Just happy to be invited

One of my favorite things about 2018 She-Ra is Hordak's story and development (and Entrapdak cough but that's not the point of this particular post), and the cleverest thing is that so much of it is actually being set up and told to us in seasons 1 and 2 before we even realize that that's what's happening.

When we first see Hordak in the show, he's giving "generic evil overlord" vibes. Garden-variety baddie. Maybe a little more reasonable than some and clearly capable of long-term thinking, but that just serves to make him intimidating. Everything about him--the way he runs his empire, his armor, his color scheme, his minion, his Villainous Eye Makeup(TM), even his name--are all projecting to the audience "yup, Acme Bad Guy here. Move right along."

But then, backstory. And everything snaps into focus. Not only is it one of the first big oh SHIT moments of the show, where we suddenly zoom out and realize that there is SO much more going on than we realized--it's also the start of the audience seeing Hordak as a character rather than an archetype. Suddenly we realize that he's not conquering Etheria because he wants power, or hates happiness and sparkles, or whatever--he's doing it out of a desperate attempt to prove his worth to his brother/creator/god. This moment where Hordak lets Entrapta in is also the moment the show lets us in on what makes our favorite spacebat tick.

On top of that, we've also seen him bonding with Entrapta and opening up to this person that he respects and trusts...probably the only person he's ever respected or trusted apart from Prime. And she's Etherian--someone of a lower species, someone he's supposed to subjugate, someone who he has been raised and trained and programmed and mind-controlled into believing is below him in every way.

But instead she's brilliant and creative and mesmerizing. She's not afraid of him, and she's fascinated with his work. For the first time since being abandoned by Prime, Hordak finally has someone that he can talk to, who is on his level and both understands and cares about the science! (because he is a giant nerd). She's kind to him, a mere defect. And it just sends his whole worldview into a spin, and that's all before--

Bam, mans is a goner. Entrapta's "Imperfections are beautiful" comment punches right through all the toxic bs that Hordak has been steeped in his entire life. You can see on his face here--I think it's the moment Hordak fell in love with Entrapta, but this is also the face of a spacebat reevaluating his entire worldview. If Entrapta, who is amazing, believes something different from Prime...what does that mean? If Entrapta, who is brilliant, believes that he is worth something, and that she herself is a failure...

Well. We know what happens after that, and how Hordak begins to doubt, and eventually fights back against Prime (and remembers his love for Entrapta after TWO mind wipes help my heart ack). But we also get to see what life in the Galactic Horde looks like: the only life Hordak ever knew before coming to Etheria.

It's not nice.

It's really not nice.

Prime operates in a very specific way, and we learn a lot about it in season 5. Prime expects complete obedience, devotion and worship from his clones. He allows no individuality from his subjects, not even a name. Failure or deviations are punished, mind-wiped, or destroyed. We even learn from Wrong Hordak that facial expressions are considered a privilege reserved for Prime (apart from, presumably, expressions of rapture caused by being around Prime).

And once we learn all of this, suddenly thinking about season 1 Hordak becomes very interesting indeed. The time we spend with the Galactic Horde and Prime throws absolutely everything that we know about Hordak into a whole new context. Now all those traits that made him a generic villain are actually hugely effective characterization! And what that characterization is telling us is that Hordak had already moved much farther away from Prime than we (or, probably, he) had realized, even long before he met Entrapta.

Horde Prime does not allow his underlings to have names, personalities, or any differences of appearance. Not only does Hordak allow this among his own troops, he chose a name for himself as well! Season 5 tells us that his very name is an act of blasphemy against his god. And yet Hordak took one for himself, and that name is part of the core identity he is able to hold on to when rebelling against Prime.

Horde Prime cast Hordak out when he showed signs of physical imperfections. Hordak not only keeps Imp (who is by all appearances a failed clone or similar experiment) around, he treats Imp more gently than we see him treat anybody or anything before Entrapta. Imp is not simply "generic evil guy's minion," he is proof of Hordak's capacity for compassion, and evidence that Hordak cannot bring himself to cast aside "defects" as easily as Prime. Considering where Hordak came from, Imp's existence is a huge, flashing neon sign telling the audience this guy here is better than the hell that molded him, and we don't even realize it until 4 seasons after it's been shown to us!

Very cool, ND.

There's more, though. Hordak's red and black color scheme? His dark eye makeup and lipstick? Very Evil Overlord chic. But nope! Actually these are actually expressions of individuality on a level that Hordak knows would be abhorrent to Prime!

