spop-romanticizes-abuse
SPOP had potential but it did not deliver
i rant about badly written shows, mostly spop but sometimes other shows • hika // bi-ace // 22 // she/they • c//a shippers and catra apologists DNI
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as someone who got a small scratch on my leg by my cat ( on accident ) and felt it stinging for several minutes, there is absolutely no logical reason that adora shouldn't have been traumatized for near-life ( or forever ) or shouldn't have been in agonizing pain when catra scratched her several times.
even in 'Save the Cat', the reason why adora is crying isn't because she's in physical, burning pain, but because of catra being chipped.
and it's not like her acknowledging the pain would make a difference on the fandom anyway. girl literally has a nervous breakdown about catra killing her, killing her friends, destroying etheria, and their response is to act like adora saying "take me out" means she wants catra to take her on a date.
they don't take any of adora's pain seriously unless it negatively affects catra in some way, so they wouldn't have the excuse of "well, there's no lasting consequences, so ofc they wouldn't react", because the consequences that do last still don't matter to them. half even blame adora for it and act like she's being unreasonable.
but catra escalating a war and committing universal genocide, death of the monarch, and attempted murder-suicide isn't unreasonable or irredeemable at all. right.
like i said, i've gotten a small scratch on accident and it hurt like a bitch. i can't even imagine the agony you'd have to go through from getting scratched on both cheeks and on your back, shoulders to waist. and then again, by the same person, on your leg and, again, on your back.
#as someone who has been scratched before i can testify#yes it hurts like hell#you do get used to it after a while but still#and dont forget catra’s claws can canonically cut through METAL#i’m surprised she didn’t just cut through adora’s spine#anti catradora#anti spop
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imagine being such a shitty person that even the fascist cult leader who wants to destroy the entire planet doesn’t want you.
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while i have my criticisms about amphibia, one thing i do like about the show is how they handle sasha as a character after her redemption arc. now, her redemption arc was not entirely satisfactory since it mostly takes place off-screen but i like how they didn’t erase her entire personality in order for her to be one of the good guys. both the shows i’ve talked about here before are on either end of a spectrum.
catra just.. doesn’t change at all. she doesn’t work on or even acknowledge her abusive tendencies, she doesn’t really mean her apologies, and she’s just the same shitty person except that she’s no longer working for the horde. because.. the horde no longer exists and horde prime has made it clear that he doesn’t want her. so she’s basically tagging along with the heroes because she has no other choice, and still being a bitch to everyone.
the owl house, on the other hand, changes all of its redeemed characters DRASTICALLY. amity, lilith and hunter are all stripped of their personalities as soon as they become good. amity used to be a snobby high achiever with an abusive mother and a neglectful father? she is luz’s awkward nerdy girlfriend now. lilith used to be part of a cult and resorted to violence and problematic acts to get her way? she is luz’s awkward nerdy aunt and eda’s awkward nerdy sister now. hunter used to be sassy and pessimistic, and an intensely traumatized child who just discovered some really life-shattering truths about his existence and also lost his best friend? doesn’t matter, he is willow’s awkward nerdy bf now. see a pattern here?
amphibia, on the other hand, strikes a good balance with sasha. we see that sasha is clearly guilty about her actions and is actively trying to make amends for everything she did (instead of making insensitive jokes and blaming people for her own actions like someone *cough*), but she has retained her personality at the same time. she’s still sarcastic and a rational thinker, she’s still bossy when she needed to be, she’s still good at making plans and solving problems. not to mention, they actually reframe her toxic characteristics into more positive ones, like her leadership skills actually being used for good, instead of being used to control and manipulate people.
#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#toh critical#toh salt#toh criticism#toh discourse#anti toh#amphibia
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sorry for taking so long but i finally watched it, and it was so well done! your voiceover was really good and actually entertaining, i was cackling at all the jokes you made 😭 great work!
and i really hope more people talk about the problematic elements of spop because so far, i only see people on tumblr or just random users on the internet talking about it. i think youtube videos would gain a lot more traction and motivate people to think twice before accepting all of this as normal and romantic. just because it’s queer representation doesn’t mean it’s GOOD queer representation.
and thank you so much for the shoutout at the end, i really appreciate it!
