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I just binged this show. Scorpia is adorable. I'm disappointed that they didn't have Catra meet Drunk Adora. Though that maybe might go badly. Magic and technology have both been big things in He-Man and She-Ra, occasionally coming into play with things like a magical barrier that no living creature can cross, so they send through a robot who doesn't count as one. Usually characters specialise in one or the other, but the lines are more blurred in this show in particular. Bow even outright says that Entrapta is one of the only people who really understands how intertwined magic and science really are. The Horde seems rather... understaffed and incompetent, but then again, seems kinda fitting; their biggest deal is their technological and logistical advantage, especially given their main strategy is just to send in shitloads of tanks and robots and stick big guns on defensive fortifications. I suppose that's reason why they're training up officer cadets specifically to counter the Princesses, who they can't steamroll as easily. I also get the impression that while the first Princess Alliance may have ended badly probably involving a lot of the older generation getting wiped out, they possibly took most of the Horde's leadership with them.
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Sep 25, 2019 10:23
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I'm not the first one to guess that Angella is totally in Eternia, right? Also, Adora might be the only girl who isn't gay for Catra. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 09:54
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Rights are probably tangled up though. Though who knows how it works with this. Maybe Angella comes back out of nowhere in a season after having had lots of offscreen adventures in a strange land and totally punched a skeleton man in the face that one time.
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Sep 28, 2019 06:13
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Glimmer's just gonna hafta join the rest of the princesses in the Batman club. I'm getting vibes from Entrapta and Hordak like when a naive and socially inept (and possibly on the spectrum) girl is just so fascinated with a troubled and dangerous boy who makes the slightest shows of appreciation and can't see the red flags of how he's definitely going to end up possessive and abusive. I mean, on top of her more or less being a war criminal at this point.
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Sep 29, 2019 05:29
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CuwiKhons posted:I actually think Hordak is more interested in Entrapta than she is in him. She likes him for sure, don't get me wrong, but so far she's seen him as a lab partner and a friend (which she's very excited about!). Hordak's the one who sees anime sparkles around her and stumbles over his compliments like a 7th grader asking someone to the school dance. Point there. Doesn't help that Hordak outside his armour suddenly stops looking like a growly middle-aged overlord and more like a sickly teenager. Between his sparing presence in early seasons and his alien design he kinda gives the idea of having dropped into Etheria from another genre outright. Also interesting that he's pretty much a total opposite of any incarnation of Skeletor thus far, complete with having an intimidating face but a weak and skeletal body.
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Sep 29, 2019 10:39
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Does Entrapta have some kind of Southern accent? She reminds me a lot of Mina Loveberry from Star Vs The Forces of Evil. Maybe just a generic 'wacky' female voice? I'm not good with regional American accents.
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Oct 3, 2019 06:12
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Darth Walrus posted:See also, Professor Frink. He's just a Jerry Lewis impersonation, iirc?
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Oct 6, 2019 13:43
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Labes for days posted:So I guess it’s safe to assume Hordak hosed off to Beast Island to save Entrapta or something and Catra seized power, huh. That'd make sense. Could be interesting when Horde Prime shows up and his little brother hasn't even managed to maintain control of his own little empire.
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Oct 7, 2019 13:22
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Am I the only one to immediately figure the second appearance of the ice princess has her basically a sighted power switched Toph?
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Oct 10, 2019 09:14
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Captain Oblivious posted:Shadow Weaver going for the psychological abuse high score. You gotta respect the commitment. It's not subtle given she's literally a parasite who leeches all her power from others.
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Nov 4, 2019 07:09
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Gotta admit I have a few complaints mostly with the tone, which I think has been mentioned; it's not clear how seriously we're supposed to take the threat of the Horde and how much peril people are really in day to day. That the Horde is shown with clearly dysfunctional and incompetent leadership at least explains a lot. It might be one of those things they can settle on later, at least. I feel a bit spoiled by Avatar. Other thing is that a lot of characters outside the Horde and the Best Friend Squad, mostly the other princesses, are pretty underdeveloped. And in the case of the ice princess at least, inconsistent, it's a little hard to square her original appearance with how she came back and was suddenly Ice Toph. I suppose they can probably fix both of those later on if they can pick a tone and stick with it, and give the other characters enough focus to develop a bit more. Comes off as a bit too much like throwing in extra characters to make sure their toys are advertised, but the toyline might not even be a thing yet.
