#gen v analysis

[yameoto]

yam love love love that analysis on cate you just posted and was curious what your thoughts are on queers (lesbians in specific obviously) reading her as a closeted lesbian going through comphet?

tbh i could talk about this for hours but would just like to say that she legitimately had queen maeve posters all over her childhood bedroom lol didn’t believe that soldier boy shit for a SECOND.

comphet reading of cate dunlap ft. mariecate

TLDR so u don’t have to read the whole thing; all of cate’s relationships with men are overall fake and do not revolve around love, rather the forging of an idealised identity formed around media (comphet Classic). cate’s only real raw genuine untainted relationship is with a woman. ft. mariecate

id love to my favourite hobby is looking at characters through a orangepinkwhite tinged lens. cate’s relationship with luke fits the comphet bill almost too well. firstly, cate being locked up her whole childhood means the formation of identity would be entirely based on media. a very heteronormative landscape of media, which aligns with traditional comphet. you could say her relationship with luke—literally golden boy—is comphet based, the ‘gold standard’ for a relationship cate’s drawn from all that she’s consumed in her childhood years. effectually, cate’s entire early life was robbed of her. and here, she achieves her perception’s ‘perfect’ idea of a life through luke, and forms her entire identity around him (hence her desperation to keep him). this is especially evident in the fact she changed her major to ‘hero management’ just to support luke’s career. to fully commit in shadowing him, for the rest of her life.

except, it’s fake. the entire relationship is fake. by the time of the show, cate has erased and changed and warped luke’s memory, his identity to the point where his mind breaks by the pilot. the fauxness and dysfunction of luke/cate’s relationship despite their image of unattainable perfection is probably her largest comphet indicator. maybe she loved him (not enough to remain faithful, however), but it reads as more of a subconscious love of what he represented, and something to anchor her identity to, which she’s never had a chance to form. as well as a means as to gain shetty’s affection and trust, no matter if she thought it was for his own good or not. her relationship with luke was poisoned, for a multitude of reasons.

(sidenote: cate/luke comphet reminds me of jiper comphet down to the false memories piper’s charmspeak and jason as the golden boy who literally explodes so like. there’s that’s free tidbit for anybody who is tapped the fuck in.)

cate has been so deprived of love she seeks it wherever she can find it. hence her stint with andre, which obviously ends in shambles because it’s foundations are already shaky, considering she’s cheating on luke with him, and andre is fucking his best friend’s girlfriend, but is also disingenuous, because cate’s compulsion powers arguably affect andre the secondmost to luke (though, by a wide margin). these are her two only romantic interests, and they suffer the worst consequences of it.

enter.. marie moreau. and cate’s relationship with marie is more genuine than any of her romantic relationships, which i think is the most telling thing. cate and marie serve as foils to each other: both in the manslaughter of their loved ones, the way shetty attempts to use them, and how can you NOT ship two reflections of each other?

in the finale, cate reaches out her hand, and andre can’t take it, because he doesn’t trust her. you can’t blame him. inversely, marie is the one always reaching out to cate, who is constantly defending cate’s intentions and her motivations to the others—when cate doesn’t deserve the benefit of doubt. partly, it’s because marie has known cate the least amount of time, making the betrayal sting the least. but also, cate’s relationship with marie is also the one least tainted by her compulsion powers; marie is the least affected by cate’s manipulations (to love her, to stay with her), and yet, despite marie not being compelled to do so; she still retains her faith in cate. that cate is good. that cate can be good, which is a fact not even cate believes in.

marie actively sees through cate’s compulsion, and later, nulls it. there’s a reason why marie is the one to discover cate’s betryal. there’s also a reason why marie is the one to blow cate’s arm off when saving jordan. in the same episode that cate reaches out and andre draws away, marie reaches out to cate, and cate draws away. that is a very direct comparison. it also speaks to cate’s larger unwillingness to accept love that is untainted, either fear she herself will ruin it, or because she doesn’t think she deserves it.

anyways, all this to say that yes, cate could totally be read as comphet. and mariecate is totally metal as they are, romantically involved or not.

