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Uhhh inutade

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Can say, this is pretty accurate

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This is me. Get me in a restaurant, I can heard silverware, tableware, footsteps, doors opening and the dozen of voices all speaking to one another but I cannot "hear" what my sister is saying and she's right next to me.

Audio processing disorder is just like "you are going to be able to differentiate 27 distinct sounds happening simultaneously EXCEPT for when someone's talking to you. Good luck"

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glimmer or scorpia or both telling catra what drunk adora is like as it's the one thing others know about her that she never experienced herself

“Lightweight,” Catra teased, amused, as Adora fell over into her lap, face pressed into Catra’s night shirt. The blonde giggled.

“Am nooooooooooooooooooot.”

She’d had one glass of wine. Thankfully, they were tucked away in the comfort of Glimmer’s room with only Glimmer, Bow, Scorpia, and Perfuma there to witness Etheria’s great hero drunk off her ass.

“Are too.”

“Well, you haven’t even finished your first glass!”

“Hate to break it to you, princess, but I’m on my third glass.”

Adora rolled over, confused. “What? That’s not fair!”

“That’s impressive, actually,” Bow said. Catra shrugged, finishing her drink.

“Unlike Ms. Square here, I have tolerance.”

“How?” Adora demanded, glaring at her girlfriend.

“You know Shadow Weaver was drunk for like half our lives, right? Me, Lonnie, and a couple other cadets used to take turns stealing her from her stash and drinking after curfew.”

“Wait... Shadow Weaver drank?” Adora blinked in bewilderment. “How did it get through the mask?”

Catra rested a hand against her face, sighing. “I somehow still love you, dumbass.”

“You don’t get to complain until you have to deal with her magically drunk,” Glimmer said. “That was something special.”

“Magically drunk?”

“Yeah, that stupid disc Entrapta had that infected the sword and made She-Ra all rage-y. It made Adora all...”

“Drunk-y,” Scorpia finished. “She, Sea Hawk, and I were trapped in a closet when we were up North. It was weird. She started crying and said we were her best friends.”

“And you didn’t come get me?” 

“There were giant infected bugs trying to kill us.”

“Oh, right.” Catra sighed, put out. “Was she really that bad?”

“She could barely walk,” Scorpia said.

“And I’m pretty sure she was trying to fight the bugs with a broom,” Glimmer added.

“Mop, actually.”

“Damn it, I hated that mission so much.” Catra groaned. “Can’t believe I missed the one thing that would’ve made it worth it.”

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing thoughtfully in a way that allowed everyone to see the wheels turning in her devious little head. “Do we have any other alcohol? And smaller glasses?”

That earned her four suspicious looks. Of course none of them knew what she was talking about. “Shots, guys. I’m talking about doing shots. It’s a great way to get drunk fast.”

“We are not getting drunk,” Perfuma said sternly.

“Oh, come on! I’ve earned seeing drunk Adora try to fight something with a mop!”

“I think it sounds like fun,” Glimmer said cheerfully, disappearing. Catra beamed, Adora giggled, and everyone else sighed. * * * * * * * * * * * Adora groaned, forcing one eye open, then immediately closed it again. “Turn off the sun,” she grumbled. The body next to her stirred, and she heard a muffled giggle. “Catra?”

“Shut up.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel like shit but I need a minute to make sure the memory of you chasing Melog up and down the halls with a mop is permanently ingrained in my head.”

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The Horde and Toxic Strength - Lonnie

(Post where I go on way too long about the Horde's ideals of Strength HERE.)

LONNIE

Status: STRONG

Lonnie is, first and foremost, someone who knows what side her bread is buttered on. She's unambiguously 'Strong', and - as somone who values that status - engages with the role far more deliberately and consciously than, say, Adora does.

Lonnie is acutely aware of the biases in the system; she knows that Adora is the Designated Winner in their creche, and that being better than her is just going to earn you a drubbing. So she doesn't try. If Adora is destined to win, then it's Lonnie's job to make that happen.

Lonnie never challenges Adora; instead, she spends her time removing roadblocks and lining up shots, then fading into the background while Adora score the winning goal. She works to reinforce the system, and she is rewarded for it. She gets to be the second-in-command, and be included in the camaraderie. She gets to make Kyle do all her shit work. Not being the Designated Winner even means she gets to be buffered against directly dealing with Shadow Weaver.

The also underlies her interactions with Catra, because Catra is one of those roadblocks Lonnie is responsible for removing. Catra's tactics don't actually matter - the fact that she is endangering Adora's status as The Winner is, in an of itself, "fighting dirty". It's breaking the system, and putting them all at risk.

