![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptI 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.
opensummer expressed significant frustration with the way that Adora and Catra were portrayed in the show, and I'm riffing on that idea, even if I think I'm running in a very different direction than the linked post. The Buffy/Faith parallel got a lot stronger as the episodes moved toward the season conclusion, and so it was probably with that lens that I was looking at the whole thing.
There's a moment, though, in Episode 9, where Catra has Glimmer prisoner, Adora prisoner, and Shadow Weaver, who has been the surrogate mother figure for both of them through this entire sequence, outright says to Catra that she'd rather have Adora back with a memory wipe than acknowledge Catra has grown and become a competent person in her own right.
Up to this point, there's been a strong theme of trying to get Adora back to her friends from the Princesses that have taken her and seem to have effectively brainwashed her, at least according to Catra. And then together, the two of them can do all sorts of great things for Hordak. Catra wants her friend back, but she also wants to prove to Shadow Weaver that she's good enough to handle the responsibilities that would have fallen to Adora. Catra gets strong, ruthless, and gathers her own allies to help her succeed and try to prove to everyone that she's just as good as Adora.
Adora wants her friend to leave the Horde and join the Princesses. (Although she's not putting in special effort, because Adora is getting snowed under by the amount of work needed to build an alliance of the princesses and fight the Horde, and everyone is expecting her to have the magic solutions because she's She-Ra.) And, other than to say that it's entirely realistic to be terrified of leaving everything you know and all the people, for better or worse, abusive (which Shadow Weaver certainly is) or no, that have come to be your family, there's not much more to say that's germane to this issue about the complexity of why Catra might be hesitant to join Adora.
At least to that point where Shadow Weaver tells Catra to her face that she's never going to be anything more than second-best. At that point, at least by the way the narrative has been running, Catra's last reason to stay is gone. What actually turns out to be the case is that Catra has gotten in with Hordak himself and is no longer dependent, really, on Shadow Weaver's grace and approval for her continued anything. That change in relationship is formalized at the end of the first season when Catra is made Hordak's lieutenant, despite only having the rank of Force Captain, which is the only real rank that's mentioned or sought in the Horde. (It's a very flat structure for such a large military force.)
It's entirely possible the narrative had been subtly hinting at the idea that Catra was past Shadow Weaver's authority before the point where Shadow Weaver broke the last bond, if she ever had such a bond in the first place, but it wasn't obvious enough to me that Catra had a fallback reason to stay with the Horde at that point.
That broke the rule of characters making sense for their setting. Catra helps Adora escape, but doesn't go with her, despite not having a reason to stay (at least as I understood it.) The later episodes backfill that information, but it's a storytelling break for me, and now you have seen the WTF that came out of looking at that break..
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.
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.
opensummer expressed significant frustration with the way that Adora and Catra were portrayed in the show, and I'm riffing on that idea, even if I think I'm running in a very different direction than the linked post. The Buffy/Faith parallel got a lot stronger as the episodes moved toward the season conclusion, and so it was probably with that lens that I was looking at the whole thing.There's a moment, though, in Episode 9, where Catra has Glimmer prisoner, Adora prisoner, and Shadow Weaver, who has been the surrogate mother figure for both of them through this entire sequence, outright says to Catra that she'd rather have Adora back with a memory wipe than acknowledge Catra has grown and become a competent person in her own right.
Up to this point, there's been a strong theme of trying to get Adora back to her friends from the Princesses that have taken her and seem to have effectively brainwashed her, at least according to Catra. And then together, the two of them can do all sorts of great things for Hordak. Catra wants her friend back, but she also wants to prove to Shadow Weaver that she's good enough to handle the responsibilities that would have fallen to Adora. Catra gets strong, ruthless, and gathers her own allies to help her succeed and try to prove to everyone that she's just as good as Adora.
Adora wants her friend to leave the Horde and join the Princesses. (Although she's not putting in special effort, because Adora is getting snowed under by the amount of work needed to build an alliance of the princesses and fight the Horde, and everyone is expecting her to have the magic solutions because she's She-Ra.) And, other than to say that it's entirely realistic to be terrified of leaving everything you know and all the people, for better or worse, abusive (which Shadow Weaver certainly is) or no, that have come to be your family, there's not much more to say that's germane to this issue about the complexity of why Catra might be hesitant to join Adora.
