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#in which scorpia is the anti fandom and glimmer is the rest of the fandom
blonde-and-cat-suc · 3 years
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11. siblings
rating: M 
wc: 996
cw/tw: incest, c//a, canon shippings, glimmer curses lol 
desc: Glimmer and Scorpia talk about the legitimacy of Catra and Adora’s relationship. The first one. 
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“I’ve never had a sister!” Scorpia’s eyes are as bright as her exoskeleton. It had been buffed the day before, and today Glimmer was taking the time to polish the scuffed, jagged patches of her pincers that had been earned during battle. This was as close to polishing her “nails” as she was going to get.
Glimmer gave the gentlest of smiles. She hadn’t a sister either. Having one wouldn’t have been desirable when she was younger. If she remembered correctly, her mother and father’s attention was the most valuable thing to a young, restless Glimmer. Sharing that attention with the Kingdom of Bright Moon was already unsatisfying. Having a sibling probably would have made it worse.
But she was an adult now. There was something incredibly special about the way she and Scorpia gossiped about the rest of the Princesses, went shopping in the village, discussed the latest fashion trends, and pitted their outfits against each other... They even shared clothes sometimes. Scorpia’s dresses flowed around Glimmer’s ankles, and Scorpia found great interest in the clusters of jewelry piled in Glimmer’s vanities, most of them long-forgotten gifts from various kingdoms.
At the moment, Glimmer was wearing Scorpia’s favorite texture of lipstick, matte black. The smoothest, non-smudging lipstick in all of Etheria. In turn, two sparkling, heavy diamonds dangle off of Scorpia’s ears. Where they were from was a mystery, though if they asked Micah, he would probably remember.
Glimmer takes great care in brushing away at the sharp, blade-like ridges of Scorpia’s pincer. “If I did have a sister back then, we would have never got along!” She truly could not imagine her younger self running her fingers against a huge, powerful scorpion claw to polish it, nor could she imagine admitting that she felt some kinship to her former enemy. “I’m glad we are.”
“Me too!” Scorpia nods. “I wonder why Adora and Catra just didn’t stay sisters. It seems really fun!”
...
What?
“Huh?” Glimmer’s form tenses up.
Did she mishear?
Scorpia blinks her dark eyes, as innocent as a deer. “Having a sister seems fun?”
“No! What you said before that.”
“’I wonder why Adora and Catra didn’t stay sisters...?’ “
Glimmer’s lip curls. She can’t control it. Sometimes Scorpia says the strangest things without realizing it. But this one is very strange. Adora and Catra are married. It was like suggesting she and Bow were brother and sister at one point. She explains this to Scorpia as patiently as she can, biting back the sigh in her voice. “They were never sisters”, Glimmer finished, shaking her head. “Always just friends.”
Silence falls over them. It seems like Scorpia was still processing Glimmer’s tangent. Glimmer moves on to Scorpia’s next pincer, setting a neat dollop of polish on the very base where her skin met the armor. She began brushing it across the rough blades, but Scorpia squirms, ruining the even spread of polish.
“Are you okay?” Glimmer narrows her eyes. She didn’t like her perfectly good work taking any longer than it had to.
“If Adora’s mother is Shadow Weaver...” Scorpia’s tail twists behind her in thought. “And Catra was also raised by Shadow Weaver...”
“Everyone was raised by Shadow Weaver!” Glimmer retorts.
“Nope.” Scorpia tips her head to one side. “I wasn’t. Lots of us weren’t.”
At this, Glimmer frowns. It was almost too easy to forget that Scorpia had once been a Horde soldier. She was present for even the smallest of Horde-based offenses. The Fright Zone Princess had a good point there.
“They aren’t related...” Glimmer replies, unsure if this was a valid point like Scorpia’s was. “Not even the same species.”
“I don’t know if that takes away from the bond. The first one.”
She finishes with Scorpia’s pincers, and it was time to move onto her own fingertips. They changed the topic, waiting for Scorpia’s polish to dry.
They talk a little bit about Bow. A little bit about Perfuma. A little bit about how they were going to let their children have playdates with each other on weekdays. "Auntie Scorpia" enjoyed babysitting for Glimmer and Bow. Sometimes it was unclear if the playdates were for the children or for Scorpia.
When Scorpia’s huge pincer held a nail polish wand (for human fingers), she quirked her brow. “They used to take baths together.”
“Can you drop this already?” Glimmer wiggles her fingers and rolls her eyes. 
“I can’t!” Scorpia protests. “I know you think I’m dumb or something right now, but I swear to God I thought they were sisters in the Fright Zone.”