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Nov 4, 2019 10:15
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Elfface posted:Ah, gotta love perfectly cromulent advice given creepily. If anyone else had said "You've got the potential to be greater than your parents, but you're not them and you need to take the path that suits you" it would have been just fine. I mean, it's pretty well established that Shadow Weaver has absolutely no concept of healthy relationships, given, y'know, Adora and Catra. She does slightly better with Glimmer because she actually has a similar enough skillset that Shadow Weaver can give direct advice and tutelage with, but she still only really knows 'creepy manipulative supervillain' mode.
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Nov 4, 2019 16:34
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Ironslave posted:I get the impression that Shadow Weaver is a character who is solely on her side. So long as it benefits her more to remain within the Alliance--and it does, since her bridge with the Horde has been fairly burned and she is being given the chance to play vizier from a lack of options--I think she will. I was gonna say pretty much that, Shadow Weaver is on Shadow Weaver's side. It depends on what Angella figures what to do with her; indefinite imprisonment might honestly be the best option presuming she doesn't do executions, since releasing or banishing her would probably bite them in the butt in the long run. And you'd think a Catra's Horde would be just as hostile to her as Hordak's, but say it with me everybody...
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Nov 5, 2019 05:55
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Hey, maybe Horde Prime thinks you're defective for not having extra eyes. So, got a few theories from everything we've seen; looks like Horde Prime has psychic powers, and I get the impression most of his clones are a hivemind, or basically his meat puppets, at least they're supposed to be. Hordak's defect isn't just physical but might be that he can resist it, since Horde Prime does say he can't read Hordak's mind before touching him. And I get the impression he was going to use the same powers to wipe Glimmer's memory, of the Horde at least; it looks like he's an evil overlord who understands the value of good PR, and removes anything in the way of that. I imagine next season is probably going to open with Horde Prime's armada presenting themselves as liberators from Horde tyranny, and seeking control of both the Runestones and the princesses. Or possibly, having both the Horde's right hand and the leader of the Princess Alliance at his mercy, presents himself as a unifier bringing peace and order to a divided, war-ravaged world. Either way, probably not going to be long before people start saying they actually miss when they only had to deal with the Horde, depending on how transparent the charade is or if there's actual relief efforts. Also, looks like the First Ones might have colonised Etheria about a thousand years or so ago, probably a while to build so much infrastructure, and maybe co-opted the local legend of She-Ra to put a friendly face on their administration. Then something went horribly wrong- probably Mara shifting Etheria into the empty dimension and taking the planetary network offline- and most First Ones tech stopped working and sites were abandoned, with the colonists eventually fully integrating into the native population. (Also would explain why about all of the official Princesses we see are apparently human or part-human, while most crowds are various nonhumans; humans mostly integrated into/became the ruling classes, a pretty common pattern with conquerers) Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Nov 9, 2019 |
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Nov 9, 2019 06:21
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MonsterEnvy posted:According to the character designer. Horde Prime's extra eyes for ornamental. He apparently takes body parts from his clones to improve himself, and he wanted some extra eyes for decoration so he ripped some eyes out of a clone. I hope we see a couple of clones with eye patches in the background.
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Nov 9, 2019 18:26
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twistedmentat posted:I think the First Ones homeworld is Eternia. Adam, Randor and the rest of them are the remains of the First Ones empire, with Greyskull the center of their technology. Hell, it probably existed before they started their Empire, using the technology they found there. Though for some reason it collapsed, and now Eternia is just a post apocalyptic wasteland full of weird mutants and decaying technology. That's a good question, though it's not like it's stopped other franchises like TMNT from saying gently caress it and not bothering trying to prevent confusion. Skeletor actually would be a really good counterpoint to this version of Hordak, since they're almost total opposites. CuwiKhons posted:Speaking of which, do you think Scorpia still has family out there anywhere or is she the last one? I assumed she would have family out in the Crimson Wastes last season but this season it seems more clear that Scorpia's family got decimated and she was only kept alive because she was young enough to be raised as loyal to the Horde. I also assumed we'd meet more of Catra's species on Beast Island but uh, nope. There was a cat girl on Captain Scurvy's pirate crew though. I got the impression her father sold out to the Horde possibly to keep them alive? Though I generally kinda attributed the seeming skeleton crew of the Horde's upper echelons to the same reason all the heads of state are teenagers; the war with the Horde has been brutal to the older generations on both sides, and Angella might be paranoid and cowardly partly because she's the only member of the old Princess Alliance still alive. Funny thing is that people were wondering about Etheria having money, but the world depicted makes a lot of sense that, for most people, the war is pretty far away or abstract- there's a bunch of different independent nations who probably only stopped fighting each other when the Horde showed up, and areas like the Whispering Woods and Crimson Waste that are so hostile and sparsely populated as to be ungovernable. It's a big world with a lot going on and we probably haven't even really seen half of it.
