Fan Theories: Do the Villains of He-Man symbolize toxic masculinity?

Hi, everyone

A little reminder, I don’t just analyze Transformers. I also delve into several 80s and present day gems like He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Anyway, I once mentioned in another essay that after seeing MotU: Revelations and several other reboots, I have come to the conclusion that not only is He-Man a progressive character, but also a feminist who dared to take a stand against toxic masculinity by embracing one’s softer side to be a better man. After all, feminism helps men too. With that said, could it be that the different villains represent the different forms of toxic masculinity? After some examination, I think they do and it just reinforces to what extent it is a great series for boys by showing us how destructive toxic masculinity can be.

Evil-Lyn: The misconception that only bad women are strong and independent.

First up is Evil-Lyn which I know already what you’re thinking; dudette, she’s a lady. How does she relate to toxic masculinity? More than you think. Evil-Lyn represents the most negative view men have of strong independent women. They see them as witches who hate men, are unladylike, cruel and wicked. In other words, she represents what misguided men think women will become if they become their equals and why many men mistakenly think feminism bad. Evil-Lyn is not actually a bad person though. She had an extremely bad life that traumatized her. She was so poor that her own parents tried to kill her so they eat her and even when she escaped, she hid in sewers for many years before being found by a witch who trained her in the art of magic. Later on, she found Skeletor who she fell in love with, but was soon burnt by him because he abused her in every way thinkable. And even with all that, Revelations reveals that all she wants is to be free which is not an evil desire at all. And who made her turn good? Teela who is ALSO a strong independent woman.

Beastman: The misconception that real men must be carnal and aggressive to be strong.

This guy is obvious. Beastman embodies the wrong idea that manly men are animalistic, rude, savage and violent which we all know all too well will actually only get you into nothing, but trouble. Yet, even in today’s day and age, the idea of men not being governed by their hormones is one that even women struggle with believing, but it’s true. Even the real Beastman isn’t like that. This is all a facade to appear strong and fearless, but reality, he is sensitive, a romantic and has good in him. We finally see his true colours in Revelations and we are pleasantly surprised at how sweet he really is deep down. It turns out that Beastman selflessly loves Evil-Lyn, he has a sense of honour and is also intelligent enough to identify abuse when he sees it or experience it. In other words, when Beastman acts more like a man instead of beast, we respect him. Heck, when I saw what kind of person Beastman really is deep down, I started rooting for him and wanted him to get the girl.

Tri-Klops: The misconception that men must be cold and unfeeling to be invincible.

When I look at him, I definitely see a lot of parallels between him and the office worker especially one who is into technology. Tri-Klops is completely consumed by his work and research in technology. He sees flesh (feelings) as weak and magic (spirituality) as something that holds you back. He thinks the solution to all of life’s problem’s is to become a computer. Tri-Klops is not a far cry at all from the man who has given up on life and buries himself in his work instead, but what he fails to realize is that he is hurting himself with isolation. Not to mention that no matter how many robotic implants Tri-Klops, he is still human and deep down, he craves a human connection hence always taking that small step out every now and then. Even the fact that he started a cult is not a far cry either from how men become so resentful towards the world, that they start preaching to others to give up and become cold with him to be free from pain. The harder a man tries to be a machine, the more obvious it becomes that he still is just a man. And while never allowing yourself to love spares you from pain, you also deprive yourself from the joy of being loved.

Trapjaw: The misconception that it’s a dog-eat-dog world where you can only look out for yourself.

Another heavy metal man, but with different baggage. Trapjaw’s big glaring problem is that he’s an opportunist. Every situation he is thrown into, his first thought is ‘how does this benefit ME?’ and even his special ability which consists of eating technology can be seen as a metaphor for greed. He is like a big shot CEO who got to the top by stepping on the necks of others, divorced at least three times and backhandedly mocks those who have less. Underneath all of that is a man who overcompensates and whose power is as flimsy as a house of cards. What is worse is that when you get to where you are alone, you wind up alone when it’s all gone. No one is there to catch you, help you, comfort you and you have no choice, but to scrape to get by. It is great to support yourself and be independent, but taking to Trapjaw’s extent is self-destructive. When everyone is in your way, no one is on your side.

Skeletor: The misconception that real men are perpetually dominant in order to be respected.

