So I finished watching she-ra
and I l o v e d catras redemption. It felt really realistic and in character, it didn’t happen overnight and she didn’t change too drastically. Circumstances made her evil and circumstances helped her redeem herself, but in the end it was her that wanted to change, to be with adora, to have the love and friendship she lost three times over, to value that more than personal power and to be better, so she’d never again hurt the people she loved.
And, when she was rescued, she didn’t join the friend group immediately. Reformed villains are pretty much always (in my experience) quite confident in their place as heroes, which seems unrealistic to me. But not catra. She shows vulnerability, she’s afraid to be around the people she’s hurt and refuses to be around them. She hides away from them, which is exactly what I would want to do, but she needs them, needs adoras support. When she’s accepted into the friend group, she’s not completely confident, but slowly begins to open herself up let herself have real friendship, something she hasn’t done since adora. (Sure she had Scorpia and Entrapta, but she never truly opened up to them and allowed herself to enjoy their presence the same way she did with Adora before she left)
And when she realises she’s hurting adora, the person she loves, she runs away because she can’t bear to hurt her again, and comes back to stop her hurting herself.
And when she realises that adora is going to sacrifice herself, she finally comes clean, shows adora the full extent of her love for her, because she’s going to lose adora again, and wants to be with her, if only for a moment before the end.
I can relate to her so much, the way she has lost friends, some leaving her behind, some because of her own actions, and some through no fault of her own, who abandoned her for no seemingly no reason at all. (Seriously Adora. That was Not Cool.) She puts up walls trying to keep herself from happiness because she doesn’t want to go through the pain of losing that happiness again. She throws herself into her work to avoid everything, changes into someone she’s not, almost destroying herself in the process. She can’t connect with the people in her life, but desperately needs that connection, and is slowly letting her walls break down to allow true friendship and happiness in :)