That's where this bit of hostility comes from, too; with Adora gone, there's a hole in their group's power structure. Lonnie isn't saying this because she has a personal vendetta against Catra, she's doing it to try and stabilize the situation - to prevent Catra from rocking the boat when they're already in middle of a metaphorical storm.

She adjust (relatively) smoothly to Catra's unexpected promotion largely because she doesn't actually hate Catra. Sure, she's shocked, but after that initial outburst she more-or-less realigns herself like the good little soldier she is.

Which isn't to say she likes Catra. Their relationship remains prickly for several reasons - Lonnie has her own feelings of betrayal and abandonment to work though, Catra doesn't do camaraderie - but Lonnie actually tries really hard to make it work, because Catra is now the Designated Winner, and supporting the system is what she's always done.

The thing that ultimately fractures Lonnie's loyalty to the system (and thus to Catra) isn't so much that Adora left (though she did) or that S4 Catra is a bad boss (although she is); it's Lonnie processing that (a) The system never cared about loyalty, only it's use as a tool of control/self-perpetuation and (b) This doesn't means she has to not care about it.

Bonus head-canons/errata:

Lonnie would have backed off immediately and tried a different tack if Adora had ever gotten even slightly snarly about bullying Catra. Lonnie read the lack of confrontation as an implicit endorsement(and was not wrong to do so), even if Adora didn't parse it that way.

Post-series, Lonnie is probably still really angry with Adora, even if she's mostly processed her feelings about Catra. Think in terms of bad bosses: The one who mandated daily overtime and denied sick days is the one who made you quit. They sucked, but they never promised to be other than what they were, and at least you got to end the relationship on your own terms. But the boss who went on and on about being a family, and promised raises just as soon as you were over this hump, and then fucked off a week before Christmas with everyone's paychecks (and who never came back for you)? That's the one you resent.

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A moment of appreciation for the Prince Zuko effect in children’s tv shows that allowed us to get all these cool complicated characters like Hunter and Catra and show realistic applications of trauma to children

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you know what, this also seems like a good time to post this

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I want to talk about this character.  There’s a lot to unpack.  Look at this entrance.  She is fabulous.  She quieted a whole room even when Dracula couldn’t.  From the moment she appeared, we all knew she was going to be trouble.  But from there, her demeanor of power and poise began to slide downhill and rather than subtracting from her character, this adds a beautiful complexity.

Remember that line in Game of Thrones?  “Any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king.”

This line by Carmilla has the same meaning.  It plays into the element of ‘show, not tell.’  The way she entered Dracula’s council was impressive and intimidating, and that is all she needed.  If she truly was a powerful, confident character, she wouldn’t have felt the need to brag about this.  By explaining her actions to Dracula, she cheapened her own tactic to mere theatrics.  With this one line, she went from a powerful woman to a power-hungry character who unknowingly displays her own insecurities.

When we hit Season 3, we see she does seem genuinely happy to see her sisters and, at first, it’s heartwarming.  However, she keeps them at arm’s length and tries to ‘control’ them as if she’s afraid of betrayal.  She is the one who presented the idea to conquer Dracula’s old territories, and then she denies the credit to any of the others who made it happen. Lenore secured Hector’s loyalty, Striga commands the armies, Morana developed the strategy.  All Carmilla did was essentially say, “Here’s an idea, let’s do it.”  We can even see Striga’s anger with Carmilla for her refusal to acknowledge any of their help, especially Morana’s.

Now we see her desire to conquer the entire world.  This is paranoia.  Her need to control everything has fully manifested, and in all fairness, we get a glimpse into the reasoning.  Styria has been invaded multiple times and when the Sisters asked for allies, they went ignored.  At this point, Carmilla wants to eliminate every possible threat so nothing can ever hurt her again.  Even Lenore is alarmed by this change in her behavior here.

We also get into her backstory a bit where she talks about how men ‘took things’ from her.  For the medieval period, this checks out.  This line could mean anything.  Her father could have taken her freedom by arranging a marriage that advanced his own interests but the match offered her no form of happiness.  It could be she was the sole heiress of a substantial territory and someone forcibly married her to claim that territory.  It could be much worse.  Any of these could be the case.

And then there’s the vampire who turned her.  We don’t get much information other than he promised her everything but then ‘became mad and cruel.’  Two ways we could look at this is 1.)  Carmilla genuinely loved this vampire when she was turned and when he revealed himself to be cruel and insane, she killed him or 2.) she was already disenchanted with the idea of love when he turned her and she used him until he ceased to be useful.

