#Adora doesn’t want me :(((

[octopusoptimusprime]

spreading my st5 / spop5 agenda fr

[am-i-interrupting]

hazbin hotel (whoever you want) with an s/o that's just smol. like shorter than Lucifer and maybe 5'1 or 5'0 because I think Lucifer is like 5'3

Husk

He likes the fact that your shorter than him.

He doesn’t really make any comments about your height.

It is clear regardless that he enjoys that he’s taller though.

When he’s feeling cuddly he’ll wrap his arms around your torso and place his head atop yours.

Maybe he’ll wrap you up in his wings. Maybe he’ll rub his face against the back of your neck.

Will come up behind you and just surround you with his presence, hands on your hips, and ask if you need his help grabbing something.

He likes that he can wrap himself around you and swarm you because it lets him know that you’re there, that you’re safe, and he loves nothing more than that knowledge.

Rosie

She can be a bit of a puppeteer to people she cares about.

Constantly having a hand on the shoulder, the back, looped arms. Just constantly guiding.

The fact that your shorter means she might have to bend down a bit more or stretch but she doesn’t mind.

She’ll rest her hand atop your head if it’s closer.

Constant fingers running through and petting your hair.

She will also give you a neck massage while she’s at it which can be very. . . interesting in public.

If you do the Catra & Adora dip from She-Ra, I think she might die again.

Vox

This man made a short joke one time and depending on how you react depends on how he’ll take to doing it in the future.

If you just sort of roll your eyes expect at least one short joke every week.

If you (are like me) pulled him down to your height and threatened him. Never again. He’ll never make one again.

He’s the type to lean against the wall and watch you struggle until you ask him to get something for you and depending on his mood, he might get it for you or he’ll smile and walk away, watching you from his cameras.

Because you’re short, it’s harder for him to kiss you. . .

Unless you’re walking past his chair in which case he’ll grab you by the waist and pull you in his lap and lavish you.

Expect to be picked up and put in tables, counters, against the wall, so he can kiss you and sometimes it’ll be with no warning so here’s to hoping you don’t break his screen in accident.

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

it legit makes me laugh when people make excuses for catra opening the portal like “she just wanted to be with adora 🥺” or “she just wanted shadow weaver’s validation” you think the millions of people who almost got killed care about that?

this is what happens when you act like your entire fictional universe revolves around one character or one ship. putting aside the fact that nothing can justify what catra did, let’s just imagine that she DID have a valid reason to open the portal.. why would the people of etheria be expected to know and understand her motives? they don’t know anything about her background or her upbringing or her relationship with adora.

why do fans act like everyone in this universe knows everything about catra and would immediately forgive her because she had a tragic past? to most of these people, she’s just another person working for the horde. it doesn’t matter what her motives are, all that matters is that she nearly killed everyone.

[that-ari-blogger]

"Do you want to know a secret?" (The Portal)

I think that the rules of writing are overblown.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things you should and shouldn’t do when telling a story, but those are more guidelines than actual rules.

Case and point, She-Ra is a story predicated on repetition, which shouldn’t be as entertaining as it is. The “bad ending” is effectively another season, which is a unique premise, and a threat that the story absolutely delivers on multiple times.

But, to me at least, the story is enthralling, and keeps me coming back to it. It works, not despite its repetition, but because of it.

Although, that isn’t exactly true. I’ve described the story as cyclical before, but it isn’t entirely. It’s a spiral, because the cycle of abuse is an innately unstable dynamic, and will only end in tragedy if it isn’t broken.

If you don’t want to take my word for this, I give you the season 3 finale, The Portal, which spells out the series’ thesis in about as blunt of a way as is possible.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, Superman: For The Man Who Has Everything, Justice League Unlimited)

I grew up reading Alan Moore comics, and if you don’t know who that is, I both pity you and envy you. Alan Moore is one of the most misrepresented writers of the modern age, and its entirely his own fault.

Moore is known for writing V For Vendetta, The Killing Joke, and Watchmen, all of which have a distinctly grim tone. He is one of those writers who seems to care more about the story he is telling than how much people enjoy it, and so he usually has a point to make.

Unfortunately, we end up with the Cyber Punk dilemma, in which Alan Moore’s genuinely unrivalled literary talent leads to people really enjoying his stories, which means they unintentionally miss the actual themes of those stories. In the case of Watchmen, this led to people seeing the gore and the violence and the depression and trying to replicate that.

This is where we get The Boys from, shallow sadness and spectacle. If that’s your thing, go for it, but it isn’t mine.

But I bring up Moore in a discussion of She-Ra for a reason, and that is the relentless hope inherent in his writing. In Moore’s stories, hope prevails every single time, with the only exception being extremely subjective. The Killing Joke focuses on the idea that everyone is one bad day away from becoming evil, and that gets proven wrong. Watchmen is about how small humans are and how annihilation changes people, yet the characters are able to find joy and an escape from their trauma, and show kindness to each other even when the sky almost literally falls on their heads.

The Boys isn’t very good as an adaptation of Moore’s themes (In my opinion). If you want one that actually understands the source material, watch The Incredibles, or Justice League Unlimited, or She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

I have praised She-Ra for its animation and pacing, as well as its overarching story, but I think its greatest strength is its humanity. Characters in She-Ra are incredibly fragile, psychologically, and yet they are incredibly resilient.

Catra and Adora’s development gets methodically and efficiently destroyed by Shadow Weaver, and yet Adora becomes a hero and Catra… well, we’ll see how that works out in later seasons.

One of my favourite Moore stories is a superman story from 1985 called For The Man Who Has Everything. This was adapted into an episode of Justice League Unlimited, but I prefer the comic.

The story follows Superman being forced to live out his greatest desire. It doesn’t sound that bad, but the point is that he is kept happy and therefore out of the picture while villains can do villain things. It’s very much a story from its time, and I love it.

Interestingly, however, Superman’s dream takes him back to Krypton, where he isn’t Superman, and he is happy. He has a wife, and a son, and he never lost anything. He can spend time with his parents.

Even with the shenanigans that ensue (because this is a comic), his time in this dream is fun, and relaxing. Until he works out he’s dreaming, and has to let it go. Superman gets the choice of happiness, or duty, and he takes duty.

The scene in which he says goodbye to his “son”, who does not exist and therefore does not matter, is heartbreaking, and if I ever do comic reviews, I’m talking about this one first.

I now turn your gaze to queen Angella, from whose perspective this story is being told.

The episode actually does a bit of a bait and switch with the point of view, convincing its audience that it is about either Glimmer or Bow, and it kind of is, but not entirely.

Angella has everything she could possibly want, her daughter, her husband, her city. There is no war, there is nothing. Everything is perfect.

“This is perfect, my love, but it’s not real. I remember now. I miss you so much, but Glimmer needs my help, and I can’t stay with nothing but memories. Goodbye Micah”

Does this ring any bells?

I want to point out that this is still Catra’s hallucination, the thing that she wants. So why does she want Angella and Glimmer to be happy?

Catra wants Adora, and arguably loves her, but in an extremely dysfunctional way that says "if I can't have her, nobody can". She is petty, and fully the villain in this episode.

So, the way that she gets Adora to be hers is by ensuring that the people who accepted her would have no space for her in their lives. Why would Glimmer want to spend time with Adora? She has her father. Why would Angella accept Adora? She has her family.

What Catra doesn’t understand is that love isn’t transactional, and that these people are genuinely kind and accepting.

There's the idea of "what you are in the dark." The concept of what a person does when there are no consequences. Characters in this episode keep getting moments like this, when they know that they are fading from existence, and are given moments to show their true colours. Entrapta chooses to be grateful, Bow chooses to be reassuring, and Glimmer chooses to be emotional.

The thing that breaks people out of Catra’s reality is the unexpected. Its Catra’s lack of understanding of people that leads to those people being themselves and instinctively breaking free.

Case and point, Angella and Glimmer help Adora, and because this world was completely unprepared for that minour act of kindness, it can’t keep them contained.

Now, I know what scene you are expecting me to talk about, so I’m going to make you wait, and talk about Catra instead.

Catra is the villain of this episode. If it wasn’t for this being set in her mind, she would have zero nuance. By which I mean, everything about her as a character here is done externally, the way she acts makes her seem like a generic, abusive partner.

Because let me be clear about Catra’s actions here. This is abuse, and it is treated as such by the story. The show doesn’t make apologies for her in this episode, or try to justify it here. Subtlety be damned here, Catra is abusive.

And so, I will read her this way, for this episode. We have seen the nuance leading up to this moment, and we will see a redemption arc. But this is Catra at her lowest, and so I will put aside the past and future to examine the present and the present only. Catra is abusive.

There are two ways you could read this drop in subtlety. One, there are parts of this character that you aren’t seeing, left blank. This episode is presenting you with a character and not showing you the whole thing. Or two, this is a character who has been broken by the story, almost as if parts of her have been removed or lost. Catra is now a fragment of her former self.

I wonder if any of this is reflected in her character design.

“If you hadn’t gotten captured, your sword wouldn’t have opened the portal. If you hadn’t gotten the sword and been the world’s worst She-Ra, none of this would have happened. Admit it Adora, the world would still be standing if you had never come through that portal in the first place.”

This hurts Adora because it’s true. Ok that’s unfair, and inaccurate, but it’s not entirely wrong, and that’s the kicker.