“You’re not dumb. Just...” Glimmer wrinkles up her nose. “Why do you know if they used to take baths together or not?”
“Before little cadets went on puberty rampages...” Scorpia lowers her voice as if embarrassed to be talking about this, though there was no one else around to hear. “You know, like... They start...”
“Having sex.” Glimmer urges. “I got it. What about that?”
“I was going to say start getting acne!” Scorpia’s skin flushes. “But yes, before that, we all took showers in the same bathroom.”
“Right! Okay, so what then? Everyone bathed together.”
“Everyone showered together”, Scorpia corrects. “No, siblings would take a bath. Shadow Weaver would prepare them baths.”
“Like... A good commanding officer?”
“Like a good mother.”  Scorpia furrows her brows. “But from what I hear about her, it seems like she was only ever good at keeping her daughters in line.”
“God-fucking-damn it! Don’t say daughters, that’s so gross!”
“Sisters?”
Glimmer reaches her hands up, ignoring that she might smudge the pink polish dripping from her fingertips. “Shhh! Stop talking about this! They’re married. They’re having a baby. Don’t ruin it for me!”
Scorpia purses her lips. She slides her gaze away. “Okay, yeah, sure. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“But it’s still there.”
“Well...” Glimmer closes her eyes and holds out her hand. “It’s going to have to stay there. It’s too late to do anything about it. The only thing left to do now is to finish my nails, please? Thanks.”
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You caught me in the perfect mood because I was just yelling to a friend abt how im sick of seeing catradora everywhere
Listen, I don't personally mind Catradora as a ship. Good ol' friends to enemies to lovers, who doesn't love that? Also hehehe heterochromic catgirl go brr.
(WAIT SHIT THE ONLY HETERO THING ABOUT CATRA IS HER HETEROCHROMIA HOW HAS THIS JOKE EVADED ME FOR SO LONG?)
Anyways. My personal beef with Catradora is:
A) it was handled a bit poorly and clearly rushed in season 5 at the expense of other characters' arcs, Adora's character development at the end of season 3, and he friendship with Bow and Glimmer, which was pushed aside to make room for Catra. Hells, I feel like she got accepted waaaayyyy too easily after what she has done to them all. Even more easily than Scorpia and DEFINITELY more easily than Entrapta (who was done dirty as FUCK but I won't discuss it in this post.) I dunno, I feel like her redemption wasn't earned and there was definitely not enough development between her and Adora - too much enemies, not enough to, and the kinda lovers which make me vaguely uncomfortable.
But hey, no show is perfect! Good for the wlws and all. I'm glad they got their lesbian reylo.
Whiiich brings me to:
B) THIS SHIP IS FUCKING EVERYWHERE. Yeah yeah, it's been the most popular thing since day one and Noelle ships it, but by FUCK I have Catradora blacklisted and it still pops up on my dash because people don't tag their shit, or tag shit completely unrelated to Catradora as Catradora so I can't see it. I saw an Entrapta cosplay post tagged as Catradora. What???? Can you guys learn how to tag things, please?
C) some of the shippers are toxic as FUCK. Fanatical Catra stans, Glimmadora antis, low-key fetishists, idiots who will call you homophobic if you don't like their ship, abuse apologists*, you name it, I've seen it. Sometimes on tumblr, mostly on twitter. And yeah, I know that most of the fandom is lovely save for a few bad apples which make a fuck ton of noise, and I know a couple of Catradora shippers who are awesome and kind people, but [sigh].
(*see, I know that Catra treated Adora badly because they were enemies - all the gaslighting, murder attempts, scratches and verbal abuse - but the line "don't you get it? I love you! I always have!" just really rubs me the wrong way given the way Catra has treated her in the past. Like I'd personally send Catra to therapy first and maybe then think about getting her together with Adora.. Shit, I'd send them all to therapy. Gods bless the ending of "Carry On" by Rainbow Rowell - that woman gets it. Can't wait for part 3. ALSO THIS BOOK HAS ENEMIES TO LOVERS TOO, IT'S GAY, AND IMO DONE BETTER THAN CATRADORA.)
Sorry, fhís turned out really rambly. Catradora isn't everyone's thing; some watch the show for other things, and I'd really love it if people respected that. And if the show itself respected that too instead of shoving it all aside for Noelle's favourite problem child. I mean all content creators are allowed to have favourite characters but neglecting the rest of the cast for their sake? Not cool.
I respect Catradora shippers. It's not my cup of tea, but I'm more than happy to let them drink it if they let me drink my entrapdak-flavoured Monster.
