Since you've done so much work uncovering the origins of Princess of Power, I was wondering if you know anything about this question: WHY DOES SCORPIA EXIST? Out of the named villains in the She-Ra pilot, we had Hordak, who was created by Larry DiTillio (or DiTillio + Straczynski) for the "He-Man's twin was raised by villains from outer space" plot, with an earlier name "Reaper". We had Mantenna, Leech and Grizzlor, who are more difficult to figure out if they were story-first or started as boys' toys. Catra was developed by Justine Dantzer as one of the earlier Princess of Power toy concepts. Shadow Weaver seems to be the same deal as Hordak, just no toy. But Scorpia? It seems like Dantzer and her fellow doll designers were going with Catra as She-Ra's sole antagonist, other characters being good. Her monstrous design with tail and pincers might suggest an origin with the MotU team, but I've never seen concept art. And DiTilio's script introduced her as just another lieutenant of Force Captain Adora's alongside others. It's all baffling.

Hmm!! Good question, I know she was a Filmation original, because her toy rights were in that bundle... My instinct is that she was a creation of Larry DiTillio and/or J. Micheal Straczynski in their efforts to flesh out the Horde. The Mantenna-Leech-Grizzlor trio I'm inclined to attribute to Mattel, since Dave Capper came up with the line & presumably the 'mind-control bat' thing, and they all seem very action-feature-based, you know? Mantenna has bug eyes, Leech has suction cups, Grizzlor's furry... they all say "toy first" to me.

Scorpia, though. Knowing she originated with Filmation, my bet would be that they wanted to introduce more female characters to the Horde. If nothing else, to give Linda Gary something to do. She was designed by Dale Hendrickson, as we can see on her model sheets (god bless Filmation's labeling practices):

(images from MOTUCfigures.com)

But the female characters were sort of his specialty, so it's not terribly surprising he'd take point with supervision by Diane Keener & Herb Hazelton. (Diane Keener, of course, being the one who designed Filmation's She-Ra model).

I don't think I've ever seen any Scorpia concepts either, come to think of it. And people don't seem to ask about her in interviews as much, so there's less information to be had. Hmm... I think our next step would be finding some LD/JMS interviews where they even mentioned her. It has to have come up at some point, right?

