#eternia works like MCU Asgard

[lightdancer1]

This will also apply to the Magicatra AU I'm in that stage of shaping as a narrative:

Adora and Catra are not perfect mirrors of each other. Catra is selfish and already despised the Horde long before Adora did. Catra's approach to fighting it even without She-Ra is going to correspondingly be different *and* the Horde has the brute force ADORA SMASH! figure against the Rebellion, who gets the girl who almost won the war amplified by She-Ra's raw power.

Catra's version of She-Ra is also different to Adora's, Catra makes better use of the super-strength for Superman style 'leaping tall buildings in a single bound' quasi-flight even without Swift Wind. Catra, due to her different focus in intellect makes more careful studies of She-Ra's powers without trusting Light Hope one bit and refusing to play the same manipulation game she escaped. Catra is much better at the political game and thus proves much better at capitalizing on the skills of all the characters than Adora and company were, mostly because Adora is a bit hapless in social skills that don't involve throwing a shitload of punches and Catra...isn't.

Correspondingly Adora's Horde is far less a haven of backbiting and treachery than Catra's, at least as long as she stays there. Adora is the golden girl who sincerely believed the propaganda and is very much an Azula-style 'true believer and paragon whose villainous traits more than slightly converge with heroic ones and this is a tragic Very Bad ThingTM' Adora also opts for 'when you have a sufficiently big hammer everything is a nail' and her hammer is pretty much sufficiently big as long as she directly commands (but when she doesn't....).

As far as Shadow Weaver i opt for the view that she knew what Adora was from the beginning and believed her fated to be She Ra so her manipulations were designed to render She Ra a pliable weapon for her use and to Hell with everyone else, Horde included. And then sorry, Shadow Weaver, your princess had another host. So she switches up manipulation and abuse strategies without a hitch and in the process forces Catra to see in Season I's equivalent that she was completely and utterly wrong about everything happening with Adora and forcing by sheer 'evil cannot comprehend good' fuckery the biggest single personality switch in the AU.

And with the Masters of the Universe element in this AU instead of merely hinting that Eternians survive, He-Man is outright named, as is Adam (though they don't appear) and a certain villain gets to be the main element of the Eternians....complete with a take from one of the canons that he's the evil uncle. Unlike most takes on Skeletor this one at least tries to hide his villainy and with Hordak as the model leader Adora's used to following Skeletor isn't that much uglier than Hordak.

#magicatra au #skeletor is a big ol' outside context problem #skeletor randor and marlena are all immortal #eternia works like MCU Asgard #the royal family has powers that the rest of the species doesn't #but they're all superhuman to one degree or another #skeletor vs Horde Prime is straight up evil vs evil #magicatra isn't going to be a clone of canon Adora #Horde Adora isn't going to be a clone of canon Catra #Things really go wild by the time the portal arc comes up