It’s done
I finally present… my spop season 5 review!
youtube
This is the first time I’ve ever done something like this so feedback would be highly appreciated and help me on future projects
@spop-romanticizes-abuse @spopsalt @anti-spop @anti-catradora-collection @antispopausandstuff @my-nitpicking-self
#the only teeny tiny criticism i have is that the bgm was far too loud sometimes it was hard to focus on the narration#also it would have been nice if you divided the video into different sections so it’s easier to understand and follow along#other than that great video i love it!#i always wanted to make videos like this but i’m so bad at doing voiceovers it would physically hurt to listen to lmao#i just sound so awkward and stiff and like i just swallowed a rock whole#spop season 5 critical#spop critcial#spop salt#spop discourse#spop critical#spop#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop
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wait wtf. let’s not do this please. this is actually such a shitty take. you can criticize spop stans for the way they defend catra as a character or romanticize the abuse in the series. but do not bring it into real life and mix it up with ACTUAL. REAL. issues. this is an ACTUAL genocide that is taking the lives of millions of innocent people in REAL LIFE, you do not get to bring fiction into this.
a fictional character committing war crimes isn’t the same as genocide being carried out in real life. PLEASE learn to separate fiction from reality, this is actually so fucking problematic. yes, fiction can impact real life, but this is taking it too far. newsflash: you can like a character that has done horrible things because they are a character. they are fictional. for me personally, the only thing i don’t like is the way spop fans try to justify their opinion instead of just admitting that the character is evil.
but it’s so fucked up to mix that with real life and imply that people who like fictional villains support genocide and war crimes irl. i’m begging you, go touch some grass.
and while we’re on the topic, please check out Operation Olive Branch, they are an organization that is helping raise funds to help and support Palestinian families. (i’m not entirely sure how helpful this organization is since i’ve been hearing of some others that were revealed to be scams, so if you have heard something negative about them, please let me know!)
friend, recently i came up with something that actually will blow up your mind after this:
C*tra stans, apart of being the most toxic person in the word, they are pedophiles ( for simping over a teenager ), zoophile ( simping over a cat that it's an animal ) and supports abusive relationships and promote abuse. Like they always said that " adults are smarter than kids because they know more better " but do they actually know what is be a redflag and a abusive person ? noooOOOooooooo. They keep deffending C*tr* as if she was an angel who did nothing. For example imagine that etheria is palestain and the horde is israel, C*tra stans deffend C*tra and are on the horde side that would mean that they deffend genocide because in this case israel attack palestain people and catra attcak etherian people i honestly find so hypocrite that catra stans deffend palestine when they deffend a genocide woman who killed and hurt innocent people.
Wow. Ok. So, I would like to politely disagree, a lot of them don't know that Catra is a teenager, a lot of people see Catra more like a furry than an actual animal, don't know that it's abusive and are in denial, and I don't wanna imply I know what they think about real war because of what they think of fiction.
#sorry op but i am very unpolitely disagreeing#this is a horrible take and i think people should know that#youre bringing in real world issues into this discussion to justify your dislike of this show#i’m assuming (and hoping) that the asker is young and doesn’t really know the gravity of what they are saying#but i hope they read this and realize that they shouldn’t be saying such things#tw genocide
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So which finale you think was better, Amphibia or The Owl House?
ooh, this is a hard question. kind of. if we’re talking about finale alone, i think amphibia was better because at least it wasn’t as underwhelming and anticlimactic as toh’s. i liked seeing sasha’s and marcy’s calamity forms, although i think they could have gotten more screentime and importance to the plot. also the whole prophecy thing was so lazily written, we never get an explanation as to why these three girls were the chosen ones.
but if we’re talking about the final seasons overall, i think toh is better because unlike amphibia, it gave SOME importance to the trauma the characters went through. i still hate that we never got to see hunter work through his trauma but at least we saw him express grief and frustration, and retain his scars, unlike amphibia where anne sees her friend die and then immediately forgets about it, and marcy is apparently completely fine and happy and healthy after all the torture she went through.
hope that answers your question!
#as you can see i have more complaints about amphibia#s2 was so good idk what’s with cartoons ruining the plot in the final season lol#anti toh#toh critical#toh discourse#toh criticism#toh salt#amphibia critical#anti amphibia#amphibia criticism#amphibia salt#amphibia discourse
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some spop fanart just gives me the biggest ick. i saw one just now where catra had apparently kidnapped and tied adora up, and she was forcefully cuddling adora.
(not going to post the art here because i don’t want to sound like i’m bashing this person’s art skills, they are very skilled i just don’t like the context of their fanart)
#oh and some of the reblogs were like “id let her kidnap me 😍”#this is bordering noncon creepy weirdness right? why are people okay with this?#yes fiction is fiction and all that but these are the same people who would hate on a toxic straight ship#soo.. glass houses.#anti catradora#anti stans#tw noncon implied
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btw i saw a post that talked about the criticism on spop’s portrayal of war and the person basically said that “war isn’t the main theme of the show, it’s the emotional conflict”. and like?? the creators didn’t have to bring war into it then. you can write stories about emotional and interpersonal conflict and the cycle of abuse, without having to make it about war. and a story can focus on multiple issues at once, if the writers are competent enough.
