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look-how-they-massacred-them · 9 months

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Preliminary Poll

Orko

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Orko is a wizard from another dimension that operates on logic backwards to our own - in his home dimension of Trolla, Orko is a powerful wizard, but outside of that dimension he is unable to perform magic without the use of an aid like a wand or amulet. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he is left stranded outside of his dimension on the planet of Eternia, but is taken in by the Royal Family as gratitude for saving the prince and made the Royal Jester/Magician (this title tends to vary depending on what series you're looking at). In the series he was created for (the 1983 Filmation Masters of The Universe cartoon), Orko's inability to do magic on Eternia tends to leave him depressed and feeling as if he needs to 'prove' himself or be 'useful', but his friends constantly reassure him that they love him magic or no, and a major theme of Orko-centric episodes, even when they aren't dealing with his feelings of insecurity, is that he's surrounded by people who love and support him.

Whether it's Adam, the prince he rescued/essentially grew up with and who trusts him with his secret of being He-Man, Man-At-Arms, his father figure of sorts who starts off the series not liking him that much but grows to genuinely care for him by the end, or any of his family and friends on Trolla once he finds a way back to his home dimension, the people in Orko's life love him no matter what. Personality-wise, he's a very sweet (if occasionally smug or overconfident) person, who's quick to judge and can hold a grudge but also deeply cares for his friends and loved ones. He can be a bit naive at times, but he's not innocent, and he's equal parts theatrical and anxious depending on how well his magic is working that day. This characterization stayed mostly consistent throughout the first generation of Masters of The Universe, which was comprised of the Filmation cartoon and numerous comics, books, and magazines (the Egmont comics changed his backstory so that he just shows up one day and is secretly mentoring Adam which is a whole can of worms that numerous other fans have discussed much better than I could and the German audiodramas made him much more self-centered and smug, but those two are really the only major changes), but after the first generation of MOTU ended in 1988 and the series moved on to New Adventures in the 90s and numerous reboots from the 2000s until now, things changed.

Orko disappeared from the 90s series entirely, although there were plans early in development to include him, and in the 2002 series the message of "Orko is loved regardless of whether he can do magic or not and doesn't need to prove himself to anyone" becomes "Orko is useless and only kept around because he makes people happy, but that's okay because he can become useful!" When Orko plans on leaving Eternia in the 2002 series, instead of assuring him that he's loved and wanted his friends HELP him with his runaway plans, and instead of him realizing that he doesn't need to be 'useful' to stay in Eternia he ends up finding his wand and staying because he's 'useful' now. Beyond that, he's treated as being in the wrong for wanting things for himself, isn't allowed to fix his own mistakes, and is implied to not only be trapped in Eternia forever, but also doomed to get stuck in the past and take on a new identity as the Oracle.

The 2012 DC comic massacred him even further by making him an outright villain, then eventually retconning it so that he was being controlled/possessed/corrupted by the skull of Horde Prime, but this is treated as a plot twist and something the main characters had no idea about despite the skull turning him into Dark Orko, A MASSIVE FLAMING DEMON WITH HORNS AND A NIGHTMARE FACE (which is more of a massacre than it seems on the surface because Orko's species, the Trollans, only show their faces to the people they love but with this edgy redesign his face is now on display to everyone in the comic who fights him).

When not possessed, DC!Orko seemingly only has two character traits ("sweet" and "funny,") is called a "would-be wizard" and referred to as Grayskull's "mascot" despite being an entire living sentient being, and never shows up in-person again after the Dark Orko arc despite it ending with Adam swearing to save him. He appears in a "bad future" story, and his silhouette appears in the final issue, but other than that he's gone.

Loo-Kee, a character who Adam never even meets face to face and is essentially only included as a cameo character, is shown more respect than Orko in the DC comics, showing up in Adam's mind during a scene that supposedly contains every person he's ever known while Orko doesn't even get mentioned. The Classics series of comics and toys utilizes Orko's Egmont backstory of "super special guy who was sent to watch over Adam and was always planned to come to Eternia", reduces him to nothing but "the funny one," and then HAS HIM COMMIT GENOCIDE AGAINST THE SNAKE MEN. Even the most recent two installments in the franchise, Revelation and the Core/CGI series, are not immune to Orko massacring.