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coldgoldlazarus · 4 years
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As a Latina from Mexico it isn’t the people who paint Catra a Latin coded character as abusive, it was the show who did that and I don’t know which part of the fandom you are in but I have seen more people complains about Glimmer than Catra and even then if it’s true that people hated more on Catra, I can understand why though, Glimmer made many mistakes but none of them were as bad as Catra’s, after all Catra killed a person, abused, victim blamed and tried to kill Adora for several seasons
...Look, I'm not here to invalidate your experience or claim that Catra was ideal representation or anything. If you felt that her portrayal was a bridge too far, then that's valid, and it's certainly worth criticism.
The problem in my eyes, is that a lot of the criticism I have seen has not been of Catra's portrayal in relation to her racial coding, but just of her as a person, and with very clear double standards compared to other characters. (Glimmer's behavior toward her friends and attempted genocide in Season 4 in particular are the most directly comparable to Catra's treatment of Scorpia and attempt to open the Portal in Season 3, with far less justification to boot.) There has certainly been some criticism of Glimmer that I've seen, but often not to the same extent and mostly not by the same people as the anti-Catra crowd. Between that and how elements of Catra's own portrayal as an abuse victim have been distorted (for example, her reluctance to leave the horde despite knowing they're evil, due to Shadow Weaver's conditioning) to make her out to be even worse than she actually was, it appears to me that, if not all, then at least the majority of the anti-Catra sentiment/criticism is made in bad faith because of a specific dislike of the character, rather than an actual problem with the racial element of her portrayal. If people genuinely feel that she went too far and was irredeemable, then fair enough, but they should apply those same metrics to the rest of the cast's more problematic members.
Also, there seems to be a strong overlap between anti-Catradora and pro-Glimmerdora fans too, which like, at that point it's just about ships; I won't begrudge people for preferring a different pairing to the canon one, but trying to mask that behind some moral justification and attacking the unwanted character is incredibly disingenuous. And admittedly my initial posts about Adora's flaws were maybe not the most well-thought-out, but I made them because I was attempting to give the antis the benefit of the doubt and contribute to the discussion. All the pushback I got has convinced me that no, most of those people aren't actually interested in having that discussion, they just want to bash Catra and Catra only for reasons I can only speculate.
Which brings me back to the start. If you have a problem with how Catra was portrayed and feel that it suggests some of Noelle's unconscious biases, that's valid, and definitely something worth talking about. Just, I think it's important to separate that from just plain hating on Catra, because in the grand scheme of things she's far from the most morally questionable character on the show, and any criticism of her as a sympathetic protagonist can and should also be levied against those like Glimmer and Hordak.
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miscellaniaofself · 4 years
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Unpopular SPOP S5 Opinions
It seems like for the past week, about 85% of my internet time has been filled with people being absolutely ecstatic over She-Ra. Multiple people sent me messages, clearly expecting me to also be over the moon. And like, I get it. But I just don’t feel the same way. To be entirely honest, season five was my least favorite season. Maybe it’s partially because I was tired while watching most of it, but that definitely doesn’t explain everything. It was still REALLY good, but it didn’t quite land with me, and I want to talk about why. Please don’t try to come at me - as one person already has with “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT” - I’m talking about my opinion. We can disagree. 
Warning that this will be spoilers all the way down, so if you haven’t watched every episode of season five and don’t want to have everything spoiled for you, don’t read the rest of this. 
I do want to start off by talking about things I actually really liked about this season before I delve into the shit I didn’t care for. For starters, I’m so glad that we finally got to see a Catra redemption arc. It wasn’t surprising to me at all, given the end of S4 and things Noelle has said, but still - it was nice. I’d spent four seasons caring about Catra like she’s a real person, so it’s nice to see her on the road to healing. Also, I’m glad we got to see substantially more of Catra purring. Horde Prime was appropriately creepy and I fucking LOVED the body horror aspect that came with being under Prime’s control. The fight between Adora and Catra? Sick as hell. 
I also really liked that we got hints that Scorfuma (which Lauren and I were lowkey shipping before the two of them even met) was happening. Melog has my entire heart.  I was in no way prepared for Horny Entrapta, but it amused me greatly. Speaking of which, I’m officially no longer alarmed by Entrapta.* That scene with Mara that I keep seeing gifs of fucking destroyed me (a type 2 ENFJ Hufflepuff recovering from a martyr complex). The message of this season was SO important and the plot was fabulous - but I’m not here for the plot and never was. 