Catra isn’t making this up, she’s just leaving out important details. Because of course, if Adora hadn’t been captured, things would have worked out better, but who was it that captured her? Who was it that made the choice to pull the switch? Who was it that destroyed the world out of spite?

Catra blames Adora for her own actions, and that is, once again, abuse. Which is why it’s so satisfying when Adora stands up for herself.

“I didn’t make you pull the switch. I didn’t make you do anything. I didn’t break the world. But I am gonna fix it.”

Hope is relentless.

But I also want to point out the claiming of agency here. Catra was weirdly insightful at the start of her monologue.

“It's always the same with you, Adora. ‘I have to do this. Oh, we have to do that.’”

Adora’s word choice is a flaw. I looked back at the past few seasons and did a word search through the scripts. I don’t think Adora uses the word “want” more than once at all up to this point.

Essentially, Catra sees things, but extrapolates exactly the wrong message from it. It’s almost as if she’s only seeing half of the world, like her vision is impaired or incomplete somehow.

I wonder if that is reflected in her character design.

In any case, Adora frequently says that she “has to” do things. “Need” is also something she says a lot, and this has the effect of making her an extremely passive character in her own story.

Like I said, this is a moment of agency, but the entire story is a story about that agency. The characters are making choices to either get out of or go along with the downward spiral that the tragic form has set out for them. Catra made the choice to follow, but Adora didn’t. Adora’s word choice makes her look like she has made no choice, but a lack of action is still a decision.

So here, when Adora declares she is “gonna fix it", she takes her agency and decides to walk in a different direction.

This reminds me of an earlier episode, that being Promise.

Hey, look at that action. Looks familiar, right?

This is the only episode I found where Adora says she wants something, although her actual wording is “I never wanted to leave you” when talking to Catra. Go figure.

The moment in question was the episode’s namesake.

“It doesn't matter what they do to us, you know? You look out for me, and I look out for you. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other.” “You promise?” “I promise.”

Agency. Adora is making a decision to stay with Catra and protect her. She is knowingly choosing to do something.

It’s telling that the two most prominent times Adora has done this have been to protect people. It’s almost as if she wants to be useful, or helpful, or protective. Almost as if she wants to be wanted. It would seem Adora is just as addicted to the highs of Shadow Weaver’s programming as Catra, she just has a better support group.

Although this isn’t a full victory, she doesn’t want to save the world, she is just going to, – we still don’t know what Adora wants – this is a partial success. Hold onto that idea, it will come back later.

“Do you want to know a secret? I am a coward. I've always been the queen who stays behind. Micah was the brave one. And then Glimmer, oh, Glimmer. So much like her father. And once again I stayed behind, letting her make the hard choices, letting her be brave for me. I told myself I was being responsible, but, Adora, I was just scared. And then I met you. You inspired us. You inspired me. Not because it was your destiny, but because you never let fear stop you. And now I choose to be brave.”

Queen Angella is voiced by Reshma Shetty. She doesn’t get much praise, but for this monologue, I think she deserves so much more than she got.

In my fourth post about She-Ra, I discussed Adora’s ability to inspire and linked her to Batman, something I stand by to this day.

In universe, She-Ra isn’t important because she’s a warrior. She exists as a leader, to protect people and pull them into a greater tomorrow. She shines a light for others to follow.

That is what happens in The Portal, Adora succeeds not by fighting the enemy, but by being herself. She only becomes She-Ra to destroy the portal at the end. To save Etheria, the giant sword lady isn’t important.

I mentioned earlier that humans are fragile and resilient at the same time, and I give you Angella as evidence for that claim. Here is someone who has lost her husband, and makes decisions based on that fear and trauma. But when push comes to shove, the fear is secondary.

Reality falling apart lets directors get away with true nonsense. Micah's staff has no reason to be here, other than the fact that it makes a phenomenal metaphor for Angella's trauma. But that's all you need.

Jon Pertwee was the third doctor, and while he isn’t nearly as iconic or influential as some of his predecessors and successors, he did deliver the line that defined the whole series.

“Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.”

I started my discussion of this season by claiming that this is the season in which the characters put a dent the tragic cycle, and I have mentioned several times that the cycle of abuse is unstable. So, here is my thesis.

Catra’s arc fails, not in a story sense, but in a personal one. The idea that every character has a single story arc is something is a specific bugbear of mine, and Catra is kind of my case and point for that. She has a redemption arc up to this point, and she ends up as a villain. Then the story continues and she has to start again and decide where to go next. She has no choice but to move in a different direction from here.

But she tasted redemption already. The crimson wastes gave her a taste of what she is missing, and it offered her an out. It gave her a choice, she made one, and consequences were served. I can’t help but imagine that for the entirety of the next season, she is considering running off to the wastes again.

That idea of consequences comes back with Adora, who makes a good decision, and is rewarded for it. Or rather, she makes a decision to actually do something. Adora becomes an active character, and that is what starts to break the cycle. Because now the motion is halted, and the puppets are pulling the strings.

But, this isn’t a complete victory. Angella is lost, Entrapta and Micah are still gone, none of the villains actually get defeated. For an episode with lasting consequences, not much actually happened.

This episode is big on the fact that this is all a dream, which should destroy the engagement. But it doesn’t. In reality, it preserves the status quo physically, but lets all the characters spontaneously experience character development. The victory of this season is that growth, but it came at a cost.

I want to briefly talk about that final shot, before I go, because this is how you introduce a villain. Sure, the voice acting is impeccable, and the cinematography gives an air of mystery and menace to this threat, but the showstopper is the reveal that this villain can destroy a moon with ease.

You see a fleet of ships, there was no battle here, just a villain showing off for nobody but himself. He gets interrupted by the plot, and he’s busy DESTROYING A MOON.

Horde Prime is f***ing terrifying.

This scene is in this episode too. It's meant to show how reality is falling apart, but I actually have a reading of why it's here. I think Catra wanted to preserve who Adora was, hence why she is the source of all the paradoxes. But Catra doesn't understand that Mara's legacy and Razz's teaching are a big part of Adora.

Final Thoughts

I’m going to talk about the implications for later seasons for a moment here, so if you’re avoiding spoilers, now you know.

I think Catra being the villain here makes her redemption so much more compelling, because she actually needs it. There is a difference between this and, for example, Hunter from The Owl House, who doesn’t really need redemption because he hasn’t done anything wrong.

Catra here has very much done wrong and is evil as defined by the show. But the show’s message is that anyone can change, and that the cycle of abuse isn’t set in stone.

So, Catra will redeem herself, and she will struggle, and fall back, and try again. Forgive her or not, the redemption is the effort to be better.

Next week (or whenever the next post is released, I have a terrible work schedule), I will be discussing The Coronation, so stick around if that interests you.

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[kyojurismo]

★ — katsuki as your boyfriend !

character : katsuki bakugo

tags : gn!reader, fluff, katsuki is soft w his s/o, tiny bit of jealousy, mention of insecurities ( nothing too serious ), all characters mentioned are aged up to 18+, not proofread.

notes : i was a bit unsure about posting it, also because i’m struggling a lot lately and it was way better in my head. but anyway, we’re here. i got a lil carried away, but hope you guys will enjoy it !! <3 + tagging my sweet @doumadono ^_^

katsuki noticed you at the beginning of high school

he knew you were strong and didn’t mind having you in his team

it was it that helped you two grow closer to each other

he started to feel more towards the end of second year

when you happened to mention how you went on a date with someone from 2-B, katsuki would feel . . . jealousy. it wasn’t rational though, you two were good friends and classmates

you were confused by him getting all grumpy when you talked about your date with tetsutetsu to mina and eijiro. bakugo scoffed and made harsh comments about how it was stupid of you to go out with someone like him

“he doesn’t have a brain, why wasting time with someone like him? thought you were smarter than this.”

it hurt, not gonna lie. but mina comforted you and sent a glare to katsuki

when katsuki acknowledged his feelings, you were seeing someone and he couldn’t help but feel jealous

but also stupid

what if there wasn’t another chance?

when you came back to the dorm, he noticed you were crying. he clenched his fists and wanted to know about everything that happened. that’s why he walked to you and asked about what was wrong, pretending he didn’t know you went on a date

“don’t worry, bakugo…” you wiped away your tears, trying to put on a happy face so he wouldn’t worry too much. oh, if you only knew. “bullshit.”

you were surprised by the stern look on his face, he wasn’t judging you for going out, there weren’t harsh comments as always. he looked genuinely concerned about you crying.

“you… i went… damn kirishima wanted to eat something, so we bought ice cream and shit like that,” he started, looking a bit embarrassed. well, that was new. “do you want something?” he offered then, trying to act cool. you stared at him for a couple of seconds in silence, studying his unusual behaviour.

it’s not that bakugo never cared about you, it’s only that he would usually brush it off with a told ya and go on with his activities. but now, it was different. bakugo was actually taking care of you.

“y-yeah… can we eat it together?” you tried, testing how far he would go.

needless to say, bakugo ate ice cream with you and listened to everything that went wrong on the date

it was a real surprise when you caught him arguing with your date, spatting harsh comments and insults while kirishima held him back the best he could to avoid a real fight between the two

katsuki blushed as he noticed you staring at him and acted as if nothing happened when you asked for an explanation

“i dunno what you’re talkin’ about,” he grunted, sitting in his seat. his eyes never meeting yours, not even for a second

you swore his cheeks were turning pink but you let him be, you couldn’t exactly force him to say it

bakugo was around you more than before, always checking on you and making sure you were doing alright

he acted more calm around you, rarely raising his voice

you two started dating out of nowhere

“go out with me,” he looked right into your eyes, his red eyes burning into yours. “what?” you raised your eyebrows, gripping your textbook tightly. “out with me. y’know… out?!” he huffed, hoping you would get it and say yes. “like, on a date?” you tilted your head to the side. “whatever you call it.”

his cheeks and the tip of his ears were red now, as katsuki looked away. he was sitting in front of you on your bed, you two were studying together for one of your final exams.