And here we come to the bone daddy himself. Skeletor is iconic for being one of the worst evil bosses in fiction as he is always abusing his minions even when they do good just to keep them in line and also because he is that sadistic. Even by other villains’ standards, Skeletor is a disgusting person for that. And as mentioned before, no one had it worse than Evil-Lyn. She was the one person who ever loved him and showed true selfless loyalty to him, and how did he repay her? He not only broke her heart. He practically ate it to make submit to him. Behind of all that cruelty is a huge coward who makes everyone think they’re nothing without him, but in reality, he’s nothing without everyone else. This is why one of the other most iconic traits about Skeletor is that he is actually a big loser who always digs his own graves by constantly being so mean and wanting it all. He is exactly like that guy who thinks he’s cool because he threatens everyone and hits his girlfriend, but in reality, he’s a failure who isn’t man enough to face his demons.

Whiplash: The misconception that being a bad boy is cool.

This is a pretty simple, but relevant one. Whiplash is a criminal who got recruited by Skeletor because he is willing to play so dirty, but what does the guy really have to show for it? Whiplash was exiled from his home, he is wanted man and he’s under the thumb of another bad man. We have an old saying that boys will be boys when they act out of line, but this mentality allows boys to go on a bad path. Being bad is not a phase. It is a choice. Being a criminal or a bad person is not cool. It will mess up your life. Period.

Mer-Man: The misconception that being privileged makes you better than everyone.

This one was a challenge for me, but in the end, I managed to pinpoint Mer-Man’s problem; he’s a showboat (no pun intended). He loves to show off in every way he can at any chance he gets hence why in the 2002 reboot, he just had to bring in a giant flying monster fish, but what did it really do? It swallowed Man-At-Arms twice and he came out of it ok both times. Just the fact that most people forget that Mer-Man is a king speaks volumes about his character. He is no different from a privileged boy who goes around showing off the nice car, nice clothes and nice gadgets that his parents got him thinking it makes him great, but really… what has he done with his life that makes him memorable? Does he even get remembered? It’s ok to like nice things, but status is an illusion. Things and simply being the rich kid won’t leave a long lasting impression on anyone. The only thing you achieve by showing off the things your parents got you is that it makes people want to forget you even more because you’re just being childish.

And that’s it. I chose this set of villains because I know them. I know there are others too and I would love to hear which forms of toxic masculinity they represent.

Thank you for reading and as always, have a great day and stay safe.

Ok I needs to rant about something regarding Hordak in DC comics, and I haven’t been able to find a better place than your post @gzeta12​​ so if you allow me, let me start:

First four Hordak here?? magnificent, and good representation of who Hordak truly is; Leader of the Horde, general of the Horde army, conqueror of both Etheria and Eternia under the orders of Horde Prime, still with a strong conviction of the Horde being the only source of truth in the universe (this is gonna be important later), but still a grumpy character, who uses people but backfires to him, surrogate father to Adora most of her life, sometimes portrayed as a laughable and defeatable villain, but other times the antihero who allies with his foes. Has a personality, a purpose, his own agenda, interacts with his minions and even address them positively when they’re useful to his crusade, he even shows some twisted respect for other leaders like him (like King Hsss and Grayskull). But mortal in the end, who relies on his own army to defeat his enemies, who sometimes is fooled, mostly due to his own arrogance and tunnel vision, by his own appendices (Skeletor) and his own minions (Shadow Weaver/Catra) not an indestructible, omnipotent/omnipresent villain.

Last four Ones?????

The attempt of DC to recreate a super powerful, omnipresent/omnipotent, and EXTREMELY EVIL ‘just because’ villain with nothing more than power but not personality, and failing miserably.  He got a lot of resemblances to Horde Prime rather than Hordak. There is even an Issue (DC Origen of Hordak) where they change Prime to be his father rather than his superior/brother, who Hordak ended up killing and absorbing his soul (?) in the process, so he became a kind of demi-god… which is in fact the 2008 backstory of Horde Prime, not Hordak:

(source: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: A Character Guide and …, Volume 2)

So:

Horde Lord: Seferus-Kur, Hec-Tor and Anillis’s Father. Was killed by his sons.

Horde Prime: Anillis-Kur, first son of Seferus-Kur. Now leader of the Horde.

Hordak: Hec-Tor-Kur, Second son of Seferus-Kur, young brother of Anillis-Kur. Ended up being a second in command and ultimately sent to conquer Eternia/Etheria.