More than Meets the Eye

She-Ra fanfic  Comedy Rated PG (mild rude humor and “bad” words). Adora, Bow, Entrapta, Hordak (and mentions of other characters) Inspired by conversation on Sweary She-Ra.  4th wall-breaking by Entrapta, but not a Sweary-specific fic.   Summary: An alternate universe from the end of the Beast island arc.  Hordak joins the Rebellion against Horde Prime and shows everyone a hidden talent of his.   For @lemaistrechat (No, you don’t have to send me cookies. My Mom’s Christmas cookies got squished in the mail.  Yours will, too).   _____________________ More Than Meets the Eye Adora had no shortage of surprises in her life for the last several months.  First, as the war had progressed, Glimmer had become more and more ruthless.  She was taking dark turns that made Adora wonder if she was even the friend she used to know anymore.  Shadow Weaver was living in Bright Moon. Flutterina had turned out to be an enemy-spy – and a shapeshifter whose true form looked nothing like Flutterina.  To top it all off, Horde Force Captain Scorpia had defected and had come to the Princess Alliance for aid, claiming that Entrapta had been sent to Beast Island by an overwhelmed Catra.   That was how Adora, Bow and Swift Wind had found themselves traveling to Beast Island just over a month ago.  To tell the truth, this was another surprise for Adora:  There were rumors told among the cadets around the Horde that Beast Island didn’t actually exist and that it was a euphemism for summary execution.  One of the older cadets she’d known was certain that Hordak just had liars, traitors and various screw-ups shot and their bodies cremated in the skiff-cleansing ports.  Well, the fabled place of exile actually did exist, and, as per Shadow Weaver’s warning, was far worse than the usual scary stories about it.   And then they’d found a king.  While hunting for Entrapta (hopefully not dead), they’d found Micah, the once King of Bright Moon, thought long-dead!  And he was a badass sorcerer!  (And more than a bit of a goofball).   And then…there was Hordak.   They’d come across him wrapped up in the despair-inducing vines that grew throughout the island that had been trying to consume them all.  He was calling out for Entrapta, crying over his failure to save her and ranting, tearing and screaming at the vines (he still had some fight in him) and he was yelling something about “Prime’s self-lubricating asshole!” as a general curse. Bow asked Adora if She-Ra could bleach his brain.  She told him that she didn’t think the powers worked that way because they were not working for her that way. Adora, in She-Ra form, took pity on him and freed him from the vines.  Entrapta showed up when she had him at sword-point under threat not to make any funny moves.   The rescue went better than expected, although it took Entrapta wrapping the warlord up in a hair-cocoon to keep the signal and the vines from getting at him again.  Adora had never seen a man so depressed!  He kept going on and on to Entrapta about his unworthiness of her, for “believing that treacherous Force Captain!” and getting her into a deadly situation.  Entrapta handled it with her usual aplomb, claiming that Beast Island was a “PARADISE of forgotten technological horrors!”  And Adora couldn’t believe it…she saw a smile on his skull-like face!   He’d found out that Entrapta was here, apparently, when he’d caught a strange, disconcerting recording from his Imp and did a check over some surveillance-footage caught by the Fright Zone’s cameras that someone had apparently attempted to erase.  Though the white noise and screen-snow, he had been able to make out a familiar feline figure and familiar twin-tails of hair.  He had put his spy-child in charge of trusted soldiers and had taken his speediest skiff straight to the island.  He had not even bothered to deal with Catra, leaving her to her own devices. They say that war makes strange bedfellows. No less than three members of the Horde had joined with the Rebellion recently: Scorpia, Entrapta and… most surprising of all, Lord Hordak!   Entrapta read ahead in the canon’s script and let Hordak know what was in store for him should he reunite with Horde Prime. He had to face full-on that his indoctrination and memories were faulty.  He could rejoin his master god-brother or stay with his mad scientist girlfriend, not that him even being on Beast Island to rescue Entrapta hadn’t already made the story an alternate universe fanfiction, anyway, but that’s neither here nor there.   Entrapta had an ass that wouldn’t quit, so his choice was clear.   And this was how Hordak decided to join with the Etherian Rebellion against Horde Prime!  And this brings us to the present after this long ramble.   “It’s been glossed over,” Entrapta says to you, starting at your soul through the text on your screen, “but give the fanfic author a break!  It’s Christmas Week and she celebrates! Although if I’m telling the truth, she’s also pretty lazy.”   “I heard that.”   “Of course you did!  You’re typing it!”   “So, anyway,” Entrapta chimes, “Hordak was really sad and conflicted by all of this, but I kissed him better, so you don’t have to worry about him.”   “Who ARE you talking to?” Adora asks.   In the weeks that followed the Beast Island rescue, Hordak became invaluable to the cause.  He knew how Horde Prime operated.  He educated the Rebellion on the nature of Horde-clones.  He was watched carefully, but he proved himself to be fully on-cause for the freeing of Etheria.   “That’s because he didn’t want to be lobotomized!” Entrapta throws your way.  “I mean… I had to show him the script, but I got through to him!  Also, he didn’t want to see me dragged around by my hair, or be ordered to shoot me, so we totally decided to make this story an AU!”   “AU?” Bow asks, “Entrapta, are you talking about gold or something?  On the periodic table of elements?”   “Nope!  I’m talking to the readers!  AU stands for Alternate Universe! It’s what happens when something goes different in a timeline and the world is fundamentally changed, even if there are other versions of you in it!  Like Rick and Morty!” “Huh?”     “Shouldn’t we be concentrating on getting Mara’s ship worthy to go into space?”  Adora asks.  She is exhausted with bags under her eyes.  She has been trying to protect everyone from robots and clones and has been running herself ragged without her She-Ra powers. She’d only now gotten back safely inside the magic-barrier of the Bright Moon war-camp.   “Yeeeah… she still lost the She-Ra powers,” Entrapta helpfully explains to you, the reader.  “The Heart of Etheria activated, popping us straight out of Despondos! There are stars in the sky now!  It’s WONDERFUL! Well, except for all the war and invasion and constant danger of death!  But that’s what makes it so exciting!  The clone-ships arrived and it’s been a real mess!  Glimmer got taken up in a tractor-beam.  Hordak explained what it was when we saw it.  It’s been a WILD time!  