“answer me!” he barked, visibly nervous. you couldn’t help but chuckle at that, finding his behaviour funny and adorable. “you’re cute,” you told him instead, making him groan in annoyance. “j-just answer me or i’ll blow you up!” katsuki at his finest.

you just laughed more at that, because he was all red and embarrassed. katsuki stared at you with a hard expression before finding solace in your carefree mood. you were laughing because of him, he was the one making you feel like that. it felt good, realising it now.

katsuki found every opportunity to take you out on a date, spend as much time together as he could — without including the others

he spoiled you, always trying to gift you something and cooking for you all the time

katsuki really wanted to ask you to start dating properly, but there was always something that got in the way

that’s why you found yourself asking him instead

he didn’t mind though, because he got to kiss you as a yes and he realised he had been craving your lips for a while now

you two have been together for a while, but started dating properly for like a couple of months

katsuki secretly loves holding your hand

but what he craves more is physical contact

he will often grab your arm and pull you closer, just because he wants to feel your body close to his

he kisses your forehead a lot, along with your chin and neck. he likes teasing you about how tensed up you get when he does it

fight me on this but he sometimes bite your cheeks, he usually does it when you’re talking about some part of your body and saying bad things

not in his presence. don’t say anything like that. never.

katsuki has a job & that job is reminding you that you’re perfect like this

we all know he would have eyes for you only. well– you and being the best hero, hehe

would often fall asleep on your chest if you’re busy doing something ( reading, on a phone call, etc. )

and loves when you’re the one falling asleep on him

katsuki has the habit to cup your cheeks and kiss you deeply out of nowhere, before resuming whatever he was doing as if nothing while you’re there needing a moment to process what just happened

he’s both the big and small spoon, depends on the mood really

katsuki gifts you his clothes sometimes,

like, “this t-shirt is so cool,” you’re smiling and then gasping as he takes it off immediately and pushes it to you, silently asking to wear it

he’s not a fan of petnames, but would call you babe or darling if you like it

i also believe he’s more on the act of service type, so expect him to show you his love by being helpful and doing things for you rather than putting his feelings into words

has a pic of you sleeping as his lockscreen wallpaper

of course he shuts you up during arguments by squishing your cheeks with his hand

kisses your lips before letting you go, as a way to make you forget all about the argument

lowkey a fan of taking you out to a bar and make out with you in the bathroom, his hands holding your cheeks or your waist as his lips move against your own

he tries his best to be as open as possible with you, trying to not hide his vulnerability when it’s just the two of you. he knows you wouldn’t judge or make fun of him

lastly, i think that if you two are around the others, katsuki likes keeping your pinky fingers intertwined, maybe if you’re talking with izuku and iida & he’s talking with eijiro and denki

[aprillikesthings]

(Help help I can’t shut up about She-Ra)

This is just now occurring to me and I feel silly but

Okay so the last couple episodes of s3, when they’re in the “perfect reality,” and for that first bit before it all (literally) all falls apart, Catra and Adora are affectionate and constantly touching

And like, from a storytelling standpoint I get why they did that??

It’s the halfway point of the whole show, and the two of them have become more and more antagonistic (and they’re going to spend an entire season not even interacting), and Catra’s just done pretty much the worst thing she does in the whole show (and is a vicious little shit even in that episode once she’s forced to acknowledge what’s happening)

But still, they took an episode to remind us: yeah that is. Not what either of them actually WANT.

(No, obviously Adora doesn’t want to rejoin the Horde, that’s not what I’m saying lol)

But what they want is to be together!!!

[thisbarbiereallylikesbirds]

Why Tang Shen is soo interesting to me

Okay with all the Nameless Trio content I’ve been posting I feel the need to let you guys know why I find Shen so interesting. This may be a long one but I have LOTS of thoughts so please hang tight.

“If we interfere Splinter will never move to New York and buy four baby turtles”

Donnie in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012) S3 E19

First of all Shen is literally the reason the story happens in most iterations. If it weren’t for her death, Hamato Yoshi likely never would’ve moved to New York, never bought the turtles, and they never would’ve gotten mutated. Without her there’d be no story. And yet she’s barely ever mentioned in canon.

Now I could talk for ages about fridging women and why it’s a stupid out-dated, over-used, misogynistic trope. And I’m not even going to pretend that’s not what happened to her. But one of the main problems with fridging is the fact that after the woman’s death sets the plot into motion (usually for some sort of love interest) she’s eventually forgotten by the plot. Women in fiction deserve better treatment than that. Real women deserve better representation than that.

However there’s another way that characters who die before the story starts can be utilized. One that I’m absolutely OBSESSED with. And that is the idea of haunting the narrative. Two of the best examples that I can think of are Mara from She-Ra and Caleb Wittenbane from the Owl House. Both characters are dead before the series begins. For a while the only way that we know about them is through what the other characters tell us. And, of course, this is a very biased view of the person. Sometimes it’s very one dimensional. 

But even though we know almost nothing about them, they linger. They are everywhere in the story. So many things only happen because of them. Memories of Caleb are everywhere in Phillip’s mindscape. Hunter’s entire life is dictated by the memory of a man who died hundreds of years ago. And even the door, the things that brings Luz the the Boiling Isles and sets the whole story into motion only is opened for her because Caleb stole it from Belos and buried it in the backyard of his family home. We don’t know much about Mara but we know that Adora is in a way doomed to follow in her footsteps. 

“In every other universe Gwen Stacy falls for Spider-Man. And in every other universe…it doesn’t end well.”

Spider-Gwen in Across the Spider-Verse (2023)

So we’ve talked about out-of-universe stuff. But what about what’s in the actual story? Due to the crossovers we know that all the iterations of TMNT sort of exist in the same way all the universes exist in the Spider-Verse world. They all have their own dimension. I can’t help but think of the parallels not only between the worlds but the characters who live within them. Gwen Stacy dies in every universe but one. She knows this. Unfortunately, the universe where she survives isn’t exactly kind to her. She loses her best friend. She loses Miles. She loses her father. She loses any chance at having a normal life. 

In 2012 the turtles have a conversation with Shen where she is trying to pick between Oroku Saki and Hamato Yoshi. Of course they don’t know this at the time, but one of the choices will lead to her death. However, it will also lead to the world being saved from a variety of threats. But what if she did know? What if Shen knew that she would be sacrificing herself? What if she knew that in every other universe she was doomed to die? In every universe but one, that is.

Tang Shen is never said to be dead in ROTTMNT. But we only see her once in a movie poster. We know she exists but she has no relevance. As far as we know, she’s out there living her best life. So what is she like? What would a person be like in the one universe where she gets to live?

I really hope this wasn’t too long but thank you so much for reading this whole thing! If you want some content about Rise!Shen then visit the Nameless Trio tag on my blog, she’s one of the three main characters in that au.

[n7punk]

“Slipstream” Fic Notes

Slipstream is done after growing far beyond the “simple hacker fic” concept and honestly Mara’s so cute I can’t even be mad. Fic notes below.

Playlist:

I’ve got the playlist here, but other honorable mentions I listeded to on repeat during this just because I wanted to: The Sex Was Good Until It Wasn’t album by XANA (it dropped in May and that shit is still on repeat), SUCKERPUNCH album by chloe moriondo (for chapter 6), PVRIS’s entire discography (I was going through something).

The Kicker — XANA

Good Luck, Babe! — Chappell Roan

Diet Heartbreak — chloe moriondo

TRAUMA BOND — poutyface

Albi — XANA

Rly Don’t Care — chloe moriondo

Chaos Is Love — K.Flay

Teenage Nightmare [unreleased demo]

What’s My Age Again? — Emilia Ali

Late Bloomer — Allison Ponthier

Holy Revival — Maisie Peters (ignore the verses)

Femininomenon — Chappell Roan

Mercury In Retrograde — Avril Lavigne

NIGHT IN JAIL — Rachel Bochner

my best friend’s ex — emlyn

Even If It Kills Me [unreleased demo]

Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl — Chappell Roan

Sirens (feat. Sophie Powers) — MOTHICA

Homewrecking Era — XANA

Obsessed (feat. Ashley Sienna) — Sophie Powers

Obsessed — Astrid S

Look At Her Now — Selena Gomez

Pretty Girls — Renee Rapp

Cruel Summer — Taylor Swift

Picture You — Chappell Roan

Epilogue Life:

It takes a few months for Catra to feel like she has any handle on “parenting” or any right to even think that term about herself when she’s still a newcomer to Mara’s life, but Mara has accepted her at that point, it’s Catra and her own lack of a parental figure that is stopping her. She never would have accepted someone trying to come in and parent her after being so jaded from the first few years of her life (see her  relationship with Adora’s parents in high school), so she’s expecting Mara to be a lot more hesitant and take “convincing”. She wants to give her the time she needs, but Mara had a loving parent growing up and doesn’t see adding Catra to that role as a bad thing.

