Autistic Entrapta, the perils of dataist thinking, and fan fictions
A screenshot from Entrapta's debut in "System Failure," s1 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, the first time we see her in that episode.
Recently, I read a thought-provoking article by Bohyun Kim in Information Today, which I mentioned in my recent newsletter, where she talked about "data-ism." She defined this term as data replacing our thinking to validate or invalidate a hypothesis, with data and algorithms seen as "a superior means to process data" and find meaning in it, as compared to human thoughts. She added that such a concept is enabled not by a particular technology but by a "specific group of people who will benefit from implementing data-ism society-wide at the cost of others outside that group" like those behind Facebook and Google. This brings me to She-Ra and the Princesses of Power where one character embodies this ideal above anyone else: Entrapta. You could say she is a dataist, pure and simple. However, she may not fully fall into this category as she has her own thoughts and experiences, like when she tries to stop the portal from opening or her decision to join Bow, Adora, and the other heroes. Admittedly, she is one of my favorite characters, correctly described as autistic by the show's existing fandom, even having a tag on Archive of Our Own: "Autistic Entrapta." [1] After all, she is autistic as noted on a leaked character sheet for the show itself. This is part of the reason she was included in fan fictions of a person I know, as noted later within this post.
Reprinted from my History Hermann WordPress blog. Originally published on November 14, 2019.
I must warn you, for those who haven't finished Season 4 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, that there are some spoilers, not only for that season but for the whole show. Long story short, Entrapta is a princess with prehensile hair who is a scientist and inventor always trying to tinker with ancient technology. A number of her experiments go terribly wrong, like the creation of murderous robots in "System Failure" (her debut in the series). She is originally portrayed as deep into her work and about experimenting with ancient technology ("First Ones tech"). In a later episode, she is unintentionally stranded in the Fright Zone, in "No Princess Left Behind", the aftermath of the kidnapping in "Princess Prom." This is where the villains, known as the Horde, have their home base. She later joins them in "The Beacon."
This episode is why some, like Ana Mardoll, say there are "problems" with Entrapta. She argued, back in December 2018, that it is hurtful that the one neurodiverse (ND) team mate turned evil because she is supposedly "too much of a reckless fool to realize that evil is bad." They further state that she is, in their view, a "collection of parodies and stereotypes about ND people being foolish and easily confused and laughably simple to lie to." She also argues that Entrapta's so-called "fall to evil" frustrates them because the show gives Catra complex reasons for why she stayed with the Horde and claims that Entrapta plays off "abelist assumptions" about ND people. While I can understand this perspective, it is clearly misguided. She is a character who is undoubtedly autistic, but also sweet and an "underappreciated technowizard." The latter is key. Even though she joins the Rebellion, serving as part of the Princess Alliance, after "System Failure," this is short-lived. Remember how Glimmer reacts to her in that debut episode: very negatively, often grumbling and sighing, only wanting Entrapta to join them in order to impress her mom and get the Rebellion "cool junk" to defeat the Horde. The fact that her and Adora both make fun of Bow for his pretty cool "trick arrows" says something about how they feel about Entrapta. What Glimmer declares, along with acting occasionally aggressive toward her does not bode well. The only person who sympathizes with her is Bow, saying:
She's a brilliant inventor. She makes robots and rehabs old tech left by the First Ones. She's a pretty big deal in the Etherian Makers Community...I bet Entrapta will like my arrows...Entrapta has traps set up all over her castle. They're supposed to be really cool...Big fan of your work, princess. Maybe not this, but your other work.
He says the last two lines after he bows to her. She gladly accepts his praise, chuckling and saying "hi," and he then kisses some of her prehensile hair courteously after she extends it to shake hands with him. The screenshot from that episode, showing her reaction is below:
She is pretty friendly and nice to Glimmer and Adora throughout the episode, even wanting a "date" with Glimmer to discuss how teleportation works. She even offers to give up her leg to save them from the murderous robots. As such, I'm not sure how people can call her "un-sympathetic." After all, all of them, plus the kitchen staff, work together to take down the virus from the infected First Ones disk, with Bow and Entrapta working together. Not surprisingly, she, of course, puts the disk together again at the end of the episode.
