Call me BabyBat! Or whatever, I don’t mind! Icon commission from @strawberryartgallery BLM, LGBTQIA+ Safe Place Free Palestine 🇵🇸 Entrapdak gives me life
Can you please reblog if your blog is a safe place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual, aromantic, pansexual, non binary, demisexual or any other kind of queer or questioning people? Because mine is.
Pansexual heteroromantic aegosexual 43yo gender agnostic ciswoman (any pronouns) with a multitude of people with different experiences living in her head (aka a writer).
Outline below for my story based on my “Who opened the portal that brought Hordak to Etheria?” theory in SPoP.
Potential relevance to another topic I’m discussing elsewhere re: poorly handled character arcs slash treatment of traumatized characters in the series.
But mostly because I really, really do want to write this, and getting this done while it’s on my mind helps.
This fic is to be written in third person with a Queen Angella focused pov (aka observations are filtered through her bias, the only internal thoughts seen are hers).
I’m also now plotting out a second chapter from Hordak’s pov, because it turns out I figured out another connection these two have! Other than this expanded crack-fic idea I now hold as my personal fanon Angella had to make the horrible, painful choice to create a stable time loop and bring her own personal devil and tormentor to Etheria to prevent the planet from being consumed by the Heart.
Anyway, at the start of the fic Hordak and Entrapta have contributed research and tech to a device that eventually is able to bring Angella back from being between dimensions after the portal disaster.
It opens with Angella waiting to talk with Hordak alone, mentally reviewing every single reason she utterly hates him and every damage he has done to herself personally and her planet.
Suggestions for here welcome! 😊
Hordak enters, polite and professional.
Angella mentally reviews everything she’s been told about how he has acted since the defeat of Prime: submitting to a trial of his crimes, living with Entrapta, working with her towards the repair of Etheria, and taking an apparently reluctant leadership role of guiding his newly freed brothers to independence.
Outwardly, she acknowledges his contribution to her rescue.
Hordak similarly acknowledges this, but independently notes he did not do it for her sake.
Angella appears slightly shocked at this.
He clarifies that he has developed some warm feeing towards Adora (this would be explored in the second chapter, it’a a continuation of their finale scene and because I happen to like papa Hordak fanons. oh and shared angst you’ll see), and is aware of the impact the lose of Angella has had on her and her friends, further depressing Adora.
Hordak claims he performed his duty partially towards the betterment of Etheria as a whole, but personally worked diligently for the sake of Adora and by extension Glimmer.
He is glad that Angella is returned, but he believes she deserves his honesty about his motives.
Angella is silent for a moment, mentally reviewing her time in-between dimensions, although the audience does not get any descriptions at this time.
Then she speaks: “I was the one that created the portal that brought you to Etheria.”
Hordak is as shocked as any unspoiled reader would be, and cannot respond.
We now get the beginnings of scenes from Angella’s time in-between, when she first regained enough of her sense of self to recognize she could see all alternative timelines.
She starts with a timeline where Hordak does not come to Etheria.
It ends with Light Hope guiding an eager and willing - and utterly naive - Adora to initiating the Heart of Etheria.
Angella asks Hordak how much he knows about LH, and he admits he has not been told much. He acknowledges, however, he is aware she had something to do with the project of turning Etheria into to a weapon, which required Adora as the She Ra to activate.
Angella explains briefly how LH would have been able to manipulate basically anyone on Etheria into allowing an impressionable and vulnerable Adora to be trained by LH.
Throughout her explanations, we also get more details from her memories of these timelines - the more that is shown, the clearer it is that Angella didn’t just witness these timelines but to an extent experienced them.
When Hordak remains unconvinced the Horde was the safest place for Adora, Angella reveals what is admittedly fanon but ties in what I want with this overall fic.
That LH could - with admittedly time, effort, and motivation, but unquestionably the ability to - directly manipulate not just an First Ones tech on the planet to her own ends, but anyone attuned to a Runestone through them.
Anyone.
And we get the memory of Angella herself raising Adora, preventing her from ever meeting Madame Razz, and then gladly guiding her directly to the Sword and LH, proud and serene in her “mission” right up until the end.
While Hordak processes this, Angella admits she will never fully understand what being under Horde Prime’s control was like, as Micah does, but she also understands better than anyone who had not been chipped.
