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A. and I went to brunch at Crossroads. Track is over, and T. is sick anyway. He popped a fever in the evening so I have already canceled school for him tomorrow and will call the nurse at the doctor’s office in the morning to see what to do next.
A. got bored, and after having her watch Toy Story 4, which she missed in theatres, and being told no to the new Lion King and Aladdin, we went looking for animated stuff that we could try at no additional cost. I found the She-Ra reboot on Netflix and we were off. We watched the first season or 2 on Saturday, and then another season today and maybe part of 4. I am not totally clear, but we are approaching the end of the episodes that are currently available, which will put us (thankfully) into maintenance mode.
This is a show that A. really wants me watching her with, which means I have to answer questions ever 3-4 minutes (this is a LOT of interruptions, given that episodes are 24 minutes long). They are good questions tho: the show is an exploration of principles vs. loyalty, ambition, power, mentorship, identity, friendship, parenting, courage — lots of really big concepts, packaged in ways that are absolutely accessible to the audience.
Adora / She-Ra is raised in the Horde and to celebrate finishing her cadet training and getting a provisional Force Captain promotion, she steals a skiff and takes her best buddy out for an illicit spin. They wind up where they should not be (but where they spend a bunch of time in training simulations) as a result of best buddy and future
HEY SPOILERS GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND DO NOT COME BACK
Nemesis Catra (Katra?) grabbing the tiller and then the two of them wrestling over it. Basically, the first episode sets the tone for all future interactions: Adora is trying to have fun with her buddy, her buddy takes it a bit far, Adora is like, NO, buddy is like, ha ha ha you cannot tell me no, disaster ensues. After a couple dozen episodes, we have escalated to planetary destruction level potential disaster, as the She-Ra backstory emerges.
Anyway. In the beginning Adora finds a sword, but then wakes up no sword, goes back to the Horde, is haunted by memory of sword, goes to retrieve the sword, is captured by Glimmer and Bo (Bow?) and converts to the side opposing the Horde. Catra is appalled and betrayed and now there is Nemesis.
Catra is a remarkably pristine example of a reactive, chaotic, but highly capable person. Lacking any clear goal other than ambition to have All The Power (and not intending to use that Power once acquired for any purpose — just the having of the power seems to be the goal, and there is not even any sense of responsibility with that Power), Catra is prepared to violently and energetically ping off of anyone who tells her no. Anyone. For any reason. It is an amazing portrayal.
Adora is much less pristine. Sometimes she is like, wait, I have been lied to! The Horde is Evil and Must Be Stopped! (Before that, it was The Princesses are Evil and Must Be Stopped!). Other times, she is like, where do I come from? Who were my parents? What is this She-Ra thing anyway and why did I get sucked into it anyway! Still other times, when there is food and it is tasty, she is just face down into her plate enjoying the hell out of it. She loves her friends. She wants to comply. She feels a great weight of responsibility for basically everything. And she is increasingly frustrated because no matter what she does, and no matter who she does it for, she is not actually getting answers to the questions most important to her. I sense a breaking point in her future. It will be interesting to see.
Their primary teacher, Shadow Weaver, formerly Light Spinner, teacher to Glimmer’s father, etc. (really, I am starting to understand sagas which had lists of these kinds of titles. They essentially remind you of what happened in the backstory of whatever you are currently hearing about) compares herself to Catra in one moment, but it does not sound all that sincere. I mean, it is not wrong: she is even more power hungry than Catra, and only marginally less reactive to being told no. She is a weird, twisted meld of the two girls: the compliance and excellence in performance of Adora, eager to please, hoping to get good things out of being good, and Catra’s thirst for power at all costs. Bizarrely, she did bad magic (with Glimmer’s now deceased father, but then he was a boy) to get power to counter the Horde early on in the invasion — and then when she was punished for it, fled to the Horde to sell out the Princess team. Seriously. WTF. Once she falls from her position under Hordak, she flips back, and sells him out to the Princess team. At this point, it is utterly unclear whether she has any more of a moral compass or even a goal than Catra — she just wants to punish people who are sick of her shit.
Oh, and she wants to suck on their magic.
Anyway. There are great stories about Bo’s secret family and the self he presents to him, because he does not think they will love him if they knew he was helping the Rebellion, and how all the Princesses are recruited to the resurrected Princess Alliance. There is delightful uncertainty and ambiguity about what exactly it was that Mara, the most recent previous She-Ra did a thousand years ago, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. And there is a mad scientist Princess, who constitutes her own team (exactly as a good mad scientist would!) and whose shifts of allegiances can thus illustrate the dangers of loyalty, ambition, having specific goals without thinking about the consequences and all kinds of delightful things like how someone really, really, really smart struggles so much with social connections and cues.
The series is a delight, in part because it is perfect for working through a lot of really important moral and social conundrums that will pop up over and over and over again in any life worth living (probably not to the tune of planetary destruction, but, you know). And my daughter and this series met at absolutely the perfect time for it. Surprisingly, it is even better (IMO, obviously!) than MLP. But YMMV.
