[Music]
It was with my friends online, we’re playing
video games and we start talking about
Skeletor, something I
do more than I should.
I like fictional
characters and I like
thinking about them thoroughly. Skeletor
is an interesting character because
Skeletor, well the question, let’s put
the question out there that started this
whole thing off, which led me to a
point where I went and did some actual
research about Skeletor. Skeletor is
a very buff man. I have to make sure
because I don’t know how much my
audience would actually not know Skeletor.
I know that show has been rebooted
multiple times, but none of those are
super popular. Do you know who he
men in Skeletor is a question? So I will be
explaining stuff that if you know it,
hit the little fast forward button on your
podcast player, but if you don’t,
you know, you do need an explanation.
He man, hero of attorneya. My apologies.
I should have said Adam, the milk
toast version of human pre-transformation.
Goes around, he’s like this guy who’s
really sort of Faye, but very buff. I think
he would be. He’s not a twink. He’s not a
bear. He’s a very buff man who’s
clearly a bottom. Then he gets out his big
sword, holds it in the air, and says by
the power of gray skull, and then turns
into a top. I’ll tell you that right now.
His clothes change, he gets a big
sort of strappy thing on, and he’s still
jacked. He’s jacked in both instances,
but his attitude changes. Let’s just
put it that way. He becomes he-man.
Skeletor, this was back in cartoons when
they basically had one body, and they like
repainted it in the cartoon. So he-man
was a white dude. Skeletor is a dark
bluish color. He actually lightens up
in later reboots, which is interesting.
The problem is, Skeletor has a
skeleton head, and so what is he? Is he a
skeleton with a buff body, or is it some
kind of like it’s a human with a skull head
for some reason? So what happened?
What is he? So the original, oh, and so the
question that came up was, would it be
appropriate for Skeletor to have intimate
relations with a corpse? Because if
he’s a dead body, because he’s a skeleton,
then him having relations with another
dead body wouldn’t be morally offensive,
or is he a buff dude with a skeleton
head and then him having relations with a
corpse? He’s not acceptable, morally
speaking. But then we would have to talk
about his morals, and this led me
down sort of a rabbit hole of how, what is
Skeletor, and where is his morality?
And that was an interesting question.
So what is he? In the original toy, so
this is back in the 80s when they made the
toy first, and then
the cartoon was
essentially a 30 minute
advertisement for the toy.
If you bought the toy for Skeletor,
and any of the he-man products and
the original toys, you got a little sort
of mini comic with it, which gave you
some sort of background on the character.
It’s not like a Pokemon card with
just like stats. This was like a little
story, little background. Now Skeletor’s
story, just basically said he’s a demon
from another dimension and then started
talking about how he hated he-man,
how he hated attorney. I wanted to suck the
magic out of the world, wanted to
take over the world, that kind of stuff.
Demon from another dimension wasn’t
explained very deeply, but it would justify
him having a skull head and a very
buff human body. But there are reboots of
the story, and they sort of alter it.
So basically the people who made the toy,
the people who made the cartoon and
the people who made the reboots, had an
inconsistent canon, and this is very
frustrating, because then we have to figure out
like what is true. Because one story
is that he was actually Hordok, which is
Shira’s enemy, the Horde,
invaded from another dimension to
Eternia and left Skeletor behind. Now
they took Shira from Eternia back to the
dimension they come from, which is how
Shira ended up there. So Shira is he-man’s
cousin I believe. But that meant that
Skeletor was left behind or abandoned by the
people who brought him here. He then
ends up being angry at both the people of
Eternia who rejects him for who he
is, and angry at the Horde who left him
behind because they were supposed
to be supporting him at all times.
This was essentially his family abandoned
him. There’s another story that he’s
actually the next in line of succession,
but the king didn’t want him to become
king because he has blue skin, racism,
and so pushed him aside and made his
son the king who became he-man’s father.
So that would make Skeletor he-man’s uncle.
In one of the reboots they have
someone throw acid in his face,
but that doesn’t give you a skull head.
Maybe he did some magic to repair it
because magic is real in this universe.
So that’s something could be done to stop
it or, you know, put an extra, I
guess a shell on the outside of his face.
I didn’t notice while sort of looking
at clips of the cartoons that the skull
exterior of Skeletor is vaguely flexible.
And this is how they give some expression.
So he can look sad because his
eye sockets will turn down. He can
look happy because his teeth will go up
and his cheekbones, sorry, his cheekbones
will go up. So he has the skull that
is resting above his incredibly buff
body is vaguely flexible. Now I don’t
know if that was on purpose because it’s
not really bone or if it’s just because
we have to give him some sort of
expression in his cartoon and nobody
cares until like 20, 30 years later when
some dude does a podcast and he
clearly cares because of inconsistencies
piss him off. So he’s going to go
through all the inconsistencies and try to
figure out what the fuck Skeletor actually
is. This was a time, Star Wars, when
all the bad guys were somehow vaguely
related to the hero and it was like a
big surprise. I don’t remember it ever
being revealed in the show as being
cannon or factual. So this is like
someone had this idea. Hey Darth Vader was
Skywalker’s dad. Let’s make Skeletor, he
man’s uncle and because there’s actually a
clear line of succession in the he man’s
story. So he can’t actually be his father.