Mara also has a little kid understanding of the world, so to her the instant Catra and Adora are dating she’s her stepmom, not because it’s that easy, but because obviously dating = will get married, so there is no point “fighting” something that is inevitable. Even though her parents don’t talk to each other, it doesn’t occur to her that people break up under normal circumstances. Her dad has hurt her mom and her a lot, he’s a bad guy, and Catra isn’t that, so why would she ever leave. They’re both girls and gay, they have no need to breakup. Life isn’t that simple, but it does make their relationship transition pretty smooth from Mara’s perspective.

Catra still insists on the stepdad thing and it becomes a family joke. Catra tells Mara it’s because it would be too confusing if they were both mom and Mara accepts that without question, because she is actually right. The reasons for stepdad are multi-layered, like this addition which helps Mara accept it: Mara wants someone good to replace the force of rejection and imbalance her bio dad was, so she’s more than happy to have Catra take that mantle instead. Catra wants to replace him as well, for many reasons including her own selfish hatred of him, but also her own insecurity. She knows she can be a better parent than Falcon, but she doesn’t think she can ever be equal to Adora and thus an equal mom. Adora’s parents weren’t 100% wrong when they mentioned the butch thing either because it is my headcanon Catra is a little GNC at times. Not really anything deep or strong enough for her to identify any particular way, just something that means she wouldn’t mind stepdad or “sir” even without all those other layers. Eventually a lot of those factors stop seeming like such a big deal but at that point it is just a family joke that never really dies. Occasionally once she’s in high school Mara calls her mom, but mostly Catra is “Dad” or “my stepdad” when being referred to singularly, and then when Mara is referring to both her parents she calls them “my moms”. Which does confuse people and Catra finds that funny.

When Mara is in high school and the age Adora and Falcon were when they started dating, Falcon finally tries reaching out again. That was a phone call Adora never wanted to get, but he’s not coming back to the country — he does still have those debts waiting for him, after all, and unable to pay them back, the stress would take him right back to that mental state he fled — and he’s not trying to rejoin their lives, he just kind of wants to know what happened after he left. Adora is angry and tells him he doesn’t have the right to know that after what he did — and she’s right — but later she still regrets it and, after talking to Catra (who also tells her she was right and she shouldn’t call him back and open that door back into their lives for him, but sits by her side when she’s on the phone to support her when she insists on going through with it), she calls him back. She only gives him the very high level stuff: she started dating someone right around when he disappeared, and they’re married now and happy, and she has become Mara’s new stepdad — something Falcon thinks she says as a pointed jab not knowing that’s really what Mara calls her — and Mara is doing well despite Falcon messing up her sense of trust and safety as a little kid, and definitely doesn’t need him fucking with her again by trying to contact her now. Adora makes it clear this is a courtesy she is giving him with the understanding that, now she has volunteered the information, he isn’t going to seek any more out or bother them.

That holds kind of true. He checks in with Adora around high school graduation just to make sure Mara made through it okay — he can’t help but remember around this time he was ruining both their lives — and to see if she plans to go to college, which she does, and then he calls again three years later just to see if she’s still on that track, which she is. He never calls again and Adora never knows if that’s because he moved on, or got closure, or lost their number, or died. Mara knows he called to check in on her once or twice but Adora didn’t tell her until she was an adult because she worried about reintroducing all that old uncertainty and fear back into her life, and at least now no one can force her to see Falcon if she doesn’t want to.

Catra seriously considers hunting him down after he goes dark, but she has done what she can to close the illegal chapter of her life and she knows Adora wouldn’t be happy with her reopening it — especially when she’s a little rusty — for their own closure with him. Catra didn’t exactly succeed in turning over a new leaf overnight, but she did greatly reduced her law-breaking, leaving only little slip-ups that happened every few months until she managed to stretch a gap long enough for it to become permanent, the impulse no longer second nature and her episodes of feeling untouchable either more rare or focused on something other than being unafraid of the government. She does stay in the cybersecurity sector professionally for a long time and works alongside Entrapta several times throughout the years.

I’ve kind of talked about this before and even included it in the concert scene, but Catra and Entrapta do kind of keep  referring to each other as partner occasionally and honestly neither of them are really sure how they mean it. They never formally said “QPR over”, they said “no more physical affection (sex)” and they remained very close, though it felt like it did end more definitively when Catra eventually moved in with Adora. That took her longer to do than it usually does in AUs due to both her happiness/comfort with Entrapta, trying not to “upset” Mara by forcing the change on her, and Catra still needing the ability to get distance from them for the night sometimes while dealing with her own demons, but those slowly disappear as Mara lets her heal her own childhood and she sees she can be a good parental figure with experience.

Chapter 1:

⦁ “Slipstream” was once again a temporary placeholder name that became permanent. It’s a reference to the hacker Slipstream, one of the names behind the Nintendo gigaleak.

⦁ Entrapta’s daily energy drink limit is by no means her daily average, but any day drinking seven energy drinks is a bad one. She doesn’t actually drink Monster every day… Just like 95% of them. And she is a lot more likely to drink 1-3 than 5.

⦁ Okay I’m like half bullshitting the tech speak in this fic. The 20 minute decryption Waffle House thing? Yeah that’s actually optimistic. The kid who hacked the CIA did that exact thing and took 30 minutes to log on and he still eventually got caught.

⦁ Close followers of my Tumblr will already know Adora Maria is reference to some terrible  “wrong” trivia answers to a question about She-ra’s names.

Chapter 2:

⦁ Steps (loosely): 1) Identify absolutely necessary files and save them, 2) Paste contents of other important word/text files into empty cloud documents she can download later (cleaning metadata), 3) Create a new encrypted email on a totally different machine (in this case, Catra’s clean laptop she had with her), 4) Forward absolutely necessary emails to new address (being very selective), 5) Delete what accounts it’s reasonable to just nuke, 6) Completely wipe computer and reset it, 7) Change first the associated email and then the password of all other accounts in a closed environment (Catra’s laptop) and turn on two-factor for absolutely everything that has the option, 8) When all information has been reset, delete old email in closed environment as insurance.

⦁ Adora’s scent changed some with pregnancy and then the rest with lifestyle changes.

⦁ Mara comes out to check on them because Adora told her an old friend from high school was coming over and she wasn’t making the happy sounds she makes with her friends. When she realized Adora was stressed she got worried, doubly so when she said it was grown-up stuff, because that grown-up stuff could be Mara-related — especially since she knows Falcon is causing problems with child support even if Adora tries to keep her from hearing about it too much — which is why Adora invited her out to see it’s really okay.

Chapter 3:

⦁ Originally when I wrote the group chat there was nothing differentiating who was speaking, but I had the idea to use emojis like profile pictures to make it more clear. The scorpio icon was originally head-in-the-clouds (high af emote), the star was originally just a sassy emote, and the dragon changed the same. I ended up changing them because a reader sent an ask letting me know that the emotes wouldn’t translate to epub format and the Scorpio and star “emote” are part of the standard unicode colored symbals, so I’m hoping they’re included, but I also don’t have any way of checking without just uploading the thing so this was my best effort. I kept the dragon even though it’s not included because I was too attached and only one person missing an icon would at least differentiate it from the others still.

⦁ Adora named Mara after her old teacher Mara because she was the only out lesbian she (knew) she had ever met. She was pretty quiet about it to not get harassed by parents, but she wasn’t about to lie about it, and she would talk about Hope when prompted. Adora admired that back in high school thinking she just Respected Her Ideals™️ and later realized it was more than that.

⦁ Catra’s conflicting feelings looking at Mara hugging Adora’s hip are actually less because she’s remembering her father and more remembering she was doing that to feel safe and she doesn’t like to think she’s making a kid feel unsafe too.

⦁ Adora’s habit of rubbing at her tattoo (versus something like the back of her neck) started when it itched a lot while healing. She has terrible tattoo discipline and really shouldn’t get another one because she couldn’t leave it alone.

⦁ You might be able to tell here, but originally Mara was intended to be older (8-ish or something) but I didn’t want them to separate that long. The timeline is already kind of screwy because even with Adora a year older Mara should actually be four with pregnancy time, but shhhhhh.

⦁ Oh my god I wish more people knew the difference between the deep web and the dark web. People act like they’re interchangable when Facebook qualifies as the deep web. Catra is a deep web miscreant, not the dark web.

Chapter 4:

⦁ Perfuma doesn’t know they’re cyber criminals but given the jokes about felonies she can guess that’s the only thing that makes sense, and then she elects not to think any more about it because they’re really important to Scorpia and she wants plausible deniability.

⦁ Obviously Catra hadn’t said Adora’s name yet, but Adora is such an Entity in her mind it feels like everybody should think about her as much as Catra does.

⦁ Perfuma would have to be totally oblivious to not pick up from the conversation that Catra had a crush on Adora in high school, and knowing what she does about Adora’s comphet she just kind of assumes it was the classic “crush on a straight girl” that went nowhere until Catra left school. She’s not about to embarrass Catra by bringing that up to Adora, but if she knew how serious it was and had a hunch how Adora felt she might interfere.

⦁ Table break lore. I wouldn’t say this is a reference so much as a shared headcanon that previously came up allllllllllll the way back in Drawn Into The Music, where Scorpia breaks a table trying to lean on it while drunk because Biceps.