And Adora broke her sword because she didn’t want to be forced to activate the weapon, which is kind of disappointing actually, because the explosions would have been EPIC!  We could have gotten so much data!” “Entrapta!”   “Okay, Bow, okay!  I think the readers understand what I’m getting at!”   “How are you coming along?” Adora asks her and Bow.  She takes a look at Hordak, seated in a chair under the tent where Entrapta and Bow are working with the blueprints to Mara’s ship and miscellaneous computer-parts. “Any luck, any of you?”   “Well, we’ve gotta patch up the outer layer of the ship super-super tight because one hull-breach and everyone’s dead! Suffocated in the vacuum of space!  There are so many FAAAASCINATING ways to die in space!”   “With the exception of myself,” Hordak rumbles. “My people can survive short jaunts into the void.”   “Yeah!” Entrapta pipes up, “With his unique cyborg-physiology, he can TOTALLY get spaced and come out alive!”   “All the same, I would rather not test it. Open space is… unpleasant.”   “He’s already tracked down Horde Prime’s main signal!” Entrapta exclaims, beaming with pride.   “What? Really?”  Adora asks, taken aback.   “I am… as I was… cut off from the hive mind,” Hordak explains, “but I can still overhear some of the mind-whispers of my brothers on a low-level when they are near.”   “We also went near to one of the spires while Bow made you take a nap yesterday!” Entrapta tells her.  “I know, I know” she says with a wave of a tail of hair made into a hand, “It was super-dangerous.  He almost got captured!  And it gave him a massive headache, but he could feel the coordinates!” Hordak retrieved something from a bag in the shadows by his chair.  He held up a slim data pad with… a smile?  Hordak had the goofiest smile on his face that Adora had ever seen.  In fact, seeing him so much as crack a simple grin filled her with a terror born of the uncanny valley.   “So, are we ready to go save Glimmer, then?” Adora asks hopefully.   “Not unless you want to get sucked into the crushing void of space!” Entrapta chimes, pointing a hair-finger in the air.  “The ship – I named her Darla, by the way – she took a lot of damage rusting away in the desert for all those years! Centuries!  Oh, and the escape from Beast Island wasn’t too kind to her, either!  We’ve been working day and night – Bow insists we get rest, I just think we need more espresso (it comes in tiny mugs)!... I estimate we’ll get Darla spaceworthy in, oh…about five years?” “And we don’t have that long,” Bow says with a worried look at the sky.   “There’s got to be a way!” Adora nearly wails. “Please!” Hordak stands up from his chair and walks out of the shadows.  “I believe I have a solution,” he says. “What? What?” Adora demands, “We modify some of the Fright Zone stuff?  If anyone would know how to make a skiff space-worthy, it would be you, I suppose… I mean, you built the Fright Zone from a crashed ship, right?”   Hordak calmly holds up a hand.  “Cease at once!” he barks.   Adora straightens, her soldier’s programming kicking in.   “I have a solution that is far more simple, albeit, unusual.  Please step back from me.”   Dumbfounded, Adora and Bow step away. Entrapta has a knowing, all-too excited grin on her face.   Hordak suddenly goes straight and stiff. He holds his head down and pins his ears back.  He balls his fists at his sides.   “Is he… trying to fight constipation?” Bow asks.   Suddenly, sparks of electricity flow over his form.  His armor shifts and it seems… like his very skin splits and turns to re-arrange itself in strange plates!  The mass starts growing, as if Hordak’s interior was larger than his exterior would have a viewer believe. In less than a minute, where Hordak was standing – there is a large rocket.   “Huh? What?!”  Adora and Bow exclaim as one. People all around the Bright Moon camp gasp and gawk.  Entrapta’s eyes sparkle as one who has just witnessed the revealing of a very special secret that she had been waiting a long time to share.  She has the biggest shit-eating grin on her face.   King Micah screams.  Shadow Weaver huffs and inspects her fingernails.  Frosta can be heard saying “Aaaaw, BADASS!”  Someone tells her that kids her age should not use the word “Ass.”   Adora stares up and up and up.   The rocket… has Hordak’s face on it.   “Ha-ha!” Entrapta laughs.  She looks up at the Hordak-rocket.  “You said you didn’t think you could do it anymore, but I knew you could!”   “It has been… a long time,” the Hordak-face says stiffly.   “His face…is moving…” Bow says with a shiver. He hugs the nearest person to him for support.  Thankfully, he latches onto Scorpia, who is a great hugger and also needs the moral support. “I swear I had no idea he could do that!” Scorpia proclaims.   “Maybe you should explain, Hordak!” Entrapta encourages.   “Very well.” He answers, his mouth and his brows moving in an organic fashion that was most disconcerting to see upon something resembling a nuclear-payload-capable intercontinental ballistic missile.   Where had his arms and legs gone?  It appeared that they had turned completely into fins.  Bow looks down at the end of the rocket pointed toward the ground with a growing wariness.  Was that his...?  Wait? Was it? He supposed it made sense that his posterior would become…that.   What did a Hordak-rocket require for fuel? Spicy food?   “I…am a cyborg,” Hordak intones.  “All of Horde Prime’s clones are, as well as Horde Prime himself.  We have organic parts and technological parts.”   “Wait,” Adora says, scratching her head, “Can they ALL do this?” “No,” Hordak answers.  “I modified myself further to compensate for my failing health and to suit the environment of Etheria better, as well as… let us say I tried some schemes in warfare in the past that failed and was left stuck with the results. I rarely use my cybernetic shape-shifting abilities as they can be quite…painful.”   Entrapta wraps her arms part-way around the cylinder that is now the bulk of Hordak’s body.  She wraps her hair around it, too.  “Aw…”   “I will…deploy an opening and…no more than three of you… can climb inside of me and we can storm the flagship to rescue your queen.”   “Inside…you?” Bow asks.   Adora makes a face.   Everyone in the camp (except for Entrapta, who is beaming) cringes.   “Ew…” Scorpia says flatly.   “Eh…can we take a raincheck on that?” Adora inquires.  “I mean, I’m sure with some extra TLC we can get the other ship working?”   “As you wish,” Hordak says.  He squints that strange rocket-decal like face until his body shifts in reversal of what it had done before.  Once he is in humanoid form again, he sways and Entrapta catches him.   “It’s the thought that counts,” she assures him, patting him on the back with her hair.   Everyone in the Bright Moon camp cannot stop staring.   “What the fuck just happened?!” someone shouts. Adora cannot help but think she dodged a bullet.   The last thing she wanted to think about was “being inside Hordak.”   THE END. 