He could be his uncle but they
never seem to have actually dealt with
that in any real way. Also I have very
bad allergies. I get allergies every year.
It’s very frustrating. Take a
lot of medication for allergies.
The interesting part about Skeletor is
that there was once the time where he
created monsters and then he man used
some magic to turn those monsters into
flowers and Skeletor was defeated
because of a severe pollen allergy.
So all the flowers started like shooting
pollen out and then he got such bad
allergies. He actually had to retreat.
So he was defeated by allergies. I actually
know how that feels. But that would
imply that within the skull on Skeletor’s
head, their error sinus cavities that
are like mine full of mucus and liquid
and they overreact to pollen. So
that to me implies that there’s a skull a
fleshy part and then a skull on the
outside. So there are some depictions of
Skeletor where the skull is floating
above the body and then there’s some where
there’s the body and then like a
little orange link between the skull.
So usually he has a hood up and you
can’t see into the hoods. You can’t see how
that skull is connected. So if it’s just
floating above it, it would just be magic.
But then if it’s just a skull, he
wouldn’t have allergies. You can see
the problem where I’m getting into.
I get into the minutia of this and the
more minutia I get into, the more conflicts
that come up. So what they need for
the whole he-man thing is me to sit
down and be like I will be the arbiter of
what is true for all of eternity and I
will make your stories consistent from
now on and I will take facts from previous
episodes and I will blend them together.
But I can tell you that there
is fleshy stuff inside there or he
wouldn’t have allergies. But we actually
have found is that he’s inconsistent.
We don’t know what Skeletor is.
So the morality of Skeletor having intimate
relations with a corpse is very difficult
to determine based on his physicality.
So we have to go into his morality. So
then I looked at some of his plots to see
where his morality falls. We know he’s
the bad guy. And this is the 80s and in the
80s they were not exactly subtle
what they’re bad guys. They’re bad guys.
We’re all just the cliche. I hate
everybody. I hate everything. I want to
destroy everything. I want to be the leader
of the world. Even if I have to destroy
the world, there’s no world left for
me to be the leader of which I as I grew
older realized that was really stupid
because what’s the point of being the
leader of a world that no longer
has anything in it that doesn’t exist.
That is always bothered me about
the I want to destroy everything. It really
bucks me. I can resident evil and the
tea virus thing because the tea virus kills
98% of the thing of the stuff in the world.
But the umbrella corporation is a
company. They need people to sell
product too. I’ve actually gone off on this
rant multiple times. It frustrates me to
no end because like, you know, parasites
don’t make sense because they kill the
host. So if you kill the host, you can’t
survive anymore. Umbrella is essentially
like the parasite. It’s killing off
the human population, but it’s a
company with no audience to sell to.
No consumer pool is no longer a company.
So what was the point? Now, I know there’s
science and evolution and stuff
that all goes into the tea virus as well.
But The president, so the company would be
like, let’s cut this research off because
we don’t want to kill everyone on it.
If they were going to create the virus
and then sell the vaccine, that could
work out. But I don’t actually remember
that coming up in any of the stories.
Some of Skeletor schemes. So to judge
his morality, we have to look at some
of the schemes he came up with. One of
them was that he created half size
Skeletors. So if Skeletor six feet, I don’t
know, they’re buff dude. So like you
could either imagine they’re like giants
like seven foot tall or being sort of
weightlifters, they might actually be
quite short. So let’s just call him six
foot so that we can do the math or easily.
He created three foot mini Skeletors,
a whole bunch of them. And his
plan was to have them overrun eternia.
The small ones, all the problem was the
small ones all had his singular attitude
and that they should be the leader.
So as soon as they started interacting
with each other, like who’s going to be
the leader of like the world once there’s
only Skeletors left, even if they’re
mini Skeletors, well, they all thought
it should be them. So they started
infighting. Now the full size Skeletor
was like, well, it’s obviously supposed
to be me because I’m the creator. None
of the little Skeletors agreed with them.
So he needed to actually rebreed
them to have a new sort of more
subservient attitude. But he didn’t think
about that at the time. So, but he was
willing to create a horde of little
Skeletors that would take over the entire
planet. And I don’t know if they were
going to kill everybody, but they were
certainly going to make it so there
were no food supply. So he was willing to
sacrifice little versions of himself. Now,
the Skeletor we all know is very selfish.
So sacrificing other versions of himself
as long as it’s not himself is fine.
That’s a very normal sort of 80s standard
attitude. So I didn’t take that too hard.
He once dropped fireworks
spiders on the capital of Eternia.
They were easily dispatched with
one hit. So that actually just was
to me showing he’s not very smart.
He started a volcano to destroy Eternia.
So he’s just trying to like destroy
stuff. I think that’s maybe the
underpinning is like he will do anything
to try to destroy stuff. Now, those
aren’t too bad. They’re very cartoony
kind of plans. He regularly mind-control
people. He had no problem taking over
people’s mind so that they would fight he man.
