Meta: Random Musings

Unless you’ve been paying no attention whatsoever (and hey, maybe you weren’t, there is a pandemic and police riots going on) you’ll know that the fifth and final season of She Ra dropped on Netflix last month, a season which just happened to coincide with the seventh episode of the second season of DC’s animated Harley Quinn.

Both shows revolve around the intense relationships that exist between their two (rather damaged) female leads, and on May 15th, both culminated in a Big Damn Kiss.

Ecstatic by the success of their escape from a giant prison-pit, Harley and Ivy spontaneously kissed each other before recoiling in shock, while over on She Ra, Adora receives (and returns) a kiss from her long-time rival/childhood friend/mortal enemy/love interest Catra while on the verge of death.

Two very different contexts for two same-sex kisses, but as you can imagine: there was much rejoicing.

Naturally comparisons have been made to The Legend of Korra, whose final episode depicted Korra and Asami walking off into the spirit world together, but also the most recent Star Wars film in regards to the way the two leads spend most of their screen-time on opposite sides of a conflict, with the latter going through a redemption arc before they eventually reconcile. Naturally I have stuff to say about all this, as most of the discourse (that dreaded word) has sparked reactions ranging from bemusement to irritation to “what the hell are these guys talking about??”

But it’s a fascinating time we live in, and so below the cut are some random musings on the intersectionality of redemption, enemies-to-lovers arcs, and Sapphic love…

(Warning: I'm gonna talk more shit about Star Wars, so if you're sick of that, best give this a miss...)

In its general premise and major themes – interplanetary warfare, female protagonists, redemption arcs, found families, a small group of underdogs versus a larger, empirical force, and a strained connection between the heroine and the story’s main antagonist – She Ra bears more than a few similarities to the Star Wars sequel trilogy (even down to the fact they’re both the sequel/reboot of a sci-fi/fantasy serial that first aired in the eighties).

Yet amazingly, the cartoon filled with flying horses, magical princesses and mystical powers that manifested in a whole spectrum of rainbow colours undoubtedly did it better, telling what was essentially the same good-versus-evil space opera as Disney’s attempt at Star Wars, but with more success in its character arcs, narrative beats, emotional payoff, and commitment to representation.

Adora/Catra weren't even the only gay couple on the show!

Was it a little rushed at the end? Sure. One more season would have given the material more time to breath, and to better explore the stages of Catra’s redemption. But compared to The Rise of Skywalker…? It’s not even a competition, especially in their respective treatment of Adora, Catra, Rey, Kylo Ren, and the relationships that exist between them. I even did a Tumblr post on the elements that the cartoon did better, and some of the examples are amazingly specific.

I won’t beat around the bush here, I found the idea of Rey and Kylo as a romantic pairing completely repellent, and didn’t have nearly enough eyes to roll back in 2015 at the fandom reaction to yet another awful white dude being given the woobification treatment. Wanting a hook-up between him and the girl he kidnapped, tortured, and threw into a tree so hard she lost consciousness? After murdering his own father, being complicit in genocide, and ordering his troops to open fire on unarmed civilians? What the everlasting fuck?

Look, I get the appeal of the whole enemies-to-lovers thing, but I will never grasp what’s so romantic about a teenage girl being violently assaulted by a mass murderer. That so many people saw an over-sensitive, tantrum-throwing, self-pitying man-child literally murder, maim and torture innocent people on-screen and thought “ooh, sexy!” is so beyond my frame of reference that it may as well exist in another dimension. I just don’t get it.

For the record, I am not an anti – because I don’t go into other people’s fandom spaces to tell them they’re committing a crime for imagining things about two fictional constructs. It’s a dick move, and what other people chose to enjoy in fandom is not mine to police.

