#why yes catra I want to make you stand in for kuroneko-sama

[freedfromthegalactichivemind]

Domesticated Villain Trope

So over in the tag for Trigun - the fandom I am currently active in (I haven't re-watched She-Ra in probably over a year, I'm fully back on my age old space-cowboy bullshit now) someone brought up an official poster-art that appears in the Trigun Art Book for the first 1998 anime. I know it's there, I have that artbook. I don't know if it should be considered canon as the scene was never actually in the show, but it is official post-credits art. If you've watched the show, it's freaking hilarious. Beware spoilers. (Note: No bearing on the Trigun Maximum manga, which goes a different way, nor on Trigun: Stampede, the reboot series which has only run its first season as yet). Anyway, the funniest thing about this poster is that... the good guys of the series, all cheerful and fun-loving? Plus a silly cat? They're surrounding and glomming onto a guy (guy in the red and white spacesuit) who has single-handedly murdered millions of people, including his and his twin brother's mom. And this isn't some Y7 show, the original show was PG to PG-13 (the manga and Stampede are definitely R) and even the lighter original anime had a lot of on-screen deaths. With guns. Quite graphic for a teen-anime, actually (and the original manga is just buckets of blood and full-out gore). Long story short, I flashed back to Hordak and how the She-Ra fandom treats him and debates his redeemability. During the fandom-fights, I always flashed back to Trigun and how both fandom and canon kind of wanted to redeem an actual genocider (Knives was well-crafted and had a sympathetic motivation) vs. "Guy pokes around in his lab all day and does light hands-off torture for lying in his ranks and just sends people to exile and half the fandom wants to kill him. Fun." Conversely, Hordak's fans have done fanart after fanart and fanfic after fanfic doing cute domestic-life stuff with him, making him Entrapta's househusband and having him begrudingly work with the good guys on rebuilding and space-diplomacy missions. Domesticated Antagonist Trope has gotta be one of my favorite things. I'm thinking if I can get more back into She-Ra, maybe I'll do a parody-drawing of that Trigun-poster, even though I suspect very few Spop fans will get it. Hordak crosses his arms, Adora hangs on around his neck like Vash, Scorpia's in the background, there's Entrapta holding Imp and there's an annoyed Catra sitting on the edge of the bench.