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maireadralph · 3 years

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SPOP HC: Hordak the Shiny Spacebat

I’ve not written an essay since I was in school so please forgive my looseness, but this kept eating away at me so I had to get it out of my system

One iddy biddy detail that sorta bothered me was this:

Image source

Compared to how we see the other Horde Clones:

[Image Source]

If all clones are supposed to be the same then why does Hordak look so different? If Hordak’s natural colouring was something he was “born” with upon returning to Prime surely this shouldn’t wouldn’t have changed (let’s ignore the other random idea I’ve had that this whole Prime storyline was meant to go in a different direction).

What if…we borrow a term from Pokemon? What if we apply the logic that Hordak looks so different from the other clones because he is a very rare genetic mutation - a “Shiny” variant.

Before we go too far down this rabbit hole, let’s first address what a “Shiny” Pokemon is.

A Shiny Pokemon is an unusual or rare colouring of a Pokemon. It doesn’t affect any of the Pokemon’s battle statistics, it just looks different.

A Pokemon is “born” shiny. It can not gain or loose shininess, and shininess can not be bestowed or removed by using items.

The natural rates of a standard encounter being shiny vary between 1/8192 or 1/4096 depending on the version of Main Series Game being played (with other modifiers applied such as the Shiny Charm item this can be as low as 1/64 or 1/100 depending on the game but we’re only looking at natural encounter rates here).

These differently coloured Pokemon can be highly sought after by players and collectors with some people spending hours if not years trying to obtain a certain one.

[Source]

I hear you cry “but that’s just Pokemon, that’s not real!” Ah but versions of Shiny Real Life animals do exist.

Check out some of these unusually coloured beauties:

Source: https://listverse.com/2014/02/12/10-amazing-color-mutations-in-animals/ and https://allthatsinteresting.com/color-mutations

These genetic colour changes can be detrimental to an animal’s survival in the wild. Such as Albinosim can make an animal stand out in it’s environment and therefor more easily found by predators

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albinism

Side note: not all generic mutations manifest as colour changes, some could be helpful to science https://www.meduniwien.ac.at/web/en/about-us/news/detailsite/2020/news-im-mai-2020/genetic-defect-could-protect-pangolins-against-coronavirus-disease/ (okay I just stumbled upon an article about Pangolins and I wanted to talk about them because they are cool)

Or how about the Blue Lobster? A real life shiny with the shiny rate of 1/200,000,000

Source: https://allthatsinteresting.com/blue-lobster and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36369687

So back to our boy Hordak. Since he’s the only one of his kind on screen to exhibit these physical changes, I’m inclined to declare that he is a shiny form of the Spacebat race.

Horde Prime I would see as a variant along the lines of a Pokemon Regional variant like Sandshrew and Alolan Sandshrew:

^These boys work hard being the Ambassadors of Tottori Source

or as a non-changeable Form variant similar to Toxtricity Amped and Low Key Forms:

[image source]

As Horde Prime still retains some of the core details of a spacebat but hasn’t got enough differences to classify as a shiny like Hordak. I don’t want to think of Horde Prime as a Parasitoid as that’s kinda creepy - nature why??!

Now the only real question to ask ourselves is…. is Hordak a star shiny sparkle or a square shiny sparkle? The Entrapdak Hivemind is swinging towards him being a Star Shiny and I love it XD

#spop headcanons #hordak #hordak the shiny clone #pokemon #shiny pokemon #buzz writes a thing #buzz rambles #long post #I've no idea how I'm supposed to present this but it's out in the wild now

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