Best posts made by insomniac7809

So I've seen some people dismiss Catra's thing about Adora "abandoning her" going through most of the series, because Adora did ask Catra to come along when she defected. Which, yeah, true.

But, in context, Adora handled it really, really badly. She told Catra that she'd just worked out that the woman she'd watched abuse and threaten to murder Catra since they were children wasn't a good or trustworthy person, and because of that she was leaving behind all the plans that they'd made together and everything they'd hoped to accomplish. But Catra could come along too!

So, yeah, Catra has some really, really good reasons to feel betrayed and abandoned there. The most important person in her life just told her to her face that she rated behind these randos Adora just met, both because she would side with them against Catra, and in that Adora was willing to lead the Horde over what they were doing to them but not for what they'd done to her. It's really no surprise that she reacted... badly.

And so then Catra, without the thing that she relied on to keep her safe, did everything she could to make herself safe. Which, obviously, gets into the arc that culminates in S4.

Not saying Adora's the real villain or that Catra did nothing wrong, Adora spends the whole series trying to do the best she can with what she knows at the time. But Adora handled that about as badly as she possibly could have.

Also just thinking about Mara's thing at the end, how "you're worth more than what you can give other people," and how that's at least as much of a running theme as the cycles of abuse.

The villains in the show (not counting the random monsters or like Tongue Lashor) are the ones who treat people like things. (Granny Weatherwax would have something to say about that.) Including Catra when she's at her lowest. Hordak, Horde Prime, and Shadow Weaver all do it in different ways, but it's constant. And Adora's tendency to treat herself as a thing is presented as a flaw, which I think is really cool and unique; it's a problem that she's so willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good.

Hordak actually manages to do the "people as things" deal and the "cycles of abuse" deal at the same time; he relates to other people as tools to his ends, and his ends are all about his own function as a tool for Horde Prime. He can't even conceive of another source of validation (and I really, really love how his whole thing of only talking in ominous villain melodrama comes down to how socially awkward he is). He treats people how he knows how to be treated, but Entrapta starts him on his path to redemption by accepting him for who he is.

I'm sure you've read this, but just in case you haven't: the First Ones writing on the crystal Entrapta gives him spells "LUVD."