My favorite thing about fiction (both as a creator and a consumer) is characters. My favorite thing about She-Ra was that we got to know and become deeply attached to a wide variety of amazing characters. It helps that many of these characters are either queer-coded or canonically established as queer. In season five however, most of the secondary characters were essentially out of commission. I realize that in order to sufficiently raise the stakes, at least some of the characters in the Princess Alliance needed to get chipped and have their characters supplanted by Horde Prime’s purity programming - but I didn’t care about what the plot demanded. I wanted to see more of Mermista, Scorpia, and Micah - and especially how they interacted with each other. 
Then there’s the Horde trio (Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio). I appreciate that there were mentions of them sprinkled throughout the season - but I both wanted and expected to see more of them. Over the course of the series they were slowly built up to be just as prominent secondary characters as anyone in the Princess Alliance, but in season 5 I don’t think we see them at all. Season four was mainly about how the Horde members (aside from Hordak) weren’t so different from the Princess Alliance members, which seemed to me to be setting them up to work with them in the final season. At least some members of the fandom - myself included - fully expected the last season to involve literally everyone working together to beat Horde Prime. Maybe the writers thought that since Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio had already left the Horde that their storyline was wrapped up? But that definitely wasn’t my impression at the end of season four. 
Speaking of areas where I really expected something, but nothing happened: Shadow Weaver. I’m incredibly relieved that neither Catra nor Adora forgave her and of course I’m happy she’s fuckin dead. But it’s very weird to me that she went from being a horrifying, deeply antagonistic figure who had a shit-ton of power and wanted to obtain more to...someone who just kind of hangs out and occasionally tempts people to the Dark Side like Darth Vader with a moving target. I fully expected her to make a last minute power grab and probably become a huge threat again by the end of the final season. And/or for her to have a karmic death. My dream scenario was that Scorpia would fuck her up, considering that Shadow Weaver used Scorpia’s own runestone to inflict pain on her and Catra. I didn’t think that was likely to happen though, since it’s so specific - but I would’ve been happy with someone else dealing her some karmic blows. But instead we get her being lightly roasted by Catra and Adora before pulling a heroic sacrifice and having her last words be “You’re welcome.” What a bitch. Now, I do think it’s interesting that Shadow Weaver’s death demonstrates the idea that sometimes abusers genuinely care about those they abuse(d) and are just EXCEEDINGLY bad at showing it - but still. It feels to me like Shadow Weaver as Threat was another thing that was built up but never actually played with to a real extent.
Speaking of Shadow Weaver’s abuse, it’s time for my single most unpopular opinion about She-Ra, which has basically always been my most unpopular opinion about She-Ra. I don’t ship Catradora. Obviously (I would hope) it’s not because of the gay shit - they’re both very clearly queer-coded. It’s not because I have anything against the enemies to lovers trope. Confession time: I was complete Zutara trash back in the day, so I fuck with that sort of dynamic. I
 actually did ship Catradora for most of season one. I absolutely lost my shit during “Princess Prom.” But then I saw “Promise” and had a mental shift to “HOLY SHIT no they’re sisters.” 
I viewed seasons two, three, and four with that lens. I rewatched most of those seasons with that lens. I walked into season five with that lens. And then Those Lines started creeping in and my watching buddy was getting more and more hype as I felt an increasing level of confusion and low-degree panic. And then they smooched and my brain pretty much broke. 
To be clear, I’m not anti Catradora. I don’t have that tag blacklisted on Tumblr the same way I do Reylo. I somehow seem to be literally the only person who viewed them through a sisterhood lens and the show never actually uses sibling terms to refer to them (*cough cough* UMBRELLA ACADEMY) so I don’t see it as a gross incest ship the way I otherwise might have. 
As someone who’s very unlikely to ever see representation of my own sexual orientation(s) - I understand how important the representation is to so many people.I understand why people are excited and I don’t want to put a damper on it
Here’s the thing though. I know that Noelle and Co. wanted to tell a narrative about abusive family dynamics. I know that they wanted to tell a lesbian love story. Those are both important and lovely stories. But I feel weird about how they intersected. They could’ve had one character to perform the Catra-As-Sibling role and another to perform the Catra-As-GF role. But they combined them and that’s weird for me.
And I really just don’t appreciate the idea everyone seems to have that just because I’m queer and love Catra that I naturally must ship Catradora. 
I feel like doing a rewatch of the entire series might help me do a factory reset of my brain and make that aspect of the show less jarring for me, but I don’t know. 
Also, WHY did Glimmer and Bow get paired up? Again, not a bad ship. Just a weird one in my eyes. And it sort of feels like the writers wanted to pair them together just for the sake of having two members of the original heroic triad get together. Because Bow is definitely gay and THAT is a hill I’ll die on. 
*-Until like, midway through season four she really unnerved me since I dated a number of people who bear a lot of similarities to her
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