird people only <3

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

i was training a young person at work, and she referred to sexual assault as "SA" out loud, and i immediately was like, "no, it's sexual assault, call it what it is," bc idgaf if the algorithm overlords have taught y'all that you should fear direct language, how tf do any of you expect to ever address real issues with any amount of seriousness if you can't even say the words? imagine an advocate looking a sexual assault survivor in the eyes and asking "did he grape you?" it's absolutely fucking absurd, but these young interns and new hires are coming into an environment where we deal with survivors of all different kinds of abuse, and they're coming with the mindset that the words are as bad as the actions, and that makes them shitty at the job and look juvenile af

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

say the fucking words, guys. just say the goddamn words before i go insane!!!

[pleaseremembertoforgetme]

happy (very late oops) 6th she-ra anniversary. i swear i was gonna polish this more but i'm already late lmao it's just gotta go the way it is. click on the image for a non-blurry version because tumblr compressed it a bit in the thumbnail </3

[n7punk]

this is about how opening up the portal was actually the logical and, by some frameworks, moral choice, but im gonna talk about the thoughts i have leading to it first before we get to expanding on the tags from my post where i got emo over catra smiling in season five lmao

i've been rewatching she-ra with the flex server and we're doing it in a weekly format (2 eps each) which has been a suuuuuuuper interesting way to engage with the show, and really makes certain story beats hit different. like rewatching it made me realize how truly Okayest Parent and Failing Monarch angella is. i remembered her inaction and her harsh moments but ultimately remembered her as someone loving, but rewatching it this way it becomes obvious that the only time she really makes the correct call - tactically or emotionally - is when she doesn't stop someone else from doing it. and that's rare, she watched over a standstill for twenty years for a reason and she tried to stop them from rescuing glimmer from being tortured in the fright zone because she was too afraid. but that's not the point of this post, actually, because the point is the rewatch stopped just before Remember/The Portal last week and oh goddddddd did it make me stew

just rewatching all of season 3 again, you're sitting there every week watching catra attempt to commit suicide over and over. the thing i've always said about catra is that she's a survivor, but this rewatch has really highlighted that she's a survivor because of the sunk cost fallacy. that term comes up a lot when people are talking about her actions in season four or why she didn't defect, but it comes up so much earlier than that, because season 3 demonstrates it's the only reason she's alive.

catra has gone through physical, mental, and emotional torture at the hands of just about everyone in her life (like, i think the only one who has never harmed her is kyle and MAYBE rogelio). like adora literally breaks her ribs in the battle of bright moon. entrapta befriends the man who has been torturing her for years and stays friends with him as he leaves her to die in the desert (i know catra did so wrong by entrapta, but if you look at the timeline entrapta chooses hordak over her, and without any of the provocation catra has. love that purple girl just like my catgirl tho). if a man did the things scorpia does to catra, you would want him in jail, but everyone looks the other way because scorpia is a "nice girl" ("good guy") so her actions aren't examined as closely as catra's, which is where the thesis of this post is going so hang on a second

catra was "spared" her execution by having it merely extended to dying of exposure in the desert, but every "bold" move she makes in the waste that lets her rise to power is just her not caring if she dies, because she thinks she's dying anyway, and she thinks there is nothing worse than this. the other outlaws of the waste aren't scared of her because she's powerful, they're scared of her because they think she's fucking crazy - because they know there's no one more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.

and then you get to the moment where opening the portal was actually decided: when shadow weaver tortures her during the invasion of the fright zone. the way catra started blacking out, blinking in and out of reality as her body moves on autopilot, the moment that adora mentioned shadow weaver was in bright moon (never said she was a prisoner btw, she in fact immediately shows that they trust her information at the least) back in the crimson waste, shows how deeply shadow weaver has traumatized catra.

the show just kind of moves past the torture because it has to or it would be rated r, but catra was physically tortured, electrocuted, magically thrown around, and told she was only alive because adora liked her since she was a little kid by shadow weaver. even hordak isn't creative enough to be that cruel. but, like scorpia, shadow weaver can win people over. like to be clear people do fucking hate her but she knows how to talk smooth enough that people still form emotional attachments to her and she gets away with it (it's how catra got betrayed and executed, after all, a fact shadow weaver immediately dismisses as catra failing at the start of this scene).