And finally, she takes her own life.  She says, “I win,” but nothing can be further from the truth.  She mocks Isaac and his Night Creatures for being unable to kill her, but Isaac wasn’t done fighting.  He wasn’t mortally wounded.  He wasn’t even slowing down, he had a lot more monsters to face her.  What happened was Carmilla could see which way the wind was blowing.  She knew she was losing the battle, she could not stand the humiliation of dying at the hands of a human, a being she viewed as inferior to her, and so she took the coward’s way out by taking her own life instead of fighting to the bitter end.  And it demonstrates that she truly loved nothing, not even her sisters, in the end.  Once she sees Isaac, there is not an ounce of concern for Lenore.  She doesn’t demand to know what he’s done to her, there’s no nonverbal moment of realization that if he’s here, he may have killed Lenore first, there’s no anguish at the possibility that her ‘beloved sister’ has died.  Lenore meant absolutely nothing to her.

This is a great complement to both Isaac and Trevor’s character arcs in the finale.  Isaac and Carmilla both rose above their traumas, just in opposite ways.  Carmilla chose to intimidate and control everyone around her and never allowed herself to love ever again.  Isaac chose to let go of his anger and began a new future.  Contrasted with Trevor, Carmilla had nothing to protect and killed herself, and he put everything on the line and essentially said, “If I’m going to Hell, you’re coming with me.”

Carmilla is a tragic character and brilliantly written.

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Season 1 Episode Index

You can get to the first entry from each episode here.

Like most things on Tumblr, it does not work on mobile

Episode 1: The Bitchin’ Sword (Part One)

Episode 2: The Bitchin’ Sword (Part Two)

Episode 3: Adora Razzles Her Dazzle

Episode 4: Sex, Drugs and Cinnamon Rolls

Episode 5: Mermista? I Didn’t Even Hear Her Mer-Ring the Doorbell

Episode 6: Maximum Overdrive, Minimum Fourth Wall

Episode 7: Most Erratic Stressed Adora

Episode 8: Gay Panic! At the Disco

Episode 9: None Princess With Left Behind

Episode 10: Alliance, The Glitch and the Horde Hope

Episode 11: Light Hope’s House of Gay Angst

Episode 12: Holy Shit A Horse!

Episode 13: Gays of Thrones

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Dog owners please be aware.

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Thank to our Patreons suggesting a love confession in Halfmoon AU we have a little comic of Adora and Catra being useless lesbians. 

Remember you can see more of this AU and much more in our Patreon!: https://www.patreon.com/ilikeyoucatradora

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Okay, want to get this out before Encanto hits theaters tomorrow. It feels like cheating posting this before I post my other meta, but that one keeps making me too emotional and I can’t make it coherent enough to post, so I’ll do this one first.

So we know all the Madrigals have a gift except for Alma and Mirabel; Mirabel for unknown reasons and Alma because she keeps the candle. We know Bruno has disappeared by the start of the movie, I think 20 years, kicked out when the family had finally had too much of his self fulfilling prophecies. Grandkids ages are Isabela 22, Delores 19, Luisa 19, Camilo 15, Mirabel 15 and Antonio 5. So, Isabela was the only grandchild that really was around for Bruno, all others came after.

Everything else after this is kind of spoiler-y, so if you don’t want that, stop reading, go see the movie and come back and finish.

My thoughts: Julieta is the eldest, has healing abilities, Bruno is the middle child and could see the future, Pepa’s the youngest and can change the weather based on her mood. Now, I’m borrowing this from a different poster, I cannot remember the name so if they read this or if anyone knows, please let me no so I can give credit. “Julieta can heal the past, Bruno can tell the future and Pepa can influence the present.” Which is very clever writing. It all comes in a balance.

Now, we now Bruno’s been banished from Casita for 20 years before the movie starts, his room is all boarded up, the glow is gone. And we also know that the Madrigals got their gifts when they turn 5, so it was 3 years after that that Isabela got her gift. Another, Alma is terrified of losing the miracle magic so she tries to always make sure her family does good, as a way of earning the right to keep the miracle, she demands nothing but the best out of all her family’s gift. Bruno was apparently banned from the family when he ruined Pepa’s wedding, which most likely was attended by most of the towns people at least. So Alma was humiliated and punished Bruno for it in the most extreme way possible.

So now the grandchildren come in and they start getting their gifts: Isabela flowers, Luisa super strength, Delores super hearing, Camilo shape shifting. All lined up, this is a very bizarre array of powers, no real relation to the other. Why did the Casita give them these gifts? Answer:to influence Alma to welcome Bruno back.