Hordak attempts to protest that while this may be true, bringing the Horde to Etheria seems excessive.
Angella counters with what the Horde gave to Adora in addition to time away from LH: training, a sense of responsibility….
And the experience of being betrayed, of being manipulated for the sake of Shadow Weaver’s own greed, of being lied to and needing to use her own critical thinking to confirm the truth.
Chapter 2 will show that this concept is going to have an angstfest impact on Hordak, and actually helps him understand Angella a lot better.
Hordak, a lot more subdued, again questions if traumatizing Adora had been necessary, and Angella admits there may have been an alternative time line she had not witnessed that may not have required it.
But she continues that it hadn’t just been the Horde itself she’d needed to bring to Etheria, but Hordak himself, shocking him again.
The memories here are focused on how Angella breeched reality for several crucial seconds to create the portal to bring Hordak to Etheria, in much the same way she described LH manipulating the thoughts of a Runestone Aligned princess/queen: gentle nudges against what already exists, pushing favorable thoughts/energies while repressing unfavorable ones just enough.
Angella doesn’t admit in her thoughts, but it’s implied to the reader that this all took multiple of her lifetimes to achieve, endless cycles of pressing a fragment of a nanometer against the wall of reality a cycle, the only substance she could even be tangible against.
Externally she describes how she had explored timelines where other clones had been transported to Etheria, and none had prepared Adora as successfully as the timeline Angella herself remembered. No clone but Hordak had had the precise combination of drive and persistence required to make the Horde a formidable threat, but also the singular motivation to return to Prime over conquest that allowed both Shadow Weaver’s machinations and the reformation of the Princess Alliance that shaped Adora.
Silently, she also admits that no other clone had successfully reconnected with Prime through a functional portal, and the reader briefly hears how Angella struggled with attempting to be selfish enough to not have Adora defeat Prime if it were possible, but Angella ultimately could not bring herself to not bring a savior to the greater galaxy when that timeline was already so clear before her.
(there’s one more point in Hordak’s favor, but that comes up in Chapter 2)
After Hordak processes this all, he surprises Angella - he calmly but sincerely apologizes that he and the horrors he had brought to her planet had ultimately been the best option she had found.
Reflecting Hordak’s earlier admission of his motives in rescuing her having nothing to do with Angella herself, the queen then tells him she still hates him with her entire being.
She, herself, even after the sacrifice she made the decision to make for the greater good, will never be able to actually forgive him, and she will not even try, even though Micah is.
Hordak appears amused by this to Angella; the next chapter reveals he actually finds it darkly funny to finally find someone not only willing to actively hate him but admit it to his face (Mermista is close but allows herself to be muffled by everyone else). It turns out he not only completely agrees with Angella’s assessment, but puts a chink into her inability to forgive him by pointing out another thing they have in common (completely without any desire to create empathy from her and totally towards his own mission of making amends to Adora and those close to her, oh how did chapter 2 turn even more angsty than this one so delightful….).
Anyway…
Hordak again apologizing that, as he will remain by Entrapta’s side and she is adamant about continuing to be Adora’s and therefore Glimmer’s friend, Entrapta’s going to end up dragging him to social functions Angella is present at.
Angella acknowledges this and points out she’s royalty - he is far from the first person she has had to remain civil towards in social settings despite despising, even of his is on a different level from anyone else.
This time, they share the amusement at the irony of them being perfectly attuned in this regard.
Not quite sure how to bridge this chapter to the next now that Chapter 2 exists in my brain, but I’ll at least give you my favorite part so far:
[Hordak cannot think how to brooch the topic he wants, trying to think of tactful ways to bring it up.] “Would I be mistaken to assume that there was a degree of - the desire for self-termination when you chose to sacrifice yourself to save Adora?”
The Queen’s head shot up and back even straighter, her eyes piercing daggers that immediately reminded him of His… of the betrayer’s fury.
I am so sorry Entrapta I am about to be executed on the spot I am so sorry I am an idiot please understand this was utterly my own responsibility please forget me and move on what in the deepest abyss was I thinking…
(it turns out, there are two reasons Hordak came to that conclusion; he silently acknowledges in this chapter that he fully intended for mutual destruction when he attacked Catra at the end of Season 4, let alone entering the purification pool…)
(As I said above, the memory of being controlled and witnessing the harm you were manipulated into doing to others you have responsibility over isn’t the only thing Hordak and Angella have in common….)