Revelation changes his backstory so that he was ALWAYS bad at magic instead of only having issues when he came to Eternia, which would be fine and an interesting interpretation of his character (the 1987 Power Tour managed to pull off a similar concept quite well), except it gets 'fixed' in the same episode it gets brought up and he instantly becomes a mega super hyper god of magic after getting a single pep talk.

Core/CGI Orko gets it even worse - in this series, he's a robot named Ork-0 who has the memories of the original Orko implanted into him by accident and has to learn how to become his own person while still honoring the legacy of Orko the Great, except his arc is never treated seriously, cut short, and eventually just reversed altogether with Ork-0 suddenly becoming a-okay with being referred to as Orko in Season 3 and learning how to become a mega super hyper god of magic after getting a single pep talk AGAIN despite him FINALLY accepting that he couldn't do magic as a robot and learning to find joy in science! And from the looks of the Core/CGI art book, his storyline next season will end up possibly being even worse, with him stuck on Eternia while most of the main cast go to Earth and having to make a new Masters team despite there already BEING a second Masters team!

80s Orko wasn't perfect - the Filmation series was prone to flanderization as it went on, and the Marvel Star comics are atrocious with the way they treat his character - but for the most part he was a good, oftentimes even great, character that could be interpreted numerous ways, most commonly as a metaphor for disability. As the years have gone on, however, he's been massacred over and over again, most likely due to an influx of fans in the early years of the internet who considered him 'dumb' or 'annoying', and we're only just beginning to move beyond this viewpoint now. This man has been massacred SO BAD, which especially hurts because he's been my favorite character since I was a high schooler.

(my apologies for this being so long, I just love this character a lot and he means a great deal to me)

Orko started out as the goofy little comic relief, sure, but he had character to him. He was insecure about his inconsistent magic abilities. Since he grew up extremely skilled with magic, he came to associate this skill with his self worth, and so when he ended up on Eternia, which operated with a different magic system and scrambled his ability to do magic, it left him struggling to believe that anyone would want him as a friend if he couldn't be of use to them.

There is one episode, the Rarest Gift of All, in which he decides to return to Trolla under the belief that no one in the palace wants him around after he accidentally causes a fire. He goes to the Sorceress to get her to send him home and she ends up showing him that the others are searching for him worried sick and that they actually do care about him and love him regardless of whether he can do magic. Then came the 2002 show. It made its own take on the same premise, with Orko messing up his magic and causing billions in property damage and deciding to run off to the sorceress to get him home because, as an incompetent jester, he's of no use to the rest of the palace while they are in the middle of a major war. The Sorceress (or rather her disguised as some random old guy idk they never explain why she did that lmao), in this version, instead shows him that he DOES have use to them; his failure is funny and makes them laugh!! Which is bad enough, since it makes no attempt to claim that they actually do love him unconditionally.

But also... Orko's role in 2002 is SO diminished that he is hardly EVER shown actually entertaining others outside of this flashback. Once the war starts in episode 1, all his attempts to do what is shown in the flashback, cheering up others, is ignored at best or harshly reprimanded at worst. This gets even worse by the time we get to the garden episode. Orko wants a new job because he's sick and tired of not having anything important to do while everyone else is sent on missions, so he finally gets a job refurbishing the garden. Ultimately, he can't do it and the episode treats him admitting it as a good thing...

AND THEN NOBODY EVER ACTUALLY TRIES TO FIND A REPLACEMENT JOB FOR HIM. HE JUST GOES BACK TO BEING THE JESTER NO ONE WATCHES BECAUSE THEY'RE ALL OUT ON MISSIONS ALL THE TIME!! Late season 2 episode ""Second Skin"" does actually try to involve Orko more in the plot, sure. But despite ending on a note that would imply that Orko is going to involve himself more in the story, that episode ends up being the LAST EPISODE HE EVER APPEARS IN.