DC confused Horde Lord and Horde Prime, ultimately shifting all Prime’s backstory to be Hordak’s backstory, which I believe takes A LOT from Hordak’s actual personality and his reason to be who he is: He is the second in command, following orders from Horde Prime even when both of them killed their father together. Prime ends up as this figure he both fears and admires, and ultimately decided to defeat. This might be the reason behind why he understood Keldor’s conflict with Miro and Randor, specially when Anillis (Prime), took the power by killing their father.

Anillis-Kur is in fact worse and more powerful than Hordak, in the classic was shown to be a complete Eldritch abomination, and even on more recent comics was implied that Anillis had been possessed by part of the Unnamed One’s shattered soul. The complexity of Hordak’s character is rooted in his convictions to take Grayskull powers: he knows this by first hand, BUT in his time as the Etherian Horde’s leader he has shown to be nothing like Anillis, he has (sometimes twisted) standards, respect for some of his minions/sidekicks, respect for other powerful leaders in Eternia and Etheria, and even a sense of honor (and obvious feelings):

(source: TV Tropes)

But at the difference of the classic shows, what did DC do with Hordak? well, starting with him killing Shadow Weaver off by disintegrating her, showing Skeletor a future in which he was gonna kill him off when his purpose as a minion was fulfilled, and stabbing Adora’s in the stomach when she refused to stay in the Horde.

Is completely true that some variants of his character (specially the MOTU 200x) are more closed to be this sorceress overlord who will do nothing but try to be evil (killing Calix for being pissed at him was a proof of that), still I have a strong conviction that Hordak should be portrayed as the second most dangerous villain, always after Horde Prime, BUT with his own agenda that differs from Prime some times, and some times defying his will, like allowing She-Ra to go without harming her nor her friends, respecting the powers of his enemies, and even being careful with how destructive certain decisions can be.

But I believe one of the biggest differences is Hordak/Prime’s reactions to how they defeat their enemies. Hordak sees it as a job, he sometimes doesn’t even laugh at it, he is completely stoic and focused on what he has to do. While Horde Prime portrayal (the little we have seen of him and even DC interpretation of evil) is of a leader who enjoys with this suffering.

But that was the point of his backstory with Anillis in the end; that Prime started as the killer of the first leader and became himself a demi-god and supreme overlord and Hordak was left defeated and secretively resentful at his own old brother, but still focused on conquering at the name of the Galactic Horde, more like it being a job, lacking the enjoyment and hedonism Prime’s projects. Hordak is just there, conquering, and he knows he is doing so for a bigger purpose that is the Horde ideology rather than a big benefit he would have with it, and he knows if he doesn’t achieves it he might end up just like his father before him.

Hordak is not the only character DC butchered and I will forever have mixed feelings about DC's run of the franchise.

But this is some top-notch analysis and I gotta say, I agree with it. DC's "Hordak" just wasn't Hordak. He was Horde Prime operating under a pseudonym.

Okay, so this is long.

I was thinking about the inherent difference in how the Masters and the Evil Warriors function. With the Masters/Heroic Warriors, they generally have the same goal per episode, and are working together to achieve it. They may have smaller, side-plot goals, but in terms of the main plot they are moving in the same direction: Stop Skeletor. Save the village. Protect Grayskull. Ect, ect.

For the Evil Warriors, this is not the case. Skeletor’s in charge, but they do things on their own. Evil-lyn is the biggest example of this, as she’s always striking out to further her personal goals, but the other Evil Warriors do it too, constantly:

They have their own primary motivations, outside of Skeletor, and preferentially act on them above what Skeletor wants.

This is the main division between how these two teams function.

I think both dynamics are interesting in their own way. But with the Masters, the main conflict usually derives from someone acting in a way that hinders the group. When Ram-man and Buzz-off fight, it’s bad because it distracts from the group’s goal, not because it hinders their own personal goals–As far as the plot is concerned, they don’t have any that they should consider more important than their duties.

The closest any Master comes to striking out on their own is in Mekaneck’s Lament, where he tries to improve his powers. There’s also Buzz-off’s Pride, where he gets a personal vendetta against the giants. However, in both cases, an unspoken moral of these episodes is that they shouldn’t have struck out on their own. They have more important things they should be doing. The Masters take their job seriously, and they’ve decided that there isn’t room for their own desires to come first.

Now, for the Evil Warriors. Skeletor wants them to follow his lead. He’ll punish them if they threaten his power. Simultaneously, he seems to understand that they’re doing their own thing most of the time. The EWs do their own stuff so much that unless they’ve egregiously undermined his authority, he limits himself. In the above examples, Beast Man is only snapped, at and Merman faces no consequences at all, presumably because he willingly gives the cordite back. Trap-jaw is sent to do something he was probably already going to be sent to do.