Non-spoilerish line from the second Hordak pov chapter I particularly enjoy.
Because I read this post from @baggebythesea and mood. 😊
Shadow Weaver: I need a child with inate power, but isolated from external influence. A child I can mold after my image and manipulate in or
Context: Hordak is thinking about his growing guilt over the trauma that occurred to those raised in the Horde, and his very poor but earnest attempts to create some rectification.
He recognizes the worst thing was allowing Shadow Weaver unmonitored control over children, and therefore out of excuses to try and directly help Adora and Catra.
And, of course, Scorpia. While he would never be able to actually conceptualize the harm he had inflicted upon the young woman, he could appreciate the vastness that void would have to repreawnr.
However, getting the princess to actually admit to his face she had suffered in any way due to his presence on Etheria went beyond his capacity.
It was with equal parts guilt and relief he resigned her healing to other hands not his own.
Hi yes I’d like to throw this into the Tumblr universe just because. The uncertainty vs true comfort. The difference in how they hold her. Just all of it thank you.
It is wild to me that the SPOP fandom doesn’t talk about or even mention the fact Hordak attempted to commit suicide on screen. That just happened and then the whole fandom proceeded to be like “well he’s still selfish and mean”. Guys. He isn’t perfect but what do you mean there’s like zero sympathy or acknowledgement of the tragedy of that???
And yes, I will not argue on this. It was not ‘a metaphor’ or ‘kind of’. Hordak stepped into that pool knowing it would erase him. He did not want to live with even the vaguest of memories of who he was. He fully intended to delete everything that made him himself. He willingly tried to destroy who he was and what he felt and everything he was inside. He did it in a way that left his physical body to still be useful because he was so brainwashed that he didn’t want to be a burden even in death. He heard so much as his name and he was ready to kill the part of him that was him, was Hordak. To make himself just another face, to wipe away the feelings and thoughts he had. Destroying everything inside and leaving just a body. That is absolutely a form of suicide. Hordak tried to kill what was left of himself in that moment.
And he was partially successful.
And it breaks me every time I think about it, and again every time it’s forgotten or thrown aside just because he isn’t a main character.
And being told they’re selfish is something a lot of people with suicidal ideation get slapped with, and it’s the LEAST helpful thing to say to a suicidal person.
I think a lot of this fandom is still young and Hordak is a character that in no way can be fully held in a black and white understanding of the world that is just something we all have to grow out of with time. Hordak is such a complex and nuanced character and it’s what makes him the most beautiful, at least to me.
To add on. This exchange. He’s scared and determined and even warning. Hordak took that last glance at something he remembered and yet it was almost begging. It feels to me like he’s saying “sorry, I don’t want this either, but I need to, I have nothing else.” It could even be taken as, in addition to the other reasons he’s doing it, Hordak is doing this to warn her. She needs to understand the danger she’s in, and this is his way of protecting her by showing her what will happen if she continues while hurting himself. The recognition in her eyes and slight jump…she finally understood that the vision of him she’d painted in her head was a lie, and he was just as trapped and scared as she was…I wish they got a proper arc together. I felt like in that moment she realized what was about to happen but couldn’t do anything :(
I headcanon that Prime deliberately set up the “accidental” meeting between Hordak and Catra. And had deliberately left just enough memory in Hordak to acknowledge her, and need “atonement”…
Specifically to twist the knife into Catra how utterly trapped and hopeless her situation was, while she still was deluded with the belief she had any kind of leverage here.
Oh, and torture The Failure, because Suffering, sweet delicious Suffering.
And, of course, to reiterate to the rest of the flock the punishment for failure, which all of them I headcanon are deliberately programmed with exactly enough leeway to make the inevitable failure of individuality a guarantee they must live in sin with…
As well as the promise of the illusion of Prime’s approval for reporting that sin in their brothers.
So yeah.
Hordak committed suicide, the person he’s been conditioned to believe was god manipulated him into it (not realizing the legitimate trauma Hordak also had that actually contributed to his feelings of failure), and Hordak wasn’t even the primary intended victim in Prime’s plan.