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Nov 10, 2019 04:50
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twistedmentat posted:In 80s cartoons, Skeletor and Hordak were BFFs and they stole Adora together. Not surprised, though it seems like this version of Hordak had nothing to do with Adora's kidnapping, that was Light Hope. Put that way though, I can totally imagine Skeletor taking Hordak under his wing and becoming his evil mentor. Would explain a lot if She-Ra and He-Man are both based on the same ancient super-soldier technology. And possibly something about their bloodline makes them compatible with it.
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Nov 10, 2019 07:30
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I'm mostly familiar with the 2002 Skeletor, mind, though I suppose to go into more detail about what I meant; Skeletor primarily uses magic, while Hordak uses technology; Skeletor is a hands-on leader who can sword-fight He-Man evenly, while Hordak prefers to sit back and when he does fight he uses a long-range weapon; Skeletor tends to dominate his minions and take charge through personality while Hordak gives them relative autonomy and mostly only intervenes when he wants something or when they screw up. Looking at that, I get the feeling it might be a deliberate contrast for this show's version of Hordak.twistedmentat posted:I think so, but could Skeletor make any other kind of pie? Weirdly enough I'm wondering if it's related to how their mother is apparently an astronaut from Earth in at least one version.
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Nov 10, 2019 08:55
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I think Hordak was Skeletor's mentor? Though I don't know if that'd work for this. Though the crazy option would be that the planet Hordak was invading when he was suddenly sent to Etheria was actually Eternia. (and extra comedy option is that it's Light Hope's fault) Madame Razz is also implied to occasionally remember the 80s series.
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Nov 10, 2019 18:37
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Really just seeing He-Man and She-Ra fighting back to back would be awesome.
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Nov 11, 2019 06:12
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I liked the 2002 series, goofy but with an actual budget.
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Nov 11, 2019 07:01
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side_burned posted:Its kind interesting to watch an episode of 80's She-Ra or He-Man while paying close attention to how Filmation went about making a 22 minutes of content while spending as little as possible. Star Trek TAS has held up surprisingly well with that in mind. Especially since they realised that weird aliens were often actually easier to animate than humans. It's a style that works surprisingly well when used right, either taken seriously or used for comedy- Archer obviously uses a similar style (and also Frisky Dingo and Sealab 2021, which was based on another Filmation cartoon) but also the human characters in Aqua Teen Hunger Force. BIG HEADLINE posted:I honestly don't want Kevin Smith anywhere remotely near to being involved with this show. He's demonstrated that he's completely incapable of reining in his toxic masculinity when it comes to his favorite childhood IP, and I've no doubt his attempt at revitalizing He-Man will be a grotesquely-realized attempt at bringing the 80s version back, but "y'know, making it edgier." The Monarch's voice and mannerisms were probably consciously based on Skeletor, I'd imagine.
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Nov 11, 2019 09:05
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I don't really have gaydar so I'm not sure if Bow being gay is obvious or too obvious. But it's pretty easy and fun to picture him crushing on Adam.
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Nov 11, 2019 11:34
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Reminded of one trans youtuber saying semi-jokingly that an upside to transitioning is no longer having to try to unfuck the utter mess that is masculinity. Not sure what people are that worried about with Kevin Smith. He has made a pretty good cartoon before.
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Nov 11, 2019 12:07
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Also, realised that Hordak's backstory is more or less Invader Zim.
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Nov 11, 2019 13:24
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I think Bow's mentioned stars before as something from old stories, and they're probably in Etheria's folklore as something that used to be in the sky a long time ago. Like we have astrology and constellations from over 2000 years ago and all, and Etheria's only been in Despondos for about 1000 years. I reckon Catra's going to spend most of the next season desperately sucking up to Horde Prime and probably having to have it hammered into her that the absolute best case scenario she can hope for is being his pet.
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Nov 11, 2019 14:07
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I just figured they were really bored.
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Nov 12, 2019 05:09
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I wonder if there's symbolism with how Sea Hawk keeps setting ships on fire. Come to think of it I realise I found him so familiar because he's basically a G-rated, more ambiguous orientation and somehow even crazier version of Shore Leave.
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Nov 12, 2019 17:36
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BIG HEADLINE posted:Shore Leave is competent, though. Sea Hawk is too when you get down to it, he's just kinda outclassed given he doesn't have any special powers or weapons like nearly every other named character of note, and his unique skill is 'can competently operate a boat'. (And set it on fire) Also funny that they swapped the usual 'girls' night out' episode for a boys night out. (Though I think the same thing happens in most female-dominated shows at some point) And in this show, one of the boys is a pegasus unicorn. Ghost Leviathan fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Nov 12, 2019 |
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Nov 12, 2019 17:54
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It seems reductive but I keep thinking of Mermista as 'Daria but a superpowered mermaid'.