At least to that point where Shadow Weaver tells Catra to her face that she's never going to be anything more than second-best. At that point, at least by the way the narrative has been running, Catra's last reason to stay is gone. What actually turns out to be the case is that Catra has gotten in with Hordak himself and is no longer dependent, really, on Shadow Weaver's grace and approval for her continued anything. That change in relationship is formalized at the end of the first season when Catra is made Hordak's lieutenant, despite only having the rank of Force Captain, which is the only real rank that's mentioned or sought in the Horde. (It's a very flat structure for such a large military force.)
It's entirely possible the narrative had been subtly hinting at the idea that Catra was past Shadow Weaver's authority before the point where Shadow Weaver broke the last bond, if she ever had such a bond in the first place, but it wasn't obvious enough to me that Catra had a fallback reason to stay with the Horde at that point.
That broke the rule of characters making sense for their setting. Catra helps Adora escape, but doesn't go with her, despite not having a reason to stay (at least as I understood it.) The later episodes backfill that information, but it's a storytelling break for me, and now you have seen the WTF that came out of looking at that break..
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.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 10:48 pm (UTC)It also links to a few bits throughout the show where you really remember this show is aimed at young girls and that they are meant to be teenagers, such as the argument between Glimmer and her mother. Yes, it helps establish their age, but considering the world they're living in, again it feels a bit out of place.
Catra... the scene where she's helped Adora escape and doesn't leave with them I see that being for a couple of reasons. A) If she went, she would be tolerated on Adora's word. She has nothing the princess alliance needs and has soured relations for most of them at this point. She's already lived that life and doesn't need to move to a situation that still has that set up but where she doesn't know the rules. B) I also don't think she sees any difference morally between the Horde and the Princesses, there's no moral reason for her to leave, Adora has showed she doesn't care, and she stands a better chance of achieving some power by staying, irrespective of Shadow Weaver.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 11:47 pm (UTC)I'm not convinced that Catra sees both sides as moral equivalents, but I can follow the logic of "if everything else is equal, I can ensure my safety and security much more easily with the Horde than the Princesses," and that becoming more cemented after Shadow Weaver explicitly rejects Catra in favor of Adora.
Perhaps it's naïve of me, but I still got the strong vibe that both Adora and Catra would be happier if they were together, and I think that's an easier thing to achieve by Catra defecting rather than the other way around.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 11:01 am (UTC)Oh yes, definitely. I think we're going to spend a large part of the show exploring that and seeing how it comes about. But in the current setup its not a done deal and both Catra and Adora are going to have to change to make that possible.
And a slight clarification - I don't mean Catra fears being Adora's second or tagalong, she fears being wholly dependent on Adora. So, Adora being the only one who sees Catra's value as a defector would feed into that.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 04:17 pm (UTC)We haven't yet seen, from Adora or Catra, what the overarching motivation to conquer Eternia is, such that it would justify the loss of life and the disruption of the planet. Hordak can be as charismatic as he wants, but even he has to have a reason for wanting to do this, and a reason he can feed to his underlings when they get doubts. Adora got a reason to save the place when she got the sword. What Catra's reason is, we don't know, since she can see that her actions cause harm.
Thank you for the clarification. It helps with the lack of willingness to go, because that kind of jump is a very big ask and puts a lot of trust that Adora's not going to abandon her (again.) At that point in Episode 9, it seemed like Adora was still her strongest link, so for Catra to not seem to think about it was strange, but I'm talk about that more in the lower thread.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-24 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-25 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 11:09 am (UTC)I think episode 11 (Promise) kind of shows some of those doubts and shows Catra wavering and then cements her certainty to stay for the time being. Which I agree, means that episode 9 didn't do a sufficiently good job of showing those thoughts.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 04:28 pm (UTC)Episode 11 does help a lot in showing the complications of Catra and Adora's relationship, but it also continues to reinforce the idea to me that Catra needs a bigger, more visible motivation to keep her with the Horde, because she and Adora seemed to have a functional friendship.
"I don't want to be dependent on Adora" is a good one, but doesn't necessarily mean staying. Catra could just desert and go hide in a Princess's territory, have some false starts about establishing a good relationship, and then rise to become a tactical leader.
"I want to prove I'm better than Adora" is a better one, and the Horde is an easy metric for evaluation, but Catra already has done that, repeatedly, and shattered Shadow Weaver in the process.
"I love you, and I'll do anything to get you back, so we can be together" might be the best one of them all, but it still needs to justify why Catra doesn't defect, instead of doubling down and trying to crush Adora.
I dunno. Season 2 might help.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-26 11:07 pm (UTC)