However… after four years of abject nonsense about how Rey and Kylo represent Death and the Maiden, or Hades and Persephone, or the reincarnations of Anakin and Padme, as symbolized through everything from hairstyles to bridal carrying, with Kylo as a feminine-coded disabled-coded mentally ill-coded innocent victim who never did anything wrong in his life and suffered a childhood of neglect at the hands of abusive parents, while Rey potentially hooking up with her stalker was actually a feminist statement because heroines “embracing the masculine shadow” was in a book they once read about Jungian archetypes… well, let’s just say I wasn’t hugely sympathetic in the wake of the emotional breakdowns that ensued when it transpired all this was a load of horseshit.

(Would you believe me if I said Snoke’s red-lit throne room was representative of Rey’s womb and that Kylo’s sword was a phallic symbol that literally impregnated her through their Force bond when she grabbed it? I had to read that with my own two eyes, so now you have to as well. I refuse to suffer alone).

It was pretty apparent to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention that the character who killed – either directly or indirectly – the three most beloved sci-fi heroes of all time wasn’t going to walk out of this trilogy with a happy ending. Heck, his karmic death was assured from his very first scene, in which he hacks Max von Sydow to death for no real reason.

Yet it’s also not too surprising that Kylo was given a redemption arc, one handed down to him from on high despite it being completely unearned and largely nonsensical, because… that’s how it works in Star Wars, I guess? And shippers apparently made enough noise on social media that JJ Abrams threw them a bone and had Rey kiss Kylo in the seconds before his death.

Thanks, I hate it.

Yet there is so much hedging inherent in this moment that I wonder if it caused as much controversy on the set as Vader’s appearance as a Force Ghost (free to spend eternity hanging out with his Jedi buddies despite all the genocide he dutifully committed) did back in the eighties. It’s a pretty chaste kiss, one born out of the understanding that Kylo has just sacrificed his own life so that Rey can live, and though she’s sad in the moment, the scenes that follow demonstrate that she’s clearly not heartbroken.

Not pictured: a teenage girl in mourning.

That Daisy Ridley wasn’t hugely enthusiastic about the ship was made pretty clear in at least one interview (“I can’t really get behind it for personal reasons”), and the writer of the novelization caught some flak on Twitter for explicitly describing it as a “kiss of gratitude”. It’s also pretty telling that Kylo never reappears as a Force Ghost following his death, or that (unlike other Star Wars pairings – Han/Leia, Anakin/Padme, Hera/Kanan) no “I love yous” are exchanged. Because of course they’re not. That would be obscene.

Personally, I don’t believe Rey had any feelings for Kylo that went beyond pity for the way his life panned out. The kiss was a quick, shorthand way for her to express forgiveness, gratitude and sympathy, and I’ve seen it likened to the kiss between the Phantom and Christine, in which the latter summons up enough courage and compassion to offer a gesture of kindness to someone who she’s never going to see again anyway. It doesn’t necessarily denote romantic interest; rather, she gave them both closure and then got the fuck on with her life.

I can live with that, though – like I said – it’s odd that everyone’s creative instincts seem to have been so against it. There was more heat and heartbreak to be found in the silent held gaze shared by Jyn and Cassian in that descending elevator than there was in Rey’s absolution of Kylo, so it’s not like the franchise didn’t know how to handle this kind of material.

Were the shippers really so loud that they had to be granted this level of validation? Maybe so, since the severe minimalization of Kelly Marie Tran and the narrative walk-backs on things such as Kylo’s capacity for redemption and Rey’s mysterious parentage in the wake of The Last Jedi seem to have been done in an attempt to placate the enraged misogynistic/racist trolls that have been spewing bile on social media since the end of 2017. It’s a troubling precedent to set, as what does it mean for the future of storytelling? Are writers always going to capitulate to the loudest voices on Twitter in all their artistic endeavours (or just as bad – deliberately do the exact opposite of what people expect in the attempt to “subvert expectations”?) Is the creative process now held hostage by the demands of fandom?

It’s especially infuriating since neither shippers nor trolls were remotely satisfied by the film that tried so hard to cater to them. If nothing else, The Rise of Skywalker is a pretty great example of why trying to please everyone is an exercise in abject futility.