⦁ Mara’s set up is basically what I had as a kid. When we were little we had the “kid computer” which belonged to someone back in the day when it was actually considered a good machine. It didn’t have internet and was just for playing games (which were all offline at that point in time). When we got old enough for the internet we had a  software that only let us browse for like 30 minutes each day and I think had an automatic filter of inappropriate sites? If it did, the site list was very minimal and I never ran into any issues personally, but a software that blocks pornhub isn’t a bad thing for a five year old to have even if I’m generally against online surveillance lmao. It’s not making a list of sites she visited for spying purposes or anything, and generally Adora tries to be in the room with her when she’s online (in-game or not) because you know. Super young. She’s really busy though and sometimes has to rely on the idea that the parents of Mara’s friends are doing the same thing and monitoring them so they can keep safe. That is not always true.

⦁ Adora tousles Mara’s hair and pets her so much because that became one of the ways she knew how to express affection with Catra and now it’s just ingrained as a part of her.

⦁ Semi-related, she and Catra didn’t actually meet until middle school in this ‘verse and had about five years together before Catra’s breakdown.

⦁ Adora’s tattoo is the season one sword in a deep maroon and then the gem in the center of the hilt is the sunset ombre from the lesbian flag. Catra just thought the lines were black because she couldn’t see that shade of red.

⦁ “The breakup” here is code for “uncomfortable sex experience”.

Chapter 5:

⦁ Catra was about to say she doesn’t get on her knees unless a pretty girl asks nicely before her brain caught up with her mouth.

⦁ Adora was absolutely not going to interrupt because she was smitten watching them interact. She never in her wildest dreams thought Catra would do more than tolerate her child at best, but she forgot the factor of her kind of outweighed the factor of child.

⦁ Uhhhh. So. Alright fuck it. Catra was in a mania fit when she broke into the mall. That can come from a couple things and I’ve experienced it once I think, but yeah she really should be on mood stablizers and just refuses to see a professional about it. Once her life stabilized and she essentially had Entrapta as a safety net, knowing she wasn’t going to kick her out if her work lapsed, it made things a lot easier, but her constant vigilance against authorities could just as easily be seen as appropriate vigilance as it is paranoia (primarily socially-unacceptable anxiety).

⦁ Catra doesn’t know how to categorize her emotions outside of bad criteria so any strong emotion gets categorized as “breakdownable” or not but that’s definitely not what she’s feeling here, having emotions just feels like she’s dying.

⦁ Bella Sara supremacy !! 🗣️🗣️I don’t think it was available on the Vita lol but it was in THIS universe.

Chapter 6:

⦁ Catra was, subconsciously, still trying to delay the inevitable of Adora and Entrapta meeting by meeting with Adora and Scorpia downstairs. When they finally came home and it was time, Catra basically tried to get everyone settled in the living room and her own bedroom without “bothering” Entrapta, but she did vaguely greet them when they got home. Their first real conversation was the one in the bed, though.

⦁ Adora is the type of drunk to try to perpetuate her own existence. If you look away from drunk Adora for a second she’s doing another round of shots and trying to get herself hospitalized.

⦁ “Adora shouldn’t be worrying about this” yeah this reaction has nothing to do with cheating, Catra, that’s just all she can do with her jealousy reasonably.

⦁ The Scene (1)

⦁ Belgian Boys mini pancakes my beloved

⦁ Okay so “cheating” per se isn’t so much a thing in their relationship, but by the idea that there are rules and they have an understanding which involves not messing around with other people without notification/permission, then yes cheating is a thing. It would  be shitty for Catra to do anything without letting Entrapta know she intends to, which is the entire point of the fun pass.

Chapter 7:

⦁ Catra didn’t really have a sex addiction or anything she was just really, really lonely, knew people found her hot, and needed reasons to stay at other people’s places, so it ended up as a perfect storm.

⦁ “Put the kid on and let me talk to her” from Catra “I’m just tolerating the kid” Meow Meow.

⦁ Yes I know that “bludgeoning weapon” was not at all correct. But it sounded good, and that’s what writing is sometimes.

⦁ “She tells herself Mara would miss her gifts and then immediately questions why she needs to tell herself anything at all.” Idk Catra I think Mara might miss you as a little more than a gift-giving source. She might be really broken up by you not coming around. (You would also miss her but I’m not even going to pretend you’re open to that idea)

⦁ IDK CATRA MAYBE THE KID WANTED TO BE AROUND AND TRUSTED BY YOU. IDIOT

⦁ The Scene (2)

Chapter 8:

⦁ Turnabout’s fair play and we’ve gone from Adora thinking she can’t stay over to Catra thinking it. These two lesbians just need to accept they’re equally needy.

⦁ “Hoodwinked” agenda !! In all seriousness I haven’t watched it in years so I’m not sure if it holds up, but I loved that movie as a kid and so did my mom. I watched it so many times.

⦁ “Tax-free” is in reference to the final line of the chapter, where Catra has some (minor) dues to pay for how she has lived her life, but it’s nothing more serious than what she has already done, because as awful as she often thinks herself, most of what she did was just surviving under hard circumstances.

Chapter 9:

⦁ Adora has it right with Falcon. To him, he and his girlfriend had sex bad enough for her to realize she was gay (he was not being a good partner for that because he didn’t notice she was uncomfortable, he was just thinking three years together made it about time), he suddenly has a kid at only 19, and his now-ex he was planning to marry can’t even look at him. He already had gambling tendencies and really fell on it with the stress of college and navigating the kid situation, and then everything snowballed because the debt got bad enough he couldn’t make tuition and his stress went even further through the roof when he was forced to just get a job to pay what child support he could, and then he starts getting these threats and at that point completely starting over is looking pretty attractive. Whether or not he was in the right has no effect on how his brain was able to handle it and Mara’s inception turned out mildly traumatic for everyone involved.

⦁ “The fact that Adora is right to have her suspicions is annoying.” That’s a little thing called guilt, kitten.

⦁ I don’t know what my thing with Albuquerque is but whenever I think of someone going into hiding/leaving the country I think of them doing it there. I’m sure it was used in some piece of media I consumed when I was young and that’s where it came from because to my knowledge it’s not an international flights hub.

⦁ Glimmer is one of those people who will drop in the group chat like hey who wants to see a show in two weeks and then just buy tickets for everyone. This was actually arranged months ago, hence the Star siblings not thinking about the timing and having a conflict, and it was before Perfuma and Scorpia even started dating.

⦁ Melendy Britt was a voice actress on the OG cartoon and like a third of the female characters, playing Adora amongst others. She was recently at the MOTU SDCC panel.

⦁ In most ‘verses I think Catra loves music, she just has a specific history in this AU that makes it a weird thing for her because she knows it was robbed of her but can’t try to get into it now because that’s acknowledging everything she has lost.

⦁ The brain development thing is actually a myth and it varies wildly between people, but Adora’s parents are also the kind to sincerely believe you’re only using 10% of your brain at any given time.

Chapter 10:

⦁ When I was initially figuring out what to do with Falcon, I wasn’t really sure what to do with him. I wanted to get him involved in criminal stuff Catra could uncover so he couldn’t be around Mara anymore, but I was also hesitant to do that because Adora’s life is in a precarious place without the child support. I also didn’t want to make him into this caricature of awfulness when he was once Adora’s longterm boyfriend and thus at least seemed decent. Then I remembered Catra has a tech sector paycheck and I could easily just run him off at that point.

⦁ Honestly, now is probably the time to admit that every third time I went to write Falcon’s name I almost wrote Sea Hawk just because they’re so similar, which makes sense since Falcon was invented to be Sea Hawk’s ex, but it was a struggle the whole fic lol.

⦁ Okay, but what did happen with Falcon and the money/threats? Well, Catra had it pretty right: they were sketchy people, and criminals sure, scammers definitely, but they weren’t actually going to send hitmen after him or anything. He was never in any danger. Leaving the country did actually give him a new leaf though and he was a better person with it, managing to build something even though he was still struggling with his gambling addiction. He wasn’t able to keep any kind of savings going as a result but he at least learned not to spend money he didn’t actually have and get in debt. He managed to find a small pension job and get help for his anxiety, which let him at least a small modest life.

⦁ Mrs. Bee is Sweet Bee.

⦁ I meant to have a conversation about swearing they never ended up having. Basically, Adora vaguely tries to censor herself, but things like “oh stars” come naturally to her from her parents, “fuck” just also comes naturally from everyone else in her life lol. Mara knows kind of what swear words are and that they’re “adult words” you need to be older to understand the impact of, so when Catra (or Adora) does inevitably swear in front of the kid, it’s  not much of a big deal. Catra ends up making it out to be a bigger thing in her head and putting more effort into censoring herself (read: any effort) than Adora does or cares. Eventually they do talk about it when Catra takes a bit more of a parental role in Mara’s life and is trying to figure out what that entails.

⦁ There’s this tendency for people talking to kids to refer to their parents as “your mom” rather than like, their name which you would be using in any other context. Catra has had a secret rule — secret even to herself — that she’s going to keep Adora’s name and not do that “your mom” shit. Well, here she is doing that shit, and it’s because she feels a lot less like she needs to distance herself from Mara — and thus the concept of Adora having kids — than she did at first when Mara quite frankly terrified her.

⦁ “I didn’t remember your phone number-” a straight up lie, “-and I wasn’t about to go back home under any conditions to ask your parents what you were up to,” will turn out to be a lie.

Chapter 11:

⦁ “It’ll even look bad on Mara by the time of their next zoo visit.” Oh? Are you planning to be part of that visit, Catra?

