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Name: Elle
Age: 28
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ElleBrat
Character: Catra
Canon: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Canon Point: haha we're gonna go with midway through season 1, episode 2. Right before the Thaymor invasion.
CRAU, Canon AU: N/A
Character age: A very nebulous 18ish. She's a war orphan and child soldier, they don't really do birthdays.
Canon Abilities/Powers: Catra's abilities are all innate physical qualities. Being a - for lack of better term - literal cat person, she's got a bundle of feline attributes that are just part of who she is. These include her heightened senses of smell and hearing, her sharper eyesight (and ability to see in the dark/low-light areas), and her dexterity/agility; along with her clawed hands and feet.
She's also like, really good at climbing things and pissing people off. Basically, if a cat can do it? Catra probably can too.
(In terms of skills, she's been raised in a military complex as a soldier for the Evil Horde, who - as the name implies - aren't very good people. She's got a variety of military skills, including combat and strategy training that I can expand on if you like. But it's basically summed up as having weapons proficiency with staves and unarmed combat, being technologically competent, and being skilled with war machines and weaponry. In later canon points, she's also skilled with using a whip and orchestrating large-scale military operations, including resource distribution and management. Buuuut for right now, she's just a bratty cadet fresh out of training.)
What is their greatest negative emotion towards an object, situation, or person in their past?:
There's kind of A Lot, but for this specific canonpoint, going to say intense jealousy/feelings of inadequacy from always being treated as less than Adora. While these feelings manifest clearly as resentment towards Shadow Weaver, who often dismisses Catra as worthless and lazy, they also sometimes cause her to lash out at Adora; particularly when Adora is doing something that Catra perceives as sucking up, or if she thinks she's trying to worm her way into people's good books. (Or if Catra's been blamed/punished for something unfairly, or if she thinks Adora's gotten away with something because she's Shadow Weaver's favourite.)
How strongly do they feel about the negative subject matter, on the scale of one to ten?:
There's a couple of seasons on it.
Honestly, it depends on what Adora has done/is doing, or if Catra has recently screwed up or been berated. It's pretty much a simmering 4 until something triggers it, at which point it explodes up into a 12.
What is their greatest virtue?:
Catra is protective of the people she likes, but it usually comes out aggressively. (That's really the only way to be, in the Horde.) She's bossy about it, too: demanding and threatening people (Entrapta) to stay out of dangerous places (Hordak's sanctum) to keep them safe.
How aware are they of their virtue, on a scale from one to ten?:
Zero. No cognition of it whatsoever, and she'll fight tooth and nail against anyone who even suggests it.
Items: A stun baton, which fires off blasts of electricity to do what it says on the tin and stun people. Her cat-based face mask, and her Horde uniform.
Samples: s1 canonpoint on the TDM, I've got tonnes of other threads from later canonpoints in a different journal if you happen to want to see more fleshing out.
Special notes
None!
Age: 28
Contact info:
Character: Catra
Canon: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Canon Point: haha we're gonna go with midway through season 1, episode 2. Right before the Thaymor invasion.
CRAU, Canon AU: N/A
Character age: A very nebulous 18ish. She's a war orphan and child soldier, they don't really do birthdays.
Canon Abilities/Powers: Catra's abilities are all innate physical qualities. Being a - for lack of better term - literal cat person, she's got a bundle of feline attributes that are just part of who she is. These include her heightened senses of smell and hearing, her sharper eyesight (and ability to see in the dark/low-light areas), and her dexterity/agility; along with her clawed hands and feet.
She's also like, really good at climbing things and pissing people off. Basically, if a cat can do it? Catra probably can too.
(In terms of skills, she's been raised in a military complex as a soldier for the Evil Horde, who - as the name implies - aren't very good people. She's got a variety of military skills, including combat and strategy training that I can expand on if you like. But it's basically summed up as having weapons proficiency with staves and unarmed combat, being technologically competent, and being skilled with war machines and weaponry. In later canon points, she's also skilled with using a whip and orchestrating large-scale military operations, including resource distribution and management. Buuuut for right now, she's just a bratty cadet fresh out of training.)