the moment the lever got pulled is before catra actually made it to the sanctum, and it's also that moment where the morality shifts to actually justify it, too, because it's the moment shadow weaver tortures catra, in front of the rebellion, using the rebellion's own magic, and no one protests. bow does say to stop, but he says shadow weaver is taking too much magic because he's worried about glimmer. no one says don't torture. not even don't torture catra - don't torture people on principle, something bow once claimed they had

that's supposed to be the good guys? the people who take in - literally - a baby torturer who leaves people for dead? the people who let shadow weaver hurt not only catra but glimmer too just so she can have more power to hurt catra with, proving that being part of the rebellion doesn't even make you any safer from your fellow soldiers than being part of the horde? the people who, as far as catra knows, let shadow weaver walk around freely despite claiming they had some kind of moral high ground?

there are no good guys left in the world from catra's perspective. the rebellion is just the horde in another coat of paint if they'll let shadow weaver in. yes, catra knows there are civilians that get hurt in the war and she knows the horde is evil because she has experienced that evil, but she also has experienced evil at the rebellion's hands, and this is the moment where she decides there is nothing left to fight for. there is no promised land. this is the moment where the fallacy hits the bottom of the floor.

there are only three options in this scenario, with this knowledge. you roll over, and you let the people who have tortured you win and put the most vile of your tormentors in a position of power over you before you get lined up for an execution right after fighting your way out of the last one, or you activate your secret not-weapon (cannot emphasize enough it's not a weapon, catra is not pulling a trigger when she turns on the portal) and you win and at that point it doesn't matter that both sides are wrong because at least the fighting is over, or... option three. it's just option two, but the warning was right and you all die. and if life is being tortured on every side no matter what, only a select few saved from the pain by virtue of just being so special that everyone loves them, is that even a bad outcome? is it?

yes, it's murder-suicide. but at that point it makes perfect sense with the outlook and facts she has, because don't forget, she has no reason to think adora is right. adora doesn't know shit about tech, much less portals. light hope catra already knows is full of shit. entrapta and hordak are the only ones who should know anything about this, and when catra decides to pull the lever, neither of them have expressed ANY concern about the portal. entrapta doesn't say anything until after catra has already made her decision. you don't see the shots from catra's pov of her blacking out and her body moving anyway like you do in the crimson waste when she decides to go back to the horde, but you actually see it happening still, just from the external pov. her body moves to taze entrapta and she only sees what has happened after entrapta falls, and then she completely panics and makes the wrong, wrong, wrong choice, but continuing forward to activate the portal? it's as much the sunk cost fallacy as it is downright logical with the facts she has at the time. entrapta already picked hordak over catra, of course she would pick the rebellion over catra now, even shadow weaver did. maybe she's wrong too. she's not, and on some level catra's subconscious knows that or she wouldn't rightfully panic, but it's too late and that's what she tells herself to quiet the bad feeling as she moves forward. she doesn't care which option it is anymore, as long as it's two or three, it's finally over.

we know she shouldn't have done it ("it" being pretty much anything she does), so it's easy to look at her actions and see them as wrong, but a lot of the time i think catra feels what she's doing is wrong on an emotional level but doesn't know what the safe alternative is, so she just keeps going, because who would think it's honestly putting down her weapon and walking into the rebellion with her hands raised, that would be way more illogical than opening the portal. adora and shadow weaver got to defect because they're special and magical and catra sincerely believes she wouldn't get that treatment if she even wanted to try, and she's not wrong to think that. glimmer literally outright says adora is different and the rest of the horde can't be trusted - not in front of catra, but it's proof that catra's view is based on observations and logic.