SPOP Hordak's inspiration from Filmation Hordak

A sequel to my post 200x Hordak and SPOP Hordak, but mentioning similarities between SPOP and Filmation versions of him:

Both have blue skin (though SPOP Hordak's skin is kinda more blue-gray, possibly as a reference to other versions and depictions of Hordak often having gray skin, including most modern ones till recently). Hordak's blue hair also is meant to intentionally parallel his Filmation counterpart's blue fin. Both Hordaks also have similar cut outs at sides of their outfits with similar fastening (SPOP Hordak's original armor was more similar in this regard). Both also have red teeth.

Both Hordak's also use arm canons:

From personality, both have more redeemable elements - Hordak being implied to had been once not-evil in the Filmation She-Ra episode My Friend, My Enemy, and suggested to be possibly redeemable in Into the Dark Dimension, as well him having a sense of honor.

In concept, both Hordaks are connected to technology, and are experts in it, and both are cyborgs - Filmation Hordak appears to be a magitech cyborg/technomancer though, while SPOP Hordak is more biomechanical than a classic cyborg (if still having purely artificial parts/cybernetic implants), with a body designed genetically to interface with technology it seems.

To be clear, these aspects were present in other incarnations of Hordak through the 80s, inspired by the Filmation take on him. Many comics and books outright adopted the Filmation design of Hordak.

Latter Minicomics as mentioned by @lemaistrechat, continue more the Filmation version of Masters of the Universe, even if Hordak has a design closer to his toy.

There the "post Filmation" Hordak also shows emotional vulnerability hating being seen as weak, akin to his latter SPOP counterpart.

Bruce Timm's (yes, that Bruce Timm's) rendition of Hordak having a more slim and long face as well as normal boots (and possibly feet) possibly also influenced SPOP Hordak sharing these traits.

It also further expands that he was once at least non-Evil, helping to build the Central Tower representing balance between good and evil.

In general, it's interesting SPOP Hordak takes clear (and fairly deep) inspiration from his past incarnations, while adding on to that new elements and new twists on olds ones.

