Catra Brainrot Central

Y’ALL @astrolavas has done a beautiful commission for my fan fic!! I’m so hype for how it’s turned out the expressions are perfect, AND THIS SCENE IS IN THE STORY!

WOOOP I CAN FINALLY POST THIS ART I MADE

Please go read this fic, these chapters are absolutely fucking hilarious and also INTENSE!!!!!  

I disagree. There are some elements of this, but the meat of the finale is not about the power of love - rather, it is about identity and self-actualization. And the places where love interact, sometimes it is in more interesting ways. Such as.... where this love comes from, and where it is accepted.

Let me go through the key beats of the finale:

1. Would you say Shadow Weaver saved Catra and Adora with the "power of love"? Is that her "love" for them? If so, then that's really interesting - a darker interpretation of love, which they also have for her, in a way. That is no happy go lucky love cliche. The scene with them crying over her, it's powerful and painful and very provocative, IMO the strongest part of the finale. What do you do when you feel love for your abusive parental figure, and then just when you're getting over the fact they never cared about you, they show love back in an act of self-destruction? What closure do you get?

2. Love in the context of Entrapta and Hordak, is hard earned, because these characters spend so much of the show thinking that they were innately unlovable, and because Hordak had spent the whole season being guided back to his own identity with the "LUVD" crystal, and even then, it still wasn't enough - after Hordak had finally won the battle to be true to himself, to show and accept love, he had this pried out of hands immediately by Horde Prime. In the original animatic, Hordak panicked that he killed his brother (who in part he does still love), and Entrapta calmed him down... then Prime yelled at them, in Hordak's body, that they were unworthy and unloved and would die with no comfort. It was chilling. The final scene was cut short but I'm glad the original was shared.

These two have a bit in common with Adora and Catra - Entrapta works her ass off this season to protect the people she cares about with her tech skills, and is scared of failing them or being rejected, while Hordak doesn't think he is worthy of love because of the monstrous abomination that he is. In this scene, rather than shooting Entrapta, failing her again, and discarding his identity, Hordak shows her that he recieved her message of caring about him, reciprocates, and has her back. And in doing so, accepts he's worth something.

3. Catra and Adora's story of love isn't about the fact that they were going to get into a romance, it is about how Adora has spent the entire show giving OTHER PEOPLE her love, INCLUDING Catra, and how she has always refused to accept reciprocation. She has gotten herself into the mindset that it's her responsibility to care for and protect everyone else, and that to accept help, or to let other people do the job, would mean that she is too weak to be counted on, that she is unworthy of the power of She-Ra, or of the love her friends have for her. Adora's too strong for her own good and thinks that because she has a very slim possibility of surviving a suicide mission, that she should do it, rather than someone who has zero chance. But like how Angella didn't think Adora should seal the portal, Catra doesn't think Adora should use the Failsafe by herself, and decides that they will face their fate together.

In accepting Catra's love, Adora accepts she is worthy of love, that she is worthy of happiness, and this basically heals a rift in her being which allows her to focus on BECOMING She-Ra and actually save the world.

4. While I'm not exactly fond of Mermista and Sea Hawk's scene (IMO its inclusion was fun but made the finale seem too much like "power of love woohoo"), Glimmer and Bow had some interesting demonstrations of love.

Glimmer doesn't break Micah's control with kind words of friendship like everyone else does - she shows her love by MELTING HIS DAMN FACE OFF, knocking him out of the fight and stopping him from further damaging his own body.

Bow's big love moment isn't for himself or even someone he's particularly close with - it's for SCORPIA. Bow appeals to Scorpia's inner good nature, to get her to pause for ONE SECOND, so that he can execute Entrapta's nicely-prepared programme and actually free all the chipped people, because no amount of love will spare them from Prime's hivemind. It's a big moment for Scorpia, who has spent the whole show being the villain who always had so much care for others, but never recieved much back. Bow may not be close to her, but he understands what it is to be that friend, and is able to connect to her and believe in her without having much of a rapport.

5. Prime's actual death is straight up She-Ra murder, which is pretty cool. Bear in mind, this isn't She-Ra's power being boosted by love so much as it is the Heart of Etheria that the First Ones collected... but Adora, now at peace, is able to enjoy a moment of empathy for Hordak, a character who has a lot more in common with her than she would have ever believed.

Two soldiers born and bred to be used as weapons of war, finally meeting again at the end of their journeys.

Anyway, like I said, there are SHADES of "power of love", and that comes through when the characters "break out" of their chip control, but complete pandering to this is subverted by how the chips actually had to be 1. broken to prevent complete control of the characters and 2. removed by Entrapta and Bow's server hack, which is absolutely NOT "power of love", we spent the whole past season watching them prepare for that task, learning about Prime's computers and dismantling the chips.

Just to zoom in on Glimmer's subplot, the fact that her "power of love" moment was beating the shit out of her posessed father, apart from what op already mentioned with her showing love by destroying Prime's ability to use him (and trusting his ability to be able to take a beating like that), her means of doing so also came from a culmination of her character arc.

One big theme for Glimmer throughout the series, and especially in s4, was the conflict between the expectations on her and her need to be herself. In s4 she got all the powers she had envied Angella for - magic and political - but itched to do things her own way. To get her hands dirty. To do the work herself. Shadow Weaver and - more roundabout through parallelism - Catra offered her ways to do that, and in the end it was to no small part the powers, tactics and self confidence Glimmer had learnt from the two of them that allowed her to take down Micah.