she's never happy with the bad decisions she makes and thus she has to find joy just in the concept of winning, which season four will see her deconstruct, but we're not there yet, so here, in season 3, she just has to react as fast as she can before she gets killed or tortured again. she can't hesitate so she panics and she makes the wrong choice every time, but it is perfectly written to build to that conclusion. the guts it takes to do something as dark as, well, catra's entire character, but the portal especially is a once in a lifetime thing for this medium. earlier today someone was recommending another animated show to me "because i watch she-ra" and when i said "okay where's the murder-suicide story arc" the way their face immediately changed shows that truly, no show is doing it like she-ra, because you know what comes after the murder-suicide? adora and catra waking up in the same bad, roughhousing and laughing and teasing each other and smiling like a breath of fresh air. you know what happens after adora feels like she's having a psychotic break in the portal and decides she needs to do something about it? her and scorpia having a petty little slapstick slap fight. the show doesn't miss a beat with the comedy swings lifting it up somewhere lighter even as it destroys its characters on a psychological level. god i love she-ra so much

[tippenfunkaport]

I just want to piggy back on this for a moment (ie agreeing with n7) because when I say that people (esp antis but honestly a lot of fans too) struggle with POV in this fandom, this exactly the kind of thinking they are not doing. 

Characters are making decisions based on their point of view. Every action they take / goal they pursue, is colored by their worldview, their biases, what they know to be true at the time. They are making decisions that will often not reflect what is morally right or correct or what *you personally* would do because they are approaching the situation from their own unique perspective and doing what feels logical for them in the moment. 

And the other half of this is saying, yes, this is the perspective that Catra is coming from AND NOW realizing that every single person in play has this exact same thing going on. That the rebellion and Entrapta and Hordak and even Shadow Weaver in her own messed up way are all doing what they believe to be the correct thing to do in that moment from their POV and with the information they have available. 

That's what good writing looks like. It's multiple strong personalities and well developed characters colliding because they are all pursuing what they believe to be right/logical in ways specially designed to be at odds with every other character's goal. 

Not to be a writing nerd about it, but that's the core of the most fundamental building block of storycraft: conflict. 

And to write well you need to be able to get into the head of every single person in the scene to understand where they are coming from or the characters lack dimension. 

Which is why people who flatten it down to "Catra was an angel who never did anything wrong actually" and "Catra is the devil incarnate who was evil all series" are equally missing the point and doing a disservice to a well written character. 

[manic-sapphic]

</3

[etheriankid]

we can start again in another life

[n7punk]

this is about how opening up the portal was actually the logical and, by some frameworks, moral choice, but im gonna talk about the thoughts i have leading to it first before we get to expanding on the tags from my post where i got emo over catra smiling in season five lmao

i've been rewatching she-ra with the flex server and we're doing it in a weekly format (2 eps each) which has been a suuuuuuuper interesting way to engage with the show, and really makes certain story beats hit different. like rewatching it made me realize how truly Okayest Parent and Failing Monarch angella is. i remembered her inaction and her harsh moments but ultimately remembered her as someone loving, but rewatching it this way it becomes obvious that the only time she really makes the correct call - tactically or emotionally - is when she doesn't stop someone else from doing it. and that's rare, she watched over a standstill for twenty years for a reason and she tried to stop them from rescuing glimmer from being tortured in the fright zone because she was too afraid. but that's not the point of this post, actually, because the point is the rewatch stopped just before Remember/The Portal last week and oh goddddddd did it make me stew

just rewatching all of season 3 again, you're sitting there every week watching catra attempt to commit suicide over and over. the thing i've always said about catra is that she's a survivor, but this rewatch has really highlighted that she's a survivor because of the sunk cost fallacy. that term comes up a lot when people are talking about her actions in season four or why she didn't defect, but it comes up so much earlier than that, because season 3 demonstrates it's the only reason she's alive.