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Nov 13, 2019 03:18
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I keep saying she basically turned into Ice Toph. Which is cool and all (ha ha) but still a bit of a shift. Though we do get some hints of her original characterisation in the Mermystery episode I think, where she's strict under pressure but when with the princesses is able to relax because she's among peers rather than expected to be the responsible one.
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Nov 13, 2019 08:29
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KylexKyle Found it interesting that Huntara is actually supportive of Perfuma from the start rather than deriding her skills; implicitly she trusts Adora and Bow's judgement enough to presume someone they brought along to the Crimson Waste was dangerous enough to be worth the hassle. (Kind of a theme perhaps given she's pointed out to have stopped expecting betrayal at the drop of a hat) Perfuma's actually a rock solid ally; nice and non-confrontational but entirely willing to gently caress poo poo up the moment you really need her to.
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Nov 13, 2019 16:46
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BIG HEADLINE posted:She's basically "nice Poison Ivy" and Poison Ivy can uproot and throw buildings around, so yeah. Well, depends wildly on the incarnation. Probably just as well Perfuma's too nice to really weaponise plants beyond brute force.
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Nov 13, 2019 17:24
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Halloween Jack posted:GI Joe had the opposite problem where the above-henchmen-level people were competent and the guy at the very top was a total moron. That's not a bad idea for a cartoon premise, since it means the bad guys' level of effectiveness can vary wildly depending on whether they have a decent plan or coordination this time around. 80s TMNT has a similar thing, except the bad guys have a huge powerful alien superweapon/mobile base that barely works and they have no idea how to properly use or repair, so their threat level depends on what they've managed to get it to do this episode. (and it plays nicely into Turtles Forever)
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Nov 13, 2019 18:50
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I'm not sure what's going on with Swiftwind but he steals every scene he's in.
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Nov 15, 2019 10:41
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 just to fit in?
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Nov 15, 2019 17:54
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Shadow Weaver's motivations are a mystery to the characters and audience, though I'm not unconvinced she isn't fuelled almost entirely by pride and spite. She's surprisingly happy to teach magic to Adora and Glimmer, with no apparent strings attached. She's more or less the unofficial court mage at Bright Moon now. Maybe recognition is all she really wants. But as said, she's a horrible person with messed up priorities and her maternal attitude doesn't make that any better. Especially since she can't do much magic now unless she steals it from others, so quite possibly her teaching young proteges how to do magic better is just another form of cultivation...tsob posted:It seems more likely any friction between Glimmer and Micah will arise from his obsolete image of who she is and what she could be. Which seems sort of like it'd be a retread of Glimmer's relationship with her mother, but more intense given the gulf in knowledge and time but the show can probably make it work regardless. Kinda makes me think the recent arc in DuckTales of a long-absent parent trying to reconnect with kids they've never really gotten to know. It's difficult, but not impossible. Especially since Glimmer clearly gets a lot of her personality from him. Also possibly her body type, given she's pretty stocky while her mom is a waif.
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Nov 17, 2019 03:54
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BIG HEADLINE posted:She's motivated by recognition and validation. She was stuck playing second fiddle in Mystacor, and saw an opportunity to distinguish herself while simultaneously hazarding her student. When it went tits up, she took up with the Horde because it was the only option available to her that let her keep any semblance of authority and power over others. She's like those 'good professors' you have in college who are still in their prime - you wonder why they're not out there practicing and profiting from what they're teaching, and it's because they never want to be "the one," they're content with being the one who taught/has influence over "the one." That makes a lot of sense. I think a lot of it is she respects magic as a practice and artform and does enjoy seeing others reach their potential through her teachings- even after her transformation she's still kindly to Micah, but she's ultimately a Svengali, and I think best demonstrated when she first aided Glimmer by using her as a power battery. She might be mollified by being useful to the Rebellion and a magic teacher, but only until someone else comes along with a better offer. Micah's return should be interesting to see how she reacts.
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Nov 17, 2019 07:05
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I still say given how much Hordak's backstory tracks with being basically Invader Zim, Entrapta is his GIR.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:06
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I mean, Zim is basically just a parody of a stereotypical alien invader who happens to be comically incompetent and being sent on what his superiors fervently hope is a suicide mission.
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Nov 23, 2019 03:50
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