Reading between the lines, I see this as Hordak desperately trying to reconcile two diametrically opposed beliefs in his head: (1) devotion to Prime, whose approval he desperately craves, and (2) maintaining some degree of unique personhood, of Hordak, from which to draw strength. Because a failed, defective clone cannot survive on a hostile world, cut off from the hivemind and from Prime's light. A failed clone cannot create an empire to offer Prime as tribute, nor build a spacetime portal from scraps and memory to call Prime back. A failed clone cannot create cybernetic armor to keep his hurting, weakened body alive; to force himself to keep going no matter what, to fight through the pain and the doubt by sheer force of will.

But maybe Hordak can.

And so there it is. Hordak had plenty of time to gain and explore his individuality while separated from Prime, but I think the reason he did it so effectively (while still deluding himself that Prime would forgive him for these little sins, if only Hordak could prove his value) is because he had to.

Wrong Hordak gained his individuality surrounded by kind, quirky people who took care of him; Hordak was ripped from the hivemind by Prime himself and had to fight for his survival against all odds. And that produced a dangerous and damaging foe for Etheria. But it also produced the one clone with the strength of will to defy Prime himself.

This is long and rambling, but ultimately my point is that 1) I love Hordak, and 2) I love love love love that the show was so clever about his characterization. We learn so much about him and how much progress he's already made in breaking from his psycho abusive cult upbringing, and we don't even recognize it until the show wants us to. Hordak had come so far, all on his own, before he met Entrapta. She just helped push him over the edge and finally realize (at least consciously) that Prime's worldview might not be the correct one.

Idk, I just don't know if I've ever seen all the trappings of Basic 80's Villain(TM) so successfully subverted, where looking back 4 seasons later is actually a smack in the face with the "effective character building" stick. Amazing.

People are shapes.

There's squiggles. Sqiggles are always coming up with different, new, interesting ideas. Some are good. Some don't make any sense. But they're always willing to come up with a new one and they're very good about having new material.

Then there's squares. Squares are the note-takers, the accountants, the lawyers. They keep the squiggles grounded. They have no problem saying 'no, you can't do that- that's illegal.'

Squiggle says: Let's do this!

Square says: I think you have a cool idea but this is breaking four laws and new laws may be written specifically about this if we try it.

Then there's triangles. Triangles are good at connecting the dots and making an idea into a solid plan.

Triangle says: Okay, maybe it DOES break a law, but if we go through the right avenues and talk to the right people we can get a permit that says we, specifically, have the right to do this.

And then there's circles. Circles are people people, who are good at talking, persuading, mediating. They're PR people, but they also make for good faces of the company.

Circle says: If we have to get a permit, I can be the person who gets it on behalf of the project so that the rest of y'all can keep doing the legwork of the planning process.

And a person can be more than one of these shapes- you can lift a project off the ground with less than four people. But you can't have a group that's all squiggles, and you can't just be squares or circles or triangles.

She was making a case that having a team of all squiggles can go nowhere fast, but I thought that it's also a really good metaphor for burnout.

I'm sure that its possible to be all four shapes as a single person, but requires constant shifting of modes and changing of hats in order to get a single project done. I've been the only person in charge of a project before and its not easy. Switching into triangle mode has saved my ass because knowing what resources are available to me to make it easier has been the saving grace.

But sometimes the triangle isn't triangling. Sometimes the square don't square, the circle is in the drain and the squiggle is more like a line.

Anyway, I think the point is that you can get really in your own head about how things are supposed to be that you don't ask for help on your passion projects. But we're supposed to ask for help! Doing stuff alone SUCKS! People are happy to help others, and just because they say 'this is not a good idea as is' doesn't mean that its not a good idea- it means you need to find more support for it until the idea IS good.

Fictional characters are objects.

Stop telling people to encourage the cop inside their head.

How you treat fictional characters, given they are entirely objects of fiction, does NOT necessarily speak to your own character, and you do not need to be "careful".

It is not dangerous to imagine dark things happening to fictional characters. It does not mean you are secretly a bad person. It does not mean you unconsciously want to hurt people in real life. It is not a "slippery slope" to doing bad things to people in real life. You cannot damage your brain or turn yourself into a bad person by consuming "dark" fanfic.

A week or two ago, I got my proof to the contrary. I'd been having a difficult day, woke up late, and had to rush out the door, ran into minor inconvenience after minor inconvenience, and then the straw broke the camel's back.

I wrote out the kind of angry vindictive seething text message I used to write constantly. I didn't send it, of course, I copied it out and pasted it in the folder of my notes where I put all my rage venting.

And then I thought.

Huh, it's been a little while since I did that. And I checked the time and dates on my previous notes. The last one was a few days before I started testosterone.

