my favourite character design on spop so far: Castaspella.
Look at her! Look at her headband!
Look at her clothes!
Look at her face!
The grace, poise, charm! And all the colours used just look so good next to each other – I was blown away when she first came on screen. aesthetics: 10/10 would look at again
Castapella is honestly the one character besides Imp who got a through thematic overall. And I find it completely understandable.
So 80s. The Sun and Lightning motifs seem weird with her wise ruler schtick.
If she does show up for battle in an outfit like that in the new series will laugh though.
I see everyone saying “two hands” in regards to ships, but no one commenting that Entrapta can make a mind boggling number of “hands”.
In a roleswap Catra would honestly really be enthusiastic as a hero … for completely nonmoral reasons.
Catra’s disdain for princesses seems to come from cynicism and pride of being too smart to fall for the fear-mongering propaganda.
If an artifact gave her awesome power and loyal admirers, the right context and a receptive emotional state would cause her to leave (most of) that disdain at the door.
Catra’s main motivators are a desire for validation, and power so no one can hurt her.
She’d see powers granted to her and the Princess Alliance as tools of revenge to be wielded against all in the Horde who ever wronged her. Which would definitely cause a lot of friction with Glimmer and Angela.
Her reunion with Adora would have her going “join me Adora and we can rule …together!”
And likely end with “You never believed in me! You’re jealous! You want me to just be your loyal sidekick!”
(Also , since Shadow Weaver probably wouldn’t send out a search party to get Catra, their reunion would be later on than it was in the show.)
The sad thing is she would be more receptive to Light Hope’s manipulations than Adora, at first finding herself agreeing with Light Hope about her friends holding her back.
I don’t know why Scorpia would end up working with Adora; but I lean towards Shadow Weaver callously treating Scorpia as a replacement goldfish in an attempt to cheer Adora up about Catra’s defection.
They would be so much worse at being evil together than Catra and Scorpia. It would be adorably wholesome.
Princess Prom would be less eventful and calmer at least, with Adora simply using it to gather intelligence rather than staging a terrorist attack… If she can manage to give an inspirational speech to convince Scorpia to attend which I’m honestly not sure she could pull off.
Notice I didn’t necessarily Catra would get the sword in this AU. I could just as easily see her getting some other First One Tech that allowes her to turn into a magical feline monster like in the original series. Bonus points if it turns out to have been used by a sidekick of one of the past She-Ra’s, for added insult.
What Catra does in the show is not right, but her actions makes sense considering her backstory. She has always been abused. She’s always been told she is unimportant and disposable- It’s no wonder she is desperate to want to prove herself. Her insecurity and obsession with becoming more powerful comes from years of living in fear because of this person who keeps threatening her of being KILLED.
She is always the one taking the fall, even when Adora had just as much a hand in their playing and breaking rules. Adora never gets into too much trouble. Because she is the favorite child.
Adora only gets a small pat on the head and is told to “keep Catra under control” and to “not let Catra do things like this again”. Like it’s all Catras fault.
Catra has to watch this happen, just seconds after being threatened to her life for doing the exact same thing Adora did..
This is what Catra has had to grow up with. Being treated like the dirty failure who only accompanies the “perfect, special favorite child”. (Please, understand that I am in no way meaning to bash Adora or anything. I am simply explaining how I think it is seen from Catra’s view)
This alone tells us so much about her mentality, where it all comes from. She is always second best. She is always the black sheep. She is the one who always gets the blame and is so badly mistreated while her friend gets nothing but a slap on the hand, if even that.
Again, while her actions isn’t right, they do make sense. Catra wants to not be that weak, scared child anymore. She wants to prove herself strong.
While seeing Adora as her best friend, she does hold a lot of resentment toward her. For being the favorite. And for not seeming to take into consideration what her own actions can do to Catra (more so in the future than when they were children). When she left to find the sword, she had no thoughts at all what trouble Catra could fall into while covering for her, even when she clearly knows about the abuse Catra resieves from Shadow Weaver.
(Something that’s always bothered me was the coments Adora made in episode 1 about Catra being treated that way because she is “disrespectful”. While Adora probably didn’t mean that Catra deserves the abuse, she still made a coment that sounds awfully like “it’s your own fault”, which is so horrible to say to a victim of abuse. Again, Adora knows about it. She has seen it herself. )
Again, if you’re still reading, I like Adora and I don’t mean to bash her character, but I do understand Catra’s view of it all. She was always the one to take a fall and Adora never seemed to actually stand up for her the way she does for her new friends. Under all these years, Adora has never actually talked back or taking a real stand against Shadow Weaver. Partly because she probably was scared herself, I mean who wouldn’t be? Shadow Weaver was also the one who raised her and it can be hard to stand up to and partly because she still justified the harsh conditions they lived in as being normal in their training for the war.
Adora was also treated badly in the Horde, but not nearly as bad as Catra. Actually, watching the show, Adora seemed to have most things going good for her. She was the favorite. Still is Shadow Weaver’s favorite. She wasn’t treated the same way Catra was.
Catra feels resentment because of that. But she could stand that because they were friends and she cared for Adora. But then Adora left. Just like that. No hesitation. She left to go rebel against the Horde and turn her back on everything she had worked for – after spending a few hours with complete strangers. That made Catra snap.
“You only figured that out NOW?”
Adora never once thought of leaving for Catra’s sake. She would have never turned into a rebel fighter because she saw the abuse Catra went through as bad, no, but because complete strangers got hurt.
And that is the scary thing that Catra had to realize. Adora never saw the Horde as evil until she saw these strangers get attacked. She never saw them as evil when Catra got abused. She never saw them as evil when Catra’s life was threatened.
She had seen all that as normal, excused or even “Because you are rather disrespectful”.
Catra feels worthless to her best friend. She feels abandoned. She feels betrayed.
Does that make what she is doing right? No, it doesn’t.
But it does give an explanation for them.
Catra isn’t just a simple villain who wants to rule everything. She wants power to not be scared and hurt anymore. She wants to prove herself as strong so that she doesn’t have to fear her abusers anymore. She wants to beat the source of her insecurity, which she believes is Adora. She wants revenge for being abandoned by her best friend.
Catra is a really sad character, who I really hope will get a redemption arc.
catra isn’t a furry because she didn’t make the conscious decision to have ears fuzz and a tail… she didn’t spend 900 dollars on a fursuit or do anything outside of her nature… she’s just a dumb cat girl and she’s already having a hard time let her rest
Valid. Adora’s the furry.
It bothers me somewhat that Perfuma has the ability to create life out of thin air!
I think it has to do with our culture sees plants as inanimate alot, so the writers didn’t think how weird it is.
She-Ra reboot isn’t the best written show plotwise (”why do they call it the rebellion? why doesn’t Bow make arrows for the guards to use?), but it is treating it characters better than most shows and that’s what I’m there for.
If the writers get overly mean to Kyle though I may reconsider
I do believe the reason we didn’t see the guards in the final battle is that Angella had honestly secretly lost hope and ordered them to oversee evacuation.
It seems pretty clear to me that Angella, like Mermista is understaffed and that’s why she grudgingly let Glimmer be part of the military. Many of the rulers have seen their subject retreat to foreign lands, after losing confidence in their ruler’s abilities to protect them.
Monsters and Stuff 