The tie in comics tried again with the ""Orko runs away"" plot and introduced A New Problem that would plague this and future iterations: the insistence on Orko's end goal to be ""get good at magic again""

This does not work because that is not a good lesson. He'd only be getting better at magic solely so he could be liked. But the writers i guess just kinda missed this important part of his character arc because the comic ends with him being rewarded with the wand that he lost that was supposed to keep his magic working (they don't explain how it survived being digested by a swamp hopper) and thats the last we see of him. He doesn't even appear in the 200X portion of the multiverse comic. Revelation came along and things got somewhat better, I mean, at least the characters treated him better than they did in 200x. But it still fell into the trap of having Orko's competence in magic being the end goal!!! It even changed his backstory so that he was ALWAYS bad at magic, even on trolla, which is just. erasing half of the dynamic of his intended character arc. Barely anyone gets to even react to his grand return where he's good at magic now because this show had ridiculously quick pacing to the point where characters did not get to properly react to ANYTHING towards the end of the show. CGI technically split orko into two characters, Ork-0 and Orko the great, Ork-0 being a robot with the latter's memories. ork-0 is decent as a character but there's a whole episode where he's insecure about his lack of magic since he's a robot now and the others reassure him that they love him either way... and then due to plot shenanigans they later just abandon him to babysit his clones and only come back to see him when they need him to do some magic for them, forcing him to learn on the spot. Nice. Great. Fantastic. Orko the great on the other hand is fine except. They gave him horrific Legs for exactly one shot and. Why did they do that. Aside from that, we have the comics. Won't go into them too much since they're not as well known as the cartoons but from the top of my head we got: - Marvel Star, in which everyone was really mean to Orko for no reason, and they put him in danger WHILE HE WAS INCAPACITATED without even an ounce of concern - Classics, which changed his backstory to that of Oh, Actually, he was deliberately downplaying his magic ability so the villains wouldn't see him as a threat! and he actually Can do magic now :) Yayyyy he can participate in the many many battles now!!! - 2012, the most infamous of the orko mistreatment, where they decided to make him a twist villain who was actually super evil and this was so poorly recieved they had to retcon it and say he was brainwashed instead. He man promises to save orko and he never does because the canon reset shortly after that.

Propaganda:

Tumblr user whymustablogbenamed has a post called ""How 200x Mishandled the Runaway Plot"" discussing the differences between the ""Orko feels he's not useful and runs away"" plots of the 80s/generation one and those of the 2002 series that goes into much better detail than I could here, I highly recommend checking that post out. Likewise, Tumblr user relatable-pictures-of-orko has several excellent posts about Orko's treatment throughout the franchise's history, such as their ""WHY LESSONS EXEMPLIFIES EVERYTHING WRONG WITH 200X"" analysis. I have a post on my own blog (madamegemknight) where I go into detail about CGI's Ork-0 and how not even the showrunners knew what to do with him as evidenced by the numerous contradictory claims made during interviews and in the artbook, but it doesn't have a title - if you search 'ork-0' on my blog it should be in the first few results though. I would also like to point out that the treatment of the Trollans parallels Orko's own treatment, and that him getting massacred typically means that his entire species will in turn. Sometimes it's even a LITERAL massacre, like the 2012 DC comic turning them into mindless beasts who exist solely for He-Man and Superman to kill in a fight scene or Revelation implying they might all (minus Orko) be dead due to a lack of magic. This isn't always the case - the aforementioned Power Tour does a great job at handling Orko's character, but doesn't mention the Trollans at all because of the limited time available in a live show to tell a story - but it's usually a prevalent connection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq3_YC8SyK8 picture of the aforementioned horrific legs (leg warning) https://64.media.tumblr.com/227eeba7d93d71833c4fd95037873418/2c0fcbe4cb43c1d6-fd/s640x960/2758c9ba6b56e9ce81eb0841c28d065c5849d620.pnj https://64.media.tumblr.com/3509190914fb08dcaf9c020d149f6569/f6ded1e537416cce-3e/s1280x1920/72e283d934df183ea32cff10ad51b2fded3160fc.jpg

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