[initforthethrill]

⚔️ GEN V x CAMP HALF-BLOOD ⚔️

been thinking about this pjo au and where the rest of the gen v gang would place and here’s my quick little analysis of where i think each character fits best based on their personalities and powers! (little bot at the end hehe)

cate dunlap — daughter of aphrodite

stunning, poised, and manipulative in the way aphrodite kids so often are. charmspeak-adjacent powers, plus all the internal angst about love, control, and beauty. she’s head counselor, obviously. thinks she’s above drama. is always in the middle of it.

marie moreau — daughter of hecate

blood magic. controlled ritual power. tied to death but not of it. she screams hecate—mystic, moonlit vibes with an undercurrent of darkness. she’s always in the middle of magical training or decoding ancient scrolls. has at least one enchanted knife on her at all times.

andre anderson — son of hephaestus

engineer king! tinkers with his power constantly, always modifying how he uses it. loyal, protective, big-hearted, and the first to jump into a fight for his friends. he has soot under his nails and grease on his shirt and definitely fixed the forge after sam blew it up.

jordan li — child of iris

genderfluidity? transformation? illusion and self-expression? iris is a perfect fit—messenger of the gods, deity of rainbows and perception. jordan’s powers are rooted in change and identity, which lines up beautifully with iris' domain.

luke riordan — son of apollo

classic golden boy. charismatic, self-sacrificial, light-aligned but not perfect. would have healing powers and some kind of minor prophecy curse he doesn't understand. plays the lyre or guitar, probably. everyone adores him. dies tragically.

emma meyer — daughter of demeter

hear me out—she shrinks and grows based on her nourishment, her relationship with food and the body. that cyclical, natural theme screams demeter. also, she’s emotionally warm and grounded in a way that’s very earth-mother coded. makes killer pies. is friends with all the nymphs.

sam riordan — son of of morpheus

sam’s perception of reality is unstable. a morpheus kid might be prone to prophetic dreams, illusions, or slipping between dream-states and reality. he might see things others can’t (ghosts? echoes? puppets, cough), and his powers would feel terrifyingly unmoored but fascinating. dreamwalking, nightmare manifestation, sleep-based magic.

♡ | demigod drama

[yameoto]

wtf do you mean mindRAPE

cate dunlap and consent

cate dunlap’s 3rd scene displaying her powers is compelling a man to deepthroat a flashlight so a woman can force it up his asshole until he cums. or, “make it wet with your slutty little mouth so i can stuff it up your tight chocolate starfish til you see stars.” so like no duh mindrape

TLDR; cate dunlap’s powers are a sexual assault metaphor. andre uses the phase here, which is interesting (not just because mindrape is a legitimate scifi term that pretty much slaps a sticker on cate’s powers as a whole), but because the emphasis of cate’s wrongdoing isn’t on the fact she mindraped somebody at all. it’s that “you mindraped your friends.” it’s the fact that she mindraped people that ‘matter’. consent is devalued to cate. 'mindraping' people is an established norm. which leads to a larger issue that likely speaks to the sociocultural climate of now in which sexual assault is normalised. but let’s talk about cate.

cate’s relationship with consent is of huge thematic importance to her character and is directly correlative to her powers. her power is inherently nonconsensual. it is not only penetrative in nature, with the perversion of others’ minds and their private thoughts, but also quite literally strips people of their free will.

the necessity of tactile contact for her powers is intentional. it's summarised by the symbolism in cate's gloves; a contraceptive-like protection against the penetration of the mind. the purpose of cate's power is to control, and the vehicle for it is stripping of consent, and touch. that is, very much, a sexual assault metaphor.

the show also delves into the nonconsensual nature of cate gaining her powers themselves. the scene where she talks to marie about her brother and ensuing childhood imprisonment, sums it up succinctly. “it’s not your fault. your parents shot you up with a drug, that..” and it’s true. cate was an infant when her parents imbued her with v, her body violated (penetrated by a syringe, if you’re going there), and completely and utterly out of her control. cate‘s absence of consent in gaining powers that are innately nonconsensual, mirror and present us the root of her her internal, fucked-up dynamic between choice and control.