[ID: an image from the original Lorax animated movie. While the Lorax is picking up truffula leaves from the ground, Orko is standing next to him. /end ID]

Orko in the Lorax, inspired by this comment from the Orko Brazil post:

[ID: A reblog from lemaistrechat, which reads: "Reblog to help him get home, or at least somewhere on Earth with snow where children are chopping down a conifer." /end ID]

How would you rate the He Man shows?

Giving either of them empirical ratings is hard since my feelings about them shift daily depending on my moods or what details from them I'm thinking about at that time.

For example, I would give Revelation a 10/10 for being the first Masters of the Universe series to have any balls and kill off He-Man in the first episode. An act which allowed the narrative to focus on and showcase the other heroes. Giving us not one, but 3 strong female leads in Teela, Andra, and Lyn; and exploring the depth of their characters and range of their emotions to an extent that no other MotU series has done before. Good job Rev!

But, I would also give Revelation a 1/10 for utterly butchering all the other characters! I was just talking about this last night with @lemaistrechat but Rev made a lot of characters OOC and/or changed their backstories in ways that did not sit well with fans (me, that did not sit well with me, I am fans). Randor threatening the death penalty to his former best friend. Changing Orko's entire backstory to make him angsty and unloved from the start. Skeletor having a Fridge Wife in the tie-in comic, then being an abusive boyfriend to Lyn in the show. Kuduk Ungol (or anyone for that matter, really) saying "good bye" instead of what they're supposed to say on Eternia, "good journey". I know Kevin Smith used to be a fan of MotU, but you wouldn't know it watching Rev. Revelation feels like a show that was made by someone who was given an assignment and turned in the homework without ever reading the book.

So, for Masters of the Universe Revelation, I guess that averages out to a 5/10? But its not a solid 5/10, like I said, it depends on the day and my mood.

The Core/CGI series I generally have a higher opinion of overall. Yes, yes, they changed the characters dramatically. They de-aged Duncan so now he's the same age as Teela, they made Ram Man into Ram Ma'am, they made Keldor completely human instead of half-Gar, Mosquitor is now Mosquitara... Yes, these are all big and dramatic changes.

But-! These changes enhance the experience and uplift the narrative, while the changes made to Rev did not make sense and dragged down the narrative. That is the fundamental difference.

My biggest complaints about the series are mostly just that the Snakemen were just mindless zombies instead of actual characters and we never got to see King Hiss.

Overall, I guess I would give Core/CGI 8/10. Its not a perfect show, but it is better than Rev. They might have taken a lot of creative liberties and completely reimagined the world and characters into something dramatically different. But it's still recognizable as Masters of the Universe. You can tell the creators did the reading and understood the assignment.

I'm curious to hear your overall thoughts on the original Princess of Power.

While Filmation's He-Man had to come to an end, due to TV stations not being willing to pay for TV show episodes beyond 100, it was still a bold move to carry on Masters of the Universe in a girl-centric show.

From some of the interviews you've posted, it doesn't sound like Mattel Marketing had much faith in PoP, saying things like "Oh, she's a flanker brand: she'll succeed, increase gross doll sales, and when she stops selling after a couple of years Barbie will gobble up the increase."

It especially struck me in the interviews about the Star Sisters engineering how much more creativity and tooling money "action dolls" took than fashion dolls. It's a bummer to think of so much heart and intellect was being poured into something doomed to be short-lived.

She-Ra has of course had two limited revivals, in a (predominantly male) adult collector form for MotU Classics, with no action features and sculpted hair, and then as more conventional dolls when SPOP debuted, but being canceled after only a few characters.

So what do you think would be the ideal way to handle these characters?

my thoughts on the original? six words:

capitalism is the death of art.

i wrote like four thousand words about it but ultimately it boils down to Mattel ignoring market research because doing so was cheaper in the short term, which killed the original toylines & had already squashed Janice Varney-Hamlin’s original pitch for an action doll.

the same 1984 FCC repeal which allowed He-Man and She-Ra to have tv shows at all marked a sharp decline in 'gender neutral' toy advertising, which had been on the rise since the early 70s. In 1975, <2% of the Sears toy catalog was marketed to a specific gender. By 1995, it was nearly half--numbers that hadn't been seen since WWII.