if spop wasn’t about war, the creators could have just made it a normal highschool drama or something. there was no need to make it a she-ra reboot, especially considering the fact that they insulted the original and changed everything except for the character names. if you don’t want to focus on a specific theme, you don’t write it into your story. simple as that. it’s like writing a dystopian novel with no critique on real-world social issues. that’s what dystopia is all about, you can’t just say “well my story focuses more on the characters than the dystopian world they’re in”. just don’t write dystopia then.
and this is WAR we’re talking about. it’s not a fantasy trope, it’s a very real issue. if you’re going to include something like that in your narrative, you have to be prepared to address it with the seriousness it deserves, and not make light of it. acting like war is just this petty little pillowfight is irresponsible at best and outright insensitive at worst.
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can we talk about how useless lilith is to the plot? she's introduced as this really mysterious antagonist with a complicated relationship with one of our heroes. but then, she's shown to be incompetent, impatient and immature in a bunch of episodes where she tries to capture eda. she's portrayed almost as pathetic as kikimora sometimes.
but then she captures luz and we find out the truth about her. how she cursed her sister in order to get into the emperor's coven and how she's trying to fix her mistake by doing the wrong thing. okay, now her character is getting more interesting. maybe we can see how hard she has to work to right her wrongs and get forgiven and— nope. we're just gonna have her share eda's curse and now everyone loves her. she's forgiven instantaneously.
and after that? she's mostly just… there. either as a comic relief or as emotional support for the other characters. “she went back in time and punched belos!” anyone could have done that. there were multiple other characters in the show who knew a lot about the boiling isles and could have helped luz with time traveling. there were multiple other characters in the show who wouldn't have hesitated to deck philip in the face. lilith could have easily been replaced by any other character in the show.
besides, the punch didn't do much other than give belos a bump on his nose bridge and more of a reason to hate witches. it wasn't his driving force, he would have hated witches even if lilith hadn't punched him. he was already knee-deep in villainy at that point.
i just feel like lilith's character had a lot more potential. i feel like toh has a trend of turning all its redeemed characters into the same old "awkward loveable nerd" archetype. and it strips them of their entire personality. oh, amity was this stuck-up bully who was suffering from her mother's abuse? she got a haircut and she's just luz's cute awkward girlfriend now. personality? we don't know her. hunter was a trained soldier who spent years under the influence of his abusive uncle and recently found out that he was a clone made solely to replace his uncle's long-dead brother, and now has to deal with that life-shattering realization? nah, he's just willow's pathetic wet cat male wife now.
i just— i don't know, man. all these characters had potential. especially hunter. he was the most popular character in the show for a reason and it's not only because some viewers found him hot. it's because people could relate to him and also because his snarky and petty personality was a fun addition to the show. by the end of the series, none of these characters are themselves.
i love romantic subplots in shows but if a character has to change entirely in order to fit in a romantic narrative, maybe you're not doing it right. maybe those characters just don't belong together.
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say what you will but i refuse to be shamed for liking a “vanilla” ship by a bunch of people who romanticize abuse and sexualize teenagers.
#“oh but vanilla ships are boring blah blah” and??#i’d rather be bored than traumatized and/or infuriated#glimmadora is not boring but we’ve already been through that#also funny how c//a shippers call glimmadora boring and vanilla but also claim its toxic?? its one or the other babes#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#anticatradora#anti stans
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catra:
also catra:
#catra knows that adora doesn’t want to go back even before their conversation in promise#but she still tries to force adora to go back to the horde#what a nice friend#/s#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#anticatradora
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i gotta say the thing that gets me the most about c//a is that when u strip it down to its bare bones it has such an interesting concept. "dysfunctional pair of siblings whose roles in their abuse get validated when the golden child becomes the chosen one"? THAT'S FUCKING COOL!!!! its a shame that it ended up as abusive incest yuri instead of the many other angles they couldve taken it :( anyway i love ur blog
RIGHT! it was such an interesting concept in theory and we could have gotten a really interesting narrative and a look into how different kinds of abuse affects different people. also if we’re putting all the c//a shit aside, i really liked catra’s arc from s1-4 as well. i always loved a good corruption arc where a person keeps digging their own grave, despite knowing that they’re doing the wrong thing. but it only works if you don’t erase all of that and act like the character was right all along, which is what spop did.
the main reason i’m so irritated with this show is because it had the potential, and the creators decided to ruin that for the sake of shipping fodder. if it was overall a bad show, i could just stop watching it midway through and forget about it. shows like spop really frustrate me because if executed well, the entire narrative could have worked well. they just needed to either remove the sibling and abusive aspect of c//a and make it an interesting enemies to lovers romance, or just follow through the toxic siblings route.