And scrolling back, I noticed that they were *constant* at least one a week for *years* I used to get so angry that I would get the serious urge to say cruel hurtful things to or about people I cared about on a near-daily basis. I didn't realize how big of a problem it was until all of a sudden I hadn't gotten that angry in Eleven Months. Nearly a YEAR.

And then I realized in my rush to get out the door in the morning, I hadn't taken my T shot. My testosterone was the lowest it's been since August.

All of a sudden, I had demonstrable proof that testosterone really did make me less angry. That all that "you may not think you're any angrier but you are" was bullshit.

If you’re heterosexual and aromantic, you’re valid. If you’re asexual and heteroromantic, fuck yeah, you’re valid too. You belong here, in LGBTQIA+ spaces, and I love and accept you here. You belong at the pride parade, you belong in the LGBTQIA+ clubs at your school or university, and you belong in the LGBTQIA+ community.

You also have experience of the world around you. You realize, by comparison with your friends who like nice things, that your forks are shit. Incidentally, you also realise that despite having made choices that were defined by being broke or frugal, you do not actually get points for having shitty thin-handled forks that are annoying to use. You don’t get respect or appreciation or comfort or pleasure. After ten years of use out of $5 cutlery, you have inarguably gotten your money’s worth. You will get nothing else from them. You only get, forever, the experience of using shitty forks.

You have probably lived on your own for a few years now, perhaps even for more than a decade. Some items have fallen behind and been lost, thrown away, broken or failed; both others are still your companions. Depending on how nice they are, this is a source of comfort and frustration. Love to the hiking boots that have lasted! Affection and allegiance to the 20 year old band t-shirt! Disgust to the t-shirt bought last year that is sent to recycling for being so shit. Increasing admiration to the grand-grandmother’s mixing bowl, especially compared to the 2016 purchase of a mixing bowl that couldn’t handle the fast-paced lifestyle. Annoyance, disappointment and sorrow to smartphone case number 241, what the fuck. Smug pride in oneself for having the foresight, in an earlier house move, to splash out on a decent new mattress. As these items persist, you cannot help but notice that quality of materials/items is now obvious and visible, because you’ve spent more time with them. A 22-year old newly in possession of two knives - a cheap shitty kitchen knife and a good one they inherited - will have spent the same amount of time with both objects; when you’re 30, you’ve worked for 8 years with the good knife, while the cheap one (if you even recall ever having it) was thrown out in a fit of annoyance six years ago.

You have, at this point, in addition to using them, also handled and cleaned most of your possessions several times. You have realized, very materially and fundamentally, that you must care for these items for the rest of your lifespan, or theirs.

You are (possibly) out of the early desperate scramble to suddenly, instantly furnish an entire independent life (sheets, mattresses, winter coat, forks) with no money. This naturally led to restrictions on what you chose.

You are (possibly) out of the eaves of how you were raised. Many people spend their early twenties reconciling how they were raised with how they want to live. Perhaps you were raised to feel guilty for wanting things, such as toys or attention, which you later dutifully applied to things like education or new forks. Over time, you will have surprised yourself with how you met, identified, addressed, and reconciled these tensions from your upbringing; through conflict and resolution with parents/teachers/church/internet/social media, you have now arrived at what you have. If you had big things to confront, like coming out as queer, you may have thought this work was done. Now you suddenly find yourself confronting the weird beliefs you have that “you don’t NEED new forks” or “it’s bourgeois to want things” or “NOBODY spend £200 on HIKING BOOTS, what are you, rich?” And you might find yourself feeling like, well, actually, I’m grown-up and I hike and eat, actually.

Steve, off camera: That’s not true.

Eddie: It is true! Grant just - Grant, can I tell people this? …Cool - Grant just told us that him and his ex-wife have been talking about getting back together. And that’s great! A normal person would say ‘that’s great, man.’

Eddie: Not Steve. Steve’s response was ‘the ex that can’t cook for shit or the one with the big tits?’

Steve: It’s a valid question!

Eddie: Stevie, baby. When Robin told you she was a lesbian, the first thing you did was criticize the girl she had a crush on

Steve: Yeah, because she was a dud

Eddie: And when I told I loved for the first time, you winced at me like I was making a bad decision. You asked ‘why?’

Eddie: And i didn’t even say it first! You already said it a week before!!

Steve: I just think that you should have standards

ex. “You’re such a good listener. You’re so generous, you’re so compassionate. You’re always there for me. You always hold me down. You’re reliable”

vs.

Asexual people can read smut

Asexual people can have sex.

Men can be asexual

Straight people are asexual.

Aroace people can be all of the above.

Not all Aromantic people are also ace.