#classic vash's very much unwilling cannon beats hordak's by a mile though

[freedfromthegalactichivemind]

Hordak's Arms and Cybernetics

Thanks to something completely unrelated to Spop, I think I may have figured out how Hordak's arms work. And, I've got an idea for fanart. I always thought that they must have some kind of internal cybernetics to work because, organically, they shouldn't be able to move being just skin over bone without critical muscles and tendons. I figured that Horde-clone arms must be fundamentally different from our own in that they had some kind of cybernetics alongside the bone that worked in a way to compensate for or shore up the muscle and thus a rotting out of muscle that Hordak had didn't leave him completely helpless (although in a bad way). Cue a reboot of another show I liked back in the day coming up and showing me just how this might work! Trigun: Stampede is a re-work of the anime Trigun from 1998 and the manga from the late '90s - '10s. It was my very favorite thing from 2001, when I'd discovered it until the early '10s and Vash the Stampede is my all time favorite blorbo (even though my brain flitted off to other fandoms - Vash is the character I consistently list as "Favorite Character of All Time.") I couldn't get a JPEG to post, but the article as a web-image screenshot of the anime with a really nice shot of Vash's prosthetic. Vash always had a prosthetic left arm (well, not when he was a kid, but in the story of Trigun, all versions). In the original anime and manga, it's one of his three important guns (hence the series title). Despite this, he is actually a pacifist and I am glad that the new series has kept that critical part of his character. The arm/gun had a very different look in the manga and first anime series. The reboot redesigned it and instead of having it hidden and a revealed mystery later, just had it out loud and proud - and even made a joke about it when Meryl meets Vash. "Ooh, need a hand?" (Pops off). It is noted right away as Lost Technology (an important aspect of the Trigun story, like First Ones' tech, but slightly better remembered). Anyway, the redesigned arm - for people who take a look at the first-episode review article with pics... Look at the thing! It's a bone-arm! Well, it's metal / shiny crystalline stuff because Studio Orange wants to show off their animation-chops, but there it is, big ol' gap with a fake radius and ulna attached to the hand-unit with something of a pivot-joint, no artificial muscle or hydraulics need. And, yeah, watching my ULTIMATE BLORBO back in action in a new form for the first three episodes of the new anime released so far, I saw that arm and thought of reboot Hordak from my more recent fandom. It's like a eureka-moment, like "Ooooh! That's how arms that are Like That can work!" And it tempts me to do a fanart wherein Hordak has been given new fully-prosthetic arms by Entrapta... but they still have gaps in them, as a facsimile of his old arms (but they are indestructible First Ones tech crystal so there is no tactical advantage of anyone wedging anything in the gap) and they look like the new-version Vash-arm. If I do that, it will have to wait until I feel like doing fanart again. I'm too depressed to do much lately (for reasons spoken of earlier on this blog).