this continues in the show. rufus, at some point, raped cate. cate ‘mindraped’ luke, and cate ‘mindraped’ andre (two romantic interests), as well as all her friends. cate’s relationship with shetty is dubious considering shetty exploits cate’s vulnerability and clear yearning for a ‘mother’s love’ for utilitarian purposes, and is also based on conditional factors of cate ‘winning’ shetty’s affections (and that’s without addressing using cate to cook up of a genocidal virus that wipes out her own people entirely). yeah.

cate has never had a connection untainted by manipulated consent, whether it be her or the other. she has never had a truly genuine relationship with anybody. for the few she had, in her desperation to maintain them, she uses her powers to wipe or to control, thus tainting them again. cycle continues. cate is a victim, but she’s also the violator.

[initforthethrill]

what’s ur opinion on the finale? I see (unfortunately) a lot of mixed reviews, so i wanted to ask the big dawg (i feel like that’s an appropriate nickname for u)

kinda also wanna snatch an emote cause i am NOT a poster on this app so uhh.. can i be this one? -👓 ty love ur aura

hello darling!!! happy to assign you the 👓 emoji. very chic, very observant, very “i’m watching all of you” energy. welcome (officially) to cate cult nation hehehe<3 also “big dawg” took me out but i’ll accept it with honor, thank you 🫡

okay, finale thoughts in one place, because i’ve definitely talked around this a lot but here’s the core of it:

my biggest issue with the finale is the absolute lack of anything meaningful for cate. sure, they gave her a so-called “redemption,” but i honestly hate that framing to begin with. cate never needed to be redeemed. she was always redeemable, always acting from a place of manipulation, fear, and deeply misplaced trust—not malice. the idea that she had to be put through an entire season of ritualized suffering so the general audience could finally be like “okay…i guess we’re allowed to like her now” quite literally makes me insane.

it genuinely felt like the show was saying: “look how much she suffers! see? you can forgive her now!” like wow!!! thank you!!! for nuking one of the most complex characters you’ve ever written just to shepherd viewers toward an incredibly predictable endgame!!!

and what makes it worse is that none of that suffering paid off narratively. she spent the entire season being punished, tortured, and humiliated to “earn” empathy...then marie forgives her and heals her—which should have been HUGE—and what do we get? a five-second clip of cate pushing a guy to open a door. that’s it. no exploration of a power upgrade, no follow-up on the fact that we literally saw her project her consciousness into another person earlier in the season, no acknowledgement that she could be capable of rivaling godolkin telepathically. nothing.

it feels very much like the writers realized that having the most powerful telepath in universe (at that point) on the board breaks the entire plot. because godolkin vs cate would end the show in like…episode two? and instead of getting creative—making godolkin immune to other telepaths, limiting projection, introducing psychic recoil, ANYTHING—they chose to kneecap cate’s abilities and call it character growth.

and that’s what frustrates me the most: there were so many interesting routes for her arc. instead, they picked the safest, most boring one. torture her, strip her agency, dull her powers, pat themselves on the back for “redeeming” her, move on.

for a character who is—in my opinion—the most important character in the show aside from marie, that’s such a waste.

it honestly felt like such a slap in the face to cate stans. as if we don't deal with enough already just for liking her and understanding nuance.

and don’t even get me started on amazon refusing more than 8 episodes, or the fact that half of those episodes are 35–45 minutes long. if you’re going to put a character through that much trauma, at least give the arc time to breathe. if you’re not going to give us more episodes, at least give us full hours. so many arcs (especially cate’s) feel truncated because of that constraint.

anyway. i’m still deeply attached to her and still think she’s one of the most fascinating characters in the entire franchise despite what they tried to do to effectively ruin her character this season. i’m begging season 5 of the boys to give us one single cate crumb. at the very least, please free her from touch-dependent powers...

thanks for asking the big dawg :)