But what’s all this got to do with She Ra’s Adora and Catra? In many ways the relationships between these four characters mirror each other: as with Rey, there was ambiguous tension between Adora and her nemesis, and like Kylo, Catra eventually walks a path of redemption that eventually culminates in a kiss. So why was I onboard with one, but completely disgusted by the other? Am I just a hypocrite?

It’s not like I morally object to either enemies-to-lovers or redemption arcs in theory, but it all comes down to how it actually plays out. For the record, I didn’t really ship anything on She Ra (beyond a certain fondness for Seahawk and Mermista) and felt that although Catra’s redemption arc largely stuck the landing, it definitely glossed over some of the worst things she did during her time on the Dark Side (that she’s directly responsible for the death of Glimmer’s mother is simply not brought up at all).

But whereas Kylo’s redemption was pretty much handed to him on a silver platter through the intervention of his mother and father, with very little in the way of self-reflection or improved behaviour across a longer span of time (I mean, he’s sorry he killed his dad, but does he give a shit about any of his other murder victims?) Catra actually has to work for hers.

As with Shadow Weaver in She Ra, Kylo’s redemption – such as it is – is achieved through performing “one good deed” followed immediately by death. Given that he is literally a mass-murderer, this conclusion hardly comes as a surprise, but it also makes for a far less satisfying story.

Catra, on the other hand, has to risk her life to make amends, apologize to all the people she’s hurt, consciously modify her harmful behaviour, put up with individuals who don’t immediately accept her, and create fresh relationships with people who aren’t Adora. Her redemption is self-driven, it’s staggered over a number of episodes, and it’s definitely not easy. Many times over she finds making amends to be mortifying beyond belief, to the point where her self-destructive behaviour could be easily read as a suicide attempt to avoid the sheer difficulty of finally doing the right thing.

More than that, we get a FAR better grasp of where she’s coming from thanks to the depiction of her abusive upbringing at the hands of Shadow Weaver (it’s still completely unclear to me what Kylo’s motivation was or what he was trying to achieve at any given moment) and for the most part, Catra’s actions never cross into truly unforgivable territory.

For the most part. The show is extremely cagey as to whether Catra is responsible for any loss of life during her time in the Horde. At one point her actions lead to the death of a main character that no one ever calls her out on, and at another she leaves Adora (who she later claims to have “always loved”) to what seems like certain death over the edge of a precipice. When I told two friends who also watched the show that I could accept Catra’s redemption because she never tortured, murdered, or committed genocide, one reminded me about how she once tried to destroy reality, while the other said: “I’m pretty sure she’s killed a lot of people.”

(And as this video astutely points out, a possible reason as to why Scorpia and Mermista were the two princesses that got brainwashed in the final stretch of episodes was probably due to Catra having hurt them the most. By taking them out of commission, the writers could neatly avoid the more difficult narrative territory of having them around when Catra joins the group).

None of this is brought up when the time comes for her redemption arc, because the writers clearly don’t want to deal with it, and so it all remains immensely ambiguous. Prince Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender remains the high bar to cross when it comes to redemption arcs, not only because he suffers and struggles for it, but because he very clearly never crosses the Moral Event Horizon. At no point is he responsible for any loss of life.  

I think the worst he does is… burn down a village? Which naturally isn’t a good thing to do. In fact it’s a very, very bad thing to do, but you can still come back from it. (And he gets called out on it more than fifty episodes later by someone who lived there. Bless that show). Redemption arcs require someone to have actually done something they need to atone for, but if you take a character’s crimes into the realm of murder, rape and/or genocide, then plenty of viewers are going to stop being interested in redemption, and simply want justice instead.

And so I dearly wish there had been one more season of She Ra to better deal with Catra’s redemption arc. Perhaps she could have escaped Hordak Prime after saving Glimmer and been off on her own for a little while, to reassess her life and the choices she’s made. She could have assisted the Rebellion in secret, to try and atone for her sins anonymously, and made friends outside of the Best Friend Squad who would give her the companionship and support she needed without any bad history between them. And her integration into the Princess Alliance could have been drawn out at a much slower pace, with Catra actually being held accountable for the crimes she committed, and required to earn everybody’s trust over a longer period of time.