catra has gone through physical, mental, and emotional torture at the hands of just about everyone in her life (like, i think the only one who has never harmed her is kyle and MAYBE rogelio). like adora literally breaks her ribs in the battle of bright moon. entrapta befriends the man who has been torturing her for years and stays friends with him as he leaves her to die in the desert (i know catra did so wrong by entrapta, but if you look at the timeline entrapta chooses hordak over her, and without any of the provocation catra has. love that purple girl just like my catgirl tho). if a man did the things scorpia does to catra, you would want him in jail, but everyone looks the other way because scorpia is a "nice girl" ("good guy") so her actions aren't examined as closely as catra's, which is where the thesis of this post is going so hang on a second

catra was "spared" her execution by having it merely extended to dying of exposure in the desert, but every "bold" move she makes in the waste that lets her rise to power is just her not caring if she dies, because she thinks she's dying anyway, and she thinks there is nothing worse than this. the other outlaws of the waste aren't scared of her because she's powerful, they're scared of her because they think she's fucking crazy - because they know there's no one more dangerous than someone with nothing to lose.

and then you get to the moment where opening the portal was actually decided: when shadow weaver tortures her during the invasion of the fright zone. the way catra started blacking out, blinking in and out of reality as her body moves on autopilot, the moment that adora mentioned shadow weaver was in bright moon (never said she was a prisoner btw, she in fact immediately shows that they trust her information at the least) back in the crimson waste, shows how deeply shadow weaver has traumatized catra.

the show just kind of moves past the torture because it has to or it would be rated r, but catra was physically tortured, electrocuted, magically thrown around, and told she was only alive because adora liked her since she was a little kid by shadow weaver. even hordak isn't creative enough to be that cruel. but, like scorpia, shadow weaver can win people over. like to be clear people do fucking hate her but she knows how to talk smooth enough that people still form emotional attachments to her and she gets away with it (it's how catra got betrayed and executed, after all, a fact shadow weaver immediately dismisses as catra failing at the start of this scene).

the moment the lever got pulled is before catra actually made it to the sanctum, and it's also that moment where the morality shifts to actually justify it, too, because it's the moment shadow weaver tortures catra, in front of the rebellion, using the rebellion's own magic, and no one protests. bow does say to stop, but he says shadow weaver is taking too much magic because he's worried about glimmer. no one says don't torture. not even don't torture catra - don't torture people on principle, something bow once claimed they had

that's supposed to be the good guys? the people who take in - literally - a baby torturer who leaves people for dead? the people who let shadow weaver hurt not only catra but glimmer too just so she can have more power to hurt catra with, proving that being part of the rebellion doesn't even make you any safer from your fellow soldiers than being part of the horde? the people who, as far as catra knows, let shadow weaver walk around freely despite claiming they had some kind of moral high ground?

there are no good guys left in the world from catra's perspective. the rebellion is just the horde in another coat of paint if they'll let shadow weaver in. yes, catra knows there are civilians that get hurt in the war and she knows the horde is evil because she has experienced that evil, but she also has experienced evil at the rebellion's hands, and this is the moment where she decides there is nothing left to fight for. there is no promised land. this is the moment where the fallacy hits the bottom of the floor.

there are only three options in this scenario, with this knowledge. you roll over, and you let the people who have tortured you win and put the most vile of your tormentors in a position of power over you before you get lined up for an execution right after fighting your way out of the last one, or you activate your secret not-weapon (cannot emphasize enough it's not a weapon, catra is not pulling a trigger when she turns on the portal) and you win and at that point it doesn't matter that both sides are wrong because at least the fighting is over, or... option three. it's just option two, but the warning was right and you all die. and if life is being tortured on every side no matter what, only a select few saved from the pain by virtue of just being so special that everyone loves them, is that even a bad outcome? is it?

yes, it's murder-suicide. but at that point it makes perfect sense with the outlook and facts she has, because don't forget, she has no reason to think adora is right. adora doesn't know shit about tech, much less portals. light hope catra already knows is full of shit. entrapta and hordak are the only ones who should know anything about this, and when catra decides to pull the lever, neither of them have expressed ANY concern about the portal. entrapta doesn't say anything until after catra has already made her decision. you don't see the shots from catra's pov of her blacking out and her body moving anyway like you do in the crimson waste when she decides to go back to the horde, but you actually see it happening still, just from the external pov. her body moves to taze entrapta and she only sees what has happened after entrapta falls, and then she completely panics and makes the wrong, wrong, wrong choice, but continuing forward to activate the portal? it's as much the sunk cost fallacy as it is downright logical with the facts she has at the time. entrapta already picked hordak over catra, of course she would pick the rebellion over catra now, even shadow weaver did. maybe she's wrong too. she's not, and on some level catra's subconscious knows that or she wouldn't rightfully panic, but it's too late and that's what she tells herself to quiet the bad feeling as she moves forward. she doesn't care which option it is anymore, as long as it's two or three, it's finally over.