⦁ (I am not personally a big fan of bucket hats but there are times when they look really cute — yes even on adults — Catra’s just a hater)

⦁ Catra’s description of how the magicat crowns work is actually how her mask works on her official doll. In the case of the magicat queens, though, the hooks were more like a fallback because the mask was made to be so perfect against their face its weight was distributed over the entire thing and the small hooks just kept it from getting out of place.

⦁ Catra’s freakout is very funny to me because kids will play with literally anyone they like but Catra has so little experience she thinks this is what fatherhood is. Not that she isn’t a Trusted Adult to Mara but most of her “signs” would be there whether or not they were dating.

⦁ “It’s also partially that she isn’t ever going to be a father to anyone, and thus using it has more joking distance that feels marginally more acceptable.” She’s a dad within six months lmao.

⦁ Being a parent doesn’t come naturally to a lot of people, and Catra is one of those, so for most of the fic you don’t really get to see her in “parent mode”, and I do worry where it leaves off some people will see her as not a good step-parent for Mara, but that’s a slow process for her to reach. The fic would have to drag out a lot longer before it could reach  the point where it’s natural for her. For most of the first year she feels like she’s horribly flailing during every interaction with Mara, and that doesn’t change with this chapter, but she does internally accept that this is a role she’s going to have and wants to take  up, so while she still jokes and occasionally slips up, she does love the kid and is doing her best.

Chapter 12:

⦁ I’m basically picturing the Home Alone house for Adora’s parents but I don’t remember it from the movie, I remember it from the LEGO set. So do with that what you will.

⦁ Marlena knows what she’s doing and she’s just trying to feel Catra out because she never would have pictured her becoming a parent in high school, but she also knows, both logically and from her phone calls with Adora, that Catra has grown a lot.

Original Outline:

I actually have my original idea for the fic still written down from a Discord conversation with a friend so here it is in its entirety:

vague idea is catra + entrapta are a hacker duo and they’re a thing. adora's organization is data compromised, forcing catra to get back in contact with her to help her fix it (vaguer idea is adora works for a nonprofit or something. dont hold me to that) like catra independently finds out there's a security vulnerability and is like fuck i have to be a good guy about this Maybe Catra tries to hack them to spy on adora because she misses her and then she gets way too much way too easily.

So yeah obviously a lot changed. Another idea was that Catra had to protect Adora from people trying to get her for… IDK, something Catra uncovered that Adora didn’t even know she knew (or at least didn’t realized was incriminating enough for people to want to cover it up), but I don’t really like writing action lol.

Everything changed because I had been wanting to write a single mom Adora fic too, just didn’t have anything written for it. In the initial version of Slipstream, I had no background for how they drifted apart, and the comphet backstory for the single mom Adora fic slotted nicely into Slipstream’s empty past, so I combined them so I could write both at once, especially because (as evidenced by how little was in the outline) I didn’t have any kind of ongoing plot after they reconnected that I actually wanted to write (again, action ideas are fun, but not for me to write). The new story gave me a lot more avenues to explore relationship dynamics as a big element for all the characters, and thus gave the QPR more relevance and let me portray something I think is kind of rare. Entrapta’s relationship with relationships in this fic is really personal to me and it kind of stuck out as a little out of place in the old idea, but in this version of the fic it works into the overall themes of relationships, self-denial, and accepting that what satisfies you isn’t necessarily the thing that will make you happiest and that’s worth whatever risks are associated with it.

I want back and forth on the club chapter and the following revolving around a few points: should they actually kiss in the club or just come close, should they kiss in the kitchen, and should they get evolved enough in that kiss for Adora’s hand to reach Catra’s tail. I kind of knew the latter would be too far, but ultimately decided the first two were permissible within their rules.

Meta:

Adora’s floorplan

Upcoming:

Next up will be an OotW oneshot. I’m also working on the Lightbeam sequel fic, and lowkey another AU I’ve been teasing, but I don’t think I'll have time for them before Sapphic September starts and I chip away at some of those prompts, so we'll see what’s going to shove to the forefront first, so stay tuned IG lol

[stardvstbby]

Some thoughts on Catra’s childhood and how it affects her relationship with Adora in episode 11, “Promise”

In the beginning of the episode the Beacon deems Catra as an unauthorized presence and Adora says to Catra “Those things see you as a threat. And as long as I’m protecting you, they’ll see me as a threat too.” This plays into a belief that Adora associating with Catra will only harm her, that Catra is an intruder in Adora’s life. Adora intends to prevent both of them from being harmed but to Catra this is an example of Adora being hindered because of her.

In the flashback fight, Adora gangs up with Lonnie on Catra, which makes Catra feel alienated from Adora and presents a reality where Adora succeeds due to Catra’s failure.

Right after this the Beacon separates Catra from Adora, paralleling that she isn’t meant to be with Adora. Catra then saves herself (solidifying that she’s better off fighting alone) only for Adora to swing in at the last moment to claim victory. This cements the idea that Catra is unworthy of being recognized for her own accomplishments.

Adora then tells Catra “You don’t belong with the Horde” meaning that she wants Catra with her, but Catra has been told her whole life that she isn’t worth being Adora’s friend. And if she doesn’t belong with the Horde or Adora, then where does she belong? She’s alone as she’s always been. Even when they were still friends Adora was accepted and praised while Catra was treated as disposable.

During the later flashback, Catra was singled out in her physical abuse by Shadow Weaver, which leads Catra to believe she is inherently deserving of it.

All of these moments play into the manipulation Shadow Weaver subjected them to throughout their childhood, creating a false dichotomy between Adora who deserves success and recognition and Catra who is doomed to fail, so that the two had an ever-present underlying conflict and therefore could play right into Shadow Weaver’s hands. Her obvious mistreatment of Catra ensures that she will be hesitant of accepting any good treatment from Adora, driving a wedge between the two that would last into their adulthood.

[anti-spop]

@they-call-me-haiku asked: [hyperlink] this post is so funny because 1. they say “even tv tropes” as if tv tropes is the jesus of all media or something. tv tropes just lists out various tropes found in a movie or tv show, that’s it. 2. op completely ignores the fact that catra still gaslights adora and slaps her when she goes into a panic attack. so even in a “perfect world” where shadow weaver treats catra nicely and loves her, catra is STILL abusive towards adora. doesn’t that defeat the entire point of her character? if shadow weaver wasn’t abusive towards catra in this reality, where did she get her abusive tendencies from? i know that she already had bits of her memory and knew that adora was trying to get out of the portal reality, but if they really wanted to show a contrast between abused catra and catra who grew up with a mother who loved her, they could have shown catra being more gentle with adora, maybe coming clean about what happened and trying to convince adora that the portal reality is better, instead of being like “you’re crazy and you’re just imagining things”. in what world is that catra being supportive of adora? c//a stans continue to ignore canon so they can keep shipping their abusive trashfire of a ship. (not to mention, this entire conflict shows that shadow weaver was indeed catra’s and adora’s adoptive mother but we’re the crazy ones when we point that out)

First, I hope you don't mind answering your ask this way, I couldn't fit it into one screenshot. Second, the post won't show up to me, for some reason. Idk if OP blocked me and/or if I blocked them... When I open the link it just says it doesn't exist. But I guess I can imagine the nature of the post judging by your observations.

You brought up a crucial point: "(...) catra still gaslights adora and slaps her when she goes into a panic attack. so even in a “perfect world” where shadow weaver treats catra nicely and loves her, catra is STILL abusive towards adora. doesn’t that defeat the entire point of her character?" So yeah, it's odd that despite everything, Catra is not any more gentle towards Adora in the Portal reality. If she were, I'd understand C//A stans arguing that Catra and Adora didn't have a hostile relationship before they turned enemies, or if Shadow Weaver loved them healthily. But the s3 finale shows us otherwise. Even with Shadow Weaver's affection, Catra is still cruel towards Adora.

And the thing is, she didn't have to be, if the show always intended for Catra and Adora to get together and/or for Catra to be redeemed. But she just goes way too far, so her redemption feels unnatural and cheap.

[spiralling-spires]

Guys something happened and im back on my she ra nonsense. Help all my recent tabs are tma fanfic i need to go deep in my bookmarks to pull out the she ra stuff and follow a ton of she ra posters bc its been like two years since i was substantially aware of she ra BUT THE HYPERFIX IS COMING BACK I CAN FEEL IT AAAAGH

Its 12:44 am and i’m going to write all my thoughts and theories and you are going to enjoy them

1. Beast island is actually sentient and the reason it makes that signal is because it’s achingly lonely and doesn’t want its new friends (anyone who comes to the island) to leave. Little does it know it’s forcing its depression upon everyone that visits

2. Etheria and Eternia are actually twin planets, the First Ones are humans, and Eternia is far-future Earth (idk, Earth got a neighbour and then we colonized it? Sure sounds like humans to me). This explains why the First Ones’ language is made up of English phonemes and includes English words, and why Adora looks human.

3. Horde Prime used to be an Eternian, a very long time ago. His current form is the result of hundreds of years of incredibly vain genetic engineering and experimenting. He still isn’t fully pleased with his appearance and tweaks his clones every generation in an attempt to find “purity”.