A. got bored, and after having her watch Toy Story 4, which she missed in theatres, and being told no to the new Lion King and Aladdin, we went looking for animated stuff that we could try at no additional cost. I found the She-Ra reboot on Netflix and we were off. We watched the first season or 2 on Saturday, and then another season today and maybe part of 4. I am not totally clear, but we are approaching the end of the episodes that are currently available, which will put us (thankfully) into maintenance mode.
This is a show that A. really wants me watching her with, which means I have to answer questions ever 3-4 minutes (this is a LOT of interruptions, given that episodes are 24 minutes long). They are good questions tho: the show is an exploration of principles vs. loyalty, ambition, power, mentorship, identity, friendship, parenting, courage — lots of really big concepts, packaged in ways that are absolutely accessible to the audience.
Adora / She-Ra is raised in the Horde and to celebrate finishing her cadet training and getting a provisional Force Captain promotion, she steals a skiff and takes her best buddy out for an illicit spin. They wind up where they should not be (but where they spend a bunch of time in training simulations) as a result of best buddy and future
HEY SPOILERS GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE AND DO NOT COME BACK
Nemesis Catra (Katra?) grabbing the tiller and then the two of them wrestling over it. Basically, the first episode sets the tone for all future interactions: Adora is trying to have fun with her buddy, her buddy takes it a bit far, Adora is like, NO, buddy is like, ha ha ha you cannot tell me no, disaster ensues. After a couple dozen episodes, we have escalated to planetary destruction level potential disaster, as the She-Ra backstory emerges.
Anyway. In the beginning Adora finds a sword, but then wakes up no sword, goes back to the Horde, is haunted by memory of sword, goes to retrieve the sword, is captured by Glimmer and Bo (Bow?) and converts to the side opposing the Horde. Catra is appalled and betrayed and now there is Nemesis.
Catra is a remarkably pristine example of a reactive, chaotic, but highly capable person. Lacking any clear goal other than ambition to have All The Power (and not intending to use that Power once acquired for any purpose — just the having of the power seems to be the goal, and there is not even any sense of responsibility with that Power), Catra is prepared to violently and energetically ping off of anyone who tells her no. Anyone. For any reason. It is an amazing portrayal.
Adora is much less pristine. Sometimes she is like, wait, I have been lied to! The Horde is Evil and Must Be Stopped! (Before that, it was The Princesses are Evil and Must Be Stopped!). Other times, she is like, where do I come from? Who were my parents? What is this She-Ra thing anyway and why did I get sucked into it anyway! Still other times, when there is food and it is tasty, she is just face down into her plate enjoying the hell out of it. She loves her friends. She wants to comply. She feels a great weight of responsibility for basically everything. And she is increasingly frustrated because no matter what she does, and no matter who she does it for, she is not actually getting answers to the questions most important to her. I sense a breaking point in her future. It will be interesting to see.
Their primary teacher, Shadow Weaver, formerly Light Spinner, teacher to Glimmer’s father, etc. (really, I am starting to understand sagas which had lists of these kinds of titles. They essentially remind you of what happened in the backstory of whatever you are currently hearing about) compares herself to Catra in one moment, but it does not sound all that sincere. I mean, it is not wrong: she is even more power hungry than Catra, and only marginally less reactive to being told no. She is a weird, twisted meld of the two girls: the compliance and excellence in performance of Adora, eager to please, hoping to get good things out of being good, and Catra’s thirst for power at all costs. Bizarrely, she did bad magic (with Glimmer’s now deceased father, but then he was a boy) to get power to counter the Horde early on in the invasion — and then when she was punished for it, fled to the Horde to sell out the Princess team. Seriously. WTF. Once she falls from her position under Hordak, she flips back, and sells him out to the Princess team. At this point, it is utterly unclear whether she has any more of a moral compass or even a goal than Catra — she just wants to punish people who are sick of her shit.
Oh, and she wants to suck on their magic.
Anyway. There are great stories about Bo’s secret family and the self he presents to him, because he does not think they will love him if they knew he was helping the Rebellion, and how all the Princesses are recruited to the resurrected Princess Alliance. There is delightful uncertainty and ambiguity about what exactly it was that Mara, the most recent previous She-Ra did a thousand years ago, and whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. And there is a mad scientist Princess, who constitutes her own team (exactly as a good mad scientist would!) and whose shifts of allegiances can thus illustrate the dangers of loyalty, ambition, having specific goals without thinking about the consequences and all kinds of delightful things like how someone really, really, really smart struggles so much with social connections and cues.
The series is a delight, in part because it is perfect for working through a lot of really important moral and social conundrums that will pop up over and over and over again in any life worth living (probably not to the tune of planetary destruction, but, you know). And my daughter and this series met at absolutely the perfect time for it. Surprisingly, it is even better (IMO, obviously!) than MLP. But YMMV.