Need more content of Imp and Entrapta. I’m just imagining her clambering throughout the Fright Zone with this child on her shoulder and he keeps squeaking at her and she’s just talking to him like he’s the bestest little guy.
I NEEDED THEM TO BE HANGIN OUT IN THE VENTS THEY BOTH USE THEM.
GIVE ME ENTRAPTA AND HER SON.
JUST IMAGINE HORDAK WATCHING THEM BOTH POP OUT OF A VENT AND HE PRETENDS TO BE ANNOYED BUT ITS THE CUTEST THING HE’S EVER SEEN
By the clones being both Prime’s ‘brother’s and kind of his children, by marrying Hordak and adopting Wrong Hordak, Entrapta is Horde Prime’s daughter-in-law, sister-in-law, stepmother, and new mother of his stolen child. She’s an ambitious woman.
I enjoy imagining Hordak attempting to explain Imp. To everyone else he just randomly had a child with him one day and refused to elaborate. Unlike all the other children he keeps coming across he refuses to let Shadow Weaver touch this one and no one knows why. It’s just his baby boy now and it’s genuinely scaring everyone because he takes after papa and just stares ominously at you.
Shadow Weaver: uhm. What’s that?
Hordak, looking at a just-born Imp in his arms: Uh. A baby. I think. My baby.
Shadow Weaver, used to this by now: Okay, okay, I get it. More work for me. Hand me the child and I’ll—
Hordak: Reach your hand towards him again and I will bite you.
Shadow Weaver: ….
Hordak: I am keeping this and you cannot have him and he is mine and he is my baby boy.
Shadow Weaver: ……….i don’t get paid enough to care, one less child for me to worry about.
A box of absolute nothingness? That sounds horrible!
My Mutuals:
A box of absolute nothingness! Please please please let me book an hour in the box of absolute nothingness!!
😆
Also, how to separate the people with Sensory Processing Disorder from the boring people.
(as for me, I’ve tried a few sessions in a salt water sensory deprivation tank. I couldn’t get my arms comfortable enough justify the expense and drive compared to being at home with my adjustable bed, half dozen pillows, black out eyemask, and instrumental music. so yes, I need something even more extreme!
The short of it is, yes, that's exactly what happens. There's no such thing as pure silence outside of a vacuum (and inside a vacuum you'd be dead). So basically your ears are constantly adapting to the noise threshold of your surroundings and slowly ignoring it. If you were in a perfectly silent room (anechoic chambers are cool!) you would actually start to hear the sound of existing!
Isn't there some room full of sound baffling foam or something that absorbs all ambient noise and most people go mad from the isolation because they start to hear things like their own circulatory system and their heartbeat pounding in their ears?
Ah, there it is. Orfield Labratories in Minnesota. They say the longest anyone's been able to stay inside was 45 minutes, as they could hear their lungs expanding and their digestive system working overtime.
Oooh, a World Record I actually have a chance for!
I know the intensity of it would be a challenge, but I’m already fairly hyper-aware of my bodily sounds and use them as comfort sounds to reverse the effects of outside sounds.
I’m also really good at flexing my ear canal to create white noise in my ear, so I’d have a known counter to edge out a few more minutes…
Who do I contact for an attempt? 😇
Edit: Wait, what, there’s a real answer to that????
General 2 — Orfield Laboratories, Inc.
The link preview doesn’t give details, so here’s a snippet:
Group Sessions of Silence:
Immerse yourself in complete silence and darkness for one hour, accompanied by a small group of guests. Each ticket entitles the visitor to 1 of 5 seats in the 12x10 suspended chamber. Hosted weekly on Monday and Fridays.
Reserve your seat [link] $90/per person + tax
Significantly more importantly:
Multi-Sensory and Cognitive Consultations:
Many of our visitors are interested in going beyond their initial visit, to deal with issues that are specific to them. Invisible disabilities are common among all populations, yet some of our visitors are more curious than others. For those visitors we offer a personal consultation service that is intended to deal with their specific area of interest and concern.