“How?” You may ask; okay follow me because I think I have a good theory.

Isabela got her gift at 5, Bruno was gone 3 years already and his room already boarded up. Why was she given the gift to grow flowers? What if the Casita was trying to calm Alma down by given her first grandchild a relatively simple power? “Alma calm down, these gifts I give are just that, gifts. They are not all your children are and not all your family is. Something as simple as a flower can give help and I gift Isabela this.” In a sense, maybe Casita was trying to show Alma that the magic is not all she has. But Alma didn’t see it. (From the song “What Else Can I Do” it seems like she didn’t try making legit plants before then; everyone focused on the pretty but didn’t entertain the practical.)

So Casita tries something different: Delores and Luisa are the same age so they most likely got there gift very close together, 1 has super hearing and 1 has super strength. 1 can in theory hear a pin drop, can hear someone hiding in plan sight in a forbidden room? (“Yo, I knew he never left, I heard him everyday.”) The other has super strength, can move churches, can rip boards hammered into stone wall? What if Casita meant for Delores to figure out where Bruno was hiding and she and Luisa would venture in and find him, realize the story about him was overly darkened. And the 2 would help the family come back together. But again, it didn’t work.

So Camilo comes of age, he comes a shapeshifter. He can turn into people, relatively but himself in their shoes, and empathize with them. Casita may have meant for him to become an empath, he could hear the stories of Bruno and find a way to relate to him, sympathize/empathize with him, seek him out and learn about him. Bring the family back together. And from the previews, he didn’t really go that way.

So now Mirabel comes in, Alma and her whispering about the gift she will get. Casita at this point has decided “No, I will give no gift, you have lost sight of what your miracle is. Until you learn, I will gift no more.” And from we see, we know that once again Alma is missing the message, and that decision has backfired massively.

So years pass, the cracks form, under the surface where no one can see, but they grow, the magic starts to fade. And Antonio comes in; Bruno hangs out with rats. Casita gives the child the gift to speak to animals. “Okay, okay, youngest child talks to rats, rats tell small child about the strange man they are friends with, small child meets Bruno, the family comes back together! It’s fool proof!”

And now we’re at the movie.

So there you go, my theory. Casita has been trying for years to reconnect the family, by given the gifts the next generation but it kept getting muddled.

Any additional thoughts? Leave a comment! Thanks for sticking to the end.

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Bad faith readings are the death of good discussion.

When Catra says "Don't you get it? I love you, I always have! So Please, Just this once, STAY!" There are two criticisms i see of this confession

1 is that this is saying that all the bad things Catra did were out of love, and therefore justified by the Narrative.

And 2: is that Catra is "manipulating" and "guilt-tripping" Adora into being with her and still blaming her for all the times she didn't stay.

So here's why both of these criticism are wrong bad faith readings.

1: Thats not what Catra or the Narrative are saying at all. Context is important. Adora in this moment honestly believes she is not worthy of love because she "failed" because she didn't save everyone. What Catra is saying in this moment isn't "I hurt you because I love you" which would be abusive but is instead saying "Even when you failed to save me, even before you were She Ra, even when I tried so hard to hate you and shut off my feelings I still loved you" shes saying her love for Adora is not conditional. Even when she's angry, even when they're enemies, Adora is worthy of love and has had it. Adora is afraid that people only love her because she's She Ra because she's supposed to save them. And Catra someone who HATED she ra tells her that she has always loved Adora. Verifiable proof that people are capable of loving just Adora, that She Ra is not what makes her lovable.

2: When she says "So please just this once Stay!" Catra is not saying that all the times Adora didn't stay were some moral failing on Adoras part. Shes saying JUST THIS ONCE she SHOULD stay. Because the alternative is dying.

And even if, for the sake of argument, it is a guilt trip and manipulation this is quite literally a close friend begging Adora not to DIE. This is suicide/self sacrifice. And anyone who works in suicide prevention will tell you that the most important thing to stop someone from committing suicide is to find a reason, any reason at all, not to do it. And in Adoras case its not as simple as "You haven't seen the sequal to your favorite movie" or "You haven't outlived trump" or "You haven't been to every country" because none of that is going to get to Adora when she feels like she's failed the entire world. Adora as unfortunate as it is and as much as she needs to unpack it with herself and find self worth that doesn't hinge on others, lives in service of Other people. Every big decision she has ever made has been for the benefit of others and not herself so for someone like Adora the only that will stop her from suicide IS something akin to a guilt trip. So using that to literally SAVE HER LIFE is not a bad thing.

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Catradora and Scorfuma by Noelle Stevenson💖💝🌈