Rewatch Discussion Post: Princess Prom

[mod_wolf]

Apologies for posting this one a day late!

 

Here's the post to discuss Princess Prom! As always, spoilers are fair game.

Comments

[erinptah]

The whole concept of "let's have a big neutral party with no weapons where enemy royals can mingle in a polite way" has so much story potential. I can't think of any parallel situations in Earth history.

Not impressed by the Perfuma-Bow-Glimmer "we're going to talk about this in terms of friendship, but play it exactly like a het teenage love triangle" situation. (Glimmer didn't feel at all threatened when Adora joined the dynamic, but now...) It's been done, guys.

Would've loved to see Scorpia also in a tux, but she was absolutely smashing in the dress. And of course Catra was amazing. I also wish we'd gotten to see Entrapta's idea of "dressing up," although Entrapta just doing her normal thing in her standard outfit was delightful.

Noticed Spinnerella and Netossa, holding hands while bowing to Frosta! And they keep cropping up next to each other in crowd scenes, too.

I love the recurring detail of Adora shoveling food into her mouth whenever she gets the opportunity. It's such an "experienced soldier who also grew up in a dystopian hellzone" touch. When there's food available, you Eat It Now, because you have no idea when the next meal is coming.

Frosta being an 11-year-old was a cool twist. (I know she's in the opening, but she goes by so fast I didn't catch that part.) I like that she's so cool and suave and has the formal etiquette nailed, but also insists that the food on her plate not be touching.

All the background extras are desaturated and blue-tinted, to great effect. They can crowd the room and move around, and the viewer's eye is still drawn right where it needs to be, to the main characters with their bright saturation and mostly-warm-toned outfits.

Pretty sure there's nothing I can say about the infamous Dance Sequence that hasn't already been said!

[the_gneech]

Scorpia's throw-away line of her family not getting along with the other princesses "even before the Horde came" opens up so freakin' many questions. O.o

Why did Scorpia's family just hand over the black garnet?

Why the other princesses don't like Scorpia is pretty obvious– Horde Force Captain, duh. But that also leads to the question, what interactions has she HAD with the other princesses? I mean, there WAS a whole war already, and it was within Glimmer's lifetime at least 'cos her dad died in it.

THIS CALLS FOR A TIMELINE!

[froggimus_rex]

Considering the lovely, ethical people the Horde higher ups tend to be, I suspect "let" and "joined" are highly subjective terms where Scorpia's family are concerned.

[redrikki]

This episode cemented my understanding of Adora as someone with an anxiety disorder. She plans obsessively because it keeps her calm in unfamiliar situations and makes it familiar. Her entire life has centered around being exactly what everyone around her needs in order to feel safe and possibly even loved and, since she left the Horde, she's been struggling to find out what that is.

It's funny that she doesn't see herself as someone who would just abandon her friends when, from her old friends' perspective, that's just what she did. She offered Catra the opportunity to join her, but what about the rest of the kids? Did she not consider them friends? So much to unpack with that.

[erinptah]

I saw the obsessive planning as another effect of her traumatic upbringing -- more like PTSD than like the clinical anxiety some people are born with.

This level of preparation was actually necessary to survive the battle simulations (if not actual battles) that the Horde kept throwing her into. She doesn't have any reason to believe Princess Prom will be different. If Glimmer and Bow are being really casual about it, that doesn't prove it's safe, that just shows they're already prepared for the dangers! Adora doesn't have their experience, so she'd better work to catch up.

Are the other present-day Horde kids the ones we saw harassing Catra? Gonna have to watch for that in the flashback scenes. It does seem like Catra is her only real Horde friend.

[redrikki]

It's interesting because while Catra is certainly the only one she seems close to, she has a pretty easy camaraderie with the rest of her training cadre in episode one and also in the Promise flashbacks. Lonnie at least seems to consider Adora a friend. In the next episode she rails against Adora for abandoning them and in the flashback in Promise, she jumps in to help Adora during her training match with Catra.

[froggimus_rex]

I think there's probably a heap of different things going on with how Adora relates to her non-Catra Horde cohort.

On the one hand, Adora is a people person. She likes people, and when she's not a wound up ball of anxiety, seems to get along with them pretty easily, even with her deliberately inflicted ignorance of various social norms (like what an aunt is, for example). Plus the big blue drill sergeant probably praised her teamwork at some point and he was likely the most trustworthy and reliable adult figure (inasmuch as someone deliberately pushing the Horde's agenda on its child soldiers in training can be described as trustwirthy) in her life, so teamwork good, praiseworthy, everyone wins!

On the other hand, Shadow Weaver does not want Adora to have friends or anything resembling an emotional support network ("They're only holding you back"), and a major component of her abuse of Adora involves leveraging Catra's wellbeing against Adora's compliance with what Shadow Weaver wants, so Adora pursuing friendships carries with it both the risk of making Shadow Weaver unhappy and having even more people whose wellbeing is suddenly her responsibility.

On the gripping hand, Catra is a jealous, possessive little fuzzbutt, and while I don't think she'd have knowingly and deliberately sabotaged Adora's attempts at being friends with the rest of their cohort, she probably did push back enough at any attempt on Adora's part to include her that it eventually became obvious that as far as Catra was concerned she could spend them with them or with her, and well...