What is their greatest negative emotion towards an object, situation, or person in their past?:
There's kind of A Lot, but for this specific canonpoint, going to say intense jealousy/feelings of inadequacy from always being treated as less than Adora. While these feelings manifest clearly as resentment towards Shadow Weaver, who often dismisses Catra as worthless and lazy, they also sometimes cause her to lash out at Adora; particularly when Adora is doing something that Catra perceives as sucking up, or if she thinks she's trying to worm her way into people's good books. (Or if Catra's been blamed/punished for something unfairly, or if she thinks Adora's gotten away with something because she's Shadow Weaver's favourite.)
How strongly do they feel about the negative subject matter, on the scale of one to ten?:
Honestly, it depends on what Adora has done/is doing, or if Catra has recently screwed up or been berated. It's pretty much a simmering 4 until something triggers it, at which point it explodes up into a 12.
What is their greatest virtue?:
Catra is protective of the people she likes, but it usually comes out aggressively. (That's really the only way to be, in the Horde.) She's bossy about it, too: demanding and threatening people (Entrapta) to stay out of dangerous places (Hordak's sanctum) to keep them safe.
How aware are they of their virtue, on a scale from one to ten?:
Zero. No cognition of it whatsoever, and she'll fight tooth and nail against anyone who even suggests it.
Items: A stun baton, which fires off blasts of electricity to do what it says on the tin and stun people. Her cat-based face mask, and her Horde uniform.
Samples: s1 canonpoint on the TDM, I've got tonnes of other threads from later canonpoints in a different journal if you happen to want to see more fleshing out.
Special notes
None!
virtue expansion (revisions request)
So, going with protectiveness as a virtue because, to be honest: Catra is a selfish person, and does not demonstrate many others. Even her protectiveness is selfish at its core, because it doesn't stem from a desire to see people safe in general. It's more of a, "this is my person, and I will feel hurt or responsible if they are hurt: so therefore, you will not hurt them" type of thing. Catra could not care less if 50 strangers become injured, if it means that her person remains safe.
Or, to use a more canonical example from the final season: Catra does not care if someone dies to save the world, as long as it isn't her person who does it.
And when it does turn out to be her person who insists on doing it, Catra ups and leaves rather than deal with the pain of supporting her on her Death Quest. She does go back to her, after realizing that the Big Bad is accessing the Plot Device Weapon that her Death Quest is supposed to destroy, and Catra is then instrumental in saving her life and keeping the planet from exploding -- but, again, none of it is a selfless act, so it doesn't really belong here.Up until towards the end of the third season, Catra demonstrates her protectiveness quite a few times. In the first couple of episodes, she's reprimanded by Shadow Weaver for trying to protect Adora by keeping her location a secret; and then by refusing to go after her to bring her back to the Horde. It's only when Shadow Weaver threatens Catra with having to suffer the consequences of Adora's disappearance in her place that Catra actually goes out after her. Even after being betrayed by her (--from Catra's perspective, anyway) at Thaymor, she keeps Adora's identity as She-Ra a secret. This is despite Catra being promoted to a Force Captain of the Horde, and She-Ra being their enemy. She holds firm to her denial of knowing anything about what Adora's doing, lying under pressure and in the face of the very real threat of torture, in order to protect her. She only confesses once video evidence of Adora and She-Ra's connection is shown to her, and the first thing she does is try to convince Shadow Weaver that Adora is just confused, and going through a phase rather than acting deliberately as their enemy.
After Adora leaves, Catra's protectiveness becomes much more aggressive and round-about. She no longer directly or obviously goes out of her way to look after anyone, except for a few moments that occur even when she is trying really, REALLY hard to close herself off from everyone else.
>After being suffocated by Hordak in his sanctum, Catra finds out that Entrapta intends on sneaking in there (for what is, apparently, not the first time) to 'borrow' (read: steal) a tool. Catra gets aggressive with her, insulting her and warning her that Hordak isn't somebody to be messed with, and orders her to remain away from his Sanctum. With anyone she didn't care about, Catra would very likely have let them continue on their way and probably relished in their punishment. But because Entrapta is a friend (--though, Catra at this point refuses to have friends), and Catra knows she'll get hurt if she goes there, she tries to keep her away.