But at the end of the day, she wasn’t actually successful in her attempt to destroy reality, whereas Kylo was very much a killer of innocent people who was complicit in genocide on a planet-wide scale. This is why Catra gets to enjoy a happy ending, while Kylo ends up dead; unmentioned and unmissed by all surviving parties.

***

Having written this post, I’ve realized that in general, the whole enemies-to-lovers narrative usually doesn’t work for me – at least not when it involves serious physical violence, or when one character ends up being the inspiration for the other’s redemption. I love me a Benedick/Beatrice pairing, in which two complete opposites bicker their way into falling in love, but Beauty and the Beast narratives have to be handled very carefully for them to work (and let’s be honest, they usually aren’t).

I’m currently reading Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows, and although I’m enjoying it, one of the big romantic pairings is between a Grisha (witch) and Drüskelle (witch hunter) who have a fraught history together. When they meet up again several years later, his first instinct is to grab her by the throat and start strangling her. I have to accept that many readers will love this as the first step of a developing relationship, even as it pretty much obliterates my interest in it.

And as much as I enjoy Killing Eve, the idea of Eve and Villanelle hooking up doesn’t sit well with me. I can’t be the only one who realizes it’s only going to work if Eve has totally forgotten that Villanelle brutally stabbed her colleague to death; the husband and father of a young child who will now have to grow up without him.

Umm... yay?

Look, I know it’s just fiction, and I can understand the appeal of it all, even when it involves violence. Anger and hatred can quicken the pulse in the same way love does. Animosity and bad first impressions require characters to grow and change, and starting out as enemies also creates obstacles and tension that naturally makes a story more dynamic, if not necessarily more interesting. Plenty of women love the fantasy that they’re so desirable and gracious and long-suffering that a man will change his very nature in order to accommodate her, with the extra bonus that if he’s an asshole to everyone except her, then that makes her special.

And if she’s the reason for his redemptive change, then he’ll be forever grateful to her for being his saviour and guiding light (which also means she never has to worry about him straying, as he owes her too much to ever get the seven-year itch).  Women aren’t allowed to wield much power in the real world, so the fantasy becomes wielding emotional power over a man.

I get it, but I’m honestly cringing as I write this. Unless it’s handled with much more nuance than in the outline I’ve just described, it’s not for me – especially if violence is involved. And I’m not talking about a swordfight, like the one between Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones in Zorro, or the well-matched tussling between Val Kilmer and Joanne Whalley in Willow, but genuine physical, emotional or mental violence. I know the difference.

So that’s why, despite both pairings following the same rough trajectory, with many of the same story elements, I can get behind Catra and Adora as a couple, whereas Rey and Kylo activates my gag reflex. The former’s enemies-to-lovers arc worked because the two shared a difficult childhood together, went on two separate journeys of growth and self-discovery before reuniting, and only hooked up when their relationship had reached a much healthier place.

Adora also had a reason to be invested in Catra, but left when she realized she had no power to change her. From this point on, Catra has to do all the work. In comparison, Rey has no real reason to be invested in Kylo (that their Force bond was something inflicted upon her is deeply unpleasant to me), though she does – at the conclusion of The Last Jedi – shut the door in his face and expresses little interest in trying to make him a better person throughout The Rise of Skywalker (saving his life after mortally injuring him is more about the type of person she wants to be).

And there are bits of Kylo’s redemption that I can grudgingly accept – like, even though Catra’s redemption is more rewarding because it’s self-directed, and Kylo still needs external guidance before finally deciding to do the right thing, at least that encouragement came from his parents and not the teenage girl he keeps attacking. It’s clearly not Rey’s job to fix him.

And ultimately, the Star Wars writers knew that the crimes he committed during his lifetime were too much for him to deserve a second third fourth chance. He is, in fact, dead now. Catra hurt Adora, but there was no torture or sustained abuse involved. Catra never beats any of the other princesses into comas, or deliberately executes unarmed opponents. She comes to understand on her own what her actions have cost her, and it’s never stated to be anyone else’s responsibility to save her or try to change her behaviour.