4. Hordak’s “defect” is a result of this tweaking. Imagine inbreeding, except it’s one guy who keeps turning random genes on and off and switching out base pairs to see if it’ll make him prettier. Turns out there were some nasty genetic surprises in Hordak’s version of the code. As with any other clone that had such genetic conditions, Prime tossed him out in the next major fleet movement without running any analyses first. Running an analysis would force him to confront the fact that he (gasp) made an error!

5. The “general” thing wasn’t actually complete bs. Prime threatening to take Catra’s body as his own, was. See, Prime really wants to be this one perfect thing. Why would he waste time being a cat when he could be perfect? He has a special line of “generals” whose sole purpose is to house his mind. They have two additional eyes, the ability to grow those weird chin/cheek spikes, and the capacity to be much taller (all hidden unless he gives them specific hormones in preparation for inhabiting them). All this to say: Hordak might just wake up with four eyes open one day and promptly freak himself (and everyone else) out.

6. Entrapta has been in the center of a lot of explosions (esepcially when she was a teenager and hadn’t figured out the right balance of “pursue knowledge” to “lab safety” yet) and has replaced a startling amount of her body with prosthetics covered in a synthetic skin.

7. Hordak’s body wasn’t repaired by Prime in season 5. Prime just injected him with a bunch of painkillers (not enough to not be in pain, but enough to function) and covered up the arm holes. About an hour after the finale, the painkillers wear off and Hordak all but collapses. Having a chronic muscle/joint condition + being electrocuted + being possessed hurts. Man, he really went through it, didn’t he?

8. Based on Wrong Hordak, it’s going to be… really hard for the clones to get used to being outside of the hivemind. They will form cults. They will make new pieces of technology that will mimic the hivemind. They’ll scrounge for the chips and try to implant them in each other. They will find and beg (or threaten) Entrapta and Hordak to put back the hivemind. Hopefully people will have enough compassion for them to help them get used to being individuals.

9. All Eternians have the capacity to activate the Sword of Protection and become She-Ra (or gender-correlated equivalent). Horde Prime is, initially, Eternian, based on the other headcanons here, so he hypothetically could. Any clone could. Hordak could.

Wow! I forgot about some of these headcanons! This was pretty neat. Hope you guys like em too. Also I haven’t watched canon in like a year so there might be some inaccuracies, but at some point I figured that holding onto the thoughts until I rewatched canon just wasn’t worth it. And lo and behold now you can see all my random thoughts too!

[spop-romanticizes-abuse]

i see a lot of people saying “you can have your opinions but you don’t have to bash a ship that other people like” and i just want y’all to understand. this isn’t about personal preference. there are a lot of ships i dislike or don’t particularly like because of my preferences. that doesn’t mean i’m going to write essays about how bad they are or bash people for liking the ship.

for example, i’m not a huge fan of jayce x mel (arcane) because their relationship kinda came out of nowhere and i don’t really see a lot of chemistry between them. that doesn’t mean i hate the ship or that i resent the creators for making it canon. there’s nothing objectively wrong with this ship. it’s just not for me.

this is not the case with c//a. this ship is objectively problematic because it romanticizes a lot of things that shouldn’t be romanticized, especially in a kids show. i would have even let it slide if it was in an adult show. i would hope that the adults watching would be smart enough to realize that this isn’t an ideal relationship.

but that’s not the case with kids. especially queer kids, who have very little representation to look up to, they’re going to idolize catra’s and adora’s relationship and think that this is completely normal and healthy. if they ever end up with an abusive partner, they won’t question it because their favorite show taught them that people who hurt you are secretly in love with you.

bottom line, different ships can coexist in peace but valid criticism is valid criticism. i didn’t even ship glimmadora for the longest time, so it’s not like i only hate c//a because i’m mad about glimmer and adora not getting together. but that’s what a lot of c//a shippers think, they think we’re just bitter because our favorite ship isn’t canon. and i honestly doubt anyone can convince them otherwise.

[that-ari-blogger]

Go Now, Be At Peace (Hero)

One of my favourite things to see filmmakers play around with is time. As in, the information isn’t given to the audience linearly, and instead it is at the author’s beck and call.

This would seem easy, but the trick is making it work. Naturally, if you write a story and turn around in the final instalment and say “wait, I actually had a sister and a secret best friend this entire time”, it will feel like you have cheated. But if you can stick the landing, messing around with time is the juiciest writing technique out there. At least to me.

Case and point, the gimmicky emotional rollercoaster that is Hero.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power)

First up, yes, this episode is gimmicky as all heck, and that is exactly what I love about it.

I think we see a lot of criticism about how certain tropes are bad, but that really isn’t the case at all. If a story gets you invested enough, you can see it coming a mile off and it will still hit you like a truck.

There are even tropes that rely on you knowing what they are, with doomed heroes coming to mind most readily, but we’ll get there in a moment.

If we define a trope simply as a repeated literary element external to a story, then if that is by definition bad, symbolism doesn’t work in the same way.

Half of symbolism is external. This is Tumblr, that’s what colour theory is, you all know this. The red carpet represents happy thoughts and warmth and healing.

In this episode, for example, there is a ton of discussion about the Heart Of Etheria project, which is described thusly:

“It was supposed to be an energy source, capable of so much good. But that's not what they made.”

“How will destroying worlds bring peace?”

The Heart of Etheria project is a nuclear weapon. That’s what the symbolism is communicating here. The First Ones may not have been the antagonists in their war, but their ends did not justify the means, at least not in… hold on a sec. We’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

The symbolism here draws on the same ideas as Star Wars to create a feeling of unknowable terror. The first ones didn’t care about Etheria, they wanted to use it as a pawn in their own war.

The series dwells pretty heavily on the thematic idea of abuse being a cycle, and the Heart Of Etheria is a pretty potent symbol for that. In order to escape their own abuse, the first ones created something that would hurt others. In order to regain personhood, they took power from a planet.

They claimed the agency of someone else, leaving a vacuum in its place.

On the other hand, the series does have some heavy internal symbolism, that being through the dichotomy of magic and technology.

“I need the sword to control She-Ra's magic.”

“Ha! She-Ra was here long before your people arrived. You cannot control magic! Magic simply is.”

Technology, specifically that of the First Ones, but also from the Horde, is synonymous with control. Which puts magic in the role of freedom, specifically that of agency. Magic just is.

“Is”. The third-person singular present tense of “to be”.

Magic is the very concept of being. It is the freedom to do stuff. What stuff? Any stuff you want. Free from restraints and shackles, free from the will of others.

There are exceptions to this rule, and they are characters. Shadow Weaver, who uses magic to control, and Entrapta, the master technician who is unrestrainable. This gets watered down to their apprentices, with Glimmer and Bow respectively, and in the middle of this is Adora.

But the fact that these are exceptions to the rule kinda proves that there is a rule here.

And those exceptions are explained pretty handily, at least with Shadow Weaver and Glimmer. They are using dark magic, not in the way it wants to be used. They are forcing the magic to do what they want, and taking its agency from it, as well as using it to murk characters onscreen.

Bow, meanwhile, uses tech to coordinate, specifically in the sense of battlefield control. And Entrapta seeks only to understand, and knowledge is power. But she never tries to control anyone. Freedom is a big thing for Entrapta, and I honestly don’t have a reading of how she plays into this. I’ll let you know if this changes.

This is an in-text symbol that has meaning. Like an external one, it can be done well or poorly depending on the story, much like time nonlinearity.

Which brings me to my issue with writing this analysis:

For my coverage of the fourth season of She-Ra, I have been avoiding talking about Adora and Catra, because I will devote most of the final season to them. The problem here, is that Hero is set up around the parallels between Adora and her predecessor. The time nonlinearity serves to exacerbate those similarities, to the point where avoiding mentioning Adora even slightly is a detriment to the episode.

So, be aware that she is there, as I try to ignore her for the purposes of this post.

Anyway, the main character of this episode is Razz, and my question from about a season ago still stands here. Why is Razz in this story? How do I read the theming of an old lady who has lived thousands of years, and has met everyone under the sun? How do I read a character who is displaced in time? Why is that significant?

I have a thesis, and you’ll have to bear with me on this.

In my reading, Razz is Etheria. Maybe not literally, but on a story level, I think Razz and Etheria are one and the same. Razz saves and is saved by the previous She-Ra in a similar fashion to how Etheria teaches and is protected by her, and she befriends Adora in the same way. She gets temporally shunted because she sees the She-Ras as the same. To her, they are different and the same, and the order of events isn’t important.

Part of why I love this episode and its time travel shenaniganry is that it leverages that for emotion. There is a building dread in this episode, specifically through that pie.

Razz will never get to enjoy that pie with her friend, you know this from the start. So, when Mara walks through the door the first time, your heart sinks.

This episode is also about Mara, and I will get to the final scene in a minute, but first, introductions.

Mara starts the episode laughing. She closes it crying. This episode shows the breaking down of this character, and I cannot think of a better example.

This episode sets up Mara as incredibly intelligent. She pieces together the Heart of Etheria plan, but she also works out that Adora will need guidance, and that she can offer that via someone who would know. She knows that Razz will guide Adora to where she needs to be, and leaves messages.

She also acts as an audience surrogate for Razz to exposit themes to.

“It’s all right. No one here will hurt you.”

The theme here is pretty obvious. Things lash out when they are scared, and all you need to do to achieve peace is to be gentle. Mara, a person who is here to end a war, is trying to achieve that peace. But we have seen the cost of that.

I'm running out of space, so if you've seen How To Train Your Dragon, you know what this is. This is about trust with the other and coming together despite differences. This is about comradery with the planet itself. Mara needs to not rush at things, and instead wait, and be gentle. They will come to her.