So, um, yeah, the facility is within reasonable take-time-off-work visit distance for me, and having a legit conversation with uber-specialists in Audio Processing sounds utterly amazing……….
the problem with movie remakes is that they always remake something that was already good, meaning at worst you ruin it and at best your remake is largely redundant. to make a truly good remake you need to start with source material that is absolute dogwater. ignore the pull of nostalgia. redeem the sins of moviemaking past.
as counterintuitive as it may sound, the easiest way to get a kid to respect you and listen to you is to just let them talk back and complain. let them learn to negotiate and question what they’re being told to do. literally like all aspects of their life are out of their control, so like. let them have SOME control where they can. also “bad” behaviors are often just due to emotions that we as adults still feel and ignore or just silently stress over. like, if you tell a kid to do the dishes or clean up a room. if you tell them to do it right away, they’re going to get anxious and angry. if somebody tells you to drop everything and attend some random meeting that you weren’t told about at all beforehand, you’re going to get anxious and angry. like. same shit. kids don’t just flop on the floor and scream to give you a hard time. you’re freaking them out by yanking their day in directions they couldn’t mentally prepare for. so like, let them talk back, let them complain. let them seek your explanation and an opportunity to negotiate their terms. after a while, they’ll just stop talking back or whining because they’ll trust that you’re telling them something for a reason and they’ll have practiced making a task work for them and their personal motivation.
So, it’s important to note that I was the “good” kid. Like, the song Surface Pressure from Encanto? Totally me.
However, when my parents divorced when me and my younger brother were teenagers the most logical plan was for us to finish high school with my father, and let my mother take contracts as a travel nurse.
“Logic,” however, assumed my father wouldn’t be an emotionally constipated asshole who, now deprived of his ex-wife, would start using us as the reasons for why his life was horrible.
My brother, who always projected his stress outwards unlike me, obviously suffered the most. It ended in him getting thrown out of the house (my father’s terminology) and living with my maternal grandmother.
But before that point, there was one night I was sitting watching tv and my father said to me “Can you make salad for dinner?”
Now, I do acknowledge the very Canadian politeness making the “can” just a euphemism for “I am ordering you to do something.”
(Have I mentioned my father was in the Canadian Air Force? Yeah, my father was an emotionally constipated control freak in the military.)
I was exhausted from the stress in the home, and very literally asked “What would you say if I said no?”
My father immediately began yelling about how he had to do everything in the house, how ungrateful I was, and I just stood up and said “Oh, that’s what you’d say.” And went to make the salad.
That was the late 1990s.
I was the last person in what I consider my family to talk with him, in 2005.
After working today (daycare teacher), I feel the need to make the Public Service Announcement.
If your Toddler or Preschooler is overly emotional about not getting their own way, you need to increase the amount of structure you impose upon them.
Because your kid is suffering from anxiety over trying to do your job.
I am not exaggerating, I am not making this up.
Children should not be the ones making all the decisions.
That is way above their pay grade.
Struggling at bedtime? Do your job, create a sleep routine, stick to it.
Angry they can’t play with a toy they want, when they want it? Enforce times they have to give up toys. Work on turn taking, sharing, and accepting less desirable toys.
Temper tantrums? They lost their turn, they need to show age-appropriate behavior to get the next one.
Note: if a child can’t calm down after getting angry or crying, that’s a meltdown. They need your help to return to emotional regulation. Teach calming techniques as a daily connection moment when they are already calm, use them during and after a meltdown, and provide positive reassurance and affection as they regain emotional regulation.
But do not give them the item/activity they wanted that triggered the meltdown; that means next time they hear “no,” a meltdown will get them what they want.
They need to accept they’ve lost access to what they wanted until they can provide age-appropriate actions (say sorry, wait 10 minutes, do another activity first) before they can restart negotiations.
Also: Don’t always allow for negotiations. Some things can’t be negotiated.
You don’t get to negotiate everything as an adult, neither will they.
Me randomly dancing to kids’ music, and the exceptionally serious 2.5 year olds who believe I have sacred wisdom and every motion must be reproduced exactly.
I am in a constant state of knurd in regards to deep pressure.
I have reached the point at home where I use two weighted blankets to strategically bury my body against the world, and removing them feels like the insult to normality.
(I work as an active 45 year old daycare teacher, sadly I doubt investing in a compression vest for day use that actually works despite my size G boobs would be useful for anything… 😭😭)