These team dynamics make sense given the history of the two groups. Keldor originally gathered his team as a diverse set of people who have their own goals, but are allied together because of a common problem–It’s no surprise that they continue to function as such.

The Masters are more formal, with the primary members coming straight from a military group. They’re only part of the team because they think of the kingdom/Grayskull as the most important goal.

(And because the writers were unwilling to have Masters who didn’t have this mindset, Sy-Klone’s valuable cultural artifact was destroyed–To force him to have nothing more important to do. @emperorsfoot​ talked more about the Sy-Klone incident HERE.)

And it’s no coincidence that Orko is kind of an outsider to the main team in this iteration, considering the aforementioned focus on how Grayskull is the most important goal. Orko’s more like an Evil Warrior in how he interacts with the rest of the team. When he does work with the Masters, most of the time it’s somewhat coincidental. He is doing his own thing, which occasionally happens to align with what the Masters are doing. If he’s directly instructed to do something (or, more often, not to do something), he’ll push back because he has his own ideas. Orko highly prefers his own motivations over anyone else’s, to the point of trying to reveal Adam’s secret despite being directly told not to. Why? Because he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t see the point.

This is constant. He can’t help with construction? Too bad, he wants to. Can’t follow Man-at-arms on a mission? Sucks to suck Duncan, he’s coming anyway. Unlike the other Masters, Orko can’t just be told to do something, he has to be convinced. How does this pertain to what Orko cares about?

And on the EW side, Stinkor is the most ‘heroic warrior’ of the Evil warriors. He sees Skeletor as the leader and his main goal is to make sure that what Skeletor wants done, gets done. He doesn’t get why the other Warriors don’t have the same level of loyalty. Skeletor is so important and cool, how could you not want to do what he says?

The next closest EW in terms of 'heroic warrior-ness’ is Clawful, but the difference is that…Clawful doesn’t have any perceivable motivations at all. He just works here, ya’ll.

Incredible analysis. 10/10, thank you for sharing this with us.

I would like to comment that the overall moral of the Masters seems to be that conformity and listening to authority should be more important to the individual. You gave the examples of Mechaneck and Buzz-off, and how the conflict-of-the-week in each episode was caused (at least in part) by them branching off from the group and pursuing their own ends for their own motivations.

Let’s have a second and discuss Adam’s henshin in the MotU: Revelation trailer.

(henshin - transformation for weeaboos otakus)

Let’s start with the original Filmation Transformation:

Instant flash cut. Lame. Moving on.

She Ra at least got a better deal and an effects budget:

The 2002 series similarly copped out with a lighting flare flash cut a lot, although this version exists and is decent.

But the newest transformation??

Many many thanks to @why-must-a-blog-be-named for this gif!!

It is a Sailor Moon transformation, and while I have conflicted emotions about that it’s still glorious.

Let’s review the checklist:

Part of me is really, really happy that a male-intended media can just (apparently) unironically embrace this.

Part of me is cackling at how ridiculous it remains (although still better than even the 2002 Hulk Out version).

The rest of me - just wishes they’d had the guts to do something more original.

(And yes, obviously the unmoving plaid sparkle field predates Sailor Moon as stock anime transformation effect. Sailor Moon definitely had a hand in codifying it.)

(Bonus Sailor Moon fact: did you ever notice the Inner Senshi mimic an important part of their planetary symbol with their arms in their final pose? Jupiter’s “4” shape is most obvious, Venus’s is the weakest because the symbol is so similar to Mercury, but they’re there!!!)

Redemption arcs and Christian hegemony in fandom

Note: I originally had another half-written post delving into this topic. Then Tumblr went, “LOL! Fuck you!” and ate it. This is my second attempt.

As a fan of many characters deemed villains in their respective stories, redemption arcs are often a topic of discussion. Does this or that character deserve redemption? What makes for a satisfying redemption arc? Which redemption arcs work or don’t work?

However, it’s rare for me to come across a conversation that examines the concept of a redemption arc itself, let alone the forces that shape our understanding of what redemption means and how it works.

With that in mind, I’m going to see what I can do to crack open the assumptions behind redemption narratives and see what interesting alternatives present themselves.

Keep reading

Hey do you think that tumblr about weird AO3 tags will post me on it?

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