That's why Micha's Prime induced 'reason you suck' speech fell completely flat.

"The weakling. The failure." By that point in the show Glimmer knew she was neither of those things. Weakling? She had held the power of the Heart of Etheria in her hand. She had seen firsthand the damage she had brought with that power. Failure? She had seen her own worst sides mirrored in Catra. She had talked Catra into doing "one good thing. She had begged for, and received the forgivness of Adora and Bow. She knew that there was a way back from even the worst of failures, and - as always - Glimmer was no quitter. She was going to keep trying, no matter what.

Pathetic? Alone? Weak? Glimmer knew she was neither of those things. Prime had tried to reduce her to a trinket in his museum before, and she smashed his fucking orb, turned his key Etherian assest against him and returned with the fucking legendary hero She-Ra to smash his shit, beat up his clones, destroy his mainframe and steal his fucking cat. Alone? Even locked up in a cell in space she was not alone, not with Catra there for her, not with Bow and Adora and Entrapta rushing to save her. Even when Prime did his best to turn the people of Etheria against the princesses, it took one fight and one speech for the princess alliance to be back in business. Weak?

Queen Fucking Glimmer of Fucking Brightmoon is many things, but 'outgunned' is not one of them.

Glimmer KNOWS she is not weak. Not a failure. Not pathetic and most ephatically not alone. She is brave. She is kind. She is stubborn.

And she won't lose another parent = she won't allow Prime to use Micah as leverage against her. He tried it in space. He tried it again in the final fight. Both times it ended with Glimmer smashing his shit, stealing his puppets and utterly owning him.

And she could do that BECAUSE of her turns and misturns during the show. BECAUSE she had allowed Shadow Weaver to tutor her. BECAUSE her choices had stranded her in space together with her worst enemy. She was GLIMMER - the person who had done those bad things AND good things that had led her to the moment where she was now, and that person could totally kick Micah's ass.

Failure? Pathetic? Weak? Alone? There were times during the show Glimmer would call herself all those things. The weak princess. The bad friend. The unworthy queen. The pathetic excuse for a hero. Overwhelming hubris and crippling self doubt. But by the time she faced her chipped father, all that was behind her.

By the end of the show, Glimmer had truly grown into her crown and her throne and her powers. She owned her mistakes. She owned her insecurities. She also owned her good sides. Her strength. Her bravery. Her stubborness. Her never ending urge to do what was right. Her friends and her hard work to mend bridges with them.

She listened to the bullshit Prime had her father say and saw right through it. Rightly realised how pathetic his taunts of her was.

Overwhelming hubris? She owned her strength as well as her weakness.

Crippling self doubt? She owned her confidence as well as her insecurities

Allow Prime to use her father as a puppet?

On her watch?

Absolutely-fucking-not

Glimmer's 'power of love' movement was the power of self-love. Of reconciling her different sides. Of winning her conflict with herself. Of not allowing her doubts and insecurities stop her from fighting the good fight.

Sure, it's fair to find it annoying but the people who read those novels generally don't want a monarchy in real life, enjoyment of it doesn't indicate that they're subconsciously anti-democratic and the popularity of that type of fiction isn't an indicator of some growing social ill.

send me ☕️+a topic for my take on it!

Hahaha I have indeed watched it and I’ve actually talked about the Gaudrim from TRoP here before, and yes I do indeed have a Take. Just a general note for the reader, please don’t take this as some sort of anti-show vendetta or wank or whatever, it really isn’t and I don’t even wank about adaptations on here, this is just my thoughts on this specific aspect, I have tagged the appropriate critical tags, and you can absolutely scroll if you’re not keen on reading it. 

Anyway, the minute these riders came on screen, literally every single bit of pomp about the show’s progressive casting and representation flew right out of the window for me and turned it into unashamed diversity theatre. It was truly the moment that made me sit back and go “ah, this is an American production funded by the Amazon corporation”. Took me right out of the setting and plunged me into post 9/11 USA. Because I’m sorry just look at these fuckers. Forget Lawrence of Arabia, these are straight up elf-jihadis under the spell of Istari bin Laden… 😭

And one of the most interesting things I learned about these guys — the actors playing were actually a relatively diverse cast and clearly individualised… yet for some reason these anonymising masks were added in post-production.

What really got my goat about all this is the fact that it is SUCH a DEEPLY unnecessary portrayal, so clearly reactionary War on Terror propaganda, that the only way I can read it is as a deliberate decision, without even a shred of allowance for ignorance, because once again, the advertising for the show literally uses its own progressivism as a hook. Because there was literally no need to do this shit. Like you have to go out of your way to do something like this. Tolkien is notoriously not-good with race, and the Easterlings were the perfect example of that. The Jackson films aren’t great with race, and the Easterlings were the perfect example of that. TROP is self-admittedly aware that neither Tolkien nor the films are good with race and that the Easterlings are the perfect examples of that, decided to shoehorn them into the narrative as the ‘Gaudrim’ and… somehow made them worse. 

I chat at length under the cut re: US exceptionalism, protestant ethnics, war on terror logic, desert-spaces, and why exactly this plotline was so galling to the point I had to rewatch those scenes like “???” and how it frankly just put a bad taste in my mouth for reasons way beyond Tolkien adaptations or lore… sorry this turned into an essay haha but it’s so you don’t think it’s just me blindly criticising something because I don’t enjoy it or interpret it differently.