By reinforcing binary gender norms, the toy industry is able to capitalize on specific play patterns (what was once ‘homemaking’ is now ‘disney princess’) and condition the market to accept pink taxes, and.

Okay I’m starting to rant again. Reining it in. No death threats this draft. Anyway Mattel killed both toylines by trying to maximize their profits & Filmation was doomed from the moment RankinBass realized it was cheaper to outsource animation to other countries. Hell, from the moment the SCG was formed. It’s so much cheaper to extract value from people you’ve fucking colonized and. uh.

No. okay I’m fine. I’m fine. We’re just gonna move onto the modern toys now.

MOTUC is its own can of worms for me. On the one hand, they didn't have the Filmation design rights until like 2012, so there are a lot of things they couldn't do, but the number of MOTU vs POP figures has always been disheartening. And the bios... it's gotten better since Penny Dreadful & gbagok have come aboard, since they're like human encyclopedia for MOTU lore, but in the early days, when Toyguru was in charge?

I should be nice but i’m still annoyed he’s making me check his youtube channel instead of just answering my questions like a normal person. what does “near future” even mean. When is “soon”??  i am currently disinclined to be charitable towards your lore, Scott! answer my riddles three or i start listing grievances!!!

The Dreamworks toys... honestly, I think the big failure there was marketing. For one thing, I never saw a single advertisement for them until I went trawling through the official Youtube channel (and that video put me off very quickly). And I can recognize that I'm not the intended demographic, you know? I’m like thirty years old & i’ve never been into dolls. Did kids like them?

My ideal toyline would have an emphasis on accuracy. Looking as on-model as possible. When I was a kid my favorite (non-stuffed) toys were those little pokemon figurines; articulation isn't really necessary for me as long as the figures can stand up by themselves. The Super7 toys were pretty good, I just wish they had more of them--or that they were sculpted in more interesting poses. But that line, too, suffered from a dearth of advertising. Who can buy these toys if they don't know they exist? Especially during the pandemic, when fewer people were willing to linger in the toy aisle and happen upon things--that's when you should be promoting shit. hell, put a bumper at the end of the episodes if you have to. as long as it was skippable idt there would be much flak for that, given we all signed up to watch a toy-based cartoon in the first place.

the type of toy i prize above all others, though? the kind of shit i went bananas for as a child & still delight in to this day?

toysets.

give me a crystal castle toyset with a little pocket guide on reading first ones' script. give me castle bright moon (WITH A MAP. PLEASE). a hordak's sanctum set that's the only way to get an imp figurine--kids love evil lairs & adults love collecting. a little Darla set that comes with spacesuits if the toys themselves are still Dolls.

but that’s not cost-effective. so. yeah

Hordak and the Unnamed One in SPOP

As in the title, it's interesting it's specifically noted that in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Hordak started out as literally Unnamed (something noted in the series) and only took on the name Hordak some time after coming to Etheria. Making me wonder if this is a coincidence (more probable), or a reference to a fan theory that in the 1986 Powers of Grayskull storyline, Hordak was the Unnamed One, instead of Gorpo, or as was to be the case in the 200X comics (kinda) Horde Prime. (I elaborated on this theory in my discussion with @lemaistrechat here). Though as I discussed with @toonjukka , the identity of the Unnamed One in 80s seemed to had been undecided.

SPOP did reference some obscure lore, and even maybe fan lore/theories - up to for example, in Origin of Hero, the novelization of The Sword two part pilot, Octavia, in what is meant to be an offensive and insulting joke, suggested Catra (and probably her kind) are from Beast Isle...and in gbagok's fan lore, Catra was from Beast Isle, and the book possibly referenced it in a creative way...

Still, like the Unnamed, and Hordak in He-Man and She-Ra Power Tour lead Snake Men, SPOP Hordak' forces were in large part composed of Rogelio's lizard men species, being kinda Snake Men like (if separate from them), with Rogelio and the rest of his kind seemingly being inspired by the prototype design of Rattlor, as is some of Rogelio's characterization.

Still, this would be just a reference then - Hordak rather wasn't present on ancient Eternia/Preternia, seeing it's strongly implied Hordak is relatively young in SPOP/not ancient. (Unless the portal to Despondos/Etheria transported him 500 to 1000 years into the future..., but that's just a rather a pretty improbable theory).