I finished the first season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power today, (yes, I know I'm late) and I think it's abundantly clear to me now that one of my cardinal rules of storytelling is that characters must make sense for their setting. Otherwise, there will be yelling. And possibly blog posts, because what is a blog for if not yelling into the aether about something being good or bad, right or wrong, in our media?
First up, I find that I agree with Ana Mardoll about the problem of portraying Entrapta throughout the series, and the harm that comes from making the character that is closest to autism spectrum into a person who doesn't appear to care about the people cost of her experiments.
I'm not particularly fond of Mermista's characterization as a Valley Girl kind of teenager, mostly because that characterization of being too jaded for everything grates hard on me (even if it mostly turns out to be a front), and I don't like that Princess Frosta, the most East Asian looking one of the lot, turns out to be the one who has the cold powers and is portrayed as having an obsession with rules and protocol over Adora's warnings. I realize that working with a property that already has certain character designs built into it is limiting, but I'll bet there's a fascinating piece out there about the fact that the honor of Grayskull turns a pale-skinned blond-haired character into a taller, longer-haired and more powerful blond-haired, pale-skinned person. While the story leaves the deuterotagonist with darker skin, heterochromia, and no powers ever. And what sort of show it might be if the protagonist got turned into pale skin and blonde hair if she didn't have it beforehand but had to accept it as the price of becoming She-Ra.
(I do like the decision to give She-Ra a skort. Very practical when swinging swords about.)
Where I had a really bad break with the storytelling, though, is with Catra, and here's where the spoiler cut happens.
( It's not just a Buffy and Faith thing, not really. )
That said, She-Ra has a lot of things going for it, including a lot of room for the possibility of romantic relationships between princesses, so if it picks up a second season, I'm likely to be watching.
ETA:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cimorene talks about the likely traumas inflicted on Adora and Catra both and how those might manifest, in ways the show got convincingly and in ways where the show might have needed better signposting and reinforcement of how those traumas interact with Adora and Catra's lives and relationships. There's a lot of "Yep, this." in that post.
First up, I find that I agree with Ana Mardoll about the problem of portraying Entrapta throughout the series, and the harm that comes from making the character that is closest to autism spectrum into a person who doesn't appear to care about the people cost of her experiments.
I'm not particularly fond of Mermista's characterization as a Valley Girl kind of teenager, mostly because that characterization of being too jaded for everything grates hard on me (even if it mostly turns out to be a front), and I don't like that Princess Frosta, the most East Asian looking one of the lot, turns out to be the one who has the cold powers and is portrayed as having an obsession with rules and protocol over Adora's warnings. I realize that working with a property that already has certain character designs built into it is limiting, but I'll bet there's a fascinating piece out there about the fact that the honor of Grayskull turns a pale-skinned blond-haired character into a taller, longer-haired and more powerful blond-haired, pale-skinned person. While the story leaves the deuterotagonist with darker skin, heterochromia, and no powers ever. And what sort of show it might be if the protagonist got turned into pale skin and blonde hair if she didn't have it beforehand but had to accept it as the price of becoming She-Ra.
(I do like the decision to give She-Ra a skort. Very practical when swinging swords about.)
Where I had a really bad break with the storytelling, though, is with Catra, and here's where the spoiler cut happens.
( It's not just a Buffy and Faith thing, not really. )
That said, She-Ra has a lot of things going for it, including a lot of room for the possibility of romantic relationships between princesses, so if it picks up a second season, I'm likely to be watching.
ETA:
cimorene talks about the likely traumas inflicted on Adora and Catra both and how those might manifest, in ways the show got convincingly and in ways where the show might have needed better signposting and reinforcement of how those traumas interact with Adora and Catra's lives and relationships. There's a lot of "Yep, this." in that post.
