On this bonus episode we are without co-host David Tavolier but we do have returning guest, television and movie reviewer, LUCY WITSAMAN!
This time Lucy is dissecting SHE-RA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER the newest incarnation of the Masters of the Universe Etherian heroin from Dreamworks and Netflix!
As always co-host JOSHUA WITSAMAN holds our guests to the…
When some friends and I were trawling through an action figure archive, one of us noticed that like 80% of Mattel’s Demolition Man movie tie-in line was made up of reused molds from The New Adventures of He-Man series… including He-Man himself being remolded into Sylvester Stallone.
I’ve never got the Orko hate that seems to be in the He-Man fanbase. I’ve always liked Orko, I though he was a fun character with a cute design. He’s my second to favorite character in the show.
This is really a session of playing effects pedals.
Unseen but an integral part of this piece is the Bastl Instruments Kastle. It provides the basic repeating drone used throughout. The Alesis Guitar FX, with its unrefined effects, and general lo-fi graininess is the perfect compliment to the Kastle. Those are fed into a Zoom A1 Four which initially is used for the increasing tremolo and vibrato effects, and then switch to some deep reverbs and slow phasing.
The Zoom MS-50G is then slowly brought in to expand the reverbs, the phasing and add some pitched down sub-frequencies to the mix.
From there the Alesis Guitar FX switched between presets to accentuate and manipulate the Kastle drone, filtered and masked by the Zoom pedals.
Continually thwarted in his quest to dominate Eternia, Skeletor becomes increasingly frustrated with the inability to manifest his desire. He has heard rumors of a portal located in the Ancient Ruins that is said to be the key that bridges the divide between occult and material magic.
Skeletor ventures into the Ancient Ruins, and after a search of many years, he eventually discovers the location of the fabled portal. Once inside the deep, timeworn recesses that hold the apparatus and its machinery, he sets about to understand what he seeks to control. Decades pass, and following much study, contemplation and experimentation, he believes he has finally unlocked the secrets that will allow him to unleash the true power of the device.
After programming the apparatus to open a dimensional bridge, Skeletor seats himself upon the portal gateway.
Initially, Skeletor can feel the power emanating from the alternate dimension as it begins to fill his body. But as that power begins to radiate through him, he has the uneasy sense that what he craves to control cannot be dominated. And as the process continues, he is engulfed by the realization that he has fundamentally misunderstood the true purpose of the portal. But it is too late. He fights against the will of the energy now pouring through portal, but his efforts are in vain. The process has initiated, and he is now powerless to escape it. The mantle he sought as his trophy, has now become a yoke that will guide his journey beyond the confines of his reality. The pulsating waves of energy now engulf his body, mind and even his soul. His very essence begins to be transformed.
The energies of the whole of the universe begins to manifest into Skeletor’s form. The transformational energies begin to replace his perception of self. He is freed from the shackles that were his desires, his machinations, his perception of purpose. His mind is released from the confines of a singular reality, and he is opened up to the entirety of all things. Micro-cosmos embed themselves into the subatomic particles that compose his material structures. He lets go of his fading grip that confines him to physicality, and embraces the journey into the astral plane.
Skeletor is projected through the portal and into the vast reaches of both space and time. His journey is traversed in a blinding instant, and also simultaneously through the achingly slow aeons of linear time. He travels from the eternal beginning of the universe to its infinite ends. He observes all — the explosive creation of universes, the primordial formation of matter, the congregation of solar systems, and the eventual entropy of all things. His corporeal body dissimilates. The very fabric of his matters diffuses and is spread throughout the emptiness of space and time that was the universe. And he, with it, decomposes into non-existence.
The being that was once Skeletor ceases to perceive. Ceases to be burdened by all realities. His essence is assimilated into all super and sub dimensions, both known, and heretofore unknown; and he in turn absorbs them. He becomes an incidental, and yet also integral, component to all things. He ceases to be “he”, or “they”, or “it”, or anything discernible. The being once known as Skeletor simply ceases to be. And that emptiness is cradled by all existence.
That emptiness is now all things, all at once. And that emptiness is nothing, and never was.