As such, the kiss she shares with Adora is a beginning, whilst Rey kissing Kylo is definitely framed as an ending; a goodbye. The Catra/Adora kiss also serves the story in a fundamental way, giving Adora the last bit of strength and motivation she needed to finally activate the failsafe and save the world. Rey kissing Kylo is (let’s be honest here guys) just fanservice. It has no bearing on how the story ends, and Rey’s complete nonchalance after his death is pretty indicative of how little it mattered to anyone but the fans who furiously campaigned for it for the last four years.

***

Having gone through all that, it’s also impossible not to compare Catra/Adora with two other popular w/w ships – though narratively speaking, the relationships bear virtually no resemblance to Catra/Adora beyond the fact that two women are involved.

Korra/Asami and Harley/Ivy play out without enemies-to-lovers arcs – in fact, the thing I loved so much about Korrasami was that it bore not the slightest trace of drama or conflict. After they put Mako behind them, they fell for each other in a touchingly subtle way… perhaps too subtly for some folks, as I’ve seen at least one post that claimed The Legend of Korra offered “breadcrumbs” in comparison to She Ra.

This annoys me, as though it's true that the couple fell short of sharing an on-screen kiss at the conclusion of the show, Bryan Konietzko openly admitted on his Tumblr that it wasn’t “a slam dunk for LGBT representation”. And yet, when looking solely at the development of the story and the two characters, I truly feel that Korra and Asami weren’t ready for their first kiss at this precise moment.

As I said at the time: This is not the culmination of their relationship – it's the beginning of it; the realization of love, not the fulfilment of it, symbolized perfectly by the fact they are literally standing between two worlds. To say there is no build up is – to me at least – patently ridiculous for the relationship is still building up when we see it last.

It’s a case of wanting to do right by the LGBT community (and I have no idea how much clearance Mike/Bryan had from the higher-ups in depicting what they did) but also recognizing that the characters themselves were still in the process of sorting out their feelings for each other.

They kiss early on in the comics, and honestly, I could
have stood for even MORE of a slow-burn.

I wouldn’t change that ending for anything, and in the long run, Korra at the very least provided a stepping stone to the more explicit love story between Catra/Adora.

But the one similarity between Korra/Asami and Catra/Adora share is that both ships become canon at the very end of their respective shows. Acknowledgement of their feelings is the happy ending for each couple, and there’s not much more to say (outside the inevitable comic book continuations). This is in stark contrast to Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy, whose unexpected kiss comes halfway through the second season and is clearly leading to a much more detailed and difficult examination of their relationship in episodes to come.

Like Korra, there is no need for a redemption arc or an enemies-to-lovers plot, unlike Korra, it’s because Harley Quinn exists in such a profoundly different tonal space that the very idea seems absurd. The main character is trying to build up her reputation as a powerful crime lord, existing within a black comedy in which she and her love interest have openly murdered people and it’s not treated as a big deal.

Likewise, Harley and Ivy’s first kiss is downright hilarious – though in an eerie comparison with She Ra, it happens after one prevents the other from sacrificing herself, though with a look of complete shock instead of an anguished declaration of love.

In many ways, perhaps Harley and Ivy are the best of all the discussed couples, because we’re actually going to see their relationship dynamics change across a longer span of time. I can’t wait.

***

Okay, so having made that rather muddled and rather aimless rundown of ships, what exactly is my point here? Only that we all react differently to fictional relationships, and that those reactions depend on so many variables: who we’re attracted to, how annoying other shippers are, the size and state of the fandom, what we had for dinner the night before…

As such, I can love Korrasami, loathe Reylo, be pleased with Catradora while wishing there had been more time to develop it, and look forward to where Harley/Ivy is going. Some people may feel totally different, and that’s fine too. Not that you need me to say it.

Now, we can all start getting excited about these two: