That post about the clone’s submission being a conditioned response to abuse had me thinking about Yudi.Let me elaborate: While Hordak is conditioned to submit easily to violence and Prime’s violation, Yudi seemed to fight possession, if only just a bit, if only to finish his hateful little speech about dirt when he was mid diatribe at Glimmer. It’s how we got the joint cracking exorcist scene we all know and love (shudders). What if his total disasterness is his response to abuse?
2 Being forced to submit over and over again has turned him vicious and wanting to inflict pain on someone else for a change, anything to feel he has some control. The clones are individuals underneath all the erasure and programming. They might have different responses to trauma too. For all we know, Prime abused the rest of his little brothers periodically. Jell-O baths could have been weekly event, like Sunday church. Each regular interval of time, someone was getting purified.
3 “Make sure your thoughts are pure enough, your devotion ardent enough that it won’t be YOU.” Prime does think of them as tools/chattel but he does have a database and he does seem to differentiate between them somehow. He has a database about them which suggests there were subtle differences that he was aware of and that were documented. What’s your take on how he treated individual clones?
Well, I feel like much of what he did in terms of individual treatment would revolve around cementing the clone’s bond to him and thus increasing the amount of “emotional energy” he could command from that individual.
So I would agree with you: he sees them as livestock, but rather than using them just for the bodies (the way humans use animal livestock), he also uses them for their emotions. Their love of him, so to speak. And in order to get maximum returns on that, he has to mentally and emotionally manipulate them. Which would certainly be possible with regular purification, and certainly could be made more efficient by using certain individual traits against them.
As far as Yudi goes: I would agree with your take!
Really, though I constantly tease about Yudi being an Utter Disaster, the reality of it is that, as you say, his aggression likely stems from a lack of control over his own life.
I mean, think about it, for him and for all the clones: what part of their lives can they actually feel good about? What part can they control and dictate themselves? What do they have to make them feel happy and secure and content and loved?
Nothing, really. Nothing save for the idea that they are enjoying some sort of enlightenment by being part of Prime’s flock. Everything has to be based upon that. It has to mean something, or else... well, or else they’re just slaves, aren’t they?
So an individual like Yudi might sneer at others he sees as below him because it makes him feel like his existence carries some sort of meaning. It makes him feel like he’s receiving a special love that they are not. But in truth, it’s just a cover for an internal emptiness he doesn’t even know he has.
