Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Fictional Women Around the World: Catra

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Fictional Women Around the World: Catra · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: I never told your production if I heard you. And
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: welcome to another sub sub sub segment of fictional women
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: around the world, Pride Edition Pride twenty twenty six. And
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: I'm excited about this one. This is a character that
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: has been requested by multiple people. I've been told I
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: should watch the show, and now, after researching it, I
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: think so.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: I think.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, I always feel bad because I know you're right,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: I would like it. I just feel like I get
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: when I start watching a TV show, that's the end
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: of me for a while. I can't stop watching it.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: So it's just an investment. But today we are talking
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: about Katcha from the show Shira and the Princesses of Power,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: which was a twenty eighteen animated series and a reboot
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: of the nineteen eighty five cartoon Sira Princess of Power,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: which in itself was a spinoff of Sorts of he
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Man and the Masters of the Universe.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I know nothing about this.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: I do vaguely remember it because I remember liking Shira.
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: I met a girl named Shira named after oh really
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: this character, and she was a force. But yeah, yeah,
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: I know very little, but I did love her and
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: appreciate her. Now with the fact that the new movie's
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: out time.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I know, and I didn't even mean to do it.
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: Some sometimes sometimes it just happened.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize we have powers.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize until I was doing this research, the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Heira and the she Ra. I didn't put it together.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: But now you caught on. Got it? Got it?
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Pat of you.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Samantha. So.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: The original Shira lasted for two seasons and was based
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: on the adventures of Hera's twin sister, Shira. Notably, it
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: featured a primarily female cast. The plot of the twenty
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: eighteen reboot very basically follows Adra, an orphan who leaves
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: the evil Horde, finds a sword that turns her into
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: a princess from myths named Shira, and teams up with
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: other princesses to stand up against evil with their magic powers. So, yes,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I have not seen this show as of now, but yeah,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a few of you have written in about the show,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: not necessarily this character, specifically, our Olympics correspondent Taylor suggested
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: several characters from the show, not specifically Katra, but she
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: did reference a scene with Katra and another character, Scorpia,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: where they have a moment where Scorpia has a moment
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of realization and says to catcha you're a bad friend.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: And she was talking about how powerful all that scene was,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: which sounds a little painful. But Katra was the one
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: who kept coming up when I was looking up queer
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: characters for this segment. Kind of odd to me now
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: that I've done all the research that it's her over Adorra,
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: but not that she's not an interesting character.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: They both are.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: But anyway, all this is say I'm going to do
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: my best. We were mostly talking about the reboot today
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: if I get anything wrong, as always writing, so in
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the world of Shira, Kattra, who has feline features, and
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Adorra are best friends and orphans raised on the planet
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Etherea as child soldiers for the nefarious Horde. From the outset,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: it's made clear that the person who raised them, the
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Shadow Weaver, is a groomer and is abusive. Adorra is
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: labeled as the perfect child and Katra is a mistake.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Adorra's well being was pinned on Katra by the Shadow Weaver,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: and Katra was punished whenever any harm befell a Dora.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: It was made very clear to Katra that she was
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the problem that was only kept around because a Dora
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: liked her. Because of this, over the course of the show,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Katra displays fear of abandonment, paranoia, and lack of emotional control.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: She's really scared of losing a Dora.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: So when a Dora leaves the Hord after realizing that
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: they're up to bad guy Shenanigan's, Katra is really hurt.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Katra tried to bring a Dora back, tried to convince
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: her that a Dora was just going through a phase.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: When that didn't work, Katra attempted to reframe the whole
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: thing at an opportunity to get out of her friend's
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  Speaker 1: shadow and rise up in the ranks. So the Dora's
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: out of the way, I don't have to worry about
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: her anymore.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: I'm going to rise up.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: Katra sticks with the Hord at first and gets a
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: second in command, Scorpia. As the quote from listener Taylor suggested,
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Katra does not treat Scorpio well, even though Scorpia is
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: trying to be her friend on top of being a
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: competent partner. Her treatment of Scorpia is so bad that
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Scorpia leaves the Horde and joins the Princesses. Katra lashes
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: out at the figure who raised her, the Shadow Weaver,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: alternately considering her as a mother figure and an obstacle.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: At this point.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Based on Catcha's upbringing, she pushes people away, often with
