A lot of writers rail against the fun and interests of fandom. I get that. I also get why you should never allow fandom to dictate what you do with your story.
However, I also think there is strength in analyzing what fans respond to and utilize the best aspects of it to your advantage. A good example of this is how She-Ra is able to establish an emotional investment in Hordak via his relationship with Entrapta.
When we first meet Hordak, he is a typical evil bossman. He's impatient, awful to everyone, seemingly mindless in his pursuit of evil for the sake of evil, and a total bastard. He's easy to dislike and dismiss. This is typical of cartoon villains and it's also, at this point, tropy and lazy writing.
Then Entrapta defects to the Horde (because they have better tech and she thinks the other princesses abandoned her) and wanders into Hordak's lab. At this point, the writers did something very cool. They used the principles of Fandom Shipping to build their relationship.
In a way, the show had to do this. Having already established a canon where people aren't treated differently based on gender, the typical and traditional aspects we see in romance would have been out of place. Instead, we see a relationship build that is far more like what one tends to see in the dynamic and energy usually reserved for homosexual characters in fandoms (which tend to be far more based on equality and mutual esteem). Hordak and Entrapta are nothing alike in personality. He's very serious and she is full of wonder and vivaciousness. He is fearful where she meets all challenges with enthusiasm as a problem to solve. What they do have in common is a love for science and discovery. They find ways to use their personalities to balance each other and with that balance, they are able to accomplish what neither could do on their own.
In the meantime, Hordak begins to trust her. He opens up to her about who he really is. As he builds his relationship with Entrapta, we, as the audience, build a relationship with him. He stops being this typical and meaningless cartoon villain and becomes a real character, one I found myself invested in.
In the fourth season, Hordak is alone again. Catra has sent Entrapta off to Beast Island (presumably to die a horrible death). Hordak doesn't know this. Catra lied to him and told him that Entrapta rejoined the Rebellion and was lying to him the whole time. Hordak is heartbroken. He mopes and won't leave his lab. It's beautiful. When he finally does emerge, it is with full plan to finally conquer everything. He begins to succeed with this, driven now by his hurt over what he thought Entrapta did. Again, it's just deeply romantic. I mean, you still don't want him to do it, but damn. He even tells Catra at one point that he's staying at the front of the war because he wants to face Entrapta in battle. And as the audience, we know that it isn't anger that is driving him. It's the knowledge that he thinks war is the only dance they have left.
Ohhhhh but the real payoff is when he finds out the truth. Hordak is so broken by the fact that Catra probably sent the girl he loves off to die that he begins to destroy his whole castle in an effort to kill her. It's an epic fight and you can just feel his grief as his whole kingdom is falling around him.
In the end, when his brother finds him and erases his memory, I was the one who was heartbroken. And that is important because if the memory wipe had been done to Season One Hordak, I wouldn't have cared at all. He was just a meaningless villain to me. But when it happened now, I knew Hordak as a person. An evil person, sure, but one with depth and beauty to him. Horde Prime took away one of my favorite characters and it made me ache. One of my main wishes for the next season is that Hordak is able to remember the man he has become and help the Rebels fight against his brother. I hope he and Entrapta find each other again. And for me to go from just rolling my eyes at this 'bad guy' to being this invested is some very good writing.
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