Just finished my most recent She-Ra rewatch

[conuly]

1. I had not realized before exactly how many of Mermista and Perfuma's interactions involve Mermista needling Perfuma. There is some backstory there, for sure. They don't even interact that much!

2. So in the third-to-last episode Adora has looked at the situation and concluded, as always, that the solution involves her sacrificing herself to the greater good. This girl is amazingly suicidal, and her friends don't help. Like, I feel like everybody can see that Catra's mental health is not so great, but Adora shows all the same problems in a lot more socially acceptable ways and, ironically, if she were worse off she'd be better off. When Catra jumps off a cliff, everybody can see she's got a problem, and if she survives, maybe she can get some help. When Adora falls off a cliff trying to save Catra from jumping, welp, that's just what the hero does, right?

Anyway, we get to hear everybody yelling at Shadow Weaver, but since they're all talking at once they aren't all captioned and I swear, I rewatched several times to figure out what probably-Catra-I-think is saying. It might be multiple people, one of whom is most likely Catra, but here it is:

"This is your fault! You don't care about Adora, she doesn't even care about herself."

I somehow don't think that either Bow or Glimmer understands Adora that well or else they probably wouldn't say things like "The important thing is that She-Ra showed up when your friends needed her!" so much. And it's not Castaspella, who... is not my favorite character on that show and let's just leave it at that.

But I might be wrong and maybe the uncaptioned line is something else.

3. I've said this before, and I will say it again, most likely each and every time I watch this show, but those two girls should not be in a relationship with... probably anybody, but certainly not each other, not until they get their shit sorted out. Which might take a while, honestly. Neither magic nor the power of love is going to cure them of being amazingly suicidal, not to mention all their other issues.

4. It is fascinating to me how many people think that the string theme in Promise is "The Catradora theme". Yes, it does show up when the two of them are together and having feelings, however, it also shows up when, eg, Adora was freaking out after finding out from Entrapta that The Heart of Etheria Project was genocide with her at the center. She wasn't even thinking about Catra then. I'm pretty sure it shows up in more non-Catradora scenes than yes-Catradora scenes, actually, though that depends on if you think Adora freaking out in Roll With It about Catra outmaneuvering her if he doesn't come up with the one and only perfect plan counts as "having feelings about Catra".

4a. Also, nobody should ever have asked Adora to come up with the plans. Girl's got no concept of tactics or strategy. I've said that before, too. The fact that Adora thinks that she needs to come up with The One Perfect Plan is proof that she is well out of her depth. That's why Catra is constantly outmaneuvering her, because Catra knows better.

Comments

[conuly]

Agreed. Catra's the tactical planner, Adora you point at a target and let her methodically bulldoze her way through everything to get there.

Bulldoze is right. It's a good thing she can turn into She-Ra, because she'd have no chance trying to beat Catra in a fair fight.

I think (1) is presented at us as "uncaring valley girl type hates toxic positivity granola girl type," but it would be much more interesting if they do have a history.

That's the thing - I'm not sure she does hate Perfuma. In fact, I don't think she hates her at all. When she's not getting her kicks by needling her, they get along fine - actually, I think I also just described Mermista's relationship with Sea Hawk, so there's that.

(Also! Sea Hawk tells us that Mermista tried to kill him the very first time they met, but I don't believe it for an instant. Mermista is objectively terrifying. If she had wanted to kill him, he'd be dead. Very dead. The entire reason for this parenthetical is to remind us all that Mermista is, hands down, the scariest member of the gang. Yes, even more than Catra. Because Catra hates water, but Mermista doesn't hate cats. Probably.)

[silveradept]

No arguments about that. Adora has trouble beating Catra with the She-Ra advantage, so it makes you wonder what the actual Force Captain requirements are, if the tactical brain gets passed over because she's Shadow Weaver's emotional hunting target in favor of someone who Shadow Weaver wants to exploit, but probably couldn't command a squadron any better than Kyle could.

Mermista is almost always portrayed as someone with free-floating hostility and a generally anti-social attitude toward others. So she might not specifically hate anyone.

She definitely is the one who will shank you and walk away calmly, though. They're worried about Frosta's eagerness to create mayhem, but Mermista's the one who will happily drown you if you aggravate her enough.

[conuly]

Ah, well, I posted about the cadet!Catra/Adora dynamics in my last rewatch, or maybe the one before.

As I see it, Catra and Adora knew the score perfectly, even if they sorta kinda never admitted it or thought about it at all.

Catra couldn't afford to be first, because if Catra ever beat out Adora, or even looked like she might possibly beat out Adora, they'd both be punished. I'm betting that until Adora was gone, Catra never let anybody see any hint that she even knew how to spell words like "tactics" or "strategy", because all that would happen is she'd get punished for it.

Also, as a second point, I'm pretty sure Hordak doesn't really understand strategy either. How many times does Catra have to explain basic things like "The point isn't to conquer every scrap of land, the point is to conquer the lands that will benefit us" to him? But he was with the Greater Horde. You don't really need strategy when you have overwhelming force and also mind control chips.

[silveradept]

Excellent points, all of them. I suspect Catra would be able to articulate the score better than Adora, since she was likely to get punished for even making it seem like she understood it.

The Horde probably would have already won if Catra was in charge, unless Catra did something very self-destructive for Adora at a climactic moment.

[conuly]

That's a pretty big if at the end there!

And regarding the first point, what I said last time around is that Catra couldn't afford to be too dumb, but Adora couldn't afford to be too smart.

[silveradept]

It is a big if, and I can totally see her feeling it because that's the kind of big explosion she needs to catch and hold Adora's attention long enough to confess to her.

The two of them are the obverses of the same coin. Adora can't get too wise to what's going on, Catra can't trust or otherwise do normal things because both of their parental figure is scheming against them. It's a tricky balance (and it all goes haywire when Adora gets the power she's destined to get and then decides she's done pretending.)