He summoned demons from another
dimension so that they would fight he man.
The problem was he never actually
figured out if he needed to come to
some sort of agreement with the demon.
So he would summon a demon. Sometimes
they would work with him. He would
summon a demon. And sometimes he couldn’t
control them. So this happened multiple
times. And he never actually thought it
all the way through like if the demon
wouldn’t do what he said, what was the point.
So a lot of us again, I think, have
the idea like if you go through the
ritual of summoning a demon, there is
sort of an inherent understanding that the
demon is going to do what you say.
We all have the monkey’s paw problem where
there’s a level of interpretation there
where maybe it doing what you say could
come back on you in a negative way.
But really summoning a demon just means the
demon is now in your world that doesn’t
necessarily mean the demon’s going to
do what you say. So that’s a very
important point for anyone out there who’s
listening right now who’s thinking about
summoning a demon. Just make sure
go through the rule book. See if there’s
any sort of like little script or anything.
And does the spell that you’re going to
use to summon a demon into your dimension?
Actually talk about whether or
not you will have control over the
demon because if you don’t, you might
want to rethink your process so that you do
get some sort of caveat in there in the
contract with you and the demon to make
sure the demon does what you say to a
degree. He did try to drain attorney of all
magic. And this meant every magic user in
the world would slowly and painfully die.
So we’re not talking about genocide.
I don’t know what you can imagine. He was
willing to commit murder on a massive
scale to gain power. So that’s where we see
his actual morality. Life doesn’t
seem to have any real value to him.
He is reckless in how he is willing to
use and spend life. He’s willing to create
life. He’s willing to use life just to
further his goals. The most messed up thing
though was he created a baby to raise.
Now the created a baby was a very vague
statement, but he basically got a
baby that he wanted to raise. So he could
marry her later and this turned out to
be Tila. Tila is a main character. She’s
sort of a love interest. I think for him.
Man at arms, sort of the leader of the
army of attorney, kidnapped her back,
I guess, I don’t know if it’s kidnapped, I
guess in that case, it’s rescuing, rescued
her from Skeletor and raised her as his
daughter. So she’s adopted. So we
do have this now like weird web where if
Skeletor created Tila, so we’re going
to go ahead and go with magic, not any
sort of other gross thing that I would
have to talk about, that she, if married to
Skeletor would be he-man’s aunt. As the
love, it just, is it problematic that she
is sort of the love interest of he-man?
I don’t think it is because they’re not
related, but if your uncle creates it,
is she his cousin? Like that’s actually
the problem because the creation aspect
is so vague is, are they actually related?
Because she’s created by magic,
right? I don’t know. That’s tough one. I’d
have to get more details on the creation
process, like did Skeletor use any of his
own flesh, let’s say, to create the
flesh that created the baby, that kind of
stuff would become important. But
he is a groomer, like that is 100% what’s
happened here. He’s going to raise a
child to become his wife. He is a groomer,
a Skeletor is a groomer. So that’s
the level of morality we’re talking about,
mass murder and grooming all on the table
as far as he’s concerned. Later on, he’s
willing to sacrifice her to want to be
aforementioned demons to get the demon
to come in. So his actual feeling about
the thing he created, this woman that he
was going to create to become his wife,
he was willing to sacrifice her without
question to get a demon because the
demon might be more powerful. So all that
being said, I think 100% the idea that
he would have a problem with having
personal relations with a corpse is
absolutely on the table. He doesn’t seem to
have any morality at all. He seems to
be doing whatever he needs to do in the
moment to what he considers perceived game.
Of course, every one of those plans
fails because he man generally throws
a rock at it. I mentioned the volcano,
he started volcano. He man threw a
rock into the volcano and plugged it up.
I don’t actually think that’s how volcanoes
would be stopped, but I think I would
just create more pressure and
create a bigger explosion. The writers of
He Man, not only were they inconsistent,
they didn’t actually spend a lot of time on
physics. Probably the most interesting
aspect of He Man as a character back in
the 80s. I didn’t actually watch any of
the reboot, so I don’t know, is that he
wasn’t allowed to hit anyone with his
sword. So his sword was used exclusively
for breaking items, usually doors or walls
or rocks. Someone threw a rock at him,
he would cut it in half. So there was a
door he would smash it with his sword,
but he never hit another individual
with his sword because of the rules of
kids TV at the time. He had a shield.
He often would use the shield to block.
The shield was kind of useless. Most
problems in He Man were actually solved by
He Man picking up something large and
throwing it. Now it may have been a rock to
plug a hole. It may have been picking
up a person and throwing them away, but
that actually seemed to be most of the
problems and how they were solved in the
He Man universe. But if he man ever
came across some of these actual real, very
diabolical plans, I think it
would have been time to
pull out the sword and
actually do some real damage.
[Music]
I just watched my viewer
count drop from three to one.
I think the phrase “scaling
to our having sex with
a dead body” maybe
turned a couple people off.