When Entrapta goes there anyway, Catra rushes in and immediately tries to defend her. It's unnecessary, because it turns out that Entrapta and Hordak have bonded over Science, but Catra's very first words when she runs through the door are meant to protect her from the brutal punishments she knows would otherwise be in store.
>When Hordak is ordering Catra to send Shadow Weaver, the woman who raised (and, frankly, abused) Catra, to Beast Island (a death sentence), Catra tries to protect her. She insists that Shadow Weaver is still of use to the Horde, and that they should keep her around... but even when Hordak tells her to get the information out of Shadow Weaver and then banish her, Catra still protests - and is subsequently threatened.
Once again, under threat to her own life, Catra tries to protect someone. She implores Shadow Weaver to give her anything useful enough to convince Hordak to keep her around (and therefore, alive).
It all goes badly for Catra. Shadow Weaver manipulates her, and then escapes; leaving Catra to suffer the repercussions.
>Surprise! The repercussion = torture and death. Or, it was supposed to be, but for reasons unrelated to this virtue it didn't pan out that way. In any case, Scorpia attempted to break Catra out of her prison cell so she could escape. Catra refused, and told Scorpia to leave or, quote, "they'll take you down with me". When Scorpia doesn't move, Catra then calls for the guards; foiling any escape plan before Scorpia can enact it, and keeping her safe from punishment.
>It's all very downhill from there, until we hit the final season of the show. Catra has a Big Damn Hero moment, which involves her prison-breaking Glimmer (the Queen and leader of the Rebellion that Catra has, by that point, spent 3 years leading an army against) from the confines of the Big Bad's spaceship. Catra does this expecting that she will be killed for it (turns out the punishment is waaaay worse than death), but does it for one very important reason: to keep Adora from coming to the ship to rescue Glimmer herself. Because Catra knows that if Adora makes it to the Big Bad's ship, she'll be killed immediately.
The punishment that Catra receives for her defection is not death, but instead is mind control. But even under the Big Bad's control, she still resists in order to try to protect Adora. (It goes about as well as you'd expect.)
>We get another minor incident shortly after that, which is a more physical demonstration. During a search on an abandoned planet for a 'secret weapon' that might help them defeat the Big Bad, they're accosted by a very creepy lifeform that Catra assumes is a threat. She moves before any of the others in her group (consisting of Adora, Glimmer, and Bow) do, shoving them all out of the way to tackle the perceived enemy herself.
>We're at 1071 words already so I'm just gonna cut to the Failsafe, which is supposed to stop the Heart of Etheria. Catra becomes suspicious of it and Shadow Weaver's insistence that Adora be the one who carries the Failsafe, and demands to know what will happen to her if she does. Catra's demanding is the only reason why Shadow Weaver divulges the risks involved in using the Failsafe (side-effects may include Exploding From Overabundance Of Magic), and she then tries to keep Adora from being the one who takes it in order to keep her safe. (It's important to note that Catra is not objecting to 'anyone' taking the Failsafe. Just specifically Adora. Somebody else could have offered themselves up and Catra would likely not have protested at all.)
So! To summarize, I would put it as Catra's greatest virtue because she consistently tries to protect the people she cares about despite real and great consequences to herself.
This also ties into why she refuses to admit that she's a protective person, or indeed, that she cares about anyone at all. At the canonpoint I'd be taking her from, she hasn't yet been betrayed by Adora; so she doesn't have the experiences of the people she cares about taking advantage of her and using her protectiveness to throw her into the line of fire in their place. (That may have not been what Adora did intentionally, but the fact remains that Catra took the fall for her defection.) After Adora leaves, Catra tries to guard herself from being betrayed and hurt in that way again by resisting other friendships: because, Catra knows that if she's friends with someone, that only gives them the same opportunity to use and hurt her.
Before Adora's defection (ie: this canonpoint), Catra's reluctance to admit she cares about anyone stems from one important fact: it's discouraged in the Horde. Any sign of weakness, physical or emotional, puts a target on one's back. That's just part of growing up in an evil military. It's obvious that she and Adora are close, but it's not something that can or should be admitted to.
(Also, it's like. A 'big, tough girl' thing. You can't admit you like someone, that makes you look like an idiot.)