I did a word search on the transcript of this episode for the word “peace”, and I found that it comes up thrice. When Mara and Light Hope argue, and here, when Mara calms down the animal.

“Go, be at peace.”

As a side note, the fighting styles of Mara and Adora are very different. Adora relies on strength and athleticism to win her battles. She can go toe to toe with Huntara and is the slower combatant when she fights Catra. But Mara flips around the battlefield like a gymnast or a dancer. The two come from different places, trained by opposite sides, it’s no wonder they fight differently.

When Light Hope presents her own worldview, or rather, that of her superiors, her wording is important.

“The Heart of Etheria has been activated. Your mission will be fulfilled. There will be peace throughout the galaxy. You will be a hero.”

Hero’s a funny word, ain’t it? It means someone you can look up to, and in war times, it is presented as loyalty and dedication to the cause. The ANZACs were heroes, for example.

Here, it is used as a trophy for Mara. She will be declared a hero, an empty title, just for doing what she is told.

But She-Ra doesn’t agree with this definition. In She-Ra, a hero saves people. In She-Ra, Mara is a hero because she disobeyed her orders to follow her better judgement and notably, she never gets called that in this episode.

Instead, she gets a monologue. She uses her last moments to give the next generation hope for the future and try to let them know of her mistakes. She sees the cycle of abuse, and she couldn’t break it, but she could leave tools for the next rotation to try and use.

Then Razz, the embodiment of the planet she saved, calls her brave, and leaves her a pie.

Mara is gone, Adora isn't looking at her predecessor, she's looking at an empty chair. She's looking at the absence of a person, the loss of a friend. She is looking at the legacy of someone she looks up to.

This episode doesn’t give you closure, because it’s not trying to. It is trying to make you feel empty. We meet Mara for just a moment, and then she is gone, and we know that, and yet we still get attached.

If that hologram hadn’t cut off exactly when it did, we would have seen Mara die. A millisecond later, and we would have watched it happen.

We watch an entire journey in this episode, everything we needed to know, and then it ends, with silence, as the credits role. The embodiment of the planet itself offers Mara a pie as a grave gift. She’s returning the favour. Go now be at peace.

"She said she would come back. She promised. We were going to make a pie. I've been waiting for so long."

I need to talk about the thing with promises, and specifically breaking them. In previous episodes, Adora promised Catra she would look out for her, and failed, and Mara made Razz a promise she knew she would never keep. Why?

The obvious reason is that unkept promises are a key source of dramatic irony, especially when you know the end point before it is said. In comedy, this is someone asking if a dress makes them look fat, and everyone in the room saying no. In a tragedy, it’s this.

The ticking in this shot of the countdown timer is such an incredible use of sound design. First up, time symbolism, of course. But it's also stressful You hear a timer getting quicker and you panic. When it is released, there is no explosion, just a dying friend.

Because, yes, this is a tragedy, remember? That’s why its cyclical, that’s why this episode exists.

"I try to remember but it gets all muddled up. Adora, Mara, it always ends the same. The present, the future..."

"Razz?"

"The past."

Everything in this series has happened before within its own continuity. The weapon, the loss of friends, the transformations, everything. This is a series about the cycle of abuse that always, always, leads to tragedy. It sets its current events up like one, and then shows you in vivid detail, just how that will end.

I said she ends the episode crying. But she does it with a smile. She looks her death in the eye and offers up hope and trust. Mara, the girl who laughed, the girl who cried, the girl who smiled.

The final scene looks like the two are talking in real time. The series cuts between Mara and Adora as they speak, taking care to be inconsistent with who is holographic. The parallels are baked into the setting, and they are being fought against.

I feel like whenever I talk about the story being cyclical, that I under stress how everything in it is about breaking those cycles. Magic and tech, agency and control. The cycle boxes you in, preventing your actions, controlling you. Breaking free is taking back that agency for yourself. The first ones tried to do this by trying to get someone to take their place, we will see if and how Adora and company will attempt the same or try something new.

Final Thoughts.

Genuinely, this post was the hardest to write of anything I have done. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because rewatching this episode left me in an emotional wreck. I genuinely felt like the scene from Interstellar when the main character laughs and cries all at the same time.

For the record, I haven’t seen Interstellar, I just know the meme.

This post was emotionally exhausting, so I'm going to lie down now. Next week is Fractures, stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[spopsalt]

I found all of these on Pinterest TODAY. And I’m only gonna be able to unpack SOME of them.

“Better than the rest of the female population”? Jfc, did whoever make that one hate women or something? Because Catra is the lowest bar for a person. Not even a bar, that chick is the fucking floor.

I don’t even understand what the Jesus one is trying to say. But I don’t think I want to. Im pretty sure whoever made that is susceptible to falling into a cult. Which is fair, since this fandom essentially is one.

“We wants S4 Catra.” First off, I feel like they’re specifically saying S4 bc thats the season most people agree she’s legal. Second, that’s literally Catra ar her worse. Look, I understand liking villains. Im a simp for villain characters. But something tells me the type of person who made that meme doesn’t understand liking a villain and acknowledging they’re a villain. They probably think S4 is the best because she’s ‘Mommy’ or whatever, and would probably defend everything she did in that season and pretend she wasn’t a villain, without realizing S4 Catra (Every Catra really) would literally let someone die for being an inconvenience, try to murder suicide someone to prove a point, send someone to a death prison for saying no, and would essentially rip out someone’s pacemaker for a laugh. Yes, the perfect partner. 😒

“Why can’t Catra be real?” Well… Catra specifically doesn’t. But people like her do. Most of them are war criminals, dictators, politicians, mass murderers, abusers, ableists, rapists, people in positions of power, in jail, the type of person to hit someone for talking back, single for a reason, you get the idea. So, in short whoever is out here simping for Catra hopefully realizes the difference between reality and fiction when having a crush. And if they don’t, they need help. I’m not even getting into the fact about half of these are her as a minor (if not all of them.)

Btw, I’m not saying anyone who relates to Catra is a bad person like what I listed. You can relate to her and not actually be like her. But I think most if the toxic stans who ‘want someone like Catra’ are in it for the wrong reasons. I. E. ‘Mommy-dom Cat-girl UWU Catra’ which is literally just an abuser who has probably murdered a lot of people.

Exactly thank you! There's a disturbing amount of Catra simps and as a pansexual I can confirm I never simped for Catra (Or any fictional character if I'm honest) I mean I guess I could see why someone would due to some people simping for villain characters (For example I know a LARGE amount of the Rick and Morty Fandom want to smash Rick, there's literally an account dedicated to it) but I still don't get it. Whatever.

Also they should be happy that Catra isn't real because Catra would be in prison. Also who wants to be the Catra to my Adora...you mean who wants to be the abuser to my victim? I'm so incredibly distributed by Catra fans

[goalieflashflight]

Incorrect quotes 3

Moist to Adora: Stop being so mean to me, or I swear to gods, I’m gonna fall in love with you.

Vimes: Where are you, Sybil? This place is fancy and I don’t know which fork to kill myself with.

Moist gleefully: They hate me because of my personality. I can totally change my personality!  

Vetinari: Please don’t mistake my measured blank tone for calmness, as I am filled with waters of rage.

Stanley: Just like Grand Postmaster Mr. Von Lipwig.

Moist: Oh, look at that. I’ve never been an inspiration before. *frowns* I don’t like it. It’s too much responsibility.

Angua: what a dumb idea.

Angua: do it.

Magrat: you always see the worst in people.

Granny: yeah, because people are the worst!

Moist: My staff are killing me!

Mr. Pump: silence

Moist: Fine, you're right; I like them. I hate myself. Is that what you want me to tell you?

Ridcully: If I was doing something stupid, you definitely would be involved.

Dean: yeah, you’re damn right I would be. and I would probably be there to make it even stupider.

Moist: I’m not convinced I know how to read. I just memorized a lot of words.

Cheri: I brake for birds, I rock a lot of polka dots. I have touched glitter in the last 24 hours!

Cheri: and that doesn’t mean I’m not smart and tough and strong.

Moist trying to hide information from Vimes: We got a hungry birthday boy right here. I don’t wanna bore him with foreign mail.

Young Sam: I like mail.

Moist: Oh, you don’t know what you like. You’re three years old.

Sybil: Young Sam is not a fan.

Moist: He doesn’t like me???

*Abridge quote*

Sybil: He sees you more as a dimwitted raccoon.

Moist: Well, my mind is blown.

Young Sam: Goodbye, Mr. Diarrhea head.

Moist deadpanned: Hey, do you have my money, Young Sam? 

Young Sam *Huff*

Moist: Then we have nothing to talk about.

[citadelofmythoughts]

This hurt my heart so much, especially after hearing Yang say later that she thought she’d died. I can imagine the last person she’d want to see in the afterlife was her little sister.

So don’t you dare try to tell me that Yang, the girl who sacrificed her CHILDHOOD for Ruby and who literally put herself in harms way for her sister doesn’t love her just because she loves Blake too.

Poor Yang sacrifices and sacrifices and has been abandoned so often so is it any wonder she’d do anything for the people around her?

"You're worth more than what you can give to other people. You deserve love too." - Mara to Adora “She-Ra” Yang, you deserve the world and you definitely deserve Blake’s love. You’re worth so much more than throwing yourself in front of swords.