#also thank you!#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#anticatradora#tw abuse
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so this was part of a post that talked about shadow weaver’s abuse towards catra and adora, and to summarize it, op basically says that catra wasn’t aware that shadow weaver was abusing adora. and i would like to dispute that point,
1. catra herself includes adora when she’s talking about shadow weaver’s abuse.
she specifically uses the word “us” here (and yes, the second screencap was before she calls shadow weaver out for manipulating adora). there was no need for catra to include adora in the conversation, if she didn’t know that adora was being abused. she could have said “shadow weaver hurt ME” or “she’s been manipulating ME” (and we all know catra wouldn’t hesitate to victimize herself, if she got the chance). no, the fact that catra said “us” means that she knew, to some extent, that adora was also being abused by shadow weaver.
2. catra uses shadow weaver’s abuse and manipulation tactics on adora.
i don’t think i need to explain this further. not only did catra know that adora was a people pleaser, like op said, but she also knew that adora was terrified of failure. and she used that to her advantage. catra knew that adora constantly needed to keep people around her safe and to accept all responsibilities as her own, and she knew how to feed on that insecurity. you don’t just pop out of the womb knowing how to manipulate and abuse people. you learn it from someone, and in this case, catra learned it from shadow weaver. she used both kinds of abuse tactics on adora - physical abuse that shadow weaver used on her, catra, and emotional/psychological abuse that shadow weaver used on adora.
in conclusion, there’s no way catra wasn’t aware of the abuse that adora endured. in some ways, catra’s entire character boiled down to her knowing exactly what was wrong in her life, but refusing to oppose it and instead turning into the very same people who made her miserable.
#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#anticatradora#tw abuse#tw physical abuse#tw emotional abuse#tw domestic abuse
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Criticals: Catra needs to go through therapy before she should ever be forgiven for the trauma she induced into her supposed new friends.
Half of the stans who are waiting for a movie that will never happen: OMFG you need therapy for hating on a fictional ship from a show that's already over! Get over it!
The other half who posts mile long threads about how much they romantacize abuse for lesbian representation: OMFG Catra has CHANGED!!!! And GROWN!!! She APOLOGIZED for being a meanie!!! Stop hurting our little meowmeow!!!
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there are vaguer forms of gaslighting in media where you don’t immediately catch onto it, because it’s worded differently or masked under a caring exterior. and there are instances where it’s not clear if the person is gaslighting someone or if they’re genuinely confused or concerned.
c//a stans however have NO excuse for not realizing that catra was gaslighting adora in the false reality, girlie says WORD FOR WORD “you’re crazy” and “you’re just seeing things” MULTIPLE TIMES after she’s shown to remember what happened. that’s TEXTBOOK GASLIGHTING and people are still like “aww baby kitty wants adora to stay with her” or “catra is so worried about adora, true love!”
#and keep in mind these people pretend to know what gaslighting is#and use it as a cool buzzword#like someone told me that glimmer gaslit adora?? girl WHERE#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#anticatradora#anti stans#gaslighting tw
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The logic of C // A stans
Their proof that Glimmer is abusive:
- Glimmer blaming Adora for her mother's death (immediately apologized)
- Glimmer saying that Adora isn't Shadow Weaver's favorite (fake argument to lure out Double Trouble)
Their proof that C // A isn't abusive:
- 'it's canon!' (Doesn't mean shit lmao)
- 'They were enemies' (even when they were kids, Catra abused Adora)
- They call others homophobic/racist etc (again, doesn't mean anything. Also most people who critize C//A aren't that)
- The same 4 screenshots that aren't even romantic or even the real Catra (the hologram, fake portal reality, 0000.01 seconds of Adora looking at Catra, Season 5)
They really have to stretch so hard to justify it. Meanwhile, a lot of Glimmadora shippers and C//A critics have.... quite a lot of evidence proving otherwise. We don't have to reach for the same 2 screenshots to show that Adora and Glimmer cared about each other. The same goes for showing Catra's abuse. We have PLENTY of that in the show.
the fact that they have to use FAKE catra or instances that are completely taken out of context to prove that c//a is healthy says enough. meanwhile glimmer and adora could be making out on screen and stans will still say that they’re sisters 🤡 ah yes, the person who my mom raised alongside me is not my sister but this girl i met and befriended when i was 17 is my sister /s
#it’s no use arguing with them at this point#they know i’m sure they know#theyre just in denial#spop critical#spop salt#spop#spop discourse#spop criticism#she ra#anti spop#anti catradora#anti c//a#anticatradora#anti stans#also do they use the “its canon” excuse for other shitty ships like edward and bella or joker and harley?#or is it just for shitty queer representation.
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