Her only other appearances, before she joins the Horde in "The Beacon" are "Princess Prom" and "No Princess Left Behind." In the first of these episodes, Entrapta comes to the prom, happily greeting Adora and Glimmer, asking if they are there for the "social experiment" where, as she describes it,
Different groups are forced to mingle. Hierarchies form and break. It's the perfect place to observe behavior. And they have tiny food.
She pries a bit into Glimmer's emotional uneasiness in the episode, making her annoyed with Entrapta, while Mermista doesn't want to involve herself in that or in Entrapta's observations. With all this excitement, Entrapta calls it "the best social experiment ever." After all, she is a person who "loves science and refer[s]...to parties as "social experiments" while standing off to one side," having trouble making friends. Later on, in the evening, Adora remains protective of her, with Catra helping her get a better vantage point. It is then that Entrapta and Catra become a bit friendly. She calls Catra her new "assistant...[who] brought snacks," with Catra saying she stole her food, and asked Catra to spy on the crowd with her. She teases Adora with the idea this is "love," who pulls Entrapta aside, reminding her of the allegiances she has agreed to:
Entrapta, she's from the Horde. The people the Rebellion are fighting? The Rebellion you're a part of.
Some say that she feels a bit oblivious, but perhaps perhaps her heart isn't into the Rebellion. After all, who, other than Bow, has actually treated her with respect? Even Adora is pretty forceful with her. Add to this what happens in "No Princess Left Behind": Entrapta goes with Sea Hawk, Mermista, Perfuma, and Frosta to rescue Glimmer and Bow. She becomes enamored and enchanted with Horde technology, even re-programming a Horde bot she names "Emily," later shown in the episode, "Promise." Even the patience of Perfuma is tested by Entrapta, while Mermista is a bit annoyed as well. Still, they all feel awful when they think Entrapta is killed in a blast during their escape. That brings us to "The Beacon." Mardoll is saying that Entrapta is a "reckless fool" for not realizing that the Horde is "bad" and that she is taken in by Catra's lies. But is this really totally the case? Catra already had a rapport with Entrapta after Princess Prom, so iThey already know each other to an extent. Even Scorpia knew who she was. As she told them, their cuffs weren't holding her. She stayed there as her choice. On the one hand you could say that Catra tapped into Entrapta's insecurities. On the other, no one, apart from Bow, treated her with respect when she was part of the Princess Alliance. They all tried to use her. Of course, the Horde also wanted to use her too, but I doubt she is naive to such an extent that she does not recognize what the Horde is doing to the planet.
Rather, as Beth Elderkin pointed out, it isn't clear whether she even knows she defected, or if she even cares what side she is on. This is clear in the "Ties That Bind" when she tentatively says she is on the side of the Horde, only after Glimmer asks her "Entrapta, are you on the Horde's side?". Here's her full response to that question:
I'm on the side of science. But I am living at the Fright Zone now and the Horde is supplying me with tools and materials for my work. So, yes, I guess?
Rather, she only cares about the pursuit of knowledge, with people around her "only worth the data they [can] provide." As a result, she is often undergoing dangerous experiments, taking notes, and "making hypotheses based on the results." This means she is person with clear "moral ambiguity" but seems to not even care about what the Horde is doing to the planet as a whole. Catra, to quote again from Elderkin, serves as a "listening ear" to Entrapta, showing her new technology and giving her free reign. This allows her to hack the planet, with her restraints gone, beginning in "Light Hope," while ignoring the signs that Catra plans to use her technology to hurt millions, possibly because she doesn't care. The same could be said for the fact that her experiment almost destroys the world but is reversed thanks to the combined power of the princesses in the Season 1 finale, "The Battle of Bright Moon."
Mardoll also quotes from Abigail Nussbaum, who writes another criticism in "The Problem of Entrapta", claiming that Entrapta is "the embodiment of the idea that you can't trust mentally ill and ND people with guns or power or being president or whatever," or that it is "impossible to "redeem" Entrapta with a reveal." Rather, she argues that Entrapta "has to face her actions and atone," while further claiming she is "being written in a way which seems to suggest that autistic folks lack that capability to self assess." She even claims that "the overall collection of her personality traits has a high correlation to us [ND people], so the portrayal of her fall to villainy needed to be handled with care--and it wasn't." She further declares that Entrapta "was turned through a combination of being profoundly foolish and utterly lacking any empathy: two harmful stereotypes about ND folks." This is an incorrect reading of her character. To bring in Elderkin again, clearly Entrapta is naive, but she is also adorable, and is "so disconnected from the world’s problems that she doesn’t even know she’s a villain," making her a true "morally grey character." To say she is foolish is silly. She could have left the Fright Zone at ANY TIME. But, she did not. Why? She has a "cheerfully wobbly moral compass" and more importantly a "Oppenheimer-like joy of discovery" above any ethical choices. This is a reality that neither Mardoll nor Nussbaum can recognize. Surely, she doesn't fully recognize that her experiments are "not just hypothetical ideas, but real things that affect real people" to quote from Elderkin. But that doesn't make her a bad person.
What about those that say she "often exemplifies the clinically un-empathetic autistic stereotype"? This belief tied with the claim that she is "evil by lack of “theory of mind”" is incorrect. While I agree that it would be great if she could "grapple more with morality, manipulation, and pursuing obsession" and have more of "her emotional and compassionate empathy...revealed to the audience," she does express emotions in relation to Emily, a robot she had modded out of a Horde robot, to help her with her work, just like those robots she modded out as war machines in "The Frozen Forest." Without a doubt, she is blindly dedicated to research, no matter the cost, and undoubtedly has social anxiety. Even so, she finds humanity in the villainous Hordak, working with him to build an inter-dimensional portal, starting in "Signals." After seeing him break down with weakness, she creates an armored suit for him, allowing them to become friends, beginning in "Huntara." This suit is later damaged by Catra in the most recent season as a way of manipulating him to do what she wants.
It is evident that Entrapta believes that her data and calculations will give her the method to discover the "answers," no matter the cost. Take what she said in "White Out" as an example of this mentality:
Entrapta's observation, in response to Catra telling them they need to leave, is correct
With that all being said, I would not say she is "un-empathetic" or that she does not have agency. She willingly stays with the Horde, a decision that the princesses respect in "Ties that Bind" and "The Signal," although they disagree with it. That's at least how I've always seen it. She even sticks up for Catra and is able to convince Hordak she is valuable, which leads him to send her to the Crimson Waste to get a specific artifact in "The Price of Power." You could claim she doesn't listen to Adora trying to talk sense to her, telling her to not use the Sword of Protection to open the portal in "Moment of Truth," but she does actually take into account what Adora is telling her. And after doing some tests, she realizes that Adora is right! Sure, she trusts the data, but she uses it with her own thoughts and analysis, making it a bit different from her typical dataist thinking. In same episode, she has a revelation that shows this to be the case: the anomalies of the portal will be "catastrophic," unhinging time and space, "creating a warped reality that would collapse in on itself, erasing us from existence." She tries to warn Catra about this, saying she has to tell Hordak, but she angrily zaps her with a stun gun, ordering Scopria to send her to Beast Island, which she reluctantly complies with. Catra then lies to Hordak, claiming Entrapta was on the side of the princesses all along, and he does not discover this lie until the end of Season 4. As this season comes to a close, Catra opens the portal and almost destroys the whole world, as recounted in "Remember" and "The Portal," with Adora barely saving the day. Apart from Angella's sacrifice, the latter is partly thanks to the help of Entrapta in the bizarre alt-Etheria world, who helps them, to an extent, fix reality in the best way she can. At the same time, she has compassion, saying to Adora at one point: "it was nice being friends with you" as she fades away from existence, at least in this bizarre world.
For much of Season 4, she doesn't make an appearance, with Scorpia concerned about her, as shown in "The Coronation," while Catra angrily wants her recordings, noted in "Princess Scorpia." Almost, as a sort of payback, Entrapta, along with Adora, is one of those people who haunts Catra in her dreams in "Flutterina." In a later episode, "Beast Island," Adora describes Entrapta as having "purple hair and really likes robots. Like, really, really likes robots," and they discover she is still alive. She is said to be heading for the center of the island, and when it seems all hope is lost, she literally saves them (Bow, Swift Wind, Micah, and Adora/She-Ra). So much for saying she doesn't have compassion. Here's what she says after she rescues them, with a smile on her face:
In the following episode, "Destiny Part 1," her life on the island is explored a bit more. Clearly, she is overjoyed that the island is full of "technological monstrosities," calling it "paradise," glad to help them learn about the heart of Etheria. She brings them to an ancient temple, calling it "amazing," saying the answers she is looking for are there, pulling up a directory of various files. She reveals to them that all the princesses are part of the Heart of Etheria project, with She-Ra as the key, channeling the weapon, with the First Ones using the sword to control and use her. Adora learns she doesn't get to refuse this task, to her horror, and Entrapta wants to stay on the island, no matter what:
Bow and Adora are able to pull her away from this, although she struggles thoroughly and claims that no one understands her, which is partially true, based on her past experience with the Princesses and the Horde. As it seems she will be engulfed by the vines, Bow talks to her about friendship and then, Adora, as She-Ra mentions they came on a ship with ancient technology. This pulls her out of her funk, although she admits that Bow's talk didn't affect her. Despite this, she is glad that her and Bow are friends. This means that Entrapta goes with them back to Bright Moon because of data and scientific discovery, not because of friendship or anything else. In many ways, her character subverts the Entrapta from the original She-Ra series whom is a "villainous technician...a skilled inventor, and is credited with designing advanced equipment for The Horde...[and] her speciality is devising different traps for members of The Rebellion." She also can "design and create complex machines and inventions to be used by The Horde....mentally control her long hair at will...[using it[...to capture enemies or to control her various machines."
In some ways, her character reminds me of Peridot in Steven Universe, even more than Spinel (who also struggles with friendship), as there are a lot of parallels. For one, both characters have, at first, a love or attachment to their robots, rather than people or other beings. Entrapta has her robotic servants, and later Emily, while Peri has her robonoids, which Steven says are "like her babies" in her debut in "Warp Tour," and adeptly uses technology as shown in "Marble Madness." Later she works with Jasper, treating Lapis as an informant (and prisoner) as noted in "The Return" and "Jail Break." However, her plans revealed in "Keeping Together," and she is injured by the Crystal Gems in "Friend Ship," is poofed by them in "Catch and Release." Due to a friendship with Steven, she grows in the coming episodes, becoming more aquainted with Earth culture, helps them build a drill to the center of the Earth, and begins to respect other beings more ("When It Rains", "Back to the Barn", "Too Far", "Steven's Birthday" (non-speaking), "It Could've Been Great", "Message Received", and "Log Date 7 15 2", "Super Watermelon Island", "Gem Drill", and "Same Old World").
She thinks about the Gem plans for Earth just like Entrapta does about her inventions, as shown in "It Could've Been Great" and "Message Received," but these types of thoughts change. She learns how to be better with people, strikes up a relationship with a water gem, Lapis Lazuli, another one of my favorite characters, apart from Peri. Both are skeptical of each other in "Barn Mates" but later get more acquainted after "Hit the Diamond" and in other episodes (referenced in "Too Short to Ride", "Beta", "Earthlings", and "Back to the Moon"). As the show's episodes continue, she becomes more comfortable with herself and her connections to other beings (and people) (as shown in "Kindergarten Kid", "Gem Harvest", "Adventures in Light Distortion", "The New Crystal Gems", and "Room for Ruby"), although she is not as adept at social situations. For instance, it is revealed she lied to Lapis so she'd feel better (in "Raising the Barn") and she begins to suffer depression (beginning in "Back to the Kindergarten") after Lapis leaves Earth. She makes such an impression on Lapis, that this water gem references her as part of her song in "Can't Go Back". Apart from handing out flowers at Ruby and Sapphire's wedding in "Made of Honor", the first gay wedding in a commercial cartoon, embrace each other in "Reunited". Both her and Lapis help the fellow Gems fight the Diamonds in "Change Your Mind". And of course, she appears in the recent Steven Universe movie, having a vital role there, determining the injector fluid with her robonoids and technology.
There is one major difference between Peri and Entrapta. Unlike Peri, Entrapta has not opened up to others in the same way. But this is not surprising, due to the fact she was in environments where people either felt displeased about her (among the princesses) or exploited her skills (among the Horde). When she appears in the season finale, "Destiny Part 2," there's nothing she nor Adora can do to stop Light Hope's plan, at least at first. Hordak learns about Catra's lies about Entrapta and attempts to kill Catra with his laser canon arm. In this episode, Entrapta only gets a few lines, but they are important ones, for the story. For instance, when talking to Bow, who asks what is happening, she says, "it's a portal. A big portal. With the planet balanced, the portal capabilities must be back online. We're getting pulled through." A screenshot from that scene shown below, indicating she is a bit excited about what will happen next:
She tries to be optimistic, noting they aren't in Despondos but are in the "wider universe" now. Adora is able to stop Light Hope's genocidal plans but cannot stop the arrival of Horde Prime with a huge fleet of warships. She-Ra is destroyed, Adora thinks, because the sword is gone. These events, sets the stage for the next undoubtedly eventful season...
That leads me to the second section of this post.
Building upon Entrapta's "dataism" within my friend's fan fictions
A screenshot from her debut episode
Entrapta is mentioned in one of my friend's first stories, where Queen Angella laments to Samurai Jack about Entrapta working for the Horde:
Entrapta would be the perfect person to help you with constructing such a device, but...she is now working with the Horde, bringing her technology genius and inventor abilities to the side of evil...Our spies inside the Horde have indicated that the Supreme Leader of the Horde, Lord Hordak, is building a portal, likely with the help of Entrapta.
This friend built out her character more when Adora, Glimmer, Bow, and Jack go to the Crystal Castle, with Light Hope able to see Entrapta's thoughts, as she worked with Entrapta to improve a portal which surprised Adora, asking herself why she was "working to turn the lightness of the world into darkness" and wondering if she had a "conscience of her own" or not. It also is part of the reason she breaks down later in the same story. In a story later on, characters suspect she helped hack into Light Hope, and she ends up being one of those who wants to shroud the planet in darkness, working with Hordak. This friend described her "almost slavish dedication to "science" no matter how much it hurt the planet," and noted the "evil look in her magneta-colored eyes as her prehensile lilac hair quickly tapped on the keyboard," as she said:
"Progress is going great! Our hack of Light Hope was a success...and the crumpling of that crystalline structure means it will be so much easier to get First One's tech for our machines. The Rebellion will think it's gone and done for, allowing us to go in without a trace. Now, if we could hack into all the runestones, perhaps we could even track the princesses...this...I must say...is all so exciting!"
Catra and Entrapta interact, I believe in episode, 'The Frozen Forest.' This is likely what she would have looked like as she typed onto that keyboard in my friend's fan fic
In the same story, Hordak praised her on the progress she had made. At one point, with only one Horde robot created by her remaining near the Crystal Castle, Bow directly addresses her:
Entrapta, someday you'll regret all this and realize the destruction you have caused to this planet...what you are doing is wrong...it's not for science, as you may think, it's for evil. I hope you change your mind.
Despite this, his words don't move her and she rigged the remaining robot to explode, which happened in "Frozen Forest." Later, Entrapta greets Samurai Jack "with a friendly, and warm, smile," and is very fascinated by his desire to travel back in time and across dimensions. Sadly, Jack isn't moved by the pleas of his friends, and he accurately saw:
a 30-year-old woman who was kind, but lonely, having a positive outlook on life, and dedicated to pursuing knowledge and discovery through her experiments and research. It filled him with joy to meet someone thrilled with learning new information, although she seemed a bit obsessive in this process. Even so, he could see that such dedication would lead to a disregard of morality, meaning she would not recognize that her work could hurt others. In a thundering voice, he told the rest of them his intentions and why he had come there.
He then defends Entrapta, although she warned him not to use the portal due to the possibility of error. Even so, she feels obligated to help him despite "her reservations about the safety of the portal itself" and he travels across dimensions, although not to the world he wanted. Ultimately, there is nothing she can do other than "shutting down the whole portal."
Entrapta has a breakthrough with Hordak in the "Signals" episode.
Apart from that, my friend talked more about her as a person in other stories, fleshing her out as a character:
The fact that Entrapta didn't pick up their magical signatures, on her computer, had been a miracle. It was a happy coincidence she had been in a deep sleep. She needed rest, especially since she had an older age than many of the princesses, who were in their teens, having lived and breathed for 30 years on the planet...Preparing to attack them with her prehensile hair, Adora stunned her with a regulation stun gun which she had taken from a Horde soldier...Although she was in a daze, she could hear Pearl and Adora utter a few stern words, "Entrapta...it's time to talk," while the others surrounded her in a semi-circle. The time for reckoning was at hand
She then serves as a major part of my friend's story that served as the capstone of part 1 of my friend's "An Unlikely Alliance Against Evildoers" series. She asked why they had stunned her, and the heroes, including Glimmer, reminded her of the "scientific experiments she had conducted which "caused the destabilization of Etheria, almost killing them in the process." After Hordak's death devastated her she opened the portal, wanting to join the ultimate Horde leader, but she relented. In the same story, she had a self-revelation to everyone:
My god, you must think I am a monster. I can understand why you are angry at me. I only wanted to conduct scientific experiments, collect data, and test the boundaries of thought. I never wanted to hurt anyone. But, in the process, I blindly charged ahead, not thinking of how my actions would affect other people. I am sorry and I ask for your forgiveness
With this, some, like Perfuma, wanted to forgive her, while others wanted her to "pay penance for what she had done." She did this by helping them begin dehordeification, starting with the Fright Zone's destruction (which happened thanks to her "ingenious implosion") after her materials had been moved back to her castle in Dyrl. Later, she talks with Peridot and works to "ensure that the new archives would have the appropriate technology," even though she would also have a trial. She also had a minor mention in my friend's recent story with Glimmer noting she is "awaiting trial," although my friend didn't give any more details at this point. Undoubtedly, she will come up in some of my friend's future stories.
That's all I have for today. Until next week! Comments are welcome.
© 2019-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Notes
[1] The Wikipedia page describes her as "the Evil Horde's chief technician...a skilled inventor...credited with designing advanced equipment for The Horde...[and has a] scientific and fact-based nature, and quickly warmed up to Catra and Hordak, with whom she forms an emotional relationship." Other fans have speculated she was written with Aspergers Syndrome in mind or think it is highly evident without a doubt (see here, here, here, and here for example), even noted on TV Tropes.
Postscript
After posting this article on the She-Ra subreddit, I got some great comments on there I'd like to share here:
Super interesting to skim through. I think we tend to downplay the seemingly unattractive aspects of autism. Particularly the very data-driven robot meets interpersonal simpleton characterization. As an autistic woman in her 30s with a historical attraction to much older, evil men (ahem), myself, its defense often comes off as an attempt to soften those characteristics in order to make them more palatable to NTs. When in reality, many of the characterizations were misinterpretations of the autistic experience in the first place. Thank you for the analysis!- esjunsia
This was a really interesting read! Thank you for sharing! Entrapta is one of my favourite characters too and I agree with everything you said. The criticism you countered, that ‘it is hurtful that the one neurodiverse (ND) team mate turned evil because she is supposedly “too much of a reckless fool to realize that evil is bad”‘ - while I can kind of see where they’re coming from, I agree with you that it’s not entirely fair, not just for the reasons you mentioned but also because what evidence do they have that Entrapta even is “the one neurodiverse team mate”? I don’t see any reason to assume that. I’m neurodivergent too, but I actually recognise more of my own autistic traits in Adora. This post I found on tumblr explores that extremely well and I would definitely recommend reading it if you’re interested! - zutarakorrasami
I really hate everyone saying ‘oh she wanted Knowledge’ like her entire motivation for joining the Horde wasn’t believing her friends abandoned her - nor-fuck-pines
"He defined this term as data replacing our thinking to validate or invalidate a hypothesis, with data and algorithms seen as “a superior means to process data” and find meaning in it, as compared to human thoughts." I'm on that field. No, noboby [sic] with a basic understading [sic] of statistics and/or pratical experience with data based analysis believes that. Some evangelists and vendors say that, but it's because we need clients/funding. Human analysis still is the best by a huge margin - FellowOfHorses
I don't know why autistic Perfuma hasn't caught on. - Tropical-Rainforest
That's all for now.