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: violence and digression. Going all the way back to preschool,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Katra would bite and scratch at Adorra. She is also
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: hard on herself because of her upbringing, thinking that no
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: one loves her or could care about her, and that
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: all she does is hurt people. A part of that
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: ingrained system of belief led her to push away people
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: that cared about her. And actually there's a lot written
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: about this character when it comes to mental health and
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: attachment styles. This was a different episode type. We could
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: talk about that, but I think you can tell you
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: can see it. Over time, Kata became depressed and left
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the Horde, joining the Rebellion and repairing her friendship with Adorra,
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: which was not an immediate process at all, and redeeming
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: herself in general also not an immediate process at all.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: The Princesses eventually forgave her in the series finale, she
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: admits to Adorra that she has feelings for her, has
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: had feelings for her, always, has been in love with her,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and Adorra says she loves her too, and they kiss,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and this kiss returns Adra's powers and allows her to fight.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: Oh so they didn't get queer baited.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: Amazing gay love, says the world. The creators, though, said
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: that this wasn't a sure bet because quote various other
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: partners had the right to first refusal, which I'm to
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: take means Netflix and other people in charge. But they
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: said that they weren't sure they were going to get
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: it get it through. But yeah, it feels like, without
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: having seen the show, but having read a lot about
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: it in the past couple of days, it feels like
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: they were a real childhood best friends to enemies to
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: lovers trope. And there was a lot of like dramatic fights,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: but also the coming together and a lot of yearning.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And pining and a lot of yearning.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but listeners who have seen it let me know,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: I actually I'm pretty invested in watching it now. There's
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: also a lot of self sabotage with this character, and
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: there is examination of trauma and how it impacts relationships
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: you can see how her own how she grew up
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: and how she was treated impacts her relationships. At one point,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: she was implanted with a control chip by horrid Prime,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and this took away her autonomy. She could control her
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: body or awakens her powers when Katra was in danger
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: saving and healing her. That's you know, you can make
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: that pretty romantic too. She's a really smart, strong, powerful character.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: There was some discussion I was reading about the queer
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: community and that whole idea of transformation and the alternate
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: secret identity and why that resonates with so many people
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of why you know you have to have this other life,
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: maybe you feel like you have to have this other life.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Also another conversation I read. I thought it was interesting
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: because we talked about this in our episode we did
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: on I think it was Women Villains, but we were
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: talking about redemption and how a lot of male characters
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: get these like redemptive arcs and they it's like really
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: well thought out and they become the most popular characters sometimes,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: but women usually you just kill them off and they
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: never have that redemptive arct. But this was brought up
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: as a great example of redemption for women of Cattra
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: kind of working through all of this. Yeah, and so
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: I wanted to end with a quote from an article
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: on Medium called the Importance of Kattra, a character study
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: by Ray Quote. Katra may just be a fictional character
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: on a children's TV show, but with Katra being a
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: lesbian woman of color, she is an important character for kids.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Katra allows girls to see that it's okay to be
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: angry and emotional, as well as that your mental illness
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't make you harder to love. It also shows little
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: girls that women can be powerful fighters too. Katra's hardships
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: and her display of trauma are what humanize her and
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: what make her a compelling character.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I really enjoyed researching this one.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I get in nervous researching a character I know
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: nothing about, right, but I hope I did her justice.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: If I mess anything up, If I got anything wrong,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: we know. If you have any thoughts, please let us know. Yeah,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and thank you to listener Taylor, who sent in the
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: suggestion a long time ago.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: We keep your suggestions.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it just takes it's a while to get to
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: come back. Yes, but yeah, listeners, if you have thought
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: about this sort of suggestions for who we should talk
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: about next.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Please write in.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: You can email us at Hello at stuff Whenever Told
• 10:25
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• 10:27
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• 10:29
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• 10:31
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• 10:33
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• 10:35
  Speaker 1: always to our super producer Chandler and our executive produce Maya.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Thank you and thanks to you for listening Stuff I
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Never Told You, production of I Heart Radio.
• 10:42
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