we know she shouldn't have done it ("it" being pretty much anything she does), so it's easy to look at her actions and see them as wrong, but a lot of the time i think catra feels what she's doing is wrong on an emotional level but doesn't know what the safe alternative is, so she just keeps going, because who would think it's honestly putting down her weapon and walking into the rebellion with her hands raised, that would be way more illogical than opening the portal. adora and shadow weaver got to defect because they're special and magical and catra sincerely believes she wouldn't get that treatment if she even wanted to try, and she's not wrong to think that. glimmer literally outright says adora is different and the rest of the horde can't be trusted - not in front of catra, but it's proof that catra's view is based on observations and logic.

she's never happy with the bad decisions she makes and thus she has to find joy just in the concept of winning, which season four will see her deconstruct, but we're not there yet, so here, in season 3, she just has to react as fast as she can before she gets killed or tortured again. she can't hesitate so she panics and she makes the wrong choice every time, but it is perfectly written to build to that conclusion. the guts it takes to do something as dark as, well, catra's entire character, but the portal especially is a once in a lifetime thing for this medium. earlier today someone was recommending another animated show to me "because i watch she-ra" and when i said "okay where's the murder-suicide story arc" the way their face immediately changed shows that truly, no show is doing it like she-ra, because you know what comes after the murder-suicide? adora and catra waking up in the same bad, roughhousing and laughing and teasing each other and smiling like a breath of fresh air. you know what happens after adora feels like she's having a psychotic break in the portal and decides she needs to do something about it? her and scorpia having a petty little slapstick slap fight. the show doesn't miss a beat with the comedy swings lifting it up somewhere lighter even as it destroys its characters on a psychological level. god i love she-ra so much

[clfixationstation]

this is what I mean when I say I can't agree with the fandom interpretation that Catra primarily receives*. she wants to DEVOUR that girl and you can't convince me otherwise

imo they spar and whoever wins, gives. and they're pretty evenly matched ;P

*using coded language cuz it keeps getting censored

[arioo0s]

nobody’s taking her from you !!

[agoraphcbja]

obviously this isn’t the case and it came out of no where but i think it’d be funny as fuck if adora needed glasses and she-ra didn’t. like she picks the sword up for the first time and suddenly her eyesight is cured and she’s happy as fuck only for them to go right back to how they were when she turns back. imagine her being so cocky about not needing glasses when she’s she-ra only to have to dejectedly put them back on as adora 😭

[aerhartdraws]

This has been my evening

[catras-breakup-song]

you see the vision too, right?

[everythingcatradora]

catra being a suit girl to the bone it’s serious

[ceruleanheaven]

being on the internet for more than three minutes

[manic-sapphic]

[trans-ouroboros]

adora is everything.

she is the messiah and also killed the pope. she is a strategic and tactical mastermind and also cannot lie to save her life. she is in love with catra as naturally as she breathes and it also took her dying to realize shes gay. she sleeps with a knife under her pillow and also trusts everyone immediately. she is the inheritor of a thousand-year old ancient empire and is also just some guy.

she is a horsegirl. she creates an flowchart to navigate social interactions. she punches fascists. she is scared of ghosts. she pretended to have a degree in art history. she didn't know what an aunt is. she tries to martyr herself like fifteen times.

she is the character of characters.

[jelly-guiro]

Revolutionary Girl Utena's reference in She-Ra's finale got me crying harder than I already was.

What an awesome final season. My heart is so full right now 💖

[n7punk]

stop reminding me she-ra is leaving 😭 you're hurting me

[the-aspen-tree]

I need Catra to be redeemed and come hang out in Bright Moon so they can be stupid together again